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Bill McKibben interviewed by Jason Bradford (audio and text)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report
The Reality Report talks to Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: TheWealth of Communities and the Durable Future and co-founder of the climate change group 350.org.
Over the past year or so, much of the thinking about the severity and timeline of climate change has undergone a major shift. In the fall of 2007, a report titled The Big Melt came out that reviewed the rapid loss of polar ice and its likely implications. In December 2007 James Hansen presented a paper at the American Geophysical Union in which it was argued that safe levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were at least below 350 parts per million, and in fact may be less than 300 ppm. For anyone familiar with climate science and policy this was a stunning conclusion because current levels of CO2 are over 385 ppm. During the winter of 2008 a new report titled Climate Code Red was released that greatly expanded upon The Big Melt and delved into the socio-political implications of the new scientific information, essentially framing the issue in terms of survival requirements on a damaged spaceship Earth. Soon afterwards, a climate activist group called 350.org was formed by Bill McKibben and friends to spread the message that policy targets need to reflect the scientific imperative.
Previous shows of the Reality Report interviewed Jamie Henn, a cofounder of 350.org, and Philip Sutton, a co-author of Climate Code Red.
This show brings us up to date since those developments–and a lot has occurred, including international climate change policy meetings in Poland, more information from scientists, a new U.S. president, and major disruptions to the global economy.
I am very pleased to have Bill McKibben on the program. Bill has been along-time champion of ecologically grounded economies, a safe climate campaigner, a popular writer, and teacher to many.
Online transcript
(12 January 2009)
Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says (text and audio)
Richard Harris, National Public Radio
Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study.
As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world’s top climate scientists.
“We’re used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix,” Solomon says. “Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it’ll go away pretty quickly.”
That’s the case for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues suggest in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is not true for the most abundant greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide. Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won’t stop global warming.
“People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we’re showing here is that’s not right. It’s essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years,” Solomon says.
(26 January 2009)
Related from Los Angeles Times: Climate change has a firm grip.
UPDATE (Jan 28)
I thought that the headline for this article was misleading, conveying a different impression than what the research and the article itself were saying. -BA
EB reader Lewis comments:
I’ve been trouble by the MSM reporting of this particular bit of research, since, in the interest of profits, it has chosen to sensationalize the findings by omitting the word “would” in favour of “will”.
As I read the findings, they report that IF we push CO2ppmv over 450 then we are likely to generate irreversible climate change. The IF is missing from the sense of most reports of these findings, including from that shown on EB.
Given that the appallingly prevalent ethos of climate apathy is becoming respectable, if not actually fashionable, the media serves the status quo by promoting that apathy – (whether intentionally or not) but getting the requisite global treaty agreed, and then ratified, will need all of the popular commitment we can find.
The other global warming
Bina Venkataraman, Boston Globe
… even if we bring the greenhouse effect under control, says a Tufts astrophysicist, the earth will warm up anyway, thanks to a completely different source of heat that we create ourselves.
Over the next 250 years, calculates Eric J. Chaisson in a recent paper, the earth’s population will start generating so much of its own heat – chiefly wasted from energy use – that it will warm the earth even without a rise in greenhouse gases. The only way to avoid it, he says, is to rethink how we generate energy.
His paper examines the planet’s growing pool of waste heat, a widespread phenomenon that nonetheless has been little studied as a cause of climate change. Nearly everything that uses or generates energy – chiefly power plants, but also cars, snowblowers, computers, and light bulbs – squanders some energy as wasted heat. And the larger and more energy-hungry the human population grows, the more waste heat remains in our atmosphere.
(25 January 2009)
Global Warming Could Unleash Ocean ‘Dead Zones’: Study
Agence France Presse via Common Dreams
Global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia, according to a study published on Sunday.
Its authors say deep cuts in the world’s carbon emissions are needed to brake a trend capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas.
(26 January 2009)
