Things have not got any better since. On either front.
Friday 25 November 2011
Climate Science in 2 minutes 43
Things have not got any better since. On either front.
Saturday 15 October 2011
ECOCIDE: A RUM MIXTURE
Media Coverage of the Ecocide Mock Trial
Thursday 6 October 2011
Ecocide: a corporate anathema
Monday 26 September 2011
Ecocide – the Fifth Crime Against Peace
Friday 18 February 2011
Rethink! Melting permafrost rewrites the picture
Every now and again research is published which changes our understanding so significantly that nothing less than a complete revision in thinking is required.
When that happens concerning climate change, nothing less than a complete revision of our responses to it is demanded too.
Such a research paper was published three days ago, one which rewrites the bleak prognosis for climate change yet more grimly.
The paper, entitled Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming compels a complete revision of our assumptions concerning the continued human emissions of greenhouse gases.
That means of the fundamental assumptions which underlie the UNFCCC climate change negotiations internationally, and the actual and planned responses by government at all levels, globally.
The reductions so far envisaged, already inadequate to avert catastrophe, must now be revised down yet further and all responses, at every level, must follow suit.
The paper deals with the vexatious issue of the melting of permafrost – which we know very well is already happening because of its very visible effects, including those on the infrastructure.
The key finding is that a positive feedback, the permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) operates, by which the greenhouse gases released by the melting permafrost cause the temperature to rise, thus melting more permafrost, releasing more greenhouse gases, and so on.
‘The thaw and release of carbon currently frozen in permafrost will increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations and amplify surface warming to initiate a positive permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) on climate.’
The quantities of carbon involved are mind boggling. The paper states:
‘Although uncertain, the total amount of frozen permafrost carbon is on par with the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere.’
In the NSIDC press release lead author Kevin Schaefer quantifies it like this:
‘The amount of carbon released is equivalent to half the amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age. That is a lot of carbon.’
Other findings of key significance are that the permafrost carbon feedback is predicted to:
change the Arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid 2020’s
be strong enough to cancel 42-88% of the total global land sink.
and that ‘once initiated, the PCF is irreversible and strong compared to other global sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2 , even with large uncertainties.’
The policy conclusions are irrefutable. The paper quietly understates them thus:
‘The thaw and decay of permafrost carbon is irreversible and accounting for the PCF will require larger reductions in fossil fuel emissions to reach a target atmospheric CO2 concentration.’
The NSIDC press release is a little more forthright:
They estimate an extra 190 plus or minus 64 gigatons of carbon will enter the atmosphere by 2200—about one-fifth the total amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere today. Carbon emissions from thawing permafrost will require greater reductions in fossil fuel emissions, to limit the atmospheric carbon dioxide to some maximum value associated with a target climate, Schaefer said. “It means the problem is getting more and more difficult all the time,” he said. “It is hard enough to reduce the emissions in any case, but now we saying that we have to reduce it even more.”
[nb the paper notes the 190 ± 64 gigatons estimate is probably low]
The source of this unwelcome news is impeccable: joint research between the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, two organisations at the pinnacle of climate science with unimpeachable credentials.
Here are links to
a short report by Canadian Press published by the Toronto Star
the paper in synopsis and full
END
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Climate Politics in 2 minutes 20
Although scripted before COP16 in Cancun, anyone believing the Cancun Agreement renders its message irrelevant need only consider that, even after the accommodations made, we remain on course for temperature increases of at least 3.5ºC on International Energy Agency figures.
Anyone who views this as a success is referred to Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, winner of the Royal Society Science Books Prize in 2008.
Or, as Lord Julian Hunt, Visiting Professor at Delft University, Vice-President of Globe, and former Director-General of the UK Met Office put it recently in a Reuters Davos Notebook briefing for the World Economic Summit on the outcome of COP16 (my emphasis throughout):
‘However, despite these initiatives, we are now at a point at which preserving our current environment is probably unobtainable.’
‘Far from being another unsuccessful international environmental meeting, as some predicted, the Cancun Summit is likely to be looked back upon in years to come as a seminal moment. The accord endorsed the various actions of countries to limit green house gas emissions. However, more significantly for the long term it accepted that preserving the global environment in its present state is probably unattainable.’
‘In the absence of moves towards a much stronger, global and legally binding deal, the world is thus on the path of the ‘business as usual’ scenario envisaged recently as an unlikely worst case. And, the international community now has got to therefore consider unprecedented changes.’
‘What is absolutely clear is that temperature rises of a 3-4C magnitude will, most likely, pose an irreversible tipping point for continental sized areas of changing land cover, and for ice on sea and land. As a result, millions (if not tens of millions) of people are likely to be displaced by the effects of desertification and rising sea levels, and mountain snow melt.’
‘And, with this in mind, politicians and the public would do well to follow the Netherlands Delta commission; the report of the UK Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change; and China’s scientific agencies and seriously begin to consider planning for the monumental changes that will be apparent in the decades to come.’
And in closing:
‘The rising costs of dealing with these effects, such as coastal defences, reducing desertification and urban overheating, mean that preventative actions have to begin right away. It would be folly of the highest order to delay this process until economies grow further, as some influential economists continue to argue.”
END
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Can you give Gordon Brown a call? - 16:30 tomorrow
Turns out to be from none other than Gordon Brown, the british prime minister, who has approached the pp (and no doubt many thousands of other people) looking for mass support for a bold stance at Copenhagen at the end of this week.
So he has teamed up with AVAAZ to do what must be the first prime minister’s mass phone call in the uk, which is happening tomorrow at 16:30.
That may not be quite as uplifting for the ego as a personal email and personal call, while the chances of actually getting heard are probably still in the order of 10,000 to one, or more ephemeral still. Yet it is still quite something politically.
So here’s the email in full so anyone who might want to add weight to this can hook up with the PM in person.
Must be worth the effort. The more support Gordon Brown has over climate change and the more radical he can be encouraged to be over what he is prepared to put on the table and the solutions he is prepared to back the better, and the greater our not particularly sparkling chances of turning climate change around.
Here's the link in case the ones below have got corrupted:
Why not give me a call?
Have fun!
From: "Gordon Brown" <info@email-new.labour.org.uk>
Subject: Could you give me a call?
Date: 14 December 2009 11:22 AM
steve,
I’ll be heading out to Copenhagen for the climate change conference soon - but the part I’ll be playing there is bolstered by the difference you and thousands of other people are making by taking part in Ed's Pledge.
That’s why I’ll be taking part in a mass phone call in association with Avaaz this coming Wednesday (16 Dec) at 4.30pm – taking questions, listening to people’s views and making sure that the opinions of people across the country get a hearing at Copenhagen.
Why not give me a call?
Ed has been keeping me up to date with the Ed’s Pledge campaign and I wanted to thank you for all the work you’ve been putting in.
The thousands of letters to l ocal newspapers, the thousands co-signing Ed’s letter to David Cameron and all your efforts to spread the word about climate change have truly been a sight to see.
Sign up to take part in the phone call
People can’t be spectators to important events – the power to change the world comes from people working and fighting for what’s right together.
Tell me the message you’d like me to give to world leaders – sign up for the phone call
I hope to speak to you on Wednesday
Gordon
Saturday 12 December 2009
Open email to Ed Miliband
[15 December: Ed's email stating this (to which this is a response) is now appended]
Ed in general has been doing an outstanding job on climate change. Most impressive and more or less unique is Ed's Pledge, his on-line campaign to build the critical mass of support needed to get the right result from COP 15 in Copenhagen.
However he has somehow not yet fully grasped the biodiversity arguments. Instead he has managed to come to the conclusion that what little remains wild in the uk should be sacrificed to windfarms and the like to meet consumers' insatiable demand for cheap energy.
Anyway, read on for the arguments.
Numbers make an enormous difference to such things. So should anyone happen to be moved to support, just paste a copy into an email with the heading:
re: Sign My Letter to David Cameron
add your comments and send it to "Ed Miliband"
info@email-new.labour.org.uk
(well that's the one he gives out, anyway. Given that address, might be an idea add to that you want him to receive it in person.)
In closing, should add that this is not a foray into politics. Just an exercise in rationality, attempting to reason objectively with those so engaged.
Dear Ed
Congratulations on Ed's Pledge and the tremendous work you are doing, especially in respect of COP 15.
Sorry to have to come back to you on this at a supremely busy time, but there is a fundamental flaw in the thinking here, and one that could prove fatal.
Ken Clarke was right on this. It is not a question of nimbyism, bourgeois values, or sentimentality.
It is the indisputable fact that wild places and undisturbed ecologies are absolutely essential for our survival. Simple as that. Because they provide the ecological services on which we all depend for our existence.
The various environmental crises which confront us so forcibly are simply the result of having failed to respect that immutable fact. The underlying reason for our current plight is that we have commandeered massively more than our sustainable share of the wilderness to serve our perceived (and often highly questionable) needs.
James Lovelock calculates that sustainability requires leaving no less than 90% of Earth in its natural state, entirely uninterfered with by human activity. Instead, the entire UK has been so modified and subordinated to human desires that there remains no wilderness to speak of, very little in the way of wild places, and the vast majority of the land mass is altered massively and detrimentally to serve human demands.
The solution to climate change is not to still further compromise or destroy those last remnants for the purpose of meeting demands that are grossly inflated by our refusal to accept our ecological limits. That is the critical mistake in your thinking.
In reality that is to add one of the final nails to our coffin by further undermining ecological integrity and the planetary life support system as a whole - which can already be seen on many measures to be approaching collapse. All in the perceived furtherance of living standards which are the root cause of the problem in the first place. Thus terminates our viability.
Its is as flawed a logic as to conceive the solution to be cutting down what remains of the Amazon rainforests to provide fuel to meet our energy requirements. Or to put up wind farms, for that matter. It would the same process. The only difference is that the UK is more advanced in the delivery than the Amazon nations.
If one of the richest countries in the world is not prepared to relent from subjugating all of nature to economic ends it renders bankrupt your negotiating position towards the developing countries - especially in respect of REDD, and indeed in the maintenance of ecological integrity generally. You can hardly expect the developing nations with their real and pressing needs to accept what you consider to be 'outrageous' when merely suggested for the UK. And if we do not have ecological integrity we have nothing, for on that everything depends.
Yet the importance of REDD must already be clear to you. Similarly the critical role of biodiversity. The Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity has already stressed that biodiversity is part of the solution to climate change; that healthy terrestrial and marine ecosystems are essential to the health of the atmosphere; and at COP 15 he has submitted a further expert report driving home that critical message.
Vital, then, that you appreciate wilderness is absolutely essential, and not a luxury to be traded away. To solve climate change and our other ecological crises we urgently need more, not less. And every nation has an inescapable duty in that respect.
To this end, please recognise the pivotal importance of large scale ecological restoration, as exemplified astonishingly by the Chinese on the Loess Plateau - an area the size of Belgium - and the groundbreaking work of John Liu at Rothansted.
And please understand that the world will no longer accept the implied imperialism in expecting the developing nations to deliver the ecological services which the UK considers completely dispensable on its own turf, and is prepared to undermine absolutely in the furtherance of preserving its standard of living.
So it is critical that you re-evaluate and take this on board urgently, even as you are in the process of negotiating the Copenhagen Treaty. It is absolutely vital that it is understood. By you. By Gordon Brown. By the other world leaders. And by everyone else involved in the negotiations.
The answer to climate change is not to complete the historical process of subjugating all of nature to meet human desires to provide more and yet more again. That is the endgame in our current and historical trajectory, and it ends - inevitably - in our self-destruction.
It is have the wisdom and humility to learn how to live well and happily within our ecological limits. Which is what we are now called on to do. That must mean valuing, protecting and restoring natural ecosystems over our more frivolous and debatable needs - even our indulgent, inflated demand for cheap energy on a massive scale - as well as getting back to real values.
We have no choice in this. You can negotiate all you like with each other, and for as long as you wish. But there can be no negotiating with Nature. And we can but accept her timing, or be swept away.
Canute showed that a long time ago. Please do not make the same mistake. Have the vision to re-evaluate now and rise to a pivotal role in changing perceptions - and in pulling us out of the fire.
That's Ed's Pledge. Thank you for it, profoundly.
Wishing you the absolute best for the rest of the summit.
PS
The importance of wilderness is far more eloquently argued by The John Muir Trust, the leading British actor in this field, which has been promoting the re-establishment of wilderness in the UK for over 20 years, and putting it into practice on its own lands and by assisting others similarly moved. Becoming fluent with their thinking would add new dimensions to your understanding and vision both domestically and internationally, and is most highly commended.
Ed's emails
Email 1
On 21 Oct 2009, at 15:06, Ed Miliband wrote:
If you can't see this email correctly, please click here
Last week it was a backbencher, today it's one of the most important shadow cabinet members undermining the fight against climate change.
Last week I told you about a backbench Tory who said those of us concerned by climate change were part of a 'lunatic consenus'. Over a thousand of you wrote to your local newspapers, letters were printed in newspapers across the country and we made it clear that the public have had enough of climate change deniers. To all of you who wrote, thank you.
But today I'm writing to you again with worse news. Ken Clarke - one of the most important and best known Tories - has gone on record today opposing wind farms, saying: "My view is that those few wild and open (land) spaces that we have left in Britain should not be used for wind turbines."
I've decided to write personally to David Cameron, asking him to overrule Ken Clarke and make their policy clear. I'm going to deliver the letter tomorrow morning but need your support if it's to have impact.
Click to co-sign my letter to David Cameron
Ken Clarke's comments are outrageous and have an immediate effect of putting off investors and stopping the creation of green jobs in our renewables industry.
If one thousand of you sign this letter with me TODAY it will have much more media impact and show Ken Clarke that the British public want their politicians to take climate change seriously.
Click to co-sign my letter to David Cameron
Let's send another clear message that those undermining the fight to combat climate change will be challenged every step of the way.
Ed
PS – Once you’ve signed the letter please forward this email to your friends and ask them to sign as well – the more of us there are, the stronger we are.
To unsubscribe, please click here.
Privacy: we won't pass on your email address to anyone else. See http://www.labour.org.uk/privacy
Reproduced from an email sent by the Labour Party, promoted by Ray Collins, General Secretary, the Labour Party, on behalf of the Labour Party, all at 39 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0HA
If you can't see this email correctly, please click here
Email 2
Begin forwarded message:
From: Ed Miliband
Date: 22 October 2009 13:30:38 BST
Subject: Success
If you can't see this email correctly, please click here
Thank you and well done.
After a huge effort by people who've signed up to the Ed's Pledge campaign, the Guardian has reported that Ken Clarke has retracted his comments calling for an end to the building of windfarms on land.
Yesterday was an incredible victory for everyone who’s signed up to the campaign.
Help recruit more people to this campaign - to fight for more victories like this
We set a target of getting 1000 signatures for my letter to David Cameron - you broke it within an hour. We set another target of 2000 signatures - you broke that too. Right now over 3000 of you have signed with more still coming in.
Winning arguments like this makes a differ ence. Climate change is too important to be left to be dealt with by people who resist the low carbon technologies of the future.
You showed that the power to make a difference lies with thousands of people working together.
Help recruit more people to this campaign - to fight for more victories like this
The more people we get involved in our campaign, the stronger each of our individual voices become.
So I'm asking you, with 46 days to go until the make-or-break Copenhagen summit, to bring more people into this campaign.
Today’s victory shows that, together, we really can make change happen.
Click here to tell your friends about Ed' s Pledge and the victories we can achieve together
Thanks
Ed