Humanity Continues to Exceed its Global Carbon Budget

A group of more than 100 researchers from more than 15 countries compiled and documented an annual global carbon budget covering sources and sinks. Coupling detailed observations with advanced models, researchers itemized emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change (mostly deforestation) offset by uptake in ocean, on land and into atmosphere. Emissions increased in 2021, 2022 (so far) and the most recent decade. 

They released their conservative report at COP27 and their watered down news isn't good.

Human emissions continued to increase instead of decline. The U.S. increased its emissions by 1.5% while India boosted its carbon emissions by some 6%, mostly from burning ever more coal to generate electricity for its ever rising population using ever more energy. Then there are the natural emissions, which are mostly ignored. Emissions from the melting Arctic in the form of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide continue to increase exponentially. We know this because during the peak of the plandemic lock-downs when human energy usage and carbon emissions plummeted by at least 20%, atmospheric CO2 levels increased from what could only be a non-human source.

Ocean and land continued to absorb some carbon but not nearly enough to keep atmospheric concentrations from continuing to rise. As oceans warm they can't hold as much gas of any type and some regions are now emitting CO2 instead of absorbing it. Deforestation has only increased. Droughts caused many wetlands and remaining forests to go from carbon sinks to carbon emitters. 

With greenhouse gas levels now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial values, the idea that humanity even has a carbon budget is a flawed premise. But within that flawed paradigm, humanity is on track to use up the next 100 years of its carbon budget in the next 9 years. This can only result in catastrophic runaway global warming and climate change, the collapse of human civilization as we know it and the mass extinction of most life that remains from the mass depopulation of species that has already occurred.

Carbon emissions in some countries have dropped as they have transitioned to more solar, wind and other renewable energy. But the decrease is not nearly enough to compensate for the increase in other countries and the increase in the Earth's own emissions. And the so-called sustainable energy sources aren't really sustainable because they are relatively short-lives and use diminishing minerals that can only be extracted with further damage to the planet.

Despite the glaring documented facts, inescapable observations of actual weather and linear logic, the delusion persists that global warming is currently only 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels and the level of warming can somehow be kept at or below 1.5 or even 2°C if the burning of fossil fuels are reduced. The reality is that temperatures have risen much more and much faster. There is no time left to debate how to reduce emissions. They will be reduced as our civilization collapses around us.

Scientists engage in deliberate climate fraud because if they don't they can lose their jobs and funding. The independent scientists trying to alert the world to the stark reality that humanity faces, are not allowed to attend any of the COP meetings and the few who get heard are quickly labeled climate doomers and ignored. When Trillions confronted scientists at a UN Working Group II climate meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2019, the scientists were physically blocked from answering meaningful questions by their UN handler and it was suggested by the handler that governments were not allowing the more alarming (accurate) information to be presented.

The stark reality that every person must face is that it simply isn't possible to transform our current civilization, which is based on the continued burning of fossil fuels, into a low or no carbon civilization given the size of the human population, the available resources, the time available and our current social and political systems. We don't have until 2100 under any plausible scenario. Our existing culture requires massive energy consumption and can only be sustained with continued destruction of the Earth, which means our own destruction.

Our current civilization will collapse and that means that it is time to create a new climate-proof, self-sufficient and truly sustainable culture and civilization. This new culture and civilization will be much different from the current one. Join us at https://www.climatesurvivalsolutions.com. 

The annual update of the global carbon budget is produced by the Global Carbon Project, started in 2006. This is the 11th update of the global carbon budget published by ESSD in the living data format. The report includes data and conclusions in the Copernicus open-access journal Earth System Science Data; interested readers will find descriptions of data and conclusions in https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/ and can access all original global and national data at: https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2022.