Pandora’s Box Part 2

London, England

Hot on the heels of James Lovelock’s dire predictions for the next hundred years, comes this…To quote the Independent newspaper:

A landmark assessment by the UN of the state of the world’s environment paints the bleakest picture yet of our planet’s well-being. The warning is stark: humanity’s future is at risk unless urgent action is taken. Over the past 20 years, almost every index of the planet’s health has worsened. At the same time, personal wealth in the richest countries has grown by a third.
The report, by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), warns that the vital natural resources which support life on Earth have suffered significantly since the first such report, published in 1987. However, this gradual depletion of the world’s natural “capital” has coincided with unprecedented economic gains for developed nations, which, for many people, have masked the growing crisis.
Nearly 400 experts from around the world contributed to the report, which warns that humanity itself could be at risk if nothing is done to address the three major environmental problems of a growing human population, climate change and the mass extinction of animals and plants.

 

It is not difficult to doubt mankind’s capabilities of saving the Earth; after all the track record so far is appalling.
Nothing less than the most profound change in human consciousness will offer any hope of a reasonable future for this species.
Unfortunately the human species is fundamentally selfish…and largely incapable of the ecological stewardship that is now required as a matter of extreme urgency.
How many grand destructions will it take to wake us all up?

We are now entering a period of extreme unpredictability, and humanity’s true values will be increasingly tested to destruction.
And then some.

Year 2100: 6 Billion Dead?

London, England

James Lovelock, author of the Revenge of Gaia, has spoken his most chilling words yet.
By the end of this century, upwards of 6 Billion human beings will have probably perished.
Global Warming is now approaching runaway levels, and the indicators we are seeing now are just the beginning.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock

By the end of the century, according to Lovelock, global warming will cause temperate zones like North America and Europe to heat up by fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, nearly double the likeliest predictions of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-sanctioned body that includes the world’s top scientists. “Our future,” Lovelock writes, “is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail…

“Some people will sit in their seats and do nothing, frozen in panic. Others will move. They’ll see what’s about to happen, and they’ll take action, and they’ll survive. They’re the carriers of the civilization ahead.”

Let us pray that California’s malevolent winds cease soon, and the thousands whose livelihoods and homes have vanished can begin to reclaim their lives.
The Earth is sounding a clarion call. It is time for our ’civilisation’ to wake up. Coherent action is needed if we are ever to be considered responsible enough to offer a future to our descendents.
It is time to stop puerile arguments about whether change is or is not happening.
It is time to stop rubbishing those who campaign for a greener future.
It is time to begin to change.
Consider a 22nd Century and a planet that is almost uninhabitable, save for the North.
Anyone who argues for ‘Laissez Faire’ stewardship needs to be considered insane.

Pandora’s Box

London, England

 With news that the Atlantic ocean’s capacity to absorb Carbon dioxide is rapidly declining, comes a warning from Australian Scientists that the world’s coral reef’’s are poised on the brink of ecological catastrophe.
And yet we still have to suffer the indignity of listening to climate change deniers posturing and parading about the world’s stage as if there is nothing to be concerned about.
This beautiful planet is being systemically and carelessly ruined by short term thinking.
The Native American Indian Concept of Seven Generations ahead is the very least we should be attempting..
So, lets say about 150 years from now:
There will be no more coral reefs; much of Greenland’s ice sheets will be gone; the Arctic ocean will be permanently ice-free; 20% Amazon rain forest will be left (if we are lucky); Sydney will be a ghost city because of permanent drought;  Florida will be inundated with rising seas… the list gets worse, with billions of people being relocated by coastal floods; wildfires will have destroyed much of the American South West…
And yet the preposterous and, quite frankly stupid gang of climate change deniers are happy to sit on their soap boxes and pronounce the world safe.

This is not so much of a Titanic headed for disaster, it is a global bloody tragedy of stupefying scale.
Pandora’s  box is about to opened and the world will never be the same.
Or is there hope? can we act now? could we change our complacent, dumb attitudes and begin to care for our treasure?

Its the only one we’ve got.

 

Back to the Eem

London, England

 The Earth is now nearly as warm as it was during the Eem Interglacial Period of 120,000 years ago, and it is sobering to read of the latest satellite data about Arctic Ice losses.
This graph illustrates vividly what is likely to happen. The black line, showing ice loss as measured by satellites, predicts probable total loss of Arctic Sea Ice in Summer by 2013.

 

There is a great deal of evidence supporting this trend, with the Arctic regions warming far more quickly than the tropics.Let us not forget that it is also the rate of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere that is doubly alarming.
In the past, the Earth warmed and cooled over millenia, just as carbon dioxide concentrations changed slowly.
But now, faced with an unprecedented rate of change, the ecosystems upon which we depend are faced with unpredictable consequences.

Of course the slash and burn mentality of the deniers and sceptics out there will rubbish this sort of information;
but their opinions will soon be seen to be as outdated as the appeasers of Hitler were in 1936.

 

86400 football fields a day

London, England

Let us not forget, that every second of every day, a football-sized area of Amazon rain forest is destroyed: 86400 football fields a day, 3 million a year.

Its like watching the lungs being ripped out of an animal, alveolus by alveolus; cell by cell. Soon the animal will be dead.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Viscount Monckton (the man with funds behind the Great Global Warming Swindle) is patting himself on the back for that so-called victory last week against Al Gore’s film. It makes him and the UK’s New Party  seem stupid beyond belief.

Within a decade, such laissez-faire attitudes will be seen to be contemptible, as will the pack of climate change denialists who swarm about Washington DC like vermin.

Our planet does not deserve such stupidity, and if it were entrusted to these sorts of people we can kiss goodbye to the future.

So, in fifty years time when the Forests are all but gone, there will be no room for Viscount Monckton’s ghost on this shattered planet; it will not be welcome there.

10,000 Wildebeast dead

 London, England

Here in the UK as a cool autumn is coming swiftly upon us, a UK judge has allowed Al Gore’s film to be shown in schools,  provided that 9 so called factual errors are highlighted. This sort of pyrrhic ruling is a complete nonsense… its just fiddling whilst our planet burns.

Its almost as if there are too many bruised egos out there, longing to bring the man down; they are small-minded folk who can’t see the wood for the trees.

10,000 wildebeast died last week; died in less than natural circumstances as vicious flood waters trapped them in their migration. To quote Time magazine:

“The Mara River was especially high this year, after the heavy rains that flooded parts of Africa, killing hundreds of people and uprooting thousands more. Climatologists are pointing to the downpours as proof that predictions that Africa will suffer the most from global warming and climate change are already coming true. The human toll is what makes all the headlines, but the consequences for Africa’s wildlife is just as drastic.” 

Al Gore is not claiming Papal infallibility, and neither should the judiciary.

But the Nobel Prize is appropriate at a time like this; when the Planet is five years away from a number of tipping points that will startle us all.

Truthful Facts

London, England

 

Watch out for a new IPCC report on the state of the atmosphere, which is to be published in a few weeks time.

Greenhouse Gas levels are at a far higher level than has ever been previously admitted, far exceeding the worst of the worst-case scenarios of the past few years.

And then wait for the media to tussle with this information; tussle with it like dogs with a rat; chewing it to death.

Will it make any difference?

This planet is in the grip of a Malthusian crisis and is soon to enter the era of the unpredictable.
Of course, there will be those who argue that Technology will ride to our rescue; that there are undreamed-of riches awaiting us…
but they are just around that corner.

For those  who continue to argue that the biosphere is safe in human hands,
let us hope that the Facts will inform them, truthfully;
for now, more perhaps than ever before, it is vital for a shift in human consiousness to occur: a paradigm shift that could offer true hope, without which, there will be destruction on an unimagineable scale.