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.

Gaia is "Le Tired"

Not Again!!

...INCREASED FIRE THREAT THIS AFTERNOON FOR NEW JERSEY...EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA AND FAR NORTHERN DELAWARE...

DESPITE THE SCATTERED LIGHT SHOWERS OF EARLY THIS MORNING...ITS GOING TO BE VERY DRY AGAIN THIS AFTERNOON. NORTHWEST WINDS GUSTING TO 25 MPH WILL ELEVATE THE RISK FOR THE SPREAD OF WILDFIRES.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WILDFIRE DANGER, BURN RESTRICTIONS, AND WILDFIRE PREVENTION AND EDUCATION, PLEASE VISIT YOUR STATE FORESTRY OR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION WEBSITE.

When did all these constant wildfire warnings start?  I took the advice and did visit my "state forestry" website and this is what I found:

What happens after we vaunt beyond "very high" and surpass "extreme" - the worst category?  Will they invent a new one?  Fried? 

According to this article, people died in Colorado last week, because they weren't properly warned about the danger of the wildfires.  Maybe the conflagrations are now bigger and faster than the dispatchers and firefighters expect, because there's so much more tinder in the forest.

In other news, the old report on Limits to Growth has (once again) been validated, and then some, in a study comparing the model predictions from 1972 to measured trajectories since then.

However, even this concluded with the delusional and completely unjustified hope that "unlimited economic growth" is still possible - if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint.  Talk about magical thinking!  Especially because both the pollution model and "observed" trend are grotesquely underestimated, since they're not accounting for the fact that air pollution is killing the forests.

The Augusta National Golf Club is hosting the Master's Tournament, so following are pictures from this year's event, followed by some from previous years.  See if you notice a difference.  First, from this year, 2012.

The water is scummy.  They had a huge amount of debris on the course from rain but given how meticulously groomed and pruned these premises are maintained, I would say either there was an excess of detritus on the ground piled up already, or there was a huge amount clinging to trees just ready to come down - or both. 

People were disappointed that the azaleas bloomed early, but my guess is it was a poor showing anyway, especially if these yellowing laurel leaves are any indication.

Here is the infamous lichen on the trunks of trees, and it's very obvious that the bark is shearing off.  No, that is not normal.

Compare the overall transparency of tree crowns today, to the pictures below taken April 8, 2002.  We were supposed to have had an early spring because it was so warm, and in fact the flowers bloomed early, but the leaves are struggling to emerge.  Trees have been relying on stored energy for several seasons, and they are running out.

 Below, in 2005, the crowns look robust.

Above, March 27, 2007, already some thinning of the pines compared to below, in 1999. 

An article written by Thomas Lovejoy for the New York Times - "The Greatest Challenge of Our Species" - reviews the recently concluded Planet Under Pressure conference.  While sounding appropriate alarm, it too, neglects some critical issues.  The article follows - I added emphasis and made comments in red.

The Planet Under Pressure conference is intended to feed directly into the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development this coming June, 20 years after the Earth Summit in Rio convened the largest number ever of heads of state and produced, among other things, two international conventions, one for climate change and the other for biological diversity.

While it is not as if nothing has been achieved in the interim or that scientific understanding has stood still, it is obvious that new science is not needed to conclude that humanity has failed to act at the scale and with the urgency needed.

In the United States, in particular (but not exclusively), far too much attention has been given to the non-issue of whether climate change is real or not. In the meantime the heating of the atmosphere proceeds inexorably, the Arctic ice has thinned and retreated at its summer low to a point that it might be tied to the exceptionally warm spring in Europe and North America. Spring bloom has erupted early in North America and Europe. Most people just say how nice the weather is with no sense of the march of climate change.

Since the industrial revolution, developed nations have contributed significantly to the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases. That led to a two-tier arrangement in the Kyoto Protocol, originally adopted in 1997, basically giving time to developing countries to improve their economies before taking major action.

The response of the United States at the time was to abdicate its traditional leadership position with a Senate vote based on the myopic notion that there was no point in doing anything if China and India were to keep on building coal-fired power plants. In the meantime, China is making measurable progress in decarbonizing its economy and has become the largest producer of solar panels in the world.

But the issue before humanity is, in fact, bigger than fossil fuel combustion, and far bigger than climate change. The Stockholm Environment Institute summed it up nicely in an analysis that identified a planet departing from planetary boundaries in three ways: climate change, nitrogen use and loss of biodiversity.

The use and frequent overuse of nitrogen fertilizer primarily by industrialized agriculture has polluted streams and lakes, and, in turn, coastal waters around the world. The resulting dead zones in coastal waters and estuaries are devoid of oxygen and largely devoid of life. They have doubled in number every decade for four decades — an increase by a factor of 16. The amount of biologically active nitrogen in the world is twice the natural level.

Why doesn't he mention that ozone comes from NOx?  Ozone in the atmosphere is smothering trees in toxic gases just as surely as eutrophication is suffocating fish.

The greatest violation by far of planetary boundaries is in biological diversity. This is because, by definition, all environmental problems affect living systems; biological diversity integrates them all. Running down our biological capital is pure folly.

The planet works as a biophysical system that moderates climate (global, continental and regional) and creates soil and its fertility. Ecosystems provide a variety of services, not the least of which is provision of clean and reliable water. Biological diversity is the essential living library for sustainability. Each species represents a unique set of solutions to a set of biological problems, any one of which can be of critical importance to the advance of medicine, to productive agriculture, to the biology that provides current support for humanity, and, most importantly, will provide solutions to the environmental challenge.

"Loss of biodiversity" - I hate that stupid euphemistic phrase!  It really means animals and plants are dying off in such numbers that they are going extinct.

Looking ahead, we not only have to deal with these planetary scale problems but also find ways to feed and produce a decent quality of life for at least two more billion than the seven billion people already here. We need to do this without destroying more ecosystems and losing more biological diversity.

Human ingenuity should be up to the challenge. But it has to recognize the problem and address it with immediacy and at scale.

An important step, a “Future Earth” organization, was announced at the conference. It will bring all the relevant scientific disciplines together to work on this, the greatest challenge in the history of our species. This is essential because many physical scientists seem blind to the importance of biology in how the living planet works, and how it can provide critical solutions. Economics and social sciences are critical as well.

History will measure the impact of the Planet Under Pressure conference and the extent that Rio+20 rises to the challenge. The moment has come to realize that this planet which brought us into existence must be managed as the biophysical system that it is. It is time to get our hands on the steering wheel, not to save the planet but to keep it habitable.

Exactly.  The climate scientists - the atmospheric physicists and geologists and all the rest - are oblivious to the collapsing ecosystem AND to the contribution that will make to climate change by depriving the globe of the major CO2 sink - trees!   They're also oblivious to the fact that people would care a lot more about emissions - whether they're CO2 or ozone precursors - if they understand how swiftly they are destroying our forests - and annual crops as well, our source of food!

I can't express my opinion of the prospects for that meeting any better than this commenter did at DotEarth:

Andy,

Could you please give us a summary of the significance of all this in your own words?

Because I'm having a hard time seeing what's new here. It feels like reading about one of those groundbreaking, million dollar, multi-year studies that confirms common knowledge — "you can get hurt if you fall off a ladder."

2,500 people gathered in London to confirm that the planet is in peril. Or, scientists now officially agree that the planet is in peril.
—Well, yeah.

A lot of the planet's problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, overpopulation and resource depletion are interconnected.
—No.? Really?

Humans are more interconnected than ever, and that can be bad because we might steal each other's resources.
—Yes, we call that globalization here in the U.S.

But interconnectedness can be a good thing because it gives us an opportunity for synergetic brainstorming that might solve problems.
—OK, but did all those people have to fly to London to figure that out? What about the internet?

We'll probably kick the environmental can down the road because our generation can't get its act together.
—Shocking.

This is a defining moment in history because if we don't get our act together, Mother Nature might give us the boot.
—Alarming!

I'm not trying to be contrary, but "C'mon." Anybody who has been paying attention has known all this stuff for decades. Other than making it "official," what did the conference accomplish?"
www.ecotecture.com

Philip S. Wenz

Here is Gaia - she is "Le Tired".


Remember this? Seems so quaint now.

pics on Sodahead
golf photos found here.

Break the Law

The news is nasty. I wonder if we are going to look back at this famine and say, in hindsight, this is where the global conflagration began.

"Vast portions of west and central Africa have become so dry that they can't support crops, livestock and the millions of people who live there...The United Nations estimates that more than 10 million people are in danger of starving to death. Aid workers on the ground say it's getting worse quickly."  Click here to see how you can help.

Thanks to Survival Acres where I saw this video:

When Coal Companies Make Offers That Can't be Refused

This morning when I woke up, my thoughts were filled with the image of a crabapple tree behind the colonial farmhouse where we originally lived in Oldwick.  First daughter was barely two years old when we moved in, but high on the list of projects was a treehouse.  The crabapple looked perfect, with it's wide umbrella crown to shelter from hot sun and even light rain, and its multiple branching habit providing ample support for a platform at about chest height, not too tall for even toddlers to climb the ladder and be safe within a protective railing.  My dad came down from Ipswich that fall, and in a few crisp and lovely autumn days he constructed it from pieces of lumber left stacked in the old dairy barn, along with a sandbox of generous proportions in the ground underneath.  It became an idyllic space where eventually all three of my children and their friends whiled away hours of imaginative, creative, messy play...


Except for two weeks every spring, which I hadn't anticipated.  When the crabapple bloomed, billowing with absolutely glorious, intensely deep magenta flowers - the bees descended.  Dense clouds of them, unabated, in a buzz so uproarious I could hear them from the open kitchen window, they commandeered the entire area.  There was no approaching until the annual spectacle was finished, and so I had to find other places to entertain the children for that period - which in May of course, wasn't difficult, because by then we were busy planting the garden and hunting for mushrooms in the woods.


Now, the population of bees has become so diminished as to be paltry, as most everybody has heard.  Increasingly the research implicates insecticides, as I was reminded by this article published today at Desdemona Despair.


Actually, though what I had been pondering about that crabapple from thirty years ago was the number of holes in the bark, which had been drilled by woodpeckers over years of feasting on insects.  There were uncountable hundreds of little circles that marched around the trunk and branches in military precision, and apparently enough abundance of carpenter ants to replenish a nest that was feeding legions of birds.  But you know what?  The tree supported them all, it kept growing and flourishing.  It never lost a branch, and I never worried that it might.


Contrast that with all the current tree death across the country, much of it being blamed by the "experts" on insects, whether native (bark beetles and wooly adelgid) or invasive (Asian long horn beetle).  Something doesn't add up!  There is a reason trees are dying now, that pollution is background against which all other stresses occur.


You could say the same thing about this grotesque injustice in Georgia, where proximity to the Scherer coal plant - the number one worst emitter of greenhouse gases in the country and, one would surmise, other pollutants - is causing nearby residents to suffer horrible health effects.  Below, I'll reprint the story which details the efforts by the power company to lie and hide the cluster of diseases, some fatal, and to silence the victims by making offers they can't refuse.  This represents another in a long list of corporate malfeasance that corrupts this country...oh, and if you want more, read this article, and follow the links to Kristof's column, about big corporations that are profiting from underage sex trafficking.


Seriously!  There seems to be no depths beneath which these scoundrels will not sink.  Scoundrels is too kind a word for them, they are evil monsters.  This reminds me so much of the Godfather series - remember?  The old-fashioned, "principled" members of the mob demanded they stay out of drugs.  But the return was just too tempting for the younger, spoiled rotten generation to comply.  Corporations now have exactly that conviction of entitlement, they just can't resist money because there isn't a shred of decency left.

The Scherer Plant seen through dying pine trees.

Here's the article about coal, and wonder when you get to this quote:  "Our ash pond is in full compliance with state and federal guidelines," says Georgia Power's Williams - maybe that means that state and federal guidelines aren't stringent enough, much?

Robert Maddox of Juliette, Georgia, poses on his property. Maddox says Georgia Power expressed interest in buying his property after leveling the house next door and sealing the water well.

Juliette, Georgia (CNN) -- "Y'know they're going to tear that house down, don't you?"

Robert Maddox has just opened his front door to let me in for the third time in three weeks. During each visit, Maddox talks about the house next door. It looks like the other houses in this rural middle Georgian town: two stories high, with a stone face and long rooftop arches, sitting on a few acres of wooded hills.

Maddox turns toward his dining room, walking by the oxygen tank he uses when he makes the 300-foot trek to the two-lane road where he picks up his mail, and shares the gossip he heard at the local market an hour earlier.

"Yeah, someone said Georgia Power will tear it down to the ground sometime this week."

Robert Maddox is a bulky man with gray hair, a deeply lined face, squinty eyes and a thick Southern accent. He lives in Juliette with his wife, Teresa. The two of them invested their life savings building their home. It's a large ranch house on several acres, and the plan was the two of them would leave it for their sons and grandchildren. They gave up that dream after Maddox's mother developed a rare form of ear cancer and died after living at the home for three years.

"I'm not going to bring my grandchildren up in this," Maddox says. "Anybody who does would be a fool, I think."

The problem, Maddox explains, is now he and his neighbors are getting sick. For Maddox, the first signs of trouble would come in the middle of the night, when he would wake up with nose bleeds mixed with clear mucus. Then his muscles started twitching, and then he got kidney disease, and then sclerosis of the liver.

His doctor wondered whether Maddox was an alcoholic.

"I don't drink," Maddox says dismissively before ticking off his other health problems:

"I also had a gallbladder that had to be removed, and they give me a one in six chance of surviving that. And right now I could walk from here to my mailbox and I'm out of breath."

The neighbor who used to live in the now-empty house has abdominal cancer. In the house two doors over, a once healthy woman has a form of dementia that's left her "unrecognizable," according to Maddox.

"Besides us all being sick, we've all been approached by Georgia Power, with them looking to buy us out" Maddox says. "And in that house next door, [Georgia Power] has sealed the well."

Maddox leans away from his kitchen table, crosses his arms and sighs.

"Y'know it's coming from over there," he says, nodding in the direction of one of the largest coal plants in the world, right across the two lane highway where Maddox collects his mail.

Maddox believes the coal plant is making people sick, and the "it" he refers to is cancer.

A plant's history of purchasing properties

Compared to other coal-fired power plants in the United States, Plant Scherer is Colossus. Two 1,000-foot chimneys can be seen towering over the pine forests from miles away. The plant, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the country.

The plant generates the fifth-most power in the nation, according to government statistics. Georgia Power owns a portion of Scherer, and manages the plant on behalf of five other utility stakeholders.

CNN has confirmed at least two houses across from the plant have been bought. Meanwhile, another 10 owners of nearby houses claim Georgia Power representatives have approached them with offers to purchase their property.

The first house purchased belonged to a woman suffering from cancer. In public statements before the purchase, Gloria Dorsett told neighbors she had breast cancer -- cancer she said her doctor had diagnosed as environmentally caused. Neighbors say after Dorsett wrote letters to the local paper, Georgia Power bought her home, leveled it, sealed the on-site water well, and planted tiny pine saplings on the property.

CNN reached the family, who refused to comment for this story.

The second house, also across from Plant Scherer, was owned by a couple. According to neighbors, the woman suffered from a form of stomach cancer, and she told neighbors before the buyout it too was diagnosed as environmentally caused. CNN reached that family as well -- they, too, refused to comment.

Almost immediately after Georgia Power purchased that house, the company sealed the on-site water well.

One of the largest coal fired electrical plants in the U.S. ... Notice the "New" stack being erected on the left hand side of picture ... When complete the stack will be approx. 1,200' tall, the same as the "Empire State Building" in NYC ... The other stacks are the approx. the same height...

A Georgia Power spokesman tells CNN the company was "unaware of any health problems" around Plant Scherer.

The spokesman, Mark Williams, says Georgia Power routinely purchases property around power plants. However, in the case of Scherer, Williams says Georgia Power "is not approaching people and offering buyouts."

Yet, three homeowners across from the plant showed CNN business cards left by Georgia Power employees indicating the company was opening up discussions to purchase their homes.

When presented with this contradiction, Williams holds firm.

"We have not been approaching people," Williams said.

Donna Welch lives a few miles from Plant Scherer. Middle-aged and gregarious, Welch suffers symptoms similar to those of Robert Maddox and his neighbors. And as with Maddox, Welch's doctor also asked if she had a drinking problem.

"They asked me if I was a closet alcoholic," Welch says, chuckling. "They tested me for diabetes, they tested me for multiple sclerosis ... they couldn't figure it out."

Curious to see if there were any toxins in her body that could be causing health problems, Welch had her hair checked. Hair stores chemicals and toxins absorbed in the body.

"My hair is 68 parts per million uranium," Welch says. "And then my husband started breaking out in disfiguring hives. His kidneys started acting really bizarre."

Welch says her doctor linked the family health problems to uranium poisoning. The uranium was traced to a water well on her property. That discovery led to more robust testing by University of Georgia researchers, who found more than 20 homes in the area with high concentrations of uranium.

Hair testing revealed that another Juliette resident, Jamie Worley, had high concentrations of uranium in his hair. Worley developed liver cancer and died, although it's unclear whether the uranium triggered the cancer.

The researchers say they haven't traced where the uranium comes from, although EPA officials said they believed the contamination to come from underneath a layer of granite 70 miles away near Atlanta.

Uranium is also heavily concentrated in coal ash. Plant Scherer produces hundreds of acres of coal ash per year. The waste is stored in a 900-acre pond surrounding the plant. Over the past 30 years, several studies have found coal ash more radioactive than the waste from nuclear power plants.

So when Georgia Power sealed two wells, many in the community began to suspect the massive coal plant could be causing the contamination and the illnesses. One of the most commonly accepted theories by residents of Juliette is that uranium and other toxins from the coal waste are leaking from the ash pond into the area water table.

"Through the grapevine and small community talk, that's what I hear," Welch says. "Over and over again people ask me, 'Is it Georgia Power? Is there any proof it's Georgia Power? Is it the ash?' I don't know. I can't say. I just want the truth."

Georgia Power, meanwhile, denies the coal ash is causing the high levels of uranium found in the wells.

"Our ash pond is in full compliance with state and federal guidelines," says Georgia Power's Williams.

It's impossible to tell who is right. Coal ash ponds are not frequently monitored by state regulators, and there is almost no federal oversight of these ponds. In Georgia, and many other states, dried coal ash is regulated by the same rules that govern landfills holding household trash.

A sick and scared community

Along Luther Smith Road in Juliette, most of the houses are simple, one-story wood-frame structures with a small porch and a few single-paned front windows. Looking out from those windows toward the street, you would see a thicket of pine trees in front of a large mound of dirt, about 15 feet higher than the two-lane road. The rise in the ground is the levy holding the coal ash pond.

Gloria Dorsett lived across the road from the coal ash pond for decades before Georgia Power bought her house. Neighbors say the cancer survivor drank water from her well. That well is now sealed; the only indication of it is a small rubber hose popping up from a newly laid patch of grass.

For environmental activists such as Jeff Stant, the sealing of the wells should be a red flag for residents. Stant works for the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group, and he says Georgia Power is taking similar actions as other utility companies when coal ash ponds have contaminated water supplies.

"When they do it quietly like that and when they are sealing the wells," Stant explains, "it creates concerns that there might be something wrong with the water people are drinking."

Stant hasn't monitored Plant Scherer, but he is an expert on coal plants. He says it's also concerning that Scherer's ash pond isn't lined at the bottom, a step he says would greatly protect the public's health.

"The EPA has estimated the risk of people getting cancer around unlined ash ponds were as high as one in 50 individuals exposed," Stant notes. "So, it's extremely important to line these ponds. It's nine times higher than the risk of cancer from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for your entire life."

There are no regulations requiring liners at Plant Scherer's coal ash pond.

Many residents around the coal plant have started asking for their wells to be tested, including Robert Maddox. He's convinced that Georgia Power knows something is wrong with the water, or else they wouldn't have sealed the well.

Maddox was right about his neighbor's house. Georgia Power tore it down on a chilly Thursday night. It took two men and a bulldozer to tear it apart, leaving a pile of broken wood planks and roof tiles.

"Georgia Power should do the same for us," Maddox says. "Even if it ain't them causing these problems, who would ever buy my house, or the neighbor's house, with that mess next door?"

He sighs, and says, "They'd be a fool to."


photo credits here, here, here and here.