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( Click on the headline to view the whole story )
The Earth today stands in imminent peril
...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
The Delusion Revolution: We're on The Road
By Robert Jensen 20 August, 2008
Our current way of life is unsustainable. We are the first species that will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive
08 August, 2008 By John James
Nearly every projection for the future of civilisation made in the IPCC reports has been exceeded. Events that were projected to emerge by the end of the century have been moved back to 2070, then to 2040, and even now to ‘within the next few years’. The goal posts are moving towards us at a terrible pace
By John James 31 October, 2008
In June I attended a conference in Canberra on “Imagining the Real: Life on Greenhouse Earth.” Many of the great men of the Australian scientific community were there to tell us of the latest research. I understand the situation well, having researched it myself for so long. I knew much of what was presented – and it was still depressing! I ask you, dear reader, to stay with me a little longer and follow the key information with me, for we are all going to feel the consequences quite soon, and only the actions you do right now are going to make the outcome any better.
The sad truth is that the dissolution of the atmosphere is moving faster than anticipated. The key indicators are exceeding most of the computer projections. Nowhere have the remedial actions already taken made things better.
This is because 80 percent of global warming comes from burning fossil fuels, and none of the wind farms or hybrid cars has made the slightest dent in its use…..
…...One large glacier on the west coast, 3 miles wide and a mile deep, is now slipping into the sea at 2 meters an hour, when the normal rate was around 90 meters per year. We know that were all the ice on Greenland to melt, sea levels would rise over 7 meters. The question is how long may this take? The IPCC estimate of hundreds of years is being contradicted by studies of past glaciations. Andrew Glickson and Bradley Opdyke showed that at the end of earlier ice ages the glaciers collapsed suddenly. Suddenly does not mean over a century or two, but within a decade…….
The Psychology Of Denial
By John James 03 November, 2008
A four-year analysis of the world's ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute found that over-consumption has pushed 15 out of 24 ecosystems essential to human life "beyond their sustainable limits". Our insatiable desire for more is moving the planet toward a state of collapse that may be "abrupt and potentially irreversible". Since we all know that, can we not go beyond the fear to follow David Attenborough, who said in a recent interview, "How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew and did nothing?"
Global Warming Producing 150000 Deaths Annually: WHO
Madison WI (SPX) Nov 16, 2005 In a recent chilling assessment, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that human-induced changes in the Earth's climate now lead to at least 5 million cases of illness and more than 150,000 deaths every year.
Last Call on Climate Change
A statement from the 2008 Manning Clark House Conference: “Imagining the Real: Life on a Greenhouse Earth”, 11-12 June, Australian National University.
“Citizens have come together with scientists in Canberra to consider global warming. We are shocked by the urgency of the situation,” said former Federal Science Minister Barry Jones, in whose honour the conference was held. Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next 5 years, decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report. Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The loss of the Great Barrier Reef now seems likely. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become more frequent. There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point. Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened,, we risk huge human and societal costs, and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault. Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to renewable energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources. The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social. We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming. [Approved by the delegates of the conference, 12 June 2008]
Contacts: Professor Barry Brook Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, University of Adelaide. Ph: 0420 958 400; email: barry.brook@adelaide.edu.au
A Last Chance for Civilization
By Bill McKibben Sunday 11 May 2008 Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start - even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now. It's not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so inextricably tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the "limits to growth" suddenly seem? how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.
There's a number - a new number - that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued - and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper - "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points - massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them - that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now, the planet is starting to take over the job.
"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." said the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri,
In 2005 the eminent climate scientist Dr. James Hansen warned that: “We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.” Three years later, we are now crossing some of those tipping points. In June 2008, Professor Barry Brook cautioned that even the most ambitious international greenhouse gas reduction targets might not prevent a catastrophic increase in temperatures: "Two degrees has the potential to lead to three or four degrees because of carbon-cycle feedbacks." Unless we adopt the strongest measures — emergency measures as we argue in Climate Code Red — it will be too late. It is no longer a matter of how much more we can heat the planet, but how quickly can we cool it.
Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming
Posted June 23, 2008 | 05:57 PM (EST) By James Hansen
Today I testified to Congress about global warming, 20 years after my June 23, 1988 testimony, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference…..
What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already "in the pipeline," delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a "perfect storm," a global cataclysm, are assembled.
Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.
More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well under way, it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely within a century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees, and no stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.
Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished, their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years.
NASA Scientist: Put CEOs On Trial for Global-Warming Lies Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature," according to a leading climate scientist.
"Special interests have blocked the transition to our renewable energy future," Hansen writes in an opinion piece posted on the institute's Web site. "Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer.”
Climate change policies failing, Nasa scientist warns Obama
Award-winning researcher James Hansen says new president's rhetoric must be backed by action
Current approaches to deal with climate change are ineffectual, one of the world's top climate scientists said today in a personal new year appeal to Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on the urgent need to tackle global warming. The letter, from Hansen and his wife Anniek, is a personal plea to the first couple. It begins: "We write to you as fellow parents concerned about the Earth that will be inherited by our children, grandchildren, and those yet to be born … Jim has advised governments previously through regular channels. But urgency now dictates a personal appeal." Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets to be met through "cap and trade" schemes as not up to the task. "This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity," the Hansens wrote. He proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend": a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded.
Seems to me we had a Liberal leader ( Stephan Dion) running his campaign on implementing a carbon tax and was shot down for his ideology. Unfortunately he was a man ahead of the times and I feel we may pay for this mistake in the future.
Dr. James Hansen, scientist Website
James Lovelock - the coming Trial
January 11th, 2008
James Lovelock is the highly respected scientist responsible for the Gaia Theory, and in his book The revenge of Gaia, he says… “Humanity, wholly unprepared by its humanist traditions, faces its greatest trial. The acceleration of climate change now under way will sweep away the comfortable environment to which we are adapted. Change is a normal part of geological history; the most recent was the Earth’s move from the long period of glaciation to the present warmish interglacial. What is unusual about the coming crisis is that we are the cause of it, and nothing so severe has happened since the long hot period at the start of the Eocene, fifty-five million years ago, when the change was larger than that between the ice age and the nineteenth century and lasted for 200,000 years…”
Where's the Sense of Panic or Urgency?
Over morning coffee last Friday, I read in my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, a distressing lead story reporting on a recent study, published in the journal Science, saying global temperatures will rise by at least four degrees by the end of the century, with sea levels rising concomitantly by three feet over the same period.
One would think that a nation that flies into a panic at the thought of a few terrorists with a bomb, or of a bird with the flu, would really be worked up about this story, but no. It sailed by here in Philadelphia without note and with no follow-up--not even an editorial--and even more incredibly, it didn’t even make the paper, much less the front page, in most of the nation’s media.
What's going on here? The world is racing pell-mell to environmental catastrophe, and Americans, who are a prime cause of the problem with our multiple SUVs, our heated saunas, our 70-degree-in –winter, 60-degree-in-summer oversized homes, and our insatiable demand for plastics, are completely oblivious. Our stunning lack of concern about the disasters that lie ahead for ourselves and our children and grandchildren wouldn’t be that astonishing perhaps, if we weren’t so absurdly jittery about much lesser threats. Get a report that one lone cow out in Idaho was found with mad-cow disease and beef sales plummet. And wait until the first U.S. chicken comes down with bird flu--Colonel Sanders will be declaring bankruptcy within days. But the world as we know it coming to an end, with mass extinctions, flooding of coastal cities, loss of prime agricultural lands, and perhaps the vanishing of the Gulf Stream? Who has time for that?
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Climate Change Requires
Climate chaos is inevitable. We can only avert oblivion
At best we will limit the extent of global warming, but Kyoto barely helps. Does humanity have the foresight to save itself?
Climate Code Red - The New Denial And The Failure Of Democracy
By Bill Henderson 21 February, 2008
A new report based upon state of the art science argues convincingly that climate change is a much more serious and immediate problem than previously perceived by even informed publics - climate change is an emergency that requires urgent mitigation measures not presently possible in our political and economic systems.
No major media outlet acknowledges let alone critiques or comments upon or otherwise covers the report. None. Not AP nor Reuters; not either ABC nor BBC. Ditto the NY Times, Wash Post, Guardian, Le Monde, Asahi Shimbun or the South China Morning Post. Not one major news agency, paper, TV or radio outlet so much as acknowledges the existence of a report on a subject that is life and death for humanity and most of the species with which we presently share creation on this small blue planet. Conversely, reports on temporal economic subjects, on flaky topics such as steroid use in baseball or Asian access to the internet receive wide coverage. A report on the worldwide increase of GM crops, for only one example, has 184 news articles listed on Google News including all of the above major media outlets. The climate change is a life and death emergency report has 12 news articles listed with the Canberra Times being the only non-net news source listed.
Uh??? What gives?
Download Climate code Red here
By the end of the century, the Earth could be more than 6C hotter than it is today, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We know that would be bad news - but just how bad? How big a rise will it take for the Alps to melt, the oceans to die and desert to conquer Europe and the Americas? Mark Lynas sifted through thousands of scientific papers for his new book on global warming. This is what the research told him ...
Negative CO2 Emissions needed now to Save Planet ……..the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was much too conservative, this being largely date to a “cut-off date” for consensus consideration of the latest data published in the scientific literature – the 2007 IPCC Report was accordingly several years out if date when it was published.
The latest scientific findings are that the IPCC 2007 Report has greatly under-estimated the rate of melting of Arctic Ice, including that of Greenland - water from melted ice is lubricating and speeding up the movement of glaciers to the sea; the so-called “albedo flip” involving converting light-reflecting, white ice to light-absorbing, dark sea is dramatically speeding up loss of Arctic sea ice; and the consequent increase in temperature in the Arctic provides a positive feedback to increase sea ice and Greenland ice sheet melting (for analysis and dramatic images of Arctic ice melting.
The latest scientific findings have dramatically superseded the 2007 IPCC Report warnings of severe problems in the developing world already and dire global consequences in future decades. The time frame has been dramatically reduced. Thus the top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen says that the “tipping point” for the melting of Arctic ice has already been reached at 385 ppm atmospheric CO2 and it is apparent that the present atmospheric CO2 is sufficient to completely remove summer-time Arctic sea ice (some scientists say this may be completely gone by 2013). However most alarming is the potential instability of large ice sheets, especially those of West Antarctica and Greenland. According to Dr Hansen, in calling for an immediate moratorium on coal power, The December 2007 Bali Conference sought to define “CO2 pollution reduction targets” for the world but was effectively wrecked by the world’s worst per capita greenhouse polluters, Australia, Canada and Bush-US. However the science has – again – overtaken the variously dishonest, greedy, corrupt, blinkered and cowardly politicians and the selfish vested interests they serve against the interests of Humanity.
The Climate Emergency means that the Bali-wrecking Australian, US and Canadian position of “no 2020 targets” is an insult to Humanity demanding immediate retraction. According to top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen we need “negative CO2 emissions” now to reduce the earth’s atmospheric CO2 from a current dangerous 385 ppm to a sustainable level of about 300-350 ppm, as reported recently by the BBC
Goodman: Peace must be a global goal - Austin American Statesman [21 hours ago]
Goodman: Peace (with the Earth)must be a global goalEllen Goodman, THE BOSTON GLOBE
Thursday, December 27, 2007 Since this is the list-making time of year, allow me to add a tiny trophy to Al Gore's very full shelf: the prize for the most elegant speech of 2007. I wasn't sure how the politician-turned-environmentalist fit the profile for a Nobel Peace Prize, but his acceptance speech connected the dots. "Without realizing it," Gore said, "we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself. Now, we and the Earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: mutually assured destruction."
...the Nobel crowd, "We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will." But, he added, 'political...
...Bush delegation told, "If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way." At the last minute...
A World
Dying, But Can We
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