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Ignatieff, the Liberals, and Bill-311

Oct 28th, 2009 by Richard

I sent this letter today to several key members of the Liberal Party.

To the Honourable Michael Ignatieff, David McGuinty, Bob Rae, and Michael Savage (who is my MP):

I am not an NDP supporter, but I am urging the Liberal government to put partisan politics aside and vote in favour of Bill-311.

I’m discouraged by Canada’s slow, dishonorable slide on the international stage because of our country’s obstructionist climate policies. I’m ashamed that we’ve been named 2008’s Colossal Fossil as the world’s worst climate change villain by more than 400 NGOs in Poznan, and that the Climate Action Network places Canada in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

But it’s not only environmental groups who are condemning Canada. In article entitled “Canada takes its Lumps at Poznan,” Embassy magazine offered this analysis of Canada’s role: “At the most recent round of international climate change negotiations, Canada once again emerged as a leading “spoiler,” attracting scorn and condemnation from both environmentalists and foreign delegations alike.”

The situation is desperate. Climate scientists convened an emergency session in Copenhagen last March because climate change is occurring faster and harder than even the most dire predictions from three years ago.

When is Canada going get the message to start to transition to a low-carbon economy?

The news from the scientific community has been unrelentingly grim. Climate scientists have been describing a devastating future for Planet Earth, and they are warning that we’re on a path to a 5°C rise (9°F) in global temperatures that will leave barely one billion standing in 2100. We’ve detailed reports that global sea level is expected to rise by at least 40 inches — and perhaps as much as 80 inches — in the next century. And that’s just the beginning.

Scientists now suggest that just 2°C (3.6°F) of warming could trigger bacterial growth in the arctic permafrost and release billions of tons of CO2 and methane, creating a terrible feedback loop in which warming creates more warming.

A rise of 4°C (7.2°F) will eliminate more than 85 percent of the Amazon rainforest by killing trees which are highly susceptible to small changes in temperature, creating yet another massive carbon time bomb. What’s particularly frightening about this study — conducted by researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre — is that the death of the rainforest has the potential to alter regional weather patterns in ways that researchers simply cannot predict.

The scientists at the congress are worried that politicians are reading from a hopelessly out-of-date policy paper: the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. To drive home their urgent message, researchers are describing a 5°C world that will be wracked by floods, droughts, severe hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, and desperate heat waves. The oceans will become far less productive, the corals will die, and extinction will take more than 50 percent of species.

Part of the problem is that Environment Canada’s climate experts are no longer allowed to speak to the media without the permission of the Environment Minister’s office. In fact. Don MacIver had to resign his chairmanship from the World Meteorological Organization’s Climate Conference-3 because Jim Prentice would not allow him to attend the recent climate summits.

In recent weeks, Mr. Prentice has been quoted repeatedly in the media as suggesting that his government is on the side of the angels, and doing all it can to solve this vexing problem. In truth, they are trying to lock Canada into a fossil fuel economy for another generation, to protect their Alberta base.

And the Liberal Party, by not supporting Bill-311, is giving them a Get Out of Jail Card.

I don’t particularly like the Jack Layton, but it’s time for the Liberal Party to put the needs of the country ahead of the needs of the Liberal Party.

Tell the world that Harper and Prentice are doing a lousy job. Support Bill-311.

With respect,
Richard Levangie
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

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Editor’s Note: Please write to your Liberal MPs, and to Michael Ignatieff and David McGuinty.

If you’re wondering about the dire science I mention, here’s a link.

Posted in Canada, Politics, Progressive Coalition | 1 Comment »

Blog Action Day: Making a Down Payment On Global Warming

Oct 15th, 2009 by Richard

Climate change isn’t only about carbon dioxide. So that’s why, in a world that is stepping close to a steep precipice, doing more to reduce non-CO2 climate change contributors such as black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), as well as expanding bio-sequestration through biochar production, might head global warming off at the pass, according to Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina and co-authors in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The authors argue that this novel perspective could transform the debate at United Nations climate change conference slated for Copenhagen in December.

“Cutting HFCs, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and methane can buy us about 40 years before we approach the dangerous threshold of 2° Celsius warming,” said co-author Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

“By targeting these short-term climate forcers, we can make a down payment on climate and provide momentum going into the December negotiations in Copenhagen,” said co-author Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “The Obama Administration and other key governments need to take up the fast-action climate agenda before it is too late.”

Dr. Molina suggests that HFCs, a potent greenhouse gas that was developed to replace ozone-depleting CFCs, are already covered by existing treaties and the Montreal Protocol, and those treaties could be could be leveraged to cut HFC emissions dramatically.

Similarly, black carbon, otherwise known as soot, is a huge pollution problem in the developing world that has been directly been responsible for almost 50 percent of the warming we’ve seen in the Arctic. The good news is it can be reduced quickly by providing relatively inexpensive solar cookers and diesel particulate filters to people living in the world’s poorest regions. Even better, such a step would not only slow global warming, it will also greatly improve air quality and, by extension, the health of people living in cities and countries where poverty and pollution is rife.

The study’s authors also support serious investment in biochar to turn back the hands on the climate clock. Biochar is a fine-grained charcoal product — produced by burning biomass at low temperatures in low-oxygen conditions — that is plowed into soil to serve as a natural fertilizer. “The other fast-action strategies can quickly mitigate emissions,” said Zaelke, “but to back away from the cliff of abrupt climate change, we need biochar.”

Posted in Activism, Climate Change Solutions | No Comments »

A Letter to Senator Lindsey Graham

Oct 13th, 2009 by Richard

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is working to pass the Kerry-Boxer climate bill, understanding that America’s future depends upon it.

I’ve sent him the following letter. I urge all people who care about future generations to write a letter of thanks.

Senator Graham:

Your bipartisan work on the climate bill will be remembered by historians as a pivotal moment in American politics.

I work in environmental publishing, and so I read hundreds of clean tech and global warming stories every week, and I’m fully versed in what the climate scientists are saying. This is the most serious threat ever faced by humanity, and we will either rise to the greatness of our parents and grandparents who fought a world war on our behalf, or we will diminish, and those who follow will suffer for our lack of resolve.

First Nations in North America have a haunting expression: We do not inherit this land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

Against this sentiment will your work be judged. I think your children and grandchildren will be proud of you.

Posted in Activism, Politics, USA | 1 Comment »

Epiphany: Evil Scientists Are Destroying the Planet!*

Oct 1st, 2009 by Richard

mother-nature-in-tears.jpg

What should I do now that my whole world has fallen apart?

Thirteen months ago, I launched a web site called Anything But Conservative to highlight Canada’s dismal record on global warming simply because I felt it should be THE issue during the Canadian election.

When the results were in, and nothing had changed, I transitioned the site to One Blue Marble, and settled in for a long fight against the forces of evil and stupidity in Canada’s government. I was so certain of the science, so sure of my convictions, that I didn’t notice the simple fact that many, many SCIENTISTS ARE DOING VERY STUPID THINGS THAT ARE DESTROYING THE PLANET!**

I now know that climate criminals heroes Anthony Watts and Steve Milloy are on the sides of the angels because today, I too, will show myself to be smarter than all the people with three and four degrees after their names, and fancy-schmancy honorifics like doctor and professor in front of them. Today, I shall highlight the work of a handful of brilliant greedy and incompetent scientists who are trying to destroy our way of life just so they can publish papers, play with cool equipment, and collect pensions in 20 years.

It makes me feel so dirty!

Read these three paragraphs to better understand how the scientists are abusing our trust. And then join me as I demolish them with my superior intellect and keen insights, á là Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That.

Using data culled from more than 50 million laser measurements, scientists have assembled a picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The findings provide valuable information that will improve the accuracy of predictions for future sea level rise due to global warming.

In the study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol discovered that ice sheets are thinning, and the most profound thinning is occurring at the coastal areas where glaciers are calving into the sea at a rate much faster than previously anticipated. This thinning occurs at all latitudes in Greenland, and it has intensified in key areas in Antarctica. Interestingly, water temperatures — not air temperatures — have been driving the dramatic losses of ice.

Lead author Dr. Hamish Pritchard from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) says, “We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline — it’s widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometers inland. We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow. This kind of ice loss is so poorly understood that it remains the most unpredictable part of future sea level rise.”

Hello! Is anyone home? For Christ sake, these are scientists — the nerdiest of the nerds! I happen to know that 97.6 percent of them own boxed sets of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly, so they can’t be as naive as they pretend.

If you shoot 50 MILLION LASER BEAMS at various places around the planet, then of course Greenland is going to melt, and of course ice shelves in Antartica will crumble. It’s a SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, and it’s just commonsense! I have to believe the scientists at the British Antarctic Survey understand these facts, and can only conclude that they are being deliberately deceptive, like Gore, Hansen, and all the other evil doers who use threats of global warming to line their pockets.

Thank god we don’t have phasars yet! Then I have to believe these British Antarctic Survey types would be deliberately setting off explosions and starting fires just to prove that global warming is real. Climate scientists everywhere would be using lasers to get research grants, and we’d be burning. Just think how much better off we’d be if this funding was used to end world hunger, or support drilling in the high Arctic.

So please join me as I transition my site to join the fight alongside Watts and others. (And my humble apologies for giving Watts a Double Dumb Ass Award).

I’m just going now to see if 50millionlaserbeams.com is available.

UPDATE: After Adrian’s comment, I’m going to come clean. This is filed under Humor, and I’m poking fun at people like Watts.
____________

* We now know that this incredibly manipulative photo — called Mother Nature in Tears — was created by a laser cannon wielded by a BAS scientist. Photo credit: Marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan

** I shout a lot in this post so you know that I am angry and that I am really, really serious. I also use a lot of exclamation points for the same reason!!

Posted in Climate Change Science, Humor | 8 Comments »

Hotter, Faster: New Report Slices Decades From Warming Scenarios

Sep 29th, 2009 by Richard

parched-soil.jpg

Just days after Rasmussen reported that 47 percent of U.S. citizens suggested that it was OK to put the economy before climate change concerns, one of the key advisors to the German government suggested that North Americans know less about climate change than just about anyone else in the world.

Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, is one of the world’s foremost climate experts. On the sidelines at a climate conference at Oxford University, he predicted that it will be several years before the U.S. will be able to get its house — or perhaps Senate — in order to join the world in cutting emissions. And until that happens, says Schellnhuber, developing countries like India and China won’t set hard emission targets. It’s a dangerous Catch-22. He’s hoping that most G20 economies will reach some measure of an agreement at Copenhagen, and the U.S. and Canada will follow in a few years time.

And Schellnhuber hopes that will be enough because time is getting short. Global warming has often been sold as something nebulous that could bring ruination several generations into the future, but a new report prepared for the British government — and presented at the Oxford conference — is warning that most people alive today will see dangerous levels of warming. According to scientists at the Met Office in the UK, climate change will be a problem for our children — not our great-grandchildren — with a 4°C (7°F) rise temperatures expected by 2060 if humanity fails to cut emissions significantly. A temperature increase of this magnitude would likely threaten the water supply of half the world’s population, wipe out up to half of animal and plant species, and swamp low-lying coastal areas. Local impacts, in places like Africa and the Arctic, could be even more severe, leading to much greater temperature increases.

“We’ve always talked about these very severe impacts only affecting future generations, but people alive today could live to see a 4°C rise,” said Dr. Richard Betts, the head of climate impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre. “People will say it’s an extreme scenario, and it is an extreme scenario. But it’s also a plausible scenario.”

The landmark 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report included scenarios that predicted more rapid warming, but these predictions were considered less likely to occur. More recent observations suggest just the opposite: That global warming is barreling along, and greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise faster than predicted in the worst-case IPCC projections. That’s why Met Office scientists used new computer models to update the IPCC predictions — models which include so-called carbon feedbacks that occur when warmer temperatures release more carbon, such as methane, from melting tundra. That, too, is already occurring, decades earlier than expected.

The Met scientists are quick to dismiss claims that the planet is doomed. If the world’s nations reach an international climate change agreement, and emissions peak sometime in the next decade, we still have a shot at keeping the rise in temperatures to below 2°C (3.6°F).

Once, on a comment board, a provocative poster asked why Republicans — who think the economy takes precedent over the environment — don’t love their children as much as Democrats. If Republican leaders in the House and Senate don’t stop wearing their scientific illiteracy like a badge of honor, that biting comment might gain currency among the next generation.

Photograph: Vinay Dithajohn, EPA

Posted in Activism, Climate Change Science, Politics, Social Justice | 4 Comments »

Where’s Waldo Harper?

Sep 24th, 2009 by Richard

More than 100 of world’s leaders met this week in New York at the United Nations Climate Conference.

And where is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper? He didn’t attend, preferring to meet New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a coffee shop. He just sauntered in to the UN in time for dinner.

For the sake of the planet, we need to bring Harper’s government down now. Layton, Ignatieff, Duceppe… It’s time for the three of you to stop squabbling. Work together RIGHT NOW for progressive change.

Defeat the Conservative Fundamentalists NOW!

Posted in Activism, Canada, Politics, Progressive Coalition | No Comments »

Global Burning

Sep 23rd, 2009 by Richard

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Would we be doing more to save the planet from global warming if we had better phrasing? Jonathan Watts asks that question at The Guardian when he notes that the only time that governments have been able to overcome their pettiness was when scientists warned about an unexpected “hole in the ozone layer.”

It seemed to have a profound and galvanizing effect, and the level of intergovernmental cooperation that ensued was unprecedented.

Watts is making a good point. We are facing a planetary threat that dwarfs anything we have faced — World Wars included — and most people seem to think that buying compact fluorescent bulbs or a Toyota Prius will be enough keep climate change to a minimum.

There are many reasons why this is so, but using terms which sound so benign, like climate change and global warming, is part of the problem.

Watts suggests that we start talking about global burning. G8 nations recently pledged to keep climate change below 2°C (3.6°F) in order to avoid dangerous tipping points that could lead to runaway global warming. That’s what he’s talking about. The problem is that we really don’t know how many steps we can make into the future before we start tripping over the tipping points.

If you live in central Canada and the US midwest, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that global warming is on hiatus this year. Folks in those regions have had relatively cold winter, and a coolish summer, but throughout the rest of the world — especially the world’s oceans — it’s been a scorcher, according to data just released by NOAA. For combined surface and water temperatures, 2009 is proving to be the second hottest summer on record. The oceans have never been as warm as they are right now at 62.5°F — a full 1.04°F above the 20th century average. That’s particularly worrisome because water takes a long time to warm, and a long time to cool. In fact, it takes five times more energy to warm water than land, and that warm water will influence land temperatures dramatically. What’s particularly interesting to NOAA researchers is that this spike in temperatures is occurring while we’re going through the deepest solar minimum in more than a century.

As climate models predicted some time ago, arctic amplification is occurring now, and temperatures there are rising disproportionately, and have been for years. Siberia, for example, is experiencing temperatures that are 5.4°F above normal, and that’s why the arctic sea ice is rapidly retreating. This year will go down as the third worst melt on record, a full 18.4% below the late 20th century average.

The headlines are likely to get more dire. NASA is predicting that el Nino and global warming will combine to set record temperatures for 2010 or 2011, and that the coming decade will be the warmest in human history.

Posted in Activism, Media, Politics | 2 Comments »

Diplomatic Unease On The Menu At UN Climate Talks

Sep 22nd, 2009 by Richard

thousands-lives.jpg

It sounds like it may have been inspired by Oxfam’s Hunger Banquet, and it will be interesting to see how it works. Mandarins at the United Nations will be subjecting world leaders to a little diplomatic shock therapy at today’s UN climate negotiations in an effort to inject a greater sense of urgency into the proceedings. As recently as the G8 Summit in Italy, world leaders were speaking about good intentions, and hopeful signs, but most pundits acknowledge that climate talks to find a successor to Kyoto are in deep trouble. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting in New York this week, and they’ll either break the logjam — or remain at loggerheads.

UN officials, tired by the status quo, have devised a pared-down program that should promote real communication.

“We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones,” said one diplomat. “Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cozy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering.”

As a result, each leader will be required to lose his or her entourage and key advisers. World leaders will be allowed to be accompanied by a single aide, and it’s recommended each country’s environment minister fulfill that role. Most leaders will not be giving speeches, so the pomp and platitudes for the folks back home will be mercifully absent. Instead, the world’s most powerful men and women will be folded into discussion groups that pair wealthy nations with leaders from countries most vulnerable to global warming. Lunch sessions will seat world leaders with environmental activists and CEOs who understand the problem — and the opportunity it presents — and who have been pressing hard for action. And dinner will see the world’s largest polluters at tables with leaders from countries like Bangladesh, Kiribati, Costa Rica, and Vietnam where people will suffer horribly if the world doesn’t transition to a low-carbon economy.

We should know by this week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh if this novel format has borne any fruit.

________________

The Espen Rasmussen photo above is from a Bangladeshi series published by The Guardian

Posted in Canada, Politics, USA | No Comments »

New York Post: Climate Edition

Sep 21st, 2009 by Richard

“SPECIAL EDITION” NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.

Read the article about the Yes Men Campaign.

Editor’s Note: About two minutes in: How does anyone get to be the publisher of Post with absolutely no understanding of science or media manipulation through astroturfing?

Posted in Activism, Politics, USA | No Comments »

Illusions of Superiority, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and Global Warming

Sep 20th, 2009 by Richard

This video explains why scientifically-illiterate scallywags* like Anthony Watts don’t understand climate science and never will. I could include links to dozens sites like CO2 Sceptic, the Global Warming Hoax, but I’d prefer not to give them the traffic.

This fantastic video was created by Theramin Trees!

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* I’m one day late for Talk Like A Pirate Day… Arghhh!

Posted in Activism, Astroturfing, Media, Politics | 5 Comments »

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