Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day! Go hug a tree, kiss a flower or just go stand in the grass barefoot. Pray to the God or Goddess of your choice that we wise up before it is ALL gone.  Right now it is not looking too good.

It's A Forest/Trees Thing

David Atkins over at Hulabaloo has a good take on the frustrations we are having with trying to get the reality of climate change talked about as seriously as it should be. Couple this frustration with the latest idiot decision on the Keystone Pipeline and it becomes insane.

The thing is, we humans have real trouble grasping the true "big" picture especially if it is something we would rather not hear. We like to reduce it into manageable bites, that may individually be pretty bad but not nearly as bad as the "big" picture.

The Keystone XL pipeline and tar sands are a prime example of this. The pipeline is awful. It will leak...we know it and it will leak in the worst possible places. It will virtually destroy the most important aquifer in the world and pollute the breadbasket of the world. The ancillary environmental damage will be awful and who knows how many men, women and children will be affected by the pollution. All tragedies and all multi-generational...maybe a couple of million people will actually die. Expanding the use of tar sands will be insane as well...increasing pollution globally. Horrible.

While millions dying or sickened by the pipeline and the tar sands is bad it is actually not that bad when compared to the "big" picture. The reality is that if we make it possible and actually burn all the oil extracted from the Canadian reserves we will destroy the planet and that means humans and the majority of all other life gone forever.

We can dither and wobble over pipeline leaks and pollution and cancer and all but it is just a distraction so we won't have to think about the end of life on the planet.

The sad thing is that I am not sure the race has the mental fortitude and stability to actually grasp and tackle the problems we are truly facing. If I am correct then we are doomed to a painful death in the near term.

Life Support

Our beautiful planet is dying. I'm an old man so it is likely I won't see it in its final death throes and truth be told, I don't want to. Still I am doing what I can to make a difference because I can see the effects of human activity everyday in my garden. You can make a difference as well. Since it was written about a month ago, 520 global scientists have signed on to this statement. You can also sign it as I have.  Maybe if enough of us do someone will pay attention. There is a lot more information, including ideas for solutions, at Stanford University's Millenium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere website.

Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet. As scientists who study the interaction of people with the rest of the biosphere using a wide range of approaches, we agree that the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support systems is overwhelming. We further agree that, based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path.
 Science unequivocally demonstrates the human impacts of key concern:

• Climate disruption—more, faster climate change than since humans first became a species.
• Extinctions—not since the dinosaurs went extinct have so many species and populations died out so fast, both on land and in the oceans.
• Wholesale loss of diverse ecosystems—we have plowed, paved, or otherwise transformed more than 40% of Earth’s ice-free land, and no place on land or in the sea is free of our direct or indirect influences.
• Pollution—environmental contaminants in the air, water and land are at record levels and increasing, seriously harming people and wildlife in unforeseen ways.
• Human population growth and consumption patterns—seven billion people alive today will likely grow to 9.5 billion by 2050, and the pressures of heavy material consumption among the middle class and wealthy may well intensify.

By the time today’s children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that Earth’s life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged by the magnitude, global extent, and combination of these human-caused environmental stressors, unless we take concrete, immediate actions to ensure a sustainable, high-quality future.
As members of the scientific community actively involved in assessing the biological and societal impacts of global change, we are sounding this alarm to the world. For humanity’s continued health and prosperity, we all—individuals, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, scientists, and people in every walk of life—must work hard to solve these five global problems, starting today: 1. Climate Disruption 2. Extinctions 3. Loss of Ecosystem Diversity 4. Pollution 5. Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption.
The full statement has been signed by 520 global scientists from 44 countries. Those signatures were obtained within a month of completion of the statement, by direct email requests from the authors and their close colleagues to a targeted group of well-regarded global change scientists.   The signers include 2 Nobel Laureates, 33 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,   42 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and several members of various European scientific academies.
PEOPLE WISHING TO READ THE FULL SUMMARY OR THE ENTIRE REPORT CAN FIND THEM AT http://mahb.stanford.edu.
AT THE SAME SITE PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO ENDORSE THE REPORT IF YOU AGREE WITH IT.  THE MORE ENDOSEMENTS THERE ARE FROM PEOPLE IN EVERY WALK OF LIFE, BETTER THE CHANCE THAT DECISION-MAKERS WILL PAY ATTENTION AND START TO TAKE ACTION.
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AS FAR AS POSSIBLE AND URGE THOSE YOU KNOW TO SPEND A COUPLE OF MINUTES TO REGISTER THEIR SUPPORT.

Welcome to 400 Parts Per Million

A very sobering event happened yesterday. We hit a new carbon dioxide milestone of 400 ppm:

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.
The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

In case you are wondering this means that we are on track to possibly see a rise in the average temperature of 4 degrees C towards the end of the century. If 4C doesn't sound so bad consider that scientist think it means the extinction of about half of the species now living on our little spaceship. We are so screwed.

Another Drop In the Bucket

No worries right? Nothing to see here just move along.

The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new federal figures show.

Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world's economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

This is not good and if you have been paying attention this isn't the first drop in the bucket and the bucket is rapidly getting full and when it does actually fill it will be the end of mankind on this little planet.
What is so frustrating is that the world is facing two big problems right now...climate change and shrinking employment/economies and addressing climate change with investment in non oil based energy resources, clean industry and other pro-environment initiatives would solve both these problems at once. The frustration being that our leaders are focusing on exactly the opposite. How to get more oil. How to get the dirtiest oil out of Canada and ship it down through the U.S. for export to China. Oh and reducing and already shrinking deficit. Idiots.

Missed A Month

March 1st and it is 74F in Atlanta today. Somehow the universe skipped a month and yes Al Gore is still a little heavy. Only had to work until noon today got home and dug out some shorts and I am still hot. Very strange.

Better Big Blue Marble

NASA has a new earth image available. It is very high definition and was created from multiple earth passes on January 4th of this year. It's a very cool picture.

You might also note the lack of snow cover over the U.S. for a January day. Just sayin'.

Hotter and Hotter

It's the last day of January and from everything I can see in the meteorological news this January has been the hottest since we've been keeping records. It's supposed to be 64F today here in Atlanta.
Eight of the warmest years  on record have occurred since 2000 and November, December 2011 and now this January will mark the warmest 3 month stretch ever recorded.... But Al Gore is still a little heavy.

Not A Problem

You can read the details here at Digby's place but in a nutshell, the Russians studying the East Siberian Ice Shelf are reporting massive up-wellings of methane gas from underneath the ice shelf. In a sane world this news would shock and dismay most people but in the world we are living in such tragic news doesn't even hit the papers in the U.S. It should be a headline.
Why the concern? Methane, in the near term, is 72 times more effective at trapping heat that CO2  which means that we are all going to be closer to the beach in the very near future. Well, some of us might have to tread water for awhile but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Besides our leaders have to resolve all the problems around gays in the military and how to keep us 99% a little more timid. Expect some really "good shit" in the tap water soon.

Going To Get Hungrier Out

  If you are not paying attention to the current trends in such things as food prices and are not actively planning to insulate yourself as best you can from the coming problems then you should. This is only the tip of the iceberg and this year's heat, flooding and drought are just a symptom of the changes our global climate will experience in the coming years. We're going to have snow and cold but the trend to warmer and drier will continue into the future and things are only going to get worse. We aren't quite at the point yet for this to cause civil unrest but that is not far in the future either. You need to start thinking in disaster terms when it comes to the things you need to survive and yes that means stockpiling some things that will come into short supply.  You may be able to afford to put food "on your family" today but at some point money does not answer the questions of short supplies or unavailable at any price. Just remember that this year's high prices and short supply are not a "one off" but a trend and it will continue to get worse.

Consumers can expect to see a jump in prices for pasta, meat, vegetable oil and many other grocery items in the coming months as a pair of new government reports forecast on [Aug. 11] that a brutal mixture of heat, drought or flooding has taken a toll on the corn, soybeans and wheat grown on American farms.

Futures prices for those important crops jumped on [Aug. 11], and commodities experts said that would lead to higher prices for manufacturers and consumers.

“The message, based on today’s report, is these higher costs should not be expected to abate any time soon,” said Bill G. Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a commodity consulting firm that works with restaurant companies and food manufacturers. “It implies higher cost forthcoming and subsequent margin pressure, and at some point the need to increase prices at the retail level or on the menus.” ...

Floods Down Under

These floods are really unprecedented and unbelievably vast but don't even mention global climate changes.  Oh! and Al Gore is still fat!

Not just Hot But Dry

A lot of people use the phrase Global Warming when referring to the ongoing changes in our climate. Increasing temperatures, decreasing polar ice caps, rising ocean levels are all a part of the global climate change process. Being a serious gardener I am extremely focused on rainfall and especially the lack of it. We had a good winter and spring and lake levels are pretty much normal but we are nearly 5 inches behind on rainfall for the year and we haven't had any significant rainfall in weeks and weeks. The AJC has declared that we are in a minor drought and that the La Nina this year is mostly the cause.

Kevin Drum points out something this morning that we really should be paying attention to.

Here are a few recent data points for you: (1) The New York Times reports that "skepticism and outright denial of global warming are among the articles of faith of the Tea Party movement." (2) In the National Journal, Ron Brownstein notes that "The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones....Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect." (3) It's not just Senate candidates. ThinkProgress notes that an analysis by Wonk Room "finds that 22 of the 37 Republican candidates for governor this November are deniers of the scientific consensus on global warming pollution." (4) The Wall Street Journal reports that "extreme drought" has taken hold in parts of nine states stretching from the Southeast to the lower Midwest.

One of the most glaring effects of climate change is the change in rainfall patterns around the world. And if predictions for the upcoming election hold true then we are electing a wave of "climate change deniers" that will make it virtually impossible to take any positive action to ameliorate the effects of the coming "Mega-drought". There are a lot of problems facing us in the short term...health care, defensive spending, unemployment. stagnate economy, and climate change and we are electing people that don't want to do anything about any of it. There is going to be much sadness and pain.

It's Hot In L.A.

Of course the jury is still out on climate change but yesterday, in what should be a pleasant September day in  autumn, the weather station in central L.A. recorded a temperature of 113 degrees. That's the hottest temperature ever recorded since they started keeping records in 1877. The last time the record was broken was in 1990. Just saying.

Speaking of Hot and Stupid

The Climate Change Deniers are losing ground again. More and more studies are showing that the infamous hockey stick is a reality and even worse that predicted.

There are such big problems to deal with and yet our incompetent leadership can't even deal with the fact that LGBT folks are in the military, needed in the military, and doing a good job in the military. They were there at Gettysburg, the Battle of the Argonne, Iwo Jima, and every other battle our military has seen. They fought and died heroically. That the puckered up assholes in the GOP can't see it and honor it really shows you where their hearts live.

Just A Bunch of Scientific Claptrap and Lies

That's what you'll hear from the climate change denier fucktards who will dismiss the "The 2009 State of the Climate report."  just released by NOAA. They will use their millions of dollars from oil and coal interests to shout that it's just another misguided and sloppy scientific study by a bunch of 'hot air fanatics'. The reality, of course, is that this is another study "based on comprehensive data from multiple sources," and not from some single weather station in the parking lot of a Las Vegas hotel as the deniers will charge. It's just science after all so there is absolutely no reason for you to take it seriously. So believe the folks with a vested interest in denying a warming world if you want but... it's really happening:

The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.

We are in deep 'kimchee' and everyone with a lick of sense knows it. I don't even have to read the scientific data to know it's real...I can see it in my garden every day. This is a real problem that demands concrete and immediate solutions. Unfortunately, concrete and immediate solutions to real problems demands real leasdership and we are sorely lacking in that respect and besides, Al Gore flies in planes and has a big house and is fat and most of all we had a big snowfall last winter.

Flash Floods

It may just be my faulty memory but it sure seems to me that we are seeing more extreme weather than I ever remember. We have always had summer 'cloudbursts' but the ones lately seem harder and longer than I recollect. The flash flooding in Arkansas last week and now the flooding in Oklahoma City just seem extraordinary. Madam is on the phone right now with our friends in NW Arkansas to see how they are making out. I hope the folks in Oklahoma City and surrounds make out better than the folks in Arkansas. What a way for a peaceful holiday in the woods to end.

No Future for Your Children

I won't repeat what Kevin Drum says here about the possibility of any real climate legislation but let us just say that we will get what we deserve. Whether fortunately or unfortunately it will not be us that suffers the results of our lack of inaction but our children and grandchildren. It just amazes me that a majority of Americans agree that climate change is real and that human activity is the primary cause and that something should be done but don't want to pay for it.

Four Futures

As the disaster in the Gulf continues to play itself along with no end in sight and our worst fears become reality it is worth contemplating what our future holds with respect to climate change. Sara Robinson at A World of Progress has an excellent discourse on the realities of what we face.

The four generic futures were first described back in the 1970s by Dr. Jim Dator, founder of the futures program at the University of Hawaii. In her article Sara takes a look at each of the four possibilities.

1. Continuation - Business as usual. This is not just the deniers but those people who intellectually understand and accept the reality of global change but are so wed to the status quo that they’re incapable of dealing with it rationally.
2. Collapse - The end of the world as we know it. This is the Jared Diamond/James Howard Kunstler/Limits to Growth scenario, where civilization’s immensely complex and brittle systems break down, and life winds down to something more simple and local. This should not necessarily be considered a “worst case” scenario but one in which we recognize the limits of our environment and adapt accordingly. I, for one, lean this direction.
3. Discipline - We acknowledge and accept the magnitude of the problem, make a serious plan to deal with it and commit to following through. There will be sacrifice and change but much of what we value today may be salvaged. This is the path advocated by most environmentalists and climate activists.
4. Technology and Innovation - We rely on our ability to create technological solutions and carbon-free energy sources that will solve the problem.

Everyone has a favorite scenario but as Sara notes, we should be planning and considering all four as equally likely. This is not easy as "the powers that be" have a vested interest in the Continuation and Technology scenarios which translates, for them, into 'success'. They naturally discount Collapse and Discipline which translates into 'failure' in their book.

To quote Sara:

Our best hope, then, is to formulate a detailed plan (Discipline) that makes a serious investment in moving us quickly, calmly and in a fiercely committed way toward a new energy paradigm. We need to re-tool our economy and government to perpetuate this new system, one that acknowledges the boundaries of this planet and emphasizes more humane values. We need to face our new limits and find creative, joyful ways to live within them. As part of that discipline, we should also be openly talking about our fears (and hopes) for what Collapse might look like and figure out how we still might survive and make satisfying lives in even drastically reduced circumstances. The more familiar and comfortable we are with the full range of possible trade-offs we’re facing — including the most extreme ones — the more likely we are to be able to make whatever choices become necessary with intelligence and grace.

Big Bucks Against The Truth About Global Warming

This is not really a surprise.  I thought I was paying attention but this obscure company, Koch Industries, has spent over $73 million to help fund the deniers and this is the first I have heard of them. I should have been following my own advice and been following the money. This just shows what a well funded and concerted effort there is to stifle the conservation and alternative energy effort. These guys are playing for keeps in more ways than one.

Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48m (£31.8m) to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008. From 2005-2008, it donated $25m to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as other  higher-profile companies during that time such as oil company Exxon Mobil. Koch also spent $5.7m on political campaigns and $37m on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.

In a hard-hitting report, which appears to confirm environmentalists' suspicions that there is a well-funded opposition to the science of climate change, Greenpeace accuses the funded groups of "spreading inaccurate and misleading information" about climate science and clean energy companies.

"The company's network of lobbyists, former executives and organisations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. The propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks," said Greenpeace.

Some Bad News on Climate Change

In spite of what you continue to hear from the Climate Liars and Obtuse Deniers (CLODStm for short) evidence continues to mount that we are at serious risk and not just in some far flung future. Something we have been warned about is the possibility of reaching irreversible thresholds where positive feedback from global warning triggers events that will hasten the global rise in temperature. One of the most significant positive feedback thresholds exists within the vast expanse of permafrost in the Northern parts of the globe. Permafrost locks up huge amounts of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas. As long as the permafrost remains frozen this methane is safely sequestered but if we warm the globe enough we will reach a threshold where the permafrost begins to melt and release its methane. This will not be a good thing and it appears from a recent report  that hard evidence is showing that permafrost is, in fact, melting.
From Mother Jones comes the news of a new research report:

Arctic seabed stores of methane are now destabilizing and venting vast stores of frozen methane — a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The paper, in the prestigious journal Science, reports the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf — long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane — is instead perforated and leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Melting of even a fraction of the clathrates stored in that shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

A report from Climate Progress gives a little more detail and links to some of the other research but on paragraph says pretty much all you need to know.

Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane.  Methane is  is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!