Forum

TruthMove Forum

TruthMove Forum » TruthMove Main Forum

Beyond the Point of No Return (13 posts)

  1. chrisc
    Member

    Some bits of an article by Ross Gelbspan follow:

    It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?

    As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world's most prominent climate scientists, is preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.

    The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.

    We can't.

    We have failed to meet nature's deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes. These will happen either incrementally -- or in sudden, abrupt jumps.

    Under either scenario, it seems inevitable that we will soon be confronted by water shortages, crop failures, increasing damages from extreme weather events, collapsing infrastructures, and, potentially, breakdowns in the democratic process itself.

    ...

    Within the last two years, a number of leading scientists -- including Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), British ecologist James Lovelock, and NASA scientist James Hansen -- have all declared that humanity is about to pass or already has passed a "tipping point" in terms of global warming. The IPCC, which reflects the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, recently stated that it is "very unlikely" that we will avoid the coming era of "dangerous climate change."

    The truth is that we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.

    ...

    The panic among climate scientists is expressing itself in geoengineering proposals that are half-baked, fantastically futuristic, and, in some cases, reckless. Put forth by otherwise sober and respected scientists, the schemes are intended to basically allow us to continue burning coal and oil.

    Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, for example, is proposing to spray aerosols into the upper atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting earth. Tom M. L. Wigley, a highly esteemed climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), ran scenarios of stratospheric sulfate injection -- on the scale of the estimated 10 million tons of sulfur emitted when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991 -- through supercomputer models of the climate, and reported that Crutzen's idea would, indeed, seem to work. The scheme was highlighted in a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times by Ken Caldeira, a climate researcher at the Carnegie Institution.

    Unfortunately, the seeding of the atmosphere with sun-reflecting particles would trigger a global drought, according to a study by other researchers. "It is a Band-Aid fix that does not work," said study co-author Kevin Trenberth of NCAR. The eruption of Pinatubo was followed by a significant drop-off of rainfall over land and a record decrease in runoff and freshwater discharge into the ocean, according to a recently published study by Trenberth and other scientists.

    ...

    Climate change won't kill all of us -- but it will dramatically reduce the human population through the warming-driven spread of infectious disease, the collapse of agriculture in traditionally fertile areas, and the increasing scarcity of fresh drinking water. (Witness the 1-in-100-year drought in the southeastern U.S., which has been threatening drinking water supplies in Georgia and other states.)

    Those problems will be dramatically intensified by an influx of environmental refugees whose crops are destroyed by weather extremes or whose freshwater sources have dried up or whose homelands are going under from rising sea levels.

    In March, the U.S. Army War College sponsored a conference on the security implications of climate change. "Climate change is a national security issue," retired General Gordon R. Sullivan, chair of the Military Advisory Board and former Army chief of staff, said in releasing a report that grew out of the conference. "[C]limate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world."

    One frequently overlooked potential casualty of accelerating climate change may be our tradition of democracy (corrupted as it already is). When governments have been confronted by breakdowns, they have frequently resorted to totalitarian measures to keep order in the face of chaos. It is not hard to imagine a state of emergency morphing into a much longer state of siege, especially since heat-trapping carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about 100 years.

    Add the escalating squeeze on our oil supplies, which could intensify our meanest instincts, and you have the ingredients for a long period of repression and conflict.

    ...

    This slow-motion collapse of the planet leaves us with the bitterest kind of awakening. For parents of young children, it provokes the most intimate kind of despair. For people whose happiness derives from a fulfilling sense of achievement in their work, this realization feels like a sudden, violent mugging. For those who feel a debt to all those past generations who worked so hard to create this civilization we have enjoyed, it feels like the ultimate trashing of history and tradition. For anyone anywhere who truly absorbs this reality and all that it implies, this realization leads into the deepest center of grief.

    There needs to be another kind of thinking that centers neither on the profoundly dishonest denial promoted by the coal and oil industries, nor the misleading optimism of the environmental movement, nor the fatalistic indifference of the majority of people who just don't want to know.

    There needs to be a vision that accommodates both the truth of the coming cataclysm and the profoundly human need for a sense of future.

    That vision needs to be framed by the truly global nature of the problem. It starts with the recognition that this historical era of nationalism has become a stubborn, increasingly toxic impediment to our collective future. We all need to begin to think of ourselves -- now -- as citizens of one profoundly distressed planet.

    ...

    The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. If we maintain the fiction that we can thrive as isolated individuals, we will find ourselves at the same emotional dead end as the current crop of survivalists: an existence marked by defensiveness, mistrust, suspicion, and fear.

    http://www.energybulletin.net/38315.html

    If people haven't watched The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil I suggest you do, you can read about it here: http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657 and get it via bittorrent here: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3675678/How_Cuba_Survi... the official site if you can afford a DVD: http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/ It's the only positive thing I can suggest people look at... :-|

    Posted 16 years ago #
  2. truthmod
    Administrator

    Thanks for this article. These issues really do make 9/11 look small, and I don't think any truth movement should ignore, dismiss, or minimize them.

    The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

    I've been trying to download the torrent for a couple weeks, it's pretty slow going.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  3. This slow-motion collapse of the planet leaves us with the bitterest kind of awakening. For parents of young children, it provokes the most intimate kind of despair. For people whose happiness derives from a fulfilling sense of achievement in their work, this realization feels like a sudden, violent mugging. For those who feel a debt to all those past generations who worked so hard to create this civilization we have enjoyed, it feels like the ultimate trashing of history and tradition. For anyone anywhere who truly absorbs this reality and all that it implies, this realization leads into the deepest center of grief.

    I take this as a call for paradigm shift if I have ever heard it. As much as we need to shift from that which has placed us in this predicament, we need to shift from the mindset that has fueled it.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  4. As much as we need to shift from that which has placed us in this predicament, we need to shift from the mindset that has fueled it.

    That'd for sure! How do you think this can be done? Our society is so wrapped up in its ignorance. It's like it actually wants to stay ignorant. What real solutions can we produce to make for that paradigm shift?

    Posted 16 years ago #
  5. truthmod
    Administrator

    What real solutions can we produce to make for that paradigm shift?

    I think people need to be shaken up, not in a manipulative way, but in a reality-based way. We've tried to do this with our banner, our site, and all the information we're promoting, but it doesn't seem to usually have that profound of an effect.

    While I'm not always a fan of the tactics of Alex Jones and We Are Change, I do think that we need to come up with loud, visible, and provocative ways of promoting awareness. They should be done with style, respectfulness, humor, intelligence, and confidence. Once again, we need to shake people out of their stupor, but only so much as in we shake them into making a choice to start being more curious and figuring out for themselves.

    As for the environmental crisis, if you read this article or any of the hundreds of others that are giving the same dire prognosis, you should know that reality is going to start manifesting itself whether brainwashed humans like it or not. Perhaps some of them will actually start to want to put their paradigms more in line with this reality.

    As many as 200 species go extinct every day. Do you care?

    Posted 16 years ago #
  6. Once again, we need to shake people out of their stupor, but only so much as in we shake them into making a choice to start being more curious and figuring out for themselves.

    But usually they are in their stupor because they are shaken. Instability, fearfulness, trauma, and the like, tend to induce that stupor. How do we encourage the people of the world to be brave? We Are Change ends up inciting the public to brave We Are Change, so the public doesn't have to address themselves.

    The people don't want difficult subjects, especially paradigm shift, in their face because of the social punishment they would receive for promoting that sort of thing themselves. If they can get over that, I've seen that people then will talk and be open.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  7. chrisc
    Member

    Rising Tide's Fossil Fools Day seems like a good idea:

    Fossil Fools Day, April 1st 2008

    Rising Tide International is calling for a day of action against the fossil fuel industry on April 1st 2008...

    Roll up, roll up! The climate circus is in town. Climate change threatens our very survival, but the fools at the head of the fossil fuel empire continue to plunder the earth, with governments the willing court jesters at their side.

    They would have us believe that we can escape climate change with techno-fixes, market mechanisms and offset schemes – all technocratic acrobatics that distract us from the truth: the only real solution to climate change is to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

    For over a century the fossil fuel industry has been fooling with our lives. From extraction to combustion they have poisoned our air, polluted our water and ruined our climate. On April 1st, 2008, we’re going to turn the tables and show them who the real fools are.

    Find a local fossil fool – the coal-mining clown, the offset contortionist, the aviator tripping on the high wire, the supermarket food mile freak show, the oily strong man, or any other fool that deserves your attention – and join with thousands around the world in taking one step closer to dismantling the fossil fuel industry.

    On Fossil Fools Day, bring the spirit of carnival and mischief to the fight for climate justice.

    http://www.fossilfoolsday.org/

    Posted 16 years ago #
  8. chrisc
    Member

    A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...

    Dr. James Hansen has also published a document with Dr. Pushker Kharecha, "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate": http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2782v2 PDF: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2782

    There is an interview with Dr. Pushker Kharecha here: http://globalpublicmedia.com/nasa_peakoil_climate

    Posted 16 years ago #
  9. chrisc
    Member

    Graph of carbon dioxide levels, we are currently around 385ppm: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

    Also the "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate" paper seems to be way off in terms of when Peak Oil will happen -- it appears to be now -- not something that is due to happen in a matter of decades, see all the graphs here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3439

    I just finished reading The Last Oil Shock ( http://lastoilshock.com/ ) and it's good, but I don't agree that more nuclear plants make sense and it's suggestions for action are mostly aimed at individuals and families rather than any collective community response...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  10. truthmod
    Administrator

    I just drove across the US, from NYC to San Francisco. Mostly all I saw was SUVs, huge pickup trucks, whole towns of fast food chains, and ubiquitous gas stations.

    As our new banner says, "UNSUSTAINABLE WAY OF LIFE"

    Posted 16 years ago #
  11. truthmod
    Administrator

    Good to see Nafeez Ahmed involved in some environmental issues...

    http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2007/12/hidden-holocaus...

    http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385315.html...

    2007: global food shortages cause riots (FAO)

    2008: global banking collapse (Arlington Institute)

    2011: world oil reserves critically depleted (Independent)

    2015: climate change point-of-no-return (Guardian)

    2025: two-thirds of world in water shortage (BBC)

    2100: Earth uninhabitable (UN)

    Posted 16 years ago #
  12. chrisc
    Member

    Good to see Nafeez Ahmed involved in some environmental issues...

    Yeah, I posted about this meeting here before it happened http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/790 I hoped someone would record it but I haven't seen any recordings from it :-(

    Posted 16 years ago #
  13. chrisc
    Member

    There is an audio version of the document that started this thread, ROSS GELBSPAN: We've Missed Nature's Deadline:

    http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=26119

    It's only 30mins, well worth a listen...

    Posted 16 years ago #

Reply

You must log in to post.