We need to protect nature’s systems

In our complex world there are more ways to do good than we might imagine.

This independent website is an unconventional exploration of sustainability-related ideas and perspectives.

From the Links page:

• Youtube video: How Thermodynamics Holds Back Negative Carbon Tech (Cool Worlds, Sep 20, 2023)
• I Want a Better Catastrophe by Andrew Boyd (2023) (click Play to listen, or click items to expand the flowchart).

The Climate Change posts are easy to explore any time. The referenced scientific articles and reports provide clear explanations of the concepts and are usually free to access online.

Feel free to take a little time out to explore… How much more carbon do the Earth’s oceans hold than the atmosphere? Which parts of the carbon cycle take millennia to play out? Did you know that the IPCC forecasts that some sectors will reach net-negative CO₂ emissions decades before others, led by agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU), with the energy sector in second place?

Get a quick overview of low-cost greenhouse gas mitigation options, promising demand-side mitigation options, and nature-based solutions. How does the global energy mix shift in IPCC scenarios that promise to be effective at mitigating climate change? How does the IPCC’s forecast share of low-carbon energy in primary energy change over the decades? What are the IPCC’s forecast shares of fossil fuels, carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear, solar and wind, bioenergy, and hydrogen later this century? Which regions have the highest historic cumulative emissions, and how does this compare to current regional emissions trends and our remaining carbon budgets?

Should we use future carbon drawdown projections to justify continued burning of fossil fuels? What’s the problem with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)? Did you know that the enhanced greenhouse effect leads to an immense build-up of ocean heat content, and that it’ll take more than clever carbon accounting to address this physical reality? What are the projections for global mean sea level rise over centuries and millennia, and how do these sea levels align with comparable times in past warm climate periods?

Physically, we know that we can bring down the global mean temperature this century, while the oceans and the rest of the climate system slowly rebalance over centuries and millennia. Our CO₂ emission levels result in specific atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, which lead to particular global warming outcomes (when combined with the impacts of other greenhouse gases). It isn’t a physical limitation that’s preventing us from decarbonising.

The site will be developed further, with a broader range of sustainability-related content:

• Celebrating hopeful and humane approaches that respect the integrity of nature’s systems
• Recognising the need for nuanced approaches to messy and contested topics, to stay open to possibilities