Tags
Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Arctic Ice Melt, Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Department of Defense, Director of the Oceans Institute of the University of Western Australia Marine Scientist Prof Carlos Duarte, Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers, Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, Environmental Collapse, Homeland Security, NASA’s Chief Scientist Gale Allen, National Science Foundation Director Cora Marett, Peter Wadhams
This will be the first time I have reblogged an entire piece, but circumstances warrant that I do so. Chilling developments…
This week, a number of top scientists, experts, DoD and Homeland Security Department notables are convening an emergency meeting warning White House officials that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free during summertime within two years.
This A-Team (A for Arctic) includes NASA’s chief scientist Gale Allen, National Science Foundation Director Cora Marett, Director of the Oceans Institute of the University of Western Australia marine scientist Prof Carlos Duarte, and nine other top Arctic specialists together with key representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.
The Washington meeting is the second major climate emergency meeting of its kind to occur within the past month. Just a few weeks ago, the UK held its own climate meeting in response to severe and unprecedented weather occurring throughout Europe this winter and spring.
Scientists and specialists descending on the White House are now echoing increasingly urgent warnings coming from Arctic…
View original post 1,306 more words
Several years ago when I first learned about climate change, I quickly became concerned about feedbacks, tipping points, and extinction. I wrote to a bunch of scientists and other people asking the same question – once we start the initial forcing with CO2, won’t mass extinctions inevitably follow? Two replies stand out for their brevity. One said, Can you spell a.l.b.e.d.o e.f.f.e.c.t? I had to look it up. The other, a paleoclimatologist said, Climate change is ALWAYS followed by mass extinctions.
LikeLike
The circle of life: We will become what we have burned – fossil fuels.
LikeLike
just brought my little bucket garden in for the night as it will freeze here tonight, left the creeping juniper out as it’s really heavy. my daughter did a report on this very subject last year about the jet stream moving south, and we were discussing it this very afternoon.
here’s the thing, i think they know it’s game over, this why DHS is arming to the teeth. more later, parental duties call.
LikeLike
i don’t think we can slow it down, to do so would take a massive infrastructure investment, and i don’t mean more machines (solar, wind) i mean underground housing, massive catchment basins for water, contouring of the land, lots of stuff.
the current way of business favors the few, they probably plan to retreat to prepared sanctuaries.
i wish this had happened when i was younger and more able.
one thing we could do right now is stop the war machine, we could make laws forcing manufacturing to be done onshore, we could reduce the carbon footprint of our current technology, but it won’t happen for the reason stated above.
LikeLike
As you say, radical changes would be required to prevent catastrophe, but if we have not done anything up to the 11th hour…
LikeLike
I tell my friends about the vanishing arctic ice, and they are very optimistic about great days ahead, with such opportunities up there, along with the great news of an almost unending supply of natural gas. We are, they feel, entering a great era for humanity, if only the treehuggers would get out of the way.
LikeLike
At this point I simply ignore such people. I consider them the Dodo birds of the human race.
LikeLike
nevertheless, moving north might not be a bad idea, beat the rush. my aforementioned daughter speaks french, she’s thinking Quebec.
LikeLike
Greenland will be the only place North with a chance for survival. Did you read this?:
Free Markets, Corporate Profits and Mass Extinctions
LikeLike
there’s a lot there in that link. of course hayek lived in a dream world, a perfect world would be nice if you could find one; but in our world we deal with monopolistic trans-nationals.
the free market mantra has become standard issue, just listen to our president 😦 look at his selections for cabinet posts.
and yes, anti-intellectualism abounds, especially where i live, problem is the techno-narcissicists are doing just about as much damage.
maybe there is a technical fix, but with 10 billion by 2050 or whatever?
the archdruid is doing a series of posts on the religion of progress, seems apropos.
you are well versed in this subject, CO2 starting going up as soon as humans discovered fire.
when i imagine the future, i think back to the extinction of 125,000 years ago, the population of Africa was reduced to 60 “breeding pairs” (as it was delicately put on NOVA), in about 6 villages, but the climate improved and eventually a second mass migration out of Africa occurred. this is my understanding.
now, in my imaginings i have no problem seeing the grain belt disappear, no problem with a desert across the mid-section of the planet, but i always figured up around Hudson Bay, Great Slave, and the Canadian Rockies there would be pockets of survivors.
we are living on borrowed water in my neck of the woods
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8359076/US-farmers-fear-the-return-of-the-Dust-Bowl.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021907973
they can irrigate all they want, but if temps. get as high as you say it won’t do any good.
LikeLike
And this: http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/emergency-climate-meeting-white-house-officials-told-arctic-ocean-could-be-ice-free-within-two-years/
There is no escape. I don’t even talk to my kids, 19 and 24, about it. Let them have fun and plan for a bright future while they still can. Their plans will not be realized, but the young like to dream. Let them dream.
It makes me sick at heart to think what they will face, what they will miss.
LikeLike
I open the news today and read this:
CBS/AP/ May 3, 2013, 8:52 AM
Wind-swept Calif. wildfire reaches Pacific Coast Highway, burns toward Malibu
LOS ANGELES A wildfire raged around a coastal region in Southern California early Friday morning, after flaring up in strong Santa Ana winds a day earlier and cutting a 10-mile path to the ocean.
Due to record high temperatures, extremely low humidity, and wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour, the state is now in Day Three of a fire season that usually doesn’t start until July…
Gee, let me think what the primary underlying culprit is of this out-of-control fire in an earlier than normal fire season. Wake up all you frogs in a boiling pot!!!!
LikeLike
Yep. We are all going to burn, because this is true all over the world, even in places where there is no drought, like northeastern US (where they are francically doing prescribed burns in county and state parks that never used to burn) and the UK.
“Elevated levels of O3 and increased N deposition together with long-term drought predispose the SBM forests to massive bark beetle attacks making them susceptible to catastrophic fires.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17450286
Abstract:
Since the mid-1950s, native pines in the San Bernardino Mountains (SBM) in southern California have shown symptoms of decline. Initial studies in 1963 showed that ozone (O3) generated in the upwind Los Angeles Basin was responsible for the injury and decline of sensitive trees. Ambient O3 decreased significantly by the mid-1990s, resulting in decreased O3 injury and improved tree growth. Increased growth of trees may also be attributed to elevated atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. Since most of the N deposition to mixed conifer forest stands in the SBM results from dry deposition of nitric acid vapor (HNO3) and ammonia (NH3), characterization of spatial and temporal distribution of these two pollutants has become essential. Although maximum daytime O3 concentrations over last 40 years have significantly decreased (approximately 3-fold), seasonal means have been reduced much less (approximately 1.5-fold), with 2-week long means occasionally exceeding 100 ppb in the western part of the range. In the same area, significantly elevated concentrations of HNO3 and NH3, up to 17.5 and 18.5 microg/m3 as 2-week averages, respectively, have been determined. Elevated levels of O3 and increased N deposition together with long-term drought predispose the SBM forests to massive bark beetle attacks making them susceptible to catastrophic fires.
LikeLike
i had not heard about this, myopia, busy, things to do, cars to fix, the usual.
see, all i’ve been thinking was it’s cold at night, and i have to somehow get thru the work week.
LikeLike
And that is probably more of a problem getting people to be aware of climate change than any other….people are just too busy.
But remember when our leaders desperately wanted to get us on board with invasion and occupation of Iraq? It took only a few weeks of constant, streaming information about threats from Saddam to get almost every American out there flag waving, and many even trying to sign up to go fight Iraqis.
Our enemy is the press. They could have our citizens desperately wanting action if they so desired. And this time they would only have to give us facts, not nonsense. But our editors and journalists have purposely mostly ignored the subject or purposely misinformed us.
I say that is criminal.
And I don’t see it changing.
WAF
(We are ______)
LikeLike
PFG,
i have posted this link
http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart
other places, it got a big yawn. when you start digging it’s clear that the same people who own the MIC have major stakes in all the major networks. the Sunday show adverts are quite revealing, it’s Boeing, GE, Northrop-Grumman, BP, Exxon, the talking heads pull grave faces full of gravitas, talk seriously, all while ignoring the elephant in the room. techno-triumphalism is the order of the day, analysis in isolation.
which reminds me,
where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep?
wherever he wants too.
LikeLike
Sandy Krolick calls it the “political-military-security-entertainment complex”.
Looks like he left out media and finance, so I’ll modify it to the following:
The “Political-Military-Financial-Security-Infotainment-Amusement complex”.
The all-intertwining and opaque entity that rules us.
I will have to draw a cartoon of that monstrosity.
LikeLike
At the top all of the media and large financial, fossil fuel and industrial corporations are the same people sitting on the boards. Lots of Kissinger types. They see it all differently than we do. The world will treat them far differently than it will us as all collapses, or so they think.
LikeLike
Good point. Let me rephrase for the final picture of the beast:
“Politico-Corporate-Military-Financial-Security-Infotainment-Amusement” complex.
I’m reminded of this post:
America: a Banana Republic with Nukes.
LikeLike
PCMFSIA
Perfect. All in one capsule.
LikeLike
meh, where’s my comment? You can watch it live here! Go Rosie!!!
http://stream.nbcsports.com/horse-racing/?pid=70&referrer=http://stream.nbcsports.com/liveextra/
LikeLike