Pillage, Plunder & Pollute, LLC

My "treetise", which has been accepted for publication in the new magazine from the Coming Crisis website that will debut next month, can be downloaded today(!) from DropBox as a pdf.  The subtitle is:  A Global Glut of Invisible Trace Gases is Destroying Life on Earth.  [Update:  for people who are having trouble downloading the pdf or just want a paperback copy, it is available now too(!) and can be ordered by clicking here.  NO guarantees as to quality of printing, I have only seen an online proof.  But it looks okay.]

The painting on the cover is Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus".  It seems like such a simple depiction of the myth, and I was surprised to learn that its most minor attribute is infused with fulsome meaning.  In Peasant Imagery and Bruegel's “Fall of Icarus” (link) Robert Baldwin elucidates a richly textured and erudite analysis.  The entire essay is a delight to read - following are some excerpts that I particularly liked (no quote marks - everything that follows is from Baldwin's work)

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Bruegel's paintings of the Seasons and his Fall of Icarus celebrate peasant life for an industrious harmony with nature. This view of peasants is particularly clear in the Icarus where the sweeping panorama is anchored around the heroic figure of the plowman.

To date, no scholar has explored the Good Plowman theme and its importance in sixteenth-century Northern art. To do so will allow a more balanced understanding of Bruegel's peasants and a richer sense of the Icarus as a mythological image phrased in vernacular terms.

The husbandman was a familiar paragon of industry, moderation, and moral integrity...

Virgil's account offers intriguing parallels to Bruegel with its extensive description of the peaceful, moderate plowman ignorant of the bellicose, avaricious ambitions of

city dwellers seeking “kingdoms doomed to fall”.7 Horace, Columella, and Pliny also contrasted a past, moral country life to the present immorality of cities.

Virtuous plowing found its most common expression in sixteenth-century Netherlandish art in allegories of Peace, Diligence, and Hope. The peaceful plowman, of course, developed from the prophecized beating of “swords into plowshares” and the fulfillment of this prophecy in the Prince of Peace. Interwoven with this was a classical tradition of agricultural abundance and pastoral harmony as images of peace.

If diligence, good works, and obedience were qualities associated with plowing, hope was equally important, drawing of I Cor. 9-10: “he that ploweth should plow with hope”.

Beyond peace, diligence, and hope, plowing could also be used to symbolize prudence, as in the rear of Bruegel's engraving of that virtue.

Seen from this perspective, the plowman in Bruegel's Fall of Icarus takes on a richer, sharper contrast to Icarus than has previously been noted. If Icarus' flight towards the heavens results in a fatal plunge to the earth, the plowman's earthbound labors lead him to eternal life in heaven.

As scholars have noted, the Icarus borrowed its plowman, fisherman, shepherd, and partridge from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Lucian, whose works were well known to the Renaissance, cited Icarus twice as an example of foolish ambition and pride.  He was the only classical author to describe an Icarus “falling head first into deep waters”.  Perhaps then he was the source for Bruegel's unprecedented choice of a drowning rather than falling Icarus, his head submerged beneath the sea.

In the Oedipus, similar nautical metaphors for moderation introduce the Icarian example.

"Were it mine to shape fate at my will, I would trim my sails to gentle winds... May soft breezes, gently blowing, unvarying, carry my untroubled barque along; my life bear me on safely, running in middle course. While, in fear of the Cretan king, madly the lad sought the stars, in strange devices trusting, and strove to vanquish true birds in flight…"

From Ovid, Dio, Lucian, and Seneca, the Icarian myth became a Medieval and

Renaissance moral topos, showing the dangers of excess, political or philosophical ambition, pride, self-deception, and ignorance of natural orders in general.

…the self-deception of Icarus is remedied only by self-knowledge, by a sense of one's true limitations and proper place in the wider orders of society and nature. Moderation, in short, is inseparable from self-knowledge.

In Bruegel's painted as well as engraved Icarus, death and damnation are the price for ambition and self-deception.

Presumably this is why he abandoned iconographic tradition by painting Icarus drowning rather than falling. If the print used a cross to imply deliverance from the whale, the painting chose another familiar metaphor of salvation, the harbor-bound ship, also seen in Bruegel's Hope.

Bruegel's ship, for example, sails past the watery grave of Icarus, its sailors as absorbed in their mission of reaching the harbor as is the plowman in his earthly work. While serving as a metaphor for salvation and Senecan moderation, the boat presents a simpler visual contrast to Icarus. For sailors utilize air and water in a sensible manner to get on with the business of life.

Icarus' unnatural flying, already remarked by Ovid and Dio Chrysostom, is followed by an equally unnatural and iconographically unusual thrashing in the water where he proves no better as a fish. Bruegel developed further watery contrasts with Icarus through the nearby fisherman who also makes good use of the sea.

With respect to the element of air, Icarus' head was submerged beneath the waves, shut off from the breath of life.

More importantly, Bruegel juxtaposed Icarus' falling feathers with the ship's wind-filled sails.  This prudent use of air was strengthened by the sail trimming needed as the ship nears the dangerous rocky shore. This contrast between unnatural and natural air technology, feathers, and sails, acquired greater irony in the context of Pliny's statement that Icarus invented sails and sailing.

If various activities relating to earth, air, and water were stressed visually in Bruegel's Icarus, the importance of fire emerged in the iconographically unusual setting sun.

"…the hot sun in Bruegel's Icarus brings fertile crops and life to the farmer, but death to Icarus. The introduction of a setting sun may also suggest the timeless cycles of a golden age and a natural order indifferent to folly. See thus, the whole picture emerges as a cosmological panorama which goes on with its elemental rhythms, its husbandry and commerce, its life and death, its labor and folly, until the final day when those who have “plowed diligently” enter the harbor of God's kingdom.

In the Praise of Folly, Folly celebrated Phythagoras who “came to the conclusion that no creature is more miserable than man; for all the others are satisfied with their natural limitations, but man alone strives to go beyond the bounds proper to his station”.  In the early days of history, before folly reigned, mankind had too much piety to search out, with a profane curiosity, the secrets of nature; to investigate the dimensions, motions, and influences of the stars, or the hidden causes of things; deeming it a sacrilege for mortal man to try to know more than is proper to his station. This madness of inquiring what may lie beyond the sky never entered their heads.

We have seen this Icarian violation of nature's laws Ovid where wings were a rash attempt to “change man's very nature”. Perhaps inspired by this phrase, Bruegel combined his own landscape talents and humanistic interests to develop an unprecedented cosmological Icarus, an Icarus exploring the nature of human nature.

A Cascade of Consequences

For two weeks now I have been so immersed in writing what my editor at the Coming Crisis calls my "treetise" (heh) I haven't been anywhere, not even to the post office.  At last I finished "Pillage, Plunder & Pollute, LLC" yesterday - yay! - so I was able to finally collect the mail (we don't get delivery here, it's too rural.)  I had actually forgotten that I ordered a used copy of "An Appalachian Tragedy", until I removed it from the envelope.

In my essay I had quoted extensively from other published work by several of the contributors, but reading a description of it while researching made me think I had better get my hands on a copy of the real thing, because for one thing in a review it was said - and it's true - that it is full of magnificent photographs by Jenny Hager, a few of which are scattered in this post.

Since the minute I opened it up, I've felt as stunned as if I stumbled upon the holy grail.  It's a large book, bursting with lush pictures of exactly the sort of damaged leaves and trees that this blog is all about.  And the text is utterly mesmerizing.

"Ozone, the uninvited intruder, does not need to reach levels harmful to humans to have a disastrous impact on forest plants and trees, and therefore wildlife.  Over a long enough period of time, even modest levels of ozone can decisively alter the delicate interconnections of highly adapted species and their food base in the Appalachian forests."

"Although air pollution is rarely the primary cause of death of forest trees in the Appalachians, its weakening effect makes various species vulnerable to all manner of creatures and environmental conditions that can cause their demise.  All too often, US foresters, reflecting the political and economic interests of those who sign their paychecks, wish to minimize the importance of air pollution's impacts on the eastern forest, asserting that the proximate cause of tree death and forest decline is the only cause.  According to this view, the fatal webworm and adelgid damage, the beech scale, the gypsy moth defoliation shown on these pages is the whole story, having nothing to do with air pollution."

 "The idea that the death of so many different species of trees along the Appalachian chain is simply happenstance - a coincidental aggregation of isolated, anomalous events - seriously challenges ordinary logic. Today even the most cautious forest scientists now confirm that the death and decline of Appalachian trees and forests is from a cascade of consequences whose point of origin, at least in part, is the debilitating effect, year after year, of air pollution from distant cities, factories, and highways."

A current poster child for the insects that foresters love to blame for killing trees because it is invasive is the woolly adelgid, which is decimating hemlocks.  But look at this:

"An import from Asia, the adelgid has been around for nearly a half-century in eastern forests without causing undue destruction until recently.  Today hemlock death is so widespread that some fear the species will become locally extinct in the wild.  The reason for the sudden virulence may well be that the insect thrives on nitrogen, an excess of which results from deposition of pollutants.  Experiments have shown that when nitrogen is applied to adelgid-infested hemlocks, the population densities of the pest increase fivefold compared with infested trees not subject to abnormal amounts of nitrogen."

The same increase in virulence applies to fungus such as anthracnose, which is killing dogwood and sycamore - a notion the typically, deliberately obtuse Forest Service, as described in this story from NPR, continues to utterly fail to appreciate:

"How Climate Change Makes Trees Sick"

"Forest diseases like Sudden Oak Death, which has infected trees in 14 counties in the state, stand to benefit from the effects of climate change, to the detriment, obviously, of the trees."

"Trees are big and long-lived. Tree pathogens, mostly fungi and bacteria, are the opposite. They’re mobile, able to blow around on the wind. And they reproduce and evolve rapidly. That’s the crux of the problem, according to Susan Frankel, a plant pathologist with the Forest Service."

“When you look at forest health and the balance between forest trees and the pathogens that attack them, it does seem, given climate change, pathogens get the better end of the deal,” she told me."

"Frankel is working with a group of ecologists, funded by the Forest Service’s Western Wildland Environmental threat Assessment Center, to better understand how climate change will affect tree diseases."

"Frankel is especially interested in Sudden Oak Death, which has killed more than a million trees in California. It needs moisture to spread and reproduce, and it thrives in warmer temperatures. 'The pathogen blows in wind-blown rain,' Frankel explained. 'It loves the weather we’re having right now.'”

It's the moisture!  Right?  Oh, wait...

Jim Robbins in the NY Times says of dying trees: "The common factor has been hotter, drier weather."  ...What???

In “Why Trees Matter” he inveighs against the usual insects, and drought.  Then, to emphasize how wonderful trees are, he wrote something that I see often - and never know whether it should make me laugh or cry:

“Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phytoremediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.”

This sort of sentiment is so nakedly anthropocentric it enrages me, frankly.  If somebody knows enough to understand that trees are cleaning up our pollution, wouldn’t it cross their mind, just for a tiny second, to wonder what that does to the tree??

Tragedy has a huge bibliography of scientific research on air pollution and forests, a veritable treasure trove. It also has pages listing organizations and foundations that are working on the problem except you know what?  Either they are defunct, or you go to their website and fine NO mention of air pollution, ozone, or acid rain, NADA, ZIP.

Published in 1998 by Sierra Club Books, Tragedy was then, apparently, promptly forgotten.  In the Foreward a declaration optimistically asserts that the book will be the foundation of an ongoing research project and "major public education campaign" about the effects of air pollution on forests, under the auspices of the Sierra Club's Southern App. Eco-region Program.  Here's their current website.  If anyone can locate a reference to pollution, please let me know!  Because I've looked and looked, and I can't find a single one.

Another group still extant is American Forests, described as being deeply involved in efforts to investigate the damage to forests by air pollution.  Following is all I can find on their website about pollution - nothing about what it does to trees, just the same garbage about how they clean the air that we just saw from Tim Robbins in the Times:

"Clean air and clean water are products of forests."

"The role of trees and forests in our ecosystems is absolutely critical. Forests renew our air supply by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Trees also clean our atmosphere by intercepting airborne particles, and by absorbing ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and other greenhouse gases. A single tree can absorb 10 pounds of air pollutants a year, and produce nearly 260 pounds of oxygen- enough to support two people."

"Urban trees can do even more for clean air. Depending on location, species, size, and condition, shade from trees can reduce utility bills for air conditioning in residential and commercial buildings by 15 to 50%. Through shade and the evaporation of water from their leaves, trees also provide natural, low-tech cooling that reduces energy use and the need to build power plants."

I haven't had time to do anything but skim Tragedy, so I don't know whether the authors anticipated that the tragedy they perceived was going to intensify, exponentially increase in speed, and spread around the entire globe, which is what has since occurred.  I don't know if they predicted that the constant, persistent background levels would ever become so high from Asian pollution traveling across the ocean, or that even young trees would start dying off just as rapidly as older trees that had many years of cumulative exposure.  I may never find out either, because none of them has ever responded to my repeated attempts to contact them.

Why?

The book is dedicated to John Flynn, a "top science writer with a national reputation, [who] unflinchingly chronicled the widespread impacts of acid rain on the Eastern forest..but during the 1980s as the frontal assault on environmental reform gained power he was hounded out of jobs on metropolitan dailies from Detroit, Michigan to Jackson, Mississippi, by managements fearful of losing advertising revenue from polluting industries.  He spent the last 6 years of his life..in virtual poverty."

"Denial has likewise been frequent among certain elements of the scientific community.  The pioneering researchers mentioned above have endured a barrage of criticism from the old-line forest-science establishment, which tends to operate in lockstep with the Forest Service and those political and economic entities whose interests this government agency has traditionally supported.  While Loucks, Likens, Bruck and others are well aware that proof of air pollution's role cannot be shown in absolute terms (in the same sense that smoking cannot be absolutely proven as the cause of lung cancer ), they have been unafraid to assert that air pollution is fundamentally implicated in the unprecedented levels of tree death and decline in eastern forests over the past quarter-century.  However, no good deed goes unpunished.  For their honesty, they have had to pay the price in attacks on their credibility and in lost federal funding.  Instead, they should be recognized for the scientific heros they truly are."

One of the individuals thanked in the forward is Philip Shabecoff, who was an environmental reporter for the NYT for 30 years and recently published this a book "Poisoned for Profit, How Toxins are making Our Children Chronically Ill" which also of course nobody has paid any attention too.

A few more excerpts from the book, and then I'm going to stop and read the whole thing, cover to cover.

"How much abuse can forest trees take from airborne pollution?"

"The answers have to do with acid deposition, excess nitrogen enrichment, damage from tropospheric ozone and from burning ultraviolet-B rays streaming through a thinning stratospheric ozone layer, all of which so weaken the trees that they cannot withstand the normal stresses they re subjected to as a matter of course:  insects, fungi, bitter cold, and drought."

"In fact the word moribund in no hyperbole, for the very soils that support the forest are sick too, depleted of their life-giving nutrients after decades of pollution-caused leaching.   The same pollution transports the molecules of heavy metals into the forest, and frees a lightweight one - aluminum.  Ordinarily aluminum is safely locked away in silicate compounds in the soils but when acid deposition breaks down the compounds the poisonous aluminum is freed to be taken up by the trees."

"Where is this happening?  The answer is:  everywhere."

"But be careful whom you talk to about it.  For there are those in government and industry who do not want this story known who for the last 15 years have suppressed the details of the Appalachian tragedy, even dissembled about it in their testimony before the Congress of the United States."

"Do you not believe this?  People who have a political or economic reason for suppressing the truth can manipulate statistics until they are blue in the face, but nothing can refute the commonsense evidence that any ordinary American can discover just by walking in  the woods and looking."

How many times have I said that?  Go outside and look.

the "Blinding Obsession with Carbon"

I read an article today that was something of a revelation.  In a way it presented mostly things I already know, but with much greater clarity.

As soon as I noticed that trees are dying, I assumed that it was from climate change.  It took about a year for me to realize that in fact, it is pollution.  Even so, because the pollution - the precursors to ozone - largely result from the same industrial civilization that produces such copious emissions of CO2, they seemed obviously connected.  But over the years any such linkage has been rebuffed by almost every environmental activist and climate scientist I have ever contacted.  Sometimes quite rudely rejected.

The explanation for what initially seemed paradoxical eventually became clear.  The CO2 adherents didn't want to include ozone even as a topic of discussion, because it is what has been described an "intractable" problem, for the simple reason that the ONLY conceivable way to fix it is to drastically curtail our level of consumption not only of fuel but also, of absolutely everything else - including food, which would require a decrease in population.

And I've understood that deep down inside, these activists and scientists harbor the hope that we will find magic technological fixes for our energy use, so that we can maintain the contemporary life-style of a developed country by replacing fuels that create CO2 with so-called "cleaner" sources like natural gas, biofuels and the rest of the solar, wind, and wave array...and if necessary geo-engineering can offset temperature increases.

Even assuming climate change can be mitigated by such efforts - a big stretch - it won't do a thing to slow the acidification of the ocean, or the collapse of forests.  And since most reactive nitrogen comes from fertilizer, and methane is a major ozone precursor, these facts have all conspired to make ozone about as taboo a conversation in climate and environmental circles as incest - they won't even entertain the topic.

This is just a long way of introducing the article written by co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, an effort I've always wished was a lot closer than Britain, Paul Kingsnorth. "Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist", which in addition to being evocatively written, has crystalized my thoughts on the above in a way that is simultaneously exhilarating, humbling and, not too surprisingly, really sad.  What follows is a little bit, but not nearly all - better to follow the link and read the whole thing because he has much more to say.  Naturally I liked the painting too:

"Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist" ~ by Paul Kingsnorth

Today’s environmentalism is as much a victim of the contemporary cult of utility as every other aspect of our lives, from science to education. We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the nonhuman world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people—us—feel is their right, without destroying the “natural capital” or the “resource base” that is needed to do so.

It is, in other words, an entirely human-centered piece of politicking, disguised as concern for “the planet.” In a very short time—just over a decade—this worldview has become all-pervasive. It is voiced by the president of the USA and the president of Anglo-Dutch Shell and many people in between. The success of environmentalism has been total—at the price of its soul.

Let me offer up just one example of how this pact has worked. If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the world worth talking about. The business of “sustainability” is the business of preventing carbon emissions. Carbon emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. They threaten to unacceptably erode our resource base and put at risk our vital hoards of natural capital. If we cannot sort this out quickly, we are going to end up darning our socks again and growing our own carrots and other such unthinkable things. All of the horrors our grandparents left behind will return like deathless legends. Carbon emissions must be “tackled” like a drunk with a broken bottle—quickly, and with maximum force.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t doubt the potency of climate change to undermine the human machine. It looks to me as if it is already beginning to do so, and that it is too late to do anything but attempt to mitigate the worst effects. But what I am also convinced of is that the fear of losing both the comfort and the meaning that our civilization gifts us has gone to the heads of environmentalists to such a degree that they have forgotten everything else. The carbon must be stopped, like the Umayyad at Tours, or all will be lost.

This reductive approach to the human-environmental challenge leads to an obvious conclusion: if carbon is the problem, then “zero-carbon” is the solution. Society needs to go about its business without spewing the stuff out. It needs to do this quickly, and by any means necessary. Build enough of the right kind of energy technologies, quickly enough, to generate the power we “need” without producing greenhouse gases, and there will be no need to ever turn the lights off; no need to ever slow down.

An Alert - reposted from Climate Code Red

Just Incredible.

"We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice."

~ Woody Allen

Triggering permafrost meltdown is closer than we think Posted: 09 Apr 2012 03:42 PM PDT Current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are probably sufficient to trigger large-scale permafrost carbon feedbacks and global warming that human effort would be unable to contain. The time to slash emissions was a long time ago but now is still much, much better than later, which may, as new studies suggests, simply become too late. Thawing permafrost Two future climate impacts above all others will overwhelm human efforts to mitigate global warming should temperatures and carbon dioxide levels reach critical levels, which in the latter case we are already close to achieving.        The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 3 to 6 degrees Celsius higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 25 to 40 metres higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland.      One impact is ocean acidification (increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is well-mixed with the ocean, to form carbonic acid and thus increasing water acidity) and rising ocean temperatures.  Given that carbon dioxide emissions over the next two decades are being determined (more than we would wish!) by existing energy infrastructure, we are not far from disaster: Oceans are more acidic than they have been for at least 20 million years, and they are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. It is predicted 10 per cent of the Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic by 2018, and 50% by 2050.  By 2030 (with atmospheric CO2 around 450ppm) the Southern Ocean will have reached a tipping point; and tiny pteropods at the base of the food chain in the southern ocean are likely to have hit a tipping point where they can no longer maintain their shells, says Dr Donna Roberts of the University of Tasmania. In January 2010, the prestigious journal Nature reported that scientists have found a 40 per cent decline in phytoplankton since 1950linked to the rise in ocean sea surface temperatures. Phytoplankton are the foundation of the marine food chain, suck up harmful carbon dioxide and produce half the world’s oxygen. This may be the most devastating impact yet documented of human-caused global warming.      And in June 2011 a global panel of scientists concluded that marine life facing mass extinction "within one human generation". The second overwhelming impact would be the large-scale release of permafrost carbon. It is estimated that the amount of carbon stored in the polar north as soil permafrost or on the ocean bed as methane clathrates is around 1,670 billion tonnes, three times greater than the current quantity of atmospheric carbon.  Losing even a third of the Arctic carbon stores would double atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and usher in warming of 4 degrees Celsius or more.      So the big question is how far we are from triggering large-scale permafrost release. PIOMAS yearly minimum Arctic ice volume (click to enlarge) The first point to note is that the Arctic has already proved to be more sensitive to global warming that expected. It is now acknowledged that the Arctic has passed the tipping point for sea-ice-free summers. The lack of summer sea-ice will increase Arctic warming (already double the global average) as heat-reflecting ice is replaced by dark, heat-absorbing open seas. There may well be a summer sea-ice-free Arctic by around 2015 (see chart). Those circumstances will increase the rate of melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is already accelerating. And now the tipping point for Greenland's ice sheet (eventual sea level rise of 7 metres) has been revised down from around 3 degrees C to just 1.6C (uncertainty range of 0.8C-3.2C). At the current temperature rise of 0.8C we may have already reached Greenland's tipping point, and with temperature rises in the pipeline (global emissions still rising, no reasonable agreement to reduce them), we are very likely to hit 1.6C in two to three decades.  Global average temperatures have warmed just less than 1ºC since the Industrial Revolution, but average temperatures in Siberia, Alaska and western Canada are now 3ºC to 4ºC warmer than 50 years ago. In parts of northern Canada, Greenland and the surrounding ocean during the 2010-2011 northern winter, temperatures were more than 6 degrees Celsius warmer than the baseline temperature average for the period of 1951-1980, and 7 to 9 degrees Celsius above average over the Chukchi Sea. So by mid-century the regional increase increase could easily be 4ºC to 6ºC. Predictions in 2011 suggested that as soon as 2020 carbon emissions from melting permafrost could be close to a billion tonnes a year. Researchers said that this positive permafrost carbon feedback will “will change the Arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid-2020s and is strong enough to cancel 42–88% of the total global land sink.” Work by Celia Bitz, Philippe Ciais and others suggests that the tipping point for the large-scale loss of permafrost carbon is around 8–10C regional temperature increase. As temperatures rise, it is projected that Arctic amplification (the multiple by with the Arctic warms compared to the global average) would be approximately times three, so around a 3C increase in global temperature is probably more than enough to detonate the permafrost timebomb. This feedback in the carbon cycle would drive temperatures significantly higher. Caias told the March 2009 Copenhagen science conference that: “A global average increase in air temperatures of 2C and a few unusually hot years could see permafrost soil temperatures reach the 8C threshold for releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane”. And now former UN climate chief Yves de Boer thinks that limiting warming to "two degrees is out of reach", which makes Caias's statement more than ominous.  Of course, permafrost tipping points is not the only reason to view 2 degrees Celsius as a crazy outcome and to be avoided at all costs. NASA climate chief James Hansen concludes that at the current temperature, no “cushion” is left to avoid dangerous climate change, and that the Australian government target goals  “… of limiting human-made warming to 2 degrees Celsius and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster”. RELATED POSTS Implications of the Arctic permafrost thaw  Hot pink climate no laughing matter  Bubbling our way to the apocalypse  On 19 March this year, a study published in Geology found that temperatures were 2 degrees warmer climate in late Pliocene (3–4 million years ago) and this meant 12-32 meters higher sea levels. Yet at that time CO2 levels were around 365–410 parts per million, similar to today's level of 390 parts per million, and Arctic temperatures were 11 to 16°C warmer. Other studies over this period estimated global temperature to be 3 to 4°C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures.        The take-home message is that current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are probably sufficient to trigger large-scale permafrost carbon feedbacks and global warming that human effort would be unable to contain. In the Pliocene 3 million years ago conditions were 11-16 degrees Celsius warmer, at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels similar to today. And now comes a new study which shows a sudden and extreme global warming events 55 million years ago known as the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is characterized by a massive input of Antarctic permafrost carbon, ocean acidification and an increase in global temperature of about 2 degrees Celsius within a few thousand years.  The study's author, Rob DeConto, says the implications of the study appear dire for the long-term future as polar permafrost carbon deposits have begun to thaw due to burning fossil-fuels:  Similar dynamics are at play today. Global warming is degrading permafrost in the north polar regions, thawing frozen organic matter, which will decay to release CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. This will only exacerbate future warming in a positive feedback loop.

Dissension Within Occupy - Chris Hedges Irked with Black Bloc

In February, Chris Hedges wrote an article that continues to cause enormous consternation, in which he labelled Black Bloc the cancer of the Occupy movement.  Many Occupiers who are themselves pacifist are loathe to condemn others who consider themselves anarchists.  Dorli Rainey has no such compunction and towards the end of this clip, from a Control the Corporation event in Washington, calls them hoodlums.  This video is a fascinating view inside the debate about where, if anywhere, the American Spring is headed.  It's worth watching just to hear from Hedges, who knows from personal experience in multiple theaters as much about how revolutions unfold as anyone alive today.

By-the-bye, what became of the baby?

I can't believe it's been over a month since I started trying to write an article - a really good, persuasive, comprehensive article - about air pollution killing trees...something a magazine might publish.  I've been working on it virtually every day, my fingertips burning from an overheated keyboard - and it is still not done.  In fact the effort has, rather like the baby in Alice, turned into a squalling, grunting, horrid little pig.

So I have no time to post anything original and offer, instead, the entirety of Chapter VI:

The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, `For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, `From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.'
Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.

Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky.

Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.

`There's no sort of use in knocking,' said the Footman, `and that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you are; secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you.' And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within--a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces.

`Please, then,' said Alice, `how am I to get in?'

`There might be some sense in your knocking,' the Footman went on without attending to her, `if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were inside, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.' He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. `But perhaps he can't help it,' she said to herself; `his eyes are so verynearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions.--How am I to get in?' she repeated, aloud.

`I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked, `till tomorrow--'

At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.
`--or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened.
`How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

`Are you to get in at all?' said the Footman. `That's the first question, you know.'

It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. `It's really dreadful,' she muttered to herself, `the way all the creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy!'

The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his remark, with variations. `I shall sit here,' he said, `on and off, for days and days.'

`But what am I to do?' said Alice.

`Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling.

`Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: `he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in.

The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.

`There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing.

There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

`Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, `why your cat grins like that?'

`It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, `and that's why. Pig!'

She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:--
`I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats could grin.'

`They all can,' said the Duchess; `and most of 'em do.'

`I don't know of any that do,' Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation.

`You don't know much,' said the Duchess; `and that's a fact.'

Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby --the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.

`Oh, please mind what you're doing!' cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror. `Oh, there goes his precious nose'; as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off.

`If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, `the world would go round a deal faster than it does.'

`Which would not be an advantage,' said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. `Just think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--'

`Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, `chop off her head!'

Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to be listening, so she went on again: `Twenty-four hours, I think; or is it twelve? I--'

`Oh, don't bother me,' said the Duchess; `I never could abide figures!' And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line:

`Speak roughly to your little boy,
          And beat him when he sneezes:
        He only does it to annoy,
          Because he knows it teases.'
                    CHORUS.

(In which the cook and the baby joined):--

`Wow! wow! wow!'

While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:--

`I speak severely to my boy,
          I beat him when he sneezes;
        For he can thoroughly enjoy
          The pepper when he pleases!'
                    CHORUS.
                `Wow! wow! wow!'

`Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!' the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. `I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen,' and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her.

Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, `just like a star-fish,' thought Alice. The poor little thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it.

As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open air. `If I don't take this child away with me,' thought Alice, `they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder to leave it behind?' She said the last words out loud, and the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time). `Don't grunt,' said Alice; `that's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself.'

The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had a very turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. `But perhaps it was only sobbing,' she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears.

No, there were no tears. `If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear,' said Alice, seriously, `I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now!' The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.


Alice was just beginning to think to herself, `Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?' when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood.

`If it had grown up,' she said to herself, `it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, `if one only knew the right way to change them--' when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'


`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

`--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you know that you're mad?'

`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

`I suppose so,' said Alice.

`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

`I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.

`Call it what you like,' said the Cat. `Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?'

`I should like it very much,' said Alice, `but I haven't been invited yet.'

`You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.

`By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. `I'd nearly forgotten to ask.'

`It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way.

`I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished again.

Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in which the March Hare was said to live. `I've seen hatters before,' she said to herself; `the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so mad as it was in March.' As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree.

`Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat.

`I said pig,' replied Alice; `and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.'

`All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice; `but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!'

She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house of the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather timidly, saying to herself `Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!'

Okay!  And while I was looking for pictures, I came across this one, and had to add it.  Thanks, Anthony!

Alas, embedding has been disabled but you can watch this very droll version by clicking here.