Both sides are losing air defences. But arguably Russia is most affected. It is not just about numbers, it's about supply of air interceptors, replacing lost systems, how much area the systems need to protect, and about how effectrive the systems are.

The most important Ukrainian Patriot air defences are very difficult for Russia to destroy and the other ones are also highly mobile too. So far Russia has only destroyed two launchers for one Patriot air defence system. https://postlmg.cc/Th15s6RY and two launchers for a NASAMS air defence system according to Oryx. For most of the systems, Russia is losing more than Ukraine according to Oryx.

However Russia has a big disadvantage here.

1. It has a far larger area to cover - especially now that Ukraine can hit targets as far away as the Arctic Circle.

2. Russia has no external supplier but has to replace any destroyed air defence systems itself. So as time goes on Russia is getting less protected, but with help from its allies, Ukraine is getting better protected.

3. Russia's air defence systems are not as good. The Patriot air defence system is very effective if supplied with enough interceptors the main problem Ukraine has is that it doens't have enough of them. But the Russian air defences, even its most modern S-400 seem to be rather easy for the ATACMS to penetrate. It can't protect even the Kerch bridge in Crimea, Ukraine has frequently hit nearby targets right next to the Kerch bridge which is a priority for Russian air defences. Here is an example, hitting the Crimean side of the Kerch ferry crossing:

QUOTE STARTS

On the night of May 30, 2024, the Ukrainian Defense Forces successfully struck a Russian ferry crossing in the temporarily occupied Crimea.

The strike was reportedly carried out with ATACMS ballistic missiles. They targeted the Kerch ferry, which was actively used by the enemy for its troops.

The General Staff noted that the ferry was covered by modern Russian air defense systems – Pantsir-S1, Tor, and S-400 Triumph, but despite this, American-made missiles successfully hit the target. https://mil.in.ua/en/news/atacms-ballistic-missiles-target-kerch-ferry-crossing-general-staff-reveals/

This is another example, when it destroyed a strategic Russian railway roll on roll off ferry while docked in Kavkaz port in Crimea. https://maritime-executive.com/article/video-russian-kerch-strait-ferry-destroyed-by-fire-after-ukrainian-attack

This is 12.5 km from the bridge.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Port+Kavkaz/@45.27063,36.4302071,20173m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x40ee95e045949fa7:0xf39c8a7c88a3fcaa!8m2!3d45.341195!4d36.6737069!16zL20vMDJ0emw3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAxMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

And the Ukrainians continue to destroy many Russian air defence systems. For most types of system, the Ukrainians destroy more than the Russians do.

The Oryx site lists the following figures:

RUSSIA:

Anti-Aircraft Guns (55, of which destroyed: 36, damaged: 1, captured: 18)

Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns (27, of which destroyed: 16, damaged: 2, abandoned: 2, captured: 7)

Jammers And Deception Systems (84, of which destroyed: 63, damaged: 12, captured: 9)

Surface-To-Air Missile Systems (280, of which destroyed: 206, damaged: 46, abandoned: 4, captured: 24)

Radars (81, of which destroyed: 49, damaged: 22, captured: 10)

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

UKRAINE:

Anti-Aircraft Guns (4, of which captured: 4) [captured 18 Russian ones so Ukraine gained 16, Russia +4-55 = -51]

Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns (34, of which destroyed: 23, damaged: 5, abandoned: 1, captured: 5) [Ukraine: 9-34 = -25. Russia: 5-27 = -22.

Jammers And Deception Systems (7, of which destroyed: 4, damaged: 2, captured: 1 [Ukraine: 9-7 = +2. Russia: 1-84 = -83]

Surface-To-Air Missile Systems (166, of which destroyed: 140, damaged: 19, abandoned: 1, captured: 6) [Ukraine: 24-166 = -142, Russia: 6-280 = -274]

Radars And Communications Equipment (131, of which destroyed: 97, damaged: 20, abandoned: 1, captured: 13) [Ukraine: 10-131 = -121, Russia: 13-81 = -68]

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html

Russia can sustain the current loss of figher jets for a long time so long as the rate of attrition doesn't go up very much. But its airforce is shrinking wiht time and it loses some irreplaceable aircraft such as its airborne command units.

The airframes are also getting battterred by the war. It means more maintenance and more chance of planes crashing and the aircraft not quite at peak efficiency.

Also Russia is losing its pilots and other skilled crew - partly through direct losses and partly because Russia often sends skilled people to the front line as ordinary infantrymen that they are not trained for and loses them.

So far its production rate has not yet been able to keep up with the losses. It did start the war with a huge numerical advantage and it is going to keep that advantage through the next few years unless the attrition ratio goes way up - but it's not going to improve on it any time soon.

The Russian airforce is shrinking and not likely to turn around and expand for sure though they can reduce the rate at which it shrinks.

Meanwhile the Ukrainian airforce is growing with the F-16s. Which its allies can easily supply because they are surplus aircraft they are replacing with F-35s. The West produces 260 aircraft a year. Russia produced maybe 50 in 2024, fewer in 2022 and 2023 and it has issues with quality because of the sanctions. Also it is losing some irreplaceable aircraft that it can't build any more such as air combat command and control aircraft.

The Western production rate is far greater, no comparison. It also has large numbers of decommissioned F-16s. The ones that Ukraine gets from its allies are being replaced by the far more capable F-35 which is way more capable than anything Russia has, even its new Su-57 is not nearly as stealthy as the F-35.

So Ukraine is mainly getting surplus jets that its suppliers would otherwise send to scrap or try to find a buyer somewhere else in the world.

It is not hitting the numbers of fighter jets available in the West at all. Indeed even if ti gets all the promised F-16s and more this doesn't impact on the Western airforce.

The bottleneck for Ukraine is training its pilots not the supply of F-16s.

Its allies could remove this bottleneck by permitting Ukriane to employ retired fighter jet pilots from any of the many countries that now fly them but so far has not considered giving it this permission. They would already be combat trained and experienced if they did this. It wold not make the countries of origin participants in the war, it would just make them foreign fighters like the many other volunteer foreign fighters already in Ukraine.

QUOTE STARTS

• Russia produced 22-26 combat jets in 2022 and 29-50 in 2023, focusing on fighter jets over civilian aircraft.
• Russian Air Force has been ineffective in gaining air superiority against a resourceful Ukraine.
• Russia lost 121 military aircraft in the Ukraine war but can sustain these losses for a long time. ,,, While international sanctions brought civilian Russian aircraft production to a shuddering halt, Russia continues producing fighter jets. Due to Russia running a war economy, fighter jets are likely to be prioritized over the production of civilian airliners and other aircraft.

While sanctions may be unable to stop Russian fighter jet production, they work to make production more difficult, create supply bottlenecks, slow production down, sometimes force compromises on production quality, and make the jets more expensive. ... According to data gathered by the military analysis channel Binkov's Battlegrounds, Russia produced 22 to 26 combat jets (including one Tu-160M strategic bomber) in 2022 and 29 to 50 new combat jets in 2023 (with one Tu-160M strategic bomber).

Binkov concludes that Russia's production is likely to be sufficient to sustain the level of Su-27 Flanker (and derivatives) losses seen in this war so far. ... By contrast, Lockheed Martin alone produces around 156 fifth-generation fighter jets a year (including many for export). Western fighter jets in production include F-35s, F-16s, F-15EXs, Dassault Rafales, Typhoon Eurofighters, and Swedish Gripens. The combined Western fighter jet production is within the ballpark of 260 fighter jets. ...

"The high utilisation rates of some tactical aircraft types are also increasing demand on maintenance and support, placing further stress on industry."- IISS

https://simpleflying.com/russian-combat-aircraft-production-rates/

It is far too soon to judge how effective they will be. The Ukrainian pilots started by shooting down the shahed drones, a difficult task mainly because of coordination with their own air defences. One of their F-16s was sadly shot down or may have collided with the debris from a destroyed missile.

But as they get more experienced they will use them near the front line.

The Ukrainians don'ot see the F-16s as wonder weapons that will win the war for them all on their own. But it is clear the Ukrainian pilots for whatever reason must be far more skilled than the Russian pilots. They managed to prevent Russia from flying outside occupied Ukraine for all except the first few weeks of the war using just a few dozen Mig -29s vastly inferior to the most modern Russian fighter jets.

Ukraine had almost nothing by way of air defences back then - a few old systems from the Soviet Era and manpads such as the Stingers only useful for low flying planes and helicopters. Russia had its S-300s and S-400s

But the 1980s technology GLMRS missiles for HiMARS got through the S-300s and even the S-400s

While Russia with its huge 11 to 1 advantage for fighter jets and even greater advantage for support aircraft was not able to fly beyond their own front line except for risky low sorties skimming below the detection of radar. With Ukraine doing the same back. They were roughly evenly matched along the front line with Ukraine equipped with vastly inferior fighter jets.

So now, with the F-16s, Ukraine may do far better than Western analysts expect.

The F-16 fighter jets are likely part of Zelensky's plan. They may have shot down their first Su-34 bomber - the very large bombers that drop glide bombs on Ukraine and should be easy for an F-16 to shoot down if it has the right equipment which it does.

Ukraine may have already shot down a big Su-34 bomber carrying glide bombs with an F-16.

This compares the size:

https://www.reddit.com/r/modelmakers/comments/1bsoqc0/su34_vs_f16_size_comparison/

QUOTE STARTS

ISW cannot independently confirm the Telegram channel’s claim, but if confirmed, this incident would mark the first Ukrainian shootdown of a Russian manned aircraft with a Western-provided F-16 fighter jet. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-12-2024

Whether it happened or not and there is a big debate on Twitter among tthe experts about whether it was shot down or just crashed, it is likely part of the victory plan that they gain air superiority over parts of the front line for a counteroffensive. They have to stop the glide bombs to have a decent chance of liberating and holding occupied Ukraine

So then - this along with forcing the Su-34s and other bombers to fly to the front line or border from further into Russia and reducing their load can hugely reduce the impact of the glide bombs. This HAS to be part of Zelensky's victory plan.

So - with reduced supplies of munitions for the ground attack forces, and then reduced use of glide bombs and then an innovatrion advantage and huge numerical advantage in the observation drones, kamikaze drones and attack zones - this may let Ukraine develop blind spots in the Russian air defences and provide air cover for a counteroffensive.

Ukraine already has sea dominance, remarkable for a country without a navy, over all of Crimea. Russia can no longer dock its Black Sea fleet safely anywhere around the Crimean peninsula. Also it can't detect the Ukrainian motorized dinghies any more which are able to do long distance raids of Crimea from the coast south of Kherson city.

In the same way it is on the path to achieving dominance with drones.

Of coures they are - but Ukraine are adapting too. They now have the ability to hit the Russian planes on the ground far behind the Russian front line. The most striking example ws when they hit an Su-57, its most modern figher yet which they have only a few dozen prototypes of.

QUOTE The Defense Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine (GUR) has released satellite imagery that appears to support its claim to have damaged at least one Russian Sukhoi Su-57 ‘Felon’ fighter aircraft on the ground at the 929th VP Chkalova State Flight Test Centre in Akhtubinsk. Akhtubinsk airfield is located around 370 miles from Ukrainian-held territory, placing it beyond the reach of most of the long-range strike weapons supplied so far by Western countries, but the attack was reportedly carried out by three one-way attack (OWA) drones.

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/damaged-su-57-emphasises-vulnerability-russian-airbases-near-ukraine

Ukraine's big advantage is in its air defences, if it can get more Patriot air defences. The Russians seem almost incapable of protecting their military assets from the Ukrainiian drones which are getting more and more effective.

Ukraine has destroyed large numbers of munitions and fuel dumps. Without the fuel and munitions the Russian army can't fight.

SHORT DEBUNK: Ukraine used its OWN drones to destroy huge depot of Russian shells and missiles in SELF DEFENCE - one of largest ever conventional explosions at > 1 kiloton - shows how defenceless Russia is - can't escalate if US lets Ukraine use ATACMS in Russia See: https://doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Ukraine_used_its_OWN_drones_to_destroy_huge_depot_of_Russian_shells_and_missiles_in_SELF_DEFENCE_-one_of_the_largest_ever_conventional_explosions_at_over_1_kiloton-shows_how_defenceless_Russia_is-_can%27t_escalate_if_US_lets_Ukraine_use_ATACMS_in_Russia

The reason it wants the ATACMS is to hit fighter jets and bombers on the ground. Of course they can fly out of range of ATACMS but this will mean they take longer to reach Ukraine and the longer they are in the air the more vulnerable they are. Also this means each bombing run has to carry fewer bombs as it needs more fuel to travel to the drop point for the bombs.

As in 2022, Ukraine is doing shaping operations, damaging the logistics supply to the front line.

It is not going to win by destroying all the Russian airforce. But it can win by making it less effective.

Ukraine's F-16s can also shoot down the larger, and easier to see S-34 bombers.

However, Ukraine has also adopted many strategies on its side too. Including electronic warwfare to jam the drones, producing many more drones than Russia has, new and more innovative drones, access to better components for its drones that Russia can't access at scale becausae of the sanctions - and most recently attack drones.

There are three kinds of drones: observation drones, kamikazi drone and attack drones. The attack drones attack other drones also they can sometimes destry helicopters, the main differenc iis they are designed to attack things that fly rather than on the ground and at the moment Ukraine has the edge, Russia doesn't seem to have attack drones yet.

So - the battlefield got "transparent" by 2024 - you could no longer do traditional reconnassance through woods and reed beds as the observation drone would spot you and both sides knew where everyone else was.

But then the attack dcrones changed that again.

This is the main way that Ukraine was able to do the Kursk incursion, throuhg attack drones and electronic warfare so that the Russians couldn't monitor their progress.

And Ukraine will make 1.5 million drones by the end of this year.

QUOTE STARTS

This week I visited an FPV production line here in Ukraine that is building 100,000 drones a month. That's not a typo: 100,000 a month. And even that output fails to match the needs of Ukraine's front-line forces.

It's an unbelievably impressive operation, comprising 1,500 workers divided into two shifts. They quality-control each component, and a team of drone pilots puts each drone through a short flight profile to ensure its airworthiness.

The vast space hummed with activity. There was urgency in the effort. This was grassroots resistance at its core — the pairing of commercial innovation and a civilian population wholly committed to the war effort.

I used to be a drone warfare skeptic. I thought, for a long time, that drones were a makeshift solution to deficits in air power and artillery ammunition. But no longer. I'm now convinced that drones have an inherent utility that supersedes their capacity to sub in for these other, legacy weapons.

Ukrainians are the experts in this new era of warfare. They're able to harness the power of bottom-up innovation — a process that's driven by the needs of warfighters and then reinforced by a nonstop feedback loop in which front-line troops work with engineers to continually refine their technological tools.

The war in Ukraine increasingly orbits around drones. The trend line is clear, and based on what I've been seeing these past few years, the US is way behind — in terms of technology, tactics, and military culture. We're still wedded to old ideas, and we're not learning the right lessons. Above all, we do not have the capacity to adapt our technologies and our doctrine at the proverbial speed of war, such as the Ukrainians have done. https://x.com/nolanwpeterson/status/1841499789424308490

By the end of 2024, Ukraine plans to manufacture 1.5 million war drones, while government has also launched an experimental project on certifying UAV operator schools.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/3911620-ukraine-to-produce-15m-drones-by-yearend-pm-shmyhal.html

I talk about the drone innovatrion race towards the end here

hrough to last weekend. I did it based on the maps shared by professor Phillips P. OBrien.

I talk about it in the second half of my new blog post here:

BLOG: Russia’s new nuclear doctrine is sabre rattling - they know Ukraine is never any threat to Russian sovereignty - Biden tweets Ukraine will win this war after seeing Zelensky's victory plan

https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/russias-new-nuclear-doctrine-is-sabre

This is a remarkable thing about the war. Ukraine with only 72 fighters holds off 809 fighters. This is a simple matter of numbers. At a ratio of 11 Russian fighters to every 1 Ukrainian fighter, even higher in 2022, Russia has never been able to take over the Ukrainian air space beyond the occupied region.

These numbers show that Ukraine MUST have far far better pilots than Russia. It would be impossible for one Mig-29 to fight off 11 Russian fighter jets many of them far more advanced than the Mig-29.

Early in 2022 they just had the Stinger shoulder mounted ground to air missiles. Later on they got S-300 systems from Slovakia which forced the Russians to fly close to the ground.

This is not because of one brave and extraordinary "Ghost of Kyiv". People make up explanations for Ukraine being able to hold back the vastly superior Russian air force and this was a popular fiction to explain it - such stories are common in war same happened in WW2. But it's not the real reason.

It is because the Ukrainian air force have had training with NATO and have focused on changing how they do things since 2014 and are a modern airforce that uses modern ideas. It still is somewhat stuck in Soviet ideas but it is far more modern than Russia

It is not so much that the Ukrainians are superior though they have also done a lot of innovation on top of what NATO taught them making stuff up for the war such as experience in how to fly very close to the ground and they way they distracted the Russian air defences with a simple drone to sink the Moskva with a Neptune.

But the reason Ukraine could hold off Russia is because the Russians are so very weak in the air.

It is because of endemic issues in the Russian airforce. Their pilots are not permitted to take initiative much but have to obey the orders of the general.

If the general says "Fly from here to there and bomb that target" that is what they have to do.

They mostly do point to point missions with a single fighter jet on a mission as in WW2.

They are dependent on mobile air commands in the air, large expensive aircraft that fly far behind the front line because they can be shot down easily.

The generals and the air command don't have a good idea of the situation.

But most of all Russia clearly has not trained in combined operations where large groups of pilots work together to achieve an objective. All they can do is to do these point to point missions under the command of a general.

Russian fighter pilots work on their own. They are not used to working with other pilots just to working with generals that tell them what to do.

The details would be more complex but you can understand the basics with simple maths.

100 fighter jets working together could surely easily overpower 10 Mig29s working together.

But even 100 fighter jets coming one at a time on separate missions can surely be held back by 10 Mig29s working together using modern methods indeed they wouldn't even try as it would be a massacre with a 10 to 1 advantage for Ukraine.

This is not theoretical. It happened all through 2022 before Ukraine got its advanced air defences.

So that is the reason that experts give. This was a huge surprise to most Western analysts, they had no idea how very poor the training was for Russian pilots and given the huge ratio of numbers expected Russia to take over the Ukrainian air space in the first few days. It never happened.

It is partly also that Putin didn't prioritize it.

The experts expected that if Russia invaded, it would first spend a couple of days destroying the Ukrainian air force before any tanks enter Ukraine and they would have had far fewer aircraft left if he'd done that. Instead Putin just did it for a few hours which warned the Ukrainians. A Mig29 can fly off a short section of highway - so the pilots got into their remaining planes and dispersed all over Ukraine and then Ukraine rapidly built lots of secret runways hidden in woods etc and Russia lost that opportunity to destroy them.

But it is also partly because the Russian airforce just don't have the training. Even with an 11 to 1 ratio and a few dozen fighter jets defending Ukraine, they should have been able to take over the Ukrainian air space very quickly. Especially in the first few weeks when Ukraine didn't even have the S-300 for air defences and the Russian pilots could fly too high to be hit by Stingers.

But they didn't and they haven't been able to learn since then and still do these point to point missions.

Things like this can't be fixed quickly because of the many years of training needed for a top quality pilot. After the war is over perhaps Russia can change. But changing it in the middle of an active war would be confusing with the pilots not knowing what to do as it would go against all their training for many years.

Professor Phillips P. OBrien talks about this issue here

https://web.archive.org/web/20220509173612/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/russian-military-air-force-failure-Ukraine/629803/

The article was later updated and the title changed and is now behind a paywall but the original version wasn't paywalled

SUMMARY:

Summary This article by Phillips Payson O’Brien and Edward Stringer, writing for The Atlantic, makes the following points:

• Airpower should have been one of Russia’s greatest advantages over Ukraine, with almost 4,000 combat aircraft and extensive experience.
• More than two months into the war, Russia’s air force is still fighting for control of the skies.
• The failure of the Russian air force is the most important, but least discussed, story of the conflict so far.
• The recent modernization of the Russian air force was mostly for show.
• Money was wasted and the Russian air force continues to suffer from flawed logistics and lack of regular training.

https://runway.airforce.gov.au/resources/link-article/overlooked-reason-russia-s-invasion-floundering

Upated article behind a paywall which as far as I know is just the title changed. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/russian-military-air-force-failure-Ukraine/629803/

As to why Putin didn't want to spend even 2 days destroying the airforce this is a guess but it may well be because he was persuaded by false information from his spies that he would be able to take over the Ukrainian government in a couple of days and didn't bother to do a proper military operation.

He didn't even make sure the tanks had enough fuel to get from Belarus to Kyiv on the ground which is why the tanks kept running out of fuel in the first week or two.

From leaked intelligence information since then, it was all just a distraction for the main operation which was to develop an air bridge to Hostomol airport, send in an elite group of tanks, soldiers etc and rapidly advance into Kyiv before the Ukrainians were able to defend themselves. Which of course failed.

So perhaps he didn't want to spend 2 days destroying the planes because by 2 days of bombing he'd have lost the element of surprise which was what he was counting on for the Hostomel air bridge. Even though the air bridge would have been far easier to establish after those 2 days.

The Ukrainians did have training from 2014 to 2022 this is not in any way secret it is public and there are lots of stories about it. The Ukrainians also did joint training with NATO and as recently as 2021 F-16 fighter jets landed in Ukraine as part of those exercises. But NATO did not give them any offensive equipment they just trained them. This was NOT and very CLEARLY NOT with the intent to try to attack Rsusia in any way just to train them to defend themselves which became a priority after Russia took ove rCrimea.

With the pilots the results stand for themselves. If the Russian piliots were as good as the Ukrainian ones then 72 Ukrainian fighter jets would have no chance against 814 Russians. It is then a question of why that is.

I didn't say it was because of corruption. Though that may be a factor. It is mainly that the Russians still use WW2 tactics where each fighter pilot is given its own separate mission and the pilots are not able to work wit each other on the field.

At least that is what Western analysts that I follow say. There may be other reasons but what is absolutely certain is that the Ukrainians are far better pilots than the Russians. As to why that is then you can work on your own theories of course.

According to Global Fire power, Ukraine has 72 fighter jets as of 2024 and Russia has 809, So it has 10 times as many. When you look at total aircraft it's an even bigger ratio,

Ukraine will be getting 85 F-16s eventually promised by Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Russia will still have many more fighter jets than Ukraine. Also the Ukrainians have only had a year to learn how to fly their jets and it takes a lot longer to really master them though they'd be able to fly them like a Mig-29 with more stealth quite quickly.

Biden gave countries permission to send them to Ukraine in August 2023. So it is not new, all that's new is that they may arrive in Ukraine soon. Other countries gave Ukraine the Mig-29 fighter jets starting in March 2023 and Ukraine had about 50 fighter jets since soon after the war started. It had probably 98 when the war started. Russia destroyed about half of those in the first few days but it only did a short half-hearted attempt at destroying them so Ukraine was able to save half of them.

Ever since then it's been flying them off remoter air fields hidden away in forests and from roads

So Russia has 10 military aircraft for every 1 Ukrainian aircraft. Also the Ukrainian ones are ancient Soviet era ones mainly a legacy from when Ukraine split off from the Soviet Union. Russia has far more modern aircraft that Ukraine doesn't have which can fire missiles from the air and can spot Mig29s from far too far away for a Mig29 to see them and can fire air to air missiles to hit the Mig 29 with the Mig 29 not able to do anything back except hide by flying too low for the radar to spot.

Western analysts expected Russia to take over Ukraine's air space quickly with waves of fighter jets. But it turned out that Russian pilots have never learnt how to do that, all they know is how to fly to a point set in advance by a commander and drop a bomb there and quickly fly back again. Russia is simply unable to win battles in the air even with an advantage of 10 to 1. The only explanation that makes sense is that the Russian pilots are simply not trained to do this. By NATO standards they are very badly trained and that can't be changed in the middle of a war, not easily. They have made some adaptations in their ability to drop bombs, e.g. to fly low and then throw the glide bombs into the air at the last minute and quickly turn back. But the Russian commanders are not prepared to give the pilots the initiative to make decisions by themselves in a quickly changing battle in the air so it is partly because the Russian approach is very hierarchical with the pilots not trained to be able to take any initiative themselves just do what the commanders tell them to do. They also can't work effectively with ground forces, often making mistakes and not trained in combined operations.

Ukraine quickly got the ability to stop them dropping bombs easily on most of Ukraine and they kept control of the air space over most of Ukraine through to spring 2023 when NATO countries started giving them advanced air defences to protect themselves.

So - NATO countries are going to give Ukraine a few dozen F-16 fighter jets. These are ancient technology for NATO as they are destined for scrap otherwise. NATO has far too many F-16s because they are replacing them by F-35s which are vastly superior to anything Russia has. But the F-16s are equivalent to the most modern Russian fighter jets.

Russia still has many more modern fighter jets than the F-16s NATO is giving to Ukraine. It will still have a 5 to 1 ratio of fighter jets and with many modern fighter jets.

So this donation would be of very little use if Russia was able to fight in the air like NATO. That's partly why NATO countries think this will hardly make any difference in the war.

But Ukraine thinks it will make a big difference and they are the ones who have experience fighting Russian pilots in the air. If it does make a big difference this will be another confirmation that the Russian pilots are just not very well trained.

So we'll see who was right. They are not magic weapons and to start with the Ukrainians will be very inexperienced at using therm in combat so they won't make a big difference on day 1. However by the end of the war the Ukrainians will be the only country in the world with experience fighting Russian fighter jets with F-16s.

To start with the F-16s will fly far from the front line just shooting down drones and cruise missiles which they are able to do with air to air missiles. That will help protect the cities. The F-16s in turn would be protected by the Patriot air defences and shoot down missiles that get through.

Later they may be able to fly closer to the front line and shoot down the bombers that fire glide bombs at Ukraine.

Then as they get more experienced they will be able to fly along the front line and support any Ukrainian counteroffensives and a counteroffensive supported by their Mig29s along with a dozen or so F-16s will be much safer than one that has to try to fight with Russian military jets flying overhead until they can set up their air defences.

So - the F-16s may make a big difference. But nothing like if NATO was to give them F-35s.

And Putin is not going to attack NATO that makes no sense. If he is so bothered by F-16s that he worries this will mean he loses the war against Ukraine quickly it makes no sense to then attack NATO with its F-35s that have a radar cross section like a supersonic baked potato in size, and are effectively invisible to its radar and with its tomahawk cruise missiles and other missiles with a range of 2,400 km instead of the ATACMS with similar payload and a range of 300 km etc etc.

An F-35 test pilot said that with a few F-35s Ukraine could quickly take over all the occupied air space and shoot out the radar systems from the air before Russia could see them and get total air control over the occupied regions of Ukraine quickly.

But NATO is very very cautious. It's aim is to give Ukraine enough by way of equipment so that it can win, but not to give it enough capability so that it can win dramatically by e.g. sinking the entire Black Sea fleet in a few hours or taking over the air space over occupied Ukraine in a few hours like a NATO country could do. Ukraine isn't asking for that capability either.

So that is not going to happen. But Ukraine CAN do major counteroffensives by blocking off the supply routes because Russia's war depends on a very few vulnerable supply routes such as the Azov coast road to supply the war. As we saw with Kherson city in the fall of 2022, if Ukraine can cut off the supply route - in that case the Antonovsky bridge across the Dnipro river - then Russian soldiers at the front line run out of fuel, and shells and missiles and their air defences run out of air interceptors. With no way to supply them then they have to retreat.

So - Ukraine has opportunities to do that by cutting through the Azov sea coast road and the bridges from Crimea to Kherson oblast and the Kerch bridge. That would liberate half of the current occupied Ukraine and put Crimea at risk. It would then be very hard for Russia to supply Crimea once Ukraine has control of Kherson oblast and part of Zaporizhzhia oblast and perhaps has regained Mariupol.

It is not impossible Ukraine gets that far even this year, but most likely in 2025. Then once that happens Putin is likely to be more in a mood for treaty negotiations.

BLOG: Why F-16s will make such a difference to Ukraine - can fly from Ukraine - ancient technology by NATO standards - roughly equal in capability to Russia’s best fighter jets which currently dominate the air space over front lines https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Why-F-16s-will-make-such-a-difference-to-Ukraine-can-fly-from-Ukraine-ancient-technology-by-NATO-standards-roughly

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The cite doesn't mention gamma ray bursts. It just says: QUOTE Thus, while VY CMa is unlikely to pr duce an extremely luminous SN IIn like SN 2006tf (Smith et al. 2008), it probably will produce a moderately luminous and long-lasting SN IIn like SN 1988Z, which had detectable CSM interaction for over a decade after explosion

Smith, N., Hinkle, K.H. and Ryde, N., 2009. Red supergiants as potential type IIn supernova progenitors: spatially resolved 4.6 μm CO emission around VY CMa and Betelgeuse. The Astronomical Journal, 137(3), p.3558. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-6256/137/3/3558/pdf and gamma ray bursts normally need a star of at least 40 solar masses

QUOTE It is apparent that long GRBs arise primarily from a subset of massive (MZAMS≥40 M⊙), moderately metal-poor stars at cosmological redshifts. Although the nearest long GRBs lie at distances of tens to hundreds of megaparsec, we can study individual massive stars within appropriate environments in the Local Group.

See Levan, A., Crowther, P., de Grijs, R., Langer, N., Xu, D. and Yoon, S.C., 2016. Gamma-ray burst progenitors. Space Science Reviews, 202(1), pp.33-78. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-016-0312-x

Another useful cite:

QUOTE "From what we can see now, it looks like a hoax," says Gerard Magill, PhD, director of the Center for Health Care Ethics at St. Louis Univer-sity. "They are not a scientifically reputable body and have yet to come forward with any data. Given the difficulty of the technology, it is extraordinarily unlikely they could accomplish such a goal." ...

QUOTE "All of the reports from cloning experiments describe a high incidence of late abortion or the birth of dead animals," said Randall Prather, MD, PhD, distinguished professor of reproductive biotechnology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, on Jan. 6. "When live cloned offspring have been produced, many have been subject to abnormalities that were apparent only after birth. These abnormalities include premature death at different ages, respiratory failure, absence of an immune response, and inadequate kidney function."

QUOTE Such problems are believed to be the a consequence of inappropriate gene expression resulting from incomplete "reprogramming" of the adult cell used in cloning, he continued. "There is absolutely no reason to expect the situation to be different in humans."

https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/27340-experts-say-clonaid-isn-8217-t-likely-to-have-cloned-baby

Lingam, M. and Loeb, A., 2020. Potential for liquid water biochemistry deep under the surfaces of the moon, mars, and beyond. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 901(1), p.L11. Press release Could Live exist deep underground on Mars?

This statement is misleading, the poll was of 21 countries and those are the 9 out of the 21 that had more than 50% with the belief. The remaining 11 had less than 50%. Less than half have that belief in Azerbaijan, Tajikstan, Paletinian territory, Jordan and Egypt Less than a third in Russia, Bangladesh, Less than a quarter in Albania, Kosova, Bosnia-herzegovina Uzbekistan Kyrgystan Kazakhstan Indonesia https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-3-articles-of-faith/#_ftn16

A more recent cite, NOAA QUOTE Blue whales are the largest animals ever to live on our planet. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/blue-whale

Citation needed - don't see any date that old

Note, if you just want to find the probability for a particular sigma then an easy way to do it is:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Prob+x+%3E+3.09+or+x+%3C+-3.09+if+x+is+standard+normal

That example is 3.09 sigma

Better source:

On September 14, Rumsfeld announced that the overall alertstatus of U.S. forces worldwide had been reduced a notch to DEFCON 4, which put the alert level back to its normal peace time status. Lambeth, B.S., 2001. Air power against terror: America's conduct of operation enduring freedom. Rand Corporation. From: CHAPTER TWO A Nation Girds for War: 22

The cite and the diagram says it is 8.2 billion years old. Not 6.9 billion years old.

This is sourced to a website that sells blessed candles. https://www.virgosacrata.com/three-days-of-darkness.html They in turn source it to a book "The prophets and our Times" from 1941 by Gerald Culleston. It in turn gives as its sources

Providence-Sligo: Life of Ven. Anna Maria Taigi Thompson : Life of Ven. Anna Maria Taigi

https://archive.org/stream/TheProphetsAndOurTimes/TheProphetsAndOurTimes_djvu.txt

This windscreen evidence is very controversial. It may tell us something, but if so it is probably about the impact of roads on insects. Manu Sanders, who did her PhD on edge effects such as roads on insects has found only one published study on the insect abundance.

People often claim the ‘windscreen phenomenon’ is established evidence and proven fact. But a search of academic journal databases returns only one published study that has used car windscreens to measure changes in local insect abundance. In that study, Anders Møller compared insect abundance (although it’s not clear from the Methods if he actually measured density) with breeding rates of insectivorous birds in an agricultural landscape in Denmark. Data was collected in the same way at the same location for 20 years, which is very impressive, and analysis showed an 80% decline in insects across the period. She says that it is a good study, especially the parallel declines in birds and their insect foods. But it is only one location and one environmental context. She continues: This tells us about insect splatter on car windscreens in that location, not the world. There are more than 21 million km of roads across the world. Generally roads have negative effects on insect abundance. There are a lot more studies measuring broader-scale effects of roads on insects. But, as with all ecological questions, there is never one single factor influencing a dataset. A recent review found only 50 studies that had investigated the ecological impact of roads on insects (the review was published in 2015 and there have been a few more studies published since then). Overall the authors found generally negative effects on insect abundance and diversity. They also found there are lots of factors within the broader ‘road – insect’ interaction that affect results. For example, during my PhD, we investigated edge effects on wild insect pollinators in almond orchards (the edge was a two-lane low-traffic road between monoculture almond orchards and native mallee woodland). The road wasn’t a barrier, but we found that the edge effect varied across time as the floral resource pulse of the orchards on one side peaked and declined. First, it depends mainly on the verges. Nowadays we trim the verges of roads much more and this impacts on the numbers of insects on the roads.

See The windscreen phenomenon: anecdata is not scientific evidence

Also she mentions bug deflectors. You can get these to attach to a car to reduce the insect splatter.

https://www.carid.com/articles/age-old-debate-do-bug-deflectors-work.html

This was an attempt. It didn't succeed.

Bilde, P., 1978. The Roman emperor Gaius (Caligula)'s attempt to erect his statue in the temple of Jerusalem. Studia Theologica, 32(1), pp.67-93.

No cite given. The Higgs particle can't stimulate a false vacuum collapse, common misunderstanding.

Passage added by an editor who doesn't normally edit on science in 2015 and not changed since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=False_vacuum&diff=prev&oldid=646646651

The universe currently doesn't have particles hot enough to stimulate a false vacuum decay without quantum tunnelling. It might have been possible in the early universe with a reheat temperature with particles with energies of 10^16 GeV.

In this diagram, the blue dashed line shows a reheat temperature of 10^16 GeV in that first tiny fraction of a microsecond of the universe, which would be enough to get the universe within the range of uncertainty of the universe's state possibly without quantum tunnelling

Caption:

: The blue dashed line shows the instability bound (5.62) obtained by taking the thermal history of the Universe into account (Delle Rose et al., 2016) and assuming a high reheat temperature TRH=1016 GeV. For lower reheat temperatures, the instability bound becomes weaker, and approaches the red dotted line as TRH → 0.

Cosmological Aspects of Higgs Vacuum Metastability

A Higgs particle doesn't do anything.

That's a bit like confusing a photon with a magnet.

Both are related to the electromagnetic field but totally different things.

It is the Higgs field itself that quantum tunnels.

Not the Higgs particle.

The Higgs particle gave evidence that the Higgs field existed.

If we had very advanced understanding of physics but no magnet, then conceivably by observing photons we might deduce the possibility of magnets. It's like that.

It proved that the Higgs field exists, at least if it is the Higgs. Originally there were some questions about whether it really was a Higgs particle eventually they are sure it is. That's like observing a photon and deducing that the electromagnetic field exists (though you'd probably need more data than just a photon to deduce the details of the electromagnetic field).

But just as for a photon and the electromagnetic field, it only tells us a bit about the Higgs field and that's why they look closely at interactions of various other particles like the Top quark that are influenced by the Higgs field to find out more about it.

Alternatively, they may be confusing with the energy needed to push it over the hump instead of tunnel through and if so energies needed are so high they only existed in the early universe and don't exist anywhere anymore.

Better cite: https://epl.carnegiescience.edu/news/long-lost-moon-jupiter-found

No citations for this section. There are theories with varying dark energy but if true it's a slow change over billions of years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy#Variable_dark_energy_models

My debunk is here https://www.quora.com/q/debunkingdoomsday/Debunked-Collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists-NOT

Where did the Moon come from? https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/427539/pdf E Belbruno, JR Gott III - The Astronomical Journal, 2005

We propose that the giant impactor could have formed in a stable orbit among debris at Earth’s L4 (or L5) Lagrange point. We show that such a configuration is stable, even for a Mars-sized impactor. It could grow gradually by accretion at L4 (or L5), but eventually gravitational interactions with other growing planetesimals could kick it out into a chaotic creeping orbit, which we show would likely cause it to hit Earth on a zero-energy parabolic trajectory. We argue that this scenario is possible and should be further studied.

Jacobson, S.A. and Walsh, K.J., 2015. Earth and terrestrial planet formation. The early Earth: Accretion and differentiation, pp.49-70.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03852.pdf

The feeding zones,which determine the compositions of Earth and Venus follow a particular pattern determined by Jupiter, while the feeding zones of Mars and Theia, the last giant impactor on Earth, appear to randomly sample the terrestrial disk. Thelate accreted mass samples the disk nearly evenly.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E_Asphaug/publication/280321193_Impact_Origin_of_the_Moon/links/55bb9a8e08aec0e5f4418e9f.pdf Asphaug, E., 2014. Impact origin of the Moon?. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 42, pp.551-578.

The idea that Earth and the Moon coaccreted as a binary pair was refined by Morishima &Watanabe (2001) in the context of the waning solar nebula. But W isotopes and other chronometers(Touboul et al. 2007) have shown that the Moon must have formed long after the disappearance of the gas, at∼4.5 Ga or later. Without the nebula, coaccretion appears impossible to support dynamically. Another idea—another kind of coaccretion—is that Theia formed at one of Earth’s Trojanpoints (Belbruno & Gott 2005) or otherwise in the same feeding zone near 1 AU. Coformationof some kind is consistent with the low-velocity collision that is required of the standard model.But even if the physical conditions could be satisfied to make a Mars-mass Trojan, it might notbe sufficient to make Theia in the same feeding zone as Earth, or in a Trojan point of Earth, togive it indistinguishable isotopes. A Trojan point exists only after Earth is substantially accreted,so it would be a depleted and much less massive region of the disk. It remains to be demonstrated how a Trojan Theia or a nearby Theia, forming at lower pressures, fugacities, and temperatures and with different boundary conditions, would have the same isotopes.

Popular account here

"They show that most of the molybdenum in Earth's mantle was supplied by the protoplanet Theia, whose collision with Earth 4.4 billion years ago led to the formation of the Moon. However, since a large part of the molybdenum in Earth's mantle originates from the outer solar system, this means that Theia itself also originated from the outer solar system. According to the scientists, the collision provided sufficient carbonaceous material to account for the entire amount of water on Earth. "Our approach is unique because, for the first time, it allows us to associate the origin of water on Earth with the formation of the Moon. To put it simply, without the Moon there probably would be no life on Earth," says Thorsten Kleine, Professor of Planetology at the University of Münster."

https://www.uni-muenster.de/news/view.php?cmdid=10278&lang=en

Source says

The stories normally have it that Albert Alexander had scratched his face on a rose bush, the wound had become infected and the infection had spread. But Eric offers an alternative. He has an old police pamphlet of stories about individual officers which suggests Alexander was injured during a bombing raid while he was on secondment from Abingdon to Southampton. He was transferred to the Radcliffe Infirmary when his infection became severe. Frustratingly his hospital notes don’t reveal the cause of his infections. >

Joke post. Zombies are fictional. Ffictional zombies don't have any blood circulating, don't breathe and are not possible. They are just stories, like the wizards and magical creatures of Hogwarts. This is "tongue in cheek"

"The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a mock serious manner."

• Wikipedia

The CDC made these pages as an entertaining way to educate the public on preparedness for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Debunked: Zombie Apocalypse - not possible, zombies are fictional

Joke post. Zombies are fictional. Ffictional zombies don't have any blood circulating, don't breathe and are not possible. They are just stories, like the wizards and magical creatures of Hogwarts. This is "tongue in cheek"

"The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a mock serious manner."

• Wikipedia

The CDC made these pages as an entertaining way to educate the public on preparedness for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Debunked: Zombie Apocalypse - not possible, zombies are fictional

Joke post. Zombies are fictional. Ffictional zombies don't have any blood circulating, don't breathe and are not possible. They are just stories, like the wizards and magical creatures of Hogwarts. This is "tongue in cheek"

"The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a mock serious manner."

• Wikipedia

The CDC made these pages as an entertaining way to educate the public on preparedness for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Debunked: Zombie Apocalypse - not possible, zombies are fictional

He mentions the African American community in the next sentence!

The 1000 species figure is for the gut.

The number suggests that our skin is as variegated as our guts, which house anywhere from 500 to 1000 bacterial species. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/05/your-body-wonderland-bacteria

From the supplmentary information Figure S3 then the species richness varies from about 15 to about 44 species over 20 different sites on the skin.

In their model it actually starts off as a binary system consisting of a white dwarf (COcore) and neutron star companion in this model. The white dwarf explodes as a type Ia supernova, This then accretes onto its binary neutron star companion which then collapses as a black hole. The black hole forms a cavity and the supernova radiation bouncess off that cavity.

From the abstract:

Within the binary-driven hypernova I (BdHN I) scenario, the gamma-ray burstGRB190114C originates in a binary system composed of a massive carbon-oxygen core(COcore), and a binary neutron star (NS) companion. As the COcore undergoes a super-nova explosion with the creation of a new neutron star (νNS), hypercritical accretionoccurs onto the companion binary neutron star until it exceeds the critical mass forgravitational collapse. The formation of a black hole (BH) captures 1057baryons byenclosing them within its horizon, and thus a cavity of approximately 1011cm is formedaround it with initial density 10−7g/cm3. A further depletion of baryons in the cavityoriginates from the expansion of the electron-positron-photon (e+e−γ) plasma formedat the collapse, reaching a density of 10−14g/cm3by the end of the interaction. It is demonstrated here using an analytical model complemented by a hydrodynamical nu-merical simulation that part of thee+e−γplasma is reflected off the walls of the cavity. The consequent outflow and its observed properties are shown to coincide with the fea-tureless emission occurring in a time interval of durationtrf, measured in the rest frameof the source, between 11 and 20 s of the GBM observation. Moreover, similar featuresof the GRB light curve were previously observed in GRB 090926A and GRB 130427A,all belonging to the BdHN I class.

Paper here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.03163.pdf

Carl Zimmer is the journalist who wrote the NY Times article. The astrobiologist who suggests terrestrial life originated on Mars is Steve Benner as explained in the linked to article.

No, this is 29 deaths in 182 individuals who developed the disease as far as an acute respiratory illness see page 61 of the cite

Legionnaires disease is often asymptomatic or sub clinical so this is not the infection fatality rate. Boshuizen, H.C., Neppelenbroek, S.E., van Vliet, H., Schellekens, J.F., Boer, J.W.D., Peeters, M.F. and Conyn-van Spaendonck, M.A., 2001. Subclinical Legionella infection in workers near the source of a large outbreak of Legionnaires disease. The Journal of infectious diseases, 184(4), pp.515-518.

1. supervolcanoes none are able to super erupt in the near future as in the next century or so - if any was gong to, then there would be uplift not just of a meter or two but of tens to hundreds of meters, it would be very obvious and they think this would probably take centuries to happen. N.B. most centuries of course don't have supervolcano eruptions so it is just a typical century and no surprise to find that none of our supervolcanoes are able to supererupt any time soon.

https://doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Centuries_of_warning_of_a_supervolcano_eruption_-_with_zoomable_map_of_top_seven_supervolcanoes

1. Even the dinosaur impact wouldn't make us extinct. We are descended from mammals - who were - survivors and not only that amongst the most adapatable of all the mammals. As for 1 km in diameter then homo erectus survived that 700,000 years ago - it would have moderate impacts on agriculture for one year. But we know all the 10 km ones and nearly all the 1 km ones. We are much safer from these. That is - we know we are safer not only that we can deflect most asteroids now if we find them in advance and we have enough warning to evacuate a city for most though not all asteroids large enough to harm humans - you can't yet say that it is impossible to die of an asteroid but we are getting there, meanwhile we do find most and it has always been a very rare death, and is now going to be even rarer. just a few die of this per century. I am pretty sure by the second half of this century nobody will die of it. https://www.quora.com/q/debunkingdoomsday/Why-you-don-t-need-to-be-scared-of-asteroids-far-less-scary-than-lightning

1. There were earlier studies suggesting widespread damage to transformers which could cause months to years to repair, widespread power supply problems that would take a long time to resolve, and trillions of dollars of damage, so a large economic impact.

However later studies found the newer transformers are more resilient than previously thought. A major solar storm could lead to some localized power cuts for hours. But not for weeks or months.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/What-would-the-effects-be-of-a-major-solar-storm-Short-term-local-power-cuts-for-hours-not-widespread-blackout-for-mo

theskylive similarly finds the closest distance between 1900 and 2100 as

Sun May 31 2015 at 82,134,610 or 0.549036 au

https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-mercury

If this happens it likely creates a domain wall protecting the false vaccum from the true vacuum bubble around the topological defect.

https://indico.cern.ch/event/472838/contributions/1150225/attachments/1289565/1919900/False_Vacuum_Decay-CAP2016.pdf

The first one is a short 1989 letter to Nature. Though very technical it just seems to be an early discussion of the Higgs field metastability. As far as I can tell there is no mention of protons or the Cassimir effect. I looked at the talk page on Wikipedia and there is no discussion of this either. You get that in Wikipedia, some editor adds something, and nobody else checks it and it may often be wrong.

http://ctp.lns.mit.edu/Wilczek_Nature/(72)vacuum_metastable.pdf

The second one is the idea that neutrinos were originally massless and at some point in the recent past they transitioned to having a mass. That clearly was a transition with very minor effects if it did happen - since nothing happened to our Earth / solar system / galaxy etc. Even ancient supernovas which depend on neutrinos to explode seem to behave just like present day ones.

So it is a very minor thing if it did happen. However this is just a hypothesis, and they say that their theory does not provide a clear explanation of certain cosmological discrepancies so that is a point against their theory as a hypothesis.

The motivation for it is to explain a "mild tension" between the red shift measurements and cosmological background measurements for the varying density in the early universe.

It's one of those theoretical studies that is highly unlikely to lead to anything but is still of theoretical interest enough to be published. By publishing it they help others who may be interested to know if a time varying neutrino mass is worth onsidering, and maybe deelop their ideas in other directions. As it is, it's not a very likely theory.

The last one, metastable dark energy is a different theory from the Higgs field and is a modern idea that has several papers on the topic by many authors, the most recent I found was in 2020. It seems to be about an exponential decay like radioactive decay where dark energy gradually over time decays to dark matter. I.e. the dark energy is metastable but it only decays bit by bit rather than all at once and has been decaying like this for billions of years.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.03790.pdf

As a general point, our universe has lasted for 138 million centuries. If it could decay in some abrupt way, then this has to be incredibly unlikely for any given century, or with near total certainty, it would have happened already billions of years ago.

So, any vacuum decay theory has to explain that. If a theory predicts with near total certainty that our universe collapsed over 13 billion years ago, say, then there is something wrong with the theory.

It is sometimes run the other way around, to use observation of our current universe, that it has existed for 138 million centuries as a way to argue that a theory can't be correct if it predicts an easy decay of the universe to some other state

However a lot is now being done to clean up the city which should help. The details here would need to be checked.

President Vladimir Putin visited the city in 2010 and announced an increase in environmental fines if the company do not cut out the amount of pollution. This resulted in increase of the company’s investments in environmental measures in production processes. Further measures included the shouting down of 74 years old nickel factor in 2013, which should reduce emission level for 75%. There is also a plan to install equipment at the copper factory that would reduce sulphur dioxide pollution by 75–80% by 2020, but there is no references to other pollutants. Although there are signs that Norilsk is making efforts to combat its high pollution by replacing old equipment with new more environmentally friendly technology, the pollution still occurs. Most lately in September 2016, local people reported heavy pollution that turned the Daldykan River’s water into red. The Company’s official explanation was that heavy rain caused a filtration dam to flood into the river.<br> Norilsk pollution, Russia

Environmental Justice Atlas

Last update: 2019-06-29

Only a retreat of 40 to 50 meters a day for 14 to 45 days, not for a year. Also it's a retreat of the grounding line, not of the ice which can be caused by slight thinning of the ice sheet floating on the sea. Also the process only works for ice sheets that are close to the minimum thickness needed to touch the sea bed..

See twitter thread here: https://mobile.twitter.com/wang_seaver/status/1266509802848481286

"Business as usual" is no longer credible - it always was an outlier requiring us to burn five times as much coal by 2100 (coal is the fuel with most emissions per kilowatt of power). Coal instead is shrinking, renewables are competitive with coal almost everywhere, and "business as usual" is out of date with the IPCC introducing two new pathways for the next report for the situation where we abandon all policies.https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Nature-article-Climate-change-business-as-usual-story-is-misleading

However far from rolling back on pledges, most countries are increasing. South Korea recently joined the UK, the EU, and in the US california with a target of zero emissions by 2050, and 1.5 C compatible. There are now over 120 countries that plan to increase their pledges to 1.5 C compatible by the next climate pledges conference in 2021.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/What-we-need-to-do-for-the-1-5-C-path-in-graphs-with-new-pledges-in-2020-and-2025-and-new-UN-emissions-gap-report-20

The latest range of projections at the “likely” level of to 17–83 percentile, is 0.29 - 0.59 meters for the the 1.5°C path, 0.34 - 0.64 meters for the 2.4°C path, and 0.61 to 1.1 meters for the 4.9°C path.

https://www.quora.com/q/debunkingdoomsday/IPCC-special-conference-on-the-Ocean-and-Cryosphere-2019

What many news reports of thsat study didn't mention is that many of those people are already living below sea level, e.g. it includes much of the population of the netherlands. The study showed that many more are already living below seae level than previously thought.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/No-cities-WON-T-be-erased-by-2050-New-elevation-data-shows-millions-more-are-ALREADY-living-below-sea-level-than-previ

We can protect those people from further sea level rise by raising the dikes further and other measures. Almost none risk losing homes if the right precaustions are taken.

https://robertinventor.online/booklets/sea_level_rise_netherlands_florida_bangladesh.htm

The linked to page is talking about all emissions involving agriculture for cows including deforestation not just methane emissions from cows. The linked to page also says

She’s done the math. If Earth’s biggest beef eaters limited their consumption to the equivalent of 1.5 hamburgers per week (about half of what the average person in the United States currently eats), the planet could support a population of 10 billion people without having to turn any more forests into farmland. This shift would avoid about 5.5 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year — the equivalent of emissions from two Indias.

Also

On top of that, if people adopted more sustainable ranching practices and turned another million square miles of land into forest, they could offset all emissions from the food that is grown. This would make the agriculture industry carbon neutral, according to Richard Waite, a colleague of Ranganathan’s at WRI.

There are myriad ways to achieve this. Industrial farms can make cows more climate-friendly by changing their diets; research in California suggests that adding a small amount of seaweed to a cow’s feed can reduce its methane production by half. Food companies can start to offer products like “blended burgers,” which mix other ingredients with beef to make the food more sustainable. Governments could eliminate subsidies for meat and dairy producers and support farmers transitioning to more sustainable crops.

Something wrong - none of these sources are for Thailand - word doesn't occur in the pages

They are just a duplicate of the sources for Taiwan

The closest now is probably Swift J1822.3−1606 at around 5,200 light years but with a lot of uncertainty, might as well round to 5,000 light years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:SGR_1806%E2%88%9220#Distance_info_is_outdated

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-closest-magnetar-to-Earth/answer/Robert-Walker-5

The ISS has six astronauts on it typically. They are all known by name and are frequently involved in video casts back to Earth. None of them spend more than a year in the ISS, and that is rare most only a few months. Right now as of writing this there are three of them. you can check here.

How many people are in space right now? There is a live feed of the Earth as it flies over. You can photograph the ISS from Earth.

It can't hold more than 6 for long. It needs supplies from Earth every three months to keep going, can't produce its own air or food, you can only grow a few lettuces on the ISS, it is in low Earth orbit and can't go anywhere else.

This is not of any use for evacuating Earth. If you were in the ISS and there was a fire or chemical release etc you would evacuate TO Earth not from Earth.

There is literally no connection here, you might as well say "the hypotehtical dog (i.e. cat, hypopotamus, kangaroo, shark, whale)

You can't hide a planetary alignment - they happen several times a year and are a photo-op when you see planets close to each other in the sky.

The Daily Express is a "red top tabloid" that makes up sensationalist news and is not taken seriously on these topics by anyone in the UK, it's similar to the US yellow press.

Nobody takes David Meade seriously any more. It was never astronomy or theology but when he starated to say that North America would split in two nhalves East and West and Pence and Trump be levitate dto the sky and Obama be re-elected to an illegal third term and a dawn attack whre North korea would collaborate with Russia and all osrts of garbage like that few people even of the most easily scred took him seriously any more.

Earth is not going to pass through anything. it's just quietly orbiting the sun.

A blood moon is an eclipse of the Moon and can only be seen at night when the sun has set from the night side of EArth. It lasts for an hour or so. A solar ecliopse lasts for a few minutes and is local to the ecliopse track.

A solar eclipse is never red except at sunrise or sunset. A solar eclipse can't even last for ten minutes never mind 554 days.

October 31 2020 is the date 13.0.7.17.11 in the Mayan calendar. Maya Calendar Converter

Not true. The "whistleblowers" noticed something unusual on 30th December. The automatic system to detect novel infectious diseases kicked in on the 31st and that is when China notifed the WHO.

It's possible that some local people at a community level noticed something before then but it was flu season when you would have lots of deaths from flu anyway (and just statistical fluctuation).

As soon as the Chinese system activated with a cluster of unusual pneumonia it up they notified the WHO. There is a difference between what you notice at the local community level and what an automatic system can pick up.

This is what the WHO say:

"What we do know is that the Chinese authorities had a special surveillance system in place for picking up unusual pneumonias. That system was active in Wuhan, and as soon as that system activated with a cluster of unusual pneumonia cases they were reported immediately to WHO and subsequent laboratory investigations were undertaken. There's a difference between what may be happening at a community level and what the public health system can detect and report, and from our perspective the public health authorities in China as soon as they detected an unusual signal - you can imagine here in China, it's winter, it's the flu season, people with pneumonia - it isn't an unusual thing, 2 people or 3 people - there are millions of people living in Wuhan. So picking out a signal of an unusual event that may be associated with a particular place is not an easy thing to do.

It is very easy to look back in retrospect and it is very easy to assign some kind of easy process that should have been carried out. It is not that easy. The signal was picked up from a very large signal of winter disease and winter pneumonia, and that was reported immediately by public health authorities. So for that we are very grateful.

Lie Wenliang died - whistleblower warned about new disease one day early - however Chinese reported to WHO as soon as automated disease detecting system was triggered)

This article gives the impression that this is a current docrtine of the Catholic Church unless you read it really carefully, even then it isn't that clear.

According to Pope Benedict, views like this continued to be held in the Catholic church through to the 1950s.

Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have both spoken against it. Not only Christians of other denominations, non Christians can be saved too.

Here is Pope Francis assuring a grieving child that his atheist father will go to heaven

“God is the one who says who goes to heaven,” not the catechism. Not the pope, not you or me, but God. Was Pope Francis right to tell a child his atheist dad may be in heaven?

Here is Pope Benedict with a more detailed theological discussion of it. He starts by explaining why it is he is sure that people who are not in the Catholic church can be saved.

He spends most of his time talking about how to reconcile this with other Catholic ideas.

His essential point is that for Jesus everything is possible and so of course those of other branches of Christianity and non Christians can be saved.

Full text of Benedict XVI's recent, rare, and lengthy interview

This is not what he IPCC say or the experts who have looked into it. Note that this post doesn't have a single cite. It is just an opinion of a reddit member based on who knows what sources as he doesn't say.

Many posts like this are based on Deep Adapatation, Jem Bendell's junk science written by a sociologist. See

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Even-worst-worst-case-climate-change-scenario-is-not-Human-extinction-or-collapse-of-civilization-science-needs-to-be https://www.science20.com/robert_walker/deep_adaptation_climate_change_paper_which_is_just_crap-237344

The UK, EU, California etc all have committed to carbon zero by 2050 based on evidence based science.

We can all do this. The scientists have mapped otu a way to do it.

Listen to the scientists themselves.

https://www.science20.com/robert_walker/what_the_ipcc_scientists_really_said_not_all_going_to_die_key_points_press_conference_and_some_highlights_from_the

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/IPBES-cochairs-and-press-conference-with-transcripts

The global industry aviation industry has an emissions reduction target to carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onwards and to cut CO2 emissions to half 2005 levels by 2050 (even with increasing flights). That 2% doesn't matter right now but it is important when we get to 2050. That is just the current goal, as time goes on then we can pledge for higher goals.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Rising-to-the-challenge-of-zero-emissions-aviation

Please don't sterilize yourself. This is not what climate scientists say. We need our next generation. Indeed many countries have a problem of not enough young people and of a graying population because of our increasing life span. We need replacement levels of young children - average of 2 children per couple or close to it, and even then we also need to do other things to help older people to work longer and raise the retirement age as is already happening in many countries..

Remember they will be the first zero emissions and biodiversity preserving generation.

You don't have to do this. We need our young children. They can become the first zero emissions generation! They also are the voters and the technology innovators and the farmers and techicians and climate experts and polticians who will help us move to a carbon zero future.

Also both India and China are projected to peak in population this century. The big projected increase is in Africa which coincidentally is also the country with the biggest potential for increase in agricultural productivity because the green revolution never got to Africa. They are starting a new green revolution now.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/We-can-grow-enough-food-for-everyone-through-to-2100-and-beyond-on-all-scenarios

None of the scientists say this. It is illegal and immoral and wouldn't work. If we somehow halved our population it would only at best halve the CO2 emissions and the problem is still there. If the population halved while the per capita CO2 emissions doubled you are just back where you started. This is looking in the wrong place for a solution.

China will continue to get richer and consume more, but they are doing it in a way that reduces their CO2 footprint per person. They have already pledged to peak emissions before 2030. As their population is still growing then that means their per capita emissions will also peak before 2030. According to some projections their emissions are likely to peak in the early 2020s and may even have peaked already.

In 2019 the chinese said they plan to submit a pathway to zero emissions some time this century. They have been silent on that since then with the trade war etc, but may come back to it with the example of the EU. If this happens there per capita emissions will reduce to zero later this century.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/China-to-Increase-2015-Climate-Pledges-in-2020-Support-Green-Climate-fund-Maintain-Biodiversity-May-Peak-Emissions-E

It is not a problem of consumption of goods. It is a problem of CO2 emissions. The solution is NOT to stop having a nice lifestyle. It is to do it in a way that is sustainable, and that reduces CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 (or by 2070 for the 2 C goal)

You don't have to go vegan, that's a mistake. The scientists say if we EITHER reduce the meat waste to almost zero (currently 20%) OR reduce meat consumption by 20% this will make a big difference to the impacts on biodiversity. It will also help with the pressure on ecosystems, and so help with the reafforestation and soil sequestration elements of climate change mitigation.

So we have until 2050 to do this. If everyone did one meatless day a week who currently eats meat every day this would take us most of the way there, in practice many won't change their habits but many will, others transition to a mediterranean diet with much less meat, and some may become vegan but although there are many entire societies, e.g Thailand that are close to vegan it is not realistic to expect everyone to do this.

It depends on the type of meat you eat too, grain fed beef is amongst the wost for biodiversity and climate change. Changing to other types of meat can make a big difference too. https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/12-Simple-lifestyle-changes-to-help-reduce-global-warming-and-biodiversity-loss

Planting trees and soil sequestration will likely be only be a small amount of the total, a few percent. It needs to be combined with reducing emissions of CO2.

First we are already reversing CO2 emissions, half the CO2 emissions are reducing, half still increasing. Some are reducing rapidly.

The aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep the rise in temperature to about 2C above pre-industrial, and the stretch goal is to keep it to well below 2C, around 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

This will be done through increasing pledges / commitments every 5 years. Next increase in commitment is at the end of 2020. We have already knocked 1 C off projections for 2100 and with increasing pledges in 2020, 2025, 2030 and so on then we can knock another 1.5 C or more off the projection for 2100.

We are currently at 1 C above pre-industrial. So the goal is to prevent our climate getting more than another 1 C warmer and the stretch goal to stop it getting more than around half a degree warmer

To reach 2 C we have to reach ZERO EMISSIONS by 2070 and for 1.5 C, ZERO EMISSIONS BY 2050.

Not to return to the emissions of 1950. To return to zero emissions. Basic confusion, and this 1950 number has no source given and is not from the IPCC or the Paris agreement.

First we are already reversing CO2 emissions, half the CO2 emissions are reducing, half still increasing. Some are reducing rapidly.

The aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep the rise in temperature to about 2C above pre-industrial, and the stretch goal is to keep it to well below 2C, around 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

This will be done through increasing pledges / commitments every 5 years. Next increase in commitment is at the end of 2020. We have already knocked 1 C off projections for 2100 and with increasing pledges in 2020, 2025, 2030 and so on then we can knock another 1.5 C or more off the projection for 2100.

We are currently at 1 C above pre-industrial. So the goal is to prevent our climate getting more than another 1 C warmer and the stretch goal to stop it getting more than around half a degree warmer

To reach 2 C we have to reach ZERO EMISSIONS by 2070 and for 1.5 C, ZERO EMISSIONS BY 2050.

Not to return to the emissions of 1950. To return to zero emissions. Basic confusion, and this 1950 number has no source given and is not from the IPCC or the Paris agreement.

This is not what he IPCC say or the experts who have looked into it. Note that this post doesn't have a single cite. It is just an opinion of a reddit member.

The UK, EU, California etc all have committed to carbon zero by 2050 based on evidence based science.

The global industry aviation industry has an emissions reduction target to carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onwards and to cut CO2 emissions to half 2005 levels by 2050 (even with increasing flights). That 2% doesn't matter right now but it is important when we get to 2050. That is just the current goal, as time goes on then we can pledge for higher goals.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Rising-to-the-challenge-of-zero-emissions-aviation

You don't have to do this. We need our young children. They can become the first zero emissions generation! They also are the voters and the technology innovators and the farmers and techicians and climate experts and polticians who will help us move to a carbon zero future.

None of the scientists say this. It is illegal and immoral and wouldn't work. If we somehow halved our population it would only at best halve the CO2 emissions and the problem is still there. If the population halved while the per capita CO2 emissions doubled you are just back where you started. This is looking in the wrong place for a solution.

China will continue to get richer and consume more, but they are doing it in a way that reduces their CO2 footprint per person. They have already pledged to peak emissions before 2030. As their population is still growing then that means their per capita emissions will also peak before 2030. According to some projections their emissions are likely to peak in the early 2020s and may even have peaked already.

In 2019 the chinese said they plan to submit a pathway to zero emissions some time this century. They have been silent on that since then with the trade war etc, but may come back to it with the example of the EU. If this happens there per capita emissions will reduce to zero later this century.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/China-to-Increase-2015-Climate-Pledges-in-2020-Support-Green-Climate-fund-Maintain-Biodiversity-May-Peak-Emissions-E

It is not a problem of consumption of goods. It is a problem of CO2 emissions. The solution is NOT to stop having a nice lifestyle. It is to do it in a way that is sustainable, and that reduces CO2 emissions.

Planting trees and soil sequestration will likely be only be a small amount of the total, a few percent. It needs to be combined with reducing emissions of CO2.

You don't have to go vegan, that's a mistake. The scientists say if we EITHER reduce the meat waste to almost zero (currently 20%) OR reduce meat consumption by 20% this will make a big difference to the impacts on biodiversity. It will also help with the pressure on ecosystems, and so help with the reafforestation and soil sequestration elements of climate change mitigation.

So we have until 2050 to do this. If everyone did one meatless day a week who currently eats meat every day this would take us most of the way there, in practice many won't change their habits but many will, others transition to a mediterranean diet with much less meat, and some may become vegan but although there are many entire societies, e.g Thailand that are close to vegan it is not realistic to expect everyone to do this.

It depends on the type of meat you eat too, grain fed beef is amongst the wost for biodiversity and climate change. Changing to other types of meat can make a big difference too.

IK Pegasi is already too far away to be a threat at 150 light years. It can't go supernova for millions of years. Its larger star first has to evolve into its red giant phase before it is possible.

Here is Phil Plait of "Bad Astronomy" talking about how there is no nearby star that can go supernova, close enough to harm us

https://youtu.be/pGqHP26rn5U

See also my

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Debunked-Earth-is-threatened-by-a-supernova

Type 1a supernovae are no more dangerous than Type II supernovae. This sentence needs rephrasing, is a bit confusing. They may mean that it is harder to see the supernova precursor because white dwarfs are small and faint - but we can see nearby white dwarfs easily enough too.

The cite is not for an embedded device. It is for an Android mobile phone running Android 2.2, that was bricked in 2011 according to someone who asked a question on Google. Android is now at major version 10.

The cited discussion itself also includes someone saying they found an update to fix a bricked Android device. All this is primary sourcing to an online discussion with no verification.

This is another discussion on Reddit in 2012-3 (not sure which date as it just says 6 years ago) nobody else their reports bricking their phone, though many said it rolled over to 1901. This also is online discussion with no verification so none of this follows Wikipedia's normal guidelines on sourcing.

This is rather unclear - from the context it sounds as if it means these are all potentially likely to be affected - but it is just a list of examples of some rather arbitrarily selected examples of hardware with embedded systems. The "not all" should rather be "hardly any of these systems will suffer from the Y2038 problem". Being included in this list does not mean that hardware is more likely to be affected than the many examples of embedded systems not included in the list.

Many countries are dropping renewable subsidies. This is because of the remarkable fall in price - a four fold reduction in prices of solar panels in just 8 years. This does not stop China's commitments to renewables.

Earlier in 2019 then there were hints that China would commit to 35% renewables, a major increase on 20%

Also China together with France said they would target zero emissions some time this century.

Since then China has stayed silent. But it is pre-occupied with the trade war and has time to respond before COP26. We might get the first idea of what it will say in the meeting with the EU in September 2020. The EU will be close to finishing the laws for its own zero emissions by 2050 pledge and thiss may encourage China to be more ambitious too.

Yes China is building new coal fired plants, but it is doing it even though it already has too many and the utilization of its existing coal fired plants have reached an all time low.

The thing is coal fired plants cost very little to build but a lot to run. So what they are doing basically is spread the same fuel over more power plants and so spreading roughly the same amount of profit over more plants. Once more renewables come on board then these will run at even less capacity until they are uneconomic and close down.

This is a quote:

The renewed push into coal has been driven by Chinese energy companies desperate to gain market share and by local governments who view coal plants as a source of jobs and investment. While electricity demand in China rose 8.5 percent last year, the current grid is already oversupplied and coal stations are utilized only about half the time. "The utilization of coal-fired power plants will reach a record low this year, so there is no justification to build these coal plants," said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think-tank. "But that is not the logic that investment follows in China," Myllyvirta said. "There is little regard for the long-term economics of the investments that are being made." China Ramps Up Coal Power Again, Despite Pressure to Cut Emissions

Even if we target zero emissions by 2050 for a 1.5 C target, we need fossil fuels through to 2050 (though less every year).

If we only meet the 2 C target we need it through to 2070.

However there are movements to invest less in fossil fuels and more in renewables. From the European "Green New Deal"

The effect of a lack of public investment and intervention means that vital investments in renewables remain underfunded, while global finance continues to be a major driver of climate and environmental breakdown around the world. Since 2016, just 33 global banks invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuel companies.

The first task of the Green New Deal for Europe, then, is to begin the process of moving away from the unstable and environmentally-destructive model of financialisation, returning finance to its roots: serving local communities through deposit-taking and lending. It recognises the vital role of cooperative banks, farmer-driven financing in agriculture, credit unions and other community-based financing architectures.

From the GPW [Green Private Works] Financial strategy

LMDC = “Like-Minded group of Developing Countries” Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Vietnam. link

BASIC = (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) link

AILAC (the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean) = Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Peru and Paraguay. link

AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States)

Carribean:

(16 countries)
 Antigua and Barbuda
 Bahamas
 Barbados
 Belize
 Cuba
 Dominica
 Dominican Republic
 Grenada
 Guyana
 Haiti
 Jamaica
 Saint Kitts and Nevis
 Saint Lucia
 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
 Suriname
 Trinidad and Tobago

Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and South China Sea:

(8 countries)
 Cabo Verde
 Comoros
 Guinea-Bissau
 Maldives
 Mauritius
 São Tomé and Príncipe
 Seychelles
 Singapore

Pacific Ocean:

(15 countries)
 Cook Islands
 Fiji
 Kiribati
 Marshall Islands
 Federated States of Micronesia
 Nauru
 Niue
 Palau
 Papua New Guinea
 Samoa
 Solomon Islands
 Timor-Leste
 Tonga
 Tuvalu
 Vanuatu

Five observers: American Samoa, Guam, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.

link

This is only part of what they say. They go on to say

Cat predation can be a problem where housing is next to scarce habitats such as heathland. It could potentially be most damaging to species with a restricted range (such as cirl buntings) or species dependent on a fragmented habitat (such as Dartford warblers on heathland).

Are cats causing bird declines?

Some more UK cites. This is by the RSPB PREDATION OF WILD BIRDS IN THE UK

It is conceivable that predation by superabundant and well-fed predators such as domestic cats, could lead to the decline of continental species, if only on a local or temporary basis. Baker et al. (2003) recorded a negative relationship between numbers of wood mice and the numbers of cats visiting suburban gardens. This suggests that high levels of cat activity may deplete the numbers of otherwise common species, such as wood mice, in local areas. It is not possible directly to discern the process of hyperpredation in the data recorded here, though the occurrence of species of growing conservation concern among the prey records, such as water shrews, yellow-necked mice and harvest mice (Marsh, Poulton & Harris, 2001; Greenwood, Churchfield & Hickey, 2002; Moore, Askew & Bishop, 2003) gives additional cause for concern. Churcher & Lawton (1987) concluded that cats had a significant impact on house sparrows in the village they studied. A potential link between the frequent occurrence of sparrow predation in this and other studies and the pronounced decline in this species throughout Britain, should, therefore be considered and experimental work is called for in the light of this descriptive study.

In conclusion, this survey confirms that cats are major predators of wildlife in Britain. Further investigation of the extent and nature of predatory behaviour among domestic cats is clearly warranted by this initial work. In particular, detailed observation of cats in the field and description of the numbers of animals they kill and the proportion they retrieve are essential. Investigation of the response and attitude of cat owners living in a range of environments to the predatory behaviour of their cats would also be valuable

Also from the Mammal society Domestic Cat Predation on Wildlife

There are an estimated nine million domestic cats in theUK, and there is increasing concern about their possibleimpact on native wildlife. By no means are all catshunters, but extrapolations from prey returns by relativelysmall samples of cats (May 1988; Woods et al.2003)indicate that, nationally, they kill millions of birds eachyear. The house sparrow, whose numbers have halved in the UK since the mid 1970s, is one of the species most frequently killed by cats. However, house sparrowsare short-lived and have high reproductive rates, andwhether cats impose an additional mortality on sparrowsor simply kill similar numbers to those that would havedied anyway – for instance by taking young or weakindividuals (Møller and Erritzøe 2000) – is unclear.Populations of some other birds commonly killed by cats, for example greenfinches, have increased (Ravenand Noble 2006).

Declines of house sparrows in the countryside have been attributed to agricultural intensification (Hole et al.2002). However, there have also been spectacular declines (>90%) in several UK cities (Crick et al.2002;Summers-Smith 1999) and a high proportion of theirpopulation occurs in gardens (Bland et al.2004). In anarea of Bristol, cats killed at least 45% of the estimated post-breeding population of house sparrows annually(Bakeret al.2005). A recent study, however, has shown that nestling starvation – sometimes of whole broods –has played a major role in reducing house sparrowbreeding success in Leicester (Vincent 2005). A large-scale experimental test of whether lack of invertebratefood for chicks limits house sparrow populations is currently being run by the RSPB in London

Whether cat predation has contributed to house sparrow declines remains unclear. Nevertheless, it is prudent to adopt a precautionary approach to the impact of this non-native predator, and to design and adopt methodsthat reduce the numbers of sparrows, and other animals,killed by cats.

This was found to be a mistaken study in 2019. The numbers actually increase with warmth (as one would expect). They were confused by Hurrican Harvey which created clearings in the forest and boosted insect numbers in the earlier data records.

Populations are not declining and food webs are not collapsing at the Luquillo Experimental Forest

No the asteroid moon was NOT knocked off the asteroid by an earlier spaceship. See Didymos.

There are many techniquies and a nuclear bomb would only be useful in some very unusual scenarios not likely to happen for thousands of years.

The Kuiper belt is a belt of comets, not asteroids, way beyond Neptune. It is nothing at all to do with Near Earth Asteroids.

Between 50 and 80- meters in diameter and likely hits Earth only every few thousand years.

Tunguska Revisited: 111-Year-Old Mystery Impact Inspires New, More Optimistic Asteroid Predictions

That is the threshold for some global effects not global catastrophes. The worst that happens at 1 km is a reduction of temperature briefly for a few weeks which could impact on crops for one year if it happens during the growing season.

They are connected with the human systems! We already have the FAO Early Warning Early Action initiative which publishes a global risk map every three months. The idea is that it is a basis for early actions. Used to be that famines would have to happen first before any action was taken. Now we act pro-actively before anything happens - before the farmers' crops fail for instance.

This is the current risk map

FAO Early Warning Early Action

This is about the CERF which is a billion dollar fund - currently a billion dollars a year that is used to help prevent famines from happening before they arise. It has been increased several times, was originally $50 million. Since it was started then we have greatly reduced famines globally. It can be increased again if it is not enough.

It is just incorrect to say we not doing anything and have been ducking action for decades.

Since its inception, 126 UN Member States and observers, as well as regional Governments, corporate donors, foundations and individuals, made it possible for humanitarian partners to deliver over $5 billion in life-saving assistance in over 100 countries and territories. Many recipient countries also become a donor to CERF and contribute, making CERF a fund for all, by all” Who We Are | CERF https://youtu.be/uPj1OOG8PQw

This shows how all this has been effective on endingfamines, see how few people ae affected since 2010.

Famines

And undernourishment is down from nearly 35% in 1970 to 13% in 2017 in developing countries.

For all cereals the stock to use ratio is 30%. I.e. if we had a world shortfall of 30% in one year, we could supply it with left over cereals from previous years. Also in sugar (50% stock to use ratio)

• FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief and more extensive summary for two year period ending 2018
• USDA-Office of the Chief Economist - World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates

Also the IPCC report they link to - the special report on Climate change and the Land has long sections on the work being done to mitigate this e.g. Spain and Turkey are especially vulnerable to desertification from climate change and have major initiatives to help adapt to a warmer drier world. Southern US, the dust bowl area is another example and around the world many countries have initiatives to adapt. We have to mitigate, reduce greenhouse gases rapidly to reduce the amount of the increase of warming but it is now recognized that we absolutely have to adapt too and we also have to increase resilience to these future droughts and changes of climate and prevent desertification and reverse the desertification that has already happened and we need to be prepared for future emergency responses.

B.4.1

"Solutions that help adapt to and mitigate climate change while contributing to combating desertification are site and regionally specific and include inter alia: water harvesting and micro-irrigation, restoring degraded lands using drought-resilient ecologically appropriate plants, agroforestry, and other agroecological and ecosystem-based adaptation practices (high confidence). {3.3, 3.6.1, 3.7.2, 3.7.5, 5.2, 5.6}"

B.4.2

"Reducing dust and sand storms and sand dune movement can lessen the negative effects of wind erosion and improve air quality and health (high confidence). Depending on water availability and soil conditions, afforestation, tree planting and ecosystem restoration programs, which aim for the creation of windbreaks in the form of ‘green walls’ and ‘green dams’ using native and other climate resilient tree species with low water needs, can reduce sand storms, avert wind erosion, and contribute to carbon sinks, while improving micro-climates, soil nutrients and water retention (high confidence). {3.3, 3.6.1, 3.7.2, 3.7.5}

B.4.4 Eradicating poverty and ensuring food security can benefit from applying measures promoting land degradation neutrality (including avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation) in rangelands, croplands and forests, which contribute to combating desertification, while mitigating and adapting to climate change within the framework of sustainable development. Such measures include avoiding deforestation and locally suitable practices including management of rangeland and forest fires (high confidence). {3.4.2, 3.6.1, 3.6.2, 3.6.3, 4.8.5}

B.5

"Sustainable land management, including sustainable forest management, can prevent and reduce land degradation, maintain land productivity, and sometimes reverse the adverse impacts of climate change on land degradation (very high confidence). It can also contribute to mitigation and adaptation (high confidence). Reducing and reversing land degradation, at scales from individual farms to entire watersheds, can provide cost effective, immediate, and long-term benefits to communities and support several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with co-benefits for adaptation (very high confidence) and mitigation (high confidence). Even with implementation of sustainable land management, limits to adaptation can be exceeded in some situations (medium confidence). {1.3.2, 4.1.5, 4.8, 7.5.6, Table 4.2}"

Have a read of the summary for policy makers. Most of it is about things to do with this. And then have a look at the report itself for more details, those cited sections at the end of each paragraph.

We can certainly do more, to build in resilience, and we can also do more mitigation by reducing CO2 emissions faster than we are doing already. However we are doing something there as well.

The top seven emitters emit three quarters of global emissions.

Of those, China, the EU, and India are over achieving on their pledges. Russia is keeping their pledge from 2015 (Russia is critically insufficient according to CAT but the question is whether they are keeping their very inadequate Paris pledge and the answer is yes). Japan is not quite on track. While Brazil is under achieving (basically not trying under Bolsorano) and the US is going to withdraw from the agreement but does have reducing emissions almost tracking its Paris pledge so far.

If you look at global emissions then about half of the emissions are decreasing, some reasonably fast, and half increasing:

Hand drawn lines on the graph Annual total CO₂ emissions, by world region from CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The emissions are expected to peak some time soon, probably in the early 2020s.

See also How well are countries doing with their 2015 Paris pledges?

However we can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 on all scenarios. Our choice is whether to do this in a sustainable or a non sustainable way. As professor Almud Arneth put it in the IPBES press conference (co-ordinating lead author of the section about future scenarios):

None of the scenarios we've been exploring would indicate that we cannot feed the world or cannot provide water cannot provide shelter that's for sure. But we can do it in a sustainable way or we can do it in an unsustainable way and that is really our choice.

We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios

81 km is far too high - this size of asteroid would boil the surface layer of the oceans and we haven't had anything this big for over 3 billion years!

The cite is to a preprint, not a reliable source as this means it has probably never had peer review and can have significant errors. In this case I think the mistake is a typo.

81 is likely a typo for 18.

Most often given as 10-15 km and here is a cite

"Asteroids striking the Earth typically [Minton and Malhotra, 2010] have an impactor density of 2680 kg/m3and an impact velocity of 20 km/s.Assuming these properties, modern scaling relations indicate that a 10–15 km diameter projectile [Collins et al., 2008] created the 170 km diameter Chicxulub crater"

Parkos, D., Alexeenko, A., Kulakhmetov, M., Johnson, B.C. and Melosh, H.J., 2015. NOx production and rainout from Chicxulub impact ejecta reentry. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 120(12), pp.2152-2168

81 km is far too high - this size of asteroid would boil the surface layer of the oceans and we haven't had anything this big for over 3 billion years!

The cite is to a preprint, not a reliable source as this means it has probably never had peer review and can have significant errors. In this case I think the mistake is a typo.

81 is likely a typo for 18.

Most often given as 10-15 km and here is a cite

"Asteroids striking the Earth typically [Minton and Malhotra, 2010] have an impactor density of 2680 kg/m3and an impact velocity of 20 km/s.Assuming these properties, modern scaling relations indicate that a 10–15 km diameter projectile [Collins et al., 2008] created the 170 km diameter Chicxulub crater"

Parkos, D., Alexeenko, A., Kulakhmetov, M., Johnson, B.C. and Melosh, H.J., 2015. NOx production and rainout from Chicxulub impact ejecta reentry. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 120(12), pp.2152-2168

From the source it is 6 to 10 ml (depending on your body mass) can cause permanent blindness or death

The lethal dose of pure methanol is estimates to be 1-2 mL/kg (Jacobsen 1986); however, permanent blindness and death have been reported with as little as 0.1 mL/kg (6-10 mL in adults) (ATSDR 1993).

https://web.archive.org/web/20111005043548/http://www.antizol.com/mpoisono.htm

Yes, we may even have crossed a tipping point already (could be as low as 0.8°C) but it takes a really long time.. Even with "business as usual" continuing our CO2 emissions without any reduction through to 2200, which is impossible with renewables, it takes until 3000 for all the ice in Greenland to melt. It is not certain even then. Between 72% and 100% lost according to a recent study.

Contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level over the next millennium (study publlished: June 2019)

It helps to slow sea level rise. However, those affected are not necessarily going to migrate. In most cases, they can stay in place and much of it can be mitigated with dikes. Holland has been doing that for centuries and some parts of Rotterdam are over 6 meters below sea level, so it is not high tech. Bangladesh, for instance, is reclaiming land at the same time that it is losing it with the help of advice from Dutch experts.

This for instance shows the potential reclamation areas for Bangladesh in a potential project similar to the Dutch polders in their Bangladesh Delta Plan:

Bangladesh Delta Plan (BDP) 2100

Only Florida is unable to do this because the limestone is porous and just lets water through. Details with links here:

Rising Seas - Ingenious Ways Netherlands, Florida And Bangladesh Can Adapt - Barriers And Sponges - And Floating Gardens

To put all this in perspective the latest Ocean and the Cryosphere report has narrowed the range of projections for the sea level rise from all sources, at the “likely” level of 17–83 percentile, to 0.29 - 0.59 meters at 1.5°C, 0.39 to 0.72 at 2.4°C and 0.61 to 1.10 m at 4.9°C.

Here RCP 2.6 is the 1.5°C path, RCP 4.5 is 2.4°C and RCP 8.5, Business as usual is the 4.9°C path.

This shows the regional sea level rise in meters Figure 4.10:

This is a zoom in on the RCP 2.6 (1.5°C approx) in that figure

And this is the RCP 4.5 (roughly 2.4 C, not far from the 3 C path we are on now with existing Paris pledges)

This shows the impact on coastal cities and other systems at the various sea level rises:

Figure 4.3: Additional risk related to sea level rise for low-lying coastal areas by the end of the 21st century. The second column with the tick shows the result of adaptation. With adaptation then megacities are at moderate risk on all scenarios (Miami would be a rare exception because of the limestone that makes it vulnerable at high sea level risees because the sea seeps through it).

These unfold over centuries and millennia. Over the very long timescales of thousands of years we can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to more than compensate for the CO2 we've added. We already have ways that could do this e.g. using giant sea kelp farming a low tech way that according to a preliminary paper could get us back down to pre-industrial by the end of this century for an Apollo moonshot level of funding.

Whether or not we can do such projects in a sustainable way this century, there is the possibility of such projects at some time over the next several centuries or millennia.

Potential for carbon capture from giant kelp farming

Uncited assertion with no reasoning supplied for it. . Many countries already target zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, with the UK already targeting 2050 and all the opposition parties in the current election have earlier targets (2045 for SNP and LibDems, 2030 for the Green party, some time in the 2030s for Labour).

There seems nothing technologically infeasible about an earlier goal.

The average lifetime of a car at scrappage was 13.9 years in the US in 2015., and of an oil tanker, 20 years. Over timescales of 20 years or so, it can be done mainly through replacement of existing infrastructure and can be speeded up further through incentives and buy back programs.

With an earlier target, fossil fuel plants have to retire early, or be used at less than capacity. However those have low construction costs compared with renewables and high ongoing costs for the fuel. The fall in prices for renewables have already made them some of uncompetitive with renewables without subsidies. Some are retiring early already because of the competition from renewables.

By way of example, VCE finds that 74% of coal fired power stations in the US are at risk, with renewables costing less than fossil fuel power generation by 2025 and assuming technology continues to reduce in price for renewables, then half the coal fired power stations in the US are substantially at risk of closure by 2025 where by substantially at risk they mean that renewables will cost 25% less than coal.

By 2025, local wind and solar could respectively replace roughly 76 GW and 111 GW of coal generation at 25 percent lower costs than running the coal-fired power plants. Combining the wind and solar data sets, VCE finds that 211 GW of coal capacity, or 74 percent, is at risk with 94 GW substantially at risk from 2018 possible local wind and solar. Assuming the NREL lower cost technology baseline case for 2025, substantially at-risk coal increases to 140 GW (with sunset tax support), or almost half of the U.S. fleet.

THE COAL COST CROSSOVER:ECONOMICVIABILITY OF EXISTING COAL COMPARED TO NEWLOCAL WIND AND SOLAR RESOURCES

That is without any incentives, we may get half the coal fired power stations or more retiring by 2025, and could get nearly all of them retired as soon as that with some incentives to favour renewables.

With enough political will there is nothing scientific to prevent us increasing pledges in 2020 to achieve net zero by 2050. Though that is unlikely at present, without the US, we can pledge to substantially below 2.9 C. With future pledges in 2025 and 2030 we can increase our ambition to well below 2 C and below 1.5 C is not scientiically impossible.

The EU parliament has just now declared a climate emergency with three resolutions:

• Commission must ensure all proposals are aligned with 1.5 °C target
• EU should cut emissions by 55% by 2030 to become climate neutral by 2050
• Calls to reduce global emissions from shipping and aviation

Finland already targets 2035 and unlike Norway which targets 2030, they don't plan to do it by buying carbon credits, but entirely through internal changes.

Finland to be carbon neutral by 2035. One of the fastest targets ever set

This is the basis of it

Finnish energy system can be made 100% fossil free

Bernie Sanders plan for the US targets 2030 for zero emissions. I discuss it here:

Does Bernie Sanders $16 Trillion Green New Deal Pay For Itself?

This also doesn't follow. They are talking about a situation where we have already used up our CO2 budget for 2 C. This is similar to the effect of the Paris agreement falling apart. There is no possibility of that happening at present - but if that were to happen, and we do too little too late, and reach 3 C instead of 1.5 C, this would mean we get the harmful effects of a 3 C rise, but those are not an existential threat to our civilization. They could be an existential threat to several small island states and some local communities.

The IPCC's own example of a worst case scenario in the 2018 report is

“Scenario 3 [one possible storyline among worst-case scenarios]:Mitigation: uncoordinated action, major actions late in the 21st century, 3°C of warming in 2100

“In 2020, despite past pledges, the international support for the Paris Agreement starts to wane.”

...

“Several small island states give up hope of survival in their locations and look to an increasingly fragmented global community for refuge. Aggregate economic damages are substantial, owing to the combined effects of climate changes, political instability, and losses of ecosystem services.”

“The general health and well-being of people is substantially reduced compared to the conditions in 2020 and continues to worsen over the following decades.”

Cross-Chapter Box 8, Table 2, page 280 of chapter 3, Impacts of 1.5°C global warming on natural and human systems

IPBES finds that with high emissions scenarios we contiknue to feed everyone, but in a biodiversity reduced world with a reduced safety net and diminished food security. We risk falling back on our sustainable development goals to worse conditions than we have in 2020. Chapter 4. Plausible futures of nature, its contributions to people and their good quality of life

It is summarized by Almud Arneth in the press conference as

https://youtu.be/SsaFFe2AQYc?t=3496

59:09 So could I perhaps ask Sandra Diaz if you could please respond to the AP question from Seth Borenstein about plain language by 2050. ... For more precise numbers I would again invite our coordinating lead author Almud Arneth ...

I think the question is what will the world look like in 2050. It is our choice it is purely our choice. None of the scenarios we've been exploring would indicate that we cannot feed the world or cannot provide water cannot provide shelter that's for sure. But we can do it in a sustainable way or we can do it in an unsustainable way and that is really our choice.

Here is Almud Arneth, the co-ordinating lead author for that section of the IPBES report again:

https://youtu.be/_66gZ_zAF-Q

Hello, my name is Almut Arneth. I am professor at Kayati in Germany, and my role in this assessment was co-ordinating lead author in the chapter about future scenarios. So with scenarios what we are trying to do, we are exploring how the world could look like in 2050 or even in 2100. Fortunately the scenarios where we try to drive a more sustainable future, more equitable distribution of resources, is a much better outcome in terms of both still providing food, to feed and fibre to everyone on this planet, but at the same time decoupling that increasing provision of ecosystem services from the destruction of nature. We can do it if we choose to operate along those more sustainable distributions of resources.

I discuss it with examples of what we are doing here We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios

This has not been established. There are no new research findings in this article to override the conclusions of the IPCC report in 2018.

This said, in the summary for policy makers, that anthropogenic emissions so far have contributed 0.8 to 1.2° C since pre-industrial and that the emissions so far have will have effects that last for centuries to millennia, such as sea level rise and associated impacts, but these are unlikely to cause even a long term global warming of 1.5°C (medium confidence) and that with high confidence this is not possible over the next few decades. This is the figure they use to illustrate it: Even the purple path with no reduction in non CO2 radiation forcing (such as methane emissions and soot) doesn't have any increases or tipping points.

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C (medium confidence). (Figure SPM.1) {1.2, 3.3, Figure 1.5}

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale (medium confidence). {1.2.4, Figure 1.5}

This is the precautionary principle and indeed is correct. One formulation of it is:

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle

However, it doesn't say

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken to prevent any claimed catastrophic event even if the scientific evidence is against it.

We need to act even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. However there has to be a scientifically credible basis for it, and so far this article hasn't established this.

Overall biomass is increasing in the Arctic region (as it is over most of the world)

Epstein et al (2012) found an average circumpolar increase in aboveground tundra biomass of 19.8% between 1982 and 2010.This increase was accentuated in the mid- to southern tundra subzones (20–26% increase), yet it was substantially less in the more northern tundra (2–7%).

…

Decline in greenness has recently been detected especially during the last 3–4 years

Changes in timing of spring snow melt, permafrost degradation, killing frosts due to mid-winter or early-spring snow melt, or vegetation shift from graminoids to deciduous shrubs are all possible reasons for arctic tundra browning.

For the boreal forest, remote sensing studies continue to support the “browning” of forest vegetation (1982–2008) with increasing drought stress as the most probable driver. However, this reduction in photosynthesizing vegetation appears to be related to the fractions of evergreen trees and deciduous trees on the landscape – with greater declines in evergreen-dominated areas (Miles and Esau, 2016). Changes towards greening or browning appear here as well highly variable, both in time and space.

The changing colors of the Arctic: from greening to browning

The melting of the Arctic sea ice is not a tipping point either, according to the report (see 3.6.3.1 Sea Ice).

"Sea ice is often cited as a tipping point in the climate system. Detailed modelling of sea ice, however, suggests that summer sea ice can return within a few years after its artificial removal for climates in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Further studies modelled the removal of sea ice by raising CO2 concentrations and studied subsequent regrowth by lowering CO2. These studies suggest that changes in Arctic sea ice are neither irreversible nor exhibit bifurcation behaviour. It is therefore plausible that the extent of Arctic sea ice may quickly re-equilibrate to the end-of-century climate under an overshoot scenario. "

The main reason the Arctic is warming faster than the tropics is for the same reason northern Europe and northern America is - because of convection from the tropics which increases in a warming world. You get the same effect on a pure aqua planet

This shows the latitude dependent effect of a doubling of CO2 on an aquaplanet with no land or ice with a general circulation model

"Polar amplification of surface warming on an aquaplanet in "ghost forcing" experiments without sea ice feedbacks"

The main reason this doesn't happen in Antarctica is because of the strong westerly winds in the southern hemisphere that block the movement of heat from the tropics towards the south pole. Why Antarctica is not getting any warmer

As soon as we reach zero emissions the Arctic ice then it is in steady state and will slowly being to heal as some of the excess CO₂ leaves the atmosphere.

The ice albedo effect in the Arctic is minor and only local - it doesn't warm up the world as a whole when the ice melts.

Annotated version of image from Arctic albedo changes are small compared with changes in cloud cover in the tropics

In their models the clouds weakening starts at 1,200 ppm, but the transition is at 1,300 ppm:

"Eventually, at sufficiently high greenhouse gas concentrations (1,300 ppm in our simulation without subsidence changes), stratocumulus decks break up into cumulus clouds, which leads to dramatic surface warming"

However they explain that they ignored some interactions that would likely increase that perhaps to somewhere between 1400 and 2200 ppm.

In particular, the large-scale subsidence in the troposphere weakens under warming32, which lifts the cloud tops and counteracts the instability15,19,24. Indeed, when we weaken the parameterized large-scale subsidence by 1 or 3% per Kelvin of tropical SST increase (within the range of GCM responses to warming33), the stratocumulus instability occurs at higher CO2 levels: around 1,400 ppm with 1% K–1 subsidence weakening, and around 2,200 ppm with 3% K–

So, their model suggests that this may happen somewhere between 1400 and 2200 ppm, more than triple current levels, which we won’t reach until the next century even at business as usual.

They continue

Equivalent CO2 concentrations around 1,300 ppm—the lowest level at which the stratocumulus instability occurred in our simulations—can be reached within a century under high-emission scenarios41. However, it remains uncertain at which CO2 level the stratocumulus instability occurs because we had to parameterize rather than resolve the large-scale dynamics that interact with cloud cover. To be able to quantify more precisely at which CO2 level the stratocumulus instability occurs, how it interacts with large-scale dynamics and what its global effects are, it is imperative to improve the parameterizations of clouds and turbulence in climate models.

It is important and may explain the past climates if it is true but is not a tipping point we can reach this century.

Paper can be read via the readcube free access link here on the author's website.

It's not known for sure what caused them. Also they are a see-saw effect, sometimes a 10 C warming in the Arctic but simultaneously the southern hemisphere cools. Then the Arctic gradually cools and the southern hemisphere warms. Possibly quasi-irregular fluctuations that last for centuries instead of decades according to one paper in 2019 Coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean dynamics in Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Whatever the cause they only happen at times when Earth has large ice sheets. They seem to be a result of the ice albedo effect for such large areas of ice combined with the effect of the melting ice on the salinity of the northern Atlantic stopping the AMOC and also atmospheric heat transport as well. But whatever the details it depends on the large amounts of sea ice in the northern atlantic, well above what we have today and it is more of a redistribution of heat than a global warming.

The balance of latest research is more in the direction of a continuous change rather than a tipping point beyond which you can't restore the Amazon. The older research used simple models with only two plant functional types and not accounting for details like a range of tree ages and nutrients and other details. More recent models with more diversity of vegetation find it more resilient and likely to change in patches rather than all at once. The Amazon has also survived much drier conditions in the past, though not identical in all respects.

It also depends on the CO2 fertilization effect and how much this is increasing the biomass of the forests. Although a mass dieback is not looking likely it is 100 times less expensive to act to prevent it using no regrets measures that help anyway. See Limiting the high impacts of Amazon forest dieback with no-regrets science and policy action

The Royal Society review of research in 2017 said

Amazon rainforest: The processes acting on tropical rainforests are very complex and a recent review still emphasised the possibility of a climate threshold … Recent work using a detailed ecosystem model (Levine et al., 2016) supports the possibility of a significant but heterogeneous [not uniform] transition in biomass type dependent on the length of the dry season, but in a continuous rather than “tipping point” manner. Resilience may be underestimated if plant trait diversity is not included in models

See also this paper in Nature, 2016: Resilience of Amazon forests emerges from plant trait diversity

Parts of the Amazon seem much more resilient to warming and this is how it survived the last glacial minimum.

The upper picture here is the last glacial minimum and the lower picture is the end of the 21st century:

Self-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks

We need to bear in mind that there is global afforestation happening as well, also reversing desertification - this is just looking at forest loss without the gains. Asia, Northern Europe, Northern America, are all increasing in forest cover. China is one of the regions of most rapid increase. Only South America and Africa still have decreasing forest cover and that may turn around soon.

A recent study, 2019 attempts an integrated model for Brazil projecting to the future. Their model assumes that:

• Crop yields [per hectare] will grow on average 1.5% per year while meat production will intensify linearly from an average base-year value of 1.0 to 1.7 heads per hectare by 2050.
• Food intake grows with a 17.3% increase in food crops and 29.3% in meat products by 2050
• The regions with the highest demand growth rates are the Centre-West, with a demand increase of 36.5% for food crops and 48.2% for meat, and the North with 34.6% and 45.8% for crops and meat respectively. One scenario explores the expansion of sugarcane on the cleared agricultural land (sugarcane expansion scenario), while the second scenario assumes an exclusive reforestation process (reforestation scenario). This shows how their model predicts a lot of freed agricultural land due to the increasing yields:

Agricultural land (crops, pasture, bioenergy and silviculture) peaks by 2020 reaching 292 Mha (an increase of 3.5%). It then liberates land at a rate of 6.0% annually, occupying 230 Mha by 2050, thus liberating 68 Mha of land or 8.0% of the total Brazilian territory. The Centre-West region, with typical large pasture lands, liberates 23 Mha, followed by the North (14 Mha) and South-East (13 Mha). Natural forest land is reduced from 459 Mha to 443 Mha by 2050., most of that in the first 15 years (2010–2025), with the Centre-West responsible of 85% (13 Mha) of the total deforestation With this scenario, then they compare growing sugarcane for biofuels on the cleared land with reafforestation. This is the result:

Their conclusion is that reafforestation of the regions that are freed up due to the reduced land area demands from agriculture will be able to recover the original carbon stocks of the felled forests by 2035 (this would be a larger area reafforested than was deforested in the first 15 years since 2010). But if you use sugarcane to make biofuels from the same area, even with carbon capture and storage, it is not able to totally offset the losses due to deforestation in the first 15 years. This is not taking account of practical issues and regulations, e.g. demand for the ethanol made from sugarcane and limitations on the amount of sugarcane plantations that are permitted. With their reafforestation they just look at the forest returning and not managed forests. They don’t seem to mention this, but if you had a manged forest and felled some of the trees for biofuel emissions carbon capture and storage you could be removing more CO2 than an old growth forest per hectare constantly through to the end of the century.

It doesn't really release it - there are organics from grass and animals and as it thaws and they decompose it can add to the soil carbon or be decomposed and released as methane (if it happens in damp conditions near the surface) or carbon dioxide. Meanwhile the thawing permafrost also supports grass, trees and peat which take up carbon dioxide. It's not clear if it will be a net sink or a net source of carbon with studies right up to the 2019 report that have it both ways even at high emissions. The date here is the date of the study and the bars show the change by 2100. From section 3.4.3.1.1 of the 2019 Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate

A recent paper in 2019 cited by the 2019 IPCC report finds that total emissions of methane from the permafrost can be more than offset by reductions in human anthropogenic emissions of methane. They cited it as:

As with total carbon emissions, there is high confidence that mitigation of anthropogenic methane sources could help to dampen the impact of increased methane emissions from the Arctic and boreal regions (Christensen et al., 2019).

The paper they cite is here:

Tracing the climate signal: mitigation of anthropogenic methane emissions can outweigh a large Arctic natural emission increase

Current legislation emission (CLE) and maximum technically feasible reduction (MFR) scenarios for anthropogenic methane reduction These are the four scenarios they look at in that paper:

• No change - Arctic emissions unaffected
• Modest: Tundra increases markedly, rest unaffected (50 Tg a year)
  • Large: Tundra and lakes increase markedly, ocean emissions double (100 Tg a year)
  • Extreme: Tundra and lakes increase markedly, extreme increase in ocean emissions (150 Tg a year)

Even the extreme scenario if combined with the maximum feasible reductions results in only a slight increase from the present. The scenarios are not correlated with particular emissions scenarios in that paper but the extreme scenario is unlikely for low emissions.

The new model results don't fit with paleo and instrumental data

Shows the range of high, low and the black dot shows the best estimate for each method.

From: Explainer: How scientists estimate climate sensitivity (Carbon Brief)

Weather Underground published a comment on this by the climate researcher Peter Cox of the University of Exeter. a researcher into Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity:

“It is worth noting that observational constraints from both the temperature trend and temperature variability still suggest ECS of around 3°C. So climate science has a conundrum to solve here.”

New Models Point to More Global Warming Than We Expected

The next IPCC report may not lean on the models as heavily as previous ones:

In assessing how fast climate may change, the next IPCC report probably won’t lean as heavily on models as past reports did, says Thorsten Mauritsen, a climate scientist at Stockholm University and an IPCC author. It will look to other evidence as well, in particular a large study in preparation that will use ancient climates and observations of recent climate change to constrain sensitivity. IPCC is also not likely to give projections from all the models equal weight, Fyfe adds, instead weighing results by each model’s credibility.

New climate models predict a warming surge

More links here

It is only models and the models are running too hot, sometimes they run too cold as well. They are not the real world.

The real world is still giving evidence of a figure around 3 C of climate sensitivity and probably they are missing something in the models - it wouldn’t be the first time. The models then need to be studied to figure out why they are running too hot and whatever glitch it is that did that needs to be fixed.

This shows how the estimates vary depending on the approach you use, this is from last year, June 2018:

Shows the range of high, low and the black dot shows the best estimate for each method.

From: Explainer: How scientists estimate climate sensitivity

The real world is still giving evidence of a figure around 3 C of climate sensitivity. Probably they are missing something in how details relate to global picture - wouldn’t be first time. Example one time for an entire year one model ran so cold there was no warming until fixed

New climate models predict a warming surge

More cites here For these sorts of reasons the next IPCC report may not rely as heavily on models for this as previous ones.

See: Do not adjust your set :) - why we shouldn't adjust the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity yet despite the new research - it is likely still 3°C

Jem Bendell is a sociologist not a climate scientist and he uses junk science sources including a non peer reviewed blog by a systems analyst Wasdell.

Science is based on consensus it's not like philosophy or politics. E.g. the melting point of ice is not a matter of philosophical speculation. If one philosopher says it melts at -50 C and another says it melts at 1,000 C, they aren't worst worst cases, they are just wrong.

Jem Bendell is wrong, not worst case, about Arctic albedo effect (the world as a whole is getting more reflective overall - more reflective in the tropics which more than compensates for the Arctic).

Short debunk of Arctic Albedo effect

There are areas of climate science where we haven't reached consensus as is common in cutting edge science, but that's also normal, and the IPCC then presents the full range of the tentative conclusions in the best evidence based science we have to date.

The clathrate gun hypothesis is effectively disproved.

Clathrate gun / methane bomb effectively disproved - less than human methane emissions and not known if Arctic will be a net source or sink

And there is no way you get human extinction on any scenario. Even with Business as usual through to 2200 then Greenland is hardly changed by 2100. This is not a world that is too hot for humans!

They don't have any cites for this except Jem Bendell. Or for the idea that billions would die.

Short debunk of Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation and Rupert Read's blog post]( https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Short-debunk-of-Jem-Bendell-s-Deep-Adaptation-and-Rupert-Reads-blog-post)

IPBES for instance made it clear that we can grow enough food for everyone on all scenarios, it's a question of whether we do it sustainably or non sustainably.

We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios

Their model is not meant to be extrapolated into the future like that. The paper is here

If you extrapolate it with Business as Usual and assuming nothing is done to mitigate this, then it's not too surprising if they find more food riots in the future if we have reduced food security.

But it's an improper use of their model.

We are doing many things, such as increasing crop productivity, most of the worst food security is in Africa which has the greatest potential for an improvement in agriculture with a tenth of the yields of comparable agriculture in China or New Zealand etc. This will continue in any scenario. Also we are not headed for "Business as usual", but for 2.9 C at present by Carbon Action tracker well below the 4.9 C of "Business as usual" and that's with lots of leeway to increase on CO2 reduction pledges.

The IPCC did an example worst case scenario and that's if the Paris agreement fell apart in 2018 which didn't happen. They had us just scrape in at 3 C by the end of the century - it's not plausible that we don't do anything through to the 2030s and to the end of the century as things get worse. But we are already doing a lot right now.

The IPCC’s own worst case climate change example - a 3°C rise by 2100

The limits to growth model is a "toy" model with only 5 variables that shouldn't be used for prediction. None of those variables relate to climate change.

• population increase
• agricultural production
• nonrenewable resource depletion
• industrial output
• pollution generation

Simplified ‘toy models’ of Earth’s future without social processes often bleak - can be sustainable with zero emissions if you add them in

It is also an oout of date model. It supposed that our birth rates would be leveling off by now because we’d all be starving and running out of resources. But it’s actually going down because of prosperity, e.g. Japan is one of the countries with decreasing populations.

The richest countries like Japan have the lowest birth rates and are actually declining. The Japanese are not having fewer children because they can't get enough food and other resources to keep them alive as the Limits of Growth model would suggest. It should be happening in the poorest contries in Africa if their model was correct but sub Saharan Africa has the fastest growing population.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Debunked-No-we-are-not-on-track-for-end-of-world-by-1972-computer-model

There are many others but nothing that I find that has a real risk of making us extinct this century if we take care. This should be no surprise as that would just make it a typical century like all the others of human history.

Could anything make us extinct in this century?

Long term we can do something about this and for millions / billions of years into the future there is no reason why we can't continue to live here sustainably.

Not really, since we could move the Earth, at least not over billions of years and not at all on ordinary human scale for the next few million years.

With space technology we can protect from future asteroid impacts.

With space habitats then we can survive here in this solar system through to the white dwarf phase and beyond as well as go to other stars

Once the sun dies and the solar system goes dark, would Europa (if it had life) continue to provide a liquid ocean and a biosphere?

We have a better idea of our local neighbourhood than when that was written. There are vaious features we can move through / out of in our neighbourhood but nothing to be worrieed about.

No danger at all from thin 'Local Fluff', ‘local bubble’, or ‘local ribbon’ interstellar clouds that Earth may go through soon

The next likely one is Gleise 710, a million years in the future. Though there may be others still to find in the Gaia data set it's not a near future worry.

https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Why-we-don-t-need-to-worry-about-the-flyby-of-Gleise-710-over-a-million-years-into-the-future

Spica is probably the closest large enough and it's 250 light years away

For the other type of supernova involving white dwarfs, the closest is IK Pegasi, but it can’t do it for millions of years. Its larger star first has to evolve into its red giant phase. In any case, at 150 light years away it is far too far away to harm us.

Debunked: Earth is threatened by a supernova

On WR104:

1. It is tilted away from the direct line towards us, according to spectroscopic measurements 30 to 40 degrees, perhaps as much as 45 degrees
2. Ours is probably the wrong kind of galaxy
3. Most stars like this do not produce gamma ray bursts even in the right kind of galaxy.

There are two other candidates Eta Carinae and Apep. Eta Carinae is surrounded in dust that would block the beam. Apep is the best candidate but it is also poitned away from us, pretty good evidence.

Debunked: A gamma ray burst could make humans extinct

This is not certain though it is possible. The subtlety here is that Earth's orbit also moves out because of the sun's decreasing mass, maybe enough so that it survives.

Future technological beings can move it e.g. using repeated flybys of an asteroid between Jupiter and Earth (of course need supreme confidence in your technology) or shade it with shades, various other possibilities but a technological civilization could also live anywhere in the solar system and survive right through to the whilte dwarf stage with space habitats.

Once the sun dies and the solar system goes dark, would Europa (if it had life) continue to provide a liquid ocean and a biosphere?

First, we know all the 10 kilometer or larger asteroids. The largest one not yet discovered probably 3.5 km. We know 95% or so of the 1 km ones with only one with a small chance of impact in 2880, 1950 DA. Most likely it's hundreds of thousands of years until one of those hits us.

Long period comets pass by further away than the sun typically and are very rare at present, to come any closer, closest any got is Lexell's comet in 1770 at vast distance of six times distance to the Moon. Robert Walker's answer to "Will an asteroid hit the Earth again"

We can deflect even large asteroids given enough time to do it.Methods for deflecting asteroids

It could cause power cuts - but the newer transformers are more resistant than older ones and at most it would cause blackouts for a few hours such as happen every year anyway. The older studies suggesting blackouts for months are now seen as out of date. Only the older transformers would be affected, or those already nearing the end of their life. It can also cause satellite glitches, during the storm itself, but the satellites would reboot once the storm is over.

It would still be an expensive event, comparable to a major hurricane in cost, leading to some expensive equipment needing to be replaced, but the total cost of power cuts in a year is more than the worst cost effects of a single geomagnetic storm. Also the power cuts would last hours to at most days. This is for the very worst Carrington event type solar storms that may happen once every century or so.

Debunking: Solar Storms to end all life on Earth

Even a really huge asteroid would do nothing to Earth's axis. Even Ceres largest asteroid in the asteroid belt is 66 times too small to have a noticeable effect . Even Mercury is not big enough for a substantial change.in the tilt of the axis. They probably misquoted that expert.

The map is due to Gordon-Michael Scallion, who claimed this would happen in 1993,

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-leaked-us-navy-map-new-madrid-submerged-us.t3777/

The table is from the Global Effects calculation on page 832 here: https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/effects.pdf for the Earth Impacts Effects program https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/impact.cgi?diam=1300&diameterUnits=1&pdiameter_select=0&pdens=1500&pdens_select=0&vel=17.99&velocityUnits=1&velocity_select=0&theta=&angle_select=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2500

This is the ratio of Ceres mass to Earth's: 0.00015

https://www.google.com/search?q=(8.958+%C3%97+10^20)%2F(5.972+%C3%97+10^24)

66 times too small for the 0.01 ratio for no noticeable effect.

https://www.google.com/search?q=0.01%2F0.00015

Ratio of Mercury to Earth 0.055

https://www.google.com/search?q=3.285+%C3%97+10^23+%2F(5.972+%C3%97+10^24)

Out of date, most recent estimate from 2011, around 7500 to 7600 BCE On the age of the Kaali craters, Island of Saaremaa, Estonia

Gravitational keyholes are not like space portals!

Apophis had gravitational keyholes because it passes very close to Earth (closer than geostationary orbit).

This asteroid has never been in the risk list, not even a removed object. This means there are no gravitational keynoles - if there were it would have a risk of hitting Earth.

The Yarokovsky effect is only 10s of kilometers per decade. This won't cause it to suddenly swerve!

The situation in India is complicated. It's burning crop stubble from rice. A new law in 2009 bans them from sowing rice until mid-june to preserve groundwater. They need to do a second crop of wheat and this gives them very little time to clear the fields to sow the fields for the winter wheat. The fastest and cheapest way is to burn the crop stubble, so they all burn it at around the same time in the year, and that then is why you get this smog in Delhi.

They produce around 48 million tons of stubble and about 39 million tons are burnt.

They were once removed manually to make cattle feed or cardboard. But now they use combine harvesters and they don't have the time or money to store it or plow it back into the ground. They would need to be paid more by the government for it to be economic to do anything else except burn it.

The main problem though is that they have guaranteed purchase price for rice, so they all grow rice. If they had guaranteed purchase prices for maize, beans and lentils then they would not need to burn them either because they are gathered by hand or gathered earlier.

It's made worse by the exploding firecrackers of the festival of Diwali.

Anyway - it's specific to Delhi and to government policy and they could fix it by changing the policy to either subsidise them to do something else with the straw, or to grow other crops.

It's hardly a harbinger of crises around the world!

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/toxic-air-in-delhi-fueled-by-rice-fields-that-india-doesnt-need/articleshow/72016990.cms

The paper they cite about the Eastern Antarctic is just one of many, I found a later cite of it here which says

Sasgen et al. [23], and Schröder et al. [26] used a regional climate model and associated firn densification model (FDM) [27] as a key constraint for ETM model. However, the density of conversion, whether ρice or ρsurf, is only exactly correct in an ideal condition that obviously deviates from the actual in many areas over the AIS, especially in the marginal areas where the mass fluctuations are noticeable. This will introduce some uncertainty into the estimation of ice sheet mass balance.

Their cite is the Schröder et al. in that sentence

and they came to the conclusion:

Over the period February 2003 to October 2009, the entire AIS changed in mass by −84 ± 31 Gt/yr (West Antarctica: −69 ± 24, East Antarctica: 12 ± 16 and the Antarctic Peninsula: −27 ± 8 ) A Joint Inversion Estimate of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance Using Multi-Geodetic Data Sets

I.e. East Antarctica is still gaining ice.

This report is from 2017. The remaining carbon budget was under estimated in the earlier reports. Which also gives the lie to the idea that the IPCC always is over cautious. See

Analysis: Why the IPCC 1.5C report expanded the carbon budget | Carbon Brief

Discuss in my No the IPCC does not err on the side of least drama, just follows scientific method

Those rapid changes after the ice ages were because of large ice sheets that don't exist today.

The permafrost in the Arctic is NOT methane -laden. It's got ancient organics from frozen vegetation and animal life. there are organics in the permafrost that can turn to methane or carbon dioxide or just soil organics as they warm up depending how they decompose and what depth in the soil, how damp or dry, what microbes colonize, the plants and peat, etc.

Whether it produces methane or carbon dioxide and whether the gases reach the surface depends on how it decomposes and at what depth. E.g. in damp anoxic conditions it produces methane but if there are overlyijng layers that are drier then the methane will be eaten by other microbes as iit gest to the surface, if it is a dry area then the microbes produce carbon dioxide.

details here

Arctic Canadian and Siberian permafrost carbon release significant but exaggerated in news stories - fraction of a degree rise in worst case - and can even be a carbon sink instead of emitter

The 1990 report not only said it was in danger of thawing, it said it WOULD thaw, just as it has today.

2.3.2.1 Changes in permafrost distribution

Under global warming of 1°C the most significant changes within the USSR are proposed for the southernmost portions of the permafrost with the boundary of the climatic zone which supports permafrost shifting northward and northeastward by 200-300 km. This will significantly expand the area of relict permafrost in western Siberia and the Pechora Valley. The boundary of the climatic zone which supports continuous permafrost will also recede approximately the same distance; however, in those areas where the ground temperatures are currently -5°C to -7°C continuous permafrost will be preserved. The thickness of the active layer (in loamy soils) is expected to increase by no more than 0.5 m.

A 2°C global warming (projected for 2020s) will shift the southern boundary of the climatic zone which supports permafrost over most of Siberia north and north eastward by no less than 500-700 km from its current position. In the north of Eastern Europe only relict permafrost will remain. The climatic zone supporting continuous permafrost will disappear from Western Siberia and will be restricted to north of the Arctic Circle in Eastern Siberia. The depth of the active layer (in loamy soils) is expected to increase by nearly 1 m (Figure 7.4a).

:> 2.2.1.6 Vulnerability of human settlement to rapid thawing of the permafrost

Climate models have generally projected that arctic and subarctic areas are likely to warm more rapidly than the average global temperature increase. Such a rapid warming could result in a significant thawing of the permafrost in the subarctic, producing major disruption to buildings, roads and bridges, adversely affecting the stability of some existing structures and forcing changes in construction practice (French, 1989).

This has happened.

The melting of the Arctic sea ice is not a tipping point either, according to the report (see 3.6.3.1 Sea Ice (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/)). As soon as we reach zero emissions the Arctic ice then is in steady state and will slowly being to heal as some of the excess CO₂ leaves the atmosphere. The idea that the climate will suddenly go haywire once all the Arctic ice melts is junk science. The ice only melts in summer and if the entire Arctic melts one year, then that means it freezes much faster the following winter (the ice forms an insulating layer which stops the oceans from freezing so quickly in winter). The ice albedo effect in the Arctic is not a tipping point because other areas such as the southern Pacific around Australia and Malaysia are getting significantly brighter as a result of global warming and you have to look at the whole picture, which actually is of a planet that is getting slightly brighter, less absorbing of heat as it warms up. See my:

• Why An Ice Free Summer Arctic Will NOT Have The Same Effect As 25 Years Of CO2 Emissions

There are tipping points for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice, but these unfold over thousands of years, plenty of time to step back from that particular cliff using carbon capture and storage over many centuries.

Techy detail: Greenland ice has a tipping point between 0.8°C and 3.2°C, median 1.6°C. If we cross that tipping point (it is possible we already have) the result is very dependent on future climate, between 80% loss after 10,000 years and complete loss after 2,000 years. The threshold for Western Antarctica (and sectors of Eastern Antarctica) is hard to estimate but probably between 1.5 to 2°C. Most of Eastern Antarctica continues to accumulate ice, as it did through the previous interglacials. See 3.6.3.2 Sea level

Amazon, early papers suggested that if another 5% of the Amazon forests are cut down they reach a tipping point beyond which much of the Eastern Amazon turns to Savannah and restoring the Amazon is impossible. The balance of research is more in the direction of a continuous change rather than a tipping point beyond which you can't restore the Amazon. The older research used simple models with only two plant functional types and not accounting for details like a range of tree ages and nutrients and other details. Recent more detailed models find it more resilient and likely to change in patches rather than all at once.

Although a mass dieback is not looking likely it is 100 times less expensive to act to prevent it using no regrets measures that help anyway. See

• Limiting the high impacts of Amazon forest dieback with no-regrets science and policy action I summarize it here:
• TIPPING POINT AND DIEBACK SCENARIO

This is not a system to isolate the Russian internet like the North Korean one. Also it is not even the Chinese system (though it would make that easier to do if they wanted to later on).

It is rather a way to be able to be able to run the internet internally even if the US was to try to cut Russia out of the internet in a conflict situation.

Note - most countries do have government banned sites. For instance the UK has government banned sites because of internet piracy. If I try to visit piratebay (just as an experiment) I get a page saying it's blocked and with a list of the blocked sites. They do this by legally requiring ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to block those sites for their internet customers.

Russia already does this through ISPs. This new method would let them do this at a higher level but they can already do it for nearly all Russian internet users so it's not really going to make a difference except for very techy users if they do it at this higher level.

And it is not a test, they are not going to try to run the internet without US servers. Rather, they are just installing the equipment to let them do it if they want to. To actually "flip the switch" and try to run the internet internally in Russia without using US servers would be very disruptive and likely wouldn't work, have a big commercial impact, as in, many things would go wrong, so they are not likely to do that any time soon in peace time.

The BBC has misreported this before.

The BBC caused an uproar on social media in Russia last month when it reported that authorities in Moscow were planning to isolate the Runet completely for a few hours this spring to test the system. But that’s neither true nor technically possible, according to officials and industry executives who’ve been briefed on the project.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/putin-wants-his-own-internet/ar-BBUopq8

And the BBC misreported it at the time as well. It isn't even a test to see if they can disconnect it from the internet which is not technically possible. Rather it's installing equipment that will let them monitor internet traffic in / out of Russia and if necessary they could use this equipment to resolve internet addresses for that traffic internally instead of relying on DNS servers in the US etc.

China already does that, because it's internet is designed like that, but Russia's internet evolved organically and has many access points to the web - and their aim is to reduce those access points. In principle if they do this they could set up a Chinese type system though they say they are only doing it to be able to continue to function if the US were to try to cut them off from the internet in a conflict situation.

https://www.scmagazineuk.com/today-russia-begins-disconnection-global-internet/article/1663083

This means one that would unfold over SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS if we continued at our current rate of extinction of 2% per century for amphibians, and less for birds, mammals etc. At that rate it would he 2,000 years for 20% of amphibians to go extinct, amongst the most at risk of them all.

Yes it is many times the background rate but it's not what most people understand by "at brink of a mass extinction" they imagine something that would unfold over a few decades.

Of course the rate may go up but it can also go down. Debunked - that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction

The killer frog disease peaked in the 1980s. [Killer frog disease - the declines peaked in 1980, it’s nothing new] (https://www.quora.com/q/duzzmyeobxjljrpq/Killer-frog-disease-the-declines-peaked-in-1980-it-s-nothing-new)

Half of them are insects, and iit's only 10% of insects which are less at risk of extinction than other groups - and by "threatened" includes creatures with a 10% risk of extinction in 100 years as well as ones with a small stable population or fragmented population.

Many others are minute sea creatures

The point of the IPBES study is that we know what is causing this, with perverse agricultural subsidies that encourage harm to biodiversity as their top reason why creatures are going extinct. Their report was about how we can SAVE a million species

Let's Save A Million Species, And Make Biodiversity Great Again, UN Report Shows How

This infrastructure may become stranded assets. Renewables are already competing with fossil fuels to such an extent that the coal fired plants that China is building will not likely be used to capacity or will be retired early. It makes sense for them to build them because fossil fuel plants cost less to build than renewables, and most of the cost is on going, for the fuel. In the early days of renewables with them not yet proven at scale and high cost ,then it makes sense to rely on fossil fuels to keep the lights going. But now that they have proven renewables on a large scale and low cost, they are not likely to build many more coal plants in the future.

However those are expected to become stranded assets, no longer economic to run and will retire early as we transition to renewables. We already have too many coal plants to run them all for the industry average of 53% capacity for 40 years.

This doesn't mean that it's impossible to transition to renewables. It means that some of our coal plants will run at less than capacity or retire early if we transition to zero emissions by 2050.

• New study does NOT conclude that we have too many fossil fuel power plants and vehicles to stay within 1.5°C

The fossil fuel industry needs to start planning for these possibilities and indeed the share holders have required BP and Shell to do reports in which they include alternate planning for a 2 C future - they haven't yet done a 1.5 C future but can already see the way this can go at 2 C. They are diversifying, putting just a small fraction of their investment into renewables, instead of new oil fields. We will need oil and gas for the next 30 years as we taper down to zero emissions by 2050, but it's not clear that we need to open any new oil fields, and it is time to transition towards renewables. I cover this in:

• Robert Walker's answer to What things are going to be Peak X?

The main thing that will help here is to stop the subsidies for fossil fuels. Instead we need to increase the subsidies that promote transitions to renewables and incentives for a circular economy. We need to encourage the international companies that are good actors on biodiversity and climate change and discontinue the incentives that encourage the bad actors.

We also need to stop the perverse agricultural subsides that promote destruction of ecosystems. The IPBES report in spring 2018 identified this as the number one thing we need to do to protect biodiversity as we transition to zero emissions. We must stop these perverse subsidies that subsidies destruction of the nature services we all depend on. This is hard as it goes against vested interests. But economically it makes sense as the nature systems have value for us, economic value too as well as social value.

See my

• Let’s save a million species, and make biodiversity great again - UN report says we know how do it

Yes some of our planes will still be flying in 2040 - they typically last for around 30 years depending on the number of pressurization cycles. They can use carbon neutral fuels.

An oil tanker, typically only lasts 21 years now before they are replaced

• The average age of demolished crude oil tankers hits 21 – not much room left for demolition balancing the market!

And sustainable clothes are gradually taking off. See

• 15 Sustainable Brands That Are Anything But Boring (Elle magazine)

These include use of climate friendly fabrics, such as linen, hemp, lynocell (made from wood pulp), bamboo (surprisingly), Alpaca, organic wool and silk.

The dyes make a difference too - traditional dyes use a lot of water to process, and the dye washes out of the fabric into rivers in the developing world. White cloth also is dyed. Natural and low impact dies and natural fabrics are least impact.

They can also use recycled materials, or directly use second hand clothes through upcycling.

For more on this, see:

12 Simple lifestyle changes to help reduce global warming and biodiversity loss

This is true to some extent. According to the Office of Climate Statistics, UK emissions peaked in 1972 but when you take into account imported emissions then UK emissions peaked in 2007. This is because the UK has transitioned from a manufacturing based economy to a services based economy, such as finance, professional services, and information and communication technology.

This is following the Kuznets curve - a theory that increases in GDP result in increased greenhouse emissions but then after a turning point, as an economy transitions to service-based industries the environmental damage gradually falls.

The EKC depicted in Figure 1 highlights the scale effect, which is the initial transition of the economy from agricultural production in rural areas to industrial production in urban areas. As industrial production intensifies, more energy is used, resulting in increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through combustion. However, as the economy develops, there will be a structural change from manufacturing and industrial production to service-based industries. Higher economic development leads to better technology, environmental awareness and enforcement of environmental regulations resulting in the gradual decline of environmental degradation.

This is low emission, but means we import more goods from abroad with our earnings. The UK is the top emitter of CO2 in its imports in the countries they looked at, above even the US.

However our own manufacturing sector and our energy production sector are also following that curve, Even when you take account of the emissions associated with imported goods we have had a reduction since 2007.

Many of our imports are from China which is a large per capita net exporter of CO2 emissions locked into the goods it exports, and the world as a whole is still on its way up in the Kuznets curve. But as China transitions to renewables that part of our imports will also peak.

The UK's peak seems to have been around 1985

For the UK, the approximate turning point at which the decoupling of GDP per head and carbon dioxide emissions seemed to have happened was in 1985, with a GDP per head of £16,667 and corresponding CO2 emissions of around 586 million tonnes.

In the world as a whole we are still on the way up in the Kuznets curve

While the UK economy is a good example of Environmental Kuznets Curve theory and has shown signs of absolute decoupling following 1985, Figure 13 demonstrates that this has not been the case when looking at the same comparison globally. There is still a strong coupling between carbon dioxide emissions and real GDP per head.

This can't be turned around globally through transition to services as we still need to manufacture goods so it has to be done by technological change (e.g. transition to renewables) or environmental policies.

They comment that

At a global level, a structural change such as the one witnessed in the UK is unlikely because of the global demand for manufactured goods, therefore any potential global decoupling must be achieved through other factors such as technological change or environmental policies.

• The decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions: UK evidence

The Committee for Climate Change in their plan for zero emissions for the UK for 2050 is well aware of this and they say that it should not be done by offshoring emissions. For instance on electricity:

Our analysis assumes that the UK imports no more electricity than it exports in the future, to offset the risk of importing higher carbon power. Interconnection would still be valuable as a source of flexibility - importing at times of need and exporting at times of surplus.

• Net Zero - The UK's contribution to stopping global warming - Committee on Climate Change

With respect to emissions accounting, the group agreed that is important to monitor both the UK’s territorial emissions and the emissions associated with the goods and services consumed by the UK (consumption emissions). As Defra’s annual indicator shows, the UK’s consumption emissions are significantly higher than our territorial emissions, though they have also fallen significantly in the last decade

• UK Net-Zero Advisory Group to the Committee on Climate Change

They talk about the importance of working on this together, for instance with imported biofuel.

If the biomass fuel used in UK BECCS plants is imported, there will need to be international agreements about the attribution of such negative emissions – and the extent to which they could be wholly claimed by the UK.

The Paris agreement is based on counting the emissions generated in the country that manufactures the goods - it has to be done this way because otherwise the emissions would be double counted and countries would be responsible for emissions that are not under their control.

The other side of this for industrialized countries is that they need to invest in the Green Climate Fund which is still under funded which helps the developing countries to achieve their climate goals. Most of them have two goals, the most ambitious they can manage by themselves without help and a more ambitious target that they can achieve with help from the Green Climate Fund.

This is one of the most cost effective ways the developing countries can reduce emissions - by contributing to this fund to reduce emissions in developing countries where the money goes further than in developed countries. They can also help them adapt to the changes. That also directly benefits the industrialized countries. For instance if Bangladesh is better adapted to sea and river flooding, it can feed its population more easily, becomes a vigorous economy with exports, and there is much less risk of migration in the future. This is a win for everyone.

See

• Rising Seas - Ingenious Ways Netherlands, Florida And Bangladesh Can Adapt - Barriers And Sponges - And Floating Gardens

What this misses out is that the reason for this is the remarkable reduction in the costs of renewables in the last few years. It's more installed capacity for less cost.

Already in March 2018 Bloomberg were reporting that onshore wind was down 18% from the previous year as were solar panels without tracking, offshore wind down 5% and lithium-ion batteries down 79% since 2010

They reported even more striking falls for India. The benchmark onshore wind in March 2018 was $39 per MWh, down 46% from the previous year. Coal by comparison was $68 per MWh and combined-cycle gas was $93.

At the time of this report March 2018, the cost of wind plus battery and solar plus battery ranged widely in India from $34 to $208 per MWh for wind and from $47 to $308 for solar but the average cost was falling fast too.

Tumbling Costs for Wind, Solar, Batteries Are Squeezing Fossil Fuels

With that background it should come as no surprise that in 2018 we installed much more than any previous year, increasing from 99 to 109 GW of new solar power installed world-wide, but at a lower cost than the previous year, declining 24% in dollar terms. [Clean Energy Investment Exceeded $300 Billion Once Again in 2018 | BloombergNEF] (https://about.bnef.com/blog/clean-energy-investment-exceeded-300-billion-2018/) That makes it 69% of the price per GW of the previous year for solar power. Some news reports shared just this graph which makes it look like investment in solar power is going down: But if you look at the power capacity added it’s gone up a lot - this is the amount added to the solar panels we already have in each year:

Clean Energy Investment Exceeded $300 Billion Once Again in 2018 | BloombergNEF

Far less cost, yes, but for far more panels! That’s excellent news.

What’s most interesting is that in many places solar power is now competing with fossil fuel economically. At that point then people will start installing solar panels for new power stations in preference to fossil fuels even without incentives so long as you don’t have incentives to prevent it.

It can really take off at that point. It’s already competitive in many places now including not only the usual Southern US and Australia but more northerly places, even in the UK for instance, solar power is competitive with the lowest cost fossil fuels.

Partly because of the Chinese initiatives, we now have low price solar panels throughout Asia Prices of solar panels and wind turbines continue to fall, faster than previous estimates, and of batteries also.

The Committee on Climate Change’s report: Net Zero The UK's contribution to stopping global warming, puts it like this:

One of the most positive and important developments since 2008 has been the very rapid cost reduction that has accompanied the global expansion of renewable electricity generation (especially for wind and solar power) and an accompanying fall in the cost of batteries.

They share this remarkable graph of the current and near future projected costs of onshore and offshore wind, and of solar-PV in the UK - both Solar-PV and the onshore wind are actually already competing with the lowest cost fossil fuels, without subsidies. Offshore wind is rapidly headed that way too. And this is for the UK which spans 50 to 60 degrees north, yet already is able to produce solar PV power competitive with fossil fuels:

So, the reason for this is not a reduction in the number of projects or the gigawatts. It is because of the huge decrease in the costs of wind and most especially solar photovoltaic which lets us build more clean energy for lower cost. Far from being a reason for pessimism this is a reason for optimism. Even in the UK solar photovoltaic is competitive now with the lowest cost fossil fuels.

Soon it will no longer make sense to build new fossil fuel plants.

And yes we can deal with the variability of renewables with peaking power (pumped hydro storage is the lowest priced way to do this but there are many other methods) and renewables don't take up more good agricultural land than fossil fuels once you take account of use of brownfield sites, roofs of houses, mixed use with agriculture, offshore wind, etc.

• Do renewables for power generation take up more land area than fossil fuels? Well - not really!

Also the very report they share explains that China's removal of subsidies for renewables had a lot to do with the drop in the first quarter of 2019 - of course with the renewables rapidly plunging in prices that's only going to have a temporary effect.

Bloomberg end the article:

Some possible good news for the clean energy industry: Spending may pick back up in the second half of the year as an auction for solar power in China triggers a “rush” of project financing and some big offshore wind deals come through, Wu said.

Spending in some countries including Japan and India rose. And despite the drop in Europe, investments in both Spain and Sweden took off, jumping by more than 200% in both countries.

The World Is Spending the Least on Clean Energy in Six Years

This is not what the scientists say. Flying is only 2% of emissions and there are many ways to deal with it.

Right now we can use carbon offsetting mainly, however there are planes already flying on low carbon fuels which were made with biofuels. In future we can make aviation fuel using renewable power. From water, and CO2 or other methods. This may sound like science fiction to make fuel from water, electricity and CO2, but actually, it is already feasible.

Audi for instance already produce carbon neutral biodiesel. Here are some of the demonstration plants.

• Carbon-neutral fuel - Wikipedia They get the CO2 from the flue exhausts of power stations. So they are offsetting the CO2 by turning it into biodiesel which of course eventually is burnt, so it is really using the CO2 twice.

But they could later on use CO2 from biofuel plants, for instance from agricultural wastes, or algae. In that case, the biofuel is already carbon neutral because it grows again each year. Turn its CO2 emissions into aviation fuel and you then have aviation fuel for free.

There is also research into electrically powered planes which are just beginning to become feasible due to increases in battery power densities. Small short haul planes in Norway, where there are lots of flights over short distances as you can imagine. There is a company that is already working on electric planes. This is a small two seater plane that took off and flew around Oslo airport. https://youtu.be/-YrhNirGd8o

It works only for small planes at present but those ones with maybe half a dozen passengers are often used in remote rural places.

They hope to start commercial flights by 2025.

• [Norway's plan for a fleet of electric planes] (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180814-norways-plan-for-a-fleet-of-electric-planes) Also, in the IPCC projections they have an offset due to reafforestation. Things that are hard to reduce to zero quickly can be offset like that. They can also do carbon capture and storage directly from the atmosphere, if that technology is mature. Or carbon capture and storage of the output from biofuel plants. If agricultural wastes are being burnt as biofuel, and some of them are converted into fuel for planes, that would mean zero emissions. If the CO2 from the biofuel power stations is also captured, the result would be net negative.

I cover aviation in more detail in my

• Does Bernie Sanders $16 Trillion Green New Deal Pay For Itself?

The aviation industry is currently commited to carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onwards and to cut CO2 emissions to half 2005 levels by 2050. It's one of the few global industries to take on such a comprehensive target industry wide.

IATA Forecast Predicts 8.2 billion Air Travelers in 2037

See also

• Climate change: Should you fly, drive or take the train? (BBC)

This is the most ambitious P1 path from the IPCC report in 2018

Note that the IPCC also have the graph rising for the first few years, through to around 2020. It’s just not realistic to have it suddenly ramp down right away.

That's mainly because of the rapid industrialization of China and other countries and though China is rapidly increasing its renewables it takes a while for that industry to grow large enough to offset the increases in CO2 emissions due to coal. But renewables are growing as fast as any fuel in recorded history and it is well feasible for China to transition to mostly renewables as this continues.

For more on this:

• Yes emissions are expected to rise or stay the same for a while on all scenarios - Yes we are able to ramp down to zero emissions

We seem to be on track for the most rapid adoption of a new form of energy ever. So far it is tracking the early days of nuclear power, but that leveled off, while renewables is set to continue to grow. This is from the BP Energy Outlook 2019 edition, so is a forecast by a fossil fuel company:

Their RT or "Rapid Transition" is a 45% fall in emissions by 2040, while for the 1.5 C path without overshoot, we need to achieve this by around 2030, so is a faster transition than they show there.

But if we target 1.5 C then the transition will be faster than their Rapid Transition.

For more on this see my answer to:

• What things are going to be Peak X?

Meanwhile, yes the population is still rising. However this is because we are living longer. We actually have almost the same number of children in the world as we had a decade ago and many countries have populations that are leveling off, and in the case of Japan and a few others, already decreasing. This is not because of any issues of fertility and not because of shortages of resources. It is because of prosperity and because worldwide in countries of all political and religious persuasions, as they become healthier, with more resources and as child mortality goes down, wealthy people are choosing to have fewer children, and a fair number are not having children at all.

The world population is expected to level off some time between 2050 (on the most optimistic projections) and 2100, with Africa the key. The World Population Division with estimate of 11 billion by 2100 project an increase of Nigeria’s population from 0.2 billion to not far off 0.8 billion, two thirds of the population of India in less than a third of its area. A population density much higher even than India. The upper limit of their projection for Nigeria here has more than the population of India into less than a third of its area. How likely is that?

There are signs already of the younger population having lower birth rates. If you factor in changes due to higher levels of education, the result can be anywhere between 6.9 and 12.6 billion by 2100 according to another study. See The human core of the shared socioeconomic pathways: Population scenarios by age, sex and level of education for all countries to 2100 Their summary is:

• Future fertility and hence [population growth] (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/population-increase) will depend on female education.
• In the median assumptions scenario (SSP2) world population will peak around 2070.
• By 2100 world population ranges from 6.9 (SSP1) to 12.6 billion (SSP3). Either way, things are actually looking brighter than one might think. Which isn't to say it will be easy, but there is no reason why we have to ruin ecosystems on Earth.

Then, it may surprise you to know that we actually produce more than enough food to feed the world. We have starvation for political reasons at present. It's an income and distribution problem. As an example, the world had a food surplus of 510 kcal / cap / day in 2010 increased from 310 kcal / cap / day in 1965. All the indications are that we should be able to feed 10 billion people.

For more details and cites see my

• Debunked: Soon we won’t be able to feed everyone because the world population is growing so quickly

This is Jevons's thesis, that technological efficiency gains actually increase overall consumption. It's called the [Jevons paradox] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox). See for instance discussion here. If that was right one would need interventions of some sort, regulations on top of improvement in efficiency.

However in practice, this hasn't actually happened. When LED lights gave us the same light for a tenth of the amount of electricity we didn't use more LED lights. The UK has seen a reduction in energy use at the same time as its population grows.

The yellow line there is what we should have seen with constant per capita consumption of electricity.

Short story about it:

Climate change: LED lights making dent in UK energy demand

Full analysis

• Analysis: UK electricity generation in 2018 falls to lowest level since 1994 | Carbon Brief

It is for the academics to discuss why this is possible. But it is clear that, for whatever reason, you can reduce energy use by improving efficiency, and that in practice you do not have to impose regulatory caps to prevent this leading to an increase in use.

See my

Sustainable continuing economic growth on a finite planet - how is that possible?

The lifetime emissions for electric cars depend on where the components are manufactured. For instance if you make the batteries in Denmark where there are high levels of renewables then the CO2 emissions imbedded in the car are far less than if you manufacture them in a country with higher emissions such as Germany. They also run on electricity which is still produced from fossil fuels in many parts of the world.

So, the effectiveness of an electric car in reducing emissions depends on how much renewables power is available to manufacture it and then for the electricity it runs on. It also depends on the technology used to make the vehicle which is constantly improving.

Carbon brief in their fact check find that EVs are already responsible for considerably lower emissions over their lifetime across Europe and that this benefit will increase as the countries decarbonize electricity generation.

Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change

Actually we are gong to find out. Many countries are already pledged to zero emissions by 2050 or earlier. It never was the idea that they would all have 1.5 C compatible pledges right away. For instance, China had to build up an entire renewables industry from almost nothing before it can become within striking distance of such a pledge. The renewables have also fallen in price hugely since 2015 making many things feasible in 2020 that were impossible in 2015.

Although there are of course a few notable under achievers such as Australia, Canada, the US and Brazil, most nations are over achieving on the 2015 pledges. They are likely to have more ambitious pledges by 2020 and indeed some already have increased their commitment (e.g. the UK).

• How well are countries doing with their 2015 Paris pledges?

They are showing by doing that electorates do vote for a green future. Finland aims for zero emissions by 2035 and after that will be carbon negative. The UK has committed to zero emissions by 2050, California has also. If California was counted as a separate economy then California would be the firth and the UK the sixth largest economies in the world. The UK is the first G7 country to commit to this. The EU is committed to an 80% reduction by 2050 and it is within reach of increasing that to zero emissions. Emissions are already going down in many countries worldwide. That includes the US which has reducing emissions.

On a personal level there are many things you can to too, and many people are choosing low energy devices, insulating their homes or building passive houses, eating less meat or eating low intensity meat (you don't have to be vegan - 20% less will make a huge difference, equivalent worldwide to saving a region larger than the amazon to be reafforested or used for agriculture or whatever you want).

Though one person can’t do so much by themselves, collectively through our life choices we can make enormous changes that will help transform the planet. This is part of the transformative change that the experts say is needed at all levels in our society to combat climate change and biodiversity loss. This is empowering because it means there is much we can do ourselves already, even if we are in a country where the government is not yet doing anything.

The transformative change IPBES and the IPCC refer to requires changes at a personal level complemented by changes at community levels, and government levels. It also involves intergovernmental co-operation and co-operation of cities and communities that cross national boundaries as well as collaboration between governments and local communities.

To take a familiar example, recycling would never work if people didn't separate their rubbish and put it in the appropriate recycling bins. That was a transformative change that happened in my lifetime - in the 60s and 70s hardly anyone recycled. Now just about everyone does, in the UK at least.

There is much less awareness of the issue of food waste. Just as with recycling, you can’t compel this, but once consumers realize that it is a significant issue for the environment and the planet, then just as for recycling, they can voluntarily choose to act to reduce the amount of food they waste in the kitchen.

One thing that’s come out of recent research is the enormous impact our diets have on the world. It’s the same also with meat, not the idea of compelling people to eat less meat or choosing less intensively farmed meat. It is about informing them, and then many may choose to eat less meat. This is working already.

12 Simple lifestyle changes to help reduce global warming and biodiversity loss

This is just one climate scientist, Oppenheimer, a specialist in Geosciences, and his co-authors are a philosopher Dale Jamieson and a historian Naomi Oreskes. Their writings on this topic have lead to vigorous discussion amongst other climate scientists.

They haven't convinced many. In this discussion, most other climate scientists responded saying that their published papers just follow the science wherever it goes.

The IPCC don't do any research of their own. They do a systematic review of all the literature,. a technique developed from medicine. As with medicine, this is needed because so many papers are published every year that it is humanly impossible for an individual expert to read them all. Instead, hundreds of scientists meet together to undertake this systematic review, co-ordinated by the co-chairs.

The aim is to include all the well supported research on the topic.

Yes they do work to a consensus but only a consensus on whether the well supported findings are included and summarized adequately. They summarize their findings here with words such as “low confidence” or “medium confidence” where these terms have precise scientific meanings. They come to a consensus on, say, whether a particular finding is low confidence, or medium or high confidence.

They don't attempt any kind of consensus about what the effects of climate change are.

If there is a wide variety of results in the literature they will say that it is low confidence and will discuss the range of findings. The climate reports often remark on particular studies that come to different conclusions from the others.

Sometimes the IPCC do underestimate. When this happens, it is because all the well supported published papers on the topic have underestimated, as happened with the Arctic sea ice. However, that wasn’t because of any tendency to conservatism. That was because of systematic issues with the models everyone used, with scientific issues modeling the detailed processes correctly. If all the studies say one thing, then a review of them will of course do the same.

They sometimes over estimate too. The climate sensitivity - a very important parameter - varies a lot and there are plenty of outliers in the direction of overestimating the amount of climate sensitivity.

graph from Explainer: How scientists estimate ‘climate sensitivity’

They summarize the complete range of values there. Indeed current models are currently showing a sensitivity higher than expected. These are likely to be inaccurate just as the climate models for Arctic ice were inaccurate in the other direction, because the combined paleo, studies and instrumental observations don't support such a high sensitiivity.

Do not adjust your set :) - why we shouldn't adjust the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity yet despite the new research - it may well still be 3 C

See my

*No the IPCC does not err on the side of least drama, just follows scientific method

None of this is about an uninhabitable Earth. As Almud Arneth, one of the experts for the IPBES report, put it::

None of the scenarios we've been exploring would indicate that we cannot feed the world or cannot provide water cannot provide shelter that's for sure. But we can do it in a sustainable way or we can do it in an unsustainable way and that is really our choice.

• We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios
• No we are not headed for an ‘Uninhabitable Earth’ - debunked: David Wallace-Wells’s book and articles such as ‘The end of the world and you are responsible’
• Some of the worst doomsday fear fact checking errors in the mainstream press - most are about climate change

No, emissions are not wealth. You get no material benefit from extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, you don't need to create emissions in the process of making goods. To take an example, if you grow a tree, cut it down and make it into furniture, you have removed carbon from the atmosphere, not added to it.

This is nothing to do with fuel efficiency. We will have the same rise in car sales, flying, and shipping with energy inefficient as with efficient vehicles, and with use of renewables or with fossil fuels. There's no evidence that using renewables and using more energy efficient cars leads to people buying more cars. Reducing the price of cars could do that. But if they are carbon zero that is fine too.

We have stock to use ratios of around 30% for grains. There are emergency supplies held by the US, China etc. We have the billion dollars a year CERF emergency fund to prevent famines which is pro-active. We could feed approximately four billion extra people if the calories grown to feed animal were fed directly to humans, so the worst case is rationing of meat not mass starvation - see Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare

We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios

The IPCC do not at any point suggest anything resembling a collapse of our civilization. Political changes, climate migrants, reduced food security (but still growing enough food for everyone) - all that yes. There is nothing remotely resembling an existential threat to our civilization. See for instance my The IPCC’s own worst case climate change example - a 3°C rise by 2100

The linked to document is a letter from the Comittee on Climate change from 2008 and doesn't seem to be anything to do with civilization being unable to adapt.

This is mistaken. The easiest path, the P1 path, assumes rapid reduction by 45% by 2030 and then a reduction to to 0% emissions by 2050. It never requires a negative emissions in total, but some of the CO2 is offset by negative emissions through afforestation and other land use changes shown in brown in the diagram. Which is already going on, China particularly is doing a lot of afforestation.

The other paths with overshoot require biofuel energy with carbon capture and storage. But it is not unrpoven technology. The Drax power station arleady burns biofuels. The carbon capture and storage is from the exhaust fumes of the power stations not from the air and this mainly involves drying it out and then pumping it underground. This also is technology we have working already at an industrial scale for instance in the steel works in Abu Dhabi

It is a two in three chance for below 1.5 C. This is often referred to more accurately as "well below 2 C". This also is for 1.5 C as the average over 30 years, occasional years may be well above or below.

The governments are only involved in writing the final draft of the Summary for Policy Makers and they do that to make sure the report is accurately summarized for non scientists. Scientists would typically focus on the technical summary and the report itself which is signed off by scientists.

The governments and scientists co-write the summary for policy makers then the governments write the final draft themselves and sign it off.

All the statements it makes are cited to the report by section number. It is easy to go through to the report itself. I use the summary for policy makers a lot and I check up the report itself and it matches what the summary says then I go through from the report to the orginal cites to find out details of the papers they summarize and they in turn match what the report says and what the summary for policy makers says.

Fitting an exponential curve through a graph doesn't prove that it is an exponential. For instance half the increase in the last year is due to China, a single country, and its rapid industrialization. China is committed to peak emissions by 2030 and is expected to achieve this peak of emissions early, indeed it may do it in the early 2020s.

Many countries already have decreasing emissions including the UK and the entire EU, and California has rapidly decreasing emissions and the US as a whole has decreasing emissions.

With the current commitments and pledges we are on track for 2.9 C. The article itself says later on we are on track for 2.9 C through to 3.4 C. That would not be possible even with steady emissions never mind exponentially rising emissions. Steady emissions from 2019 through to 2100 would see the temperature around 4.9 C. Again this article is contradicting itself.

The IPCC do not try to provide a consensus view. It is a systematic review. The aim of a systematic review is to give an overview of all the published research on the topic.

This has to involve considering unpublished as well as published research to take account of publication bias (where the most dramatic studies get published) and it involves weighting them according to how well the research is done- how thorough, detailed and so on.

See Medical research: Systematic review and meta-analysis

It does not have a political motive to spur policy makers into action. It is done in order to give an overview of the topic. This article is contradicting itself - later on he says that they are too conservative - how can they be doing it to spur people into action and then also be too conservative?

“…any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4….”

But he saw it as beneficial

The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree… By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.

These are dream periods not dreams. Each dream period consists of many dreams

This has been much criticized

• Accounts for emissions mutiple times - parents responsible for their children's emissions and grandchidlren's emissions, children responsible for their own and their children's emissions etc.
• Explicitly excludes scenarios where we are successful in achieving zero emissions targets (with zero emissions, the emissions due to children are zero).

Comment on 'The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions

The planet will still be intact, it will still have seasons, it will still have elections and it will still have comedies on Netflix or whatever the equivalent in 2050. Nothing in the IPCC report says any of this will change.

Click bait. A more accurate title would be "When plant species go extinct then some other species that depend on them also go extinct". But that would never be clicked on and shared by anyone unless they had a special interest in plants and species dependency.

The article is saying that when plants go extinct it is bad news for the species that depend on those plants. Not "all species". E.g. when the flowered St Helena olive tree goes extinct, then the speceis that live on that tree and no other will also go extinct, but there won't be many species that can only survive on the St Helena olive tree.

Others depend on common plants that will never go extinct. E.g. grass isn't going ot go extinct, so there is no risk of herbivores going extinct due to lack of grass to graze. Red deer in Scotland won't ever go extinct because of lack of food. They graze grass and there is plenty of grass here in many different species.

Many species do not depend on plants directly or indirectly. Most marine life depends on plankton indirectly or directly. The great whales are for the most part doing very well now that hunting has stopped and we do not face a world without whales no matter what.

Many microbial species are autotrophs - don't depend on any other life at all. E.g. green algae only need nitrogen, CO2, sunlight and trace elements to survive.

They gave no sources, and a paper that said such a thing by reputable authors would be headline news and astonishing and bizarre.

Perhaps they are thinking about the "toy models" that sometimes hit the headlines with stories like this. If so these are not meant for projections. Only 4 or 5 numbers to describe an entire "toy" world!

They are just for exploring ideas and are not meant to substitute for the detailed projections of the UN Population Division and the various researchers working on projections of our population through to the rest of this century.

For the estimates by the UN, see World Population Growth

For many more details

Our Population Is NOT Headed For Accelerating Collapse In Next 20 Years - Elon Musk And Jack Ma Are Not Population Experts

Click bait. A more accurate title would be "When plant species go extinct then some other species that depend on them also go extinct". But that would never be clicked on and shared by anyone unless they had a special interest in plants and species dependency.

The article is saying that when plants go extinct it is bad news for the species that depend on those plants. Not "all species". E.g. when the flowered St Helena olive tree goes extinct, then the species that live on that tree and no other will also go extinct, but there won't be many species that can only survive on the St Helena olive tree.

Others depend on common plants that will never go extinct. E.g. we don’t face a future where all species of grass go extinct. To take one example, the red deer in Scotland won't go extinct ever, because they graze grass and there is plenty of grass here.

Many species do not depend on plants directly or indirectly. Most marine life depends on plankton indirectly or directly. The great whales are for the most part doing very well now that hunting has stopped and we do not face a world without whales no matter what.

Many microbial species are autotrophs - don't depend on any other life at all. E.g. green algae only need nitrogen, CO2, sunlight and trace elements to survive.

cite: [Lithium-Air Batteries: An Overview] (http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph240/zhong2/)

It's not so much "some sources claiming" as that the newer PHS are able to achieve 87%. Good source here

RTE includes both hydraulic and equipment-related losses (pump, turbine, generator, motor and transformer). Typical PHS systems' RTE range between 65 and 80%, depending on the technical characteristics of their equipment . Naturally older stations have lower RTE, while technological breakthroughs of the last 25 years have resulted in modern systems with RTE up to 87%

Pumped hydroelectric storage utilization assessment: Forerunner of renewable energy integration or Trojan horse?

Historic present

Continuous present. Talking about something that is ongoing.

Historic present again.

It is in the past as of writing this article but it is written in the present. This is done to make it feel more immediate and vivid. It is a literary device that changes the tone.

Historic present. Speaking in the present tense, but about the past.

This gives it a literatry feel / tone. Like a novel.

Continuous present. What they want now, but wanted for a while in the past and will want in the future

You don't seem to have understood what just happened. A reviewer has tried really hard to find some compromise with you going forwards and you have rejected all her suggestions and not come up with anything else of your own.

It is for you to try to find a way forward not her.

The main thing here is that you haven't agreed to any of her suggestions. Even to the one that involves a huge amoutn of work on her part - for her to do editing of all your articles for some time in order to make them compliant with you rules as well as Wikinews rules.

She is not asking you not to use the present tense.

She is asking you not to use it when talking about past events in accordance with Wikinews policy

She returns and asks you not to undo edits according to Wikinews policy.

Again no response from you. Instead you are arguing with her that you are right. But she is talkign about a compromise where she edits according to both your self imposed policy and the Wikinews one.

She comes back and is even more accomodating. She will do this for some time, so long as you don't undo her edits

Instead of agreeing with her, you tell her that eventually if she reads enough text in English she will see things the way you do.

She is being very accomodating here. She has offered to do the wording according to their policy herself since you can't do it. She will find a way to do it that is consistent with both the Wikinews policy and your own personal self-adopted policy.

She wants you to say this is OK and that you will use these work arounds in the future.

She is using "We" again not "I". She is speaking for the entire reviewing team. I assume from this that you are not a reviewer and she is.

They probably have a special forum / talk page where they talk together and they asked her to talk to you.

This is about use of historic present tense. She says it is potentially confusing to international audience.

She has said clearly she is speaking for the team. It's not a threat on her part.

To a third party it seems that you are being very offensive here. Not intended but you are claiming she is acting like a child wanting to cause you problems when she is clearly here as a spokesperson for the entire reviewing team.

She says "We" - she is a careful writer and if it was just her personal view she'd say "I".

She has talked to the other reviewers and it is a collective decision to take this up with you.

When you see a careful editor like Grylida say "We" it means that this is serious

Most of what follows comes from not noticing the "We".

She repeats herself and says for the second time that she is speaking for the entire reviewing team

You repeat yourself claiming she is treating you as a slave or dog. She is not. She is just speaking as a spokesman for the review team telling you what Wikinews's policy is.