Human Breakouts as Enhancements of Climate Change
We have been warned of several possible tipping points that may occur from climate change. They are physical or chemical in origin, or involve atmospheric or oceanic flows. But there are also human caused actions that can also exacerbate attempts to fight climate change. Some have already started. It seems too incidental to just call these “tipping points” rather than the catastrophes that they are. So I am going to up the name to “human breakouts”. Some of these have been covered in Defense Department projections, and I am sure reports of intelligence agencies, and public climate change reports. However, all of the projections here are just my own guesses, and this is not my usual reporting of well established sources.
The Air Conditioning Breakout will be caused by intolerable heat waves. As they increase more often, become hotter, become longer, and start earlier and end later in the year, people will buy more air conditioners. This starts with single room and window air conditioners, and then moves to full house or apartment air conditioning. They spread to larger areas as do the heat waves. With occasional heat waves, people can do simple things to weather them. They can buy fans, close shades or drapes, go to a movie or out for lunch, stay at work, go to shelters or a swimming pool, spend the day in a beachside city, etc.
But as the number, length and intensity of heat waves increase, people must buy and use air conditioning. Air conditioning require a lot of power and energy. Once you have them, you use them more and more, even for non-critical times and days. They also use potential greenhouse gases as hydrofluorocarbons. People also use more air conditioning in their cars which uses up more gasoline. More power and energy usage is made up by more greenhouse gases generated in power sources. More heat also lowers the efficiency of solar cells. It can also create atmospheric highs that block winds and lower the power generated by wind power.
Long heat waves and droughts dry out brush, and make wildfires more likely. This leads to large rebuilding costs, which draws money from creating renewable power, or converting coal to natural gas, or creating nuclear power. All of these factors lead to a runaway or breakout human response, which we call the Fire Breakout.
Similar cycles will occur with floods and hurricanes, where reconstructing severe damage will drain climate mitigating funds. There are also safeguarding expenses of shore fortressing, larger and more reservoirs, larger and stronger dykes, widening river drainage, and raising roads, property, houses, and businesses, which soak up all possible mitigating funds. We should call this the Water Management Breakout.
Then there are the Crop Failure Breakouts. These are already occurring around the world, and leading to refugee flows. The US is undergoing one this year in the central rivers that drain into the Mississippi. The floods in these highly level states have fields under water, and soil that remains wet, killing the days needed to plant crops for the summer. The food output of the United States is already partly wasted making corn ethanol, which is relatively neutral as far as greenhouse gases are concerned, but is a great subsidy to midWest Republican states. California pays for this as the ethanol has to be trucked into the state. This also lowers the world’s food supply, which will also be affected by this year’s floods. Trump is already supplying $16 billion for soybeans that his tariffs have prevented from being sold to China. Farmers are going bankrupt and leaving the business, and this can permanently lower food production.
Droughts lead to refugees and wars, even when not well publicized. The Sunni Sadam regime in Iraq had starved the Shia southern Iraq of water supplies. The rebellion in Syria was partly caused by droughts, and also partly led to the flow of refugees into Jordan and Europe. The poor farming in Central American states has contributed to the refugee flows to our border, since 25% of the refugees are farmers. This has been further exacerbated by Trump’s cutting off foreign aid programs that were successful in providing jobs and fighting gangs in Central America. Refugees have reinvigorated the right in European politics, and also inspired Brexit. Trump also started his 2016 campaign banning Muslim immigration, and building a wall. The mistreatment of asylum seekers and family separations have destroyed the humanitarian reputation and leadership of the United States at home and abroad.
One possible future is that US droughts will drive farming North into Canada, and the destruction of the Boreal Forests, which is a major source of oxygen and CO2 sequestration. This is again a feedback which raises greenhouse gases, or a Drought or Farming or Refugee Breakout.
The biggest Breakout that concerns the US and therefore the World is the apparently improbable election of the most stubborn climate science denier in President Donald Trump. Actually, the US largely alternates between Democratic and Republican regimes, and Republican ones are strongly funded by fossil fuel magnates. The Republican funders have had a consistent history of fighting climate science and climate action. The whole Trump administration has been manned by experts in dismantling climate action, as we have well described in many articles. Since the investments in fossil fuel cars, power plants, and energy sources will last decades, this is an ongoing Fossil Fuel Breakout.
The Trump withdrawal from the Paris Agreement removes one of the strongest leaderships for climate mitigation. Remember that Obama talked China into going into the Paris Agreement on an equal basis, not just as a developing country. The US withdrawal also allows other countries to backslide. In foreign discussions and reporting, I never see them mention that a California led coalition, and city and business coalitions, still commit about half the US population to meet the Paris Agreement. The Republicans are using all Political power to contravene Constitutional safeguards to extending their Political powers, creating a runaway Political Power Breakout.
So we see that in addition to possible physical tipping points, there are also many human positive greenhouse gas feedback Breakouts which are already occurring, and will get larger in the future.
To review, we have identified:
The Air Conditioning Breakout;
The Fire Breakout;
The Water Management Breakout;
The Crop Failure Breakout;
The Farming or Refugee Breakout;
The Fossil Fuel Breakout; and
The Political Power Breakout.
