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Author Topic: Future Earth  (Read 53769 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #150 on: November 21, 2015, 04:35:45 pm »
Michael Pollan’s Letter to the Future
Michael Pollan | November 18, 2015 9:04 am

This letter to the future by Michael Pollan is part of the Letters to the Future campaign, a national effort to encourage people from all walks of life to write six generations into the future about climate change. The campaign puts a spotlight on the importance of world leaders agreeing to a global climate treaty at COP21 in Paris.

Dear Future Family,

I know you will not read this note until the turn of the century, but I want to explain what things were like back in 2015, before we figured out how to roll back climate change. As a civilization we were still locked into a zero-sum idea of our relationship with the natural world, in which we assumed that for us to get whatever we needed, whether it was food or energy or entertainment, nature had to be diminished. But that was never necessarily the case.

In our time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture still handed out subsidies to farmers for every bushel of corn or wheat or rice they could grow. This promoted a form of agriculture that was extremely productive and extremely destructive—of the climate, among other things.

Approximately one-third of the carbon then in the atmosphere had formerly been sequestered in soils in the form of organic matter, but since we began plowing and deforesting, we’d been releasing huge quantities of this carbon into the atmosphere. At that time, the food system as a whole—that includes agriculture, food processing, and food transportation—contributed somewhere between 20-30 percent of the greenhouse gases produced by civilization—more than any other sector except energy. Fertilizer was always one of the biggest culprits for two reasons: it’s made from fossil fuels, and when you spread it on fields and it gets wet, it turns into nitrous oxide, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Slowly, we convinced the policy makers to instead give subsidies to farmers for every increment of carbon they sequestered in the soil.


Over time, we began to organize our agriculture so that it could heal the planet, feed us and tackle climate change. This began with shifting our food system from its reliance on oil, which is the central fact of industrial agriculture (not just machinery, but pesticides and fertilizers are all oil-based technologies), back to a reliance on solar energy: photosynthesis.

Carbon farming was one of the most hopeful things going on at that time in climate change research. We discovered that plants secrete sugars into the soil to feed the microbes they depend on, in the process putting carbon into the soil. This process of sequestering carbon at the same time improved the fertility and water-holding capacity of the soil. We began to relying on the sun—on photosynthesis—rather than on fossil fuels to feed ourselves. We learned that there are non-zero-sum ways we could feed ourselves AND heal the earth. That was just one of the big changes we made toward the sustainable food system you are lucky enough to take for granted.

Adapted from an interview in Vice Magazine.

An American public intellectual, Michael Pollan is a teacher, author and speaker on topics that include the environment, agriculture, the food industry, society and nutrition.


http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/18/pollan-letter-to-the-future/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #151 on: November 21, 2015, 04:51:48 pm »
Groundbreaking Ruling: State Has Constitutional Obligation to ‘Stem the Tide of Global Warming’ 

Our Children's Trust | November 20, 2015 9:33 am

Late last night, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill issued a groundbreaking ruling in the unprecedented case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come.


In a landmark decision, Judge Hill declared “[the youths’] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming … before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late.” Photo credit: Shutterstock


In a landmark decision, Judge Hill declared
Quote
“[the youths’] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming … before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late.”

Highlighting inextricable relationships between navigable waters and the atmosphere, and finding that separating the two is “nonsensical,” the judge found the public trust doctrine mandates that the state act through its designated agency “to protect what it holds in trust.” The court confirmed what the Washington youth and youth across the nation have been arguing in courts of law, that “[t]he state has a constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people.”

Quote
“It’s incredible to have the court finally say that we do have a right to a healthy atmosphere and that our government can’t allow it to be harmed,” said 13-year-old petitioner Gabriel Mandell. “This ruling means that what the Department of Ecology does going forward in its rulemaking has to protect us, the kids of Washington, and not just us, but future generations too, like my children and those to come. Now they can’t decide to protect short-term economic fears and ignore us because we have constitutional and public trust rights to a stable climate!”

The court validated the youths’ claims that the “scientific evidence is clear that the current rates of reduction mandated by Washington law … cannot ensure the survival of an environment in which [youth] can grow to adulthood safely.” The judge determined that the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard dramatically for several reasons.

The judge continued, writing that “current scientific evidence establishes that rapidly increasing global warming causes an unprecedented risk to the Earth, including land, sea, the atmosphere and all living plants and creatures.”

The youth petitioners first requested the state initiate greenhouse gas rulemaking procedures in June 2014. The state refused to do so in August of the same year. The youth appealed that refusal last September, and in a June 2015 decision highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis, the judge ordered the state to reconsider the youth’s petition taking into account current climate science.

Then, in July 2015, the youth plaintiffs met with Gov. Inslee to plead their case personally. Just 11 days later, Gov. Inslee ordered the Department of Ecology to institute greenhouse gas rulemaking, as the youth had requested for more than a year. In August 2015, the Department of Ecology again refused the youths’ request for a science-based rulemaking because they had initiated similar rulemaking at Gov. Inslee’s request. Because the Department of Ecology also rejected the youths’ constitutional and public trust rights, the case, resulting in this decision, was argued in front of Judge Hollis Hill on Nov. 3, 2015.

“In this important ruling, Judge Hill has made it very clear what [the Department of] Ecology must do when promulgating the Clean Air Rule: preserve, protect and enhance air quality for present and future generations and uphold the constitutional rights of these young people,” said Western Environmental Law Center attorney Andrea Rodgers. “We will hold Ecology accountable every step of the way to make sure that Judge Hill’s powerful words are put into action. This is a huge victory for our children and for the climate movement. To Gov. Inslee, we hope you take this message with you to Paris and heed Judge Hill’s finding that ‘if ever there were a time to recognize through action this right to preservation of a healthful and pleasant environment, the time is now.’”

This case is one of several similar state and international cases, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. Cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before trial judges in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and before appellate courts in Massachusetts and Oregon.

Significantly, similar legal issues are being considered in a federal lawsuit brought in August 2015 against the federal government by 21 young people from across the U.S. and Dr. James Hansen as guardian for all future generations, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Just last week in that case, the world’s largest fossil fuel industry representatives filed a request to intervene to protect their commercial economic interests in fossil fuel exploitation and to thwart the youth’s request for protection of their fundamental constitutional rights. The proposed intervenors, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (representing members ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries and virtually all other major refiners and petrochemical manufacturers), the American Petroleum Institute (representing 625 oil and natural gas companies) and the National Association of Manufacturers, called the youth’s case “a direct threat to [their] businesses.”

Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children’s Trust said, “This Washington decision establishing constitutional public trust protections for the atmosphere, together with the decision earlier this year doing the same in New Mexico, evidences a wake-up by the judiciary that our collective right to a habitable future is at stake and must be protected by the courts before it is too late. Judge Hill did not mince words on the need for science-based climate action now.” 


http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/20/stem-tide-climate-change/?
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #152 on: December 14, 2015, 07:33:06 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: Despite the COP21 "agreement", reality will prevail. The climate doesn't negotiate and is certainly not impressed with any ass hole or tiny group of them in our species claiming to be TPTB.


Why the COP21 "Agreement" is Smoke and Mirrors

War & Climate Change: Jeremy Corbyn on the Brutal Quest for Oil & the Need for a Sustainable Planet: video.

Top Climate Expert Kevin Anderson: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk. 

The biggest threat that climate change has in store for us. 

12/04/2015 12:12 PM 

Income Inequality = Climate Inequality, Says Oxfam

SustainableBusiness.com News

In the US, one of the major themes in our presidential campaign is income inequality between the richest 1% and the rest of our citizens. Not suprisingly, this theme also applies to climate change.  

Oxfam's new report - released at COP21 - lays bare "climate-change inequality": the world's richest 1% are also the biggest polluters by far, producing 175 times the carbon emissions as people in the bottom 10% of income.

Quote
The richest 10% are responsible for half the world's emissions, while the poorest half - roughly 3.5 billion people - produce only 10% of all emissions.

That 10% has no intention, despite the COP21 accord, of changing their giant carbon footprint suicidal ways. Here's the evidence of that suicidally stupid greed:

Oxfam says:

"While the richest citizens can and should contribute as individuals to cutting their own emissions through lifestyle changes, wherever they live, they can't solve the climate crisis through voluntary action alone. Their choices are often constrained by the decisions of their governments in all sorts of areas, from energy to transport policy.

"Without question, a weak agreement in Paris is no more in their interests than it is in the interests of the poorest and least responsible. Increasingly members of the richest 10% are experiencing the impacts of climate change themselves, and are mobilizing to demand action from their governments.

"The only beneficiaries of inadequate climate action in Paris and beyond are a much smaller elite with vested interests in the continuation of a high carbon and deeply unequal global economy.

Quote
The number of billionaires with interests in fossil fuel activities has risen from 54 in 2010 to 88 in 2015, while the size of their combined personal fortunes has expanded by around 50% from over $200 billion to more than $300 billion."


Read Oxfam's report, "Extreme Carbon Inequality": 
 
Website: http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26487

When I see this clock and this clock and this clock show greenhouse gas and pollution levels at survivable levels, I will entertain some hope that we can avoid climate catastrophe.

Until then, this "agreement" is a feel good toothless tiger.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #153 on: December 14, 2015, 10:34:34 pm »
12/14/2015 04:45 PM   
How The Paris Agreement Falls Short      

SustainableBusiness.com News
 
The Paris Agreement is fantastic news if only because it is the first time the entire world said Yes ... and by consensus ... pushed along by the business community - but it certainly falls short in many crucial ways.

 The Agreement is based on aspirations, not binding agreements, and anything done is purely voluntary. We are too far along on climate disruption for this approach to make sense, say many critics. But the fact is, it is the only way to get all countries on board. 

Saying ‘We'll have a 2°C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years' is worthless words, says climate scientist James Hansen. "There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned."

Hansen is referring to the fact that there is still no carbon tax and countries can still subsidize fossil fuels.

Quote
The only way to avoid catastrophic flooding of the world's major cities is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum 3% a year and impose a global carbon tax,
says Hansen.

"Despite the self-congratulatory statements from world leaders, the reality is they have set the planet on course to burn. Science tells us that emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels, need to peak by 2020 and come down 6-10% every year after that, yet 'fossil fuels' are not mentioned once in the entire agreement signed in Paris. Hence, there is no mention of stopping exploration for more, stopping building coal plants, oil pipelines, or fracking for more natural gas," says Chris Williams, author of the book, Ecology & Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. 

Another study warns that only "immediate and substantial" reductions can prevent massive, irreversible damage to the world's oceans and marine life by 2100. Without that, oceans will heat up, lose oxygen and become too acidic for much of life. 

"Impacts on key marine and coastal organisms and ecosystems are already detectable, and some face high risks well before 2100," say the international team of scientists.

"We are allowing ourselves to travel a uniquely dangerous path, and we are doing so without an appreciation for the consequences that lie ahead," Manuel Barange, Science Director of Plymouth Marine Laboratory told BBC.


Current World Emissions Path: Yellow shows country climate pledges, blue shows the path we must be on.


 This summer, Hansen and 16 other scientists released a paper showing that limiting warming to 2°C is extremely dangerous. All over the Earth, ice sheets are melting much faster than expected and sea levels could be up to five meters higher by the latter part of this century - inundating cities such as London, New York, Miami and Shanghai.
Quote
"More than half the world's cities are at risk,"
Hansen says.


Quote
"The economic cost of a business as usual approach to emissions is incalculable. It will become questionable whether global governance will break down. You're talking about hundreds of million of climate refugees from places such as Pakistan and China. Civilization was set up and developed with a stable, constant coastline."

Speaking of US Republicans - where every leading presidential candidate denies the existence of climate change - Hansen says: 

"Many conservatives know climate change is not a hoax. But those running for president are hamstrung by the fact they think they can't get the nomination if they say this is an issue. They wouldn't get money from the fossil fuel industry."

Still, Hansen believes humans will meet the climate challenge. He points to the flattening of global emissions we're seeing and sees China as emerging as the world leader, not the US. 

"I think we will get there because China is rational. Their leaders are mostly trained in engineering and such things, they don't deny climate change and they have a huge incentive, which is air pollution. It's so bad in their cities they need to move to clean energies. They realize it's not a hoax. But they will need cooperation," Hansen says.

Read our articles, Global Emissions Fall This Year, Coal Use Peaked in 2013!

International Momentum Builds For Price On Carbon, End to Fossil Subsidies.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26499
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #154 on: December 15, 2015, 04:04:40 pm »

Will Paris Agreement Save Us From Climate Chaos?
SNIPPET:

•The preamble to the agreement suggests that governments “should consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants … as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.” But, there is nothing in the actual binding part of the agreement to ensure that any of these obligations are addressed.

•There’s no mention of “food security” anywhere in the preamble or the binding part of the agreement.

•The agreement contains only limited acknowledgement of the responsibilities of the most highly polluting countries to those in the global south and furthest north which did not create the climate disaster.

•The agreement continues to support false solutions such as carbon markets that allow polluters to pay or trade “credits” with those who are actually stewarding their farms and forests.

The agreement contains no mention of the need to stop using fossil fuels and turn to alternative energy sources. This omission is simply ridiculous greenwashing. We must immediately keep the oil in the soil and the coal in the hole or the planet will continue cooking.



http://ecowatch.com/2015/12/15/paris-climate-chaos/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #155 on: January 02, 2016, 09:50:44 pm »



Quote
How do wealthy families protect their wealth when their country has been successfully invaded?

Geoff Smith, undergraduate degree in History

28.9k Views

My former wife's family was extremely wealthy prior to World War 2. They lived in Austria and had a prescience that horrible things were to come in 1937. They sold most of the assets and invested in diamonds and antique furniture. They hired an accomplished woodworker to make ingenious hiding places within the furniture.

They then placed the diamonds in the furniture and shipped it to many different storage facilities in many different countries.

While they lost a fortune in lost treasure to countries in Eastern Europe they had successfully recovered the shipments sent to Australia and South America.

They had many Jewish friends in Austria that thought they were paranoid.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-wealthy-families-protect-their-wealth-when-their-country-has-been-successfully-invaded

Aglbert NOTE: Those STUPID, CLOSED MINDED, IGNORANT people that labeled those intelligent people (that saw the writing on the wall and took measures to weather the coming storm) as "paranoid" are EXACTLY like the fossil fuelers that, in the face of overwhelming evidence of assured climate catastrophe because of 402 PPM (and climbing) CO2 pollution, say, uh, see below:


The Fossil Fuelers   DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleteing CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or     PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #156 on: January 03, 2016, 02:34:33 pm »
   
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/briefings/forests/2013/Offsets-briefing-Flawed-Logic.pdf

For those who believe this CO2 mess can be cleaned up lickety split with biochar or whatever, you, like the fossil fuel worshiping, biosphere math challenged "fine fellows" before you, should proceed to window number three (see below).




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #157 on: January 08, 2016, 06:34:04 pm »
Thinking Beyond the Age of Fire


Posted on Jan 4, 2016

By Tim Radford / Climate News Network

This Creative Commons-licensed piece first appeared at Climate News Network.

LONDON—In December, in an unprecedented demonstration of international unity, 195 countries adopted the first-ever, universal, legally-binding agreement to take action on climate change.

It was a decision that, to be truly effective, requires an obligation to think again, at the most fundamental level, about how humans manage energy and maintain the essential comforts of civilisation.

Humans cannot go back to the beginning and start again, but if they had to, Walt Patterson’s new book would be as fundamental a guide to the challenges as any.

It doesn’t contain many helpful prescriptions about the most efficient exploitation of the emerging technologies that could deliver renewable energy, or deliver more bang for the megabuck of investment. But that’s not the point.

Patterson’s point is that a new start means a fresh attitude, and Electricity vs Fire is as nice a statement of the essential simplicity – and the scale – of the challenge as I have yet seen.

Patterson first made his name 45 years ago as an informed critic of the nuclear industry, and as one of the early voices of Friends of the Earth. He starts simply by reducing what humans do to six simple and very easily described physical actions.

Quote
•Humans control heat flow: that is, they put on clothes when cold, and open windows when hot.

•They adjust local temperatures: that is, they put a log on a fire or turn down a thermostat.

•Third, they make light: by candle, by electric lamp.

•Fourth, they exert force: they lift weights and push open the door.

•Fifth: they move things: this sounds like exerting force – and it requires force – but the whole of civilisation is based on traffic, on commerce, on the flow of objects, so you can see why he makes it a separate physical action.

•And lastly, humans manage information: they talk, listen, reason, exchange ideas, amass data, create mental pictures of worlds they cannot see, construct histories, and compose paradigms that help them work out how things came to be as they are, and how they could be different.

Everything Homo sapiens has achieved in the last 70,000 years involves all of, but only, those six actions. And for most of those 700 centuries, humans have achieved everything using only tools, and fire, and – but only for a century or so – electricity.

And much of that electricity is made for us with help from fire – coal, oil, gas fire – which delivers carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in quantities so vast that global temperatures have begun to rise and the once-stable global climate has begun to change in ways that, ultimately, threaten civilisation itself.

So the trick is to switch to electrical supplies that don’t depend on fire. We’ve started. But the logic of this book insists, to really change, we need to think the whole process through from the beginning, and understand that humanity’s profound dependence on fire must end.

Chance of change

Having listed the six physical energy-dependent actions that define us as humans, Patterson pursues each of them, as histories, and as opportunities that really do offer change.

The arrival of the combined cycle gas turbine in continuous operation, for instance, meant that generating stations could be smaller, better and clean enough to be close to users, and built in shorter time. Where natural gas was cheap, you could have electricity.


But such innovation pointed to even smaller, better and cleaner ways, and once a “renewable” – a wind turbine or photovoltaic array – is in existence, electricity becomes not a commodity, but a process, with options for new ways of financing it.

Patterson explores the inventive ways we can control heat efficiently without fire, and concedes that domestic cooking “is not, in the main, a significantly wasteful way to use fire. In rich countries the waste occurs much more in the increasing prevalence of processed food.”

“Infrastructure changes only slowly. But minds can change in an instant. Today could be the day you start thinking beyond the Fire Age”

He delivers analysis, and instances better ways of doing things, but the value of a book such as this is that it simply frames the important questions.

On the exertion of force, for instance: “Many people might now argue that most of the undertakings that use lots of brute force, such as large dams and river diversions, mountain-top removal coal mining, tar sands extraction or uranium mining, are at best ill-advised and frequently destructive.

“Closer examination suggests that such undertakings proceed only because those promoting them do not pay the costs of their actions.”

He points out that the whole global economy is based on fire and its consequences, and the consumer society exists to turn resources into waste. The phrase “consumer durables” becomes an oxymoron.

New values needed
Quote

To move beyond this “stupid and dangerous” situation, humans “need to rethink the whole value structure that governs what we do and how.”

This is more easily said than done, but he foresees human activity switching towards natural systems, functioning not with the brute force of fire but the elegance of electricity.

One bit of this reviewer murmurs: “Good luck with that!” But another bit endorses his final words: “Infrastructure changes only slowly. But minds can change in an instant. Today could be the day you start thinking beyond the Fire Age.”

Tim Radford, a founding editor of Climate News Network, worked for The Guardian for 32 years, for most of that time as science editor. He has been covering climate change since 1988.


http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/thinking_beyond_the_age_of_fire_20160104

Agelbert COMMENT: In regard to fossil fuels, it is amusing, in analyzing the prejudices that support their use, how slender the foundation they rest upon is.

The problem with the fossil fuel polluting status quo is that custom and prejudice accompany it and unthinking resistance to change perpetuate it. In human affairs custom, prejudice and resistance to change are stronger than truth and logic.  :(

We need to change that in order to survive our "WE, the 'apex predators', can do WHATEVER"  suicidal STUPIDITY.


Quote
"Human nature is bad. Good is a human product . . . A warped piece of wood must be steamed and forced before it is made straight; a metal blade must be put to the whetstone before it becomes sharp. Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles." —Sun Tzu

Patterson is a good teacher. We do as he says or perish in a nuclear and fossil fuels fouled nest.

Renewable is the cheaper energy option without fossil fuel and hidden nuclear subsides.

Top Climate Expert Kevin Anderson: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk.

Our Responsibility to Future Generations
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #158 on: January 11, 2016, 03:20:23 pm »
[embed=640,380]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZitR4gqxN0[/embed]

Steve is right. It's time for people to get right with God.


No truer words spoken.
Thanks Ag.

You are always welcome, my friend. 

Work While There's Day light - Night is Coming...

John 9:4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #159 on: January 23, 2016, 06:54:03 pm »
Is Humanity On the Eve of Extinction? 
Jan. 21, 2016 1:23 pm By Thom Hartmann

According to NASA and NOAA scientists, 2015 was the warmest year ever for global land and ocean surfaces, dating all the way to 1880.

And it's not just American scientists who are reporting that last year was the warmest on record, British scientists reported that it was the warmest year since 1850, and Japanese scientists reported that it was the warmest year since 1891.

Keep in mind, 2014 had set the previous record for global surface temperatures, and 2015 just beat that record by a longshot.
 

Part of what's going has to do with an unusually warm Pacific Ocean due to an El Nino that's going on right now, but that doesn't explain it all.

As Dr. Michael Mann explained to the New York Times,  if the global climate weren't warming, the odds of setting two back-to-back record years would be about one chance in every 1,500 pairs of years.

He added though, that because the planet is warming, the odds of setting back-to-back record years is really closer to one in ten now.

The really scary part though, is that there's good evidence that this is nothing compared to what's to come.
Just as William F. Ruddiman argued in a paper from 2003, even though humans hadn't industrialized, we had already started having a major impact on the Earth's atmosphere and its natural cycles as far back as 8000 years ago.

And that makes sense, because 8000 years ago is about the time that early agriculture appeared in Eurasia and humans started clearing, and burning, forests to make more space for agriculture and human settlements.

In his research,  Ruddiman points out that based on the natural Earth's natural cycles for methane and carbon over the last 400,000 years, we should see a decrease in both gases starting roughly 11,000 years ago and continuing for another several thousand years.

Instead, we see that carbon dioxide and methane levels started to rise in the atmosphere starting about 8000 years ago, marking a sharp movement away from what had occurred for over 400,000 years of Earth history.

Recent research from the Anthropocene Working Group at the University of Leicester shows that humans have almost always had a noticeable impact on the planet's natural cycles, but our impact has been exceptional since the start of the industrial revolution.

In fact, the 24 co-authors argue that we've entered a new and distinct geological era, just within the last 50 years.

They call it the "Anthropocene era" from the greek word "Anthropos" meaning "man".

The authors argue that even though we've been having an impact on our planet for thousands of years, it's only been during the last 50 years that human activity became the main factor driving almost every single natural process on Earth.

And that brings us back to the relationship between global surface temperatures, methane, and carbon dioxide.

Because as these    charts     show, if atmospheric temperatures continue to follow the same sky-rocketing trend that methane and carbon dioxide have during the last century, we could very well be approaching the eve of extinction.

And none of this is taking into account the greenhouse gases that are trapped in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could be up to 21 quadrillion grams of organic carbon, and up to 400 billion tons of methane gases.

If we continue on this course, if we continue to spew methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the pursuit of cheap and short sighted economic growth, we can guarantee that our planet will continue to warm.

And, as the planet warms, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (Nature International Weekly Journal of Science:  Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica )  will begin to rapidly melt, which means that up to 21 quadrillion grams of carbon, and up to 400 billion tonnes of methane would be released into the atmosphere.

At that point, if humans are even still around, there will be literally nothing that we can do to stop a planetary mass extinction and to save humanity.

More and more scientists agree that natural processes don't drive the climate anymore, human activity does.

And it's only human activity that can stop our march towards planetary extinction.

Which means we need to put a price on carbon.

And we need to aggressively convert our energy system to one that's 100% renewable, and we need to find carbon and methane-neutral ways of transporting our goods, building our infrastructure, and constructing our cities.

The technology to achieve all of those goals already exists, and we now face a choice as a global society.

We'll go extinct if we keep doing what's easy, and what's comfortable. 

But we can save the planet, if we make bold decisions and take immediate action to minimize human impact, and thus restore the planet's own natural processes and the balance that existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the first human settlements.   

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/01/humanity-eve-extinction#sthash.FoBR5OHQ.dpuf
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #160 on: January 27, 2016, 02:55:37 pm »
I may be the king of beasts but Homo SAPS own the title of King of Stupidity.


Doomsday Clock Stays at Three Minutes to Midnight: At the ‘Brink’ of Man-Made Apocalypse

With “utter dismay,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the symbolic Doomsday Clock will hold at three minutes to midnight—at the “brink” of man-made apocalypse—because world leaders have failed to take the necessary steps to protect citizens from the grave threats of   nuclear war and  runaway climate change.

View various charts at link:
http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/

“Three minutes (to midnight) is too close. Far too close,” reads the statement by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.

The decision not to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock “is not good news,” it continues, “but an expression of dismay that world leaders continue to fail to focus their efforts and the world’s attention on reducing the extreme danger posed by nuclear weapons and climate change. When we call these dangers existential, that is exactly what we mean: They threaten the very existence of civilization and therefore should be the first order of business for leaders who care about their constituents and their countries.”

The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 17 Nobel Laureates, ruled last year to move the clock forward from five minutes to midnight to three in response to the competing threats of “unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals.”

The board acknowledged some bright spots over the past year, namely the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris Climate Accord, but said that “they constitute only small bright spots in a darker world situation full of potential for catastrophe.”

The statement continues:


Even as the Iran agreement was hammered out, tensions between the U.S. and Russia rose to levels reminiscent of the worst periods of the Cold War. Conflict in Ukraine and Syria continued, accompanied by dangerous bluster and brinkmanship, with Turkey, a NATO member, shooting down a Russian warplane involved in Syria, the director of a state-run Russian news agency making statements about turning the U.S. to radioactive ash and NATO and Russia repositioning military assets and conducting significant exercises with them. Washington and Moscow continue to adhere to most existing nuclear arms control agreements, but the U.S., Russia and other nuclear weapons countries are engaged in programs to modernize their nuclear arsenals, suggesting that they plan to keep and maintain the readiness of their nuclear weapons for decades, at least—despite their pledges, codified in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, the presenters repeatedly called attention to U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to modernize    the country’s nuclear arsenal.

“What message does this send to non-nuclear nations about our intention to build smaller, more useable weapons?” asked Lawrence Krauss, chair of the Board of Sponsors and foundation professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments at Arizona State University. “There is no sane strategic use of nuclear weapons. We need to reduce our nuclear arsenal, not make a new generation of weapons.”

Further, the panel described the COP21 agreement as merely a “tentative success.”

Sivan Kartha, a member of the Board and senior scientist and climate change expert with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), said national pledges to reduce carbon emissions are “manifestly, unequivocally inadequate.”

“The voluntary pledges made in Paris to limit greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to the task of averting drastic climate change,” he continued. “These incremental steps must somehow evolve into the fundamental change in world energy systems needed if climate change is to ultimately be arrested.”

Since the clock was first introduced in 1947, the hands have moved 22 times. As Rachel Bronson, executive director and publisher of the Bulletin, explained, the clock represents a “summary view of leading experts deeply engaged in the existential issues of our time.”

It has become a “universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability” and is a symbol of “how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making,” the Bulletin states. Such dangers include nuclear weapons, “climate-changing technologies, emerging biotechnologies and cybertechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation or by accident, to our way of life and to the planet.”

The clock does not move every year. In fact, prior to 2015, the countdown hadn’t changed since 2012, when it ticked ahead one minute.

A broadcast of this year’s announcement can be viewed here.


Doomsday clock history video at the end of the above story.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/27/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight/


The M.I.C. and their FASCIST Fossil Fuel industry pals weigh in on the above news. SEE BELOW:
 





He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #161 on: February 21, 2016, 07:54:06 pm »
"We did not get to our imminent climate catastrophe by accident. WE got here because of the WORSHIP of 'PROGRESS'." 


John Michael Greer: False Promises
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #162 on: February 24, 2016, 03:03:00 pm »
Quote

Dear A. G.,

Last week, Climate Reality Founder and Chairman Al Gore spoke at the 2016 TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. This talk came nearly a decade after Vice President Gore last spoke on the TED stage, and we can say with certainty, the future of our planet looks very different today than in 2006.

Today, we’re truly hopeful. 
 
Hope isn’t always easy. With global temperature records being broken month after month, rising seas off coastal cities like Miami causing “sunny day flooding,” droughts and wildfires destroying thousands of acres of forests, and more severe hurricanes and typhoons, many wonder how we’ll solve this planetary crisis in our lifetimes.

But we want to remind you that you can – and should – be hopeful. Here are a few reasons why:

•In 2000, analysts projected the world would have 30 gigawatts of wind energy capacity installed by 2010. In 2015, the world passed this mark by 14.5 times!

•Experts also projected in 2002 that the world would install 1 gigawatt of solar power per year by 2010. Last year, we beat that figure by 58 times over. And this year, we are on track to exceed that prediction by 68 times over!

•The cost of solar energy has decreased about 10 percent each year for the past 30 years, and we’re getting closer to grid parity in more and more markets around the world, which means solar power will soon cost less than electricity from fossil fuels in more and more places around the world!

Then there’s the Paris Agreement. In December, 195 nations reached a historic agreement at the UN’s COP 21 climate conference in Paris, to reduce carbon emissions and put us on a path to a sustainable future. The Paris Agreement marked a turning point for our movement and will have a positive impact on the health of people everywhere and the planet for generations to come.

Ready to learn more about the future of our planet? Watch our Chairman, Al Gore, give his latest TED talk and learn more about the challenges we’re facing, what the world can look like if our world leaders live up to their promises in the Paris Agreement, and why he’s optimistic that we can and will solve the climate crisis.

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/ideas-worth-spreading

Thank you for all that you do every day,

- Your friends at Climate Reality

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #163 on: March 06, 2016, 01:11:40 am »

Earth Days (2009) - Full Movie
« Last Edit: March 12, 2016, 10:08:25 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Future Earth
« Reply #164 on: March 12, 2016, 10:25:12 pm »


Abigail Mnookin: Why I support the carbon pollution tax
Quote
 
Putting a price on carbon would begin to account for the damage that burning fossil fuels is doing to both people and the planet.
Mar. 11, 2016, 6:55 pm by Commentary

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Abigail Mnookin, who is the membership coordinator of Brattleboro Time Trade, an instructor at the Vermont Wilderness School, a regular commentator on Vermont Public Radio, and serves on the board of Food Connects. In addition, she now works with 350Vermont on their Mother Up! campaign, organizing parents for climate action.

Unprecedented drought in California, widespread flooding in South America, staggering snow in Mexico, shipping in snow for Alaska’s Iditarod dog sled race, sap running unexpectedly in Vermont in January. Although these are strange weather patterns, they’re becoming the new normal in an era of human-caused climate change.

It’s easy to feel powerless and think that nothing we do makes any difference. But as the mother of a young child, I must believe we can mitigate the worst effects of climate change; that the world we give her is one of promise and possibility.

There’s no simple solution or easy fix. But one important step in the right direction is to put a price on carbon pollution. In Vermont’s current legislative session, the House Natural Resources Committee will continue to review carbon tax proposals, and I hope they move these bills forward.

The carbon pollution tax is supported by Energy Independent Vermont, a growing coalition of diverse organizations, including Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Vermont Energy Investment Corp., and recently, the Vermont Council on Rural Development. Their bill consists of a three-part plan. Put a price on carbon pollution. Help Vermonters save energy and save money by increasing funding for programs such as low-income weatherization.

Cut taxes for Vermonters and Vermont businesses.

The proposed changes would not only de-incentivize consumption, but also incentivize efficiency and public transportation. Even more notably, under one proposal, 90 percent of the revenue would be returned to Vermonters in the forms of rebates and other tax relief. This will help ensure that low- and middle-income people don’t unfairly carry the tax burden.

Quote

As activist and author Bill McKibben recently stated: “When it comes to climate change, the essential problem is not one group’s preferences against another’s. It’s not — at bottom — industry versus environmentalists or Republicans against Democrats. It’s people against physics, which means that compromise and trade-off don’t work.”
McKibben was speaking of the need to keep 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground. But the same logic applies to Vermont’s proposed carbon pollution tax.



Putting a price on carbon would begin to account for the damage that burning fossil fuels is doing to both people and the planet. It isn’t the sole solution or silver bullet to our climate woes. But it’s a necessary step that’s proven to decrease consumption, and Vermont has an opportunity to demonstrate political will by leading the way.

After all, our future — yours, mine, and our children’s — depends on it.


Abigail Mnookin will be hosting an informational meeting about the proposed Carbon Pollution Tax at her home in Brattleboro on Tuesday, March 29th at 7pm. Contact her at abby@350vt.org if you’d like to attend.

http://vtdigger.org/2016/03/11/abigail-mnookin-why-i-support-the-carbon-pollution-tax/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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