Month: September 2023

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Why don’t we fix climate change …. It is in our power?

The focus of climate change has and will likely continue to be carbon mitigation; however, we know that this will not work. The climate will continue to become progressively more extreme, and at best, carbon mitigation will delay the inevitable (point of no return) a few years to 2050. https://lnkd.in/eiC9kgDu

While carbon dioxide is part of the problem, it will not stop the process, which is increasing exponentially. Be under no illusion; this is an extinction-level event that is being ignored because human nature fails to engage with the fact that we are part of nature and cannot survive on this world without nature on land, and marine life in the world’s oceans. This is partially due to Shifting BaseLine Syndrome, SBS https://lnkd.in/eiC9kgDu .

We look at a world that appears full of life, but according to WWF and others, we have lost 50% to 80% of all nature on land and marine life since 1970, and about 90% since 1900. In another 20 years, the figure will be 90% to 99%, respectively. It will not be possible for most of us to survive, and bioclimatic aspects will cause catastrophic climate change. SBS syndrome and generational amnesia will drive us into extinction and planetary meltdown.

Sure, we must continue with carbon mitigation, but carbon tunnel vision is even more dangerous. We need to be nature-centric, to stop destroying ecosystems, and to start doing some good, because we are way past the point of just doing less harm as a solution. So, what can be done….? There is too much to explain in this post, but 80% of the world has no wastewater or atmospheric pollution control, we need to eliminate / prevent toxic forever chemicals, plastic, and partially combusted carbon from entering the wider ecosystem, and we need to be nature-positive and start to repair the catastrophic damage humanity has inflicted on nature.

We are part of nature and will suffer the same consequences when it is destroyed.
https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN

www.goesfoundation.com

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Oceans are turning green

The Oceans are not blue anymore……this is scary !!!!

The world’s oceans are changing colour from blue to green. It is reported that this is due to climate change, but the green chlorophyll phytoplankton are not tracking the warmer water. It is suggested that it may be due to nutrients and stratification in a recent report by Nature.
https://lnkd.in/eGxzHe5C

Very little information is given in the Nature report. At Goes, we think the change in colour is due to a regime shift of phytoplankton from Coccolithophore species to cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. This is well documented in other reports.

Coccolithophores are composed of calcium, and they help to make the water appear blue. The change has affected 56% of the world’s Oceans. A number of years ago, we predicted this would happen; see the graph below. The issue now is that it is occurring many years earlier than predicted.

Dinoflagellates will produce harmful algal blooms, which can impact human health and the marine food web. The algae produce toxic chemicals such as domoic acid, which causes brain damage in marine mammals. Orca have now been attacking boats in Portugal and Spain https://lnkd.in/ey5tgN_D
and seals are now attacking people in South Africa. This is not normal behaviour !!!!

Additionally, the shift in phytoplankton composition will affect the carbon cycle, as dinoflagellates do not calcify like coccolithophores, and oceanic pH (acidity) is going to crash at a faster rate.

What are the scientists doing about this…..We need to collect more data

A major regime shift in the world’s Oceans from Coccolithophores to cellulose dinoflagellates is catastrophically bad and will impact everyone.

https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN

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Zapatillas Panama sea turtle restoration project success

Hawksbill, Leatherback, Green Loggerhead sea turtles are making a come back on ther Zapatillas Islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama in Bocas del Toro. The animals were in serious decline because of pollution, tourism and fishing industry. The local fisherman saw what was happening and collectively decided to stop fishing for the turtles. At the same time the Government declared their nesting grounds a National Park and enforced strict regulations.

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We all have some of OCEAN DUST inside our bodies.

We all have some of OCEAN DUST inside our bodiDiatoms are one of the most important marine plants that give us around 20% of all our oxygen and remove the same amount of carbon dioxide. Because they are made of silica, their skeletons survive inside us all. We are all made of ocean dust….

This demonstrates that we are all connected to the oceans, when we breathe in air, we are breathing in marine plants in every breath.

Due to ocean acidification, diatoms and carbonate based marine plants are going to change to plants call dinoflagellates, and many of them are toxic. This will happen over the next 25 years.

Will the air we breath become toxic ? check-out red-tides

We need to protect ocean ecosystems, because they represent our greatest carbon sink, and all life on earth depends upon the oceans.

We need to stop the pollution from toxic chemicals and plastic, regenerate nature, and nature will help remove the carbon.

https://lnkd.in/gub2stf

https://lnkd.in/gqRx_p5

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Carbon mitigation strategy could accelerate climate change….

The carbon tunnel vision path is not going to stop catastrophic climate change. Even if we were to achieve net zero by the end of the decade (impossible), carbon dioxide will still pass 500 ppm, the ocean pH will drop below pH 7.95, and the marine life support system for the planet will crash. In parallel, you have toxic chemicals, plastic, and partially combusted carbon destroying most life on the planet. Over the next 20 years, there will be less than 90% of all nature on land and marine life in the oceans remaining as compared to 1970. Humanity is part of nature, and we cannot survive on earth without the life support system for the planet. It’s madness to continue to pollute the planet and destroy nature for short term gains.


According to an international report by Bernard et al. 2021, most mainstream attention and investment are directed towards mitigating and adapting to climate change. Even if this narrow intervention is successful, it will not resolve the meta-crisis of ecological overshoot; in fact, with many of the current resource-intensive interventions, it is likely to make matters worse.

The current climate change strategy adopted by most Governments around the world is destined for failure and to accelerate the problem. We need to focus on the regeneration of nature and ecosystems; we must eliminate toxic chemicals, plastics, and carbon particles from getting into the environment. 80% of the world has no wastewater treatment, this must stop.

We must have a hypocritical oath to do no harm to nature, but even this will not be sufficient because we are too late, to just do no harm is not enough, we must be nature positive and start to do some good.

Bernard et al. 2021, report https://lnkd.in/ejV98Q7t
Bioclimatic factors regulate climate change; https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN
www.goesfoundation.com

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Nature doesn’t need humans

Nature doesn’t need humans, but we have inflicted so much damage on the environment that if humans were removed from the planet tomorrow, the oceans will still experience a regime shift, and we will still have catastrophic climate change.

We have focused on carbon as the solution for climate change, but it is only part of the problem, and maybe even just a small part. Water vapour pressure and biogenic aerosol formation from the ocean SML layer could be responsible for as much as 80% of climate disruption.

Countries most at risk are those that are impacted by atmospheric pollution and loss of the SML, so all countries around the Mediterranean, the Arctic and Antarctic, high latitude countries, South America New Zealand, Australia. The climate disruption will be droughts, no clouds, high humidity, high pressure, followed by torrential downpours and strong winds of up to 200km/hr that just last for maybe 20 minutes.

Countries subject to aerosol pollution from the burning of coal or trees, for example the horrific torrential floods in Pakistan were blamed on climate change, they were more likely to have been caused by atmospheric pollution from China.

Unless we stop the cycle, the extremes will become more and more violent.

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Ecosystem collapse is inevitable, and we have the time table when it will happen.

We argue about climate change and carbon mitigation and do nothing to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. We monitor and analyse air, water and soil quality but do nothing to reduce pollution. At the Ocean conference in Paris in 2018, the top statement was that we are doing and excellent job at monitoring the destruction of the ocean ecosystem.

All life on earth depends upon the marine environment, but unless we start to clean up the mess, the oceans will collapse within the next 10 to 20 years then humanity is finished. We report on some of the solutions on our website at; https://lnkd.in/eQeaA6UK

The relationship between climate disruption and biodiversity is explained in our peer reviewed published report;

https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN

According to a report in Nature, we have less than a 10% chance to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse of the environment. https://lnkd.in/g3D3nXNS

https://lnkd.in/ewCPcH_r

#water#biodiversity#climatechange#environment#marine

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/24/ecosystem-collapse-wildlife-losses-permian-triassic-mass-extinction-study

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The smell of the ocean has changed

When wastewater is discharge into a river or directly into the sea, the belief by many is that the waste has been safely discharged. However many pathogenic bacteria, the most toxic of chemicals and microplastic float in the surface micro layer SML of the ocean. The SML is 1mm thick, it covers 100% of the worlds oceans and 71% of the planet.

The SML surface layer has 500 times higher concentration of chemicals, bacteria, plastic particles and partially combusted carbon than the underlying water.

Sea spray aerosols are responsible for 80% of cloud formation by nucleating water vapour. The smell of the sea used to be a marine plankton called a coccolithophore, now the smell of the ocean is pollution. When aerosols are formed by bubbles bursting through the SML layer, the airborne aerosols are contaminated by everything that was in the SML layer.

Pathogenic bacteria, plastic and toxic chemicals are returned back to land, to contaminated all plants, agriculture, water supplies and our atmosphere. The suffering, and cost implications to public health and societies is difficult to quantify. For small rural communities it has been estimated that for every dollar spent on sanitation, the return is 20 fold. It is likely to be a similar number of even greater for high income countries, but the cause and effect are further apart, so it is not considered.

Pollution now causes more deaths than all wars, and infectious diseases combined (from Lancet Planetary Health Report)

The following is a report recently published on the subject.
https://lnkd.in/eZYgX2TH
https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN
#water#health#cloud#cloud#marine#agriculture#dollar#publichealth

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Mammals

96% of all mammals on the planet by mass are now humans, stated in a presentation by Attenborough 4 years ago needs to be repeated.

Humanity controls and regulates nature, but mostly we destroy by habitat destruction and toxic chemicals. Humanity has wiped out more life than the meteorite that slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago, but our future still depends upon nature.

Carbon mitigation is important, but it is also insignificant in relation to the damage we are inflicting on nature. Our future still depends upon nature and I refer to the microscope life of plants and animals that live in our Oceans, the plankton. They control our atmosphere and more than 80% of our weather, but we are also poisoning the oceans with plastic and toxic chemicals, and we seem to be fixated on carbon as being our savior, but it is now part of the problem.

All of nature on land and marine life in the oceans are connected in a complex web, we need to regenerate nature and increase biodiversity if we are going to have any chance of survival over the next few decades. With 96% of mammals humans and 70% of birds domesticated chickens, we are a long way from a diverse ecosystem.

GOES report, https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN

Actions and solution on www.goesfoundation.com

#biodiversity#marine#future
https://lnkd.in/gdxcdr9H

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Almost 100% of our atmosphere is now considered toxic.

About 99.82% of the global land area is exposed to levels of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) — tiny particles in the air that are linked to lung cancer and heart disease — above the safety limit recommended by the Word Health Organization, according to the study published in Lancet Planetary Health.

And only 0.001% of the world’s population breathes in air that is considered acceptable.

Everything in the air ends up on the land and in our drinking water. Particles that land on the sea float on the surface and attract toxic lipophilic chemicals in the surface SML layer. The SML layer forms aerosols which nucleate clouds to form rainwater. Rainwater all over the world now contains the particles with added chemicals absorbed from water pollution of the oceans. This is probably responsible for up to 80% of climate change, but it is almost totally ignored and is not being addressed.

There is no way we can stop catastrophic climate change by carbon mitigation alone.

GOES report. https://lnkd.in/ev6_2cXN
https://lnkd.in/ezB5f4qP
#water#climatechange#health#clouds