Warning signs

Rebecca Rosen over at The Atlantic presents a graphic which illustrates the climate crisis in worrying detail:

More from Rosen’s article:

Higher temperatures today are the result of higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. In 1880, when the study’s temperature record-keeping begins, the concentration of carbon dioxide was 285 parts per million. Today it is more than 390 parts per million and rapidly increasing. Many top climate scientists, including NASA’s James Hansen, have argued that a level not exceeding 350 parts per million is necessary “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”

The bold was added by me for emphasis as I believe that Mr. Hansen’s words are a succinctly stated warning for us all.

Disappointment in Durban

The negotiations seem to be at an impasse in Durban over a new climate change accord. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has stated that a replacement for the Kyoto Accord which expires next year “may be out of reach” and now the chances of an extension of even the Kyoto Accord may be dwindling. This is from The Guardian:

But the global north, responsible for 75% of accumulated CO2 emissions, has made far less substantial pledges than the south, which is least responsible for climate change but whose people are the most at risk. It’s unlikely that India will agree to binding commitments. The issue is a potential deal-breaker.

The EU has linked it to another hypersensitive issue on which Durban could founder, the Kyoto protocol. This imposed a modest 5% emissions cut on the north. Despite some flaws, including an over-reliance on markets, Kyoto differentiates between the north and south’s responsibility for climate change and mandates that the north repay its climate debt.

But Kyoto’s effective, early phase, called “first commitment period”, ends next year. A second period must be negotiated if Kyoto is to survive. Russia, Japan and Canada are vehemently opposed to such an extension, and the US seems to be working quietly to kill Kyoto, which it never ratified.

And that very thin string that holds the sword of Damocles over the world unravels even more…

The consequences of complacency

Some stiff medicine is needed when it comes to the general public’s attitude toward the threat of climate change here in America. And UC Berkeley Scientist Dr. John Harte (JH) seems more than happy to administer it. Here in an interview with Forbes’ Michael Charles Tobias (MT) he pushes back against the unfortunate complacency:

MT: Climate has varied throughout Earth’s history as a result of natural processes — why should we be inordinately concerned about the current warming that our species is currently unleashing/triggering/producing?

JH: This enormous irony, if you will, apparently confuses many of those who deny the findings of climate science or, for other reasons, argue for complacency. First of all, some deniers ask “what’s the big deal with 5 or 10 degrees of warming? We see such changes daily. “

MT: Right, floods in Manhattan, a drought across half the U.S. this Summer; temperatures in Texas exceeding three digits week after week after week. Some people are simply packing their bags and moving to Oregon, or wherever they are betting it’s going to be cooler.

JH: Well, one way to think about that is to note that when earth’s average temperature was just ten degrees cooler in the last ice age, a 300-foot thick ice sheet covered much of North America and Europe!

MT: OK? Go on?

JH: Other deniers argue that Earth has changed that much in the past and life survived. True, but previously, Earth warmed much more slowly than it is now, giving animals and plants many millennia to adapt or migrate through wilderness — wilderness undisturbed by exploding populations of people who now occupy much of the planet’s former natural habitats.

The Heat Waves Cometh

Chris Hedges over at Truthout, appropriately IMHO, continues to ring the climate change alarm bell:

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist we can learn to live with it are perhaps more dangerous than the buffoons who decide to shut their eyes. It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives voted 240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” But it is not much of an alternative to trust those who insist we can cope with the effects while continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Entering the Anthropocene

The effect of humankind on its environment has been so profound as to mark the beginning of a new geological epoch. Such a statement with its assigning of large fault in human activity with respect to environmental change is at the crux of the argument over the importance and implications of climate change. But what will this new epoch be called? The modern iteration of an ancient primate born during the Holocene epoch has now seen the dawn of the Anthropocene?

Lee Billings over at SEED Magazine reviews:

In 2000, as the green shoots of spring cracked through winter’s icy grip on the northern hemisphere, a letter from the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and his colleague Eugene Stoermer appeared in the news bulletin of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. In it, Crutzen and Stoermer made the case that the Holocene, the geological epoch that had held sway on Earth for the past 12,000 years, was at an end. In its place, with a start date pegged to the late 18th century commercialization of James Watt’s steam engine, was the Anthropocene, an epoch defined by the influence of humanity’s collective actions.

Bolivia grants constitutional rights to Mother Earth

Bolivia has become the first nation to codify rights of the natural world into its constitution. The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth recognizes mineral deposits as “blessings” and is expected to be used in efforts to regulate industry and encourage conservation.

From The Guardian:

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said Bolivia’s traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama was vital to prevent climate change. “Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values,” he said.

Climate change tipping points and 391PPM

Dr. James Hansen is a personification of the importance of sustained and adequate funding for NASA. Hansen is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the most respected advocates for concerted action to address climate change. In an article with the New Zealand news site, Scoop, Hansen describes and compares the climate change tipping point and the personal tipping point where each of us becomes an activist:

What the science clearly shows, Dr Hansen states, is that we are in an emergency. Such an emergency requires urgent action, but this urgency isn’t present in either public action or government policy.

Dr. Hansen seems to suggest we’ve already passed a critical tipping point with respect to the amount of CO2 already present in the atmosphere:

Hansen suggests that this 350ppm level is a maximum, and that 300-325ppm might be necessary to stabilise ice sheets. Because the current carbon dioxide concentration is 391ppm and still rising, the world is already in the dangerous range, according to Dr Hansen, and we need to take ourselves out of it as quickly as possible if we want to avoid environmental and social collapse. To reach the goal of 350ppm, Dr Hansen says a substantial and continually rising price on carbon emissions is needed. Just slowing down emissions is not enough, though, he says, and this can only mean one thing: most fossil fuels must be kept in the ground. All of our efforts to be green will be in vain if we burn more carbon. In addition to this, Dr Hansen states that we also need to begin drawing down carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, through forest preservation, massive reforestation projects and improved agricultural practices.

Earth Day & The Third Revolution: Sustainable Societies

People around the planet celebrated the first Earth Day 31 years ago today. And it was one of the many beginnings of the modern environmentalist movement which has taken upon its shoulders nothing less than the challenge and responsibility of educating everyone about something that should be such commonsense: that we must nurture and care for the home which shelters us in all its beauty and wonder and in all its fragility. A Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson was instrumental in the founding of Earth Day and today as we educate, nurture, celebrate and persevere we should take heed of some prescient words from a speech he made called “Where Do We Go From Here?” at an event to mark the 25th anniversary of Earth Day:

The history of man has been influenced by many revolutions but none more important than the Agricultural Revolution followed by the Industrial Revolution. We are now at the threshold of a third great revolution, the transition to a sustainable society…which is described as “one that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” There is a profound moral question that revolves around the issue of how we treat the life-giving resources of the planet. Do we who are here today owe anything to future generations of people and other living things? If our answer is in the negative, as current and past practices would seem to indicate, then we are squarely on course travelling down the road to massive environmental degradation. If however, we have a moral obligation to the future then we must move expeditiously to preserve all environmental options for those who will follow.

On this Earth Day I hope that more people realize that this third great revolution can’t start soon enough.

Humankind and the next mass extinction

According to a study in the journal Nature the Sixth Mass Extinction Event in the past 540 million years of Earth’s history may be commencing and this time it is driven by the actions of humankind. The numbers:

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Endangered Species contains some 18,000 species currently listed as endangered. Of those almost 2,000 are considered “critically endangered” which means that within three generations their numbers will have dwindled by 80%.

Climate change is not just a threat to the well-being of the human species but a threat to the biodiversity of our planet.

Sunlight, Water & Carbon Dioxide=Diesel?

HuffPo has some fascinating news on the renewable energy front. A company by the name of Joule Unlimited has announced the creation of a cyanobacterium which transforms through photosynthesis sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into diesel fuel. This particular form of cyanobacterium was created through genetic modification and the company’s CEO Bill Sims makes what I hope time will demonstrate to be an appropriately bold claim:

“We make some lofty claims, all of which we believe, all which we’ve validated, all of which we’ve shown to investors,” said Joule chief executive Bill Sims. “If we’re half right, this revolutionizes the world’s largest industry, which is the oil and gas industry,” he said. “And if we’re right, there’s no reason why this technology can’t change the world.”

The new rainmakers

When I hear the word “rainmaker” I usually think of it being used metaphorically to describe a great fundraiser. Scientists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) may have just earned the literal title. Working secretly with the UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan they managed to induce rainstorms 52 times in the nation’s Al-Ain region during a period of the year which normally forecasts little to no rainfall.

Appiah on the arc of moral revolutions

I have been thinking about the principle of intergenerational equity for some time. Perhaps that is why a recent Washington Post article by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher at Princeton University speaks to me so much. He asks a simple a question with many answers–some of which are challenging in the level of shame they should provoke in most people. The question is “What will future generations condemn us for?” Many people comfort themselves in thinking that the cumulative effects of small and random good acts will lead some divine authority to judge them mercifully in a supposed afterlife but what of the small, deliberate acts of complicity either by silence or participation with what our children will justly judge to be horrendous and immoral systems that we failed to overthrow in the scope of our age. Appiah establishes the criteria to highlight some candidate practices:

First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. The case against slavery didn’t emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries.
Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity. (As in, “We’ve always had slaves, and how could we grow cotton without them?”)
And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they’re complicit. Those who ate the sugar or wore the cotton that the slaves grew simply didn’t think about what made those goods possible. That’s why abolitionists sought to direct attention toward the conditions of the Middle Passage, through detailed illustrations of slave ships and horrifying stories of the suffering below decks.

Using these criteria he proceeds to highlight four practices that will mostly gain us some ignoble attention from our descendants: our prison system, our institutionalized and isolated elders, our degradation of the environment, and our our abuse of animals through mass production of meat. This is why I love philosophy and philosophers–always holding the mirror up and reminding us how far we fall short of the life we profess to being in pursuit of. Throughout the second half of his article Professor Appiah clearly outlines how these practices should offend our “egalitarian sensibilities” and will offend our children’s more learned sensibilities but it is early on in his article using the examples of slavery, women’s suffrage and homosexuality that he indicates just how long the arc of moral revolutions are.

Lowering your carbon footprint

The site Carbon Footprint has a neat tool to estimate your personal carbon footprint based on home energy use, your automobile, air flight history and secondary preferences such as your diet, clothing and purchases. Just calculated mine and it is 2.34 metric tons of carbon dioxide. At first glance that seemed like a large amount of carbon dioxide but the average American’s carbon footprint is 20.4 metric tons (we really do live unsustainably large) and the worldwide average is 4 metric tons. Now if you are wondering what the worldwide average for carbon emissions needs to be in order to counteract climate change it’s 2.0 metric tons. The site also offers some ways based on your survey answers to offset (or decrease) your own carbon footprint. I suspect the reason for my low carbon footprint is the fact that I have no car, am vegetarian and have an average commute but carpool with three co-workers. Just .34 metric tons to go…

Wonderings on our crisis

I am about to buy Erwin Schrodinger’s 1944 lecture collection What is Life? because it makes an intriguing proposal that we view the history of humankind and the evolution of life in general through the lens of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy–or the apparently natural pattern of life as “order-from-disorder” as a form of negative entropy or syntropy. The issue which presents the most important challenge to the survival of human civilization is climate change. And apparently climate change, in my undereducated opinion, is a presentation of runaway disorder within the overarching life system on the planet. The challenge of managing climate change is really a challenge to human beings to find more efficient and sophisticated methods of maintaining our own order without causing disorder within the larger system we inhabit. In short of finding a syntropic equilibrium.

Eh, just some wonderings on this Sunday as my head is in the clouds again.