newnoah’s Recent Comments

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  “I am not a doomsayer,” said Bell. “I am not one who wants to say we are beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close to that.”

  As Joseph Romm eloquently describes our predicament faced with Hansen's new vision of climate change:

  1. Staying below 450 ppm is technologically doable, but would be the greatest achievement in the history of the human race, by far. It would require a global effort sustained for decades comparable to what the U.S. did for just the few years of World War II (the biggest obstacle is not technological, but political ­ conservatives currently would never let progressives and moderates pursue such a strategy).

  2. If 350 ppm is needed (and I’m not at all sure it is) then the deniers and delayers have won, since such a target is hopeless.

  But hopeless is not an option if Hansen is right. If the climate change diagnosis is now akin to a possible terminal illness then we must get out of denial and make the drastic, radical, unthinkable, impossible life style changes necessary or were toast.

  http://www.countercurrents.org/henderson180408.htm

  Or do we just rely on Waxman-Markey and the Western States Initiative?

  "The first, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, showed that the climate change we cause today will be "largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop". About 40% of the carbon dioxide produced by humans this century will remain in the atmosphere until at least the year 3000. Moreover, thanks to the peculiar ways in which the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, global average temperatures are likely to "remain approximately constant … until the end of the millennium despite zero further emissions"."  It's time to alter course  Monbiot

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/01/global-warming-emissions-fossil-fuels

  bill (at) pacificfringe.net

   

   

  On Global warming, California, and wildfires posted 2 months, 1 week ago 20 Responses

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  Yesterday, the Grist op-ed “The fallacy of climate activism” was sent to me independently by five different people. (It’s over; we lost; it’s too late; we’re already over the tipping point.)

  The author, Adam Sacks, only states bluntly what most climate scientists and activists know but don’t often say: given the 30-odd-year climate-cycle time lags, the now obviously activated positive feedbacks of decreasing albedo from the melting Arctic ice cap, and increasing methane and carbon dioxide from melting permafrost and from drying soils and burning forests, and the non-linearity—or abrupt, wild instead of gradual, pattern—of climate change, we are probably already over or past that tipping point to dangerous, runaway, uncontrollable-by-human-action climate change already.

  http://www.straight.com/article-249389/mr-premier-beyond-tipping-point-climate-change

  Bill  (at) pacificfringe.net

   

  On The fallacy of climate activism posted 2 months, 1 week ago 100 Responses

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  There is a local Gibsons band called Sweet Cascadia and they play a locally written song called Riding my Bike that is every bit as good as BOTH SIDES NOW and BIG YELLOW TAXI, a could be classic for today - but they haven't recorded it yet. Most of the band members are enviro educators and most of their songs are about being the change. Somebody should record them and make the bits available carbon free cause they're singing our song. (not much on net but pictures http://www.lagoonsociety.com/sweet-cascadia.php )

  On Friday music blogging: Lightning Dust posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago 1 Response

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  Isn't Waxman-Markey confirmation that "Climate policy is characterized by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points."
  David Spratt, Philip Sutton, Climate Code Red, Australia, Published July, 2008
  
  "These scientific imperatives are incompatible with the realities of politics as usual and business as usual. Our conventional mode of politics is short-term, adversarial and incremental, fearful of deep, quick change and simply incapable of managing the transition at the necessary speed. The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model."
  http://www.civicus.org/new/media/climatecodered_1.pdf
  
  Isn't Waxman-Markey one more hard to ignore lesson that those committed to climate change solution need to solve the broken / captured government problem first: How to get out of BAU where needed change isn't possible? Instead of just mis-educating the public and helping the delayers?
  
  "...(T)he critical factor for leadership and organizations is no longer whether one accepts the reality of abrupt climate change, as it was for the last 10 years, but whether one believes in the possibility of abrupt political change and is willing to work for it." Ken Ward
  http://www.grist.org/article/2009-03-19-u.s.-groups-desert-precaution/
  
  bill  (at) pacificfringe.net

  On Four Democratic senators call for delay on climate legislation posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago 12 Responses

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  Isn't Waxman-Markey confirmation that "Climate policy is characterized by the habituation of low expectations and a culture of failure. There is an urgent need to understand global warming and the tipping points for dangerous impacts that we have already crossed as a sustainability emergency that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We are now in a race between climate tipping points and political tipping points."
  David Spratt, Philip Sutton, Climate Code Red, Australia, Published July, 2008
  
  "These scientific imperatives are incompatible with the realities of politics as usual and business as usual. Our conventional mode of politics is short-term, adversarial and incremental, fearful of deep, quick change and simply incapable of managing the transition at the necessary speed. The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model."
  http://www.civicus.org/new/media/climatecodered_1.pdf
  
  Isn't Waxman-Markey one more hard to ignore lesson that those committed to climate change solution need to solve the broken / captured government problem first: How to get out of BAU where needed change isn't possible? Instead of just mis-educating the public and helping the delayers?
  
  "...(T)he critical factor for leadership and organizations is no longer whether one accepts the reality of abrupt climate change, as it was for the last 10 years, but whether one believes in the possibility of abrupt political change and is willing to work for it." Ken Ward
  http://www.grist.org/article/2009-03-19-u.s.-groups-desert-precaution/
  
  bill  (at) pacificfringe.net

  On Four Democratic senators call for delay on climate legislation posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago 12 Responses