Nitrogen Glut: Too Much of a Good Thing is Deadly for the Biosphere
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
Climate change deniers often claim that carbon dioxide cannot be harmful because plants need it to grow. The same false argument can be made about nitrogen, and our reply is the same: too much of a good thing can be deadly. Organisms and ecosystems that evolved in a world where the supply of reactive nitrogen was strictly limited are now being disrupted, in many cases destroyed, by an unprecedented nitrogen glut.
As Climate Crisis Grows, Temperatures Set Global Records
By Ian Angus, Climate & Capitalism
The global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average for July 2019 was the highest for the month of July, making it the warmest month overall in the 140-year NOAA global temperature dataset record, which dates back to 1880.
Nitrogen Crisis: A Neglected Threat to Earth’s Life Support Systems
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
The rift in the nitrogen cycle is a major threat to the stability of the Earth System. This and subsequent articles will discuss how the natural cycle works and how it has been disrupted in the Anthropocene.
Broiler Chickens: The Defining Species of the Anthropocene?
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
An important new paper, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (RSOS), makes a convincing case that modern broiler chickens are a “distinct and characteristic new morphospecies ….[that] symbolizes the unprecedented human reconfiguration of the Earth’s biosphere.”
The Climate Report that Trump Tried to Bury
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
In an obvious attempt to keep it out of the news, the Trump administration released the most recent report — Volume 2 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment — at 2pm on the day after Thanksgiving. The 1656-page report begins with a blunt statement that “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization.
Climate Change in the Anthropocene: An Unstoppable Drive to Hothouse Earth?
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
Can the global climate be stabilized before runaway change creates conditions that are too hot for human civilization and deadly for most species?
The Keeling Curve at 60: A Portrait of Climate Crisis
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
What the Keeling Curve shows, then, are two separate but connected rifts in Earth’s metabolism. First, an increase in total CO2 that breaks with at least 800,000 years of history. Second, increased CO2 is changing the way that plants absorb and emit CO2, and that in turn is altering a seasonal cycle that has likely been unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
Five Revolutions: How Bacteria Created the Biosphere and caused the First Climate Crisis
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
When Marx was writing, the science of metabolic cycles was in its infancy: an enormous amount has been learned since then, especially in recent decades. To be true to Marx’s method, ecosocialists must, as he did, base our understanding of nature on the best contemporary scientific work.