Game Over for the Climate

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
*...*
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

Strong words from a man I believe.

HT Climate Progress

Noam Chomsky - Peak Oil and a Changing Climate

I'm sure I've posted this before, but it's important.

The McCormick Climate Change Conference

Colbert Mocks Limbaugh, Carlson, Doocy Over Their Global Warming Denials

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Annoying

We have this

Edward A. G. Schuur, a University of Florida researcher who has done extensive field work in Alaska, is worried by the changes he already sees, including the discovery that carbon buried since before the dawn of civilization is now escaping.

“To me, it’s a spine-tingling feeling, if it’s really old carbon that hasn’t been in the air for a long time, and now it’s entering the air,” Dr. Schuur said. “That’s the fingerprint of a major disruption, and we aren’t going to be able to turn it off someday.”

As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks

And this

And then a so called environmentalist Andrew Revkin posting garbage like this:
Methane Time Bomb in Arctic Seas – Apocalypse Not

Even the links he references in his article contradict his premise. Click on them! You will be annoyed.

George Carlin on Global Warming

I've posted this before, but it's worth posting again.
Keeping ourselves in perspective is sometimes hard to do.

Nicole Foss aka Stoneleigh - A Century of Challenges - Peak Oil & Economic Crisis

Nowhere to go.

We'll see permanent refugee camps for flood victims. Their homes are innundated every year. We may see these in the US within the next couple of decades.





At a time when climate change is putting stress on all of our resources, diseases will flourish and to add insult to injury we are heading into a post-antibiotic era as the bugs become resistant to them.
The Antibiotics Crisis (video)

So put these to things together and what do you get? People in crowded and unsantitary conditions will be vulnerable to diseases we can no longer treat. This may result in a heartbreaking mortality rate for those who have nowhere else to go.

Greg Allen at Climate Change Conference August 15 2010

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Our civilization is based upon MAXIMIZING consumption of natural resources, manipulating matter and energy and discharging waste

Wow

We need to change our DNA I guess.

Revisiting Population Growth

Some analysts, ranging from scientists David Pimentel of Cornell University to financial advisor and philanthropist Jeremy Grantham, dare to underline the possibility of a darker alternative future. Defying the optimistic majority, they suggest that humanity long ago overshot a truly sustainable world population, implying that apocalyptic horsemen old and new could cause widespread death as the environment unravels. Most writers on environment and population are loathe to touch such predictions. But we should be asking, at least, whether such possibilities are real enough to temper the usual demographic confidence about future population projections.

Revisiting Population Growth:
The Impact of Ecological Limits

Let's see, water shortages, food shortages, war... all predicted with peak everything and climate change even if you are conservative.

It's too complicated to model, so we'll just run this experiment in the lab called Earth.

Bill McKibben at Occupy Wall Street rally 10/8/2011

LOL

PEDERSEN PAST AND PRESENT

Click to enlarge

See more:
State of Flux

Peter Schwartz and Ralph Cavanagh on Nuclear Power

Climate Reality

Streaming by Ustream

Pakistan floods.... again

All my life

All my life my cohort has been under some existential cloud or another. It was the communists, it was the USSR, it was nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was DDT and silent spring, it was mercury in the fish, it was the population bomb or acid rain, the ozone hole, AIDS, and on and on and on.

None of those things materialized in a catastrophic fashion. We muddled through. We put a band-aid on it.

This time I think we're in for it. The band-aids were temporary, we failed to "get it". We're looking at less than half of the warming that is already in the pipe. You don't believe we are having a record La Nina do you? Nobody is saying the La Nina is that extreme... but  record rainfall, record drought... and Katia may hammer Europe... this is different. I'm an old woman. I have memories, and I know this is different than anything I have ever seen.

We need to hope that the weather catastrophes settle down  long enough for us to get a handle on the emissions issues. Otherwise we're looking at a domino effect. No money to fix stuff  because the economy can't grow... due to, among other things, climate disasters. Stuff stays broke... civilization degrades. You get the picture.

All my life, and the lives of my generation, we've been under some threat or another... duck and cover.

This time it's for real. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A Farm for the Future

HT Peaktweat via twitter

Energy Now

Energy Now

New Normal

In the United States so far this year, families and communities have been slammed with 10 weather disasters costing $1 billion or more. Damages from floods, fires, tornadoes and drought totaled $35 billion as summer ended, not counting Hurricane Irene and whatever other destructive tantrums Mother Nature throws between now and Dec. 31.

These huge costs have big implications for local and national budgets, many of them disasters in their own right. That should concern fiscal conservatives and taxpayers, as well as disaster victims who may find someday soon that the government does not have the capacity to help.

Can We Handle Nature's New Norm? Part 1

And the GOP rant that we're broke, as if we haven't been borrowing to pay the bills since Bush took office. We need smart voters that call these guys on their relentless, politically motivated dogma... by not voting for them.

How the West Has Won