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Living within a living, loving planet
Global Warming
Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
Feb 5th
Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-scientists-esld.html
Posted on 30 January 2013 by dana1981
“A paper recently published in Global Environmental Change by Brysse et al. (2012)examined a number of past predictions made by climate scientists, and found that that they have tended to be too conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. The authors thus suggest that climate scientists are biased toward overly cautious estimates, erring on the side of less rather than more alarming predictions, which they call “erring on the side of least drama” (ESLD).”
“The IPCC is an intergovernmental body. It is open to all member countries of the United Nations (UN) and WMO. Currently 195 countries are members of the IPCC. Governments participate in the review process and the plenary Sessions, where main decisions about the IPCC work programme are taken and reports are accepted, adopted and approved. The IPCC Bureau Members, including the Chair, are also elected during the plenary Sessions.” http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml#.URDDCqVNVsA
If these governments accept, adopt and approve the IPCC pronouncements, then by definition they are biased. We should not be surprised that they favour the status quo. Anything published that would tend to limit the flow of profits would necessarily be toned down.
It has been like this before
Jan 29th
Major climate changes looming
Carolyn Lochhead
Updated 11:10 pm, Sunday, January 27, 2013
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Major-climate-changes-looming-4227943.php
I’m so tired of hearing “It has been like this before” Usually this statement is followed by 14 million years, 60 million years or other.
Physical history never repeats itself with Gaia. It just cannot. Atmospheric contents, oceanic contents, soil contents and on and on are different now.
All these absurd statements reveal a failure to realise that Gaia is a living being and self-regulates as James Lovelock revealed. As I’ve said before, knowing how a star expands and gets hotter as it approaches an expansion which will in the end cause its demise, Gaia most probably feels it needs to have regular periods of major cooling to keep global temperatures fit for lifeforms that form Gaia’s outer regions – surface. We will never, never progress in understanding how to work in synchronicity with Gaia until we see that our planet is alive and intelligent. There are heaps of implications and connections that could be made on this subject, but I’ll stop here.
It is what you do that Counts
Jan 26th
“The repercussions of our acts — the constructs we create — endure well past the dissolution of our convictions and desires. Our actions exist as living architecture that surrounds the breathing moment. Future generations will dwell in the world we erect, thought by thought, deed by deed.” Phil Rockstroh
“As an example, the fate of the earth’s biosphere and its capacity to sustain human life is being subjected to an unfolding, desperate campaign — craven as it is noxious — in its intentions, scope, and side affects, by the elite of an arrogant order to maintain their grip on privilege and power. By propaganda and coercion, they proceed, with cult-like conviction, on a course of catastrophic folly involving a race to secure and exploit the remaining resources of our ecologically taxed planet (the only planet available to us). If their agendas remain unchecked, the biosphere will be rendered unviable to our species.”
Phil Rockstroh
http://www.nationofchange.org/great-dismal-what-we-speak-becomes-house-we-live-1359211982
This man has a way with words, doesn’t he?
Half a degree
Jan 16th
5 January 2013
Climate change: Soot’s role underestimated, says study
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Half a degree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21033078
The research – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract
“This new study concludes the dark particles are having a warming effect approximately two thirds that of carbon dioxide, and greater than methane.
‘The large conclusion is that forcing due to black carbon in the atmosphere is larger,’ lead author Sarah Doherty told BBC News.
The value the IPCC gave in their 4th assessment report in 2007 is half of what we are presenting in this report – it’s a little bit shocking,”
This is just one of many instances where the IPCC predictions have been challenged as being far too conservative. One could be quite within the realm of reasonable doubt in concluding that global warming is a far greater threat than governments want their citizens to realize. Polar ice, ocean warming, sea level rises, affect of melting permafrost on methane levels and on and on are just a few examples of instances where the IPCC underestimated.
2012 US record breaking hottest annual surface temperature
Jan 15th
2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality
Posted on 14 January 2013 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2012-us-temp-record-fox-denial.html#89622
“Big oil will loose trillions of dollars in unusable reserves if climate change is accepted, so it’s not surprising they will use any weapon to discredit AGM.”
I had not considered oil reserves and their value.
Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss
Jan 14th
Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss: Exponential?
26 December 2012
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf
In this paper, Hansen and Sato point out that the IPCC rise in sea level projections need updating. As I understand it, the models used in the past did not take into consideration the possible – Hansen and Sato suggest that it is probable- non-linear increase in ice sheet loss due to human contributions to the rising global temperature due the greenhouse effect. Sea level rises will most probably be far greater than the 1 meter mentioned by the IPCC. Sadly, it will be too late to do anything about it when enough data is collected to convince reluctant sceptics. I suggest that powers that refuse to change the status quo understand this and will at that time just shrug their shoulders and say, in effect, “Too late to do anything now, so let’s just keep on keeping on the way we have been and enjoy what we have while we have it.” Of course, only the 1%ers will be enjoying their lives whilst the rest of us waste away in cold and hunger. You don’t think this can happen?
Of course, what has not been mentioned is the question: How will Gaia maintain stable, life enabling global temperature without glaciers and ice sheets? The Gaia Theory plainly points out that the earth should be a lot warmer due to the expanding heat from an expanding sun over the last 5 billion years. We need to work hard to understand how Gaia operates and cooperate rather than destroy her enabling structures and global health measures.
“A crucial question is how rapidly the Greenland (or Antarctic) ice sheet can disintegrate in response to global warming. Earth’s history makes it clear that burning all fossil fuels would cause eventual sea level rise of tens of meters, thus practically wiping out thousands of cities located on global coast lines. However, there seems to be little political or public interest in what happens next century and beyond, so reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) focus on sea level change by 2100, i.e., during the next 87 years.”
“…future sea level rise of greatest concern is that from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which has the potential to reach many meters. Hansen (2005) argues that, if business-as-usual increase of greenhouse gases continue throughout this century, the climate forcing will be so large that non-linear ice sheet disintegration should be expected and multi-meter sea level rise not only possible but likely.”
“Perceived authority2 in the case of ice sheets stems from ice sheet models used to simulate paleoclimate sea level change. However, paleoclimate ice sheet changes were initiated by weak climate forcings changing slowly over thousands of years, not by a forcing as large or rapid as human-made forcing this century.”
“The increasing Greenland mass loss in Fig. 1 can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 and 5 meters by 2090. The dates are 2045 and 2057 for 5-year doubling time and 2055 and 2071 for a 7-year doubling time.”
How much more evidence do you need?
Nov 28th
Nation of Change
28/11/2012
Chris Hedges
http://www.nationofchange.org/stand-still-apocalypse-1354008355
“Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe’s inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank. The continued failure to respond aggressively to climate change, the report warns, will mean that the planet will inevitably warm by at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, ushering in an apocalypse.
The 84-page document, “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,” was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population. The report comes as the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change begins this Monday [Nov. 26] in Doha, Qatar.”
“The political and corporate elites in the industrialized world continue, in spite of overwhelming scientific data, to place short-term corporate profit and expediency before the protection of human life and the ecosystem. The fossil fuel industry is permitted to determine our relationship to the natural world, dooming future generations. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, increased from its pre-industrial concentration of about 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 391 ppm in September 2012, with the rate of rise now at 1.8 ppm per year. We have already passed the tipping point of 350 ppm; above that level, life as we have known it cannot be sustained. The CO2 concentration is higher now than at any time in the last 15 million years. The emissions of CO2, currently about 35 billion metric tons per year, are projected to climb to 41 billion metric tons per year by 2020.”
Be persuasive. Be brave.
Nov 17th
Be persuasive. Be brave
Financiar Jeremy Grantham
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.11796!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/491303a.pdf
“I have yet to meet a climate scientist who does not believe that global warming is a worse problem than they thought a few years ago. The seriousness of this change is not appreciated by politicians and the public. The scientific world carefully measures the speed with which we approach the cliff and will, no doubt, carefully measure our rate of fall. But it is not doing enough to stop it. I am a specialist in investment bubbles, not climate science. But the effects of climate change can only exacerbate the ecological trouble I see reflected in the financial markets — soaring commodity prices and impending shortages.”
“It is crucial that scientists take more career risks and sound a more realistic, more desperate, note on the global-warming problem. Younger scientists are obsessed by thoughts of tenure, so it is probably up to older, senior and retired scientists to do the heavy lifting. Be arrested if necessary. This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.”
Invest in Trees
We need more establishment people with the courage to speak out.
Cowed into silence
Nov 4th
Cowed into silence
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/03/opinion/safina-sandy-said-the-words/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Editor’s note: Carl Safina is a MacArthur Fellow, Pew Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University and president of Blue Ocean Institute. His books include “Song for the Blue Ocean, The View From Lazy Point” and “A Sea in Flames,” about last year’s Deepwater Horizon blowout. He is host of “Saving the Ocean,” on PBS.
“East Hampton, NY (CNN) — In three debates by the presidential candidates and one by the vice-presidential hopefuls, no one could bring himself to utter the words “climate change.”
Hurricane Sandy said what all four White House contenders were afraid to say.
I’ve heard that some voters are undecided. Watching the debates, I became undecided over what’s worse: Republicans, who not only don’t acknowledge reality, but who genuinely seem not to believe reality. Or Democrats, cowed into silence on issues of enormous importance like climate change and its solution: clean renewable energy.
Sandy said things no candidate in America could voice without blowing away their own political career. She said: ‘Enough! Wake up. Take a reality check. And if you don’t get it, it will get you; then you’ll get it.’
Now, we got it.” Carl Safina
This is so unbelievable. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s bad dream.
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An Interview with Jorie Graham
Nov 1st
An Interview with Jorie Graham Issue 2 (August 2012) Earthlines Magazine
“SB: Your poetry has grown more ecological in subject matter over
time. What factors have contributed to that – has it followed the
pattern of your own personal transformations?
JG: To answer this question: once I woke up,
once I read-up, once I lived outside of the US where the green
movements arise out of a very wide swathe of the population
– once I lived on agricultural land in France where any farmer
was also a committed, informed and active environmentalist
– because he saw the bees disappearing and he knew what it
meant – because he saw the seasons coming unravelled and he
knew why – because he saw birds lose their way in migration
and knew why – because he saw his growing season alter, his
water disappear, his family come down with environmentally
induced cancers – once I watched so many people who live
on the land – in Iowa, in Wyoming, in Normandy – tell me
‘It is sick, it is sick, we are killing it’ – I began to read deeply
in the field. And I grew very afraid. And what scared me
most was the narrowing window of opportunity – the tools
at hand, but kept just out of reach by corporate interests and
greed, and a population as much lulled into their sleep by
(heavily financed) denial as by the very technology that could
have awakened them and handed them tools. I saw the failure
of courage as a failure of imagination. And that is where art
comes in. Or so McKibben thinks, and I agree.”
We were told by the best scientists that Sandy was coming and
would visit more and more often as long as the CO2 continued to
build. But we were NOT afraid.
It will take more than fear now
to seriously begin the recovery the burden of which will fall on
our children and grandchildren and perhaps many generations
to come. We desperately need to decrease our footprint and I am
afraid that it will be messy.