Abrupt Climate Change Assured, Time to Prepare for Struggles Ahead
Human political and economic system failures mean world will not meet 2C warming target [ark]. Most climate scientists now agree that given soaring emissions and political constraints, an average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely. This will disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate innumerable species of plants and animals, trigger massive sea level rises, and otherwise lead to ecological and social collapse [search].
The climate change movement's [search] struggle has now gone from trying to minimize impacts to continue living largely as we have, to just maintaining a climate and biosphere that are operable and will allow for continued shared survival. It is not time to give up. Just the reverse, it is time to redouble our efforts in order to maintain a habitable Earth. We have the answers -- ending coal, old forest logging and industrial agriculture -- to continued human being. And despite escalating police brutality against lawful protest [ark], we must wage an escalating Stewardship Revolution if we and all Gaia's creatures are to survive.
Governments have until Copenhagen to lead at which point they may need to be replaced. Simultaneous to massive protest, I urge you to begin preparing yourself to adapt and survive. A piece of land you are willing and able to defend is critical. Abrupt deadly change may come next year, or there may be a lull, but have no doubt, the global ecosystem is collapsing. If you have not already, I urge you to read EI's recent Earth Meanders, which further explains the stakes and options. I beseech you to start preparing and steeling yourself for coming struggles. Be part of a New Earth Rising.
Comments
Now that Hiroshi Ohmoto, Penn State, has shown, by implication, that cyanobacteria produced as much oxygen 3.46 billion years ago as we have today (3-14-09 Press Release from NASA), we need not worry that other self-replicating geochemical processes will vanish with us. Life will go on.
So should it matter if we die seriallly? We have been doing so for around 200 thousand years. Or if we go out together?
Since it seems we are now likely to make a planet-wide hospice, we can seek employment of as nurses to our neighbor or as patient sufferers to her/his mercies. The versatile will switch hit.
I tend to think if one presents the idea of going out communally, it may reduce the chances of our joint demise with our fingers at each others' throats.
But one may always consider one's self mistaken. Eh?
Posted by: Juola (Joe) A. Haga | April 14, 2009 2:46 AM
I trust I am mistaken about the concern that besets me this morning: One day our children will look back in anger at those in my generation who had the chance at least to try and mitigate the fully expected damages of abrupt climate change but abjectly failed because we "played around the edges" and refused to take demonstrably responsible action. Sacrifices of 'sacred cows' often associated with making necessary changes were too damn hard for so soft, satisfied and selfish a generation of leading elders, I suppose.
Posted by: Steven Earl Salmony | April 14, 2009 8:30 AM
Dear Friends,
Perhaps you can assist me. There must be something wrong with the "picture" I am about to draw, but no one with wealth, power, status, and privileges to conspicuously consume and endlessly hoard has said anything. Their bought-and-paid-for politicians and absurdly enriched minions in the mass media are also silent.
Picture this:
A remarkably tiny group of conniving, deceitful, ostentatiously greedy, patently fraudulent financial schemers on what is left of Wall Street in the remaining investment houses and the major {stress-tested} banks that are described as "too big to fail" are at one and the same time being given hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, racking up billions of dollars in profits, and paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses. All the while, millions of people are losing their livelihoods, homes, pensions, etc. The children of these less fortunate people are going hungry.
What is wrong with this picture?
Sincerely,
Steve
Posted by: Steven Earl Salmony | April 14, 2009 8:05 PM
It would certainly be nice if everyone had the option of retreating to a piece of defensible land and living simply and in harmony with Nature. Realistically, however, this just isn't possible for the majority of people, much as many of us might seriously commit to such an undertaking if it WERE possible. The truth is that most of us who care about what's going on will have to "adapt" to it from right where we are.
I took a few hours off from work on April 2 to go up to Concord, New Hampshire where James Hansen gave the following presentation to the New Hampshire state legislature:
http://www.agu.org/webcast/fm08/presentations/bjerknes/
During the Q & A session which followed, he commented that the climate-change skeptics come across more like lawyers than scientists, we simply cannot keep burning fossil fuels at the rate we are doing and expect to not ultimately be living on a very different planet, and that he is not in favor of "engineering" of Earth systems as an approach to climate-change mitigation.
Hansen (still) believes that a major grass roots-level movement is the best (and only) chance we have for catalyzing a reversal of the current trajectory.
I currently interpret this to mean that it is important that WE get, stay and work together and STOP allowing those in denial to drain our energy.
Posted by: zephyr | April 14, 2009 11:52 PM
Raise the cost of carbon fuels with a tax (as Glenn Barry and others have suggested) that can balance the governments budget for eco improvements medical care and the like. Then its less a question of guilt and more of how much hoggery can you actually afford. Guilt defeats us and separates us from talking to others about reducing consumption over time.
Posted by: Dave Moore | April 16, 2009 2:26 AM
Abrupt climate change just happened. We're cooling down after the spike of 1998, especially after the Pacific Decadal Oscillation kicked in last year. We can expect weather more like the 1943-1977 period.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/abq/feature/PDO_NM.htm
Posted by: Judy Cross | April 18, 2009 6:26 PM