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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged global warming
From the Archives – A New Story
Sep 15th
A New Story
There have been a few “deep feeling” people who have called for a “new story.” There can be no doubt that we desperately need a new story. All major religions advocate “love.” and “Peace.” But unfortunately, they seek “God” to bring peace. Part of the new story, is that Peace and love must come from within each of us. Also, they are not what we can “have” or “obtain” but what we “are.” So, why do we have problems? We are taught that we are helpless and must invoke assistance from “God” out there somewhere. This is “the pollution of the ages.” Further, it is “Earth energy” that nourishes and sustains us yet we are alienated due to basic beliefs that don’t keep their promises. We now have runaway Global warming where the positive feedback is increasing at an increasing rate. We either cooperate, and very soon, or suffer unimaginable consequences. This is not a Henny Penny or chicken licken story either – just do the maths!
Sky: 10 January, 2019
2019 atmospheric methane increase greatest in five years
Apr 8th
2019 atmospheric methane increase greatest in five years: preliminary data
By Rachel Frazin – 04/06/20 04:57 PM EDT
“The average level of methane in the atmosphere increased last year by the highest amount in five years, according to preliminary data released Sunday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that the average level of methane in the atmosphere increased by 11.54 parts per billion (ppb) in 2019 over the level of methane in the atmosphere in 2018.
This is the largest increase since 2014, when the average level of atmospheric methane increased by 12.72 ppb.
NOAA’s data also showed that in December 2019, the last month for which data was available, the level of methane in the atmosphere was about 1,874.7 ppb.
The data in NOAA’s report is preliminary, and the agency said that it is “likely to change significantly.” A final value is expected this fall.”
Sky:
What this article and many others I have observed, fails to mention is that methane breaks down into water and CO2; both greenhouse gasses. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Thus, methane doses out a double whammy of threat to the environment.
Ships fitted with ‘Cheat Devices’ to Divert Poisonous Pollution into Sea
Oct 6th
Ships fitted with ‘cheat devices’ to divert poisonous pollution into sea
Wil Crisp The Independent
“Global shipping companies have spent billions rigging vessels with “cheat devices” that circumvent new environmental legislation by dumping pollution into the sea instead of the air, The Independent can reveal.
More than $12bn (£9.7bn) has been spent on the devices, known as open-loop scrubbers, which extract sulphur from the exhaust fumes of ships that run on heavy fuel oil.”
Is this the result of a mature capitalism? If so, then these kinds of actions reveal a severe mental illness.
A Religious Left
Sep 30th
A religious left
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/24/684435743/provoked-by-trump-the-religious-left-is-finding-its-voice
“Activists on the left should welcome the emergence of a religious core in their ranks because when political activity is morally inspired, it becomes more passionate — as conservatives already understand. Liberals are famous for being cerebral. A religious left may bring more energy to the progressive movement.”
“Democrats got a jolt of that passion at their last national convention with an appearance by the Rev. William Barber, an African-American preacher from North Carolina who started the “Moral Monday” movement in that state.
“Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, called us to preach good news to the poor, the broken, the bruised, and all those who are made to feel unaccepted!” Barber thundered, bringing the delegates to their feet.
Describing himself as “an evangelical Biblicist,” Barber said the nation is need of “moral defibrillators” to work on its weak heart.
“We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all!” Barber said, in the most rousing speech of the convention.”
I have no problem with concern for the poor, the broken, the bruised etc. However, to ignore the health of the Earth, to ignore an emphasis on “other than humans” is to invite extinction. We truly have a “climate crisis.” CO2 in the troposphere is increasing at an increasing rate. The increase is non-linear and unpredictable. A tipping point has been reached.
Definition of tipping point: the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place. The process at work here, and that imperils us, is un-predictable and poorly understood positive feedback. We must remember that with a CO2 reading of 414.7 ppm, in May, from the Mauna Loa Research Station on the big island of Hawaii, we have reached levels never before experienced by humans. Notice the caveat “often.” We don’t understand the Earth behaviour triggered by a “runaway” increase of CO2. We must consider that the “often” is probably a “certainly.”
Greta Thunberg’s Speech
Sep 25th
Greta Thunberg’s Speech
Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the UN Climate Action Summit
By Greta Thunberg, originally published by PBS News Hours
September 24, 2019
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years.”
“There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
You are failing us. But young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.
We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
It takes courage to tell it as it is. It takes courage to speak out when your neighbours are speaking with their heads in the sand. Our exploitative economic system sucks us into such a subservient system – a “company store” – binding that we are compelled to shut up and put up. The ecosystem is still a misunderstood theory to many, boundless, loving Earth energy is credited to God and disaster is too often credited to God’s will. The environment is understood by many to be something “other” than us that we are at the mercy of. Many pray as if they think that the creator needs our praise and dishes out favours to selected followers. Some, hopefully a growing number realise that we “are” the planet. Thus, as the planet suffers so do we.
“It is not a matter of being “close to nature.” The relationship is more one of identity, in the mathematical sense, than of affinity. The Earth is, in a very real sense, the same as ourself (or selves), and it is this primary point that is made in the fiction and poetry of the Native American writers of the Southwest.” Paula Gunn Allen. Maybe that’s why a homespun, behavioural, saying goes: You must love yourself before you can love others.
As long as we see the Earth as “other” there is very little chance that we will change our behaviour or our destructive lifestyle.
Prof Martin Weitzman on climate change
Sep 15th
Economist Prof Martin Weitzman on climate change
Tim Harford, Financial Times
“The message of Weitzman’s recent work has influenced the policy debates on climate change: the extreme scenarios matter. What we don’t know about climate change is more important, and more dangerous, than what we do.”
One of the most significant examples is the predictions of the amount of tropospheric CO2 in the future. Actually, analysis of the records held by the NASA Earth Observatory at Moana Loa on Hawaii reveal that the amount of CO2 is rising and the amount of rising is increasing. It has already hit a tipping point and the amount is unpredictable. See: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
“Weitzman ‘asked us to contemplate the risk of runaway effects’, or ‘tail risks’ that lie well outside the most likely scenarios, such as permafrost thaw, explains Harford. ‘Central estimates can lead us astray,’ says Harford, and’ it is only when we ponder the tail risk that we realise how dangerous climate change might be’. ‘The truly eye-opening contribution – for me, at least – was Weitzman’s explanation that the worst-case scenarios should rightly loom large in rational calculations,’ says Harford.”
Millions raised for climate activists
Jul 13th
US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists
Matthew Taylor, The Guardian
“The Guardian reports that “a group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead”. It adds: “Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry, to launch the Climate Emergency Fund. Neilson, who has worked with figures such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, said the fund was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK in April.” The report continues: “Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get ‘a hundred times’ more in the weeks and months ahead. ‘This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,’ he told the Guardian.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 12/07/2019 Leo Hickman
System change not climate crisis
May 18th
SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE
Vicky Robin from Vicky Robin Blog
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-16/from-despair-to-repair/
“Yes! But notice that most system change has to do with human civilization, human inventions gone awry – democracy, justice, infrastructure, food production, finance. Our actions come from fixing our civilizational future. Now our grief is overwhelming: almost everything is too little too late… but if we stop CO2 we may save a remnant of the beauty, intelligence and glue of our human presence on the planet.
I am not saying this is wrong!!! I want to do all of this as well, and work daily locally on it. It’s just missing the true heart of the matter – that we as humans act upon the earth for our benefit but we do not act with the earth at any level of scale for healing all life.”
Human Extinction
May 7th
Human Extinction
Risk ‘misunderestimated’: War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
Just when we need wise leadership and global cooperation, what we are seeing is internal fighting over rigid local opinions. It is like people on a train that has jumped the tracks and is headed down the mountain fighting over who gets access to the dining car first.
“The ultimate question that the Extinction Rebellion poses is this: Why should we care about human extinction? The geologic record suggests that humans will one day go extinct no matter what they do. So, what if that happens sooner rather than later?
The answer to those questions hinges on whether a person defines his or her community strictly in spacial terms and does not include temporal terms. In other words, are we a community of people only by space (and then only weakly at that) or are we a community that extends through both space AND time?
In other words, does it matter whether human culture continues?
Those who deny climate change are answering the last two questions “no.” If those who accept that climate change is largely human-caused do not see it as an existential question, they may as well be deniers.”
“The hardest minds to change are those who accept climate change as a reality, but cannot embrace the necessary steps implied by that belief. Will the Extinction Rebellion change that? I’d like to think the answer is yes. But I think a more thoroughgoing change in human hearts and perceptions will likely only come from actual catastrophic consequences hitting much larger groups of people and only if they understand that those consequences are the result of climate change.”
Risk misunderestimated War
May 7th
Risk ‘misunderestimated’ War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
“How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population?”
Exactly, we are like a frog in a pot of water that has gone sleepy whilst the water is steadily headed toward the boil. Will we jump out in time or not? That is the critical question we must answer.
“It also seems plausible that the infrastructure we have built—dams, reservoirs, roads, electric grids, seawalls, water systems, and other industrial and agricultural systems—will not withstand intact the heat, drought, floods, sea level rise, severe weather and other problems that unchecked climate change will bring with it. At the very least, we are unlikely to be able to reliably grow enough food to feed all of us.
How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population? Of course, for the poorest among us—those who barely make it from one day to the next—risk is immediate, personal and abundantly clear. Lack of food, shelter, medical care and protection from violence are existential questions that command attention.”