Hot world and blistering speech at U.N. by Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Sea ice expert Dirk Notz: new science shows summer Arctic sea ice gone within 10 years? Oil industry takes over the COP climate process. The crazy rush for methane power – Greig Aitken takes us Inside Gas.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

 

Feeling uncomfortable? Extreme heat is bubbling up all over the world. Searing temperatures are back in India and never left China and Southeast Asia. Now it’s Mexico setting up cooling centers and sweating it out. France and Spain are cooking. Texas is steaming up to120 degrees F (with humidity)(48 degrees C). Not reported: Mexico is sweltering even worse. Maps showing high ocean temperatures literally around the world are really scary.

Fortunately there is a solution. Just pretend it isn’t happening. There. Fixed it. But what is you suffer from “I still see reality syndrome?” You feel like the only one awake in the slumber room of mass media and social fantasy. That is why, as global climate negotiators backpedal into loving methane and carry on drilling, that is why it is refreshing to hear at least one voice of authority calling out.

Last week, the Secretary General of the United Nations did not meet with the CEO’s of big oil companies. Following yet another failed climate negotiating session in Bonn Germany, UN chief António Guterres met with major climate campaigners. On June 15 he came out swinging in a press conference in New York.

You need to hear this. It’s just ten minutes of truth you won’t hear on TV.

 

In case you had not heard, the only world effort to save our climate has gone off the rails. The conference in Bonn agreed two things would not be on the agenda for COP28 in Abu Dhabi: a phase-out of fossil fuels and financing a just transition for developing countries. The two things we need to do to stop extinction-level heat will not be on the agenda. By the way, COP28’s president-designate, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber is the CEO of the UAE’s state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, also known as Adnoc. He’s part of a new line of defense by fossil fuel producers: we don’t need to stop using fossil fuels. We just need to reduce emissions with carbon capture and storage, or some other technology which they are sure will develop any time soon.

As you will hear later in this program, the biggest companies from Chevron to Shell have mostly dropped their pretense of winding down their climate-killing products. There is no “Beyond Petroleum” for BP.  In our second interview, Greig Aitken, Editor of the Inside Gas Bulletin adds more facts to the stark statements by Antonio Guterres. From the trillions of dollars of profits made by fossil fuel companies last year, for every dollar they spend on finding even more fossil fuels, they will spend 4 cents on developing renewables. That is the opposite of what should be happening to save a livable planet. The fossil addicts are heading out to buy lots more drugs, enough to kill us all.

But Guterres did offer a plan, a way to cut fossil dependency by 45% in just seven years. That is what scientists know we have to do to survive. There is a plan.

Also last week, a coalition of environmental groups announced worldwide protests for September 15 and 17th. Even if you have never been to a protest, please mark those days on your calendars, and consider what you can do, in person or online, to send a message to alleged climate negotiators. It is not OK to set the world on fire.  By the way, September 15 is also Greenpeace Day around the world.

The global mobilization has six demands. I will pass on just two of them:

Number One: No new fossil fuels—no new finance public or private, no new approvals, licenses, permits, or extensions. The provision of sufficient, consensual climate funding to realize this commitment everywhere.

Number Four: Stop greenwashing and claiming that offsets, carbon capture and storage, or geoengineering are solutions to the climate crisis.

Find out more at the web site www.priceofoil.org (Oil Change International)

THE PLANETARY CHANGE WE MADE ALREADY: DISAPPEARING SEA ICE

DR. DIRK NOTZ

Want proof? How about the largest scale single human-caused change on the planet? It is highly visible from space. When I was a child, the Earth’s used to have an ocean frozen-over with ice year-round. It had always been that way in human memory. Over the last decades the Arctic sea ice has decline in dramatic stages. They used to say the Arctic Ocean would be practically ice-free by the end of this century. That became by 2070, and most recently from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report by 2050.

According to new science, you won’t have to wait that long, and hopefully most of you will be alive to see it. The summer sea ice could be gone from the Arctic in the early 2030’s, say within 10 years time. Not only is an ice-free summer coming very soon, these scientists find that cannot be stopped, no matter what we do with emissions now. The Arctic sea ice tipping point has been crossed already. That is stunning news. It’s too late.

To explain this worrying new sea ice science, we are joined by Co-author Dr. Dirk Notz. Professor Notz leads the Sea Ice program at the University of Hamburg. He is Deputy Managing Director for the University Institute of Oceanography and a long-time specialist in the field.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock interview with Dirk Notz in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

In it’s 2021 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted sea ice would, quote “be practically ice-free near mid-century under intermediate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.” New Science just published in the journal Nature Communications says there could the Arctic Ocean could be practically ice-free during summers in the 2030s. The title is “Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emission scenario”. The paper is Open Access, free to read.  I have also posted some introductory news articles below.

In the interview, I asked Dirk about transfers of heat from a warmer Arctic Sea (with no summer ice) out to the Atlantic and Pacific. New research finds the heat is going the other way, from the Atlantic and Pacific INTO the Arctic Ocean.

Mark Serreze at University of Colorado says the first ice-free September will not be a turning point really. Earth has been losing Arctic sea ice cover for a few decades.

The Arctic Ocean largely refreezes every winter. But if there is no summer ice to build on, the ice cover is thinner and weaker than before. There is very little multi-year ice left.  Even if a tiny bit of sea ice hangs on, the reality is: open ocean stretching 1500 miles, or 2400 kilometers, from Canada all the way to Russia. All that opened up within my single lifetime.

SEE ALSO

The Arctic may be sea ice-free in summer by the 2030s, new study warns

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN Tue June 6, 2023

“’We were surprised to find that an ice-free Arctic will be there in summer irrespective of our effort at reducing emissions, which was not expected’,” Seung-Ki Min, lead author of the study and professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, told CNN.”

AND THIS FROM JULIA CONLEY AT COMMON DREAMS

People Didn’t Listen’: Complete Loss of Arctic Summer Sea Ice Now Inevitable, Warn Scientists

Long-time climate reporter Elizabeth Kolbert Tweets:

THE PLOT TO RUN THE PLANET ON DANGEROUS METHANE (“Natural” Gas)

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres just demanded oil companies stop investing in new supplies of climate killing carbon. They need to wind down those operations and find a new business model in sustainable energy. But you might as well ask a fentanyl addicts to switch to Yoga. They just have to out and get us more deadly drugs.

Fossil fuel industries say greater demand forces investing recent profits into even more production. We just had two interviews reporting on the splurge of fossil fuel investments by the biggest banks and private investment firms. April Merleaux from Rainforest Action Network named the big banks lending billions for new drilling, mining, and fracking. Then Katrin Gandswindt from the German group Urgewald revealed the investment companies putting trillions more to expand fossil fuel production – the exact opposite of what we need to do. Find those interviews free at the links above – you will learn the awful truth of what big fossil fuel companies are really doing.

But just take the case of so-called “natural gas”. It’s just methane, and in America, 80% of it come from fracking. Of course blowing up the underground and injecting super-toxic and radioactive chemicals to get free bubbles of gas, nothing more natural than that, right?

INSIDE GAS WITH GREIG AITKEN

That is where we need Greig Aitken. As Europe scrambles for gas, Greig is Editor of the weekly “Inside Gas Bulletin.” for the NGO Global Energy Monitor. This free bulletin is a like an industry insider about projects that every community and activist should know.

Inside Gas Bulletin

 

This interview was tough technically. The phone line to Brno in the Czech Republic was poor, and disconnected Greig and I at least four times. We made it happen. Listen carefully. You will hear how the gas industry is ramping up methane production – to “save the world” from climate change apparently. Even former Green voices like Germany have methane madness. While we all fear we will freeze in the dark, we plan to roast in Hell to avoid it.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock interview with Greig Aitken in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

COMING UP NEXT WEEK

Next week we talk with Dr. Peter Carter, the medical doctor who now tries to heal the world’s climate. Peter tells it like it is – and backs that with climate science. I also speak with Australian military analyst Dr. Elizabeth Boulton. She’s telling militaries around the world to prepare for social chaos as the climate goes off the rails. But will they protect the fossil fuel regime even as climate disasters strike? Be sure to join us again next week, for Radio Ecoshock.

Please send whatever support you can. The Ecoshock bank account is running low – not a good situation as we head into the summer when donations are always sparse. Usually monthly donors keep the show on the air during those times, but if you have been thinking of paying it back for this non-profit information stream, now is a good time to help Radio Ecoshock keep going. It is easy to do here.

There are so few places left on the dial still playing climate truth. My thanks to all the volunteers and dedicated people making non-profit radio happen. And thank you for taking time to listen.

I’m Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock.