Tim Flannery - Atmosphere of Hope

Australian scientist & author of "The Weather Makers" on new book "Atmosphere of Hope". Despite what he knows, Tim Flannery explains new "natural" based tech that may prevent climate catastrophe.

“Can our desire to overcome [the climate crisis] drive humanity’s next great waves of positive technological economic and social revolutions, or will we be plunged into the dystopian collapses and terrors of civilizations past?”

That's the question asked by Dr. Tim Flannery in his new book "Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis".

Flannery rocked the world with his 2003 book "The Weather Makers". For a while, the Australian government hired him to coordinate climate communications. He left to form the Climate Council, with community funding. Flannery is also with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, at the University of Melbourne. He's trained as a specialist in mammals and palaeontology.

Dr. Tim Flannery



We're about to hear Tim Flannery speak about his new book, at the Town Hall in Seattle, on November 12, 2015. I thank Mike McCormack of talkingsticktv for this recording.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show, the full speech with question and answer period, in either CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB).

Or listen right now on Soundcloud.





Tim begins this talk with a climate reality check. He outlines an overview of climate science, and the huge challenges facing us. Flannery doesn't try to sugar-coat our situation, and admits that from about 2008 to 2013 he was somewhat depressed about the prospects of severe climate change, and our lack of appropriate response.

However, in 2007, following his publication of the Weathermakers, Tim was called to the Caribbean island owned by multi-billionaire Richard Branson. From that was born the $25 million dollar Virgin Climate Challenge for the best invention to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Flannery tells us Branson himself was doubtful humans will get themselves out of this civilization-wide problem.

During the following years, the Virgin Challenge received about 11,000 entries. Reading through many of these, Flannery tells us he began to see hopeful signs toward solutions to lower carbon in the atmosphere. In this talk he mentions several, including carbon-negative cement (it removes CO2 as it hardens); fibre and plastics that can be made directly from CO2.

There is also a type of rock (Serpentinite) that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Perhaps this fairly common rock could be crushed and used as beaches (as the seas rise) to capture more carbon dioxide. This is known as "carbon sequestration by mineral carbonation". Serpentinite has been used by a Dutch firm to make allegedly carbon neutral shingles for houses.

We need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The first way is to cut emissions drastically. That must be done, but it will not reduce carbon dioxide already there, and already too high.

The second way, Flannery says, is to use geoengineering techniques, like spraying sulfur into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight. But this has grave risks for weather systems, he says.

Flannery tells us there is a "third way": solutions to save nature without wrecking nature. Although these ideas mimic nature or use nature's tech, they do require some energy to deploy them. That energy would have to come from solar, wind, or perhaps burning biomass?

I recommend this talk as inspiring, and it will teach you new things. Personally, I did not find enough in the talk to convince me we have a way out, yet.

My thanks to Mike McCormick of talkingsticktv, and host of the Mind Over Matters radio show for this recording. Mike produces a lot of worthwhile original material.

Mobilize to Save the Climate!

SUMMARY: Psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon on movement to mobilize to save the climate - a total shift in society. The transformative power of climate truth. Plus scientist Paul Beckwith on chemtrails and geoengineering.

She's an American clinical psychologist and host of theclimatepsychologist.com. Now Margaret Klein Salamon is calling the United States to an emergency mobilization - to stave off a disastrous shift in our climate. Why it might work. Why it has to.

Then we're back with climate scientist Paul Beckwith to talk over chemtrails or covert climate geoengineering. Maybe it hasn't started, but Beckwith thinks it should.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Or listen to it right now on Soundcloud!



MOBILIZE TO SAVE THE CLIMATE!

I realize not everyone listens to radio. That's why I'm taking the time this week to give you extensive notes on this critical idea of a rapid shift in society to prevent disastrous climate change. It's not a new idea, following the example of what happened in the United States (as well as Great Britain, Canada and many other countries) during World War II. What's new is a movement to really make that big change happen.

Our guest is Margaret Klein Salamon, the author of a widely read article "The Transformative Power of Climate Change".

While studying for, (and getting) her PHD in psychology last year, Margaret Klein Salamon became increasingly aware of climate change. She was also in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. Talking with friends, she decided to start a climate psychology blog, but her friends challenged her, saying writing is not enough. What can we do together to really solve this problem?

Clinical psychologist and climate activist Margaret Klein Salamon

Through her blog, she found more "collaborators" and allies, in particular Ezra Silk. They developed a "social movement start-up." (The Climate Mobilization, and The Pledge to Mobilize). Ezra Silk is the co-founder of the Climate Mobilization. The Pledge was developed with Philip Sutton, the co-author of "Climate Code Red" (2008).

Margaret is the fourth psychologist we've had on the show - but so far, no psychiatrists, even though what we are doing to the planet is pretty crazy. Why do you think there's a difference in response by the two fields of mental health?

She replies that psychatrists are trained like medical doctors, and these days tend toward pharmacology - writing prescriptions. While a psychologist might be able to offer therapy regarding climate change, there is no drug treatment for it. However, Lise Van Susteren is one American psychiatrist who is also a climate activist.

CLIMATE MOBILIZATION

"We recognize that the climate problem is a global emergency that threatens to cause the collapse of civilization within this century."

- Margaret Klein Salamon

That is the starting point. They look at history: the World War Two home-front mobilization in the United States, starting after Pearl Harbor (December 1941) and developing in 1942 and after. The global emergency was the imperial ambitions of the Axis Powers (Germany and Japan).

America rapidly transformed every sector of society and economy. Soldiers, businesses, and housewives went to work on the war needs. It was the first time women went to work in factories (other than during the early industrial revolution). During this time, 40% of produce was grown at home in Victory Gardens. Universities changed to war-related research (a trend which continues today). It's an example of how America, and other countries, could deal with an acute crisis, such as climate change.

This historic example has been used by many climate leaders and thinkers. Hilary Clinton has used that example, as have Executive Directors of many NGO's, including Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute. He was one of the signatories of a 2008 letter to President Barack Obama, calling for an effort like the World War Two mobilization, but this time to fight climate change.

And yet, no one was directly advocating to go ahead and do this mobilization. That is the role of this new movement called Climate Mobilization. They want to push this forward through the tool "The Pledge to Mobilize". That is a one page document that any American, and just recently any international citizen, can sign. The Pledge contains a platform with five political demands. The signer recognizes climate change threatens civilization, and they endorse this 5 point plan to mobilize all social and economic resources to stop the worst of climate change from developing.

For example, the Pledge calls for the United States to reduce their emissions to "net zero" by 2025, through a complete transformation of the energy and agricultural sectors. It would entail, they say, full employment. It demands the top priority of American diplomacy is to reach global net zero emissions at top emergency speeds.

When signing, you endorse those 5 points, but also make three personal and political commitments. They include "I will vote for candidates who have signed the Pledge, over those who have not." That includes all levels of elections, whether local, state, or national. "I will support candidates who have signed the pledge with time or money or both." Plus the signer promises to spread the truth of climate change and the Pledge itself to others. Margaret says it becomes "like a missionary activity." The expectation is that you will talk to people about the reality of climate change, and what needs to be done, quickly. "It's a way to break climate silence."

Up until Pearl Harbor, many Americans were in denial about what was happening in Europe and Asia. They did not want to become involved in another European war (after World War One) and chose isolationism. Only when the people felt directly threatened at home, did the big swing take place. Where people wanted their personal lives, suddenly they developed a sense of duty before self. If each of us continues pursuing our own happiness only, then we will face collapse.

DO WE HAVE TO BE POLITICAL?

A huge number of people who distrust any government action. Does climate mobilization have to come from the federal government?

"Yes", says Klein, the scale of changes are so large that they must be coordinated nationally. A city-by-city, state-by-state approace won't do enough, fast enough. And yet City and State action are also needed.

She wants a declaration of emergency, or maybe even a declaration of war against climate change.

Localized agro-ecology is part of the required change, giving us near zero emissions supply lines, rather than long-distance trucking or air transport of food. Agriculture should also sequester carbon into the soil. This will also offer more protection against food shocks.

International relations would be built on countering the climate emergency. It might involve technology transfer, similar to the "lend-lease" that occured during World War Two. Except we might ship out solar panels or electrified mass transportation systems instead of guns and tanks. It will require "all hands on deck" which means anyone who wants to work would be employed in this climate emergency (full employment) as happened during World War Two.

The Republican majority in Congress is filled with leaders who deny climate change is real, or that humans are causing it. That's kind of a stumbling block, isn't it? Yes and no, says Klein. We should not waste out time arguing with deniers, but work with the majority of people who know climate change needs to be stopped.

We must ask our politicians: "do you have the ability to protect our country - and the world - from collapse, or not?"

Another part of World War Two, for people in many countries, was curtailing consumer spending and even rationing. Do we need that now, and won't that be a very difficult sell, to promise people less?

It seems just to fill up our car one more time, or pay that electric bill for coal-powered juice, we all need to be able to turn off our knowledge of climate change. Margaret, what tools can psychology offer to help us overcome the bits of denial we all need, in order to keep functioning in a fossil-powered world?

Klein says psychoanalytical work helps a patient accept conflict, within themselves. For example, you might both love someone and hate them. We will have similar mixed emotions, because in spite of our climate knowledge, the fossil powered world around us is almost inescapable on an individual level. Still, we feel guilty about our energy use.

Psychology suggests we should expect the mind to do anything and everything to protect us from full knowledge of what climate change means and will do. We've never been perfect as information processors. "We don't want to know, on the most basic level, because it hurts to know."

BEYOND DENIAL: DISSOCIATION

Denial is just one of our mechanisms. Most of the time we operate in "dissociation". The most extreme dissociation is an out-of-body experience, or creating multiple personalities. We all dissociate in lesser degrees, by putting unpleasant realities out of our minds. We may plan video games, watch TV or do many things to think about anything other than climate change. "Zoning out" works. Dissociation, Margaret says, is the lack of normal integration between thoughts, feelings, and action.

People understand the climate threat intellectually, and may talk about a billion people dying, but their feelings and actions don't reflect what they are talking about. Margaret references David Robert's recent piece about the awful truth about climate change - but his language reflected a kind of emotion numbing.

WILFUL IGNORANCE

Another psychological defense against really knowing about climate impacts is "wilful ignorance". It's when you "know enough to know you don't want to know any more." We may start reading an alarming article on climate change, then quickly move on to another news item, and "forget" about it. The person could learn more about it, or really throw their lives into it, but claim they are not experts, not scientists, so they bear no responsibility.

HANDLING CLIMATE EMOTIONS

If we really tune in to what humans are doing to this planet and other species, we may feel strong emotions, like grief or anger. Do you advise people to let those emotions happen, or to calm themselves in various ways?

Margaret says we must experience these emotions, but we may need to find ways to contain or structure, so they don't overwhelm our lives. "If you haven't cried about climate change, maybe you don't quite understand, or more likely, maybe you are dissociating." But we need to find the right time and place. It doesn't work to cry about climate change at an important meeting, "or to become furious about climate change in front of your young children." Holding feelings in can create psychological problems, she says.

Margaret started a Facebook group, now run by others, called "Climate Change. It's Personal". It's about how we as people live in these times. We don't have to experience the climate crisis alone.

SHOULD WE DOWNPLAY BAD CLIMATE NEWS TO AVOID PARALYZING PEOPLE?

We recently had the Norwegian eco-psychologist Per Espen Stoknes on the show. He says we have to stop frightening people with climate forecasts, which may only paralyze them into inaction. What are your thoughts?

She wants to read more about his position, but mainly disagrees. Climate change is frightening, if the facts are understood. However, Klein wants us to channel emotions like grief, fear, anger into mobilizing to do something about the situation. The Pledge to Mobilize solves the problem Stoknes is talking about. There is a huge solution on the table that everyone can be part of. "If we don't solve this, all is lost."

She believes in "climate truth" and recently published an essay titled "The Transformative Power of Climate Truth". It was published on Common Dreams, and has been a top story on the site Climate Code Red, while trending high on Reddit, and of course in her blog theclimatepsychologist.com.

Klein tells us: "If you're not talking about the fact that climate change will cause the collapse of civilization, if we don't take drastic action, I think basically you are bull-shitting people."

Her use of "bull-shit" comes from the piece "On Bullshit" by Philosopher Harry G Frankfurt. It shows how especially in America, and especially in politics, experts recommend avoiding the truth, to communicate instead just some message that works to bring people toward what you want. It's called manipulation, and it's the new method of operation for control by politicians, corporations, and anyone with a cause.

Even phrases like "green jobs" or "clean energy future" may hope to trick people away from the awful truth of climate change, and the much stronger path we need to take, says Salamon. Honesty offers us the enormous power of transformative truth. The fact we've gone this far, toward warming the planet, is a sign of wide-spread institutional failure.

"Our institutions are not working. It has to come from us, from the people living in this fateful hour." She's seen this inaction. For example, some have change jobs, so they have more time for climate activism. They become the kind of fuel for the massive social transformation that we need.

Of course I agree with Margaret: this is the hour. People are either going to answer this threat in reality, or not.

INSPIRATION FROM SOCIAL CHANGE IN WORLD WAR TWO

Margaret says she derived some hope from the book "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns. The full title is "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" and it won a Pulitzer Prize for history after it was published in 1995.

During the isolationist phase in the United States after World War One, military production was largely decommissioned. Germany built a war machine never seen before, with the Blitzkreig and tanks, while the U.S. was still using horses - the Cavalry - in the military. After the attack on Pearl Habor, there was a transformation on every leve in America, with massive public participation. It gave her hope we could make a massive change to save what's left of the climate.

IS A MILITARY IMAGE THE BEST WE CAN DO?

I worry a return to military imagery has it's draw-backs. Militarism is part and parcel of climate change and the bad things that might happen when droughts, famines or repeated extreme weather strike. Is this really the best example we have?

Klein admits it's not the best example, but it may be the best we have in living memory. Plus, the climate mobilization will be much better, because it leads to more life and living things, rather than death and destruction.

However, in some ways it's easier to sell war. It's been part of our evolution as a species. If the North Koreans (or pick you enemy) was destroying our climate, we might rally against them sooner. But really, we ourselves are the enemy wrecking the climate. That's difficult.

There are bad actors, like fossil fuel companies and denial think-tanks. But they don't actually cause the problem as much as our willing dependency on burning fossil fuels. Without a visible "enemy", the climate mobilization will require a higher level of human consciousness and functioning.

CAN "CLIMATE MOBILIZATION" GO INTERNATIONAL?

How do you see this call for climate change going international - to countries like India, who never experienced the big shift in World War Two, or Scandinavia, where they didn't mobilize against Hitler? I guess I'm asking, is this really an American movement, when we need a global response?

Klein replies that very recently they introduced an international version of The Pledge to Mobilize. They had to take out the World War Two metaphor, as it doesn't apply everywhere. Plus they changed the target of getting to Net Zero to 2030, to give developing nations a little bit more time. Instead of relying on the U.S. Constitution, it calls on the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. People from all over the world are now taking the Pledge to Mobilize. It can apply in any country that has elections, because it calls on pledgers to choose climate-active politicians. I presume it cannot yet reach into dictatorships or kingdoms, like Saudi Arabia.

We must choose leaders who will "protect civilization" - the "pro-civilization party".

CURRENT MOBILIZATION NEWS

Ralph Nader, the famous consumer advocate and Presidential candidate, has signed the Pledge.

The first Climate Mobilization Day of action will be on June 14th, 2015. That's anchored by their San Diego team. They had a march/rally where they posted the Pledge on the Federal Building in San Diego. They will follow that up with former Congressman Jim Bates who has signed the Pledge. Bates will recreate Paul Revere's ride in the streets of San Diego - warning that the climate crisis is coming and we must mobilize, ad Revere warned of the coming British troops in the Revolutionary War.

Now the movement will build on that to call on Mobilizers all over the country on June 14th. Their longer goal is about the 2016 elections in America. The huge media coverage of this long drawn-out election cycle is a good opportunity to get the Mobilization message out.

Climate change is so evident now, everyone can see it in their community. What initially seemed like a wild idea now seems almost self-evident - that we need a massive change to save ourselves. Who could have imagined the Roman Catholic Pope Francis would spear- head the climate message?

People wanting to take the Pledge and become climate truth activists should go to climatemobilization.org.

Download or listen to this 44 minute interview with Margaret Klein Salamon in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

SCIENTIST PAUL BECKWITH ON GEOENGINEERING AND "CHEMTRAILS"

A lot of interest in geoengineering from former chemtrails people, who think geoengineering is already happening, being sprayed from planes.

On our Radio Ecoshock show for March 18, 2015, Harvard scientist David Keith said we would know if geoengineering was being done on a scale that matters was happening. That show was picked up by Dane Wigington, host of geoengineeringwatch.org. Suddenly that show was downloaded a month later another 500 times from Soundcloud.

Dane is one of the more charismatic and savy people to emerge out of the "chemtrails" movement. They don't refer to "chemtrails" any more, but position themselves as an anti-geoengineering group. Some environmentalists also oppose geoengineering, like the ETC Group. But Wigington, and apparently a large number of people connected via the Internet, think covert spraying of the sky, to cool the planet, is already happening.

The former chemtrails movement has splintered somewhat. Some still believe the spraying is done to enable the secret Alaskan radio frequency site HAARP to control our minds. That may be the origin of the "tin foil hat" expression, as believers suggested metal foil could repel these waves from our brains. I got an email from another chemtrails enthusiast who thought the spraying was CAUSING global warming, not cooling the planet. Other's don't believe in climate change at all, so it's all over the map.

Wigington has no doubts that the world is set to warm in a dangerous way. He says governments, or the Powers That Be, are panicked, and are spraying aerosols to try to control what would otherwise be runaway warming. They may also be playing with controlling the weather, a project the U.S. military has tried in the past.

I haven't been able to find any peer-reviewed, published scientific work establishing the existence of a massive covert project to stave off climate change with aerosols launched from aircraft, commercial or otherwise. Being a science-based program, that doesn't leave me much to cover, other than asking other scientists what they think about it.

University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith

Two weeks ago, we had Paul Beckwith on Radio Ecoshock, for a tag-team effort to cover major climate change stories around the world. After our talk, I asked Paul what he thought about covert geoengineering, and about new scientific calls to do research into ways we could cool the planet on an emergency basis. Paul agreed to have this conversation broadcast, and that's what you'll find in this week's show.

I'm just making notes on a major climate research talk given at Harvard University. The speaker, Dr. James Anderson, says there is support for geoengineering research coming from both the Left and the Right. The Left hopes to show the big risks of doing it, the Right wants to find a way to keep on burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Research Council has called for funding research into geoengineering. However, I haven't heard of that resulting in new funding announcements yet.

As a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), Paul Beckwith joins a few other scientists, including Dr. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge (also a guest on Radio Ecoshock) in calling for geoengineering to cool the Arctic. They want to save what is left of the sea ice, saying when that goes, runaway feedbacks will develop that will speed glacial melting, increase methane emissions to very dangerous levels, and further destabilize the weather in the Northern Hemisphere, by disrupting the Jet Stream.

In another Radio Ecoshock interview, Beckwith suggested that just a few airplanes could spray sulfur or other materials to create a localized volcano-like cloud in the Arctic to deflect some solar energy back into space. He's now looking at other ways to create clouds in the Arctic, and is open to many varieties of geoengineering, such as biochar, and of course technology to remove carbon from the air.

Does he think there is a global conspiracy of geoengineering right now? He hopes not, "because it certainly isn't working." Like David Keith, he thinks any spraying effort large enough to make any difference would be detectable in various ways, and it hasn't shown up.

It's a simulating talk, which no doubt will add to both or our resumes on the Chemtrails "Disinformation Directory".

I've been told in a half dozen emails that eventually I will be tried and convicted of some sort of crime for not admitting that there is a conspiracy to poison the sky. It's rather amazing that we picked up that number of listeners who came to hate. That's new for Radio Ecoshock.

Listen to Paul Beckwith on geoengineering and conspiracy here in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

My thanks to those whose ongoing monthly support keeps this show on the air. You know who you are. And a special thanks to Pat for her generous donation this past week. Find out how to support the show here.

I'd also like to thank Jack Wolfe for helping to manage the Radio Ecoshock Facebook page. Jack's doing a tremendous job, helping to announce each new show on a wide variety of internet forums. With that help, we reached over 19,000 people on Facebook in one week. You can help us spread the word, by "liking" Radio Ecoshock on Facebook here. That helps us get wider exposure.

The folks who retweet my humble weekly show announcement are also helping a lot. It's a kind of radio/Net activism.

All our past programs are available as free .mp3 files on our web site at ecoshock.org.

I'm Alex Smith, saying thank you for listening, and caring about our world.

BROKEN FUTURE NEWS

Welcome to another round of Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, with two of the world's top climate scientists talking about the severe challenges we face right now, and in the future. From the United Kingdom, we have Dr. Kevin Anderson, who pulls no punches. Then Rutgers distinguished scientist Alan Robock tells us why geoengineering might not be a good idea. Open your ears and your mind to what's coming next.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



DR. KEVIN ANDERSON TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

Dr. Kevin Anderson is a Professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester, UK. He's also Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre, a multi-university project for the study of climate change. Kevin has advised the UK government and European Union.

Find Kevin's web site here.

As I reported in my Radio Ecoshock show in 2012:

"In a devastating speech at the University of Bristol Tuesday November 6th, 2012, Professor Kevin Anderson accused too many climate scientists of keeping quiet about the unrealistic assessments put out by governments, and our awful odds of reaching global warming far above the proposed 2 degree safe point.

In fact, says Anderson, we are almost guaranteed to reach 4 degrees of warming, as early as 2050, and may soar far beyond that - beyond the point which agriculture, the ecosystem, and industrial civilization can survive.

Kevin Anderson is from the UK's premier climate modeling institution, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and the University of Manchester. He delivered the speech 'Real Clothes for the Emperor, Facing the Challenges of Climate Change' at the Cabot Institute of the University of Bristol in Britain."

Read my blog about all that here. A Radio Ecoshock listener made this transcript of that talk.

The speech is still a great listen. Download or listen to the audio of Kevin Anderson in Bristol in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

NOW WE GET THE UPDATE

Is Kevin Anderson more optimistic 3 years later. Hardly. Practically nothing has been done about greenhouse gas emissions in the real world, and years of climate talks have not made any progress.

Still, we talk about new science, and our increasing focus on the details of what will happen as climate disruption sets in.

The climate denialists like to says that climate scientists fly about the world to conferences. Personally, I think these scientists should do exactly that, to meet and match up research. If there is a last plane flying, these are the people who should be on it.

But Kevin Anderson has taken the whole issue to heart, saying each of us must make personal sacrifices. He's pretty well stopped flying. Yes Kevin was just advising the World Bank at a conference in Iceland, but he took a more fuel efficient solution: a rather unpleasant trip on a merchant marine ship. The waves were wicked he told me.

Dr. Anderson will attend the Paris climate talks later this year. He can go by land, using the Chunnel. It's loud and clear. All of us have to re-evaluate who we are and what we do. Are you bored with winter, or just bored, and want to fly to an exotic location? Be sure and kiss the kids and grandkids goodbye, as you add to their future misery...

We talk about new science showing climate change is speeding up, and what it all means. He's a powerful voice, don't miss this interview.

Download or listen to this new Radio Ecoshock interview with Dr. Kevin Anderson in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

ALAN ROBOCK on NUCLEAR WINTER, GEOENGINEERING AND CLIMATE CHANGE

What if geoengineering to save the climate turns out badly? What could go wrong? Alan Robock has some questions, and the science to back them up.

As a Distingushed Professor of environmental science at Rutgers University, Alan has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He's an Editor at the important Earth Sciences journal called "Reviews of Geophysics". Alan has been a lead author in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I also ask Dr. Robock about another application of climate science: what happens if there is an exchange of nuclear weapons. Could that stop global warming?

Download or listen to this new interview with Dr. Alan Robock in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WHY GEOENGINEERING MAY NOT BE SUCH A GOOD IDEA

I do a lot of research for each guest. To be honest, I don't have time for detailed notes on this week's interview with Alan. It's very powerful, and loaded with science and reality - as befits a major contributor to science, and to the web site realclimate.org.

Instead, I'm going to give you my notes on a web presentation by Alan Robock and some of his students.

Find this online article here.

Reasons geoengineering may be a bad idea

Climate system response

1. Regional climate change, including temperature and precipitation

2. Continued ocean acidification

3. Ozone depletion

4. Effects on plants of changing the amount of solar radiation and partitioning between direct and diffuse

5. Enhanced acid precipitation

6. Effects on cirrus clouds as aerosols fall into the troposphere

7. Whitening of the sky (but nice sunsets)

8. Less solar radiation for solar power, especially for those requiring direct radiation

9. Rapid warming when it stops

10. How rapidly could effects be stopped?

11. Environmental impacts of aerosol injection, including producing and delivering aerosols Unknowns



12. Human error

13. Unexpected consequences (How well can we predict the expected effects of geoengineering? What about unforeseen effects?)

Political, ethical and moral issues



14. Schemes perceived to work will lessen the incentive to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

15.Use of the technology for military purposes. Are we developing weapons?

16.Commercial control of technology

17. Violates UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques

18. Could be tremendously expensive

19. Even if it works, whose hand will be on the thermostat? How could the world agree on the optimal climate?

20. Who has the moral right to advertently modify the global climate?



We find a graph showing (a) warming at our current emissions rate up to 2050 (b) SRM by dumping 3 Million tons a year into the Arctic only from 2008 to 2030 (b) Dumping 5 million tons a year into the tropics in the same period, and 10 million tons a year into the tropics.

The Arctic experiment seems to lower Earth's mean temperature by about .2 degrees C, which could be said to counter-act or gain about 20 years in the emissions pathway. After stopping in 2030, the heat level regains entirely the original pathway upward without geoengineering.

The 5 million tons a year into the Tropics has a of about .4 degrees C, but as soon as it stops, it starts an upward curve parallel to the un-geoengineered curve, but lower by about .1 degrees by 2050.

The 10 million tons a year causes a significant drop in temperature, going from .8 degrees C above the 1951 to 1980 mean in 2020, to about .3 degrees below that mean temperature (-3 on the chart). That's a drop of 1 degree C. However, when geoengineering stops in 2030, the temperture rises again to about .1 degree C of where it would have been anyway, or 1 deg C warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean temperature.

The Arctic drop expands over much of the Northern Hemisphere, but doesn't affect the Southern Hemisphere much. So it would affect acidity or rain and lakes, and reduce sunlight to both crops and solar power installations, in the Northern Hemisphere. The impacts don't stay in the Arctic. The impacts seem greater in Russia's north than in North America.

Precipitation also drops, the planet gets drier as it gets cooler. The tropical drop affects the whole world, but precipitation is greatly impacted in certain spots, like Northern Australia. The precipitation changes more than the temperature.

Note that the Arctic sea ice continues decline even with the 3 MT year drop in the Arctic, not much differently than having not done it at all.

"Both tropical and Arctic SO2 injection would disrupt the Asian and African summer monsoons, reducing precipitation to the food supply for billions of people."

ALAN ROBOCK ON NUCLEAR WINTER

Alan and I discuss "nuclear winter" in our interview. I ask him if he thinks a major nuclear war would lead to human extinction. Unlike Helen Caldicott, he's not so sure it would.

Alan tells us about the "Toba event" that scientists think occured about 74,000 years ago. A huge super-volcano erupted in Indonesia (leaving a hole and lake today). The sun was blotted out for several years, likely decimating plants and animals.

Genetic scientists chimed in that research into the X and Y chromosomes of humans seems to show a "bottleneck" possibly around the same date. Some scientists speculate that humans declined to around 10,000 individuals (for the whole of planet Earth!). That would explain why most of us share some of the same genes.

If we could survive Toba, Robock says, some people somewhere might survive the nuclear winter after a war.

We also talk about what would happen if India and Pakistan got into a "minor" nuclear war, with the smaller weapons they have. There is no "minor" nuclear war. Aside from the millions of people dead, again the cities burn with so much dust that the sun would be dimmed - all over the world! Crops in North America and Europe would suffer greatly. Food shortages would appear.

That means that any nuclear exchange anywhere happens to all of us. We can't just push it aside as a matter in some foreign lands. That is also why nuclear weapons can never be used. We really only bomb ourselves.

ALAN ROBOCK AT THE NYC SYMPOSIUM ON THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WINTER

Title of Robock talk at the New York City Symposium: (in the morning of Day One, February 28, 2015):

"Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter: Climatic Affects of Nuclear War, Catastrophic Affects to the Global Food Supply"

You can listen to or download this 19 minute presentation by Alan here. It was delivered at this "Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction l February 28-March 1, 2015 at The New York Academy of Medicine" sponsored by the Helen Caldicott Foundation (my thanks to Helen, and Dale Lehman of WZRD radio for recording this 19 minute talk).

You can find audio of all the speeches from the Symposium available for free download here.

In ground burst type of nuclear explosion, fires start with tremendous smoke, but also parts of the ground are blown into more particles in the air. Some obscure the sun, some reflect it, so very little sun reaches the ground. That causes rapid drops in surface temperature, devastating crops.

The smoke in the air also heats the upper atmosphere, which then destroys ozone. More ultraviolet radiation reaches the ground, also devastating for life.

Nuclear winter would be more cold, dry, and dark at the surface, but loaded with ultraviolet light.

The problem has not been solved.

In the 1800's one volcano caused such cooling it snowed in July, crops suffered in the "summer that never was". That's nothing compared to nuclear war.

Reagan and Gorbechov had info from both Russian and American scientists telling them a nuclear war has no winners, only losers in a nuclear winter. They both said that information from scientists helped them end the arms race.

There are now 9 nuclear nations. The current arsenal can produce a nuclear winter that would last decades. A smaller local war would not create freezing conditions at ground level, but would be terrible where it occurred, and create severe effects on agriculture around the world.

CITIES BURN

1906 Earthquake in San Francisco filled the land with smoke, firestorm for 3 days. All buildings but stone ones gone. Same in Hiroshima.

There are about 16,400 nuclear weapons in the world now. Russia has 8,000 US has 7,000. Other countries only have a couple of hundred each. That's all it takes to be a deterrent.

As in our interview, Alan spoke about the hotspot of India and Pakistan - the subject of a study, with 50 Hiroshima size weapons. It would create 6.5 million tons of smoke. Even 5 million tons of smoke can affect climate. 20 million people would die directly. He shows a movie of where the smoke would go.

Most would go into the stratosphere, beyond the level of weather, where rain cannot wash it out. So it would cover the world and last for about a decade. (Inadvertent geoengineering?) It would become 1.5 deg C or 2 degrees Fahrenheit colder. That would be "climate change unprecedent in human history, colder than the Little Ice Age" (10:20)

Two other climate models were run to check this simulation. All three found basically the same results.

In China, the largest food producer, for about 10 years rice would be down about 20 percent, winter wheat 40%; in the U.S. corn would go down by about 20%, soybeans 15%.

But it's much worse than that. The actual bombs of today are much, much more powerful than the Hiroshima-sized bombs used in these studies. One Trident submarine can produce about 1,000 Hiroshimas. The U.S. has 14 Trident subs, and that is just half the American arsenal.

That could be 150 million tons of smoke, and 7 or 8 degrees C colder! Every possible target in Russia and the U.S. had a possible 9 nuclear bombs targetting it. Even with just one on each target, we can still produce the same amount of smoke.

14:40 "yes this would solve the global warming problem" "I did a calculation, if you produce that much smoke and you stop producing CO2, the global warming is gone".

15:04 "So what's new in this work? A nuclear war between any nuclear states using much less than 1% of the current nuclear arsenal can produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history" "Such a 'small' nuclear war could reduce food production by 20 to 40% for a decade."

They revisited nuclear winter calculations made in the 1980's, and the current US and Russian arsenal can still produce global temperatures below freezing. Old 1980's computers were less powerful than an Iphone. Now modern models confirm those results.

They can only test this theory in little bits, using analogs, like winter cold.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

New START treaty signed between Obama and Medyev (sp) signed in 2010. In 7 years, each side would bring arsenal down to 1550 per side. Due to a loop-hole on bombers, it might actually be about 2,000 nuke weapons each. That could bring world total down to about 5,000 weapons.

If instead the U.S. and Russia went down to about 200 each, like other nations, that could be enough to prevent a complete nuclear winter. "We wouldn't be able to produce enough smoke to actually cause temperatures to go below freezing, and sentence the entire world to famine."

Maybe a billion people would die with just a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

The late Carl Sagan, a leader in nuclear disarmament in the 1980's said: "For myself I would far rather have a world in which the climatic catastrophe cannot happen, - independent of the viscisitudes of leaders, institutions, and machines. This seems to me to be elementary planetary hygiene, as well as elementary patriotism."

"We've already banned biological weapons in the world, chemical weapons, land mines and cluster munitions."

Support ICAN the international campaign against nuclear weapons wants to ban nuclear weapons.

Ends with Dr. Zeuss quote: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

HEATHER WOODBURY - AS THE GLOBE WARMS

As the climate crisis deepens, we don't know how to grasp it. That's when we call in the arts, our pathway to the heart and the inner brain. Heather Woodbury has a one-woman play with a huge cast for this coming Earth Day. Heather has been recognized in the performing arts with awards. Her work has spread into books and public radio, and inspired many.

Now Heather is launching a climate change novel on stage. It's called "As the Globe Warms".

Listen to or download this interview with Heather Woodbury (10 minutes) in CD Quality.

In this program I play a quick clip from "As the Globe Warms" the audio eco-comic novel by Heather Woodbury. The clip comes from here.

Here is a 2.25-minute scene from Episode Nine.

The whole series will be finished and available on Earth Day this April 22nd. I love that Heather tested this piece in Florida and Texas, where climate change dare not say it's name...

Here is a description of the new audio play, from the PR blurb:

"Timely and entertaining, 'As The Globe Warms' humorously explores surviving on a planet veering toward social and ecological crisis; Gripping,funny and sexy, the drama crucially connects the dots between climate change, America’s religious-secular polarity, and economic inequality. The protagonists are a working class family on the brink of extinction who befriend Tea Partiers, desperate scientists, off-the-reservation-Evangelicals, and come together via a strange form of eyewitness testimony from bees, bats, polar bears, and frogs.

Woodbury, an OBIE-winning actor and recipient of the Spalding Gray Award, is known for novel-sized solo works that combine serial storytelling with high-wire performance. *What Ever*, her 1990s stage tour-de-force, was adapted and broadcast on public radio, hosted by Ira Glass, and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Filmmaker Richard Linklater (*Boyhood)* likens being engrossed in her serial works to "living INSIDE a novel." Laurie Anderson calls her "an incredible one-woman Dickens." And The Irish Times writes of her work "What if the great American novel turns out to be a piece of theatre?" (Fintan O'Toole)"

LISTEN TO The Newest Episodes from the current podcast here.

WATCH a scene from the original crowd-funded webcast here.

KEEP TRACK OF RADIO ECOSHOCK

Keep track of Radio Ecoshock on Facebook, by Twitter, on our Soundcloud page, and our web site, ecoshock.org.

I appreciate the people who hit the "Donate" button on this page. You are funding the program!

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening, and caring about your world.

Climate Geoengineering and Chemtrails Conspiracy

SUMMARY: In this program we talk with one of the world's top experts on geoeningeering to cool the planet, Harvard's Dr. David Keith. Then from the UK, Dr. Rose Cairns investigates the internet phenomenon of chemtrails, the belief that aircraft are already poisoning the sky. Is it an expression of public fears about geoengineering? Radio Ecoshock 150318

I'm Alex Smith. Let's go.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



DR. DAVID KEITH ON CLIMATE ENGINEERING: SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT

When people talk about geoengineering, for or against, one name keeps coming up. For over 20 years, scientist David Keith has kept open the door for discussion and research on climate modification. At Harvard University, David is a Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He's also a Professor of Public Policy at the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Keith wins awards and criticism for talking about technology to stave off the worst of climate change.

Like most scientists, David Keith works hard to get a society with fewer greenhouse gas emissions. He also has a Calgary-based company trying to remove CO2 from the air. But today we pick David's brain on technology to artificially cool the planet, by blocking out some of the sun's rays. It's called Solar Radiation Management, or SRM.

First David describes how spraying sulfur into the upper atmosphere would work. Essentially, if the particles are small, they stay up there for long periods of time, reflecting some of the sun's rays back into space. The sulfur droplets would be sprayed from an airplane, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) high in the atmosphere.

Scientists in the Arctic Methane Emergency Group have already called for regional SRM in the Arctic. They hope to preserve what is left of Arctic Sea ice, to slow glacial melt, and to prevent large-scale releases of methane from the clathrates or thawing permafrost. I ask David what he thinks of this proposal.

David Keith says the concept of regional Solar Radiation Management is meaningless. The particles will spread down over at least most of the Northern Hemisphere, rather than staying over the Arctic. Due to the way this planet's air mixes, the sulfur particles would not enter the Southern Hemisphere to any large degree. So trying to cool the Arctic means repeatedly recharging the sulfur spraying over the Arctic, and essentially cooling the whole Northern Hemisphere, with expected and unknown side effects for crops in Canada, the United States, Europe and Scandinavia, and Russia.

Not all scientists agree that regional cooling is impossible. Next week I'll talk with Dr. Alan Robock. His group ran models looking at what would happen if someone dumped about 5 million tons of sulfur over the Arctic. We'll find those results next week. U of Ottawa PHD student Paul Beckwith also thinks Arctic cooling could work. We just don't know for sure.

That is one reason Dr. Keith says more research is needed into SRM, and he supports the recent call for that research by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. However the Academy support does not translate into real funding. That probably has to come from governments. That isn't happening yet. David says there is a political and social taboo about even researching geoengineering. Some groups, like the ETC Group, worry if the public thinks there is a quick technical fix, then we won't change away from burning fossil fuels.

One of the key unknowns is the impact of SRM on rainfall. It may reduce rainfall in some areas, but may also reduce extreme rainfall events. Again, we'll hear more about that next week with Dr. Robock. But David Keith says the idea that SRM will cause drought is a "false claim".

Don't get the idea that David Keith is a total supporter of geoengineering. He worries about things like damage to the ozone layer, and many other affects. Really Keith is not sure SRM should ever be used. He is sure we should do more research to see what it can and can't do.

We also discuss the possibility that the airborne sulfur might replace the cooling we currently experience by global dimming. Scientists like Dr. James Hansen (and many others) say that industrial pollution is blocking enough sunlight to hide at least 1 degree C of the heating we really create with current carbon dioxide levels. Millions of people a year, especially in Asia, but in all industrial countries, die every year because of this harmful pollution. If the public demands a clean up of the air, for health reasons, then the planet will warm significantly, due to the hidden heat "in the pipeline".

Dr. Keith thinks the relatively tiny amount of sulfur required to acheive the same global dimming would be far less harmful than the low-level smog humans are breathing. It takes 1/50th or 1/100th of the amount of sulfur to acheive the same effect.

And don't forget, we already put about 50 million tons of sulfur a year into the lower atmosphere, mostly from coal burning, but also from other industrial processes. The amount being suggested for the upper atmosphere might be 10 million tons a year. We don't know yet.

Of course we may also get more acid rain as the sulfur comes to ground. And SRM does nothing to stop ocean acidification - but Keith says there are plenty of tools we use, even though they don't solve everything.

David Keith claims SRM could reduce net effect of CO2 by about 100 gigatons, equivalent of US emissions over a century.

CHEMTRAILS ACTIVISTS VERSUS GEOENGINEERING SCIENCE

I ask David Keith specifically about chemtrails. He's not only on the radar of the chemtrails crowd, but is often demonized as a key figure in what they think is a world-wide conspiracy to hide the poisoning of the sky. Dr. Keith has received a few death threats, and gets hassled when he speaks at geoengineering forums and events. Anecdotally, some airline pilots have also become wary of chemtrails activists.

Keith notes in the earlier days of the chemtrails movement, say around the year 2000, a lot of internet posts thought the sky was being sprayed for mind control. Now that has shifted to one of two "reasons": either to control weather (as an economic or military weapon); or to cool off the planet. It is as though geoengineering for climate has been going on for a couple of decades (believers claim). We'll have more about chemtrails and the relationship with geoengineering science in the next interview.

Meanwhile, David Keith says geoengineering, encompassing many technologies (from sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, maybe seeding plankton, and solar radation management) - is the only way to significantly reduce global warming within a single lifetime. Maybe, given our current failure to reduce emissions, we will experience multiple climate-driven emergencies so serious, we will need this tool? David Keith says we should at least do the research to find out if SRM could work, and what the expected side effects might be. Then people and their governments could decide - although I'm not sure the public would be consulted if any government decided to go ahead and spray the sky.

Some SRM research is going on in the UK, in Germany, and likely in Russia. Like the American military, the Russian military has long had an interest in climate weapons. Most started with cloud seeding, but it may have gone much further. In that case, the chemtrails people may have actually seen real life secret experiments by the military. Who knows?

I ask David Keith if such experiments were taking place, would we know? Would he know? He replies that if the experiments were large enough to actually cool anything, various satellites and other tracking would pick it up. David Keith was approached by a CIA agency, asking many of the same questions I asked him. He says as a kind of "lefty" Canadian, he find it "pretty disturbing" that secret agencies were looking into this. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also interested.

On the other hand, the military looks at a huge range of options, and their interest doesn't mean they are actually doing anything at this time. Plus Keith feels so plugged into the few geoengineering research projects around the world, he thinks he would probably know if large-scale experiments are happening. He says they are not, at this time.

FUNDING FROM BILLIONAIRES

It's not just the military. A few billionaires are aware of the climate risks to their wealth. Richard Branson comes to mind, and some geoengineering research scientists hope to win Branson's $25 million prize to suck significant amounts of CO2 out of the air. Maybe then Branson's aircraft fleet could keep flying?

David Keith acknowledges he and his study group have received several million dollars from one of the world's richest men, Bill Gates. The Gates money is being used to set up scientific conferences on geoengineering to exchange research and data. That is all public knowledge, not a conspiracy.

David Keith's landmark book "A Case for Climate Engineering" is available from MIT press and the usual book sellers.

If you would like more, here is a good BBC "Hardtalk" interview with David Keith on You tube (24 minutes long)

This 2012 David Keith lecture on solar radiation management at Stanford University is very informative.

Note that many David Keith video clips are posted by his adversaries in the chemtrails movement, so beware of selective editing. I suggest you stick with complete presentations, from reliable sources.

Download or listen to this 24 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with David Keith in CD Quality or the faster-downloading but lower quality Lo-Fi version.

On most computers, you right click with your mouse to save an interview file. Just note where the computer stores it!

ROSE CAIRNS: THE CHEMTRAILS CONSPIRACY

A group of people, perhaps even some of my listeners, believe there is a world-wide conspiracy to control the weather and maybe your mind and health - by dumping chemicals out of aircraft at high altitudes. They call these persistent high clouds "Chemtrails".

Now the internet phenomenon of the chemtrails movement sets itself up to fight off geoengineering, like solar radiation management, which it sees as more of the same. A sub-set of chemtrails believers also want to stop climate negotiations. They don't believe in human-induced climate change.

We are going to explore the meaning of the chemtrails meme. Our guest has written a sociological analysis of the chemtrails phenomenon. We will not argue whether of not the chemtrails conspiracy is true or false. Instead, Rose Cairns investigated the methods and possible meaning of this underground movement.

Dr. Rose Cairns is a research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Research unit at the University of Sussex, in England. She's also been an environmental campaigner.

We talk about her paper titled "Climates of suspicion: 'chemtrail' conspiracy narratives and the international politics of geoengineering". It was published online in April 2014 by the Climate Geoengineering Governance project. Read the full paper as an online .pdf for free here. It's a great read!

Just for the record, Rose Cairns made plain in that interview that she doesn't believe in the chemtrails conspiracy. And just for the record, neither do I, although I keep an open mind about such things.

I don't doubt that the military in the United States, Russia, and probably now China, are working on experiments to develop weather weapons, like huge storms to strike an opposing army or navy. That's probably been going on since the 1960's. Here is a web site where you can find a lot of documents on this.

The video talk by Rosalind Peterson to go with this site is here. Rosalind believes experiments are going on to modify the weather, but stops short of saying there is a world-wide conspiracy to poison us from the sky. In this video at least, she sticks to statements that can be backed up to some degree by the documents she has collected. Peterson also links widespread tree death to common ground level air pollution. In this video, she declares against the widespead conspiracy theory. By all means, check out the many government and other documents she has collected. It's an education.

There are plenty of real conspiracies. Major banks admitted they fixed everything from interest rates to the price of gold. The George Bush Administration conspired to start a war in Iraq. So it is not irrational to believe in a conspiracy.

In my own exploration on the Net, I found a nexis of beliefs on the site called "Air Crap", and a link to a site called "His Heavenly Armies" - a Jesus blog. Both contained screeds against vaccines, abortion, the American HAARP installation, and of course, geoengineering. Is this coming from the Left or Right spectrum of political belief? Rose says it's a mixture of both. We have "left" ideas about evil corporations and protecting nature, along with "right" ideas about too much government control and the need for personal liberty.

Air Crap includes stories like: "UN Official Exposes The Intentional “Transformation Of The World Economy” As The True Purpose Of The Climate Change Lies".

One chemtrail activist wants people to go to the Paris Climate talks this year. She thinks those talks will just legitimate the spraying that is already happening, as geoengineering. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of climate change denial I found rampant on many chemtrails sites. We don't need "chemtrails" they say, because there is no global warming. It's all a hoax, they say, repeating many of the climate denial talking points common on the Net.

Being opposed to dumping chemicals in the sky, the chemtrails folks are all over any proposal to do solar radiation management. They attend public talks and conferences, posing questions that scientists find strange and hard to answer. On the other hand, chemtrails activists do monitor the situation closely, and serve as a news source for anyone concerned about geoengineering. Just be careful to cross check what you find.

Just how the chemtrails movement will affect any public discussion about geoengineering is yet to be seen. Here is a quote from Rose's paper:

"While this belief is marginal, it is not insignificant: a Google search of the term ‘chemtrails’ returns over 2.6 million hits, and a study by Mercer et al. (2011) found that 2.6% of a sample of 3105 people in the US, Canada and the UK believed entirely in the existence of a conspiracy involving chemtrails (and around 14% believed in the conspiracy to some extent)."

If we do run into a climatic emergency in the future, and scientists says they have a temporary way to cool things off, will the public response be partly shaped by the chemtrails movement now? That's where the research by Rose Cairns becomes so fascinating.

Some people encountering chemtrails go through an emotional and sometimes life-changing experience. I've heard the same from listeners who suddenly get the reality of climate change. Are they different?

Some of my Radio Ecoshock listeners are already deeply offended that we haven't spent our time proving chemtrails are real. Others are wondering how to deal with the chemtrails crowd. Are there avenues of communication, or are most chemtrails folks insulated from further facts or arguments? It's difficult, Rose says. She knows a few friends or even family members believe chemtrails are real. Once a person adopts that as their belief system, anyone questioning it becomes either (a) too blind to see the obvious record in the sky! or (b) obviously a dupe or an active part of the conspiracy. That doesn't leave us much room, or much choice.

I think there is ample evidence that if the upper atmosphere is cold enough, the moisture in air-plane exhaust becomes visible as a "contrail". Science has already shown that if we have enough contrails, in the right conditions they can stimulate the development of a layer of high cirrus-type clouds. There is more water vapor in the atmosphere of a warming planet (about 7% more since 1970, we've been told). And of course there are way more planes in the air. Aircraft traffic is traffic, just like cars.

All of that suggests to me that most impacts on the sky are not from a vast hidden conspiracy, but just the result of pollution from aircraft. But as I said, I'm willing to believe, based on some documents available, that the military of various countries have run, and may be still running, some very small scale experiments to modify the weather. These may generate "chemtrails". But personally, I doubt that's a very big impact.

Some chemtrails folks, like Dane Wigington, blame absolutely everything on this vast evil experiment to poison the sky. The California drought? That's not climate change - it's chemtrails says Wigington. Tree die off? Not our pollution, but chemtrails. Fukushima? Chemtrails. It's a single theory to explain everything, and like all such single answers, it's just not right.

That's my opinion.

Here are a couple of chemtrails skeptic sites: Contrails Science and Metabunk.

Or check out this article: by Grant Petty, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Chemtrails: Real threat or urban legend?"

And here is Dane Wigington's site, geoengineeringwatch.org. Good luck!

A well-known pro-chemtrails movie is WIWATS - "What in the World Are They Spraying?"

Listen to or download this interview with Rose Cairns in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

SAVE THE SALAMANDERS!

We wrap up with a short piece about the endangered salamanders. It turns out North America, and not the tropics, has the most of these reclusive creatures. Japan and China have some over 5 feet long. Here's a video of a giant Japanese salamander coming out.

Matt Ellerbeck, "the salamander man" gives us an update on this threatened species - who hold the miracle of how to regenerate lost limbs, or even missing eyes. If only we knew what they know...

On Radio Ecoshock you often hear me try to expand our view beyond humans to the many other marvellous creatures that live on Earth. It's time to hear about one of them. Call them salamanders, or call them newts, but in too many parts of the world we have to call them endangered.

Our guest has dedicated his life to saving the salamanders. Matt Ellerbeck works through public education in schools and the media - and through his web site at savethesalamanders.com.

Download this short interview with Matt Ellerbeck (in CD Quality only).

Just like the planet, we are out of time this week for this program. My thanks to everyone who Tweets and spreads the word on Facebook. Find all our past programs as free mp3 downloads at our web site, ecoshock.org.

Thank you for listening, and please join us again next week for more thrills and spills.

Will Humans Go Extinct Soon?

Investigating claims of near-term extinction for humans. Clips from Guy McPherson, John D. Cox, Dr. David Archer. Interview w. John Michael Greer. Analysis of predictions by Malcolm Light of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG). Radio Ecoshock 130605 1 hour.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the 12 minute interview with John Michael Greer in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

THE LAST GENERATION?

Mike Ruppert: "The last time you were on about a year ago, you said essentially at that point, that the only thing that could save us was an immediate cessation of all industrial activity. How much further do we have to go now?"

Dr. Guy McPherson: "I strongly suspect that because of those positive feedbacks, even completion of the on-going collapse will not prevent near-term human extinction as a result of climate change - a scenario that would involve geoengineering, a complete collapse, and 27 other miracles that you might come up with that would actually allow our species to persist beyond another human generation."

That was Dr. Guy McPherson, speaking on Mike Ruppert's Lifeboat Hour on the Progressive Radio Network, April 21st, 2013.

Are you living in the last human generation? Now that the 2012 Mayan Calendar craze is over, there is a new movement claiming we are heading into "near-term human extinction". One group says the Northern Hemisphere will be devoid of people by the 2030's, with the population of the Southern Hemisphere dying out a few years later.

Why? Due to a combination of events caused by climate change. The Arctic will release very high levels of methane gas. It will come, they say, from frozen methane on the shallow sea bed, now exposed by the end of sea ice. And from the land, from rotting vegetation frozen over the ages in the Permafrost, now released.

Methane is at least 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. For a few years, it may be as much as 100 times more powerful. If a lot of methane is released in a decade or two, global mean temperature may rise more than 10 degrees Centigrade some say. It could be twice that in the Arctic. Could our complex industrial civilization could survive? It's unlikely agriculture could feed our current billions. Most current species would disappear in the 6th great extinction. Are humans immune to extinction?

Is it happening already? Arctic sea ice is melting more each year. should we try to cool the Arctic, if not the world? That's the view of a small but growing group of scientists and concerned citizens. It's called geoengineering.

Most scientists caution we have not reached such a desperate stage yet. Geoengineering could just make things worse. It's never been done; we don't know the side-effects.

Two weeks ago we had the Australian author Clive Hamilton on Radio Ecoshock. Clive explained the big risks of attempting to block out the sun, called Solar Radiation Management. In his book "Earthmasters" Hamilton describes a somewhat unholy alliance of billionaire Bill Gates, a small clique of worried and respected scientists, some nuclear weapons lab types, and some of the world's biggest oil and coal companies. They are all pushing geoengineering to cool the world.

We are going to investigate near-term human extinction. We'll peer into one of the primary sources of this idea, Malcolm Light, from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group.

You may find some of his solutions outrageous, but they have been presented in all seriousness to the British Parliament. The AMEG group wants geoengineering to start this year, in 2013.

We'll hear who is spreading this ultimate climate despair. Some are people I respect, my friends. Others are from the fringe, the anonymous spaces of the Internet.

I also interviewed a German scientific expert on extinction, and a widely published author. It's a wild mix, as we encounter the strangest and most fearful prediction of human demise.

Oh, and one more thing. I can't give you the final answer. We don't know yet, do we? In fact, as collapsenik Dmitry Orlov writes in his blog, we can never know whether we are extinct!

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW!



GUY MCPHERSON ON RADIO

Let's begin with that voice that tweaked my brain. My Radio Ecoshock Show for December 5th, 2012 was called "On the Road to Extinction." It features a speech by Dr. Guy McPherson, delivered at the Bluegrass Bioneeers Conference in Kentucky. Guy, you will remember, is a qualified natural scientist who left the University of Arizona to pursue his own free speech. I wondered if the extreme statements Guy made about extreme global warming were true. I spent two days cross-checking pretty well everything he said. I posted my results online. His sources all checked out.

None of those scientific papers and authoritative reports said humans would go extinct before 2050. Guy McPherson made that jump, in part due to a frightening scientific-looking paper by Malcolm Light. I'll get to that.

These days Guy's blog "Nature Bats Last" features stories like "The irreconcilable acceptance of near-term extinction" by Daniel A. Drumright, and "On the Acceptance of Near-Term Extinction" by Gary Gripp and "Preparing For Near-Term Extinction" by Carolyn Baker. These people explain how they came to accept that humans are done-for, and soon. How do we cope with living in the end-times? There are others, a growing chorus of others. They take this belief very seriously, as if already proved by science and developments in the real world.

I disagree.

I think humans will still be around, trying to survive a continually warming world, for hundreds of years, if not more. Shortly, I'll explain why. We'll hear about the long human history of end-times thinking from popular author and commentator John Michael Greer. I've got a Radio Ecoshock reading from a new book by Asoka Bandarage about current trends of extinction in aboriginal peoples. Author John Cox wonders if we might choose extinction.

You can hear more of Guy McPherson on near-term human extinction on the Gary Null Show on May 14th, 2013. Find it on here on prn.fm.

JOHN MICHAEL GREER WEIGHS IN

Before we go digging into the science of near term human extinction, let's get a different view, this time from John Michael Greer, author of over 20 books and the Arch-Druid.

[Greer interview]

Essentially, Greer points out we've had a string of "end of the world" incidents, from Y2K to the end of the Mayan Calendar. Greer thinks we'll always need a replacement for that kind of thinking, and "near-term human extinction" could be it. He has his own theory of a bumpy decline which he calls "catabolic collapse". Greer was heavily criticized by those who believe near term human extinction is inevitable and is a scientific point of view. When I raised the danger that all sorts of end-times seekers and tin-foil types would pile on board this new idea, participants in the Near Term Extinction discussion site, - yes that's online already - they said "of course, we know that. But that doesn't change the science behind what we are saying."

MALCOLM LIGHT PREDICTS A METHANE FIRESTORM

Let's look at that science. In his seminal post June 20th, 2012, titled "We're Done", Guy McPherson links to this quote from Malcolm Light: quote: “This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century.”

McPherson has defended Malcolm Light and the Arctic Methane Emergency Group in a various places, including Transition Voice, the organ of the Transition Movement.

Now remember, I'm not questioning McPherson's other sources, including Utah Professor Tim Garrett, the International Energy Agency, and a long list of others. I've checked those, and Guy is right. They are frightening predictions of warming up to 6 degrees Centigrade, or more, by 2100 - a climatic catastrophe for sure.

I'm concerned with the conclusion that we will be wiped out, soon, and especially using Malcolm Light of the AMEG group as a source.

Malcolm Light's core article, posted on The Arctic Methane Emergency Group web site is titled: "Global Extinction within one Human Lifetime as a Result of a Spreading Atmospheric Arctic Methane Heat wave and Surface Firestorm".

In what looks like a scientific paper, complete with complex graphs and charts, we find this stunning announcement: "The absolute mean extinction time for the northern hemisphere is 2031.8 and for the southern hemisphere 2047.6 with a final mean extinction time for 3/4 of the earth's surface of 2039.6."

Well that's pretty precise isn't it? On August 2031, say goodbye for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. There is a lot in this article. I won't call it a scientific "paper" until I can find evidence it was peer-reviewed or published in an official journal.

This theory, and the radical solutions I'll discuss in a minute, were presented to the Britain's Environmental Audit Committee. The UK Parliament responded to this all-party committee's report "Protecting the Arctic". This AMEG paper went beyond the fringe into serious consideration by a major government.

What was the Committee told, as published by AMEG? Quoting from Malcolm Light's article, "This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century."

We get slightly different estimates of when humans will go extinct in notes to one of the complex graphs in Light's article. It reads:

"Figure 8 shows a different method of interpreting the extinction fields defined by the (12 +-3) + 6% year long lifetime of methane (IPCC, 1992) assumed to have been instantaneously injected into the Arctic atmosphere in 2010 and the lifetime of the globally spreading methane atmospheric veil at different methane global warming potentials. The start of extinction begins between 2020 and 2026.9 and extinction will be complete in the northern hemisphere by 2057. Extinction will begin around 2024 in the southern hemisphere and will be completed by 2087. Extinction in the southern hemisphere, in particular in Antarctica will be delayed by some 30 years. This makes property on the Transantarctic mountains of premium value for those people wish to survive the coming methane firestorm for a few decades longer."

Let's pick up on that key phrase "assumed to have been instantaneously injected into the Arctic atmosphere in 2010". That leads to a building block of the whole theory, and the panic to geoengineer the planet.

An unlikely source has disputed the essential point. Somewhere out there in cyberspace is a person who made tens of thousands of posts on the site democraticunderground.com. She or he used the name "Muriel Volestrangler" - which just happens to be an alias used by British comedian John Cleese.

"Muriel" says Malcolm Light cherry picked the very worst single measurement of methane release in 2010, a startling spike reported by the American agency NOAA, from the Arctic Svalbard base on the day of November 16th, 2010. Light uses that spike for all his subsequent frightening calculations.

But here is what New Zealand blogger, Climate Show radio host Gareth Renowden wrote in his "Hot-Topic" blog about the graph Malcolm Light used:

"The graph comes from NOAA’s Earth System Research Labs Global Monitoring Division’s new data visualisation web page here (you’ll see a CO2 graph first, but click on the menu to the left of the graph to get the methane version). The readings for the last year are preliminary, and shown in brown. The last five data points are so far off the chart that they are almost certainly going to be rejected as being caused by local contamination. That’s happened before — the green dots show when — and at the moment other Arctic sites are not showing a similar rise. However, Svalbard is close to sea floor methane hydrate deposits that are known to be venting gas".

--- end Quote from Gareth Renowden at hot-topic.co.nz

Muriel Volestrangler tells us the data points showing the big methane spike have been revised by NOAA, who always said such measurements were provisional. I checked. The spike is gone. The steady rise over the decades is back. You can see it for yourself at the NOAA site linked above.

Therefore, most of the calculations in Malcolm Light's paper are not based on reality. They show what could happen, maybe, if there was ever a big release of methane in the Arctic, which continued at the new high level. But that hasn't happened at all. There's no doubt about it. Actual methane levels in the global atmosphere have NOT spiked beyond the gradual increase expected. No emergency. Yet. Although it could happen...

Volestrangler finds several more gross assumptions, all for the worst, and unprovable hypothesis in the Malcolm Light paper. Muriel writes:

"But since the basis for it all is a one month anomaly at one measuring station, which has since been counted as a false reading, it is all based on a mistake. He's taken that one month error, and extrapolated it until the world has heated up by 14 degrees C, which he says will therefore be an extinction event."

It's good news if Malcolm's paper is faulty, unless you have an agenda that requires governments to act in panic.

WHO IS MALCOLM LIGHT? AND WHAT DOES HE WANT?

At AMEG we find only this: "Malcolm Light, specialist in earth sciences, blogger at globalwarmingmlight.blogspot.com". He claims a PhD from the University of London, but we are not told in what field.

I checked that blog address, but globalwarminglight has been taken over by companies selling financial services. Dead end.

An article at the Ecologist Magzine describes Light as an inventor and retired professor. Not much information there.

In a post at peakoil.com, Light says of himself: "Malcolm Light, retired Arctic oil, mineral and climate researcher". Getting closer.

I followed up on papers published by Malcolm Light, which he cites in his AMEG posting. Here is one titled "Saline Fluid Flow and Hydrocarbon Migration and Maturation Related to Geopressure, Frio Formation." It's from the place where Malcolm Light worked: The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas, Austin. He is a petroleum geologist who spent most of his career in Texas preparing information to assist extraction of fossil fuels.

Now we understand the vision that Malcolm Light is advancing to solve the climate crisis - a solution which hardly anyone in the environment community knows about.

Digging around on the Net, we find Malcolm Light has two main answers for the methane emergency. Other scientists like David Archer at the University of Chicago dispute there is any such emergency at this time.

PROJECT LUCY (IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS)

The first he calls "Project Lucy". I found it at the Iowa City Climate Advocates site. In this paper, Malcolm Light gives himself a new description, quote: "Malcolm Light, PhD (Univ. of London), consultant with many years of experience in methane, diamonds and numerous related topics."

Here is Light's solution Number 1. Quote: "Project Lucy therefore aims to design, build and test a microwave transmission system targeting low-altitude methane clouds with the aim of breaking the first C-H bond as soon as the methane erupts into the atmosphere from the Arctic Ocean. The transmitters can be mounted on submarines, planes and after 2015 on boats and drilling rigs when the Arctic ice cap has melted."

Light also calls for the use of HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program super radio wave broadcasting facility in Alaska to break up methane. He wants to use the multi-billion dollar secret military facilities, in both the United States and Russia, to emit a very specific frequency. Not only will this break up methane into less harmful chemicals, Light claims. It will create a bi-product of nanodiamonds, tiny flecks of diamonds, in the upper atmosphere, which would serve to reflect more sunlight away from Earth. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Malcolm Light bases this whole radio waves kill methane and makes diamonds theory on experiments in making artificial diamonds, under high pressure, in laboratories. No one has ever tried what he suggests. so far I can't find a scientist who can make any sense out of this proposal in the real world. Perhaps someone could try it and see, if anyone would fund the research.

At least I like the idea that radio will save the world! That matches my own hopes with Radio Ecoshock.

ARCTIC DRILLING TO SAVE THE WORLD - THE ANGELS PROJECT

Malcolm Light's second way to save the world from the alleged Arctic Methane Emergency is far more dire. Characteristic of the answers seen by a petroleum geologist, or big fossil fuel companies, his solution is to install a massive array of gas drilling rigs in the Arctic, trying to capture methane from the sea and land, before it can rise up into the atmosphere.

This second plot is has the delightful name "The Angels Project". I found this in a PowerPoint presentation by Light, titled "A Proposal for the Prevention of Arctic Methane". "ANGELS" is an acronym for "Arctic Natural Gas Extraction Liquefaction Sales".

The sub-title reads: "A Proposal for the Prevention of Arctic Methane Induced Catastrophic Global Climate Change by Extraction of Methane from beneath the Permafrost - Arctic Methane Hydrates and its Storage and Sale as a Subsidized "Green Gas“ Energy Source".

One slide says:

"This 'methane hydrate gun', which is cocked and ready to fire at any moment, is an extremely serious scenario that will cause abrupt climate change (CCSP, 2008; IMPACTS 2008). Even if this subsea volume of Arctic methane is released over a longer interval of some ten to twenty years it will still result in a massive feedback on global warming and drive the Earth on an irretrievable plunge into total extinction."

Shell Oil, Exxon/Mobil, StatOil, and all the majors will be thrilled to hear we MUST start massive drilling for natural gas in the Arctic, right away, or go extinct!

Light continues:

"After 2015, when the Arctic Ocean becomes navigable (Figure 5. Piomass in Naumer, 2012) it will be possible to set up a whole series of drilling platforms adjacent to, but at least 1 km away from the high volume methane eruption zones and to directionally drill inclined wells down to intersect the free methane below the sealing methane hydrate permafrost cap within the underlying fault network."

He predicts huge methane plumes erupting from certain identifiable areas of the Arctic Sea (from troubled areas of the sea bed). These should be capped instead by drilling rigs, and the energy used instead of oil or coal.

Quote: "Separated methane is stored in LNG tankers for sale to customers as a subsidised green alternative to coal and oil for power generation and for air and ground transport."

And here is how the world will be convinced to burn this methane:

"Support should be sought from the United nations, World Bank, national governments and other interested parties for a subsidy (such as a tax rebate) of some 5% to 15% of the market price on Arctic permafrost methane and its derivatives to make it the most attractive LNG for sale compared to LNG from other sources."

"This will guarantee that all the Arctic gas recovered from the Arctic methane hydrate reservoirs and stockpiled, will immediately be sold to consumers and converted into safer byproducts. This will also act as an incentive to oil companies to produce methane in large quantities from the Arctic methane hydrate reserves. In this way the Arctic methane hydrate reservoirs will be continuously reduced in a safe controlled way over the next 200 to 300 years supplying an abundant "Green LNG" energy source to humanity."

I note the "safer byproducts" of burning methane (natural gas) is carbon dioxide, the global warming gas that lasts up to 100,000 years. Malcolm glosses over that.

So... we will run the world from the Arctic methane erupting from clathrates and permafrost melting? Global warming will force us to capture this massive source of greenhouse gases and convert our society to methane power. Forget about solar or wind power, tidal, or simple changes to drastically lower power use. We'll turn lemons into lemonade as the Arctic warms. We'll spray sulfates too, using aircraft, to cool the Arctic, and hope those radio waves create some reflective "nanodiamonds" in the upper Troposphere or lower Stratosphere to further deflect sunlight. It's a total industrial solution to the woes of industrial civilization.

Think about this for a moment or two. As I say, we are forced to extract and burn still more climate-wrecking fossil fuels or go extinct, Malcolm Light claims. But we only have a limited amount of carbon we can still burn and stay below two degrees. I doubt there is enough left in that budge even to build and install this fleet of Arctic drilling rigs. Never mind the huge emissions required to convert methane into LNG.

No such Arctic drilling has been tried. Shell Oil's attempts last year turned to disaster when they tried to withdraw their rig before winter. It crashed aground in Alaska.

Beyond that, we haven't a clue whether the methane will really appear mainly along certain fault lines Malcolm Light has splashed across a colorful graph in his AMEG paper.

None of that research has been done. Does anyone really believe we can capture meaningful amounts of methane from a geologic release occuring across the vast Arctic tundra, and coastlines tens of thousands of miles long? The whole world economy would have to be converted to drilling rigs to capture a tiny percent of the methane. It doesn't make sense.

Adding it up, it's a huge and possibly dangerous fantasy, with near-term human extinction nowhere in sight.

The UK government responded to the Environment Audit Committee's report by saying they do not envisage an ice-free Arctic in the next few years, or a collapse of the major ice sheets on Greenland.

The Government wrote:

"Geo-engineering techniques for the Arctic at present do not offer a credible long term solution for tackling climate change. Further research is needed to understand how such techniques work and their wider impacts on climate systems. In the meantime, therefore, we remain unconvinced that using 'technical fixes' is the right approach and efforts should not be diverted from tackling the fundamental drivers of global climate change."

Denied.

There are all sorts of curiosities lurking around in the AMEG plan to save the Arctic, and the world. They suggest the move away from burning dirty bunker oil in ships is a mistake. Ships should burn the dirtiest, most sulfur-laden fuel we can find, to add more sun-deflecting clouds. Commercial aircraft, they suggest, should get fuel additives that create chemtrails to ward off the sun. Unbelievably, they use the word "chemtrails" thus setting off another whole Internet hive of paranoia.

You can download AMEG's plan for the Arctic as a .pdf file here.

In fact, I think a case can be made that Malcolm Lights paper does two things:

First, it creates a story to bring the public, and even environmentalists, on board for massive gas drilling in the Arctic. That's something the big oil and gas companies want badly.

But it also stirs up the noise level around climate change, which may be just as important to the major energy companies. As University of Chicago climate scientist David Archer told us in a Radio Ecoshock interview, once the public becomes over concerned about methane, coming from the far away Arctic, we can forget about our own roles in burning carbon every day, in our cars, homes and factories. It's carbon dioxide that really counts in the long run. Carbon dioxide, not methane, will last determine the heat of the world for the next 100,000 years - for millennia after the short-lived methane has broken down.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAVID ARCHER ASKS "WHAT METHANE EMERGENCY?"

Let's hear a few words from David Archer on Radio Ecoshock. Check out this Radio Ecoshock interview from our February 15, 2012 show.

That was climate scientist David Archer, author of the book "The Long Thaw" and an editor at realclimate.org. We talked on the Radio Ecoshock Show February 15th, 2012, as part of my survey of three scientists, including AMEG's Peter Wadams interview here.

Read more about David Archer and the methane debate here at Joe Romm's blog at ThinkProgress.

Perhaps in the next few decades we will see a significant burst of methane from the Arctic. It's something that should be monitored much more. We should spend a billion dollars on research, to determine the real level of threat from the frozen methane in the shallow sea beds, and from melting permafrost on land. I've done several Radio Ecoshock shows about all this, and will continue to do so.

I think AMEG has done some good work. We've had good interviews from ice expert Dr. Peter Wadhams from Cambridge, and Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa. Paul taught us all about the jet stream, the latest science. I hope to have him back as a guest.

But I think the paper by Malcolm Light is flawed. It may be based on faulty data and unproven assumptions. At this point it's nothing more than an interesting idea, in the realm of science fiction.

We may very well experience a methane emergency in the Arctic. It's possible without the work of AMEG we might not be watching as we should. Let the group carry on, but without the histrionics about near-term extinction of humans, and re-assessing their role assisting big fossil fuel companies, whether intended or not.

I'm Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock.

OTHERS WORRIED ABOUT EXTINCTION

I can't wrap up a show on human extinction without saying that other very serious scientists, public policy wonks, and artists are deeply concerned with it. As we learn more about biology, it's apparent that all species have gone extinct sooner or later. You may recall my interview with Dr. Peter Ward about the Medea Hypothesis - that all forms of life are ultimately self-destructive. Find that on our web site with a Google search. Or listen to my 25 minute interview with Peter about the Medea Hypothesis here.

In last week's program, I considered one argument for our survival - that some humans will continue to live directly from nature even if our complex world civilization fails completely. We heard from National Geographic author Scott Wallace, and his book "The Unconquered". If you missed that, download it here.

We hear other ways of facing ultimate threats to our humanity, from the author of a brand new book titled "Sustainability and Well-Being". As I read through my review copy, I was startled to find author Asoka Bandarage says some humans are already going extinct. In fact, the aboriginal people we were counting on may be the first to disappear. In the show I play you a reading from that new book, recorded for Radio Ecoshock by Asoka from her book "Sustainability and Well-Being", published by Palgrave.

We may not go extinct in some wave of deaths, but in smaller collections of endangered humans.

This is another reason why I disagree with the theory of near-term human extinction. It doesn't fit with what biologists know about extinction, unless you believe a Malcolm Light type apocalypse where the whole atmosphere catches fire or the oceans suddenly die.

DR. FRANZ ESSL ON DELAYED EXTINCTION

To understand more, I called up Dr. Franz Essl. He is from the Department for Biodiversity and Nature Conservation, in the Austrian Environment Agency, in Vienna. Essl was co-author of a new paper titled "Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions".

I intended to play you the interview, but... to be honest the phone line was too poor to get audio easily understood. I apologize to you and Dr. Essl.

Here are some of the highlights of that interview.

Essl began by explaining that species go extinct after a long delay. Quote:

"In ecology there is an understanding that species reaction to changes in environment often follows with considerable delay. That means the impact of changes caused by human activity like habitat fragmentation or habitat loss often translates with a delay of years, or many years, or even with decades to the full loss of species in the given habitat. This is well understood on a local level.

So if a site is being reviewed to a fraction of it's former size we can expect quite a substantiation fraction of species will finally go extinct in this habitat. However we are not aware of a scheme of this phenomenon on a larger scale, so if this applies to the full range of species on a large geographical scale like a continent. This was the reason we started to analyze this phenomenon on a larger scale, to get an idea of how important this might be on a global scale."

What they found was amazing. Changes to ecology say in 1910, before the First World War, determined exinction of a species up to one hundred years later.

The authors chose Europe because most members of the EU had similar record-keeping on biodiversity, records that went back at least a century. European countries also kept track of Red List species, those who were most endangered.

I asked: It seems important for the public to realize extinction is not just about polar bears, tigers or some exotic large mammals in far away places. Are there dangers of extinctions of simple plants and fish in Europe?

Essl said: "If you have a close look on Red Lists in each country in Europe, you see quite a lot of species which are in the most severe categories in the Red Lists, which means they have a strong risk of getting extinct in these countries.

We also analyzed the proportion of species which are Red Listed in Europe. We looked at seven different taxa ranging from fish to mammals, and also to plant species like ?? plants. And what we found was the currently on a national scale in Europe between 20 to 40 percent of species are already considered to be at risk of getting extinct in the future.

So there are many species. Some of them are prominent species well-known to the wider public because of their conspicuousness, or their activity. Others are much more species that are at risk of getting lost at the national scale which are much less known. However they might be very important in eco-function or conferring other benefits to human well-being. So this is really a very important phenomenon.

And I have to say not only a European phenomenon of course. It's also a phenomenon which applies at the global scale. So the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature], which is the global conservation union, which provides Red List assessment on the global scale has found in a recent assessment in the year 2012 that approximately 30 percent of all vertebrate species are being at risk of getting lost globally in the coming decades.

That's really a very important phenomenon that we have created and I am convinced of a global extinction problem."

Thirty percent of all vertebrate species, which includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish! Earth's ecosystems, this study found, works at a slower time-scale than humans. We haven't realized the delay factor. Many species we see now are already headed for extinction, determined perhaps a generation ago.

If pre-war social and industrial expansion caused such damage, I shudder to think what the new chemicals released in the 1970's and 80's will do decades from now. Or the mass expansion of cities and industrial agriculture.

Dr. Franz Essl told me:

"I suspect in regions which have just been transformed even more strongly than Europe, recently, like in emerging industrialized countries, for instance China, or other South East Asian countries, or countries who have lost a large fraction of their natural habitat in their recent history like some countries in the sub-tropical and tropical regions, might expect an even more delayed, or more pronounced delay in species loss.

This is particularly worrisome because many of these countries are the mega-biodiverse countries which means the most, or a huge proportion of global biodiversity. And a very strong delay of species extinction. That might mean lots of species are really at risk of getting lost in the long term."

This study did not even try to calculate the impacts of climate change. Socio-economic development itself was enough to drive massive extinctions. Climate change will add to that in the coming century.

The paper "Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions" was published in April 2013 in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Another take-away from this look at the biology of extinctions, I think, is that humans are very unlikely to go extinct all of a sudden. We may have already set the stage for out extinction, but it may take a hundred or more years to play out. Personally, I think humans will limp along, surviving through changes larger than anyone has dared to imagine.

Make no mistake, I'm deeply worried by the reports we carry on Radio Ecoshock.

The author of the new book "Scatter, Adapt and Remember", Annalee Newitz, thinks humans will survive anything. She looks through our ways of surviving past crisis despite incredible odds.

Even James Lovelock, the British inventor and scientist who years ago warned we were doomed to massive climate change, didn't predict a total end to the species. He speculated humans would end up as a few breeding pairs surviving around the Arctic Sea, the last place cool enough to support our mammalian life form. But given the climate record so far, that would take hundreds of years, if it ever gets that bad.

WILL WE CHOSE EXTINCTION? JOHN D. COX

Perhaps we can only go extinct if we accept that as our fate. Our last clip comes from 2005, by author and long-time Sacramento journalist John D. Cox . Cox was speaking at the launch of his book "Climate Crash: Discovering Rapid Climate Change and What It Means to Our Future". He brought up one of the few cases of extinction in our recent history, namely the Viking settlement on the coast of Greenland. They were hit by climate change, as the times became colder.

Find the full John D. Cox book launch on C-Span here, as recorded July 12, 2005 at the National Academy of Sciences. My clip comes from the Q and A.

John D. Cox asks, why did the Norse fail in Greenland, while the Inuit survived? The Norse failed to adapt, there was a cultural identity which prevented them from learning from the Inuit. They chose to become extinct there. Will we decide to adapt? Or will we decide to stay the same, and thus be extirpated?

Will we choose extinction, even when more natural ways of survival are known, are right before our faces? Are we too inflexible to survive, to wedded to the many fossil powered slaves we all enjoy, from cars to dishwashers and vacation flights?

As John Michael Greer suggests, we may bump down some hard stairs for a few hundred years. I expect plenty of mass die-offs, a decrease in human population, and forced climate migrations. But in 2050, I think my grandson will be alive, and despite all, he'll be glad to be alive. That is the way we are.

Please support Radio Ecoshock if you can, at our web site at ecoshock.org.

I ask you to educate yourself to the challenge, by listening to our scientists and authors in past shows, as free mp3 files on our site. Support your local non-profit radio station, so we can stay on the air.

I'm Alex Smith. Don't give up to near-term extinction thinking. Use wit, love and persistence to change the paradigm. And don't be afraid to have fun.