News can
be a poison sometimes. Newspaper owners
learned years ago that people buy frightening headlines. The motto of TV news: if it bleeds, it
leads. The most horrific stories get
top billing.
We all
need to turn away from time to time, to those we love, to amazing Nature, and
the trivia that convinces us for another day.
Lately,
the climate news is to shocking even for Radio Ecoshock. In the last two weeks, I've been rebuilding
myself, and listeners, with back-stop nourishment. We had programs on your food security, and how to be the change
you desire.
Meanwhile,
I've looked for a way to communicate the probability of catastrophe, without
knocking out our will to live, and our activism.
HERE
ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL WANT FOR THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW:
Thomas
Homer-Dixon
Presentation
to the UK Parliament's Peak Oil & Gas Subgroup May 6 2009
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698157/e5a0c9c/thomas_homerdixon.html
Q and A
session at UK Parliament presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698159/e9e2219b/thomas_homerdixon_q_and_a.html
PowerPoint
Presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698158/9ee5110d/thomas_homerdixon_ppt.html
All from
this site: http://appgopo.org.uk/
(and
thanks to Ecoshock listener Chris from Riseup.net for tipping me off to this
speech!)
Phil
England and Climate Radio
Hope
shows up in the most improbably places.
In the last half of this program, after an overview of our predicament,
we'll explore how the economic crash may delay the worst of climate
disruption. Isn't that twist? We may get time to save the ecosphere, due
to our incompetence and criminality.
Hang in,
as Phil England of Climate Radio arrives with experts calling for a planned
economic contraction to save the remains of the natural world. He'll interview Tim Helweg-Larsen, Director
of the Public Interest Research Centre at http://www.pirc.info/.
Phil has
a regular program on Radiance FM in London, UK. That's in our second half hour, along with a little black
depression humor, called the "Global Meltdown Darby".
Before
that, you'll hear an overview of climate and Peak Oil, from Professor Thomas
Homer-Dixon. I've prepared a digest of
his new presentation to a Committee in the British Parliament. It's crammed with science and analysis from
his new book "Carbon Shift", including a re-think of how we can
respond, given the near bankruptcy of governments and financial institutions.
But
first....
Red
flags, warnings and howling about climate shifts are pouring out of scientific
institutions around the world. Here is
just a sample.
MIT's
Centre for Global Change Science predicts global heating could be twice the
level predicted by world scientists just six years ago. Or more.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology model allows testing of
various human responses, economic developments, energy use - along with the workings
of the atmosphere, the oceans, and biological systems. Changing various parameters, with 400 runs
of the model, leads to projections of a world hotter by 5.2 degrees Celsius by
2100. That is 9 degrees Fahrenheit - a
huge jump in a very short period of time, likely faster than anything previous
in Earth's long history.
The range
of 90 percent probability, very likely, runs from 3.5 degrees at best, to 7.4
degrees at worst.
Previously,
in 2003, peer reviewed science projected a media of only 2.4 degrees Celsius,
that's 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Our
children and grandchildren will very likely see at least twice that much
heating.
The study
was published in the May issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal
of Climate. Andrei Sokolov is the lead
author.
MIT's
statement calls for "rapid and massive action" to prevent a
catastrophic warming. A spokesman for
the MIT team said "The consequences of such changes would be off the known
scale. They are unthinkable."
"A 7.4 C rise would mean severe ecosystem collapse worldwide,
with total economic collapse in many parts of the world.
"The
planet would face resource wars between people, and you can safely say many,
many hundred of millions of people would die."
The same
message was delivered at a meeting of Nobel laureates in London at the end of
May. It was organized by John
Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute on Climate Impact Research, based in
Germany. These top scientists say
global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015, just 6 years away, and
then decline rapidly, to avoid a new greenhouse world. That has severe implications for our current
energy use, and especially for newly industrializing countries like China and
India.
These
Nobel laureates call for global carbon pricing, aid for those countries faced
with adaptation to climate shift, and emergency action to stop
deforestation. All of these calls for
action are based on solid peer-reviewed science.
Meanwhile,
according to an article by Stacy Feldman at solveclimate.com - quote:
"Greenhouse
gas emissions skyrocketed 15 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to new
numbers from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research or
"EDGAR." For context, the rate of emissions growth was just 3 percent
for the period 1990-1995 and 6 percent between 1995 and 2000.
The
future looks even worse. Without a global treaty, carbon emissions will surge
nearly 39 percent by 2030, the Energy Information Administration (EIA)
predicted this week." end quote.
All of
these scientists hope to stimulate dramatic action in climate negotiations going
on in Bonn, Germany - for a replacement to the old Kyoto Treaty.
Google
"St. James's Palace Nobel Laureate
Memorandum" to get the details.
So this
is it folks. It sounds like a science
fiction script, but it's real and happening now. All over the world, scientists are measuring millions of fossil
bits, ice cores, satellite measurements, ocean instruments, birds and bacteria
- just to test for truth. The results
are coming in faster almost too fast for super-computers to tabulate, and too
frightening for most of us to think about.
All
the rest of human history shrinks before our present time.
Will we sink into denial and war?
Or adapt in time?
You be
the judge.
Meanwhile,
here is another voice, an honest intelligent one in my opinion. Thomas Homer-Dixon to members of the British
Parliament. After that, the wild twist,
as UK broadcaster Phil England asks, can the economic downturn save us?
This is
Radio Ecoshock, with Alex Smith.
PHIL ENGLAND CREDITS:
"To
listen to this programme and for a list of references visit the Climate Radio
archive at www.climateradio.org. The 300-350 Show is made for ResonanceFM in
London and syndicated free to not-for-profit community radio stations and
independent media outlets around the globe. The programme is named after what
is now believed to the safe level in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere. This finding is based on the work of James Hansen and his
team in a paper titled "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity
Aim." [http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126]
The
Global Meltdown Darby performed by the Irish poet known as "Grassy
Knoll".
The
Thomas-Homer Dixon piece contained a clip from the new movie trailer "Steam
Bath" with action man Val Kilmer.
Find the trailer here:
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/03/13/val-kilmers-global-warming-steam-bath-flick-gets-a-trailer/
We also
played a clip from "The End of the Age of Oil" by David Rovics http://www.davidrovics.com/.
Download
all Radio Ecoshock programs from our archive at http://www.ecoshock.org/eshock09.html
Alex
Smith
Your host