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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Antarctic Ice Melt, Arctic Ice Melt, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Guy McPherson at the 'Age of Limits' Conference, Inverted Totalitarianism, James Hansen, Mass Die Off, Nature Bats Last, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Runaway Climate Change, The Nemesis Effect, Tim Garrett
I have yet to meet Guy McPherson, but with a blog entitled “Collapse of Industrial Civilization”, it appears inevitable. Who else on Earth has such an unvarnished view of the horror show modern man is orchestrating? Truth delivered up with no hidden agendas is a very bitter and difficult pill to swallow, but being a true radical means getting at the root of the problem irrespective of “ideological and/or theological prejudice“, or as Guy says…
For those wanting to keep abreast of the deteriorating habitability of the planet, Guy posts periodic updates to the unfolding climate chaos here.
There exists no high quality recording of Guy’s speech at the most recent “Age of Limits” conference that I know of. In order to review his talk I watched this clip and studied his powerpoint slides which he sent me and which are posted here.
I’m certain that many who attend Guy’s speeches don’t internalize all the information he sets forth, fore if they did, their language would lose all the culturally ingrained phrases of hope for any kind of eleventh hour rescue by our technology-worshipping society. If there were a fix, don’t you think we would have implemented it by now before setting off a list of unstoppable positive feedback loops, known and unknown? Hell, even the much-trumpeted cleanliness of natural gas has turned out to be a farce. A recent study shows methane release from natural gas production is much higher than was known.
We seem to be leaking greenhouse gases from every orifice. Yes Moore’s law and the illusion of infinite progress have brainwashed everyone into believing mankind is immortal, forever in control of primal earth forces. In 2000, Chris Bright of the Worldwatch Institute introduced the term “nemesis effect” which refers to the cumulative effect of multiple stressors and conditions that lead to unanticipated consequences. Taken as a whole, the information in Guy’s speech equates to a global nemesis effect which is taking the planetary biosphere past the threshold of human habitability.
After stating the “benefits to the biosphere” from the collapse of industrial civilization, he presented a brief history of climate science’s implication of man as the primary culprit of climate change:
Benefits to the Biosphere from the Collapse of Industrial Civilization
– will slow down climate chaos, but too late to stop it.
– will terminate human population overshoot which is proceeding currently at the rate of 217,000 per day (births minus deaths every single day).
– will slow or stop the 6th Great Extinction proceeding at a pace of roughly 217 species per day (conservative estimate).
– will terminate environmental decay such as the soil we wash away into the oceans, the air we foul, the water we pollute, and all the other consequences of industrial civilization.
Brief History of Climate Change Science and the Pinpointing of Human-Induced Climate Change
In 1847, George Perkins Marsh is credited with being the first person to have implicated human activity as the source of climate change.
In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, considered the father of climate change science, predicted a 1 degree Celsius rise by the year 2,000. Few quote him today because he thought that a slight warming of the atmosphere would be a good thing for human agriculture. In the end, no such benefits will result from human-induced climate change due to the extreme weather swings and our oil-dependent agricultural system…
So much for global warming being beneficial
Last year, James Hansen (et al), pointed out that extreme weather events of all kinds (hot, cold, wet and dry) are becoming more frequent. In fact, their statistical analysis of historical data (as opposed to computer modelling of future events) demonstrated that extreme events (i.e. more than 3 standard deviation above or below average) are now ten times more likely than they used to be…
Our Oil-Dependent Agricultural System Spews CO2
Over the past 40 years, about 2 billion hectares of soil – equivalent to 15% of the Earth’s land area (an area larger than the United States and Mexico combined) – have been degraded through human activities, and about 30% of the world’s cropland have become unproductive. But it takes on average a whole century just to generate a single millimetre of topsoil lost to erosion.
Soil is therefore, effectively, a non-renewable but rapidly depleting resource.
We are running out of time. Within just 12 years, the report says, conservative estimates suggest that high water stress will afflict all the main food basket regions in North and South America, west and east Africa, central Europe and Russia, as well as the Middle East, south and south-east Asia.
Unfortunately, though, the report overlooks another critical factor – the inextricable link between oil and food. Over the last decade, food and fuel prices have been heavily correlated…
Past Predictions of Mass Extinction and Human Die-Off
Despite the rantings of wingnuts like Alex Jones, free-market ideologues, and conspiracy theorists, the following warning given in 1986 by Robert Watson, who was the director of NASA’s upper atmospheric program at that time, remains prescient…
A dramatic loss of ozone over antarctica proves the “greenhouse effect” is real and presages a gradual warming of the Earth that threatens floods, drought, human misery in a few decades and – if not checked – eventual extinction of the human species, scientists warned Tuesday…
James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned Wednesday that human-made climate change could lead to the deaths of millions of species.
“If we continue with business as usual this century, we will drive to extinction 20 to 50 percent of the species on the planet,” he told Current TV host Eliot Spitzer. “We are pushing the system an order of magnitude faster than any natural changes of climate in the past.”
In a recently published study, Hansen and his team concluded that the drastic increase in record high temperatures in recent years could be directly traced to human-made climate change, particularly the increase in greenhouse gases…
Large-Scale Climate Assessment Projects
Guy then goes into some large-scale climate assessment studies which do not include data for:
(a) Positive Feedbacks (tipping points)
(b) Economic Collapse
Back in 1990, the U.N. Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases warned:
Beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.
Our Dying Oceans and Back to the Future with Mass Extinctions
CO2 levels are now at 400ppm which does not account for methane and other greenhouse gases accumulating from human activity. CO2 has never exceeded 280 ppm in the last million years (based on actual readings of atmospheric chemistry from Antarctic ice-core data.) The last time greenhouse gases were at 400 ppm was three million years ago — a time when no humans existed. Humans have managed to radically alter the chemistry of the atmosphere to such a degree as to replicate pre-historic levels when no humans walked the Earth.
Phytoplankton has plummeted in the last century due to ocean warming and acidification:
A 2012 Science study found that the pace of ocean acidification today is ten times faster than during the PETM – the most rapid acidification event in the geologic record. Looking as far back as 300 million years, the study found that at current trends the projected rate of acidification of the world’s oceans will be the worst ever – worse than all the major extinctions of this time span: the end-Cretaceous, the end-Triassic, and even the end-Permian 250 million years ago, when 96% of marine species went extinct.
The current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 million years of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.
Considering the projections of increasing temperatures from the numerous large-scale assessments listed above, we can logically predict that the remaining phytoplankton, the base of the food chain, will suffer catastrophically.
Can CO2 Emissions and Economic Growth Be Decoupled?
Even with the economic meltdown of 2008, carbon emissions only slowed temporarily, quickly rebounding in 2010.
What this implies is that only a complete collapse will prevent runaway climate change. Others seem to agree. A censored 2012 study [original paper here] by University of Utah professor Tim Garrett explains that energy efficiency gains actually accelerate global energy consumption and CO2 emission rates and that only collapse can stop this process:
…Taking [a] global perspective with respect to the economy, the implication is that efficiency gains will do the exact opposite of what most claim it will do. If technological changes allow global energy productivity or energy efficiency to increase, then civilization grows faster into the resources that sustain it. The consequence is that energy consumption and CO2 emissions accelerate.
CO2 emissions can be stabilized despite efficiency gains. But this is possible only if decarbonization occurs as quickly as energy consumption grows. At today’s consumption growth rates, this would require roughly one new nuclear power plant, or equivalent, to be deployed each day. Barring this, since wealth and energy consumption rates are linked, it can only be through an economic collapse that CO2 emissions rates will decline. If the size of civilization enters a long and profound decline then wealth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions will all decrease at roughly the same rate. If the collapse is sufficiently rapid then it may be possible to maintain atmospheric CO2 concentrations below levels that are normally considered dangerous.
Perhaps there is a way out of this admittedly grim sounding double-bind. But Jevons’ Paradox tells us that it will not be by way of increasing energy efficiency. Quite the opposite…
From an interview with Garrett:
Although it “feels good to conserve energy,” he said, “there shouldn’t be any pretense that it will make a difference.”
These views, both radical and controversial, will be published this week in Climate Change, an online academic journal edited by renowned Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider. Other research journals declined to publish Garrett’s research.
Garrett believes current options to potentially avert climate change — increased energy efficiencies, reduced population growth and a switch to power sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, as well as underground storage of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning — are “not meaningful.”
“Fundamentally, I believe the system is deterministic,” Garrett said. “Changes in population and standard of living are only a function of the current energy efficiency. That leaves only switching to a non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power source as an available option.” Some economists are critical of his approach, but his solution is targeted to solve economic issues as “physics problems,” looking at civilization as one big problem instead of calculating individual problems based on population growth, increasing energy efficiency and other things.
“I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have,” he said. Garrett treats civilization as a “heat engine” that “consumes energy and does ‘work’ in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy,” he said.
Ominous Signs of Disturbing a Fragile Planet
Following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau’s 1851 observations of flowering plants, Richard Primack, a professor of biology at Boston University, and his then-graduate student, Abe Miller-Rushing, observed the habits of the same species and found drastic changes:
…An analysis of Thoreau’s observations, those of another 19th-century naturalist and their own modern records indicate the first flowering date for 43 of the most common species has moved up by an average of 10 days. What’s more, species that aren’t shifting their flowering times in response to warmer springs are disappearing…
Recently, researchers at Penn State reconfigured the habitability zones for planets and Earth was calculated to be much further to the edge of what is called the ‘Goldilocks Zone’. The Goldilocks Zone is defined as…
…a narrow belt around a star where an orbiting planet would be warm enough to support life, but cool enough that life wouldn’t just go around bursting into flames all the time, a factor that can significantly delay evolutionary development. The term was introduced nearly two decades ago, and hasn’t been substantively updated since then.
Guy said that this suggests “relatively minor changes in the chemistry of the planet will produce significant impacts that might take us out of the habitable zone for humans.”
Back in 2010, researchers calculated the maximum wet-bulb temperatures reached in a high carbon dioxide emissions future climate scenario:
Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate…
…”Whole countries would intermittently be subject to severe heat stress requiring large-scale adaptation efforts,” Huber said. “One can imagine that such efforts, for example the wider adoption of air conditioning, would cause the power requirements to soar, and the affordability of such approaches is in question for much of the Third World that would bear the brunt of these impacts. In addition, the livestock on which we rely would still be exposed, and it would make any form of outside work hazardous.”…
…”We found that a warming of 12 degrees Fahrenheit would cause some areas of the world to surpass the wet-bulb temperature limit, and a 21-degree warming would put half of the world’s population in an uninhabitable environment,” Huber said….
Since 1998, global surface air temperatures have flattened despite continued increases in greenhouse gases. Climate change deniers have used this as proof that there is no human-induced climate change happening. Where is all the heat going? Into the deep oceans…
…If extra heat is temporarily stored elsewhere thanks to natural climate variations, we won’t necessarily notice it.
But sooner or later it will inevitably emerge, which means that the current slowdown in warming may well be balanced by a period of rapid warming in a few years — nobody knows how many — from now. Scientists have always said that global warming would proceed in fits and starts, not in a smooth upward trend in temperatures…”
– source
Another factor (global dimming or the aerosol effect from Asian industrialization) causing the dampening of current surface air temperatures in the last 15 years was mentioned in a previous post by David Wasdell:
…The effects of global dimming have been enhanced during this period [Asian Industrialization] by the mixing of more surface heat down to deeper ocean water, by the dominance of La Nina (cooler) conditions in the Pacific, and by a prolonged period of minimal solar radiation. The absence of temperature increase has also blocked all amplification from the temperature-dependent feedback mechanisms…
Unstoppable Feedback Loops
The following list of positive feedbacks are identified by Guy (with one added by me) as irreversible, although the last one appears to be hampered by the increasingly treacherous conditions that the resource extraction corporations are faced with as they try to set up shot in the melting and warming Arctic. I have added links to articles and essays, a few of which are very recent and add new information about these feedback loops (increased CO2 from hidden fires in the Amazon, boreal forest migration, and loss of top predators)
Standing on the Beach of Doom and waiting at the Last Chance Saloon for the waves to come in…Brace for Impact.
Irreversible Positive Feedback
1.) Methane hydrates are bubbling out the Arctic Ocean (Science, March 2010)
2.) Warm Atlantic water is defrosting the Arctic as it shoots through the Fram Strait (Science, January 2011)
3.) Siberian methane vents have increased in size from less than a meter across in the summer of 2010 to about a kilometer across in 2011 (Tellus, February 2011)
4.) Drought in the Amazon triggered the release of more carbon than the United States in 2010 (Science, February 2011)
Using an innovative satellite technique, NASA scientists have determined that a previously unmapped type of wildfire in the Amazon rainforest is responsible for destroying several times more forest than has been lost through deforestation in recent years…
…In years with the most understory fire activity, such as 2005, 2007 and 2010, the area of forest affected by understory fires was several times greater than the area of deforestation for expansion of agriculture, according to Morton. The study goes further and fingers climate conditions – not deforestation – as the most important factor in determining fire risk in the Amazon at a regional scale…
…The new knowledge about the scope of understory fires could have implications for estimates of carbon emissions from disturbed forests. How experts account for those emissions depends on the fate of the forest – how it is disturbed and how it recovers.
“We don’t yet have a robust estimate of what the net carbon emissions are from understory fires, but widespread damages suggest that they are important source of emissions that we need to consider,” Morton said…
5.) Peat in the world’s boreal forests is decomposing at an astonishing rate (Nature Communications, November 2011)
…The planet’s boreal forests won’t expand poleward. Instead, they’ll shift poleward. The difference lies in the prediction that as boreal ecosystems follow the warming climate northward, their southern boundaries will be overtaken by even warmer and drier climates better suited for grassland.
And that’s a key difference. Grassland stores a lot of carbon in its soil, but it accumulates at a much slower rate than is lost from diminishing forests…
7.) Russian forest and bog fires are growing (NASA, August 2012)
8.) Cracking of glaciers accelerates in the presence of increased carbon dioxide (Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, October 2012)
9.) The Beauford Gyre has apparently Reversed Course (U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, October 2012)
10.) Exposure to sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon, thus accelerating thawing of the permafrost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2013)
11.) Summer ice melt in Antarctica — highest level in 1,000 years and the most rapid melting has occurred in the last 50 years (Nature Geoscience, April 2013)
I would add one more here…
12.) The Disappearance of Top Predators accelerates CO2 emissions (Nature Geoscience, Feb 2013)
People play a big role in predator decline and our study shows that this has significant, global implications for climate change and greenhouse gases,” says Atwood.
“We knew that predators shaped ecosystems by affecting the abundance of other plants and animals but now we know that their impact extends all the way down to the biogeochemical level.
Reversible Positive Feedback?
13.) Arctic drilling was fast-tracked by the Obama administration during the summer of 2012
I think you have quickly covered every major issue about global warming in a bite sized gulp. All of this should be on the news every day, common knowledge held by everyone. That it isn’t indicates a concerted effort by the media, a real conspiracy to censor.
So glad we have the Internet and guys like XRay Mike and Guy.
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Hi Paul, Tom, xray,
There’s already too much to cover in any one blog post, but two thirds of the planet are covered by ocean, not enough mention of the oceans, imo, 146 dead zones and increasing, 90% of large fish gone, industrial raking of the sea bed destroying the ecology, coral reefs going, plastic islands the size of countries, toxic algal blooms, invasive species from shipping, sea mammals going wreck the ecology, etc, etc. Basically, dead oceans = dead us. I think there’s probably another irreversible feedback loop there too, because dead zones produce nitrous oxide.
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The 40% drop in phytoplankton, the base of the food chain, is a pretty good indicator, but yeah, one could just concentrate on mankind’s wholesale destruction of the ocean to come to the conclusion that we are done for.
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OMG……good rundown of how screwed the oceans are.
Just saw this……one more horror going on in the oceans of the near future: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/squid-threatened-by-ocean-acidity-caused-by-rise-in-co2-16096
Every week there are new scary stories, well documented research, actually, in journals like Nature and Science, about worrisome changes in the oceans. All of it is, or should be, big news. But to find it, one has to go to obscure websites or intense scientific literature. The big boys know only a few of us strange kinds will do it, so they know their censorship in the msm will make sure there will not be any groundswell of activism or pressure for big policy change. We will all keep going along as free enterprise and true capitalism dictates, and profits will continue for the big guys and all will seem good.
But we very few collapsitarians know…..and will watch the show with a very different perspective. And all of us need to stick together in our bleacher seats as we watch the show….a very sad show…. But one that we understand and maybe can find a way to somehow appreciate one day in a weird way.
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And another
Art of our oceans, biting the dust: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130608-great-barrier-reef-australia-world-heritage-unesco-environment-science-global-warming/
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Thanks xraymike – for the concise yet profound recapping and added element to Guy’s “dots.” Connecting these surely indicates that we as a species have already shot ourselves in the foot while simultaneously we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.
It’ll be “interesting” to discover what other irreversible feedbacks are in store for us in the coming years. One might be the decline or stopping of the thermohaline current (if it hasn’t already happened), which would amplify the rapid weather system changes, jet stream lags and the die-off of humans in the process. Social changes will ramp up quicker now too, due to the stress on food production, with the resulting violence and death by our own hand. It’s strangely fascinating to watch all this interaction and degradation as it’s occurring. The coming years will become more chaotic to the point that governments will fail, whole societies will evaporate and widespread destruction of civilization will ensue. Look for diseases and pests to multiply faster than we can control them (pandemic is only a matter of time), crop failure will become the norm, resources will dry-up or be too expensive to harvest, and all the good times we’ve had will become distant memories as we leave them further and further behind with each passing year.
With economic collapse on the doorstep while all of the above is occurring, we can expect the electrical grid to fail sometime in the not-too-distant future too. That’s when things really start to descend rapidly, once the over 400 nuke plants lose power we’ll all be subject to Fukushima style disaster and radiation spread practically guaranteed to wipe out all life on the planet.
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I noticed this report of methane, and conjecture the origin might have been clathrate/hydrate on the sea bed, but no mention is made of that possibility.
http://enenews.com/officials-large-release-of-methane-off-los-angeles-coast-unusual-concentrations-detected-by-haz-mat-crews-gas-may-be-from-shift-in-tectonic-plates-video/comment-page-1
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A news story I posted last year:
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That is big. What was a prediction is now obviously happening. A huge positive feedback IS occurring, and no mention on the evening news.
The more this stuff is ignored in the news and general public discussion, the less hope there is that any real action or substantial policy changes will happen.
And that is why I am becoming a collapsitarian.
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Pingback:
AnimalFarm.org
http://animalfarm.org/news/2013/06/guy-mcpherson-and-the-nemesis-effect-at-the-age-of-limits-conference-part-one-httpt-co0etlwrqzk0-occupy-ows-occupywallstreet/
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Pingback:
OccuWorld.org
http://www.occuworld.org/news/232202
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‘I have yet to meet Guy McPherson’
Guy (and Sheila) stayed at my place for three days in June-July 2012, as part of the speaking tour of NZ I had initiated.
It was great for me to converse with Guy and find that we were in almost total agreement on most of the things that matter.
The two events I organised in New Plymouth were semi-successful. Around 60 attendees, and no naysayers. Other speaking events were well attended. And Guy spoke on National Radio (100,000+ listeners). There were several quite good write-ups.
None of made a scrap of difference to the general direction of society, of course., but maybe a handful more people started to get it.
By and large, the proles are not suffering enough yet.
Mike, why don’t you organise a ‘truth event’ in your area. That would be a good way to meet Guy..
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And now this…….
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/09-1
“In the past diseases might not have survived in the cold temperatures and the ice of the Arctic but as the region warms a new dynamic is introduced” Heffernan told Climate News Network.
“We need to fundamentally alter the way we look at disease in the context of climate change. We should recognize disease as a harbinger of a warming world.”
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Paul, thanks for posting that article. Very good read.
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It isn’t a pleasant thought to think of swift epidemics encircling the earth, but, in a way, it sounds like a better way to go than many other horrible scenarios, like exploding methane and radioactive material spewing from old, abandoned nuclear plants.
If we have….or when we have….loss of food production and distribution and the world’s billions are suffering from malnutrition and rampant poisons in the environment, it wouldn’t take much for some mutated viruses to, well, go “viral”.
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State gets passive as CWD spreads: http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2013/04/30/state-gets-passive-as-cwd-spreads/ & http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/14978/20130429/mad-cow-disease-british-blood-transfusion-infection-1-000.htm. Great time to transition to a plant based diet …
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The Origins of 1ºC – United Nations 1990
“…[B]eyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.”
– United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases
In 1986, three international bodies, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), who had co-sponsored the Villach Conference in 1985, formed the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG), a small international committee with responsibility for assessing the available scientific information about the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the likely impact.
In 1990 the AGGG calculated what level of climate change our planet could tolerate, also referred to as “environmental limits.” These levels and limits were summarized in the document, “Responding to Climate Change: Tools For Policy Development,” published by the Stockholm Environment Institute.
The targets and indicators set limits to rates and total amounts of temperature rise and sea level rise, on the basis of known behaviour of ecosystems. The AGGG report identified these limits in order to “protect both ecosystems as well as human systems.” The report states that the objective is: “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human made] interference with the climate system.”
It adds: “Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” Thus the report requires limits to both the total amount of change and the rate of change.
Further, they warned that a global temperature increase “beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.” A temperature increase of 2ºC was viewed as “an upper limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems, and of non-linear responses, are expected to increase rapidly.” [For “non-linear,” read “runaway global climate change.”][2]
The Framework Convention on Climate Change signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 should have ensured that staying within the AGGG-identified ecological limit of a 1ºC temperature rise is a central objective. But it didn’t. This investigation attempts to spell out why.
From the AGGG report. The low risk indicators:
Sea level rise
· maximum rate of rise of 20–50 mm per decade
· maximum total rise of 20–50 cm above 1990 global mean sea level
Global mean temperature
· maximum rate of increase of 0.1ºC per decade
· maximum total increase of 1.0ºC
The AGGG report also identified the CO2 [equivalent] concentrations corresponding to these as 330 – 400 ppm for 1ºC and 400 – 560ppm for 2ºC. It is critical to understand these concentrations cited from the report are far below the 350 ppm that has become the status quo target of today.
Citing a need for climate stabilization, a Dutch Ministry of Environment funded project concluded in 1988 that this would preferably be at just 1ºC above pre-industrial temperatures, but certainly with a maximum target of 400 ppm CO2 concentration (Krause, 1988).
http://thebiggestlieevertold.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/part-1-expose-the-2%C2%BA-death-dance-%E2%80%93-the-1%C2%BA-cover-up/
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Part I
World Marches to Methane Annihilation
“[T]he question is not will this methane be released, but when.” – Robert C. Hendricks, NASA, November 2007
The architects of death: The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction are the melting permafrost, the destabilizing methane hydrates and the corporations such as Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and the banking and investment industry who, hand in hand with the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Defense, have been planning and waiting to exploit methane hydrates for decades. Methane hydrates are considered the ultimate in climate wealth opportunity because the control of these hydrocarbons could literally shift the balance of global power (US Department of Defense). It is clear that nothing has been done to prevent catastrophic climate change – and nothing will be done. Global emissions are set to continue skyrocketing. This article attempts to clearly articulate why, almost two decades after the first international climate change summit, the world governments have failed to protect us from dangerous atmospheric climate interference. As we are now living in a world that is beyond dangerous, society must be aware of, be able to critically analyze, and ultimately reject the new onslaught of misinformation that is being perpetuated by the corporate elite and the current power structures that support their agenda.
http://thebiggestlieevertold.wordpress.com/category/articles-2011/the-real-weapons-of-mass-destruction-methane-propaganda-the-architects-of-genocide-part-i/
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Now that is about the scariest stuff I’ve read yet. But that is what we need…..,full exposure to what we are facing.
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Hi Cory, thanks for excellent info re methane than I linked to on NBL
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/06/age-of-limits/#comment-77053
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Btw, I got the message via email alert, assumed ‘admin’ was xray, didn’t realise it was you, hence slight confusion. Also your link for Part IV is broken.
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Hi ulvfugl,
You write: “Btw, I got the message via email alert, assumed ‘admin’ was xray, didn’t realise it was you, hence slight confusion. Also your link for Part IV is broken.”
Thanks for the fyi. Here is the link to part IV: http://bit.ly/11xjMBk
Apologies my name says ‘admin’. Note to self to change it. I barely have time to ever make comments & I really had no idea what my name said. Yes, confusing.
Best wishes, c
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Thank you posting the links to: http://guymcpherson.com/2013/06/age-of-limits/#comment-77053. Greatly appreciated.
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“If there were a fix, don’t you think WE would have implemented it by now before setting off a list of unstoppable positive feedback loops, known and unknown?”
I think the word “we” is key here. It seems we are always thinking about the total sum of human beings first before thinking simply about ourselves, our immediate environment and those fellow human beings close to us (or absent as I suspect all of us at this point a to one degree or another isolated socially).
Of course, to have an impact politically, economically and environmentally it would take changing a great deal of the whole of humanity. But how can we expect humanity to change in any positive direction if there’s no example, no better way seen to live?
The idea that human beings could live in large, mostly self-sufficient communes (at least 150 people) is, at this point, theory. Still, I think it’s a theory that’s worth proving correct or incorrect, for we sure can’t imagine anything else working. We tend to be so hung up on words. It’s hardly like one communal arrangement has to be for all. There could be communes where people wanted to work all the time and communes where people value their free time; communes with people trained in self-defense and maintained some sort of Arsenal and others that were pacifist; communes that were omnivores and others that were vegetarian. Anyway you get the idea.
If we’re not giving up, then what is there to do? Simply reporting the data is useful and necessary, but shouldn’t we be doing something more than this?
In the idea that 7 billion people could go “back to the land” so to speak, sure, you could say that is not enough land. But that’s ignoring the efficiency and the massively lower consumption necessary of living such a lifestyle.
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Not sure if Cory has commented here previously and don’t see a link to her site in your sidebar. Her site provides an enormous body of work along with great depth of insight into the smoke & mirrors which permeate just about everything.
This video is 2 years old – pickings are slim – but you can meet her here…
Cory is truly awesome…good to see her on coic. Sorry if I’ve missed something from any of your past posts.
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Cory is right there between Fraktracker and George Monbiot (alphabetized). Once in a while there are errors in the RSS feed, but it clears up later.
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Hi Mike,
Thank you very much for providing a link to my work on your website. The correct name is The Art of Annihilation. (‘From the Non-Profit Industrial Complex with Love’ is the tag line). The site was/is being updated so it may have appeared messed up. Thanks again, c
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I listened to this video of Corey and I agree she is awesome. I love someone who stirs up the pot, who is not afraid to speak one’s truth. I thought her assessment of the NGOs was amazing. And not particularly surprising. My only critique would be after half an hour of explaining how we must get to zero emissions, there was no description or explanation about what that would look like.
This is what I have found from experience, even the most radical critics of the system dare not say what the solution would actually look like. I’m not saying I’m right, the idea of cooperative communities really can’t be said is true until it’s proven by an actual attempt. Yet, any criticism of capitalism or the system should go along with some idea about what an alternative would look like, specifically.
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Hi ‘Communal Solution’ – thanks so much for the kind words and support. Greatly appreciated. Just as a side note, I would LOVE to talk about what a zero carbon/ carbon neutral (outside of a dismantled industrialized capitalist system) world would look like. On Karyn’s show – there was simply not enough time. I think the topic is vitally important. The fact so few speak to it demonstrates how our imaginations have become stagnant and eroded. Maybe I will try to write something along these lines soon. It certainly would be a nice break from writing about corruption/greed and ecocide. On a separate note, watch this video with Karyn Strickler with McKibben – it is something else. Best to you, Cory Morningstar https://vimeo.com/17613444
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To Cory,
I watched the interview with Bill McKibben. I tend to accept people for where there at and appreciate the good that they are trying to do. However, I do critique the overall picture. What I focused in on particular was right at the beginning where the interviewer was listing Bill McKibben’s credentials and accomplishments and particularly his position. This position is “scholar in residence” at Middlebury College in Vermont. I looked up the salary rate for that and the average is 34,000. For me the issue is if he deserves $34,000 a year why doesn’t everyone. What is everyone else supposed to do including the people up in North Dakota drilling oil or building pipelines in Nebraska? Not everyone can be a “scholar in residence”.
I realize I’m referring to all of us in a sense. For those who feel the situation is hopeless; because of this very situation, I tend to agree. As long as there is the need or desire for great quantities of money everything will continue as it is.
The hope, as slim as it might be, for me lies in the possibility of people coming together and living differently. I haven’t read a lot of Bill McKibben stuff, however I have read enough to know he knows what this would look like, at least economically.
The catch is it really has to be done in groups large enough to be relatively self-sufficient in all areas, including socially. Really just a few good examples could, at least in my mind, have an enormous effect. People love to get in on a good thing and this, if done right, would be the best of things; not just because it would be good for the environment, but it would be a “rich” way to live even if it was very simple materially.
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Yes, I agree that everyone should be able to meet their needs. Bolivia promotes the ideology behind “Buen Vivir”. The Peoples Agreement of 2010 was an opportunity for the environmental movement/grass roots groups to educate on/build upon the foundation of, a transition to a better life away from the industrialized capitalist system. Both were marginalized/crushed by the corporate greens. Even the so-called climate justice movement let the democratic People’s Agreement die. (35,000 participated, a very large segment being Indigenous).
The reason I linked to the McKibben video is because in it, he pretends to not be aware of his financiers/investors. To be blunt, he is lying. I have a communication between McKibben and a 350 chapter from Nov 2010 – a month before the interview with Karyn Strickler, where McKibben talks openly about his funding from the Rockefellers. In the interview with Strickler, he pretends to not know. 1Sky (now merged with 350) was an incubator project of Rockefeller. Further, 350.org is not the right number. Further, 350.org/McKibben do not share with the public what has to happen to even slow down the heating planet (negative emissions must occur as stated by even the IPCC). We have the appointed and self-appointed climate “leaders” who claim to speak for civil society, but in realty, are not at all transparent with civil society. Because in reality, they are accountable to their funders. People need to ask why the oligarchs funnel billions (via foundations) to the non-profit industrial complex. Because the system (that needs to be dismantled) must be protected for the elites. A great read is Joan Roeloff’s Foundations and Public Policy – The Mask of Pluralism. Within the past few days, 350 et al have launched a “Flying Clean” campaign promoting biofuels. I’ll stop here because I’m rambling at this point. I’m trying to say that the non-profit industrial complex is dangerous and their power, influence and untold damage – is very much underestimated. http://theartofannihilation.com/category/articles-2013/the-most-important-cop-briefing-that-no-one-ever-heard-truth/
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Power corrupts, but money corrupts absolutely. I’m going to go back and read all your articles.
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The word “socialism” is a dirty word. How about “ecosocialism”? That must be doubly dirty, like triple X.
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Jacob – thanks a million. It’s nice to find a space where people are actually interested in discussing truth and our current reality, even though dire … a space where intelligent individuals refuse to adorn the rose-coloured glasses the non-profit industrial complex distributes on behalf of their funders. It’s good to be reminded that such people do exist.
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Cory,
I’d like to talk to you in depth(perhaps an interview for this humble site), but I’m pressed for time right now. I think that writing about alternatives to the current omnicidal system would be interesting and perhaps a much more difficult task than documenting ecocide. Gotta run.
Best Regards,
Mike
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To Mike and Cory,
Yes, by all means try to articulate an alternative to capitalism or the present paradigm. As you say, I think you will find it more difficult than reporting various facts and news. But try to do it not as an intellectual hypothetical, but rather as something you would do yourself with others. And do, not just if it dropped in your lap, but as something you viewed as necessary to do ethically/responsibly and as something you wanted to do, even just for yourself/yourselves.
Maybe you’ll come up with something that people can rally around, that they really want to do. Maybe we’ve just got the wrong idea, yet I wouldn’t be surprised if, like us, you found the troops, the very people who you would think would care to enough to take risks and do something different, well, scattering.
I dropped out in the late 60s. I’ve done the local economy thing, the homesteading thing and the organic farming thing and I found it not only unsustainable and high carbon, but also, on a personal level not very satisfactory at all. For sure, it could be my own deficiencies, but still I think there are problems with simply thinking along these lines.
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