Scientist Paul Beckwith speaks out on Arctic methane and abrupt climate change – and ways to stave it off. Scientist Douglas McCauley, University of California: industrializing the ocean could lead to mass extinction of marine animals. Radio Ecoshock 150128
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It’s a long blog this week. There are so many big stories to cover. You may have to take it in pieces. Anyone who followed all the links, and watched the videos on offer, would likely get the equivalent of a week or two of a college course on climate change.
If you came for the big story on extinction in the oceans, scroll down a couple of page/screens to my interview with Dr. Douglas McCauley.
INTO THE RED ZONE
According to one climate scientist, “We are at the extreme weather stage and rapidly heading into the red zone.” That is when “all hell breaks loose”. Who else says so? Your insurance company. Both Lloyd’s of London and Zurich Insurance in Switzerland just warned of extreme weather events coming this year of 2015.
The climate scientist is Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa. He has two Masters Degrees, and is working on his PHD in climate science. Paul lives out the late Steven Schneider‘s call for scientists that communicate. I follow Paul’s Tweets, Facebook page, and You tube videos to see what’s new and what’s hot.
Paul is this week’s feature guest on Radio Ecoshock.
We’ve tons to talk about, after the hottest year on record, climate talks in Lima, Peru – Paul was there – and still more alarming news coming out of the Arctic.
SHOULD YOU FEAR A 50 GIGATON METHANE BURST IN THE ARCTIC?
Before we get to that important stuff, I ask for Paul’s help in a little fact-checking. A couple of people seem to have misunderstandings about the possible 50 gigaton burst of methane suggested by Dr. Natalia Shahkova from the University of Alaska, and her Russian colleagues.
One You tube speaker says this 50 gig burst has already begun. As Paul tells us, that is not correct. Yes methane emissions from the Arctic are increasing due to melting of frozen methane (“clathrates”) on the sea bed, and from melting permafrost. But the increased methane is in the order of millions of tons, not billions of tons (also known as gigatons.)
Another scientist on You tube says the Shakhova’s 50 gigaton release could happen “any day now”. Yes, that’s technically true. But the eruption depends on more than just melting sea ice. It also requires some sort of undersea event, whether an earthquake, or a land-slide under the sea, for example. That would release the methane held many meters below the sediment.
I give the example of Vancouver, where seismologists say an earthquake is over-due, based on past records. They’ve been saying it could happen any time for the past 35 years or more. The great West Coast quake could happen tomorrow, or it could happen 200 years from now, or 500 years.
I’m not a scientist, but I think I heard the last major release of methane from under the sea is thought to be over 8,000 years ago. [See more on this from P. Beckwith below.] So don’t sell your house and move to Alaska or the Yukon based solely on fear of a methane burst.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying it won’t happen, or that I’m not seriously concerned about rising methane levels in the Arctic. It is a mega-threat, as some Arctic scientists say. There will come a point, and we don’t yet know when, that methane from the Arctic could overwhelm our own carbon dioxide emissions. We may already have crossed an unseen tipping point where this is unstoppable.
I’ll have more about unseen tipping points in my coming interview with Dr. James White. Meanwhile, Paul Beckwith and other scientists in the Arctic Methane Emergency Group say we should try extreme means to restore the reflective cover of white ice on the top of the world. Paul says we could cool ocean currents going in the Arctic, while mimicking the impact of volcanoes, which can cool the Earth, or parts of it, for a few years.
One final fact check, before we head off into the real science. One scientist who needs to check his facts says in a You tube video that the British Parliament predicted all the Arctic sea ice could be gone by 2015. I thought this was really a presentation made by John Nissan of AMEG, and that the Parliamentary Committee rejected his prediction. Certainly the whole UK Parliament never met and agreed on a 2015 date for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Anyway, Paul writes:
“The undersea landslide idea that Shakhova is talking about is well covered in th[is] book by [James] Kennett: “Methane hydrates in Quaternary Climate change: The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis” [published in 2003].
[online book listing here. See also this free online paper by Kennett “Role of Methane Hydrates in Climate Change: Compellling evidence and debate.”]
Beckwith continues:
“In particular, there were 3 “Storegga Slides” (see it in Wikipedia) that were amongst the largest known landslides. The latest was around 8200 years ago, and they may have released large amounts of methane.
Interestingly, rapid sea level change either up or down can trigger landslides. Down, since the pressure on the seafloor decreases that could trigger a methane release and cause a landslide, and up, since glaciated continents rebound from rapid ice loss.“
Here is a key passage from Natalia Shakova, taken an interview by John Mason, in the Sceptical Science blog:
John Mason, Skeptical Science:
“With respect to future events, in your EGU 2008 abstract it is stated that “we consider release of up to 50Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time”. This represents a colossal quantity of gas. How quickly could such a release occur and what would be the most likely mechanism?“
Shakova:
“There could be several different triggers for massive releases: a seismic or tectonic event, endogenous seismicity caused by sediments subsiding pursuant to hydrate decay, or sediment sliding on the shelf break; the shelf slope is very steep, and the sedimentation rates are among the highest in the ESAS.”
In our interview, Paul Beckwith also references an influential paper by another member of the AMEG group, Dr. Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Institute at Cambridge. Here is the listing for the paper “Climate science: Vast cost of Arctic change” in the Journal Nature. Below the title are a number of blog articles you can use to follow up.
This article from the University of Cambridge hits the bleak note: “Cost of Arctic methane release could ‘size of the global economy’ warn experts.“
The UK newspaper the Guardian has a good article on it too. “Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist.”
Do keep in mind that there is a whole school of scientists, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt and David Archer from the University of Chicago who either disagree that Arctic methane is a threat, or disagree that it warrants our attention. They suggest we keep our focus on man-made carbon dioxide, which we can control, and which will determine the fate of the earth for tens of thousands of years. Find my interview with Dr. David Archer on Arctic methane here.
METHANE COMING UP IN THE KARA SEA
Some new science out bears on what we’ve been talking about. Sub-sea permafrost is melting in the Kara Sea, unexpectedly releasing methane in shallow seas. This isn’t the East Siberian shelf other scientists studied. How could those frozen balls of methane, the clathrates exist in such shallow water in the Kara Sea? Paul explains this well.
People who want to follow up on this story can search for the paper title: “Offshore permafrost decay and massive seabed methane escape in water depths less than 20 meters at the South Kara Sea shelf” The lead author is Alexey Portnov.
Here is a good article about this Portnov paper.
The full paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, is available free here
Paul Beckwith adds this comment on the Kara Sea research:
“The Kara Sea info adds more support to what I have said in the past to David Archer, and goes against the mainstream view that it will take 100’s of years for heat to move downward in the permafrost to cause significant thawing.”
Speaking of scary, Paul pointed me to a press release from NASA about increased solar radiation in the Arctic. We talk about that. Since 1970, the amount of heat being absorbed from the sun, in the Arctic with less sea ice cover, has gone up almost 5%. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a huge bump in solar heating of the Earth, because we are talking about a gigantic area. Read about it from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science here.
OH YEAH, AND ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE IS UNDERWAY!
Here is a link to Paul’s video on abrupt climate change.
The cats in this video seem distracting but (a) you can’t get anything to go viral on the Net these days without cats and (b) I think it’s symbolic of how distracted we all are as we discuss these amazing threats. Even while you watch, you may also be thinking of your job, a TV series you like, the next Facebook post, and some trip you’d like to take. And oh yeah, the climate may shift so Montreal Canada feels like Miami, and crops don’t grow any more.
In our interview, Beckwith says:
“…and the probability is very high, and increasing all the time, that we will have an abrupt change. I think it’s going on myself, and that’s the hypothesis of my whole research.”
We talk about abrupt climate changes that have happened in the past. In times 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, the Greenland ice cores show a warming of 5 to 6 degrees C within one decade. (Imagine that today!). It has gone as high as 16 degree C change in one decade or two. (Unimaginable.)
“The planet is capable of very large, rapid swings in temperature. We’ve changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and CO2 and temperature and things, they are increasing at least an order of magnitude, at least 10 or maybe 20 times faster than anything in the geological record.“
“I think there’s no question that we will have abrupt warming again on this planet. The only question is ‘what is the time scale?’ Is it going to be 10 years? Is it going to be a hundred years? Is it going to be a thousand years?
The system does change quickly. It goes from one state to another state. I mean it’s not a linear thing. There’s so many non-linear feed-backs at play that the system is quite capable of switching and switching very quickly.”
I strongly suggest you listen to the interview.
Download/listen to this 33 minute interview with Paul Beckwith in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
GLOBAL RISK EXPERTS WARN OF TURBULENT DECADE AHEAD
The world’s biggest insurance companies agree. Check out this report from Lloyd’s.
“Risks to the environment outnumbered economic threats in the report this year, with experts negatively assessing the preparations in place to cope with extreme weather and climate change.”
That report was prepared for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 2015.
And then we have Zurich, another of the world’s biggest insurance companies. Here are the five biggest risks rated by impact, according to a new report from Zurich:
1. Water crisis
2. Spread of infectious diseases
3. Weapons of mass destruction
4. Interstate conflict
5. Failure of climate change adaption.
I would say four out of the top five risks in terms of impact are climate-related. See if you can pick which ones. Strangely, Zurich lists biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse at only number 10 in terms of impacts!!! If we experience “ecosystem collapse” it’s all over, in my opinion.
Zurich also predicts extreme weather events are likely to occur this year.
Regarding an abrupt climate change, whether stimulated by methane or not, it’s a doubled-edged sword. If we could experience just a little abrupt warming, and then plateau for a while, maybe humanity would be forced to act. On the other hand, if we just slowly and gradually warm, we may experience the boiling frog phenomenon, where we go over the climate cliff bit by bit, decade by decade, without reacting.
GOOD VIDEO SERIES ON GREENLAND MELTING
During our Radio Ecoshock interview, Paul recommends You tube videos of scientist Eric Rignot talking about the rapid and unexpected melting of ice on Greenland (which will eventually flood our coastal cities). Here are the links:
ERIC RIGNOT You tube videos at the AGU, on Greenland melting:
Part 1 (4 min)
Part 2 (2 min)
Part 3 (4 min)
THE LIMA CLIMATE TALKS – PAUL’S REPORT
We also discuss the results, or lack of them, at the recent Climate Conference in Lima Peru. Paul was there, giving a series of press conferences. Here are the links to several of those You tube videos.
COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #1 (12-4-2014 in Lima Peru)
COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #2 (12-5-2014 in Lima Peru) (Paul Beckwith briefing)
COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #3 (12-6-2014 in Lima Peru)
Paul’s presentation (in the 2nd Press Briefing) is the best, but I also highly recommend this briefing by Stuart Scott on “Ecology Vs. Economy in the Age of Climate Change“.
Paul and I get into some wild discussions about science and climate change, as we always do. This is one of my favorite interviews. I hope you think so too.
INDUSTRIALIZING THE OCEAN CAN LEAD TO A MASS EXTINCTION – Dr. Douglas McCauley
We all fear there is something terribly wrong at sea. Call it extinction, or call it something else, stories of dwindling ocean life are daily washing ashore. A new paper published in the journal “Science” says we are at a cross-roads for marine life. The lead author, and our second guest this week, is Dr. Douglas J. McCauley, head of the McCauley Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
For once this was a science story that did get out to the world. The New York Times and the BBC covered the new science on mass extinction in the ocean. But did they get it right?
The paper is “Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean.” It was published in the journal “Science” on January 16th, 2015.
First of all, note the term “defaunation” rather than extinction. Basically defaunation means removing animals (the paper is about animals, not plants) from their essential services in the ocean. For example, suppose there are still sharks hiding out in some faraway reef (so they are not extinct) – but not enough sharks left to clean up weakness in the food system.
McCauley gives the example of garbage workers. Suppose there are only 100 left in the world. Technically, they are not “extinct”. But mountains of garbage pile up everywhere, because there aren’t anywhere near enough workers to carry out their function.
This defaunation is happening at sea. It’s very hard to say for sure that a species is extinct, everywhere in the hard-to-reach ocean. But we can say they are not where we expect them to be, doing the things we expect them to do.
INDUSTRIALIZING THE SEA
That’s point one. The second warning, and this is really new from the paper by McCauley and his colleagues at Stanford and Rugers. Their overview of a huge collection of papers on threats to sea life finds that we are on the verge of industrialization of the ocean.
There are under-sea mines, and many more planned. Mass feeding lots, similar to cattle feed lots, already exist for Tuna. We plan to harvest tidal energy with underwater propellers looking like undersea wind mills. Some countries cramped for land have already built things like airports (Japan) into the sea. We are stripping away protective mangrove swamps to build suburbs in Asia.
The fishing industry is already heavily industrialized. Masses of trawlers are essentially bull-dozing the bottom of the sea flat. It’s wrecked the Baltic and parts of the North Sea. Chinese fisheries are flattening all around that country. The Canadian Grand Banks were wiped clean of cod with trawling. That’s an industrial fishery. Add in the ability to use sonar, and even satellite guidance, to find fish at any depth.
So McCauley and his co-authors discovered that we are at a knowable point in the history of marine life. Essentially, we are about 200 years behind where humans are on land with the industrial revolution that began in the late 1700’s. We know what happened, and is still happening to the species on land as we industrialize.
Image courtesy of University of California
About 500 land animals have gone extinct in the last 100 years or so. Marine scientists think only about 15 animals have gone extinct in the ocean, although, as I said above, it’s harder to tell.
I ask McCauley point blank if we are entering the 6th Great Extinction in the sea. The answer is “not yet”. But we are headed there.
Creating giant marine parks (sea animals need more space than land animals) is one solution. We’ve begun to do that, but not yet on a scale to prevent more extinctions.
Marine protected areas also face the challenge of climate change. As ocean waters warm (and that’s where most of our excess heating is going) – some marine species can move toward the poles to find cooler water. Sadly, they can’t take the estuaries, shallow seas or other breeding places with them. We just don’t know what will happen with the hotter seas.
There are other very desperate reasons to hope, not mentioned in this paper. For example, the large scale industrialization of the ocean may not happen. Maybe we run out of fossil fuels, or this civilization has to retreat, due to economic or climatic failures.
We also talk about another study about mass die-offs just came out in mid-January, led by scientists at the University of California Berkeley, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy. They found increasing mass-die offs in the past 75 years. Fish and marine invertebrates are among the hardest hit.
And then we have another study released last November, this time led by scientists from the Smithsonian Institute. They warn dead zones are increasing, and will greatly expand as the climate warms. Are these dead zones tiny, or are they signficant in the big picture of threats to ocean life?
The paper by McCauley et. al. doesn’t attempt to catalog every threat to sea life. I’m alarmed by the huge masses of plastic particles in the sea, and by radiation leaking out of Fukushima, but those aren’t in this work. Instead, the point of this new science is to ask “where are we” on the timeline of industrialization and extinction, when it comes to marine animals.
The answer seems to be that we are on a precipice. The optimists (including McCauley) say we can see what happened on land, and so wisely avoid the same slaughter of species in the oceans. The pessimists will say we will fall off the cliff, because we are too blind to change. Is the ocean cup of life half empty, or half full?
PERMACULTURE IN BELIZE
I got a message from our friend Albert Bates, at the Farm. They still need another half dozen students to pull off the planned permaculture workshop in Belize. Personally, I think the carbon from flying to Central America might overcome the carbon saved by permculture. But maybe not. This is not just any course. It features biochar, and knowledge from Latin America, plus Mr. Bates himself. Albert is at the center of a flurry of activity teaching how to restore carbon to the soil.
If those who attend eventually become soil-masters and permaculture leaders themselves, then the carbon savings could snowball. It’s your call, if you want to get the in-depth grip on permaculture and soil/climate management.
Albert writes:
“We offset everyone’s air travel with the trees we will plant and biochar we will make in Belize, no worries. My guarantee.”
Here is the blurb, with some powerful guests:
============================================
“come to Belize…
Travel far south; to the back of beyond; to a remote valley accessible only by dugout canoe. Study permaculture surrounded by a lush, productive forest of edibles, medicinals and tropical hardwoods. Eat organic food, sleep in dorms powered by renewable energy, bathe in a sparkling pure river….
Teachers/speakers:
ALBERT BATES STARHAWK MARISHA AUERBACH CHRISTOPHER NESBITT
Permaculture Design Certificate Course Dates Feb 21 to Mar 6 2015 Place: Maya Mountain Research Farm San Pedro Columbia, Belize
To register, please see http://www.mmrfbz.org or contact Christopher at info(a)mmrfbz.org.
===============================================
There you go, my first classified ad in the Radio Ecoshock blog. Now Albert owes us, perhaps he’ll show up as a guest after the course. We have lots to talk about, especially if restoring carbon to the soil is basically humanity’s greatest hope.
Next week we’ll talk more science, about abrupt climate change, and those invisible tipping points.
Thanks for all your encouraging emails and tips! Feedback from listeners enriches my life, and this program. Find a handy “Contact Me” form at my web site, http://www.ecoshock.org/contact/
I’m Alex Smith. Thanks for listening, and for caring about our world.
It's like playing planetary Russian roulette with multiple guns…while all the sheeple go about their day blithely unaware…
Thanks for all the additional blog links…this is so important…should be on every media outlet as the top story of the decade…
Not ballgaze.
Paul Beckwith is dangerous enough to qualify himself as an emergency. He is obviously biased just as Guy McPhearson is biased by his preponderance of overwhelming evidence.
If geo-engineering goes ahead without serious carbon-charring soil efforts, then it's just a roadside distraction for business as usual. We can't risk fucking up the planet while changing almost nothing else. Monumental stupidity.
The second guest says we're lucky the oceans are so huge that we may not have killed everything off yet, although we can't tell for sure because we are flying blind.
There is only one species extinction that matters, and that's phytoplankton which are disappearing at the rate of 1% per year. When something disappears at 1% per year it's gone in 70 years.
The ocean's heat stratification layers are blocking cold upwellings of essential nutrients for plankton that is causing the fishing birds to starve.
I do not trust the arrogance of blinkered scientists. We can't travel through time and space through wormholes. There are not multiple parallel universes. All that stuff is just the talk of drunken mathematics.
Just because I'm just a guy who cuts grass in a trailer park for a living, it doesn't mean I'm stupid. What if I told you that in order to re-wild Yellowstone park, we will have to introduce elephants, lions and cheetahs and surround them with a million miles of fence. You would think I was high. That's what eminent scientist Anthony Barnosky says in his newest book. He also says eco-tourism outweighs the economic benefits of ivory poaching. Eco-tourism is an oxymoronic contradiction that masquerades as a word.
Mining and fish farms are taking over the oceans. Palm oil and eucalyptus trees are taking over the jungle. The way we make our food is killing off all life on earth.
HOW TO FIX EVERYTHING
Best Carbon Practices
We are crashing towards mass extinction.
Climate change is only 1 of 6 drivers of mass extinction.
Energy demand is set to double in 50 years.
Emissions have to go down 80% in 30 years.
Green energy uses more minerals for less energy than fossil fuels.
Post-peak minerals will hit in 20 years – more energy for less minerals.
It takes 10X more intermittent energy to displace one unit of fossil energy.
Green energy systems only last 30 years and have to be replaced.
We can’t replace billions of green systems every 30 years and save earth.
Recycling their alloys is difficult and uses more energy than mining.
Green energy doesn’t run on the sun and wind, it runs on mining minerals.
Green energy is driven by short-term greedy capitalism and corruption.
In 30 years, when you need to replace your systems, it will cost too much.
We can’t get rid of capitalism and corruption by definition of capture and crime.
We have to redefine the basis it works on, which is money.
Carbon charring soil can reduce C02 six times more efficiently than anything else we can do. It also rejuvenates and renews soil. We have to reduce C02 more efficiently than the current national currency system. We do this by pricing carbon-charred soil using 100% private-citizen carbon-tax dividends with no share for corporations and governments directly deposited to you in a new world currency system so that fossil energy pays you to carbon-char soil.
Pricing carbon-charred soil produced organic food in this new currency will reduce GMO foods. Pricing carbon-taxes into livestock consumption will reduce emissions and species extinctions. Crop and pasture lands are responsible for 80% of species extinctions. We have to hit a bullseye on 4 moving targets in one shot using tax incentives worldwide all at once, so that we can:
1) increase carbon-charring soils,
2) decrease mass livestock production.
3) increase organic food production.
4) decrease energy emissions.
We will have to turn depleted uranium munitions into ploughshares all over the world at once. That’s why Monsanto and the gas-pipeline giants are killing each other in the Ukraine, for money and power, in one of the largest remaining GMO-free breadbaskets of Europe.
We have to use nuclear thorium power to clean up uranium waste to provide the base power green energy needs to clean up its act and reach carbon-energy resource efficiencies. The idea of solar panels making solar panels for everyone is ecologically unsustainable worldwide. Corporations know we don't have enough resources to make green energy for everyone on earth. They don't care, that's not their goal. They are competing to see how many solar panels and wind turbines they can sell before we run out. We are better than that. The Saudis will crush the financial system before giving up market share. Resource companies will destroy the earth before giving up market share. This has to change. We have to change, or die.
See: http://www.globalcoral.org/
Listen to Thomas J. Goreau:
http://www.ecoshock.info/2015/01/the-engines-of-life-hit-stall-speed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EcoshockNews+%28Ecoshock+News%29
Will we do it? Nope, too greedy and fearful.
Did i mention free birth control for everyone?
How about free drugs?
Cutting grass in a toxic trailer park can mess with ya, although I could relate a bit more with some of your rants today, Robert. Still viewing thru a very narrow largley factless lens…almost like you are a computer program putting together one or two line bullet points, mashing them all up, and spewing them time and time again…
Hmmmm. could a computer generated talking point generator…they are suppose to be going live as of a few years ago….
I mean, WTF does this mean?…."Corporations know we don't have enough resources to make green energy for everyone on earth. They don't care, that's not their goal. They are competing to see how many solar panels and wind turbines they can sell before we run out."
That is just totally stupid!
BTW, Paul is probably one of the most lucid people I know… and you call him dangerous??? And you go on to pimp biochar, which HE talked about…
Trying to deconstruct your random one liners, full of BS is getting old.
And the one liners extend to solutions then to why they won't happen…. aside from using a huge amount of words to just say "we're fracked" you're not saying a thing useful…
I'd suggest subscribing to David Brin, 360 storage, InsideEVs, transition network, RenewEconomy, TonySeba, solarpvtv, and… oh that may brighten up your life a bit.
The funny thing about this matrix… this huge data set we're in… you can mostly blather any position by selectively spewing data points. The key is to see lots of them and be open to things outside your proclivities… to perceive the unfolding opportunities of this web of life…
Thus, while I'll take many of your "one shots" and say, ok… hmmmm. or maybe or yes… there are just as many things you say which are like a computer script, bordering on nonesense, strung together to breed confusion and disempowerment.
If you have given up, please GO AWAY!
I get very frustrated at some, or a lot of the data I consume… but I seek answers and pathways out of this mess… and they are unfolding… and while YOU are supposedly mowing lawns (a nice bit of code!) others are doing their damnedest to find solutions and rebuild reality…
We need to be energized and empowered to seize them… I dislike you because you seem to be trying to do just the opposite…
My climate music is at tinyurl.com/vastman
Latest song: Change the Rules of the Game…
BTW, wish we could edit posts… the above "subscribing" mentions are for twitter…a great linking resource for data points outside your closed mind… there are many more.
There is MUCH MORE unfolding than you know… or most of us know… and it is these very things…. just like biochar… that can remake the world…
but not if we puke all over everything with doomerism…
Oh, and as you are a podcaster, download "this week in science"… and 10 or 20 more such amazing insightful science pods into what's unfolding… It'll help restore your excitement.
Mind you, I get very depressed about rampant corporate control… then consume some extraenvironmentalists podcasts for the new emerging paradigms…
Will we shift in time? Is this a simulation? Is the corporate meme really a slick alien invasion? Who knows??? But try, damn it! Imagine you're in the matrix and the whole point of your life is to see what you'll do….
Rather than mow lawns (disgusting), start urban farming… the real nature we need to grasp. I'm always broke but I create edible gardens with people who care and reinvest my few dollars in music creation technology to better communicate our situation to try and change peoples minds…
Ocean farming??? The visions of OTEC ocean farming communities were excitingly explored during the Carter years and still offer one of the best means of evolving into a grander harmony with Gaia…restoring the balance within our habitats…these are pathways of true abundance and connectedness with the grander essence of everything around us…
The biggest problem with your mentality is it is stringing together bits to arrive at defeat.
The best way to engage in transitioning to a grander relationship with all the universe offers is to explore, focus on real opportunities, and shout about them… to give people something to strive for. People will get behind it if they aren't wallowing in futility…but not your way.
I find it amazing that a disgusting group like Chase is now saying fossil fuels are done for. We are at a new opportunity, born of need and necessity…and this should be pushed MUCH MORE FERVENTLY than all the negative garbage couched in failure.
OK, I'm done for the moment…except to note just a couple new amazing facts discussed in the last two weeks… the discovery of energy producing bacteria… just one little itty bitty amazing data point some cool scientists just discovered; printing your own solar cells is on the horizon… oh, and air aluminum batteries… a revolution I studied 30 years ago…may become a commercial reality in a year…
Data points all over are changing; more precisely, are being uncovered…which, with the growing awareness of our predicament, forge the memes of change we need to shout about…
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?
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with an ithberg, like the titanic.
i'm glad i tickled your rant bone wasteman. i'm glad your job is greener than mine. lots of bluster and thunder saying nothing. killing the messenger changes nothing.
4 days from now there will 1 million more people on planet earth you can sell solar panels to.
Population out of control? Of course… wish I could wave my hand and half the planetary load or reduce fertility to 10% …
But I'm not doing the ranting… you are. "We're all going to DIE!" every post is the same, with one liners strung together like spaghetti…
You say your a messenger??? Sound more like a human overloaded with negative data points…You've populated this blog with "We're gonna die" for awhile now… A COWARDLY WAY TO GO DOWN…if you ask me…
Still think your a human moderated bot…
Climate change is responsible for 7% of species extinction so far.
Crop & Pasture Lands are responsible for 80% of species extinction so far.
8 year old kids in rich countries spend 8 hours per day staring at video screens.
2 million kids were murdered in the Congo in the fight for minerals so our kids can become video screen addicts.
millions of young people in China work 70-hour weeks as slaves to make our tablets and phones.
thousands die in China's mines every single year to get the minerals our green hi-tech world requires.
1 billion people walk a mile for water every day.
I give away doom for free because it is reality.
Paul Beckwith sells near term doom for future fantasy.
there is so much more we could be doing than playing god right now.
Dear Robert…
Despite the fact that you continue to sound like a Koch contrived doom bot… I want to talk to you as if you're a real caring and frustrated human…I'm going to pretend this is so and hope it is.
I know the current state of the world seem overwhelming. Hell, 40 years ago in GAO my nickname was “infomaniac”, as I consumed every bit of data I could (in my position, that was a lot!). I was freaked out by Dr. Murry Mitchel's frank words to me that… “if things continue as we think they're going, by the time we're able to prove it, it'll be too late” These words, shared with me very likely before you were born…before anyone was talking about it… affected the last 40 years of my life and drove my choices…His visions were precient, but I soon found the visions of Bill Heronomous's offshore wind machines and Howie Wilcox's visions of free floating oceanic OTEC ocean farming communities equally mindboggling… two of the three are now a reality and their long gone words ring in my mind today as I eagerly await our transition to oceana…
Many of the data points you cite…can be overwhelming and result in fatalistic numbing anger and depression. I urge you to get unstuck… and be part of the wave we need to better navigate the future.
Given that reality appears fluid and multi-dimensional (consume a dozen recent physics books and you'll understand) you can stay where you are… you can die there… you can keep mowing an insane construct called grass or you can change… I maintain it is lazy and cowardly to sit at a computer terminal stringing together doom lines… if this is a “construct” you, as a free willed participant, fail. Most importantly, you are choosing to fail.
I've suggested you broaden your perspective to include the larger realm of science and opportunities which can and hopefully will counterbalance and revolutionize our situation…I gave you suggestions. It is a lazy spiteful human that ignores them… Even you cite biochar as a huge part of the solution yet you continue mowing lawns, as if you are a willing participant in the chains that bind. I urge you to explore solutions and be part of them. Intelligent people are important… but narrow minded focus and truth twisting is dangerous… just look at climate deniers…
Alex and I have talked many times of climate depression…I cry at times reflecting on what I know and the life my 14 year old daughter is heading towards. But I keep trying to sort through solutions… ways to stabilize and rekindle our beautiful Eaarth. I network, write songs to motivate/wake up others, and dig into the natural world, planting, cultivating, and trying… trying to learn and expand the forces needed to change things.
One trick I use is to postulate: If this is a simulation, there are solutions…so try and be part of them… if this is a test, my challenge is to resist the death and cultivate the life force… We have choices…
You can go out a small, cowering, angry little man, lazily sitting at your terminal spewing looser one liner interpretations of reality, stuck in that deluded limited paradigm… essentially a cowardly flamer or paid corporate troll spewing Koch filth to derail impetus for change… essentially, a totally worthless looser…or you start contributing something meaningful to the conversation…
I am a firm believer we can change the world. It won't be easy. It might not even be glorious, given the corner we've backed ourselves into…but it is an exciting challenge born out of where we are…
I hope this helps your spirit…if you have one…personally after reading your latest post… more one liner insanity sprinkled with a bit of truth… I still think your just a disgusting Koch bot…a shameful example of humanity…
VastmanDana
climate music at https://tinyurl.com/vastman
Dear Wasteman
► I am flattered that you condescended to treat me like a human instead of a Kochbot.
► I am ecstatic that you and Alex converse. I am over the moon that you think the scientific method is the end-all-be-all.
► I am glad that you make the effort to stand before your keyboard to string together insult lines.
► I am glad you believe in space wormholes and multiple universes.
► I am glad that you live such a righteous life. Keep on singing.
► I am glad you believe that science will save us, and after you're dead, we can all live happily ever-after up in the clouds.
► I am sorry I don't have a job you consider worthy. Please forgive me.
► I am glad that you don't argue the facts and take the time to slag me.
► I am unworthy of your attentions.
My stupid fact-listing doesn't amount to a hill of beans before your awesome majesty.
More Stupid Facts
http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableEnergy/comments/2qg5s9/mass_extinction_vs_green_energy/
If you truly believe in your own words then also believe in mine, http://buildtoflowwithnaturenottoresistit.blogspot.com/?m=0
Dear Robert… I have argued with your bullet points. I do not consider them facts… They're like right wing talking points…others have too…but like a Koch bot you just repost the same talking points. Enjoy being stuck…
Hi, Mary…I'm mobile at the moment but look foreward to your links. Thanks!
Global warming. Probably the biggest banking scam in history. Jail the fraud deniers.
http://www.scrapthetrade.com/intro
Dear scap the trade dude… A feebate direct carbon tax plus rebate per individual is the superior system. Yet your website totally ignores or hides this… I think this is very weird…are you just another Koch bot our do you really care for getting carbon under control? If you gave solutions Hanson proposes rather than just cite his position [which I agree with] against carbon trading…I'd find your message a lot more credible
As it is you seen too imply globally warning is a banking scan which I consider ridiculous…and again, sounds like a Koch contrivance
a SOLAR ENERGY CAR made by amateurs have crossed Australia. Why CAR´S FACTORIES do not want to know that?. Petroleum´s economic interests. Shame politicians
…global warming ("good" no longer spend cold)… the discharge of pollutants into the air with its greenhouse effect is melting the Poles. This large amount of freshwater to the ocean could stop deep sea currents which depend on a delicate balance between fresh and salty water and temperatures. Heat from the Sun reaches the equator and currents distribute it throughout the Planet. then…goodbye to our warm climate. The horizontal oceanic currents produced by winds and some others by the rotation of the Earth, rotating all by the Coriolis effect, will continue…but the vertical currents produced by the sinking of horizontal currents of dense salty water that reaches the Poles where the water is sweeter, less salty, and form deep currents would stop (why are the Grand Banks fishing in cold latitudes?…because over there is the polar ice, freshwater, different sweet/salty density, salty dense water arriving and sinks in a little salty water environment…nutrients that are removed from the bottom and rise to the surface, phytoplankton that feed on nutrients, zooplankton that feed on phytoplankton, fish that feed on zooplankton)… No polar ice over there will be no vertical currents…could reduce the rise of nutrients to the surface and therefore PHYTOPLANKTON SHORTAGE MAY DECREASING ITS VITAL CONTRIBUTION WITH OXYGEN TO THE ATMOSPHERE (90 %)…fish…winds in some places of more warm latitudes carry out the surface hot water permitting the outcropping to surface of water and plankton (the upwelling) from the bottom cold current coming from the Pole, forming other Banks fishing… Without polar ice the sea it could almost stratified into horizontal layers with little energetic movement of water masses in vertical which is what removes fertilizer nutrients from the sea bottom… Besides lowering salinity of the sea, for that great contribution with freshwater to melt the Poles, will increase evaporation (ebullioscopy: the less salt has, more evaporates) producing gigantic storm clouds as have never seen, that together with altering of the ocean currents, could cool areas of the Planet causing a new ice age… Warming…invasion of tropical diseases carried by their transfer agents, already without the "general winter" containing them would fall upon the World like a plague…can produce a cooling, a new ice age, like living at the North Pole…and less oxygen in the Atmosphere… Is not known to be worse… Go choosing.
…the beginning of the End of the World (no polar ice: the countdown has already begun)… the World is silenced by politicians and their armies and their control of the media by the religious. They are leading the Planet to catastrophe worrying only of the economy, "their" economy. Politicians do not want to know anything about climate change, even bothers to talk topic, do not care about anything other than "utilize" their way through the power to… ((The scientist say:"…Examining 20,000 data points, the researchers showed that the Southern Ocean surface has freshened during the last 60 years. They also found that vertical gradients of salinity and density have increased in the Southern Ocean, suggesting that mixing has been reduced. Seven of the models suggest that increased freshwater in the Southern Ocean could stop the convection from occurring altogether by 2030, and most models show strong decreases in convection during the 21st century, reducing the Antarctic Bottom Water´s formation. The absence of polynyas in recent decades could mean that heat is getting trapped in the deeper ocean, possibly contributing to the recent "hiatus" in global atmospheric warming and the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent that have been observed in recents years.""))… Scientist checking that there can be NO and CONVECTION in 2030 in the stratified ocean with almost freshwater surface…the beginning of the End of the World…and the experts interested in Laws POLITICIANS not even know what it is and looking elsewhere unsigned serious international protocols that IMMEDIATELY STOP AROUND THE PLANET POURING OF CONTAMINATION. It´s the economy…
…interstellar travel not acceleration constant (graphene: planet errant)… every bit a Terraformed planet errant into a bubble graphene how diamond transparent…with fusion reactors which will give the light and heat how an artificial sun, encircling an antigravitational field Tesla/Brown “electrogravitics” prevents objects collision against the “blue-arch of heaven”… Who needs already a star…
CO2 + UV laser → C + O2… 3d bioprinting = Immortality = go to stars (typewrite: interstellar travel constant acceleration))
…interstellar travel constant acceleration (without religious burning forests)… “Those” religious demented are burning the forests “infidels” in the entire World (in countries of “those” religious there is not fires), cheap religious-terrorism obviously using tech-artefacts drones, balloons; and the religious-miserable occult-power Rome-saint (terror against reason, how they did to Galileo Galilei, recent threat: “the III World War has already begun”) protects to “those” other credos and silences to politicians and Global Media (TV never says that are the incendiary-religious) for that the innocent people that still says “oh my god”, do not know it a fact already evident: IS TRUTH THAT RELIGION IS LIE