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#overshoot

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#Overshoot is de levensverzekering van business as usual. Het is de dominante overtuiging dat het economisch schadelijk is om fossiele brandstoffen te beperken en uit te faseren, dat het ondoenbaar is fossiele productie af te bouwen, maar dat we een technologische oplossing zullen uitwerken die ons zal behoeden voor de totale catastrofe.”

@tine sprak met Andreas Malm.

apache.be/2025/05/08/historicu

apache.be · Historicus en klimaatactivist Andreas Malm: “Mijn pessimisme is geen reden om afzijdig te blijven”“Om onder 1,5 graad opwarming te blijven, is de afbraak van de fossiele industrie onvermijdelijk.”
Replied in thread

@cstross I actually hope so. We (all humans on this planet who live in modern societies) are deep in ecological #overshoot and can't just go on like this. The global economy is more than double the size a hypothetical sustainable economy could reach, we won't ever become sustainable unless the economy shrinks dramatically, which of course would mean the collapse of Capitalism. If Trump manages to speed up the inevitable #collapse of the world economy, we might slow down the ecological collapse for a while (but only if we can get rid of the oligarchs very quickly afterwards).
There is no way to avoid chaos and collapse now, but how and when certain systems collapse makes a huge difference for the future evolution of organic life on Earth, and whether the genus Homo is still a part of the biosphere for a few more millions of years or not.

#ClimateCrisis #earth #humanity #societalcollapse #article

"#Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save #Civilization"

I also quote a paragraph that brings some hope (from another article of the same author).

"That’s why I always emphasize that even though it’s too late to save civilization, it’s not too late to save as much of the natural world as possible. Every 1/10th of a degree of warming that we prevent will save millions of lives and countless species."

medium.com/@CollapseSurvival/o

Medium · Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save CivilizationBy Alan Urban
Continued thread

Hm. nature.com/articles/s41467-021
"Timescales of the permafrost carbon cycle and legacy effects of temperature overshoot scenarios" by deVrese and Brovkin 2021

They took one of the plant-soil models and looked in an overshoot scenario what the temperature rise and artificial sudden removal of atmospheric CO2 does to the soil and carbon store in the #Arctic.

The end result after adaption to new stabilisation level is: carbon store is only 40GtC lower than before the overshoot, ie a mere 4 years worth of current global fossil CO2 emissions.
This surprisingly (to me) low end result of -40GtC is due to increased plant growth from the temperature increase over pre-industrial, from the prolonged growth seasons, and a special Arctic circumstance of high Nitrogen availability that ensures nutrients for excessive plant growth.

But the "end result" comprises the whole adjustment period to a stabilised °C after the overshoot. Adjustment takes 1000 yrs in the model.
And in the interim periods, emissions from thawing permafrost do reach 1 to 1.5GtC each year, and for decades! The duration for this soil-atmosphere carbon flux depends on the level and duration of the temperature overshoot.
Of course, it also increases the #CO2 amount to be artificially removed to undo an #overshoot.

In the context of #RCPcollapse :
the toot above showed how natural CO2 removal after civilisation collapse leads to temperature reduction of more than 0.5°C within 30 years .
Now, while permafrost thaw is irreversible on human time scales, it won't continue in RCPcollapse. (Because Arctic permafrost has no general technical tipping point after which self-perpetuating or self-reinforcing processes would kick in. Such processes only exist in small areas, locally, with local-only tipping behaviour. See "Global Tipping Points Report" 2023, chapter on #cryosphere nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/5365)
In RCPcollapse, the adjustment to the new equilibrium will take 1000 years – but there won't be a palpable increase in °C from the thaw.

NatureTimescales of the permafrost carbon cycle and legacy effects of temperature overshoot scenarios - Nature CommunicationsIn this study, the authors investigate a scenario where global temperature increase is limited to 1.5 °C. They find that Arctic ecosystems will need centuries to adapt to such an increase and that the ensuing steady-state depends on the preceding climate trajectory.

Why Cheap Renewables Won't Save Us?

An interesting look at the reasons. Here it is shown, once again I should say, that capitalism doesn't work when it comes to long-term thinking. Capitalism is about short term profit above all.

So, would the world be saved when be could kill the capitalist system?
Well, we would be much better off I'm sure, but unfortunately when it comes to saving the planet, or our civilisation for that matter, I don't think so.

When it comes to the energy transition, there are two main factors that are not mentioned in this explanatory video.

1. Renewables produce electricity. Wind, solar and hydro power all result in electricity production. Unfortunately electricity only accounts for some 20% of our energy usage. The rest is supplied mostly by fossil fuels.

2. More importantly, we are in a severe state of overshoot. We have been using more than our share of minerals, oil and whatever. There are just not enough critical minerals available for the type of energy transition that would be necessary for 8 billion people on the planet.
- And besides energy we also need food and wild nature -

youtube.com/watch?v=mkIMf_hVOf

#energy#Renewables#PV
Replied in thread

@c_ozwei @hausfath

In the 1610-event when CO2 dropped 6-7ppm (Koch et al 2019 "Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492" sciencedirect.com/science/arti ),
and in the 1940event when CO2 growth fell to 0,
the true power of each underlying cause was 25% bigger than observed, because oceans degassed CO2 accordingly.

And AMOC stumbled during both – is there a direct link?

A link between CO2 drop and AMOC slowdown, if it exists, has practical impacts in both emission scenarios: while undoing an #overshoot, or in the more likely #RCPcollapse scenario where we kill our civilisation – which, via a resulting gruesome population decline to 20% of today, increases the land sink:
743Gt CO2 within 30 years, ie -0.5°C, when only pastures and crop land for animal farming were to be rewilded, says Hayek et al 2021 nature.com/articles/s41893-020 "The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land"

I can imagine a link between AMOC slowdown and CO2drawdown in 3 ways:
* that the process of decreasing CO2 concentration affects salinity and convection (maybe first increasing salinity = speeding up AMOC, followed by salinity decline once CO2 drawdown is complete = slowing AMOC down)
* that the process of changing atmospheric composition affects precipitation over the North #Atlantic,
* that the process of rewilding in the Eastern Americas, much like in the 1610-event but 10times higher, changes pressure patterns over the Atlantic, leading to more precipitation for example over the "warming hole" / convection region in the Northern North Atlantic. A bit like in Preece et al 2023 nature.com/articles/s41467-023 "Summer atmospheric circulation over Greenland in response to Arctic amplification and diminished spring snow cover over Canada" where bare, drying soil in East Canada leads to summer Omega blocking with the High pressure systems over Greenland and Low to the SouthEast of Greenland

Just wanted to add this here to stress your question "Are there any calculations available?"

We must know in advance if either scenario causes #AMOC to slowdown.
Societal dynamics in reaction to an AMOC slowdown during an intentional overshoot-decline scenario might well mean that the OS-scenario then also glides into civilisation collapse and #RCPcollapse...
pinging @rahmstorf

Continued thread

a word about delays

this is not an actual archetype, but it can be said that a delay in a balancing loop almost always causes some problems, especially in a #limitstogrowth situation. #overshoot is the best example for that. and everything can be a delay. a stock is a delay in itself. a flow can and often has delays. delays are probably the thing i have the most respect of in a system.

Continued thread

3. situation, and this is the one we are actually living in:

what happens when the fishery still stays profitable, even at very low fish densities?

well, these oscillation get out of hand. the fish will at some point, no longer replenish. just for the simple fact they are too few and far between. the delicate balance of reinforcing & balancing feedbacks is disrupted and tips the system into a new state: the fish have now become a non-renewable resource. that is what we mean by "#overshoot".

Overshoot: Cognitive Obsolescence
And the Population Conundrum

by William E. Rees, human ecologist

Eric Lee
Jul 24, 2024

Abstract

The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem. I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies. Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified. If successful, this would merely extend overshoot. Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere. The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.

Keywords: carrying capacity; cognitive obsolescence; systems complexity; economic contraction; population planning.

Introduction: Evolution and humanity’s eco-predicament

This article attempts a more-than-usually systemic assessment of the human eco-predicament. It is inspired by two related facts: First, the human population substantially exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of Earth even at current average material standards. We are in overshoot, a state in which excess consumption and pollution are eroding the biophysical basis of our own existence (GFN, 2022a; Rees, 2020a). Second, national government and international community responses to even the most publicised symptom of overshoot, climate change, have been dismally limited and wholly ineffective (Figure 1).

. . .

medium.com/@alysion42/overshoo

#overshoot
#biodiversity
#ClimateChange
#ClimateCrisis

Medium · Overshoot: Cognitive Obsolescence And the Population ConundrumBy Eric Lee

The best & most comprehensive article I have read yet about the impending #collapse due to #overshoot, and what we can, but why we won't, do anything about it.

Thank you Jack of all trades @jackofalltrades

Overshoot: Cognitive Obsolescence
And the Population Conundrum

medium.com/@alysion42/overshoo

Medium · Overshoot: Cognitive Obsolescence And the Population ConundrumBy Eric Lee
Continued thread

K-selected species have slower reproduction & longer generation times, their responses to changes in population size are delayed, which creates lower-amplitude, slower oscillations in their populations.

they are selected for by evolution regarding resource use, hence K-selected.

humans like other big mammals once were a K-selected species, even when elon musk is flying around with his jet having 3 million kids - we still are.

#overshoot
#systemsthinking
#systemsdynamics
@systemsthinking

Continued thread

#systemsdynamics-wise there are 2 different types of species:

r-selected species like small mammals have rapid reproduction & short generation times, so they respond quickly to environmental changes. they produce many offspring, so they face overshooting K often, leading to high-amplitude, rapid oscillations in their population stocks, especially when delayed responses are present.

they are selected for by reproduction rates, hence r-selected.

#overshoot
#systemsthinking
@systemsthinking

Continued thread

however, there can be a delay between the time when the population reaches a relatively high density & the time when resources become limiting enough to significantly affect birth and death rates. this delay in the feedback mechanism can cause the population stock to temporarily "#overshoot" the amount of possible individuals available resources can sustain. that results in a temporary die-off and starts a boom-and-bust cycle of oscillations.

#systemsthinking
#systemsdynamics
@systemsthinking