How Do You Spell Climate Inaction: WILLARD "MITT" ROMNEY

President Obama is no bargain, but if Mitt Romney is elected, it will mean that nothing will be done to curb atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. It also means that the narrow window for climate amelioration will have closed. In other words, climate armageddon will be inevitable and the continued viability of our biosphere for most life will have been unalterably impaired. The planet's sixth great extinction which has been happening before our eyes, with synchronized swimming getting more media attention, might well include our own species. One thing is certain, without immediate action, and Romney spells inaction, hundreds of millions of people will die, and many people living today will marginally survive on a planet they do not recognize. The face of evil is indeed banal.  jj

Climate Denialism on the Increase

As our climate crisis heats up ( intended), the fossil fuel industry is spending more money and time trying to convince the American people that scientists and environmentalists are just alarmists. Their solution to the rapidly intensifying problem of a warming planet is clearly articulated in the moronic Romney energy plan which involves using more coal, more drilling, fracking, and other WTF technologies that will continue to drive atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ever higher. How can an entire species be persuaded that suicide is a rational form of problem solving?
Miasma of Climate Misinformation

Fighting the Good Fight for a Our Planet in Peril

Curbing Methane Release from Coal Extraction

Buying Some Time

Published on Friday, August 31, 2012 by Common Dreams
We Are Writing the Epilogue to the World We Knew


by John Atcheson

The data continue to roll in, and they are telling us we are in the process of bringing an end to the world we evolved in, and creating a new, harsher world. We will be forced to devote more and more of our resources trying to adapt to this new world, and less on development.

While politicians fiddle, the world burns. While the press plays he-said, she-said, the ice melts, the seas rise.


In 1990 we could have averted this disaster and saved money doing it. As late as 2010 we still had a shot at avoiding it. But now, the die is cast, the future foretold. What follows will be an epilogue to civilization, as we knew it.

Hyperbole? Let’s look at the facts.

Arctic sea ice hits lowest extent ever measured (and it’s still melting) – check.

Hottest winter, spring, summer, year, decade ever measured – check.

Most extensive drought in 50 fifty years, and getting worse – check.

Worst floods in recorded history – check.

Hottest seas in eons – check.

Most acidic oceans ever measured – check.

Most greenhouse gasses released in a single year – check.

Highest sea levels since Pleistocene – check.

Most permafrost melted (with record releases of methane) ever measured – check.

Massive crop failures and record high food prices – check.

Most severe weather events ever recorded – check.

Meanwhile, in Tampa, the fossil fuel funded Republican Party is doubling down on climate denial, pushing greater use of oil, coal and gas, and trying to gut programs designed to save energy and use more renewables. In short, they’re working diligently to hasten our demise.

And no, that’s not hyperbole, either. Check out Romney's energy plan.

What about the Democrats? Well, except for one mention of climate change in an interview with Rolling Stone, the President has been mum on the topic, as has most of the rest of the Party.

How about the press? Week after week of record heat and drought brought nary a mention of global warming. It was as if people were dropping dead from bullets, but no one mentioned guns – oh wait. Bad analogy. That's actually happening. OK, how about, as if the nation were getting obese, but no one mentioned massive farm subsidies for fattening foods – Whoops. That's happening too. Oh well, you get the idea.

And so the last chapter concludes. The story ends. Only the Epilogue remains. The part where we reveal the fate of the characters.

But here’s the thing. We are writing the story, but our children and their children’s children will inhabit the epilogue.

Imagine a world where vast regions of an acidic ocean are dominated by jellyfish. A world where tuna, salmon, halibut swordfish, crabs, shellfish, shrimp and the rest of the seafood we take for granted – the primary source of protein for more than a billion people – is virtually gone. Oh, and that might come with a side of oxygen depletion. You know, the stuff we breathe. Think of it as planetary COPD.

The land? An unending series of drought, flood, fire and famine. Throw in some disease, a little social chaos – with as many as billion climate change refugees desperately swarming the planet by 2050. Good thing the Republican platform reinforces everybody’s right to bear assault weapons.

The coasts will be their own special blend of hell on earth. Ports will have to be abandoned. The richer countries might get away with extraordinarily expensive dikes, levies, and pumps for a while, but eventually even they’ll have to be abandoned. Wicked storms will be routine. International trade will become difficult and unreliable. That is, assuming anyone has the social cohesion and political capacity to engage in global trade.

This is the epilogue we are writing. It is all but inevitable at this point. What Bill McKibben called, global warming’s terrifying new math.

But as terrifying as McKibben’s math is, it doesn’t even consider the increasingly likely horror of methane releases from permafrost and clathrates. Methane just happens to be 72 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide in the short term, and 25 times as strong over the long term. And there are 1.5 trillion tons of carbon trapped in perma-frost and about the same amount in clathrates.

Not to get all techno-geek on you, but the people modeling the effects of this much carbon suggested it would be hell on Earth by 2100. But in calculating the rate and amount of methane and carbon released from Arctic sources, they didn’t even add in the effect of accelerated warming from the permafrost releases themselves. In other words, they looked at greenhouse gas emissions from conventional sources only, despite the fact that releases from methane feedbacks are equivalent to those from fossil fuels.

So yeah, Hell is coming, but it’s coming a lot faster than any predictions you’ve see so far from the scientific community.

Now, as we’re closing the book on civilization as we know it, yes, let’s talk about how we can increase the production and use fossil fuels; let’s serve up divisiveness, hate and fear at a time when unity and courage are needed; let’s get guns into the hands of every possible frightened and hate-filled person so we can up the ante on the chaos to come; let’s talk about gutting government – the only force capable of mounting a coherent response to this unfolding tragedy.

That’s the real Republican platform.

Democrats? They don’t even have a platform. To the extent they do, it seems to be “We’re not quite as bad as them.
And the press? They’re busy hammering away at the Epilogue.

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers.

Durban Continues Our Species' Suicidal Trajectory

Climate change is the biggest challenge we face today, just as it was three decades ago. Tragically we have done nothing to mitigate the problem even as human numbers exceed 7 billion. We have watched mean global temperatures rise 1 degree C in the last century and the planet is locked into another 1 degree C increase even if ALL greenhouse emissions were stopped today. With agressive action, earth may still be recognizeable in 2100, but given our failure to act meaningfuly, it is nearly a certainty that our children and grandchildren will be living on a planet nobody alive today would recognize. Even then, the profiteers will be trying to make a buck from humanity's last gasp. Earth will be a planet with far less biodiversity, resilience and capacity to be the life support system for all that some revere as life. I include humans in that group. Atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 ppm in 1850. They are currently at 391 ppm. The paleoclimate record documented from ice core data preserved in Greenland and Antarctica shows that the CO2 levels for at least 650,000 years remained between 180 -290 ppm. The Republican presidential candidates tell us that climate change is a leftist, Marxist, Socialist, Whacko, etc. conspiracy. Obama says nothing and does less. The word coming out of Durbin is suicide.

Germany's Greening Economy Creates Jobs

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7376-279a

Tar Sands DC Protest

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/06-0

Geoengineering to Cool Planet

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=poll-finds-support-for-geoengineering-blocking-sunshine

Northwest Passage

Northwest Passage
(Stan Rogers)
cho: Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Climate Skeptic Does a 180

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/climate-skepticism-takes-another-hit

New Climate Study: What are we waiting for?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44996377/ns/us_news-christian_science_monitor/

Letter To Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Senator,
Would you be kind enough to tell me what your position is on the tar sands pipeline. As I am sure you know the extraction of oil from tar sands is a dirty and energy intensive process. Climatologist James Hansen has stated that if this pipeline is built it will result in the expanded development of the tar sands as an energy source. Hansen, among others is, adamant in his opposition to this project and is on the record as having stated that if the project goes forward, it is " game over" for the climate. My students and I look forward to your response on this issue. We fervently hope that your views are informed by the current robust science which ascribes much of our planet's warming in the last 50 years to anthropogenic activities. This pipeline can only exacerbate an already dire problem which is in immediate need of remediation and creative solutions.

Best,
Jeff Johnson
Science Dept.
South Kingstown High School

Message to Jack Reed: RESIGN

Having recently sent Senator Jack Reed an email requesting his position on the Keystone XL Tar Sands pipeline without, as of yet, any response at all, I'm am inclined to believe that it's not just Obama who doesn't get it. None of our policymakers seem to be able to place the future of our planet ahead of political posturing. I have had experience, in the past, with Jack Reed, and it is more than a little disquieting to think that this great liberal warlord has been and will continue to make decisions about our energy future. His knowledge of basic science is disturbingly limited. Now this is not Jim Inhofe we are talking about. Inhofe's refusal to accept the robust body of evidence linking climate change to anthropogenic activities is the result of recalcitrant ingnorance and stupidity. Reed is certainly ingnorant when it comes to even an inchoate comprehension of climate and the dire consequences of inaction. But he is supposedly one of the brighter lights in Washington and the Democratic party. It is increasingly clear that the business of the Democrats, like the Republicans, is business. The future of our children be damned, as well as the viability of our beleagured planet. It is time for Reed to resign. His spineless waffling and knee jerk support of corporate interests is not acceptable.



http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/11-6

Keystone XL Pipeline

Senator Reed has been very quiet on this issue. I hope that he sends me a timely reply. I will keep you informed. It is imperative that we hold our legislator's feet to the fire on climate change. Without question this is the seminal issue of this generation.

Senator Reed,
Please inform me of your position on the Tar Sands Pipeline. Climatologist James Hansen has stated that if the pipeline is built it is "game over" for mitgating what now are inevitable impacts of climate change. In addition to my personal interest many off my students would like to know your position on this most important issue.

Climate Change Lab

http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/labs/vostok/

655,000 years of Ice Core Data

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/

Carbon Sequestration

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbon-capture-and-storage-projects-make-measured-progress

2011 Artic Ozone Loss

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/04-1

Food and Climate

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/29-3