DOUBT IS OUR PRODUCT - the blog

NOTES AND LINKS FOR THIS WEEK'S SHOW:

Why do media run "scandals" about climate science? They get full page ads from car and oil companies, and they don't give a damn about our future. It's all in the latest ratings, the quarterly profit statements.

But why do we accept it? You know why... today, there's a good chance you got in your car, turned on a coal-fired light bulb, ate an agro-business meal. We want to believe we are not guilty of polluting the atmosphere.

Some people need to believe that so badly, they are ready to shoot the messengers. Literally. Our climate scientists.

And this anger (at unemployment, declining health care, degraded nature, who knows what all) - is developing from a cult of the few, into a mass movement. The madness of crowds, as we head into the greenhouse world.

That is what this Radio Ecoshock program is all about.

CLIVE HAMILTON

We go to Australia, to talk with Clive Hamilton. He's a Professor of Public Ethics, supported by Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. Clive is lighting up the media, with a fantastic new series on climate denial. Plus his controversial new book "Requiem for a Species, Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change."

His previous books include Affluenza, Growth Fetish, Scorcher, and Silencing Dissent.

I've been reading about harassment and death threats to climate scientists, most recently in an excellent 5 part series by Clive Hamilton. The most recent installment, published in Scientific American, has the sub-head "Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist."

Clive Hamilton is a Professor of Public Ethics, supported by Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Previously, he founded and ran a progressive think tank called the Australia Institute.

His five part series includes:

February 22, 2010: Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial
February 23rd: Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?
February 24th: Think tanks, oil money and black ops
February 25th: Manufacturing a scientific scandal
February 26th: Who's defending science?

- all published on the ABC National web site.

I wouldn't have believed the death threats and low blows, if I hadn't heard Stephen Schneider's own story. If I hadn't talked with other climate scientists who say the same.

As we heard from Clive Hamilton, the world's best climate scientists, and green activists, are under attack.
Now we'll hear directly from one of them.

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER

Stephen H. Schneider is Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University. He's a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Schneider has advised the federal government during the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He is one of America's pre-eminent climate scientists, one of the driving forces behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We'll hear an exclusive interview with Stanford's famous climate scientist, Stephen H. Schneider. His latest book has been frozen out by major media. His teaching has been harried by attacks from climate deniers. Schneider talks candidly about death threats, and attempts by some in Congress to charge him as a criminal. Shades of Joe McCarthy, as humanity reacts to the bad news - with more madness.

The interview comes in a telephone conversation between Professor Schneider, and one of the few independent environmental journalists left on the planet - Stephen Leahy of IPS, independent press service. Dr. Schneider opens up with news of his alleged crimes against the nation.

[Schneider-Leahy interview]

That was Stanford's Stephen H. Schneider talking with Stephen Leahy. Find links to Schneider's web page in my Radio Ecoshock blog entry dated March 11th. And you'll find links to Stephen Leahy's IPS article "Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists," as published on the Tierramérica network, hundreds of papers, on March 8th.

Canadian climate scientist and IPCC contributor Dr. Andrew Weaver told Leahy "'We're in a bizarre time, powered by greed and fear. The general public is more confused than ever,' 'And good scientists are saying to themselves, 'Why would I want to participate in the IPCC?'

The newspaper world is falling into bankruptcy, due to debt-laden mergers and acquisitions, competition from free information on the Internet, and a generational move from print to audio and video. Hordes of good reporters have lost their jobs - and would you believe it, newspapers tend to let environment reporters go first. Are they protecting their big-business advertisers? Of course not. It's just co-incidence.

You can help. Stephen Leahy may be the new model - a journalist who works directly for his or her readers. Stephen is off on a whirl-wind tour on three continents, covering conferences ranging from forestry to the oceans. He is your reporter - but Stephen needs help to keep going. Please visit his web page at stephenleahy.net, where you can "Adopt An Environmental Journalist" with a small donation by PayPal. Steve has two kids to feed, and we need to keep him going. Do it.

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This is the last gasp of the fossil fuel age. The men who make billions every quarter, the longer they can stall, are buying whoever they can in the media, the blogosphere, and the houses of government.

And this is all tied into a long-standing conspiracy that goes deeper than mere money. It finds a home in Libertarians and ideologues who fear big government, or hate it.

A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center says disgruntled Americans are being whipped up by well-known media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Somehow, in muddled minds, the science of climate change has been deftly attached to 911, unemployment, and the new extreme "patriot" groups. That report is called "Rage on the Right."

The militias, and the haters are back. They fly planes into the IRS, or attack the Pentagon single-handedly. Both Leahy and Schneider worry it's just a matter of time before a climate scientist is shot as well. I hope they are wrong - but just imagine the coming madness of crowds after a series of strange climatic events. After a heat wave kills thousands, after a mega-storm wipes out another city. After the crops fail, again. Our picture of society may fall off the wall, as anger takes over.

NANCY ORESKES: MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

We'll go now to a real conspiracy. Three scientists who frightened the world, who morphed from cold-warriors to anti-environmentalism. The founders of the current climate denialism. The institute they founded, named after World War Two warrior general George C. Marshall - took tobacco money, and then oil money, to stop government action, to endanger millions of lives, and future generations.

We'll get the story from the author of a new book "Merchants Of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth About Climate Change". Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. She spoke at the University of Rhode Island, on March 2nd, 2010.

You'll hear 15 minutes from that speech. Find the whole thing on the climate 2010 page or our web site, ecoshock.org.

1 hour speech as mp3, CD Quality 56 MB (recommended, only mediocre audio quality)

Or Lo-Fi 14 MB(for telephone or slow download locations).

[Oreskes clip]

That was Naomi Oreskes, on a tour for her new book "Merchants Of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth About Climate Change". The recording comes from the Vetlesen Lecture series, at the University of Rhode Island, March 2nd, 2010.

I remember battling Frederick Seitz back in the early 1990's, on a whole series of environmental fronts. If there was an evil chemical needing regulation, something killing off people or the biosphere, Seitz and his industry backers were against taking any action.

Now the three old men have finally almost faded off the horizon, but their George C. Marshall Institute was taken over by the American Petroleum lobby. The web site exxonsecrets.org lists grants by the Exxon Mobil oil company to the Marshall Institute totaling $840,000 since 1998. The Institute funded and published a who's who of climate deniers, including the late Sallie Baliunas, Frederick Seitz, Patrick Michaels, Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, and Richard Lindzen. The tiny crowd who continue to mislead the public about climate science, while whipping up anti-government feelings.

According to Wiki, the executive director of the George Marshall Institute helped develop the doubter's strategy for the American Petroleum Institute. Wiki continues, quote:

"The institute's CEO William O'Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, is a registered lobbyist for Exxon Mobil."

So there is the real conspiracy - not by climate scientists to take over the world -but by industry hacks and cold warrior ideologues - to keep us upset and stupid, while the world burns. Beware the doubters and deniers.

But that was history. Now, in 2010, the anti-science belief system sprouted by three American scientists, has grown into a cult for now, and threatens to become a popular movement.

Nature - and physics - don't care what you believe. What is coming will come.

I'm Alex Smith. As always, I appreciate you taking time to listen to Radio Ecoshock. Write me any time, radio at ecoshock.org.

Opening music from Thamnos. Great new duo from Germany and England. Green aware. Check out their sample audio and video.

Songs: In the Year 2525, two versions: the original #1 hit from 1969 by Zager & Evans, album Exordium & Terminus, RCA End version from Venice Beat, featuring Tess Timony, released 2005.

ON THE ROAD TO MASS EXTINCTION

Are we on the road to mass extinction? More scientists, from different fields of study, say that is possible, as we pollute the atmosphere and oceans.

We'll explore that - the worst case scenario - in this edition of Radio Ecoshock.

I'm going to dedicate this program to one such scientist, Dr. Andrew Glikson, an Earth and Paleoclimate specialist, from Australian National University.

We featured Andrew Glikson in our Radio Ecoshock show, May 1st, 2009. You can download that free from our web site, ecoshock.org.

We'll also interview a top scientist from Yale, Dr. Mark Pagani. His recently released study shows a hot greenhouse world, just 5 million years ago, with CO2 levels similar to those we have already put into the atmosphere. We'll talk about what the IPCC may have missed.

And we'll keep coming back to the mother of all climate nightmares: the dying oceans, which could wipe out most land species as well. Including us. You'll hear clips from an important speech, "Brave New Oceans" by Jeremy Jackson, Scripps Professor of Oceanography. He too warns we are heading toward a mass extinction event. And Jackson is far from alone.

But first, we'll start with a drop of good news: Bill Gates, the world's richest man, has finally discovered dangerous climate change. Here is how Gates began his speech to TED, the Technology, Entertainment and Design series, on February 12th, 2010.

READ MORE (with links to more audio, video and references)

Toward the Collapse

Is global warming unstoppable now? Could we be saved by total economic collapse? If so, should we help civilization fall?

It's another cheery edition of Radio Ecoshock, with your darkness at the end of the tunnel, Alex Smith. There are lots of links to our program content below.

Last night I recorded another glimpse of the climate apocalypse, with the author of "Climate Wars" Gwynne Dyer. He outlined the short distance from here to the cliff where long-known natural feed-backs leading to runaway global warming begin, and continue on for millennia. That limit is known as two degrees. Beyond that, great forests melt into fire, liberating their carbon. Beyond that, the Arctic permafrost melts, likely doubling atmospheric greenhouse gases. Five to seven degrees Centigrade of average global temperature rise. Utter disaster.

Dyer says world governments quickly agreed to the 2 degree limit at Copenhagen, without telling the public why. No need to panic the herd.

Dyer says we won't make it in time, before the big climate switch is pulled. You'll hear clips from that speech in an upcoming Ecoshock Show. I can't run the whole speech, because as usual, Gwynne is developing his new work toward another radio or TV program. I appreciate Gwynne sharing his "working notes" with our Radio Ecoshock audience. Kind of a sneak preview.

Find out more at www.gwynnedyer.com
Here is info on the "Climate Wars" radio series.

... and the book.

Up early this morning, I tune into a climate science web cast from the Center for American Progress. Two top American IPCC scientists, trying not to say too much. Late in this program, I'll have a few clips and comments from that update, hosted by Joe Romm, of the blog climateprogess.org.

But we'll start out with a different sort of scientist. Cloud specialist Tim Garrett stepped in a few people's faces, when he proposed a formula about carbon and the world's wealth. Simply put, unless our economy collapses, to levels you and I would hate, climate change is unstoppable. Garrett bases his jarring statements on a basic law of physics, of thermodynamics.

Read the "Is Global Warming Unstoppable?" article here.

You won't need a science degree to understand our Radio Ecoshock interview.

Following Garrett, we dive deeper into the culture of despair. Keith Farnish is the author of "Time's Up, an uncivilized solution to a global crisis." I've put lots of Keith Farnish links below, including one to his online book.

Are you ready to become uncivilized?

If collapse is the best solution, would you help kick the system over? Or would you just watch it fall? Farnish has been called a terrorist, and a green realist. Your brain exercise for troubling times.

Let's start with the science of collapse.

[Garrett interview]

This is Radio Ecoshock, with Alex Smith. We've just heard Tim Garrett from the University of Utah - and let's take a quick review.

His paper is titled "Are there basic physical constraints on future
anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?"

The basic thesis, tested against past industrial development, is that neither population nor standard of living have to be included in modeling prediction of climate change. Garrett concludes that civilization, as measured by gross domestic product, is directly related to the amount of carbon burned. More emissions, more wealth. Less emissions, less economic production.

Here is the exact description of the theory, from an abstract of Garrett's paper:

"Here, it is shown both theoretically and observationally how the evolution of the human system can be considered from a surprisingly simple thermodynamic perspective in which it is unnecessary to explicitly model two of the emissions drivers: population and standard of living. Specifically,
the human system grows through a self-perpetuating feedback loop in which the consumption rate of primary energy resources stays tied to the historical accumulation of global economic production—or p × g—through a time-independent factor of 9.7 ± 0.3 mW per inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollar."

By applying his formula, Garrett says it would take a new nuclear plant built every single day to keep up our current standard of living. As that isn't happening, and may be impossible, the only other solution is economic collapse. In our interview, Garrett suggests a horrible economic crash, which I imagine as diving perhaps to Medieval standards of life, is required just to reach 450 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

In the conclusion of that paper we find, quote:

Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter.

Because the current state of the system, by nature, is tied to its unchangeable past, it looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates. For predictions over the longer term, however, what is required is thermodynamically based models for how rates of carbonization and energy efficiency evolve. To this end, these rates are almost certainly constrained by the size and availability of environmental resource
reservoirs."

end quote.

Several science journalists picked up on the paper's underlying prediction: global warming is unstoppable, unless the economic system crashes. And that leads to our next guest. He agrees, and suggests it is our duty, all of us, to help the inevitable hard landing come sooner, rather than later. Why wait until Nature is totally used up, on a nearly dead planet?

[Keith Farnish]

Here are a bunch of links for Keith Farnish:

His blog. earth-blog.bravejournal.com
Another blog ("unsuitablog")
Keith's book "Time's Up" (online version) www.timesupbook.com
========

Web casts are proliferating, as various publishers and institutes slash travel costs. That's good for emissions, and a way to let more people into the virtual room. I attended two this week.

One was a re-assessment of Copenhagen, and the way forward, from the British publisher Earthscan.

There I met David Satterthwaite, our radio guest next week. His recent work on the realities of human settlement, slums, and western consumerism - fits in perfectly with the new Worldwatch 2010 State of the World Report. I interview that report's project director, Erik Assadourian, as we ask "Is it them, or is it us?" Next week, on Radio Ecoshock.

My second web cast was provided by the Center for American Progress, and hosted by uber-blogger Joe Romm. His spot climateprogress.org really is the indispensable climate blog, as author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called it.

On the web cast, we got to hear from two top American scientists, who have helped organize IPCC reports: Dr. Michael MacCracken and Dr. Christopher Field. Dr. MacCracken has been a Radio Ecoshock guest.

I'm not going to lie to you. At time the web cast was timid to boring, as the two scientists were so careful about the limits of the IPCC process. You had to re-interpret wonk speak, to realize this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not really up to the task of warning the world about the real threat.

Why not? Let me count just a few reasons.

One: the whole pile of summaries, the things you, and I, and politicians actually read, must be agreed to, line-by-line, by each and every government in the world. That means, for example, Saudi Arabia, the giant oil producer who denies climate change, has to sign on. It's almost like having Dick Cheney approve everything the Obama administration does. Oh wait, it seems like that's happening in the Senate anyway.

Two: when incompetence, and possibly corruption in the case of grand-leader Pachauri show up, the IPCC has no agency to investigate, to correct the problem, or even to handle the press. Pachauri was involved with the unscientific and botched prediction about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2030 - now shown to be contrary to the common knowledge of most glacier experts. A member of the team acknowledged they knew the information to be false.

Yet Pachauri helped get that wrong prediction into the report, and then personally profited from the panic by the Indian government. His company got fairly big money to find out more, about a problem with did not exist at the levels claimed.

It stinks of corruption, not a new idea at the United Nations. I've posted a list of Pachauri 's various businesses, and it's a long list, in my blog for this week. He should resign.

Here is an article which claims a direct conflict of interest for Dr. Pachauri , when it comes to carbon trading.

The same blog goes into detail about Pachauri 's business holdings and roles. It doesn't look good.

And let's not forget that Pachauri is essentially President George W. Bush's man. Bush objected to Robert Watson heading the IPCC, and pushed for Pachauri instead. Another very bad sign.

None of this was mentioned by the upright scientists at the American Progress web cast. They admit a major mistake was made, but don't criticize either the man, or the system that let him get away with it. Pitiful.

Three: there are a lot of things that science simply can't address, that matter a lot. For example, when the assembled scientists realized they didn't know how to predict Arctic ice melt, they just left that out of the calculations of sea level rise. So their prediction of a few millimeters rise by 2100 was laughable.

There's a lot more unknown unknowns, including public panic, climate wars, and climate trauma, and mass migration, just to name a few. Those demons are outside the realm of science, but definitely part of what we need to understand, or at least plan out with the best guesses.

Four: the IPCC is always 5 years behind current science. And why do we only report every five years, on a problem that suggests we only have ten years left to act, if that, before Nature takes over control of the greenhouse? We need a permanent climate war room, or rather a peace room.

Five: experience with past reports shows, the IPCC always underestimates both the urgency, and the severity of the impacts of climate disruption.

I run a couple of the best clips from the web cast, which you can see in full here.

In our first radio clip, Dr. Christopher Field echoes, almost exactly, the theory we heard in our first interview, with Tim Garrett. Carbon equals wealth.

Then Field adds to a list of climate change impacts, already begun by Michael MacCracken.

And finally, Dr. Michael MacCracken expands on everyone's nightmare, melting permafrost.

Still, it was a worthwhile web cast by the Center for American Progress, February 2nd, 2020. My thanks to Joe Romm, super-climate blogger at climateprogress.org, for at least trying to keep it lively.

Most of the talk about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was diplomatic - and disappointing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in fact the whole U.N. system for negotiations, isn't working. If anything, it's working against us.

Frankly, we need a new public body to measure and predict the climate threat in real time. Let scientists say what they can prove, without censorship from Saudi Arabia, George Bush, or whoever. Maybe it can all be built as a knowledge machine on the Internet. Heaven knows who will fund and control it. Maybe some billionaire will care enough about the future to fund it, and let it go, without strings. Maybe we can find a few honest women and men?

Something has to change, or we are toast.

Can the public stomach the awful truth? Or, will we go down in a sea of denial and business-as-usual?

It's almost to the point, where the danger to the world as we know it, might matter as much as the Toyota recall, or who won the Oscars. I know that's a big claim, but that's the way I see it.

I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for listening.

Atomic Dreams, Climate Nightmares

In this program you'll hear about the new nuclear renaissance. The lobbyists, and the greens, who want you to accept more reactors, to prevent catastrophic climate change.

I'll toss in one slightly tarnished hero, Dr. James Hansen, and a new interview with another combative doctor, Helen Caldicott. And running throughout, a stimulating podcast from Shelly Thomas, urging us to "Drop the Nuke Bias"

And I introduce you to your new nuclear neighbors: the United Arab Emirates. Where torture is legal, debtors are thrown in jail, and most of the population are immigrant workers with few rights. Why did South Korea get the deal to build 4 new nukes in the Gulf? Read on....it's dark and dangerous.

But first, a message for the idiots who made Al Gore snowmen in the Netherlands, to prove there is no global warming. And all the American gumbos who posted snowfall in Texas, and Fox News who announced the end of climate change during a brief interlude of cold weather.

Yes, it's time for the new "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" from Peter Sinclair. Peter explains why it gets cold in the winter time - and has a scientist explain that there will still be a few records for cold even in the year 2100 - while almost all other days set records for heat. Meanwhile, on January 15th, much of the Mid-West was 20 degrees above normal, as a warm snap spread across the U.S. Does that prove global warming? No, it's just weather, like the previous cold. Deniers who try to sell you weather as proof of climate are just dumb.

The temperature in the Netherlands on January 15th? Seven degrees Celsius, or 44 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess what happened to the Al Gore snowman protest? It kind of melted away in the heat, just as most of these amateur denier sites will disappear in a few years.

Let's get back to nuclear as the salvation of the world's climate. Before we hear Dr. Caldicott from Australia, I want to introduce you to climatefilesradio.com. That's a good podcast from Shelly Thomas, who also runs Futurism Now and a blog called "civilianism".

I like Shelley's new climate podcast. You really get your hour's worth of news, followed by useful clips and information. For example, I like Shelley's take on a greener internet. I had no idea our exchange of electrons was so damaging to the climate.

In the same podcast climatefilesradio #55, Shelly makes her case that we need more nuclear power, and especially new atomic tech, to replace American dependence on coal fired power plants. I play a clip, including a jazzy piece she snapped off the net, on Thorium reactors.

Is it as great as it sounds? Why are green busybodies opposing this wonderful invention? Shelly doubts that a pediatrician could know enough about nuclear technology. Yes, a pediatrician with 30 years investigating nuclear affairs, many books, even more honorary degrees. What would she know? Let's talk with her now, Dr. Helen Caldicott on Radio Ecoshock.

[Caldicott interview]

Then I introduce you to your new nuclear neighbors: the United Arab Emirates. Were you wondering why Korea got this sweet deal to build four new nuclear reactors in the troubled Gulf, while France and others lost out? A Pakistani source quotes Korean newspapers saying the South Koreans topped up the project with a deal for arms. And not just any weapons: cruise and ballistic missiles, drone aircraft, and even EMP electrical bombs.

Read More here.

In the past, Earth has almost frozen over. Dr. James Hansen tells us there will never again be another snowball Earth, or even another ice age, as long as humans have technology. In the program, I look into Hansen's very recent conversion to advocating nuclear technology, and who his new friends are. When Hansen wrote an open letter to President Obama, calling for more nuclear funding, he became a lobbyist himself.

His climate science is impeccable. But now he's calling for desperate measures.

Without your action, the climate can go very wrong. No better way to end this show than the song simply called "Earth" by Imogen Heap.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock
http://www.ecoshock.org

The Coming Climate Panic

Should we arrest our best climate scientists? The denier fringe is calling for investigations and criminal charges. On today's Radio Ecoshock Show you'll hear one of the world's top scientists answer those charges. I'll digest the best from a stunning speech by Professor Richard B. Alley, at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, in December.

Here is the link to a video of that speech.

Scroll down for much more on Richard Alley's speech, including a link to transcripts of the clips from this week's radio show, and notes to help non-scientists grasp the important new science.

But first: Ten years ago, the tipping point was whether we could stop climate change. Now, after years of inaction, the answer is no. The next tipping point is likely in human affairs, namely, will we be able to govern ourselves? Will our civilization survive the coming climate panic?

The coming climate panic. That's title of a work that just ricocheted all over the blogosphere. Let's meet the author, Auden Schendler.

[Auden Schendler interview, radio only]

I appreciate Auden Schendler's bravery putting out an SOS about delaying action on climate change. I disagree that cap and trade will actually save the planet - it's got corruption and cheating built right in, in my opinion, and in the European experience. A carbon tax that flows through to the citizens, as proposed by Dr. James Hansen and others, has a chance of actually working.

And I can't agree that the individual doesn't matter in this fight. Auden still believes governments could solve this problem. Copenhagen, and the simple record of increasing emissions no matter what government is allegedly in charge say otherwise.

Sure we should push governments, but I've consistently said that you and I, the citizens are the front line in the fight against climate change. We can and must:

- lead by example, cutting our own carbon emissions by at least 40% this year, and pointing toward energy self sufficiency. And no cheating with phony carbon off-sets.

- start connecting and organizing locally. Fossil energy supplies are limited, and we can't burn what we have. A local economy is the only way to survive well, or survive at all. Pay special attention to your food supplies.

- prepare yourself for emergencies. There are tough unstable times ahead. Have at least several weeks of food and water on hand. Plus other supplies to keep warm and safe. And prepare to help others in emergencies - the latest flood, storm, fires, heat waves. It's not enough to keep yourself or even your family alive. Get ready to help lots of folks.

- either dedicate hours a day to fight for sustainable energy in your community, or figure out where to move. Pure coal power won't last a decade. Industry won't locate there. Eventually, consumers will demand labeling not just about the contents of products - but the amount of pollution used to produce it. If you buy low-fat soup, you'll but low-energy manufactured products.

- my last point, as an individual, is DO NOT count on big governments for much at all. At every level, governments in North America, England, some European countries, and more, are really bankrupt. The growth economy is sputtering out it's last. Then we have to go for a stable state economy, or massive reductions, until the climate is stable, and until a more just distribution of wealth is achieved.

In his blog this week, the dour James Howard Kunstler writes:

"Our destination is an everyday economy where you rarely travel far from the place you live, where you have to make provision for you own health, your own old age, your own income, your own diet, your own security, and your own education. If you're really fortunate, some or all of these necessities can be obtained in conjunction with your neighbors in the place where you live -- but don't expect an increasingly mythical federal government to supply any of it. Expect a new and different way of organizing households based on extended families and kinship groups. Be prepared for agriculture to return to the foreground of everyday life, where farming is back at the center of the economy. Think about how you will cultivate your best role in a social network so the things you do will be truly valued by the other people who know you."

Find that under "The Futile Economy" January 4th, 2010 at kunstler.com

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. Look, it's winter. There is snow. It's cold. I can't believe the number of idiots who cite that as proof of the coming ice age, much less a damnation of climate change science.

Check out Joe Romm's "Experts: Cold Snap Doesn't Disprove Global Warming."

If we are really that stupid, and some of us are! - all future climate conferences should be held in August. I believe the next one comes up in May 2010 in Germany?

Climate is measured over decades at best. Heaven help us if we have two real winters in a row! The masses may give in to the loudmouth deniers, going back to energy gluttony, while supplies last. Then we're doomed.

What the heck, let's get back to skiing. Joe Romm, the climate demi-God blogger at climateprogress.org has a feature on the future of skiing this week. Published on January 6th, 2010, it's titled "Can U.S. skiing be saved?"

In the blog, a guest writes:

"Take Aspen, for instance. The resort is already seeing a gradual increase in frost-free days and warmer nights, according to Mike Kaplan, CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, and aspen trees are dying off in large numbers. A study by the Aspen Global Change Institute forecasts that if global carbon emissions continue to rise, Aspen will warm by 14 degrees by the end of this century—giving it a feel similar to Amarillo, TX."

Ouch.

I started covering this story back in 2006, with a podcast called "Can Winter Sports Be Saved?" That mp3 got thousands of downloads, and still goes out by the hundreds every month. In it, I interviewed a rep from Whistler-Blackcomb, the super Canadian ski resort where the 2010 Olympic downhill events will be held in February. Not much has changed since that time, except emissions are worse, and the climate warmed faster. Let's give it a listen now.

[audio only]

That was an interview from one of my early Radio Ecoshock podcasts in 2006, still chilling today.

Find all our past programs and features, as free mp3 downloads, at our web site, ecoshock.org.


RICHARD B ALLEY - THE CARBON CONTROL KNOB

In the recent attacks on top scientists, let us take the case of Richard B. Alley. He is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, at Penn State University. Alley is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His popular book about ice cores is called "The Two Mile Time Machine."

Alley was expected to give one of the best speeches of the 2009 annual meeting of the AGU - and he did not disappoint. I'm going to give you a short digest of that hour-long Bjerknes Lecture to the AGU in San Francisco in December, with a transcript of the quotes.

Professor Alley begins with the attack:

"I said these were interesting times. This is a copy of an email that was sent to my administration [at Penn State] by an alum [alumni, former grad of Penn State], and said alum copied me on this, so I believe I am fair. The alum asks for certain personnel changes to be made, and I have just put in the ones that relate to me.

So for what it's worth, Dr. Alley's work on CO2 levels and ice cores - now I don't actually do that but I talk about it - OK Dr. Alley's work on CO2 levels and ice cores has confirmed that CO2 lags Earth's temperature. This one scientific fact alone proves that CO2 is not the cause of the recent warming.

I continue to mislead the scientific community. There should be prompt response (getting rid of me), I have "crimes against the scientific community, Penn State, the citizens of this great country and the citizens of the world" that "must be dealt with severely" because of my "shameful" activities."

[laughter from the audience][applause]

"So there'll be a wanted poster which will be up here somewhere, but the thing which is fascinating, and we'll come back to, is that this email has in it a logical fallacy which is evident on casual observation. And I think it's worth our understanding at some level, how polarized the world is, how easy it is for someone to misunderstand our science, if they aren't fully within it, the amount of education, the amount of outreach, the amount of clarification, that we have to make, to get from this to a proper scientific understanding."

In fact, the former Penn State grad calls for "an investigation into...Dr. Alley's activities [that] will... start prior to the end of this year."

Later in this program, we'll follow Professor Alley as he explains the denialist bugaboo of carbon dioxide lagging temperature rise in climate history. In excerpts from this important speech, we'll learn more about the scientific history of our planet, and it's atmosphere.

As we will learn, this was part of a concerted effort against climate scientists at Penn State, including the famous "hockey stick" graph creator, Michael Mann, and others.

The Bjerknes Lecture is one of the keynote speeches to the American Geophysical Union annual meeting each year. Named after a famous Arctic researcher, Professor Bjerknes - Penn State's Professor Richard B. Alley received the award, and gave his speech at the December 2009 meeting in San Francisco, for his work teaching the history of Earth's past climates.

The title of the speech was "The Biggest Control Knob, Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History".

I have made a transcript of the excerpts used in today’s show – likely the only print version from the speech so far.

READ MORE

Science or Conspiracy?

Do you believe in climate science? Or is it a world-wide conspiracy to control your life?

We begin with a digest of a key hearing at the U.S. government, December 2nd, 2009. You'll hear testimony from Dr. John Holdren, Obama's top science adviser, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, among other things. The sparks fly when Republicans like Jim Sensenbrenner talk about a global scientific fraud, "scientific fascism" and a "culture of corruption" in science.

I try to referee the event, with the top 30 minutes of audio, from the full 1 hour 46 minute recording. The digest is 7 megabytes in Lo-Fi, and I introduce each speaker. You can download the whole thing here, as a 26 MB Lo-Fi mp3 file.

Just as a sanity check, you can also download Chairman Ed Markey's 8 minute closing remarks here.

The official government web site for the event is here.

Find some of the video of John Holdren on the hacked email controversy, at Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog, here.

In the second half hour, we finally have some fun, among all the bleak news. British broadcaster Hugh Warwick gets his first tattoo. He's been chosen to represent the hedgehog. It's "A Prickly Affair" - fun yet serious, as we try to get close to nature. In America, the book is called "The Hedgehog's Dilemma".

What is the dilemma? It was first expressed by the philosopher Schopenhauer. The hedgehog wants love, but gets hurt by the spines as it approaches. So it withdraws, and then feels lonely.

Warwick suggests we are in the same position now with Nature. We want to experience the wild, but if we do, in our millions, we end up damaging the wilderness. Yet when we withdraw into cities and cyber-life, we feel disconnected. Humans have some hard-wiring to expect and need the smells, touch, and sights of the natural world.

And hedgehogs are marvellous creatures. They can live for an hour and a half without air. When hedgehogs hibernate, you might think they were dead. Yet they are one of the few wild animals we can approach, even nose to nose - because they don't have to run or fight. If threatened, they just curl up in a ball.

Find out all about them, with Hugh Warwick, who's not only written the book, he's studied them, and championed them, for 20 years. Warwick often appears in the BBC and other nature shows. His story about the Hedgehog Olympics in Colorado reminds us of the film "Best in Show".

It's Hedgehog Heaven. Grab that hilarious interview here.

READ MORE, INCLUDING NEW STATIONS - AND BREAKING NEWS

NATURE AS KILLER: The Medea Hypothesis

From the edge of the Earth, broadcast, podcast, by cable and satellite, this is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith.

Gaia - the great interconnected force of living things on a minor planet called Earth. British scientist James Lovelock wondered how life created it's own space, with the oxygen and nutrients we all need. It's a soothing idea. Some Greens took it further, suggesting Gaia is a super-consciousness that watches over balance and survival. A few worship Gaia.


Dr. Peter Ward, a deep time digger and climate investigator says Gaia, if there is one, can also be a mass murderer. The rock record shows at least 5 great mass extinctions before us. Ward offers us a different Greek myth: Medea - the wife of Jason the Argonaut, who swiped the Golden Fleece. In a fit of rage against her husband, Medea killed her own children. In a new book, the Medea Hypothesis, Peter Ward says Gaia is out. Bountiful Nature can become ecocidal, and only intelligent life can stop the death cycle we are now approaching.


Peter always stuffs us full of the latest science. He's not well-known to the public, but other climate scientists are listening closely, as this brilliant mind sparks off a new paradigm for life and death, Earth-style. But can we trust a creature with obvious pathological flaws to save the species? Should humans try to replace Nature?

Following our interview with Peter Ward, I answer a few questions about Radio Ecoshock, as a local college stations turns the tables, to interview the elusive Alex Smith. We talk the future of food, the economy, and radio itself. You'll also hear the new climate anthem, a re-worked "Beds Are Burning" from a host of celebrities. Plus "Fear Itself" from Loudon Wainwright III.


READ MORE

Beyond 4 Degrees

What will our grandchildren experience in the year 2080? Or will some of you feel the heat, the climate and social disruption as soon as 2060? Scientific studies are pouring out their warnings - we have already passed the danger levels. And there is no sign of action to stop horrible climate change.

What if the politicians fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep the Earth's climate from warming? What if the people of the world keep on pumping out carbon dioxide, as they now do? Can we survive? Will the Earth hit runaway climate change, morphing to another Venus?

The widely accepted danger line is 2 degrees Celsius, that's 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit, global mean temperature rise over pre-industrial levels. We have already warmed at least .7 degrees C. Counting the masking effect of other pollution, the warming in the pipeline may already be around the 2 degree level - and the major polluters show no sign of agreeing on steep cuts at the Copenhagen climate treaty talks in December 2009.

So what will happen?

In this program, we're going to cover major new scientific reports about our climate situation. Then, almost as a relief, we'll go to an interview with one of the long-time activists with solutions, from the UK, Dr. Jeremy Leggett. He's an oil expert who crossed over to Greenpeace, before becoming a solar energy entrepreneur.

I also have some new climate music for you.

Right now, we'll get hot and heavy with an international climate conference held at Oxford in Britain from September 28th to the 30th. The title is: 4 DEGREES & BEYOND. We'll hear the results of some of the first scientific studies of a failed climate world. I have a digest of a speech from Professor John Schellnhuber.

MUSIC IN THIS PROGRAM

"Radio, Radio" by Elvis Costello
"Don't Kilowatt" by Seattle group Million Dollar Nile

LINK FOR AUDIO AND SLIDES FROM "4 Degrees & Beyond" Conference:


MAJOR SPEAKERS

1. Prof John Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research "Terra quasi-incognita: beyond the 2 degree line. (past director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research)

2. Dr. Richard Betts, Met Office Hadley Centre "Regional climate changes at 4+ degrees"

3. Prof Nigel Arnell, University of Reading 4+ degrees C: impacts across the global scale

4. Dr. Pier Vellinga, Wageningen University, "Sea level rise and impacts in a 4+C World

5. Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "Sea-level rise in a 4 degree world

6. Prof David Karoly, University of Melbourne "Wildfire in a 4+ C degree World

7. Dr. François Bemenne, Sciens Po Paris "Cimate-induced Population Displacements in a 4+ degree World

The conference opened with one of the top climate advisors in the world. Professor John Schellnhuber is from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He is a past director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The German version of his name is Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. He has directly advised many heads of government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and even Barack Obama. The title of his talk: "Terra quasi-incognita: beyond the 2 degree line."

This was a presentation to fellow scientists, so part of it is heavy going for the rest of us. It was accompanied by slides, and I'll give you the web address for those.

In order to hit some key points from this speech, and several others from the 4 Degree conference, covering several hours of audio, I'm going to attempt a digest of this latest science.

READ MORE

AMERICAN CLIMATE CHANGE

The star of today's Radio Ecoshock Show is the American climate.

We'll start with the most important Press Conference of 2009: the release of the multi-agency report "Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States". It's the list of violent storm warming, heat wave predictions, cities and parts of whole states either going under-water, or roasting without water. Everyone will know the climate is badly out of balance.

Welcome to our special coverage of new report "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" from the White House briefing. After years of denial, terrible changes already happening in U.S.

This one hour version of Radio Ecoshock contains:

a) clip from Dr. Jane Lubchenco (see bio notes below)

(b) full presentation of Dr. Thomas Karl (outlining terrible impacts for the U.S.)

(c) analysis interview with Joe Romm, from climateprogress.org

(d) full presentation by Dr. Jerry Melillo (more terrible impacts)

Plus a special interview with Dr. Anthony Barnosky on his new book "Heatstroke, Nature in an Age of Global Warming"

This is the most important report on climate change ever released by the American government. The picture is bleak. Many Southern U.S. cities will become hot like Baghdad during the summer. Crops will burn out.

On the coasts, new flooding estimates show more than 3 feet of sea level rise before 2100 - enough to flood New York subways, rail-lines, and much more. That doesn't count surges from storms expected to be much worse.

Please listen to this compelling audio.

The book "Heatstroke" is also quite important. Antony Barnosky is a field researcher and curator at University California Berkeley. He realized climate change was coming in the early 1980's - and set out to document how Nature (especially small mammals) responded to previous climate shifts. He fears mass extinctions for many reasons, especially since there may never have been a warming starting in an already warm period, and likely never one so fast (one century) as we are inflicting on the Earth. Solid science from 30 years of research shows big problems for all the creatures of the Earth, as we continue to pollute the atmosphere.

Radio Ecoshock 090619 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes:
Presentation recorded from official release of the report at the White House, April 16th, 2009.

Here are quick bio notes of speakers:

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans & Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center, lead for NOAA’s climate services, and a
lead author of the report
Dr. Jerry Melillo, Director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,
Mass., and a lead author of the report

There is no copyright music. It is OK to take clips out for your own use in non-profit radio, to blog or pass on to friends.

Those with a shorter public affair program can use this 24 minute version, if you remove the Green 960 Station ID at 14:03

U.S. government Press Conference Video and slides here.

Get report copy here.

Get the word out there!

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

OFF THE CLIMATE CLIFF? OR GREENER CITIES?

Every day tankers and pipelines carry black gold to power industrial society. The coal trains and ships deliver more carbon for the great bonfire of humanity. We know for a certainty, if we keep on burning it all, our planet will become hot, stormy, ice-free with dying oceans and extinction for most big species. Including ourselves.

Now the question: how much can we use, before we tip the climate too far?

This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith.

HERE ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL NEED FOR TODAY'S PROGRAM

Interview with scientist Bill Hare:

How much time left to burn fossil fuels? PRIMAP.ORG

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

George Monbiot column in UK's Guardian newspaper
"How Much Should We Leave in the Ground?"

Green Cities:

Grist article on 15 Green Mayors

Radio Ecoshock series on Green Cities

Resilient Cities (Australia's Dr. Peter Newman)

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil
Richard Register and Anthony Perl

Building Madness (various speakers)

Urban Meltdown (Clive Doucet)
Speech (53 min)

Clive Doucet interview

READ MORE

TROUBLE DOWN BELOW

You have just heard rioting hit the central banks of London during the G20 conference, set to Dirty Town from Mother Mother. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

The world is quietly burning with discontent as corporate schemes go bad. Industry and trade are collapsing and no one seems immune. The world trade center has fallen again, and maybe the Pentagon will be next.

I've had some long hours into the night worrying - how about you?

We have two guest speakers this week to help you engage.

Even though I realize everyone is gob-smacked by crumbling banks and revelations of piracy at the top - we just can't take our eyes off our natural life support system. Ice is cracking loose at the poles. In desperation, President Obama's new science advisor, Dr. John Holdren, joins a chorus of experts toying with the idea of cooling off the atmosphere by artificial means.

We'll hear a top National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration scientist explain a huge risk to human geo-engineering. In fact, Dr. Richard Feely has a horror story of his own to tell: our carbon waste is turning the oceans acidic. So what? The whole marine food chain is threatened. I'll bet the G20 didn't discuss our dying oceans for even 20 seconds. Banks come first!

Could a supposedly intelligent species make the world's oceans more acidic? It sounds like science fiction, but now it is science. Our guest is Dr. Richard A. Feely, an Oceanographer at the NOAA Pacific Marine Laboratory in Seattle, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He specializes in the way carbon cycles in the sea - and ocean acidification.

UK scientists from Bristol University recently told the three day summit in Copenhagen, that we are creating ocean conditions not seen since the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. We've done it in less than 250 years of fossil fuel burning - and carbon emissions are still going up.

Then we'll go to a recent speech by Greenpeace founder, author and Peak Oil expert Rex Weyler. We've gathered up a powerful half hour segment connecting the dots between the economic collapse and dying natural systems. Rex even throws in a few suggestions on how we can cope. That's coming up in the second half hour of Radio Ecoshock.

Getting back to the riots in Europe, and likely soon enough in North America - is it worth trying to protest the rape of our jobs, savings, and pensions? It's time to turn to The Stimulator.

Get the full video of that and dozens of other pro-level reports from The Stimulator at submedia.tv. Warning to college students: the site contains adult language. You know, the way you actually talk to one another.

All this talk of social upheaval and transformation is exciting I know. Next week we'll devote a full hour to zombie banks feeding on the flesh of taxpayers and the newly homeless - all with a special guest.

[Feely interview 19 min 5 MB Lo-Fi]

Our next speaker, Rex Weyler, is one of the original Greenpeace gang, author of "Greenpeace the Inside Story" plus two more books, and a recurring journalist in all media. He's also a Peak Oil spokesman, recorded in the Radio Ecoshock Show "Peak Oil and the Media," broadcast August 29, 2008 and available free from our archive.

[Rex Weyler speech excerpt 31 minutes from the original 107 minutes found here]

Rex sees the links between degrading the Earth and our economic collapse. His insight is well worth our time. Here is 30 key minutes from Rex Weyler's speech to the Bio-Society Conference at McMaster University in Canada on March 20th, 2009.

That Rex Weyler speech comes from Maggie Hughes, Producer of "The Other Side" of the News on 93.3 fm, CFMU McMaster University Radio. Find her web site at www.oside.ca. Get all these links from my blog entry for April 9th, 2009.

Our music this week was "Dirty Town" by the Vancouver group Mother Mother, plus a clip from Live Earth with the Black Eyed Peas closing up the show.

You have been listening to Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith. Find our web site at ecoshock.org - and thanks again for caring about our world.

Forget the Economy - Is It Too Late for Our Climate?

This is the Radio Ecoshock Show. I'm you're host and tormentor, Alex Smith.

Yes I know the economy is crashing around the world. Eastern Europe threatens to bring down the Austrian and Italian banking systems. Britain is in the tank, along with Spain, Greece and Ireland. Everybody is hoping the Germans have saved enough to bail out the European Union.

It's as bad or worse in Asia. Japan's exports have plummetted, the results so terrible the Japanese Finance Minister was dead drunk at his press conference. Singapore was stung badly by Wall Street scams. Dubai, the fabled playground of the Middle East rich, is tumbling. South Korea wants to jail bloggers who reveal how bad things are in that country.

Now the latest American scamster, Allan Stanford has ripped off billions from investors all over the world, especially in Latin America. ABC News is reporting the Texas big man, lately based in Antigua, is connected to money laundering for Mexico's most vicious drug gangs. And speaking of off-shore pirates, the giant Swiss bank UBS is paying up 780 million in taxes ripped off from the American government, as the Swiss advised the very rich how to avoid paying their share. Really, it's been a pirate economy all along - and the worst scams were run by the very best companies.

Against the backdrop of kicked out families, closed factories, and worried populations, our climate threatens changes worse than any all-our nuclear exchange. Scientists warn the coming changes are huge, irreversible, and likely fatal to most species we know. Including us.

In this program, I'll pass on some of the horrible climate news, hot off the scientific press. Then we'll ask: is it already too late? Major scientists, in the United States, Australia, and Germany say the world is loaded up for at least 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming - that's over 4 degrees Fahrenheit AVERAGE global change. Temperature increases over land, and especially over the Arctic, will be much higher. The only thing saving us so far is smog, which can dissolve in a matter of weeks.

These warnings come not from fringe scientists, but key advisers to governments in Western countries. I'll tell you who. This is major news: global warming has already taken place. Television and newspapers have not told the public, who are living in an illusion, a fairy tale, about their future. Things are not going back to normal. Not for thousands of years.

As we will hear, one of the co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits their reports greatly underestimated our real situation. We'll cover the latest news, and then work with reports from V. Ramanathan, of the Scripps Institution, and Joaquim Schnellenhuber, a science top adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The music for this program is "Don't Let The World Swallow You" by Canadian artist Andre Ethier.

Read more from this Radio Ecoshock transcript for the 090220 Show. Available as a free mp3 download in either CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) 1 hour.

Much more free audio at our web site http://www.ecoshock.org

The Economy of Climate Burn

The Australian wildfires - a warning to the world? I interview Dr. Barry Brook a climatologist from Adelaide. Brook was named one of the top 10 bright young scientists in Australia. His blog makes a strong case that the drying of Australia shows a radical shift in the climate. More: he argues the recent combination of drought and heat is without precendent in recorded history, and driven by climate change. Check out the particulars in his blog at bravenewclimate.com. I've bookmarked it.

Please don't push away the Australian deaths as just another bush fire. This is a big sign. Parts of the world are beginning to burn fiercely due to climate change. The same has already happened last year in California, with more than a thousand fires in a short period, as you might remember. More to come there, and throughout the West. American scientists like Jonathan Overpeck are certain this is the start of the long drying, that may last hundreds of years. It is possible that tens of millions of Americans will have to abandon the South West in this century, and perhaps in the next few decades.

All the climate-killed pine forests of British Columbia will also burn. Vast valleys of dead trees await the heat and the spark.

The Brook interview is followed by a music collage of world deserts expanding. Quotes of the expanding Sahara, Chinese deserts, Mongolia, and then the U.S. South West (per Dr. Jonathan Overpeck of Arizona U).

The fact is, folks, the tropics are expanding due to human induced climate change. That's bad news for all those hundreds of millions of humans currently in the expanding sub-tropics. Because where the tropics end, so does the moisture, leading to new bands of dying trees, drylands, and then deserts. The American South West is no exception.

Witness the incredible statements by Dr. Steven Chu, Obama's new Energy Secretary. He told the Los Angeles Times on Feb 4th that there may be no agriculture in California by the end of this century. He doesn't see how the great California cities can survive either. The water supply in the mountains is no longer coming. There will not be enough water to keep the California civilization going - and with it, the largest source of agricultural products (that means food!) in North America. Not small news.

The clips that help bring it all home are set to "Making Deserts In A Day" by The Henry Gorman Band.

In the second half of this Radio Ecoshock Show: guest host KMO (host of C-Realm Podcast) interviews Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of "The Upside of Down" & now "Carbon Shift".

I think this is a really important interview. Homer-Dixon explains how collapse is part of Nature, and how that might apply to our current economic collapse. It's something I hadn't thought of - although I'm not sure I agree with Homer-Dixon's apparent conclusions. What do you think?

Homer-Dixon is one of the few thinkers to really draw Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse together in a coherent way. I'm happy that Kay Emmo does such a good job with the interview, sitting back when it counts, to get answers to deep questions. That's one of the things I enjoy about "KMO's" podcasts. He gets great guests - and manages to get them enthused about their topic on air. Most of them thank HIM for the interview! Me too.

KMO's efforts also show what a group effort Radio Ecoshock has become. I've had so many great tips from listeners - and I'm pleasantly suprised at what a talented bunch of communicators listen to the show. We have enviro journalists, politicians, scientists, activists, bloggers, radio people, a whole gang of people. I recognize that many of my listeners have more expertise, or talent, than I do. Thanks for the tips people send by email. The address is in the show.

Also in the music mix this week: the background music is "Strategy" by Paul Dickow of Portland. The end music showcase is Canadian Andre Ethier with a clip from "Infant King". I have another of Andre's songs on tap for next week.

Ecoshock 090213 1 hour CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Alex

BANKRUPTCY OF THE ATMOSPHERE

[opening Quote from John Kerry on the looming catastrophe in climate change]

That is Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, and you are about to get 20 minutes of the latest from Al Gore. In our second half hour, I'll interview Pieter Tans, one of the top scientists measuring greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. In fact, he is Chief Scientist at the Earth Research Lab, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. I'll ask him about the state of the atmosphere, and who's watching the store.

Surely this is the worst time to talk about climate change. According to the IMF, the international banking system is teetering on the brink of disaster. Really, we're just propping up the illusion. 65 thousand Americans laid off in one day. Now, predictions that 50 million humans will lose their jobs in 2009. Where I live, construction crews have walked away from unfinished buildings. The government is rushing in to operate a bankrupt pulp mill, with no visible owner, before the chlorine blows up. The Jack Nicholson golf course and condos will never open.

Britain is going bankrupt. Who can compete with a headline like that?

Top world scientists now tell us the natural world is dying. In just one example, trees in the Western United States are dying from climate change. In fact, the whole West is heading into a drought that may last hundreds of years. Cows are falling over dead in Texas, finding nothing in the dried up vegetation. Bush's home state is headed into climate disaster.

The Obama administration is rushing to undo the damage of eight years of denying science. Of muzzling, firing top scientists. Of wantonly lying to the public, about the bankruptcy of our atmosphere. In a flurry of appointments, the deniers have been cast out, and actual scientists and experts appointed to a wide range of posts all pointing to climate action. Even foreign affairs, as we'll now hear from John Kerry, depends upon saving the climate.

[Kerry explains military experts say that climate disruption will lead to disturbances, failed states, wars and terrorism.]

That is why the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited former Vice-President Al Gore to testify on January 28th, 2009. He spoke for 27 minutes, and then answered questions for another two hours. We'll just hit the highlights. You can download the testimony, and the Q and A, as free mp3 files, from our web site, ecoshock.org. I'll give you the links in just a moment.

After Kerry's introduction, Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana spoke. Now that the public knows climate change is real, Lugar can't trot out a denial. Instead, he promoted big bucks for biotech. Lugar said Africans will starve without biotechnology. He wants America to pressure Europe, forcing open their markets to lab-made food. Just a lobby announcement.

Let's clear our palates, with a taste of Al Gore.

[listen to a digest of Al Gore's key testimony, and answer to questions, in this week's Radio Ecoshock Show]

Remember, I'm just playing you selected clips from 2 and a half hour of testimony. Get the real thing from our web site. Here is the testimony link (6 MB, 27 min), the first hour and 24 minutes of Q and A with Gore and the Foreign Relations Committee (20 MB) and the last 37 minutes of Q and A. A lot of questions you would ask, along with political considerations, i.e. how can this transition to green energy happen in the real world.

Mr. Gore goes on to explain that the Arctic Ice remains at the lowest levels ever seen since the last great ice age. West Antarctica is also warming up. As it melts, along with Greenland, each 1 meter rise of sea level means another 100 million climate refugees. He showed new maps of huge horrible dead zones developing in our oceans.

But you know that. You know.

Naturally, the Committee wanted to know what we can do. Al Gore did offer a range of solutions. He said solar thermal energy alone could meet the electricity needs of America, with just a hundred square miles of desert.

But we're going to focus on the step he thinks need to happen first: the construction of a unified national smart grid to distribute the power of renewable energies. Here is John Kerry in dialog with Al Gore.

[in the Radio Ecoshock Show]

CAP AND TRADE OR CARBON TAX?

Although he has supported a revenue neutral carbon tax in the past, Mr. Gore testified he thought the cap and trade system was the most viable option now. Some European countries, and two Canadian provinces have already brought in a carbon tax. The revenue is not kept by the government, but returned to taxpayers. Some Americans are not ready for that, or don't trust the government.

We also need to realize that Al Gore, in addition to his famous role as climate educator, is now a multimillionaire successful businessman in the green energy field. The industry alliance he represents wants cap and trade - they think they can make money in a pollution market. Given the collapse of self-regulated capitalism, many environmentalists don't trust cap and trade either.

A DEAL WITH CHINA?

Part of the focus of this testimony is preparation for the climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. That will be the first international opportunity for the new Obama administration to work for a climate solution. However, Al Gore suggested that the U.S. should be negotiating an agreement with China, even before Copenhagen. If the two biggest polluters can really reduce carbon, the worst of climate disruption might be avoided. And Gore says China has seen the green light, and is willing to reign in their greenhouse gas emissions. We shall see.

WORKING WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

While Gore brought out a lot of technical solutions, he made surprising emphasis on the role of protecting the last great forests of Earth. Deforestation causes 20 percent of our emissions. Gore also wants to see a program where the world's farmers can get credit if they capture more carbon in the soil. There is four times more carbon in the soil, than in all the trees.

THE LAST CHANCE

Al Gore told the Senate that top scientists are screaming from the roof tops: this is our last chance for action to stop a massive heat shift on planet Earth.

Dr. James Hansen of NASA wrote to President Obama, saying the climate will be saved, or lost, in the first four years of this administration. Other scientists from Germany, Australia - many parts of the world, have the same angst, the same conclusion of deadline, the need for swift action.

The most dire comes from one of the oldest voices: Sir James Lovelock. The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, that living things regulate their own climate, told New Scientist magazine that we have, quote, "one last chance."

In fact, Lovelock worries it is already too late for emissions reductions. He doesn't trust carbon trading at all, and has even given up his love for nuclear power. The only hope he sees is a giant program to bury charcoal in the Earth, agrichar. But Lovelock doesn't think that will happen either. He expects a cull of human population, dropping down to perhaps a billion or less surviving.

Lovelock told Gaia Vince of the New Scientist, quote:

"We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK."

I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Did you want me to lie to you? To sugar coat the facts?

The climate situation is far more serious than any banking scandal. That is why Al Gore went to Washington.

WHY ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD CAN'T MAKE US RENEWABLE...

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you heard Senator John Kerry ask Al Gore the perennial question: why hasn't safe renewable energy taken off? The obvious reason is opposition from an entrenched oil and coal oligarchy. But is that really all? Are we innocent?

Here is a quick quote from next week's Radio Ecoshock Show. The speaker is Martin Burger, CEO of Blue Energy, and a campaigner for tidal energy. We'll examine power from the tides, but Burger raises a deep and difficult point. Just how does a society transform itself? Can any amount of money from the Federal Government, or even mega-corporations, really change things? Or does it take a tidal wave of consciousness in humanity?

Let's listen to Martin Burger for two minutes.

"And this is a long talk, in of itself. And we are in the infancy of our consciousness evolution as individuals, but in this collective mind field.

Our Western perspective has not, or has failed to integrate the quantum perspective, and field effect. There is a fundamental truth, in physics and in reality, to what Chief Seattle said, when he talked about the web of life, that how all the animal kingdom - the birds, the forests, the beasts, and all of us - are all connected at some dimensional root level.

And out of that arises a signal that generates and manifests our shared experience called our future.

If we haven't contemplated the possibility of a low-cost clean sustainable energy future, that signal is presently weak. And that signal is displaced and dominated by those with an agenda that serves a narrow element and segment, rather than the broader segment of society.

So consciousness is really more important in creating this future, and in realizing the opportunities of significant efforts that have come long before this one [referring to tidal power]. But this one is still under the same limits of a feeble signal to the future.

Meetings like this, your book, your effort, the New Energy Movement, creates that monkey [the "hundredth monkey"] that has to ride that what-could-be train. And every one of the efforts needs that hundredth monkey.

So they [the public] will behave quantumly until that quantum mass is achieved in attention and consciousness. But then there's a tipping point where they can't be stopped.

Money won't do it. Money will take - and you can put something into a technology, and have a great flurry go on, but if it's going to change the world it has to occur with consciousness, before the money will make it stick.

So there are other technologies out there, raising more money. But when you look at it from a vision, versus a good idea, most of them are just good ideas. They're not going to change the future. They don't have a future."

What is he talking about? Einstein conceived the field theory of physics around 1905. You could say that each of us is less a distinct body, and more a collection of atoms held together by a field. These fields interact, forming larger fields.

Biologists such as Rupert Sheldrake opened the idea that animals really operate as large groups. You've seen large flocks of birds wheel in the sky as one, like schools of fish in the sea. Next week we'll hear about the hundredth monkey theory - that groups of animals reach a critical mass, where change occurs.

99 monkeys may not bring alternative energy to our lives, but the hundredth adopter might be the tipping point where suddenly everyone realizes the route to sustainable power.

Money can't do it. A change in mass consciousness needs to happen.

We'll explore all that next week on Radio Ecoshock, along with Burger's inside look at the state of tidal power around the world. Yes we could power everything using the gravity of the moon and stars, as they pull the ocean surface.

Oh yeah, we'll also take a trip into other engines and technologies waiting in the wings.

Don't miss the interview with top Earth Research Lab scientist Peter Tans in the audio of this week's Radio Ecoshock Show. We start with his ability to really speak the truth, without government interference. I ask how we know humans are altering the atmosphere, for sure. It turns out there are several ways to prove that, including a different form of carbon that humans emit when they burn fossil fuels.

Near the end of the interview, Tans worries that there is a chance, perhaps even a one in six chance, that the average temperature over land could increase by as much as 10 degrees Celsius (!!!!) due to feedback effects which we are only beginning to realize.

That is what we are trying to stop now, as each of us rises to consciousness about the danger, and the solutions just waiting for our eyes to see.

Listener tips make this almost a group project. This week "jon q public" tipped me to the Laurie Anderson live performance on You tube. The song "Only and Expert (Can Deal With a Problem)" contains a great verse about experts denying climate change. Sadly, due to time limitations, I had to cut another powerful verse about countries that bomb other countries. Listen and watch the whole song here.

Our background music at the half time break is "Clubbed to Death" by Rob Dougan.

A half hour cut-down version of Radio Ecoshock plays every Saturday morning at 11:30 on Green 960 Radio in San Francisco. In America only, you can hear it live on the Net.

I'm Alex Smith. Write me any time. The address is radio [youknowwhatgoeshere] ecoshock.org

CLIMATE PANIC & BIOFUEL SCAMS

Jack Nicholson: "You Can't Handle the Truth"

All right, I admit it. I can't handle the truth. Friends and family losing their jobs, and their self respect. Even German billionaires are throwing themselves under trains.

It used to be so easy out on the edge. Nobody took the truth seriously. Economic doomsayers were just nuts then. Now they dominate prime time TV.

In last week's show I did a feature on tools for tough times. Now I open up a blog on Wired magazine and they do the same thing - except their includes an Apple Ipod instead of my axe and shovel.

In just a few minutes we're going to three features on the biofuel mess. I know how boring that sounds - that's what I thought too. Then I get audio that turns our cosy green vision right upside down. It seems the big agribusiness corporations couldn't make enough monopolizing the world's food production. They decided to become energy companies too. Wearing green overcoats, they stomped into the last remaining reserves of biodiversity, hacking it down to grown palm oil, and the soy beans we displaced with corn ethanol.

Did I mention this great green rush may have caused the hottest year on record in 1998? You'll hear how tiny Indonesia passed the world's largest carbon polluters, in a climate tipping tsunami of greenhouse gases. We'll hear voices from the Amazon and Asia, where biodiesel production has replaced food for indigenous people. And Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University explains how we use a gallon and a half of ordinary oil, to produce a gallon of ethanol. It's just a bubble, a magic machine that transmutes oil into taxpayer subsidies and dead zones on the coasts.

President Bush made so-called biofuels boom. What could go wrong?

CLIMATE NEWS, CLIMATE BLUES

First I want to get you a bit of the news that gets buried.

Here's a surprise. Carbon emissions to the atmosphere are still going up. Last summer, Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre told a stunned conference that carbon dioxide emissions were rising faster than anybody predicted. He thought it "improbable" that levels could be kept to 650 parts per million, the doomsday scenario. That means at least a 4 degree centigrade average rise, and likely the tipping point at which ancient climate shifting mechanisms take over. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Governments are doing next to nothing about it. Two European groups, Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, have measured the Climate Change Performance Index. It shows which countries are actually working to save the climate. Sweden, Germany and France are in the top ranks, while the U.S. comes in 58th. U.S. emissions are up 20 percent since 1992. Canada's are up more than 26 percent. Canada is the 59th worst performing country, second worst only to Saudi Arabia at 60th.

On the positive side, some OPEC countries are cutting oil production, trying to get prices back up. But the drop isn't enough to stop spiralling carbon emissions. Still, Goldman Sachs analysts say the low price of oil may halt development of expensive sources, like Brazil's Tupi, billed as the largest oil find in the Americas since 1976. Also endangered are other deepwater drilling projects around the world, including one off Angola.

Development of Canada's oil sands is also slowing, but not stopped. The Norwegian company StatoilHydro and Royal Dutch Shell has put off investments in Canada's tar sands.

Too bad! Too good for the climate.

The train to climate change is still rolling along. We've just slowed it down from 180 miles an hour to 175. Still, the economic crash could give us a little more breathing time, before we run out of livable weather.

There is a lot of debate about the cooler weather in the Northern Hemisphere this year. Climate deniers say it's the coming ice age. I just saw Lou Dobbs on the infamous CNN looking very wise, as he explained the melting glaciers around the world come not from us, but from sun spot activity. Television loves the car ads so much, they'll spit out anything.

To show the depth of interdependence of televison and auto advertising, here is a clip from a press conference given by the National Auto Dealers Association:

[NADA clip][a car honcho explains to camera crews covering the event that car and truck advertising is the largest single source of their paychecks - if car ads go, so do the television stations...]

Get it? If the Big Three go bankrupt, and the Asian companies can't afford to advertise, commercial televison may disappear. What a shame that would be. Think of the propaganda we'd miss. Oh wait, the government would nationalize TV too. Knock out the middleman - those wise corporate heads like Rupert Murdock - and get your government pablum directly. Although non-commercial stations worked out OK, in the UK, Canada, and other countries. At least you don't get 10 minutes of commercials every half hour.

Back to the winter storms. We don't really know what caused this burst. It is compatible with scientific predictions in one way: the appearance of extreme precipitation events can appear as rain, or if the temperature is cold enough, as snow.

Most of the media is blaming the storms on the appearance of the Pacific ocean cooling phenomenon known as La Nina. Last April, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab rats announced that the Pacific has entered a ten-year cool phase - after 29 years of warmer currents. The ocean has occillated between those states for a very long time.

The combination of La Nina, with warmer currents in the Atlantic, may lead to drying in parts of South America, but more rain and flooding in the Pacific. Planting in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could be affected. Weather instability may add to growing world hunger. Our friend on Climateer Investor blog says "um foks, maybe we should start thinking about rebuilding our grain reserves."

My thoughts exactly.

Despite the snow storms in North America and Europe, 2008 ended up in the top ten warmest years, according to various climate centres. Remember, we are talking about the GLOBAL average temperature, which includes the other hemisphere we seldom hear about. Even here in Vancouver, we had one of the warmest Novembers on record. 2008 is likely one tenth of a degree cooler than last year. Back when Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the 2008 average of 57.9 degrees would have been the warmest year on record.

As you heard in our two interviews last week, papers presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in December show climate change is hard upon us, no matter what the doubters say.

Here are two clips from a speech by Dr. Graeme Pearman of Australia

Find his presentation in Australia last summer on Youtube. Search for pearman and climate.

A growing chorus of scientists think it is already too late to save the climate as we know it - unless humans take over management of the atmosphere. That is geo-engineering.

One of the biggest worries: the Earth's covering of ice is disappearing. You have seen the comparison photos of various glaciers all around the world, retreating or disappearing altogether. Even Glacier National Park may have no glaciers in just a few years.

But now a NASA satellite can measure the loss of ice in places like Greenland and the Antarctic. The GRACE satellite is actually a pair of insturments which can determine changes in mass below. As reported by rawstory.com, the latest data shows "over 2 trillion tons of ice has melted since 2003." That's the headline to Google.

The Environmental News Network has the story as well. NASA geophyicist Scott Luthcke told them "'More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite."

There have been many signs that Greenland is melting. Instant lakes on top in Summer. Rumblings the size of earth quakes. No we know for sure. The world's largest supply of ice is melting fast. It guarantees the sea level will rise, endangering major cities and crop deltas. Changes to climate and ecosystems as far away as the U.S. SouthWest result from the loss of the Arctic ice. The process may be irreversible.

Here's a human view of that debate, in a curious setting. One of the world's top climate scientists and modellers is Stephen Schnieder. A couple of years ago, Schnieder found out he had a rare and deadly form of cancer. With little hope from existing treatments, he decided to apply the decision and risk models from climate to his own medical case. That resulted in a new approach of aggressive maintenance, rather than a cure. It has kept him alive so far.

Here is a quick clip from Schnieder's Youtube video - which is a 68 minute comparison of risk decisions for the world's climate, and for himself as a man with deadly cancer. It turns out there are many parallels between his disease and ours.

[Schnieder clip]

If you get time to view the video, you will appreciate why we need the mind of Stephen Schnieder to keep going.

Over in Britain, the former head of the IPCC and now chief scientist for the UK environment department, warns the world needs to prepare for a 4 degree centigrade rise in global temperatures. That means get ready for millions upon millions of climate refugees, countless climate caused deaths, and possibly extreme shortages of food and water.

Watson said: "We must alert everybody that at the moment we're at the very top end of the worst case [emissions] scenario. I think we should be striving for 450 [ppm] but I think we should be prepared that 550 [ppm] is a more likely outcome."

Australian economist Ross Garnaut, hired by the government, also predicts future climate agreements will struggle to accept 550 parts per million as a goal!

In Britain, the Independent newspaper carried an article January 2nd, 2009 titled: "Climate Scientists: It's Time for Plan B". They continue "Poll of international experts by The Independent reveals consensus that CO2 cuts have failed – and their growing support for technological intervention."

Just like Stephen Schnieder, some scientists are now calling for a maintenance mode. They want geo-engineering projects, on a mass scale to protect us against the worst heating, until we can transition our energy economy to safe and renewable sources.

Good God. We're back to fertilizing the oceans with algae blooms, as Russ George tried to do. Or spraying ocean water into the air to create more cloud cover. Hopefully, the idea of launching a billion tiny reflective mirrors into space has died a quiet death?

Anyway, the Independent newspaper surveyed 80 international climate scientists, and found that 54 percent, quote, "agreed that the situation is now so dire that we need a backup plan that involves the artificial manipulation of the global climate to counter the effects of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. About 35 per cent of respondents disagreed with the need for a "plan B", arguing that it would distract from the main objective of cutting CO2 emissions, with the remaining 11 per cent saying that they did not know whether a geoengineering strategy is needed or not."

Politics has failed. Our own social network has failed. The corporate system has failed. We are killing off the climate system that supports us, while continuing to shop at the mall. We still hope for a new car, or a vacation get-away.

BIOFUELS

OK. We need a little less of this (scream from the Wall) and a little more of this... our Radio Ecoshock Special on the biofuel scam, and how it warms the world while talking green.

There follows a digest version, from a longer speech, by Dr. Ted Padzek of Berkeley - on why biofuels could never power our civilization. Full speech available at ecoshock.org in the alternative energy section of the Audio on Demand menu, of from Unwelcome Guest #443.

Next on Radio Ecoshock: Cornell's Dr. David Pimentel will explain the cruel idiocy of burning corn for car fuel. Dr. David Pimentel quickly laments the 5 billion dollar fuel fiasco in America, courtesy of alternative radio, Unwelcome Guests.

Then the radio premiere from the Canadian National Film Board. You'll hear voices from the global South, where biofuels displace local humans - and Nature's last reserves.

We wrap up with 15 minute podcast from the National Film Board of Canada. They've recorded some voices from the global South, where the poorest of people are pushed off land by our schemes to fuel cars.

Next week we'll look at better solutions: cities that work. I'll be out recording Dr. Peter Newman, author of the new book "Resilient Cities". His interesting theory: the Peak Oil crisis, the first wave of high energy prices, exposed all the cracks in our rotten urban design, and transport system. THAT triggered the fall of the finance Ponzi system.

That it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Find our web site at ecoshock.org. Alex has left the building.