Wednesday, December 31, 2008

CLIMATE CODE RED: SCIENCE AND PROSPECTS

The new science is rolling in from England, Australia, and the American Geophysical Union conference. The news isn't chilling - it's heating and it's very scary.

To cover it, we interview two top people in the field. We open with David Spratt, co-author of "Climate Code Red - The Case for Emergency Action" - which is just now being released in North America.

I received an update from David, passed on by top Australian scientist Andrew Glikson. I trust Glikson, and he says Spratt has the science right.

It seems so hard to believe. Even a close friend, a life-time environmentalist, came out doubting science just a week ago. We have the denial mechanism designed into us, since our earliest days. Nothing in human experience, as taught and recorded by any civilization, revealed that the climate system was very delicate. In fact, our world was barely balanced between the "Ice House" (vast glaciation) and the "Hot House" (climates too hot for humans and life as we know it). Unknowingly, we are tipping the switch.

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

Following, David Spratt, we go to one of the best - Hell - he is the best - climate blogger on the Net. That is Joseph Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. During the Clinton Administration, Mr. Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy, responsible for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Joe Romm's blog "Climateprogress.org" is reprinted all over the place, including many features in the Grist Mill blog. We are lucky to get him on radio, explaining not just the hot new climate science, but the possibilities for surviving this natural trap.

Romm is also plugged into the Democratic science establishment, and describes some of the appointments made by Barrack Obama - that could help the climate.

Then I do my "Tools for Tough Times" - simple gear for an emergency, Depression or system breakdown. You may need these tools, due to a storm, civil disruption, banking failure, flu outbreak, or just a lost job and looming poverty on government hand outs. Get your gear.
Here is a short list, but you should listen to the broadcast.

The full Radio Ecoshock show is available in
CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Note: 10 sec music bed for station ID at 29:53.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

ECOSHOCK GREEN GOLD the best enviro tunes

All the tunes we've used on Radio Ecoshock - full versions and how to contact the artists. 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB (recommended) or Lo-Fi 14 MB

After all the words, of scientists and activists, it's time to reach another part of your brain. We've never done this before - but see if these songs don't get you going. And play it any time.

Production Notes: 30 second song bed at 29:30, pull down for your station ID. Ready to play.

Playlist: "Endless Summer" Ghostly Penguin Display;
"Runaway Train" Eliza Gilkyson;

"Alternative Energy" Combat Wombat (Australia);
"Mother Earth" Shane Philip (Canadian);

"What If You Knew" David Rovics;
"Is That What It Will Take?" Bryan Wood;

"Swimmin In D'Nile" Dana Lyons;
"High Water Rising" Joel Zifkin;

"Our Ocean" Te Vaka (Polynesia);
"Slow Down Fast" Bruce Cockburn (Cdn);

"Power From Above" Dan Berggsen (#1 from our site);
"Good Planets Are Hard to Find" Steve Forbert;

"Dirty Town" Mother Mother (Cdn);
"It's Not Easy Being Green" Kermit the Frog;

"House of Trouble" Clatter;
"Gamma Ray" Beck.

Enjoy!

Alex
Radio Ecoshock

Thursday, December 18, 2008

EARLY DEPRESSION DAZE

Forget Madoff. Wall St. is the giant Ponzi scheme.

The former NASDAQ Chairman and investing icon Bernard Madoff admits he ran a giant investment scam that lost $50 billion. Everyone, the wealthiest and wise, were taken in. Even the Rothschilds were hit, not to mention Swiss banks, British Banks (Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC), hedge funds (for a cool ten billion), Jewish charities, university endowments, pensions funds, municipalities. Lots of pain - but it's also illustrative of the much bigger landscape. Wall Street and all the big banks were just Ponzi operations, paying out old investors from new suckers. Can you say "sub-prime"?

Hear, in his own words, audio of Bernie explaining why fraud just isn't possible these days, due to stiff regulation. Yeah right.

It gets worse. The CDS/CDO asteroid is set to strike Earth in 2009. Bets totalling at least $50 trillion dollars come home for settlement. But that is more than the net worth of Earth. As Max Keiser points out - even if every American home and business were sold off to the Chinese and Saudis - the debt still wouldn't be paid.

That is the black hole the American Treasury and the FED (read: the same bank nuts who got us into this mess) are trying to fill up with your children's tax money. There isn't enough money in the world to settle these gambling debts. The idea any of it is going to be paid back is ridiculous. It just goes into the hole, and is never seen again. That is called "deflation".

Why doesn't the government give the money to the people instead? Or at least start up some productive industry, like building alternative energy plants, and more trains. Sadly, the gansters/bankers are in charge of our government now, scaring the politicians worse than Osame bin Laden. And paying them off too.

Alex explains.

Then
we interview Michael Byron on surviving the Crunch. He's the author of the Infinity's Rainbow series, and a professor in the San Diego area. His last book is:
""The Path Through Infinity’s Rainbow: Your Guide for Personal Survival and Spiritual Transformation in a World Gone Mad."

Finally, at the request by a couple of listeners, Alex comes clean about his food storage project. How much things cost, how long will wheat last in buckets, why is bulk food so hard to find all of a sudden? Getting in ahead of the curve, as the world food situation - even in plentious America - gets scary.

You will also hear a song I love, capturing the times "Clearcut" by Ethan Miller and Kate Boverman. And, of course, "Food Storage Blues" by Mormon Brother Thompson and the bean sisters.


Alex's
food storage audio blog. Bit of music and fun. Radio Ecoshock 081219 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: Song "Clearcut" by Ethan Miller & Kate Boverman runs from 27:50 to 30:41. Interrupt for station ID if needed. Other music: "Food Storage Blues" by Brother Thompson. Short clips from maxkeiser.com, Bernard Madoff, Sky News.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

FOUR HORSEMEN Cars, Coal, Climate & War

1. Testimony to Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming Dec 9.

On
auto bail-out & real future of green transpo. Clips from Chairman Ed Markey, Member Jay Inslee, plus testimony from Joan Claybrook of the watchdog group Public Citizen (founded by Ralph Nader). Next up is a bit from Reuben Munger, Chairman of a start-up independent auto maker - of electric plug-in vehicles, called Bright Automotive.

Also, Dr. Peter Morici, Professor of International Business at the University of Maryland, thinks the bailout is a waste of money and won't work.

Finally, from the design side of the car business, there is Mr. Geoff Wardle, Director of Advanced Mobility Research, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California. He describes the need to design a real public transport system that is green and sustainable.


2. Frosty the Coal Man?
Twisted carols and coal plant radiation. What, you didn't know coal plants emit bomb-quality radiation along with the CO2?

3.
second half hour - Gwynne Dyer columnist, author, military historian on extreme climate change and resulting wars. Exclusive preview of new radio series.
Recorded at the Park Theatre December 6, 2008.

Radio Ecoshock Show 081212 1 hour
CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: 30 second music bed for station ID at 29:30. Can be run as two half hour shows. No copyright music. Cut end music as needed if more time required.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

CLIMATE TERRORISM: The Tar Sands

As #1 supplier of oil to USA, Canada's tar sands kill the environment, locals, and pollute the world's atmosphere. Canada can never control its emissions with this giant carbon smokestack to the sky. Now they want to make the damage five times greater. To scoop off the soil in an area the size of Florida. Strip mining vast areas for the world's dirtiest source of oil.

The U.S. group Environmental Defense launched a report February 2008 titled "Canada's Toxic Tar Sands, The Most Destructive Project on Earth" A whole range of activists, from Greenpeace to the Council of Canadians, is fighting to stop massive expansion of the Tar Sands. The major oil companies want to strip away the surface of the Earth in a patch the size of Florida. They dump their toxic waste into giant man-made lakes dangerously close to the mighty Athabasca River, and by that river, to the sensitive Arctic.

All told, the Tar Sands projects, led by the world's largest oil companies, create an octopus of toxic waste and global climate change. No one is exempt.

Three new speeches:

Jessie Kalman on environmental and social impacts. From the Polaris Institute. Update on latest situation, including the economic downturn;

Mike Mercredi - the industrial genocide of aboriginals. A member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation describes how his family and community are dying of cancer in unbelievable numbers, now that the Tar Sands mega-project is upstream. A really moving speech puts the poisons in perspective.

Will Horter, from the Dogwood Initiative, on new pipelines, ports and spills in British Columbia's treasured forests and coast. Even the Great Bear Rain Forest is at risk, as tanker traffic is set to double in the wild and stormy West Coast of Canada, British Columbia. The pipelines will scar the rockies. The spills are inevitable, from this spiderweb of chemicals running from Canada's North to all points south, and the American refineries.

The Radio Ecoshock Show 081205 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: 30 second music bed for station ID at 29:30.
Music: "Dirty Little Secret" by All American Rejects.

P.S. be sure and visit notankers.ca to sign their petition.

Alex.
Radio Ecoshock