CF / Sea Level Rise and Adaptation
Climate change is not debatable, it is an issue of science, facts and physics. It is happening, and debates will not change that. The physics of global warming progresses despite our opinion about it. That’s the message from professor Jim White, a geological and environmental scientist and director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Climate change is progressing and easily observable in nature right now. Greenland’s ice sheets are melting. We may need to live with it, so we have to be more responsible with our money, and stop spending it on wars, and start planning for how we are going to adapt to climate change and sea level rise, if we can adapt at all. Our resources are finite, including finances to adapt to climate change. Sea Level rise is going to increase, and cities like Miami will be under water in 100 years or so.
This Climate File* is an interview with Professor Jim White, broadcast on KGNU radio’s show How on Earth, from August 3rd, 2010.
Professor Jim White directs the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and he’s a professor of geological sciences and environmental studies at the University of Colorado.
Professor White is also a paleoclimatologist — in other words, he studies ancient climates in attempt to understand better how Earth’s climate system works. He has just journeyed back to Boulder from the Greenland ice sheet, where he has been part of an international science team working on the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project, or NEEM.
After two summers of work, the NEEM team has drilled down more than 1.5 miles through the Greenland ice sheet, reaching bedrock just last week. And the ice core Jim White and his colleagues have recovered is from what’s known as the Eemian interglacial period, from 115,000 to 130,000 years ago.
Original show broadcast site.
It’s very interesting to me that this professor of environmental studies claims he is not pessimistic about the future. How is that possible? He is a teacher, so he is optimistic about the next generation of young people that he works with every day. That’s good to know. See more about this interview here, at CEJournal.
“White is a paleoclimatologist — he studies ancient climates to understand better how Earth’s climate system works. He has just journeyed back from the Greenland ice sheet, where he has been part of an international science team working on the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project, or NEEM.”
*Climate Files, from now on, will consist of archived audio and video files on climate and the environment, from various sources. The purpose is for information and educational reasons and to get these lesser known files out to the public as examples of some of the best climate change and environmental information and science. We believe the public has a right to know as much as possible on this topic and that this information should be shared as widely as possible.
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CF / Deadly Pursuit of Extreme Oil
Raping the Planet: Strip mining at Fort McMurray. Greenpeace / Colin O'Connor
The end of easy oil is over. From now on, all the oil we use will be difficult to obtain. So, since renewable fuels are available to us, it follows that we should be working hard to get off fossil fuels. Instead we are cleaning up the mess that more oil has created and planning to get even more difficult-to-obtain oil. This is not just unnecessary — it’s dangerous and stupid.
This is a recording of a very interesting and timely presentation that puts our use of oil in perspective, by expert, author and Hampshire College professor Michael Klare. He talks about the follies and dangers of our unwavering pursuit of extreme energy and describes the geopolitics of the energy crisis.
Oil is now actually “extreme energy” and unconventional rather than normal, because we are now getting it out of shale, from under miles of ocean water, and from tar sands in Canada, for example. It’s become “extreme oil”. We have passed peak oil, so oil is no longer readily available except by these extreme measures of extraction that push the very edges of what is possible. And while they are pushing those edges, some of the very nastiest environmental degradation and pollution is taking place. As a result, the Gulf of Mexico may have a permanent “dead zone” far bigger than anything imagined in the past, and it may not be cleaned up for a century. Is this really what we want to do to our planet for a little bit of energy that we will burn tomorrow and then it’s gone forever? It’s time to say No to fossil fuels and move on to something that makes more sense. Pursuit of extreme oil is a terrible government strategy.
Michael Klare’s entire talk can be downloaded here. Watch, if you want to see the slides, from here.
Klare’s latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.
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Climate Files 68 / Climate Scientists Conquer a Lord
Diagram from the testimony of Dr. James Hurrell (click to enlarge)
Real climate scientists smack down a gecko-like climate denier operative named Lord Christopher Monckton. Or to put it nicely, for purposes of educating the public about climate change, real climate scientists update us on climate science and correct climate denier operative named Lord Christopher Monckton at a May 6th global warming hearing. Monckton is a poser and a favorite of the right-wingers in the climate denial movement. After you get past the frustration of being fed lies by Mr. Monckton about climate change, it’s highly entertaining — especially when a congressman decides he’s had it with the bull. This all took place on May 6th in a congressional hearing, but this so-called debate was just made for TV! But here you have it in podcast form, in nearly its entirety — and all of Mr. Monckton in his ridiculous glory. If you want to watch this presentation you can view the video by downloading it at this link. This Climate Files podcast contains only the audio.
The hearing was sponsored by Rep. Edward J. Markey and held by his Select Committee on Global Warming, a hearing he called “The Foundation of Climate Science”.
Climate Scientists who testified last week:
- Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Director at School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona
- Dr. Chris Field, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of new IPCC report due in 2014
- Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University, past President and Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of IPCC report published in 2001
- Dr. James Hurrell, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, contributor to IPCC reports
And for some reason the guest (their “expert) of the GOP minority: Lord Christopher Monckton, a British consultant, writer and journalist — not a scientist. He argued with the real scientists that were present, and basically made a fool of himself. If you click on the names of the scientists at the hearing listed above, you can download their statements that contain loads of climate science facts and figures. See more at the website for the hearing. Lord Monckton and his charts have been thoroughly debunked by scientists, and one place with a good debunking is here on RealClimate.org.
Download this episode here, or subscribe on the right.
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The Front Lines of Climate Change
This is a tragic video from Bangladesh, from Yale e360. Climate change is causing water to rise and people aren’t just losing their ability to support themselves; they are losing their very homes. Yet they are too poor to move, so what can be done? Governments will have to pay to relocate people in the near future, and in fact should be doing this now. I don’t know why these people have been abandoned by their government, but this is now their life. More about this video is below.
“Danish photographer and filmmaker Jonathan Bjerg Møller recently spent nine months in Bangladesh, chronicling the lives of people struggling to survive just a few feet above sea level. He traveled to the South Asian nation after hearing projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the millions of climate refugees that would be created this century by rising seas and more powerful storms. Møller wanted to put a human face on this issue, and decided there was no better place than Bangladesh, where 15 million of its 160 million people live less than three feet above sea level.
While he was in Bangladesh, Cyclone Aila struck, killing roughly 200 people and leaving thousands homeless. Møller proceeded to document the devastation from that 2009 storm, as well the impact of subsiding land and rising seas on other Bangladeshis, many of whom earn less than $1 a day. In this Yale Environment 360 report, we present two videos by Møller – “Aila’s Victims” and “Wahidul’s Story.”
A Bangladeshi man who is the subject of one of his videos, Wahidul, lives in the town of Kuziartek, which was once home to 40,000 people. Now, the island on which Kuziartek was located is underwater.”
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(If you can’t see the video, try subscribing or downloading it. It plays for me in iTunes.)
Climate Files 62 / EPA Priorities
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Discusses 2010 EPA Priorities
On March 8, 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson spoke to the National Press Club on progress made by the agency in 2009 and priorities for 2010. She discussed actions on climate change, America’s waters and EPA’s efforts to expand the conversation on environmentalism.
She was asked why the EPA doesn’t stop surface mining (mountaintop removal) and she basically said because the EPA regulates pollution and water quality; the EPA does not and cannot regulate mining. That is a political excuse. They are the Environmental Protection Agency — it’s their job to protect the environment. Mountaintop removal is one of the most environmentally destructive practices in the U.S. and they must have the authority to stop it. Apparently, this is the EPA’s way of stalling a decision on mountaintop removal. Surface coal mining is especially destructive, not just to our water but to the trees, the ecology of the area, and to the land itself. There is no way to put the top back on a hill or mountain once it has been removed, and no way to completely reinstate the wildlife and balance of the ecology of the area once it has been ruined.
Unfortunately today, in conjunction with this talk, the EPA approved a surface mining operation in Ohio. They imposed supposed stringent rules on the mining operation so that it doesn’t pollute the water, but nowhere are there requirements of a carbon fee or any way for this mining to take responsibility for how it adds to global warming. This is where the EPA has to change. The EPA’s responsibilities should include protecting the human race’s ability to live in its environment–which would necessarily render coal mining obsolete. Read about the EPA’s new permit below. To see the video of this talk, visit CSPAN.org.
Below is the press release released by the EPA today in its approval of the Ohio surface mining permit. This is a blow to the environment, and it’s hard to see how this is the EPA “protecting” the country’s land and water.
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Climate Files 61 / Question the EPA
I attended the EPA Townhall Meeting and asked a good question. Everyone should question the EPA. Mine was about that nasty Canadian tar sands oil and the pipeline that is spilling oil into the beautiful northern part of one of the Great Lakes states. The EPA must not care very much about that, because they wouldn’t answer a simple question: how does a dirty oil pipeline fit in with the new green economy being promoted in the Great Lakes states? I like this EPA so much better than the last one, but it’s hard to believe it’s so easy to stump the EPA.
Also in this episode, what U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said about climate change deniers, and what President Obama said about energy and climate in his speech to the business roundtable in Washington DC. Some headlines were covered too, including the exciting news about Bloom Energy, a new company making a revolutionary new type of stand-alone power station. It sounds almost too good to be true — fuel cells that run on oxygen and biomass? Yes, and it’s already being used by companies in Silicon Valley. Here is what I wrote about it on Futurism Now.
The Delta Institute website is here.
The EPA video page where you can watch the entire Townhall meeting from February 23rd is here.
News covered:
- Poor Nations Could Be Paid to Preserve Marine CO2: UN (Reuters)
- Curbing Smokestack Emissions Tops EPA’s 2011-2013 Enforcement Goals (Greenwire)
- Groups ID Toxic Coal Ash Sites in 14 States, Demand Regulations (ENN)
- Tackling Climate Change ‘Urgent,’ President Hu Jintao Says (China Daily)
- Italy Delays New Solar Plan Again, Industry Worried
- World’s Temperature Record To Be Re-analyzed (The Independent)
- Check out the Enbridge Pipeline in my Backyard blog.
- Waste could fuel part of Spain – read here.
- Did you hear about the 126,000 gallon oil spill in northern MN, the 2nd in months?
You can download this episode here, or subscribe on Climate Files Radio.
Final song is by Galactic, “Heart of Steel feat. Irma Thomas” from the MPR song of the day podcast.
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Climate Files 60 Special / The Gates Equation
This is a special edition of Climate Files of a highly anticipated talk by Bill Gates, who has come up with an equation you see in this graphic. He presented this at the latest TED conference during a short talk on February 12th. This was followed by a short Q&A at TED and on livestream.com. Gates says he’s happy to get Twitter questions, so visit his website and fire off some questions to him.
Gates discussed energy, his “equation”, and his goal in life at the TED conference — getting us to zero carbon by 2050. He feels this is doable in a variety of ways. (These are his ideas and are not necessarily endorsed by myself or by Climate Files, but they are interesting.) He is getting a large amount of criticism from some environmentalists for saying that we need an “energy miracle” and lots of tech development to solve the climate problem. As he defines “miracle”, I mostly agree with his ideas on climate change. (Read an article discussing this here.) He is promoting nuclear power and not just any nuclear power but specifically, a “traveling wave” type of nuclear power, which is being developed by a company called TerraPower.
Is Gates just another T. Boone Pickens trying to cash in? Nope, Gates actually does understand and believe in the importance of climate change and is really seeking zero carbon solutions, unlike Pickens.
If you are wondering what Gates is up to besides caring what happens to the atmosphere, you should know that he is personally investing his own money into these ideas. He is spending quite a bit of thought and some of his great wealth on thinking about not just seeds and malaria, but also zero-carbon energy. Check out another article from last Monday for more on what Gates is doing to promote zero carbon energy. “When we talk about zero climate emissions, we sound crazy. When Bill Gates does it, bankers pick up the phone,” from Alternet.
(This episode of Climate Files is sans commentary from yours truly because I’m on a working break, and the plan is that this podcast will still return to weekly or bi-monthly episodes at some point.)
Download this episode here — it’s a short one — or listen here or subscribe on the right. For an interesting graphic I found of Bill Gates after he left Microsoft, click on more. I wanted to include it for the cover art for the podcast but it needed the equation on it to make sense!
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Climate Files 57 / Hacking the Climate
Mt. Pinatubo erupting in 1991
In his State of the Union Speech Obama last week, President Obama focused on Nukes, Offshore Drilling and Biofuels. A lot of people were bothered that he didn’t focus more on renewables. It seems that we can’t depend on the U.S. government to come to the rescue of the climate because they aren’t communicating the danger of climate change and they aren’t talking about how to stop it. In fact, they are mostly talking about jobs and the economy. So that leaves us with the same climate crisis we started with before the last election.
Ross Gelbspan is an author (his website here) and journalist who feels that it’s already too late to stop climate change. Based on his 15 years of research, he has released a recent video that tells us we need to act now and plan to adapt and survive. According to Gelbspan,
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, are preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.
This brings up the idea of using geoengineering to help in a climate emergency. People involved in geoengineering research stress that it’s not a substitute for mitigating carbon emissions but that it’s tool of last resort. The question is, what kind of tool will it be, how can it be safely tested, and who should be making these decisions. They emphasize this is not a substitute for mitigation. Whether you think it’s good or bad, the research is expanding and growing right now.
CDR (carbon dioxide removal) and SRM (solar radiation management) are discussed in this episode according to recent articles in the journal Science. (Articles here and here). What are the risks of solar radiation management actions, which scientists feel would be potentially dangerous?
Bill Gates has been writing about climate change lately, and he’s putting his money where his keyboard is. He’s investing in stopping hurricanes with his new patent and is talking about what our climate change targets should be. (more info after the break)
Download this episode here, subscribe on the right or listen below.
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Climate Files 56 / Answering Skeptics
Dead coral and sea shells washed up on beach, Mexico, 2007.
We know that CO2 causes climate change, but how? Believe it or not, credit card debt can help explain how CO2 causes global warming, even if the graphics show CO2 kind of non-synchronized with temperatures, at times. Hear Richard Alley talk about CO2 causing global warming at the AGU Annual Meeting. (Full video with graphics is here)
Also hear Stephen Colbert talk about mountaintop removal with Dr. Margaret Palmer, and the latest crock of the week, the claim of a petition with 32,000 signatures on it from scientists. It’s a hoax, of course. From Peter Sinclair of the Greenman’s Climate Crock video series. Sinclair is a longtime advocate of environmental awareness and energy alternatives and he runs Greenman Studio from his home in Midland, Michigan.
Richard Alley is an American geologist and Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University. He has authored more than 170 refereed scientific publications about the relationships between Earth’s cryosphere and global climate change, and is recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a “highly cited researcher.” (wikipedia)
More information on how to speak to deniers and skeptics that should be useful to everyone is here and here.
New climate change meetings/conferences after COP15:
In Abu Dhabi, the World Future Energy Summit.
Another climate change meeting is coming up on January 24th. Read about it here.
“…key groups of developing countries will meet to try to explore ways to get to agree a legally binding final agreement. As the dust settles on the stormy Danish meeting, environment ministers from the so-called “Basic countries” – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – will meet on January 24 in New Delhi. No formal agenda has been set, but observers expect the emerging geopolitical alliance between the four large developing countries who brokered the final “deal” with the US in Denmark will define a common position on emission reductions and climate aid money, and seek ways to convince other countries to sign up to the Copenhagen accord that emerged last month.”
You have to wonder what the carbon footprint is of all these meetings, especially given what they accomplish.
Transportation emissions information from Science Insider:
“. . . . projections spelled out in a new report reviewing the issue by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change suggests that by 2050 the total amount of carbon pollution from these sources could increase tenfold, depending on population, economics, and technology trends. Were that to happen, emissions would be as high as the entire transportation sector, which takes up 14% of global greenhouse emissions, currently dominated by pollution from cars and trucks.
You can download this episode here or subscribe on the right.
Music dedicated to all skeptics and deniers at the end: Pants on the Ground, by ‘General’ Larry Platt.
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Climate Files 55 / Drop the Nuke Bias
Being antinuclear is like a religion to many environmentalists. But solving climate change will be a compromise of what is possible and needed. We are not going to get a green utopian world to emerge and solve climate change with windmills. Even environmentalists want to be able to charge their cell phones and laptops. Should we throw it all away, or find out a realistic way to power it all once the coal plants are gone? We should be supporting nuclear plants over CCS any day. The last thing we want to do is spend billions locking in coal for another 50 years, something that could kill us all.
The Clean Air Act is under attack by Republicans with new legislation trying to block EPA again again. You can help save it by contacting your Reps. here.
Some news discussed in this episode includes information on and quotes from the books Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen and the Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock. Hansen’s letter to Obama is here (PDF). The UK must raise its CO2 emissions target to a 42% cut, says a new report. Read why our endless consumerism needs to be replaced with sustainable living here. The story about Bell Labs greening the internet by 2015 is here. There is a lot more in this episode including an audio description of what a thorium reactor is and how it works.
Read another interview with Stewart Brand, whose interview is played in this episode, here at e360.
More info on thorium reactors:
- How a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) works
- Energy from Thorium blog
- Uranium is so Last Century
Contact CF using the contact form at the top or email CF at news @ climatefilesradio (dot) com
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Music at end: Nuclear Power Plant by Zen Eyes
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Climate Files 51 / The Geek Files
Sea level rise in Australia, happening now.
This episode contains talks by the delegates from Stanford University and a talk by Steven Chu, a pretty geeky guy, from last weekend. Monday was Oceans Day at Copenhagens COP15, and the guys from Stanford discussed the health of the oceans and why that 350 number is so much better than that 450 number that Todd Stern seems to think is OK.
It’s impossible to keep up with everything that is going on in Copenhagen. There are groups doing interviews everywhere, press conferences, side events, Youtube debates and lots more. My hope is that everyone is keeping informed by going to the COP15 website, or the ENB report.
Presented Monday: New estimates of sea level change including the dynamics of the big ice sheets are way higher than the IPCC 2007 estimate.
Also discussed: UN Carbon-Capture Decision Faces Delay to Next Year.
Coal gassification explained.
Remember: 350 ppm is OK, 450 ppm is not OK. Bill McKibben and Al Gore also spoke, and now the heads of state are beginning to arrive. Even Prince Charles already spoke too. You could listen to speeches all day and still not hear them all.
Music at the end is a fun song by that guy from Minnesota, Bob Dylan.
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Climate Files 46 / Cap and Raid
Earth's damaged climate is a bit BIG to be fixed using capitalism products and trading schemes.
The cap and trade legislation has been “put off” until well after the Copenhagen summit in December. It’s pushed into spring, 2010, if then. If you want to read some better bills than cap and trade, which should be called Cap and RAID, you can check out all the other bills that intend to mitigate climate change. There are a lot of them!
This episode contains recent news and the “Huge Mistake” by the EPA attorneys gone rogue who have lots of information about cap and trade. The same rogue EPA attorneys interview on DemocracyNow here. Many environmentalists are very disappointed with the whole concept of capping and trading permits to pollute. The Carbon Tax Center site has a great list of the other, better bills here.
A Carbon Tax, Not a Cap and Trade
EU emissions trading scheme an ‘embarrassing failure’
Peru is losing its sacred glaciers to climate change. Slideshow of amazing photos is here.
Floods and Droughts: How Climate Change is Impacting Africa.
Also discussed in this episode: The Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle is now on sale at Best Buy.
Click below for the feature:
Initial Report: 2009 Brammo Enertia
One of the new, sneaky greenwash sites: GERrrrr (don’t take it seriously, folks).
Payal Parekh’s blog is here. Her interview on the Real News network, if you want to see it (the entire interview audio is in this episode) is at the Real News network ‘Cap-and-trade won’t cut it’ Pt. 2.
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