Did a South Pacific volcano cause extreme heat waves of 2023 and ’24? Atmospheric scientist Mark Schoberl investigates. Bleak big picture with Greek author George Tsakraklides: climate collapse in necro-capitalism. Plus clips from two new climate songs.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
In January 2022 a massive volcano erupted from the sea bed in the South Pacific. Unlike land volcanoes, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha-apai eruption blasted about 150 million tons of water vapor high up into the stratosphere, about 12 miles or 18 kilometers altitude. Closer to Earth in the Troposphere, water vapor lasts about nine days before being cycled back to land or sea. The Hunga volcano sent water vapor above weather systems. This atmospheric water remained there for about a year and a half – acting as potent greenhouse gas, some say stronger than carbon dioxide while it lasts. Could this eruption add a burst of warming pushing extreme heat in 2023 and early 2024? What just happened to our climate?
And what just happened to us? Later we’ll talk with George Tsakraklides about climate collapse in “necro-capitalism”. This is Radio Ecoshock. I’m Alex Smith.
TWO NEW SONGS FOR THIS SHOW
In this program, you hear clips from two new climate-related songs in this program. Here they are, free of course.
Listen to or download the song “Volcanoes Cry” (lyrics by Alex Smith, music by AI, Creative Commons copyright – free non-profit use, citation of source preferred)
Listen to or download the song “Sold Out” (lyrics by Alex Smith, music by AI, Creative Commons)
WAS IT THE VOLCANO?
MARK SCHOBERL
The unique eruption did raise big questions. Now, qualified scientists have the answer. Published July 24, 2024, Lead Author Mark Schoeberl explains. The paper title is: ‘Evolution of the Climate Forcing During the Two Years After the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Eruption.”
After retiring from NASA in 2009, Dr. Mark Schoeberl is Chief Scientist of the Science and Technology Corporation. With over 200 publications, Mark is one of THE experts on the stratosphere. Find his web site here.
Listen to or download this 27 minute interview with Mark Schoberl in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
There is some continuing scientific discussion on this. In May 2024, Martin Jucker and co-authors used chemistry climate models to find “Long-term climate impacts of large stratospheric water vapor perturbations”. But as we read in their Abstract, they, quote “neglect the relatively minor aerosol loading from the eruption.” It turns out – not so minor on the aerosols…
THE BIG DISTRACTION BUILDS
Scientific discussion is natural – especially when a novel volcano blows up before our satellite eyes. But this event took on legendary powers amplified by the “climate change is all natural” crowd. Climate denial blogs echoed an article by a retired neurobiologist. He said extreme heat in 2023 and 2024 was caused by the Hunga eruption, perfectly natural. Even reputable blogs like space.com got sucked into the wrong story, with the headline “50 million tons of water vapor from Tonga’s eruption could warm Earth for years.” Climate scientist Zack Labe complains: “The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano is now easily the number one trolling comment I receive in response to the recent global temperature records. Somehow the eruption in 2022 is responsible for all of global climate change…”
In a press release from Texas A&M University, atmospheric scientist Andrew Dessler said although water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, their new article in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, reveal the opposite: The eruption actually contributed to cooling the Earth, similar to other major volcanic events.
“Our paper pours cold water on the explanation that the eruption caused the extreme warmth of 2023 and 2024,” Dessler explained. “Instead, we need to focus primarily on greenhouse gases from human activities as the main cause of the warming, with a big assist from the ongoing El Nino.”
The “Plain Language Summary” in the new paper says: “The change in the radiative flux would result in a very slight 2022/3 cooling in Southern Hemisphere. The Hunga climate forcing has decreased to near zero by the end of 2023.”
So no, recent heat records set all over the world were NOT caused by the Pacific volcano. Maybe record fossil fuel production, burning and emissions did it? You can find more on this continuing mystery in coming Radio Ecoshock programs. I hope this interview can clear up what actually did and did not happen when it comes to that volcanic impact on climate.
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DECAY IN THE BIG PICTURE
GEORGE TSAKRAKLIDES
In the birthplace of Western Civilization, Greek scientist and author George Tsakraklides sees it ending. Author of “In The Grip Of Necrocapitalism”, we spoke with George in January. His new book coming out this fall is “Beyond The Petri Dish: Human Consciousness in the Time of Collapse, Apathy and Algorithms”.
Listen to or download this 30 minute interview with George Tsakraklides in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
We talk about developing dystopia, but first – I ask George about his Summer in Greece…
Twitter had dire news over the summer, like “Over 100 tons of dead fish collect in … the port of Volos in central Greece, following a mass die-off attributed to extreme climate fluctuations” and “’No rain for two years’: Northern Greece faces significant water crisis”. Rhodes suffered through the hottest average summer temperature ever recorded in Europe. With the Acropolis closing and tourists dying in the heat . It must be tough to see millions of people flying in for a holiday during an obvious climate crisis.
“The more time we spend unconscious, the more likely it is that we’ll wake up in a burning house”
– Tsakraklides
In his earlier book “The Unhappiness Machine” George suggests the system requires human unhappiness to expand and profit the few. Happy contented people will not want to march off to war or risk their lives in unsafe mining. We are motivated by the discomforts and fears, this social psychology goes. You can sell medicines and status toys only to those who are sick or mentally suffering. Products are the answer to unhappiness, they tell us, but we discover excess products are the cause of unhappiness. That is the machine.
“The Unhappiness Machine: and other stories about Systemic Collapse” 2023.
At work, AI-driven demands for more efficient production suck out all the time of workers. In many countries people work ten to twelve hours a day – and not just developing countries but the workaholics of Japan and many western countries. Going home, possibly in a long commute, they must have someone else’s thoughts and voices on the radio or podcast. Then television, the Internet or games provide their reality. When is the time of useful consciousness? Are we voluntarily giving up personal minds to the system, or does the system take it by force?
Tsakraklides calls it “cognitive devolution”.
In the swarm of all those words, hyper-images, and games – it is really hard to maintain an independent consciousness. Cyberspace is rich in stimulants – but also depressants and anesthetics. Can the inner voice and personal senses survive expert algorithms designed to capture and train our brain?
From “Beyond the Petri Disk”:
“a terrifying transformation: from semi-conscious beings to consumatronic androids servicing the transaction economy”
It appears billionaires and trillion-dollar wealth funds see ecological collapse as yet another opportunity for profit. Do you think there is a breaking point – where even data addicts demand an alternative, or will we just keep clicking and scrolling until the blackout? In the new book, George makes a strong argument that profit has grown a brain. Algorithms, automated trading, and vast flows of money have their own rules, and they are not human.
‘Profit becomes intelligent… . The purpose of consumption is to keep The Thing alive and profitable. We have become hosts to an intelligent parasite. ,,,humans becoming nothing but products on the shelves of this new marketplace hosted within the metaverse. The destruction of the planet’s climate essentially goes on autopilot.”
“Humanity is a terrorist without an escape plan”.
– George Tsakraklides
I think TikTok or Twitter can become a replacement for any thought or personal action at all. Just scroll for hours with candy like today’s photo on the Sun or Pluto, some sexual stimulators and the greatest lies. The greatest lies are made profitable in the click-verse of social media. Only the exaggerated survives.
IT’S NOT THE TECHNOLOGY
In one of George’s fundamental insights: instead of the Green narrative of renewables to power this brave new world, he says the climate crisis is not about technology and neither are the solutions.
ARE GOVERNMENTS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT?
“The most dangerous aspect of all forms of government and power is that they despise change. …governments are effectively Reality Management Authorities, servicing the need of the most powerful to maintain social narratives which control the production and distribution of wealth.”
– “Beyond the Petri Dish”
COLLAPSE WILL BE SOLD…
“Even as it takes place, a collapse will always be normalised, minimised, gaslighted, concealed, renamed and relabelled as anything but a collapse by the very powers of profit which brought it on.”
In art, and in occasional revolutions, masses of humans tried to break the mold. Like the Iconclasts of old Byzantium, we must break the images of the techno-Gods, which become Kali the Destroyer. How can we awaken from the nightmare?
RECONQUERING OUR MINDS
This book doesn’t completely leave us in the swamp of disasters. He has suggestions including “the infinity state” – which I interpret as a place of consciousness outside the consumer bubble with a view toward our place among the stars. The Infinity State is more than that, but you have to read the book.
Tsakraklides also says we do not have a purpose. In philosophy that is called existential nihilism. Personally I prefer Jean-Paul Sartre’s conclusion: we have no purpose and so must create our own.
I follow George on Twitter here. Get’s George’s latest book from Amazon or his web site. I also read and recommend his book on “NecroCapitalism”. Our radio discussion about that is here.
Listen to or download that January 2024 interview with George Tsakraklides in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
Please tune in again next week, as we thrash through science, reality and survival. Thank you for listening, and caring about this world.
Alex
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SONG LYRICS “VOLCANO CRY”
[Verse]
Volcano bursts Hunga Pacific roars
Lava flow and the ocean soars
Throwing water up into the sky
Steam and ash like a battle cry
[Verse 2]
Shockwave rips air boiling tight
Island’s gone no end in sight
Sky on fire world so lit
In the stratosphere we sit
[Chorus]
Water rising reaching high
Into space up to the sky
Earth’s eruption made us see
Nature’s force wild and free
[Verse 3]
City echo distant call
Nature’s fist breaks the wall
Smog and fire beast unleashed
Ravenous sky won’t be appeased
[Bridge]
Ash rain deadly veil
Final breath whispered tale
Ceaseless flow burning stream
World in chaos no more dreams
[Verse 4]
Future flickers in the haze
Lost in burning ocean’s maze
Rage of earth consuming all
We stand frail to its call
SONG LYRICS: “SOLD OUT”
The Acropolis is closed
because the heat don’t you see?
too hot for humans
hot as it can be
But the Necropolis is open
and receiving visitors
who never leave.
[Chorus]
The birth place
Becomes the death place
As storms and tides
Wash over land
The sweet spot
Is the attraction
to the end.
[Bridge]
Sold out.
To the big bidders
Big, big players
Everything on sale
How much
is that child’s future, please?
[Verse 2]
Did you travel far
to carry all your things
I would sell you
a new future
but they are gone.
All gone.
[Bridge]
Sold out.
To the big bidders
Everything on sale
How much
is that child’s future, please?