The full copy of an email received yesterday from 350.org
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Breaking news about a good friend
Dear friends,
Big news has just emerged: Dr. James Hansen, the planet’s premier climate scientist, announced his retirement as head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, where he began his career in 1967.
If 350.org has a patron saint, it’s Jim. It was his 2008 paper that gave us our name, identifying 350 parts per million CO2 as the safe upper limit for carbon in the atmosphere.
But as much as for his science, we respect him for his courage. He’s always been willing to speak the truth bluntly, from the day in 1988 when he told Congress that the time had come “to stop waffling so much and say the planet was warming,” to all he’s done to bring attention to damaging projects like Keystone XL — even to the point of risking arrest to do so. I have no doubt he’ll go on doing science, and speaking plainly — indeed, he told the New York Times that one reason he’s leaving the federal payroll is so he can take on the government more directly.
But this is a big moment, and we need to mark it. Here’s what I hope you’ll do: honor Jim’s lifetime of work by making a public comment to the State Department about Keystone XL and tell them to reject the pipeline. In this case, speaking out is simple — click the link below to go to the page to submit from. There’s a list of ten arguments to choose from – you can mix and match or put it in your own words and just speak from the heart.
Sending a message to the State Department might not seem like much, but I think it’s actually quite fitting tribute.
One reason we’re fighting the pipeline is because Jim Hansen did the math to show that if we combusted the tar sands on top of all else we burn, it would be “game over for the climate.” So far that message hasn’t gotten through: the State Department hired a bunch of compromised oil industry analysts to ‘review’ KXL, and unsurprisingly they decided it would have ‘minimal’ environmental impact. We need to get them to take reality seriously, and change that assessment.
Maybe — just maybe — with a truly overwhelming flood of comments, we can break through. Together with our friends across the movement, we’re aiming for an ambitious target of 1 million comments to the State Department to stop the pipeline.
Beginning this comment push is all the more timely after the disasterous tar sands pipeline spill in Arkansas, where thousands of gallons of toxic oil ran freely through the streets of a suburban community.
Jim Hansen has been to jail twice to try and block KXL. When I saw him in handcuffs, I cringed. I don’t mind going myself, but it seems crazy that we have to send our best climate scientist off in handcuffs; in a sane world he’d never have to leave the lab. And in a sane world we’d just be toasting his retirement from NASA with well-deserved champagne.
But it’s a crazy world, heating fast, and so we need to mark this historic day in a way that really counts. Please do take a couple minutes to submit a comment on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
P.S. please submit your comment re the Keystone XL Pipeline; for all our sakes. This is the acknowledgement you will receive from 350.org.
Hey,
Thanks for submitting your comment. We’ve set the ambitious goal of 1,000,000 comments to the State Department because our best defense against the big money behind this project is overwhelming numbers — in short, people power.
Submitting a comment is just the first step — to hit that big goal, we each need to get our friends, family and maybe a few new people to join us. The next step is to share this with your social networks. You can click below to easily share with Facebook and Twitter:
A trip down memory lane with the BBC That’s Life programme.
Sent to me by Neil Kelly from South Hams in Devon.
That’s Life was a BBC television programme that ran for over 20 years. Difficult to attach a precise lable to the format but this is how the programme is described on WikiPedia.
That’s Life! was a magazine-style television series on BBC1 between 26 May 1973 and 19 June 1994, presented by Esther Rantzen throughout the entire run, with various changes of co-presenters. The show was generally recorded about an hour prior to transmission, which was originally on Saturday nights for many years and then on Sunday nights. In its latter days, in an attempt to win back falling ratings, it was moved back to Saturday nights.
Anyway, the following video from That’s Life goes back to 1986 and involves three German Shepherd dogs and a soda syphon. The video was ‘borrowed’ from a Dutch TV show called ‘Zomergasten’, hence the Dutch sub-titles.
If you ever find yourself in Castle Cary, Somerset, then do drop in to the George Hotel; it’s still going strong.
Learning from Dogs is not a blogsite about climate change!
Why, you may ask, do I start today’s post with that sub-heading? Because, I am conscious that many of my posts do touch on this subject. For example, just two days ago there was Breaking news. Then there was the piece about the climate implications for Phoenix, Arizona. Followed the next day by the changes in the flow of the jet stream across the North Atlantic with all the weather implications for North-West Europe.
Indeed, as the heading to today’s post makes clear, this is also about the changes going on to our planet.
Learning from Dogs is about a different way of living and behaving. A campaign, if one wants to call it that, to show that the way that modern man is living is corrupt. Not with a big ‘C’ but still in the sense of living a dishonest life. Learning from Dogs attempts to show that our wonderful dogs, a source of so much love and pleasure for so many millions, offer us an example of a life in and of this planet.
If there was ever a time in the history of man when we needed being reminded of our frailty and vulnerability, it is now. As the following so starkly illustrates.
A new study of ocean warming has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (2013). There are several important conclusions which can be drawn from this paper.
Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically.
But what really jumped off the page was this graph. It is truly scary!
Figure 1: Ocean Heat Content from 0 to 300 meters (grey), 700 m (blue), and total depth (violet) from ORAS4, as represented by its 5 ensemble members. The time series show monthly anomalies smoothed with a 12-month running mean, with respect to the 1958–1965 base period. Hatching extends over the range of the ensemble members and hence the spread gives a measure of the uncertainty as represented by ORAS4 (which does not cover all sources of uncertainty). The vertical colored bars indicate a two year interval following the volcanic eruptions with a 6 month lead (owing to the 12-month running mean), and the 1997–98 El Niño event again with 6 months on either side. On lower right, the linear slope for a set of global heating rates (W/m2) is given.
I’m not going to republish the whole piece, although Peter Sinclair kindly gave permission, because I want to move on. But please do go to that article here and take in the conclusions; for all our sakes. Conclusions such as:
Their results in this respect are very similar to the main conclusion of Nuccitelli et al. (2012), in which we noted that recently, warming of the oceans below 700 meters accounts for about 30% of overall ocean and global warming. Likewise, this new study concludes,
“In the last decade, about 30% of the warming has occurred below 700 m, contributing significantly to an acceleration of the warming trend.”
and such as:
Most importantly, everybody (climate scientists and contrarians included) must learn to stop equating surface and shallow ocean warming with global warming. In fact, as Roger Pielke Sr. has pointed out, “ocean heat content change [is] the most appropriate metric to diagnose global warming.” While he has focused on the shallow oceans, actually we need to measure global warming by accounting for all changes in global heat content, including the deeper oceans. Otherwise we can easily fool ourselves into underestimating the danger of the climate problem we face.
If you’ll forgive me for stating the obvious: Most people don’t understand climate change very well. This includes a large proportion of the nation’s politicians, journalists, and pundits — even the pundits who write about it. (I’m looking at you, Joe Nocera.)
One reason for the widespread misunderstanding is that climate change has been culturally coded as an “environmental problem.” This has been, in all sorts of ways, a disaster. Lots of pundits, especially brain-dead “centrist” pundits, have simply transferred their framing and conception of environmental problems to climate. They approach it as just another air pollution problem.
David writes that firstly carbon dioxide is not like other pollutants, for example like air particulants. Then later goes on to say:
The second difference is that climate change is irreversible.
As Joe Romm notes in a recent post, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera slipped up in his latest column and referred to technology that would “help reverse climate change.” I don’t know whether that reflects Nocera’s ignorance or just a slip of the pen, but I do think it captures the way many people subconsciously think about climate change. If we heat the planet up too much, we’ll just fix it! We’ll turn the temperature back down. We’ll get around to it once the market has delivered economically ideal solutions.
This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. [my emphasis]
The article is really best read in full. Because it’s a reminder that the way we presently behave is, in so many ways, a scary legacy for future generations.
So, back to dogs!
When dogs were living as wild dogs, thousands of years ago, a typical pack size was between 40 to 50 animals. The ‘head’ dog was the alpha dog, always a female. Next in status was the beta dog, always a dominant male. The last one in terms of status was the omega dog, or clown dog. Those genetic traits still survive in the domestic dog.
Pharaoh – still being an assertive beta dog; taken 22 days ago!
The alpha dog had two important roles as ‘leader of the pack’. She had first pick of the male dogs, for obvious reasons. (Only much later in life do we human men come to understand that it’s always the woman who chooses!)
The second role was that she was the one who decided that their territory was unsustainable for her pack and signalled the need to find a new territory.
For man, there’s no other territory to move to. So we will just have to clean up the only one we have!
Repeat after me: We are of this planet! It’s really very simple!
There are times when I look back at my writings on Learning from Dogs, now well over 1,500 posts (1,633 as of today, to be anal about it!) and ponder if the fundamental message behind the name of the blog often gets overlooked. The Welcome page states:
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.
Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
Elsewhere on the blog, I underpin that proposition by listing the attributes of dogs:
value and cherish the ‘present’ in a way that humans can only dream of achieving
are, by eons of time, a more successful species than man.
Now this is all fine and dandy but of what relevance is this to the mess that homo sapiens now finds itself in? Two parts to that answer come to mind.
The first part is that watching a dog out in the open countryside quickly brings home the fact that these animals are part of nature and, if push comes to shove, can live in the wild and fend for themselves. Not saying that a domestic dog would enjoy the experience but that their wild dog and grey wolf roots still rest somewhere in a dog’s consciousness.
The second part of the answer is that all animals instinctively live in harmony, in balance, with their surroundings; with their environment.
For the incredibly obvious reason that dogs, as with all other animal species, are an evolutionary consequence of the natural history of Planet Earth. That evolutionary journey from the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus) part of the Canidae family, a family including wolves, coyotes and foxes, thought to have evolved 60 million years ago. That journey all the way to the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris).
That ancient journey where the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus – painted dog) came together with early man. No one knows when but the African wild dog was certainly around when man developed speech and set out from Africa, about 50,000 years ago!
Two vastly different natural species, dog and man, evolving compatibly with each other for so many thousands of years.
Back to the attributes of dogs, in particular a dog’s ability to cherish the present. Earlier this week I was chatting with Kevin Dick, friend from Payson, AZ days, about the ‘interesting’ times we are living in. Kevin thought there was a significant difference between the generations born in the 1940’s and 1950’s and those born in later times. Most people over the age of, say 55, were brought up to save for ‘a rainy day’ and, possibly, be able to leave a legacy to their offspring. Kevin then went on to reflect that more recent generations exhibit a ‘buy today, don’t delay’ mentality.
A by-product of this materialistic instant gratification approach is that the whole damn consumer machine has created a total disconnect with the fact that we humans are of this planet.
“The earth is the mother of all people..“
(Chief Joseph 1840 – 1904, leader of the Wallowa band, a Native American tribe
indigenous to the Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon)
Humans today fail to comprehend this fundamental fact: Our ability to harm the planet and think that it won’t affect our species is complete madness! If only we could learn how to cherish the present in the way that our dogs do!
I’m now going to offer an essay from John Hurlburt. I knew John had written this essay but didn’t get round to reading it properly until I had finished the introduction above. I’m blown away by the resonance between the two but, as always, John’s words are so much more eloquent.
Inside Out
Climate change, religion, economics, government, politics and social issues are topics which create strong personal opinions and cultural divisions. We have difficulty accepting ideas which may conflict with our personal understandings. As usual, it’s an ego thing. The arrogance of our species is inclusive. We all suffer the consequences.
To counter our ego, we know that everything fits together. We exist in a unified cosmos with fluctuations and diversities that emerge around and through us.
Our present transformative state is as a biological form of energy and matter which possesses a conscious awareness of the natural order. We choose to ignore or deny the essential nature of our being at our own peril. Do we live only for the moment or do we live to insure our species future? That’s our fundamental choice.
“Seek the truth and identify the common good.” Zoroaster [also known as Zarathustra, Ed.]
We are a consciously aware component of a living world in an isolated corner of a remote galaxy. Everything within and on the earth has an extraterrestrial origin. We live on an incubator we call the earth. We rarely truly communicate with or fully understand the energy of nature in our lives. Our critical thinking ability has become enveloped by an electronic cloud.
We generally agree that the actions of many religions and most politics are based upon short term human interests rather than upon the long term well being of our planet and its disappearing life forms. The fact is that we only began to emerge as a species about 100,000 years ago. Hubble telescope observations have dated our universal origin to roughly 13,002,000,000 years ago.
Could it be that we only imagine ourselves as independent beings? Could it be that beyond the mind games we play there is a vast reality greater that we can understand with our limited sensory apparatus and our finite minds?
Life is a transformative experience. All species, tribes, races and genders are united by the nature of life. We pass through a period of being selfish and ambitious during our journey. Many of us choose to move into these familiar ruts and furnish them. We do not always walk the way we talk.
Nature favors species which adapt to constant change in an emerging universe.
If we agree that our intelligence is judged by choices we make, there is some question about intelligent human life on earth. A recent Harvard University study of species in relation to change estimates that the life span of the human species is approximately 100,000 years. Sound familiar?
The wisdom of our brief human history tells us that we are on a careless and needless path to self destruction. All that’s necessary to verify this assertion is to turn on the news of the day. The systemic paradigm that has been imprinted on our psyches is in constant flux. As we live and learn, we realize that our purpose is to leave life better than we found it.
A delicate balance is necessary to maintain an even strain of faith in the natural process rather than dwelling upon our self centered fears of losing something we imagine we own or not attaining something we believe we want. The earth heals itself from the inside out. We can do the same as a species. Today is the tomorrow we dreamed of yesterday. What have we done to fulfill the true purpose of our lives?
an old lamplighter
So, yes, we have much to learn from dogs.
I will close as I started. We are of this planet! It’s really very simple!
Back over two years ago, when Jean and I were living in Payson, Arizona, I wrote a post called Tara’s Babies. Here’s a flavour of that post:
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Many who follow this Blog will know that my beautiful wife, Jean, is totally devoted to dogs, especially rescue dogs. Over the years that she and her previous husband Ben lived in Mexico, Jean must have rescued at least 70 dogs. Even today, we have 11 ex-rescue dogs enjoying a fabulous life in our mountain home here in Payson, Arizona.
So it was a big surprise to come across a dog rescue organisation called Tara’s Babies and find that their sanctuary is in our neighbourhood.
Photo by Wib Middleton
Here’s a description of the organisation taken from the local newspaper from September 9th, 2009.
By Alan R. Hudson
Gazette/Connection Correspondent
It has been nearly five years since Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare began rescuing animals displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Tara’s Babies operates a no-kill animal rescue and sanctuary “off the grid” at the Ellinwood Ranch, near Young.
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Anyway, Alan Hudson left a comment a few minutes ago to the effect that Tara’s Babies is closing. Confirmed by going to their website.
The reason why this post is being published straightaway is because of the urgent need to find homes for 24 dogs. Take a look at those dogs; please!
I’m republishing what you can read on the Tara’s Babies website – please share this news as far and wide as you can. These dogs need good homes.
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Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare
No Kill Animal Rescue and Sanctuary
Practice kindness, save a life…change the world
Tara’s Babies began in 2005 as a desperate cry from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left thousands of dogs and cats, homeless and suffering. Our founder sent a crew of volunteers to search the flooded buildings for animals in need. We rescued 17 dogs and a kitten. and thus began Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare (TBAW).
While down there, we paired with Best Friends and arranged an airlift to bring 150 dogs and cats from Tylertown, MS to Phoenix, AZ. Waiting at the airport when we arrived was a cattle transporter, volunteers and SUV’s to take the animals to Dakini Valley, AZ.
Our sanctuary at Dakini Valley is located on 157 acres in the remote Hell’s Gate Wilderness. Here the dogs and cats were cared for with love and attention three full-time volunteers until every one of the Katrina dogs were re-homed or found forever homes, with the exception of 15 dogs who were non-adoptable needing lifetime sanctuary. As the original Katrina animals were placed, we found our true mission evolve into saving animals from death row.
Since then we have worked tirelessly networking with other rescues, shelters, and sanctuaries to continuously save dogs from death row. Connections were made as far as Taiwan! Pipi, a Taiwanese dog, was brought to our sanctuary through this connection.
We have had as many as 71 dogs at once at the sanctuary. Even those dogs considered non-adoptable, who are human or dog aggressive, have benefited from the peaceful surroundings of the land and our love. These dogs have demonstrated good behavior with their caretakers and some have even been paired with a companion dog.
Due to unforeseen medical and other issues we lost our director and several volunteers bringing the number of volunteers down to only one. Out of concern for the safety of the dogs coupled with ongoing financial difficulties, the Tara’s Babie’s board made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to close our doors.
We will continue to lovingly care for each of the dogs until ALL are placed.
(Tara’s Babies sanctuary is located outside Payson, Arizona. Most administrative and support operations are in Sedona Arizona. The telephone number is 928-301-1392. Leave a message.)
Once again, if there is anything you can do, please be in direct contact with Tara’s Babies. Feel free to leave any comments or news here.
Recent news items reinforce messages from yesterday’s book review.
In my review published yesterday of Martin Lack’s book Denial of Science, I wrote, “the continuing and accelerating loss of the Arctic ice-cap“. Back on the 22nd in More new tomorrows, I included:
A study published in 2012 showed that by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which steers weather systems from west to east around the northern hemisphere. The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system. The jet stream, the study said, is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and higher ridges.
A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters shows that reduced sea ice cover can favor colder and stormier winters in the northern midlatitudes. [my emphasis – UK readers will need no reminding of this!]
So bear those references in mind as you read:
Breaking News (Literally): NOAA Video Confirms Early Breakup
A series of intense storms in the Arctic has caused fracturing of the sea ice around the Beaufort Sea along the northern coasts of Alaska and Canada. High-resolution imagery from the Suomi NPP satellite shows the evolution of the cracks forming in the ice, called leads, from February 17 — March 18 2013. The general circulation of the area is seen moving the ice westward along the Alaskan coast
“Intense storms” are not an unheard of thing in the arctic. What’s new is that the ice is so fragile that normal storm activity is breaking it up much earlier than has been seen in the past.
To recapitulate: It is normal for the ice to crack and for leads to occur. However, this is very extensive cracking and there are some very big leads, and all of it seems to come earlier than expected. Given last year’s melting mayhem and the low amount of multi-year ice, it makes one wonder whether this early cracking will have any effect in the melting season to come.
There are still several weeks to go before this part of the Arctic is going to start melting, up till then the ice will actually thicken some more, even when the Sun’s rays start to reach the ice. But the ice is already getting broken up in smaller pieces, which means that 1) the pack becomes more mobile (like we saw last year), and 2) the thin ice that now grows to fill up the leads will go first when the melting starts, potentially leading to more open water between floes to absorb solar energy and convert it to heat.
But maybe not. Maybe this will have zero influence. We don’t know. That’s why we watch.
Nothing more to add except to ponder on what strange weather we will be experiencing this year! Actually, no need to ponder. The UK Met Office issued a weather warning last Sunday that included this sentence, “Cold easterly winds will persist through the coming week with bitterly cold conditions.” That came on the back of a blog entry from the Met Office that same day that included:
Many areas also saw strong winds, with a gust of 61 mph recorded at Shap, Cumbria and 48 mph recorded at Machrihanish, Argyll . These winds have caused even deeper drifts of snow in some areas. [my emphasis].
61mph? That’s Storm Force 10 under the Beaufort scale and 3mph under the lower boundary of a Violent Storm; Beaufort Force 11!
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The next item that caught my eye was some ‘goodish’ news from the US Senate via a recent post on 350.org.
After a very chaotic week on Capitol Hill, I wanted to write you with an update on what just happened in the Senate today.
First and foremost: the oil industry’s Senators did not manage to pass legislation that would force President Obama to build Keystone XL.
Because you — and people like you, all across the country — jumped into action this week, they backtracked and instead held a vote on a nonbinding resolution that says it would be nice to build the pipeline, but doesn’t actually do much about it. For that vote, they got the stomach-churning number of 62 Senators to vote with them. As usual, the ones who had taken the most money from the fossil fuel industry lined up to cast their votes—the cosponsors of the bill, on average, had taken $807,000 in dirty energy money.
Now, this amounts to symbolic chest thumping by the oil industry: showing just how many Senators they can get to jump when told to. It’s not the worst thing that could have happened, but it reminds everyone why, in one recent poll, congress had approval ratings lower than head lice and colonoscopies — even on the symbolic stuff, they can’t get it together to stand up to the oil industry guys cutting them checks.
In a certain way though, this vote couldn’t come at a better time. Congress is going on break, and for the next two weeks, these 62 Senators will be back in their home states, doing things like meeting with constituents — people like you.
Home states are where some of the most heroic work took place the last week — in Minneapolis, say, where 150 350MN.org activists showed up on very short notice at Sen. Klobuchar’s office in a snowstorm to tell her to vote no on Keystone (and she did, it should be added).
If you’re interested in following in the fine example of those leaders who held actions at their senators offices, you have a chance in the next two weeks.
We’re looking for people who can step up to lead, and then we’ll put the 350 network into action to get people to join you. If you want to lead an action, just click here to tell us when you’d like to do so: act.350.org/survey/kxl-senate-accountability-2013/
Look, there are two ways to react to a democracy for sale. One is to walk away in disgust, which is what the Koch Brothers count on. The other is to stand up and say: no more. If you visit your Senator, take some pictures or some video so we can share them around. It’s time to build this broader fossil fuel resistance.
And remember, Capitol Hill is not the center of the world. Around the country this week our friends at Tar Sands Blockade have been actively targeting Keystone investors; faith groups have been hauled off to jail in front of the White House to protest the pipeline; and the divestment campaign has expanded off college campuses and into municipal and state governments.
The movement is doing amazing stuff — we just need more of it. We can’t outspend the oil industry, but we can out-organize them. In fact, we have to.
Forward,
Bill McKibben
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“the cosponsors of the bill, on average, had taken $807,000 in dirty energy money.” Words utterly fail me!
A review of the recently published book by Martin Lack.
In many ways it would be terribly easy to find fault with this book. If it had been written as a book, been through the edits that a new book requires, then published, those faults would be a significant criticism.
But it was not written as a book! It was originally written as an academic text. As Martin explains in the Preface:
This book is based on research originally undertaken – and a dissertation written – as part of my MA in Environmental Politics from Keele University in Staffordshire (in 2010-2011).
Then in the following paragraph goes on to say:
Academics generally disapprove of the publication of academic research via non-academic, non-peer-reviewed routes. However, I am trying to reach more than just an academic audience.
Three sentences later:
However, this book retains many of the features of a piece of academic research, …. (All quotes from page viii of the preface)
To a person unaccustomed to reading academic research, as is this reader, the structural and presentational differences between a ‘normal’ non-fiction book and a dissertation are significant. That needs to be borne in mind as you turn to page one.
OK, now that I have got that off my chest, on to the substance of the review.
Turning to the outside back cover, one sees Martin clearly explaining that the book is not about climate science, rather an analysis of why some people dispute “the reality, reliability and reasonableness of this science.”
That alone justifies the work that Martin put into his research and dissertation and his subsequent decision to adapt his findings into a book.
The pace and scale of the changes that are being visited on Planet Earth is truly frightening. The number of feedback loops that we are locked into now don’t even bear thinking about. Just take the continuing and accelerating loss of the Arctic ice-cap and extrapolate that for a couple of decades (touched on in my recent post More new tomorrowsand see footnote.)
We are not talking of subtle changes over many generations. We are talking about irreversible and irrevocably massive changes to our environment within the lifetimes of just about every living person on this planet. (I’m 70 next year and while I have no idea how many years I have left, I rate it as at least 50:50 that before I take my last breath, the coming destruction of biosphere will be blindingly obvious to me, Jean and 99.9% of the world’s population.)
Makes me want to shout out ……
There is not much time left to leave a sustainable world for future generations. Come on politicians and power-brokers; start acting as though you truly understand the urgency of the situation!
Ah, that feels much better!
Back to the book!
Martin examines 5 categories that display denial behaviours, to a greater or lesser extent. These categories are: Organisations; Scientists, Economists, Journalists and Politicians. Oh, and a 6th catch-all category: Others.
Each section dealing with a category is structured in the same way: Preliminary Research; Key Findings and Summary. Tables are used extensively to allow easy review of the findings.
Again, what needs to be hammered out is that this format is very unlike a typical non-fiction book. Because it’s fundamentally an academic dissertation! But, so what!
What is important is for the widest possible audience to understand the breadth and extent of the denial going on. Denial that is, literally, playing with the future of humanity on this planet; the only home we have.
Let me reinforce that last sentence by picking up on what Martin writes on his closing page (p.76):
Furthermore, there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that this scepticism is being fuelled by those with a vested interest in the continuance of “business as usual” by seeking to downplay, deny or dismiss the scientific consensus on the extent of ACD.
Martin Lack’s book may be unconventional in many ways. But as a tool to show how those who deny the science of climate change deny the right of future millions to live in a sustainable manner, it is most powerful. It is a valuable reference book that should be in every library and every secondary school across the globe!
The Denial of Science is published by AuthorHouse 02/23/2013
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Footnotes:
To add weight to the points made in this review, do look in on tomorrow’s post.
I have no commercial links to Martin Lack; indeed, I purchased the copy of the book that I used for this review.
With grateful thanks to Capt. Bob who sent this to me.
Have a great Sunday, wherever you are!
A little Irish girl named Becky makes a prank phone call to have her school demolished. Becky made this call a few years ago so I’m sure her technique is even better today. Perhaps if she had offered the Top Boss a few pints in the local pub she would have pulled this off.
I had completely forgotten about the story of Zanjeer. But thanks to a recent email from John Lewis, friend from previous Devon days, it seemed fitting for today’s post.
Zanjeer was a Labrador Retriever who served as a detection dog with the Mumbai Police. During the time of the 1993 Mumbai bombings, Zanjeer detected arms and ammunition, including 3,329 kg of RDX explosives.
Here’s how Zanjeer’s death was reported back in November, 2000.
Police dog Zanjeer dead
Date: 2000-11-17
Police sniffer dog Zanjeer, who detected arms and ammunition used in 1993 serial explosions, died at a veterinary hospital at Parel last night, Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad sources said.
The nine-year-old Labrador was admitted to the hospital last month after it developed swellings in the lungs and paws.
Among the eight dogs with the squad, Zanjeer was regarded as a hero. It had two handlers, Ganesh Andale and V G Rajput. Zanjeer had detected 3,329 kgs of RDX, nine sticks of gelatine, five kg of other explosives, 18 AK-56 rounds, five pistol rounds and 6,406 other rounds during the blast investigations.
Zanjeer was born on January 7, 1992, and was inducted into the squad on December 29, 1992. It was trained at the Dog Training Centre of the Criminal Investigation Department at Shivaji Nagar in Pune.
Zanjeer (7 January 1992 – 16 November 2000) was a Labrador Retriever who served as a detection dog with the Mumbai Police. During the time of the 1993 Mumbai bombings, Zanjeer detected arms and ammunition, including 3,329 kg of RDX explosives.
Zanjeer was trained at the Dog Training Centre of the Criminal Investigation Department at Shivaji Nagar in Pune, India. He joined the Mumbai Police Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad on 29 December 1992 and was handled by Ganesh Andale and V G Rajput.
The name Zanjeer comes from the 1973 Hindi film Zanjeer but he was also called “Ginger” because of his coat colour.
Not including his contributions during the 1993 attacks, Zanjeer helped to recover 11 military bombs, 57 country-made bombs, 175 petrol bombs, and 600 detonators.
Zanjeer, the labrador: Unlikely hero of 1993 Mumbai blasts
A senior police officer lays a floral wreath on Mumbai’s most famous dog Zanjeer, who worked with the Bomb Squad, following his death from bone cancer in the city, November 17, 2000.Zanjeer, a golden labrador, saved thousands of lives during the serial bomb blasts in the city in March 1993 by detecting more than 3,329 kgs of the explosive RDX, 600 detonators, 249 hand grenades and 6406 rounds of live ammunition. He was buried with full honours during a ceremony attended by senior police officials. Reuters
Twenty years ago! My, how the years slip by!. Thanks John.
We spent some enjoyable time with neighbours Dordie and Bill yesterday afternoon from where my sub-heading quote comes. Perhaps, a tad tongue-in-cheek, but only a tad!
Yesterday, the bulk of my post The new tomorrows consisted of a powerful essay from William deBuys ‘Phoenix in the Climate Crosshairs‘, courtesy of TomDispatch. It painted in very stark terms the impact of climate change on the metropolitan city of Phoenix in Arizona; a city of over 4 million people, indeed home to more than two-thirds of Arizona’s population.
So, today, I wanted to wander through some other aspects of this new world order.
Here’s a recent item on Climate Crocks examining the changes in March’s weather, 2013 vs 2012. From which I quote:
Much Different March. Same Reason?
Dittohead reasoning: “So when it’s warm, you blame it on climate change. When its cold, you blame it on climate change. It can’t be both.”
I think we’ve passed the point of tolerance with these ceaseless storms. Gone are the days when viewers would flood our inboxes with pretty pictures of their pets and kids frolicing in the snow. Constant cleanup has made us snippy and short – even a few plow guys have hoisted the white flag. The holidays are long past, the winter is stale, and the people just want spring…
…and accountability. Instead of pictures, I get questions in my inbox. “Why are we getting so much snow? Why did it turn on a dime? And when will it stop?”
Those are fair questions. But with the limits of the long range (10-14 day) forecasts, I’m not ready to answer the last question. We may sail out of this in April, but so far the first week of the month isn’t looking much different from the first week in March. The ultimate question is why.
The jetstream has taken on an odd path. [my emphasis]
Now just look at this:
Forecast sea level pressure departures from average from the GFS computer model. This shows the large area of unusually high atmospheric pressure over Greenland. Image from Weatherbell
Later on that article says:
Recent research suggests that rapid Arctic climate change, namely the loss of sea ice cover, may be contributing to blocking patterns like we’re seeing right now. That rapid decline in Arctic sea ice since the beginning of the satellite record in 1979 may be altering weather patterns both in the Far North and across the U.S.. Some studies have shown that sea ice loss favors atmospheric blocking patterns such as the pattern currently in place, while others have not shown statistically significant changes in blocking patterns across the Northern Hemisphere, at least not yet. Arctic sea ice extent declined to a record low during the 2012 melt season.
The last Winter in North-West Europe has been ‘interesting’, to say the least! A follow-up to that Climate Crock’s essay reports:
A study published in 2012 showed that by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which steers weather systems from west to east around the northern hemisphere. The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system. The jet stream, the study said, is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and higher ridges.
A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters shows that reduced sea ice cover can favor colder and stormier winters in the northern midlatitudes
Did you fully take in that paragraph? The one about “The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere …“?
The other great ‘river’ in the North Atlantic is the thermohaline circulation or to put it in more familiar terms: The Gulf Stream. Has that been changing? You bet! In more ways than one might expect.
Here’s a snippet from an item from last October’s issue of Nature journal:
Recent changes to the Gulf Stream causing widespread gas hydrate destabilization
The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that modulates climate in the Northern Hemisphere by transporting warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico into the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. A changing Gulf Stream has the potential to thaw and convert hundreds of gigatonnes of frozen methane hydrate trapped below the sea floor into methane gas, increasing the risk of slope failure and methane release.
How the Gulf Stream changes with time and what effect these changes have on methane hydrate stability is unclear. Here, using seismic data combined with thermal models, we show that recent changes in intermediate-depth ocean temperature associated with the Gulf Stream are rapidly destabilizing methane hydrate along a broad swathe of the North American margin.
As the diagram below shows all too clearly, the cold waters from above the Arctic circle directly affect the Gulf Stream.
Average sea ice extent for February 2013 was 14.66 million square kilometers (5.66 million square miles). This is 980,000 square kilometers (378,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for the month, and is the seventh-lowest February extent in the satellite record.
Less ice means more cold water. QED!
OK, moving on.
We met recently with Wayne over at Rogue Valley Firewood here in Merlin. Not to buy more firewood but because Wayne has started into hugelkultur. Jean and I hadn’t heard of the term before. Come back to that in a moment.
In musing with Wayne about how rapidly life is changing for us all, he spoke of the consequence of rising fuel prices and the rising costs of putting petrol (OK, he used the word ‘gas’!) in one’s car. Wayne pointed out the obvious. That the inevitable effect of those rising costs would be to steadily reduce one’s range for ‘affordable’ car journeys. Many people will no longer be able to afford to drive longer distances.
In other words, local will increasingly become more relevant to daily life. Or to use a better word than local, community will return to the centre stage of our world. And of all the things important to a community, none is more so than access to food.
Back to Hugelkultur. Watch this video:
Wayne is committed to seeing just what can be grown for the local community of Merlin using this form of raised garden bed. You can read more here.
The USDA’s new Food Access Research Atlas is a map of all the places in the country where people live in food deserts — places where it’s difficult to access fresh food.
The message that hits me from that map is the consequence for millions of people, especially those in rural areas or unable to afford a car, when it comes to getting hold of fresh food. Another reason why community food programs are going to be a feature of the new tomorrows.
Finally, take a look at a recent item on Paul Gilding’s blogsite.
Paul Gilding
Paul is an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability. He recently published Victory at Hand for the Climate Movement?From which I offer:
There are signs the climate movement could be on the verge of a remarkable and surprising victory. If we read the current context correctly, and if the movement can adjust its strategy to capture the opportunity presented, it could usher in the fastest and most dramatic economic transformation in history. This would include the removal of the oil, coal and gas industries from the economy in just a few decades and their replacement with new industries and, for the most part, entirely new companies. It would be the greatest transfer of wealth and power between industries and countries the world has ever seen.
To understand this incredible potential we first have to step back and understand the unique structure of this social change movement, which may rank among the most influential in history. It is simplistic to characterise it as an alliance of grass roots organisations and activists pitched against a rich and well connected adversary. While that is part of the story, it is more accurately understood as an idea whose tentacles reach into every tier of government, the world’s largest companies and financial institutions, and throughout the academic and science communities.
Because of this, it is winning the battle from within: Its core arguments and ideas are clearly right; being endorsed by the world’s top science bodies and any significant organisation that has examined them.
Strikes me that in one very important way, we will be reverting to how our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors lived. I mean reverting to living our lives as relatively small interdependent communities almost exclusively at the local level.
Guess what! Yet another aspect of learning from dogs. In the wild, dogs live in groups of about 50 animals with clear boundaries to their territory. Just like the ancestors of the domesticated dog and the wild dog: The grey wolf Canis Lupus.
Learning from Dogs 