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Climate Code Red: the Case for a Sustainability Emergency (15 posts)

  1. chrisc
    Member

    This report is essential reading, a summary follows:

    http://www.climatecodered.net/

    Two interviews on it:

    http://globalpublicmedia.org/sustainability_emerge... http://globalpublicmedia.org/sustainability_emerge...

    Summary:

    • The extensive melting of Arctic sea-ice in the northern summer of 2007 starkly demonstrated that serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. Human activity has already pushed the planet’s climate past several critical “tipping points”, including the initiation of major ice sheet loss.

    • The loss in summer of all eight million square kilometres of Arctic sea-ice now seems inevitable, and may occur as early as 2010, a century ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections. There is already enough carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to initiate ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland and to ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades.

    • The projected speed of change, with temperature increases greater than 0.3°C per decade and the consequent rapid shifting of climatic zones will, if maintained, likely result in most ecosystems failing to adapt, causing the extinction of many animal and plant species. The oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life.

    • The Earth’s passage into an era of dangerous climate change accelerates as each of these tipping points is passed. If this acceleration becomes too great, humanity will no longer have the power to reverse the processes we have set in motion.

    • We stand at a time where we still have the power to make a choice. Only by dealing with the full scale and urgency of the problem can we create a realistic path back to a safe-climate world. Targets should be chosen and actions taken that can actually solve the problem in a timely manner. A temperature cap of 2–2.4°C, as proposed within the United Nations framework, would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years and into catastrophe.

    • The loss of the Arctic sea-ice unambiguously represents dangerous climate change. As the tipping point for this event was around two decades ago when temperatures were about 0.3°C lower than at present, we propose a long-term precautionary warming cap of 0.5°C and equilibrium atmospheric greenhouse gas level of not more than 320 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide.

    • The USA’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, stated recently that we should set an atmospheric carbon dioxide target that is low enough to avoid “the point of no return”. To achieve this, he says, we must not only eliminate current greenhouse gas emissions but also remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and take urgent steps to “cool the planet”.

    • These scientific imperatives are incompatible with the “realities” of “politics as usual” and “business as usual”. Our conventional mode of politics is short-term, adversarial and incremental, fearful of deep, quick change and simply incapable of managing the transition at the necessary speed. The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model.

    • There is an urgent need to reconceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. The feasibility of rapid transitions is well established historically. We now need to “think the unthinkable”, because the sustainability emergency is now not so much a radical idea as simply an indispensable course of action if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.

    Download Climate Code Red full report http://www.carbonequity.info/download.php?id=6

    Posted 16 years ago #
  2. DBLS
    Inactive

    "Climate Code Red" - so you're using Homeland Security style "colour codes of death" now are you? And you guys still can't see the parallels between the "Man-made" Global Warming Establishment agenda and the "War on Terror" Establishment agenda?

    Posted 16 years ago #
  3. truthmod
    Administrator

    Hmmm DBLS, you don't seem very interested in the very alarming FACTS listed above. You seem very defensive actually.

    The climate and the overall environmental situation is the ultimate CODE RED. And you still can't see that the very people who are pushing hardest for and enjoying the benefits of the War on Terror are the ones who strangely seem to agree with you on the unimportance of environmentalism.

    Reality nullifies your attitudes.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  4. truthmover
    Administrator

    Moderator Comment

    After repeated warnings about the content and subject of his posting, DBLS has had his TruthMove forum account rendered inactive. This allows him to read the forum, but not to post.

    The moderators have been more than patient and flexible with him, allowing him to remain an active poster for many months despite his continued off topic posting and derogatory remarks toward TruthMove and the forum moderators.

    The TruthMove forum is not a venue in which anti-environmental rhetoric is welcome.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  5. chrisc
    Member

    After repeated warnings about the content and subject of his posting, DBLS has had his TruthMove forum account rendered inactive.

    Fair enough.

    I hope it's not too late to stop the devastation of the planet by the time people like DBLS realise that they have got things so terribly wrong on this... Of course I also wish he was right, but I know he isn't -- it's like wishing for a god when you are a committed atheist...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  6. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/10/cei-attacks-go...

    Tomorrow, the ultra conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will launch a new round of television ads attacking former Vice President Al Gore for his leadership on climate change. The right-wing Washington Times gleefully reported on CEI’s ad buy on Saturday:

    Al Gore’s opulent lifestyle and his virtuous plea to save the planet from global warming don’t mesh, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which announced plans yesterday for a new national advertising campaign to showcase the contrast before the American public.

    In fact, Al Gore has worked diligently to reduce his own carbon impact. After a thorough renovation of his house — complete with a fight to obtain zoning permission for solar panels — Gore has one of the first 14 homes in the United States to receive the LEED gold certification for efficiency and green practices. The renovations “cut the home’s summer electrical consumption by 11 percent compared with a year ago.”

    – The Washington Monthly reported, “The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been a particularly aggressive advocate of the notion that global warming is a ‘theory not a fact.’” [LINK]

    – CEI “adjunct analyst” Donald Boudreaux said in 2006: “the best policy regarding global warming is to neglect it – and let capitalism continue to make us healthier and wealthier.” [LINK]

    – CEI has received more than $2 million from ExxonMobil since 1998. [LINK]

    – CEI’s global-warming denying position is so radical that last year, ExxonMobil announced it had ceased funding CEI, in an effort to improve its corporate image. [LINK]

    – CEI belongs to the State Policy Network, a “voluntary and by invitation-only” coalition of free-market think tanks that includes both the Tennessee Center for Policy Research and the Heartland Institute, which ran last week’s global warming denial conference. [LINK, LINK]

    Posted 16 years ago #
  7. truthmod
    Administrator
  8. truthmod
    Administrator

    The facts show that these people are liars and deceivers. They are liars.

    Global warming skeptics plot new strategies
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0803/S00252.htm

    The conference ended with the attendees considering a document called the "Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change." The declaration confirmed that: "global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans"; "the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed 'consensus' among climate experts are false"; and the costs of government regulating climate change will have a desultory effect on developing nations.

    The Manhattan Declaration also stated that "human-caused climate change is not a global crisis." The Declaration recommended that "world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth," and "that all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith."

    Conference organizers apparently hope that the New York City conference will lead to a revitalized anti-global warming movement, with many more such conferences around the world: "This event is intended to be a catalyst for future meetings, collaboration among scientists, economists, and policy experts, new research, and new publications," a conference document stated.

    "The proceedings will be transcribed, edited, and published as a major contribution to the debate over global warming. Other possible follow-up activities now being discussed include: an event in London in 2009; launch of a new journal devoted to climate change; launch of an association of philanthropists willing to support further research and public education opposing global warming alarmism; support for an International Climate Science Coalition that will act as an alternative voice to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and expanded cooperation among the scores of organizations currently sponsoring research, publications, and events on the dubious claims in support of the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming," the conference organizers wrote.

    Despite their well-funded corporate connections, these are big plans for conservative think tanks whose ideas on climate change appear to fly in the face of most scientific studies and public opinion.

    Posted 16 years ago #
  9. truthmod
    Administrator

    Just wanted to bump this thread. We need to not let ourselves forget about this emergency. I highly recommend the interviews that started this thread.

    Also, an informative lecture:

    Global Warming: Why the Skeptics Are Wrong (2006)

    Professor John Harte of University of California-Berkeley examines the current status of knowledge about global warming and reviews prevailing myths that surround the subject.

    http://www.archive.org/details/Why_the_Global_Warm...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  10. chrisc
    Member

    I just came across a good article on the first interview on Ireland Indymedia:

    This is a must listen podcast and presents the case that we are in grave danger with the climate as the effects of global warming are happening much quicker than anyone has in public admitted. According to Philip Sutton, we need to declare a Sustainability Emergency. In this report, he outlines how the existing institutes have failed.
    http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86361

    Posted 16 years ago #
  11. chrisc
    Member

    Another interview on the Climate Code Red report:

    David Spratt : Climate CODE RED!

    David Spratt -- along with Phillip Sutton -- has authored a sharp review of the Climate change crisis that is bearing down on all of us: Climate Code Red.

    This interview with David Spratt explores the main arguments in this report (published by Friends of the Earth, Australia) and tries to locate the environment science in the context of what urgently needs to be done right now.

    Spratt criticizes the politics of pragmatism and the ready habituation of low political expectations. He then tries to relate this penchant to compromise to the challenge of sustaining an emergency response as exemplified by the war economies during the Second World War.

    MP3 - 18.3MB 20:05 128 kbs - http://ratbagmedia.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/...

    http://leftcast.blogspot.com/2008/02/david-spratt-...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  12. chrisc
    Member

    There is a new third interview with Philip Sutton:

    Philip Sutton on the Reality Report

    This is the third interview with Philip Sutton, coauthor with David Spratt of a recent report titled Climate Cod Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency. The first interview reviewed the latest scientific understanding of climate change and established an appropriate target for temperature change and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The second interview discussed the socio-political implications of the latest scientific understanding—namely the need to go into "emergency" mode, abandoning business and politics as usual in order to make a rapid transition to a fossil-fuel free economy before catastrophe unfolds.

    When we realize that our survival is at stake, business as usual no longer applies. Familiar analogies include times of war when factories shifted from producing unnecessary consumer goods to what is needed to feed, clothe and arm troops. During these times, civilians accept sacrifice and social cohesion is high because the shared threat is understood. In our current situation, we need to adopt an emergency mode of conduct in politics, business and civic life that achieves the survival goal of sustainability.

    While our task is daunting, today’s interview will show that it is still possible to stabilize the climate.

    MP3: http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RM/2008/04/Sutt...

    http://globalpublicmedia.com/philip_sutton_on_the_...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  13. chrisc
    Member

    UK launch of Climate Code Red, renamed "Climate Safety":

    The new report from the Public Interest Research Centre, entitled "Climate Safety" will be launched with an event on 27th November 2008 at Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ at 7pm. A panel of key Climate Change speakers will present some of this year's Science and host a discussion on where we're at and where we need to be. This is the UK launch of Climate Code Red that started in Australia earlier in 2008.

    http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/11/412059.html

    I don't know how they are going to managed this:

    No screaming, no panic, no doom, no gloom. Just a short and simple summary of the latest climate science followed by a discussion of what we’re going to do about it.

    http://climatesafety.org/

    ...

    Posted 16 years ago #
  14. chrisc
    Member

    The UK "Climate Safety" report is out, scary but essential reading:

    http://climatesafety.org/downloads/climatesafety.p...

    Posted 15 years ago #
  15. chrisc
    Member

    New interview with David Spratt, co-author of "Climate Code Red - The Case for Emergency Action":

    CLIMATE CODE RED: SCIENCE AND PROSPECTS

    We MUST pay attention - no matter what the temporary weather is outside, or the political climate. It is time to learn or die.

    http://www.ecoshock.org/2008/12/climate-code-red-s...

    MP3: http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock09/ES_090102_Show_Lo...

    Posted 15 years ago #

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