Another moment of terrible significance

If the breaking of the ice bridge on the Wilkins Ice Shelf at the start of April was, as a Times leader so rightly reported, a moment of terrible significance, (covered here and here) then what is now happening has to be all the more so.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf has since destabilised and is starting to calve - in other words its seaward edge is starting to break up on a massive scale.

This was reported a few days ago the European Space Agency - though there seems to be no report to be found on its rather rudimentary website - and covered 3 days ago by the news agency UPI. However the mainstream media has in the main been slow to pick up this key development.

From what has trickled in subsequently we learn that 'about 700 sq km of ice - bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York - has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.'

Scientists estimate that 'over the next several weeks the Wilkins shelf will lose some 1,300 square miles (3,370 square kilometers), an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, or two-thirds the size of Luxembourg.'

While more forebodingly: 'even more ice could break off "if the connection to Latady Island is lost" though it is as yet unclear that will happen.'

The best impression can be had by viewing the image slideshow on the ESA website on which Latady Island is clearly visible, while making allowance for the fact that the accompanying text is hopelessly retrospective.

While here is a sample of the press coverage.

The Independent reports

'Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km of ice - bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York - has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.
'She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days.'


The Guardian story went out 9 hours ago, which tells us

'"The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and the largest of its kind"'.

'The Wilkins shelf, which is the size of Jamaica, lost 14 percent of its mass last year'

'Average temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 Celsius) over the past 50 years — [sic] higher than the average global rise, according to studies.
'Over the next several weeks, scientists estimate the Wilkins shelf will lose some 1,300 square miles (3,370 square kilometers) — [sic] a piece larger than the state of Rhode Island, or two-thirds the size of Luxembourg.

'"We are not sure if a new stable ice front will now form between Latady Island, Petrie Ice Rises and Dorsey Island," said Angelika Humbert of Germany's Muenster University Institute of Geophysics.
'But even more ice could break off "if the connection to Latady Island is lost," she said, "though we have no indication that this will happen in the near future."'


The Telegraph adds

'David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey said: "The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and largest of its kind.
'"Eight separate ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the last few decades.
'"There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has been the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere."'

We should be watching with absolute attention as this drama unfolds, with the key question being how the glacier behind disintegrating ice shelf will respond.

Yet also for the historic drama. Not often in humanity's history have we been presented with the chance to bid farewell to an Earth feature as old as the hills - literally - and forever.

Should ever it reappear it will not be in be in the foreseeable future. Nor prior to the next ice age. So make sure your kids get the chance to witness this for themselves.

Apocalyse shortly! - Lovelock

Last October the prognosticator carried Apocalypse shortly? We should know next by next summer.

It was prompted by the disquieting discovery in the dying days of the last Arctic summer of the unprecedented release of methane in large quantity from the Arctic sea floor, and attempted to distill the grave implications resulting.

James Lovelock's latest thoughts on the matter are simpler. They come from an interview carried in the Irish Times of 16 April under the title The genial prophet of climate doom.

Why? Because for Lovelock, it is not a question of if. It is now a certainty.

Along with most climate scientists and specialists in the region, in the case of the Arctic ice the debate is no longer of whether it will endure, merely one of when. From there the process is inevitable:

'Within 30 years, he believes, the Arctic’s floating summer sea ice will all be melted. The polar caps will no longer reflect sunlight back into space and, instead, the ocean will absorb sunlight, heating up. The permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia will thaw out, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, the tropical forests, which play a critical role in taking CO2 from the atmosphere, will die out. Global temperatures will rise by between five and six degrees in a short period of time, rendering most of the world uninhabitable for the vast majority of mankind.'

'“It is out of our hands. When the floating ice finally melts, it will be the equivalent of nearly all of the CO2 we have put in the atmosphere to date, so the earth begins to join in the act of global heating, doing it in a big way,” he says. “The earth is already moving to its hot stage. The hotter it gets, the faster it goes – and we can’t stop it.”'

'The problem, as Lovelock sees it, is that we have trashed the planet, destroying ecosystems and pumping harmful levels of CO2 into the air. The damage is already done.

'The temperature rises will be permanent, he predicts, and Gaia will adjust. Life will survive, but there is no guarantee that human beings will.'



'He pours scorn on the idea that climate change can be reversible.'

Quite rightly he points out that geoengineering - the concept that we can somehow fix climate change using technology, in essence manage both the planet and its climate - is an absolute conceit and utter folly.

'He pours scorn on the idea that climate change can be reversible.'

We only have to look objectively at our present predicament to see that.

'“I think humans just aren’t clever enough to handle the planet at the moment. We can’t even handle our financial affairs. The worst possible thing that could happen is the green dream of taking charge and saving the planet. I’d sooner a goat as a gardener than humans in charge of the earth,” he says.'

Odd, though, that he attributes that aspiration to the green lobby, as it seems misplaced. Perhaps a small portion of it. But most green solutions are based on living more ecologically and closer to the Earth.

The proponents of geoengineering are those still wedded to technology as the be all and end all (possibly quite literally) of life. In other words those who somehow remain able to believe that the industrial and economic system that has put us on the very brink is miraculously also to be our saviour.

Part of this is a naive and misplaced faith in the powers of science and technology to develop such a solution and on a scale totally unprecedented by orders of magnitude, and to do so perfectly, first time, without any prior testing. That is quite a belief.

But the main reason it is favoured is because it is the ideal recipe for the maintenance of that system as it is - massive investment in new technologies offering a bonanza for all concerned: stockbrokers and financiers; scientists, engineers, designers; manufacturers, materials suppliers; real estate; engineering and construction companies. So the perfect economic stimulus on a planetary scale, just when it is considered so desperately needed.

That is what swings the enthusiasm and support. The system marches on triumphant and unaltered. All predicated on the madness that economic well-being is paramount. Or at least on a par with having a future. Strange kind of thinking, really.

Here is where it has got us so far:

'QUITE THE MOST dire of his predictions is that the human race will be reduced in numbers to around one billion people by the end of this century. The biggest problem, he believes, is that there are just too many of us. Simply by existing, we and our lifestock [sic] account for a quarter of all man-made CO2 emissions.'

Yet like all good stories, this one still manages to surprise by reconciling things against all odds in a happy ending:

“I lived through the second World War and I thought it was exciting even though I was a pacifist. Life is going to be the opposite of boring. Young people will not regard the catastrophe in the same way as our generation will do.”

So there you go.

In closing, for James Lovelock's sake, we should note one error. The Gaia theory is not 'that the world is itself a living organism.' It is that the biosphere behaves in a manner analogous to a living organism in acting to sustain optimal conditions for the continuation of life on the planet. He is not well enamoured with that New Age interpretation.

Lovelock's scientific Gaia theory is by now thoroughly proven. The process it describes is what we have thoroughly derailed by our energy profligate ways of living.

What price a future?


For those wanting more, here is a review of both his latest book and his biography by John and Mary Gribbin which were published simultaneously in February.

Pig Business - More 4 tonight 2200

The flurry of important environmental events at short notice continues apace.

The latest is Pig Business, a film by Tracy Worcester, which is being shown tonight on More 4 at 2200.

Tracy did a brilliant job chairing the launch of the groundbreaking and quite possibly historic Wild Law research paper last Tuesday, by all accounts. More on that later.

While if all of us had her commitment to building a better world, just imagine how much better things would be. Here's what she does according to Wikipedia - amongst other things.

In 1989, Tracy Worcester began working with Friends of the Earth. Since then, she has been active in green politics as Patron of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a Trustee of the Gaia Foundation, the Schumacher Society and the Bath Environment Centre, Patron of the UK's Soil Association, and as a member of the advisory board of The Ecologist magazine and a member of the International Forum on Globalisation.

And still has time for making movies!

Pig Business exposes the unconscionable costs of bringing home the bacon on four fronts:

- animal rights

- destroying small farmers - at an astonishing rate as the market is globalised by multi-national farming conglomerates

- polluting the environment - in a big way...

- jeopardising our lives


For example on the environment (my bolding throughout, other than titles)

'One-third of the world’s total cultivable land is dedicated to growing cereal and soya to feed livestock, while a further 7% is used for grazing animals. Eighty per cent of the world's soya beans and 60% of its maize and barley are grown for livestock feed.

'Much of this land is acquired by destroying forests, a major cause of CO2 emissions and loss of biodiversity. Between 2004 and 2005 around 1.2 million hectares of rainforest were cut down as a result of soya expansion, almost entirely for animal feed and livestock pastures.

'How livestock production contributes to 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions

Source: McMichael et al. (2007) Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. The Lancet, 370(9594), 1253-1263

'In Latin America the land devoted to soya crops doubled between 1994 and 2004, and deforestation, particularly of the Amazon rainforest, now accounts for around 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. Soya cultivation in Brazil to date occupies an area of land the size of Great Britain.'

On the threat to our lives:

'Because of the crowded and unnatural conditions in which factory farmed animals live, they are frequently given antibiotics to prevent disease or bolster their weakened immune systems. Across the world half of all the antibiotics used are administered to livestock. Around 80-90% of all antibiotics used for humans and animals are not fully digested or broken down, leaving them to pass through the body and enter the environment intact through waste.

'Evidence suggests that this over-use of antibiotics is helping to spread drug-resistant strains of diseases such as MRSA and E. coli, which can cause humans serious illness and death. The transfer of MRSA from pigs to humans is already recognised in the Netherlands, and it is feared this new strain of MRSA affecting pigs in some countries will spread to the UK, exacerbating the existing problem.

'Workers at risk
'... at least a quarter of factory farm workers consistently suffer from respiratory diseases, including bronchitis, mucous membrane irritation, asthma-like syndrome, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

'A deadly environment
'Studies repeatedly show that air and water quality are threatened in and around factory farms. Noxious gases in the atmosphere from manure containing hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, and dangerous pathogens cause ill health not only to those working with the animals but those living nearby. Many local residents report unusually frequent headaches, eye irritation, excessive coughing, nausea and asthma. Hydrogen sulphide may cause nausea, blackout periods, headaches and vomiting, and breathing in too much ammonia can cause severe respiratory damage.

'Excessive spraying of faecal material onto fields results in run-off into nearby lakes and rivers, poisoning the water table, eco system and drinking water. The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources has discovered that 1 in 10 drinking-water wells near factory pig farms contains unsafe levels of nitrates, which has been linked to risk of blue-baby syndrome. Six-month-old infants, pregnant women and adults with immunity deficiencies are especially vulnerable.

'President George W. Bush, in one of his last acts before he leaves office, has proposed to free industrial-scale pig and cattle farms from the Clean Water Act if they declare they are not dumping animal waste in lakes and rivers.

'Exploiting the poor
'In the US, intensive pig farms are clustered typically in non-white areas near low-income communities where people are extra vulnerable to the hazards of factory farms because of existing problems of poor health, poor housing, low income, and lack of access to medical care.

After all that, one may ask why not go the whole hog, keep the poor old hog whole, and just go vegan? George Monbiot came to that conclusion, at least intellectually, in this article last April:

Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but - take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse

While there are some telling environmental arguments put forward by the Vegan Society here and in the side links dealing with land, water and energy.

Perhaps most telling, particularly for those inclined to blame climate change on the growing human population is this:

'World meat production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and livestock now outnumber people by more than 3 to 1. [2] In other words, the livestock population is expanding at a faster rate than the human population.'

And consuming a substantial proportion of the available resources, particularly land, food and water.

More than enough said.

Film Premier Crude 23 March

Along with the leaves and blossoms, it seems that spring is a profusion of premieres for some reason.

Monday 23 March sees the UK Premiere of CRUDE at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at the ICA in London.

'Filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s latest documentary focuses on the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, a 13 year battle between indigenous communities in Ecuador nearly destroyed by oil drilling and Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil companies. In a sophisticated take on the classic David and Goliath story, Berlinger crafts a portrait of the incredible team in the US and Ecuador who have pursued this case against all odds. He is at pains, too, to show the case from all sides: the scientists and lawyers employed by Chevron, Ecuadoran judges, activists and humanitarian organizers, and the dramatic intervention of Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa. CRUDE looks beyond compassion for the disenfranchised and the corruption of power to ask how justice itself is being defined in the 21st century. *Official selection, Sundance Film Festival 2009'

The film stars Trudie Styler, married to Sting who

'...stunned fans at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah at the weekend
(18Jan09) when he showed up unannounced to support a pal's rainforest preservation documentary.The rocker and longtime rainforest activist stepped up to the stage at a Gibson Guitars-sponsored suite to perform hits with a house band.But he was keen to point out that he never intended to play at Sundance - the bearded star was there to back Joe Berlinger's movie Crude, which chronicles the plight of Ecuador residents who are battling the bosses of oil giant Chevron for allegedly contaminating water supplies around the headwaters of the Amazon River.Sting's wife Trudie Styler stars in the film, and the rock singer is
featured.

Obviously this will help everyone to understand what they are contributing to when they cruise the planet in their chosen form of haste, gas up the tank or whatever, so well worth seeing.

For those who like films called 'crude' about peak oil and the woes of the oil industry, googling this also turned up these offerings:

A Crude Awakening
http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/index2.html

Crude Impact (here reviewed and recommended by Transition Towns)
http://transitionculture.org/2006/12/12/review-new-peak-oil-film-crude-impact/


And The Age of Stupid was also going under the name Crude when previewed last year.

Popular kind of choice, then.


Be happy


PS Here are the URLs for plain text readers.


http://www.crudethemovie.com/

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/sting%20supports%20crude%20film%20with%20sundance%20show_1092250

Exclusive? Gulf Stream to weaken by 25 to 30%

'It is very likely that the northward flow of warm water in the upper layers of the Atlantic Ocean, which has an important impact on the global climate system, will decrease by approximately 25-30 percent.'

Well here's one that seems to have gone straight under the media's radar. Probably because its scare-mongering, you might be thinking.

Who is it making these exaggerated and irresponsible predictions? Some group of eco-nuts way out west of Greenpeace, skeptics might well presume.

Unfortunately not. In fact it is the Geological Survey of none other than the United States of America - good 'ol Uncle Sam in person, in effect, previously a.k.a. the self-proclaimed climate change skeptic in chief.

Astonishing what a change at the top will do. Let us just hope its not too late. It is now perilously close to it - wait for the update on CO2 and others, later this week, Inshallah.

An unimpeachable source, then. Or as near as we are likely to get to one. Here's what they have to say in their Newsroom feed March Science Picks released on 6 March (all bolding is mine):

'The United States faces the potential for abrupt climate change in the 21st century that could pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt. A new report led by the USGS makes the following conclusions about the potential for abrupt climate changes from global warming during this century:

'Climate model simulations and observations suggest that rapid and sustained September Arctic sea ice loss is likely in the 21st century.

'The Southwestern United States may be beginning an abrupt period of increased drought.

'It is very likely that the northward flow of warm water in the upper layers of the Atlantic Ocean, which has an important impact on the global climate system, will decrease by approximately 25-30 percent. However, it is very unlikely that this circulation will collapse or that the weakening will occur abruptly during the 21st century and beyond.

'An abrupt change in sea level is possible, but predictions are highly uncertain due to shortcomings in existing climate models.

'There is unlikely to be an abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere from deposits in the earth. However, it is very likely that the pace of methane emissions will increase.'

The feed summarises US Climate Change Synthesis and Assessment Report 3.4. Abrupt Climate Change. Assessment and Findings which is a quick read in 4 pages replete with graphs, excellent diagrams and some pretty pictures.

It all sounds positively reassuring until you adjust to the cool scientific language. Then you may not find statements like those that follow quite so reassuring.

(The AMOC referred to is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is perhaps the most famous component.)

'Inclusion of these ice-sheet and glacier processes into future modeling experiments will likely lead to sea-level rise projections for the end of the 21st century that substantially exceed those presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report (IPCC AR4).'


'It is very likely that the strength of the AMOC will decrease by approximately 25–30 percent over the course of the 21st century in response to increasing greenhouse gases, which will affect the distribution of heat in the North Atlantic. Even with the projected moderate AMOC weakening, it is still very likely that on multidecadal to century time scales a warming trend will occur over most of the European region downstream of the North Atlantic Current in response to increasing greenhouse gases, as well as over North America.'

'It is very unlikely that the AMOC will undergo a collapse or an abrupt transition to a weakened state during the 21st century. It is also unlikely that the AMOC will collapse beyond the end of the 21st century because of global warming, although the possibility cannot be entirely excluded.'

'The summer arctic sea-ice cover has undergone dramatic retreat since satellite records began in 1979, amounting to a loss of almost 30 percent of the September ice cover in 29 years. Climate model simulations suggest that rapid and sustained September arctic ice loss is likely in future 21st century climate projections. It is notable that climate models are generally conservative in the modeled rate of Arctic ice loss as compared to observations, suggesting that future ice retreat could occur even more abruptly than simulated in almost all current models.'


'While a catastrophic release of methane to the atmosphere in the next century appears very unlikely, it is very likely that climate change will accelerate the pace of persistent emissions from both hydrate sources and wetlands. Current models suggest that wetland emissions could double in the next century. Methane release from the hydrate reservoir will likely have a significant influence on global warming over the next 1,000 to 100,000 years.'

On the last, my suspicion is that the data used did not include the latest findings which came in right at the end of the Arctic summer last September covered previously in 'Apocalypse shortly? We should know next summer.'

As to a 25% to 30% reduction in the Gulf Stream, for those living in the atypically warm areas on the west coast of Europe bathed in its currents the best analogy I have been able to come up with so far is someone turning the central heating down permanently by that a quarter to a third.

Enough to make most folks complain, it would seem fair to say. As well as reach for the duvet jackets...if not take to bed permanently, were it not for the countervailing effect of global warming

'a warming trend will occur over most of the European region downstream of the North Atlantic Current in response to increasing greenhouse gases, as well as over North America.'

expected to result in a net rise in temperature.

Put the two together,and that sounds like they are expecting the planet to heat up. I suppose you could say 'quite radically'. Which all sounds like bad news all around - particularly for most of the rest of the world that does not have the countervailing effect of a weakening Gulf Stream to cool them.

Add in unstated, highly uncertain effects on the weather, and there is a lot to be concerned about.