Earth Hour 2022 - 26 March @ 8:30 PM

The message for the environment continues to be urgent and critical. No matter how small.

Earth Hour information and resources can be located at this hyperlink: Earth Hour 2022

IPCC Report February 2022: Key global indictors on impact of climate change

As part of the Sixth Assessment Report, working group II of the IPCC published the 'report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability'. This specific paper contains a list of impact indicators in a graphical presentation covering both ecological and human impact measures (as shown below). Copyright IPCC 2022.

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Panel B

IPCC Report February 2022: adaptation to climate change falls well behind

                                                              IPCC 2022

The latest report from Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) continues the well established trend of identifying the sadly lagging response to the threat of climate change globally. While a few concrete steps have been taken to address carbon emissions and mitigation, these efforts remain substantially insufficient and in many cases, badly misdirected.

A number of messages in the report emphasise the importance of close collaboration between all parts of society: Government, private sector, media, the scientific community, investors and essentially international cooperation.

There is also a sense that many of the 'soft limits' to human adaptation have been reached and increasingly the next steps will be harder to achieve with options now increasingly closing off with the risk of cascade events more likely.

Key points covered in this report -

• it is unequivocal that climate change has already disrupted human and natural systems. Past and current development trends (past emissions, development and climate change) have not advanced global climate resilient development.
• climate resilient development prospects are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline, especially if 1.5C global warming is exceeded in the near term.  the Report also noted that " evidence of observed impacts, projects risks, levels and trends in vulnerability, and adaptation limits, demonstrate that worldwide climate resilient development action is more urgent than previously assessed in the 5th Assessment Report".
• the rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and humans systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.
• approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.
• climate change impacts and risks are becoming increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. Multiple climate hazards will occur simultaneously and multiple climatic and non climatic risks will interact resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions.
• Note a key caveat about global warming that transiently exceeds 1.5C which is termed 'overshoot'. "Depending on the magnitude and duration of overshoot, some impacts will cause the release of additional greenhouse gases and some will be irreversible even if global warming is reduced".

The IPCC report can be accessed at this link: IPCC Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability report

The Ukrainian Armed Forces - outnumbered but still lethal

                                                                                                Shutterstock

Ukraine's armed forces may be small by comparison with their Russian counterparts, however they have lethal capabilities and after seven years of battling insurgency in the two breakaway provinces, a level of combat experience has been gained.

Ukraine to its great credit could have had nuclear weapons but discarded these lethal weapons many years ago. These weapons were part of the Soviet arsenal but the Ukraine decided to have them dismantled at part of the arms control treaty.

A brief comparison of key categories of assets in the armed forces of both countries is provided below drawn from various sources including the European Union.

Military assets	Russia	Ukraine
Personnel Active Reserves	1,154,000 2,000,000	255,000 1,000,000
Army and other land forces Armoured vehicles Tanks Artillery Self-propelled artillery Rocket launchers	26,831 12,270 18,497 6,500 4,350	6,990 2,105 3,721 1,040 630
Air Force Fighters Multirole aircraft Attack aircraft Helicopters Combat drones	5,550 832 870 1,720 30	70 0 29 120 12
Navy Aircraft carrier Destroyers Frigates Corvettes Submarines	1 18 11 83 55+	0 0 1 0 0
Military budgets 2020	$ 61.7B	$ 5.9B

Russia dwarfs the Ukraine in every form of military asset capability except the critical one: morale and commitment to defend one's homeland. After two weeks of war, the Ukrainians have demonstrated the willingness and capacity to defend their country.