How Will We Power the Future?

In-depth interview with Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin on his book "Powering the Future: How We Will Eventually Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow." Dr. Rose M. Cory's new science on positive feedback loop discovered in the melting Arctic. Plus song "No Such Thing As Waste" by Australia's Formidable Vegetable Sound System. Radio Ecoshock 130227

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Download/listen to Radio Ecoshock 130207 "How Will We Power the Future?" in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to the Robert B. Laughlin interview (38 min) in CD Quality (34 MB) or Lo-Fi (9 MB)

Download/listen to the Rose Cory interview (17 min) in CD Quality (15 MB) or Lo-Fi (4 MB)

Worried about prices at the pump? Or is it still way too cheap to save a livable climate? Even big fossil fuel executives wonder if we'll find enough energy, or retain an economy to pay for it. In just a minute, we'll encounter a powerful mind who drove through the options and calculations, to arrive at surprising conclusions about powering the future.

I'm Alex Smith. Later in this program, we'll talk with Dr. Rose Cory, lead author of a newly published paper. She found another surprise agent whipping up the production of greenhouse gases in the far North. It's yet another positivie feedback loop in the rapidly changing Arctic. About 24% of exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere is frozen under the surface. That empire of permafrost is disappearing quickly. Scientists estimate ten to twenty percent will melt in this century alone. The latest research says just 1.5 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels will tip the permafrost into a vast melting process, unleashing more carbon dioxide than we have in the atmosphere now.

That is a recipe for climate disaster unseen for millions of years. We are already half way there.

I'll also play you a new song, from an upcoming tour of North America and Britain, by a hot new Australian band. It's good green music for your ears.

But first, this in-depth conversation with a surprising mind, about your energy future.



Listen to this Radio Ecoshock program right now.

ROBERT B. LAUGHLIN



Everone knows our civilization is doomed and our kids will be digging through the rubble, for cans of dogfood.

Apparently Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin missed the memo. He wrote the book "Powering the Future: How We Will Eventually Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow". Laughlin is the Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he's taught since 1985. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics. His previous books are "Crime of Reason" and "A Different Universe".

This is Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. I read the book. I called Robert up to argue with him, and that's a big mistake, because he's smarter than I am. Anyway it's a trap. Robert Laughlin wants us to argue with him.

The old saying is "Don't jump to conclusions." But that is exactly what Lauglin did in writing this book. He presumed humans will find the energy needed in the future, and then figured out how. I stewed over this book, thinking "well he hasn't counted on an economic crash" or "where is the climate damage?"

Laughlin says he expects both. There could be an economic collapse, and serious climate damage. But, he says, humans are more or less the same generation after generation. There is no reason to expect out descendants will be very different from ourselves.

When Laughlin addresses student audiences all over the world, he asks them: "Will we still have cars? Will we still fly? Will there be electricity?" Eventually, they say "yes" - because they envision the same basic desire and need to travel, and to power things.

We get into an intriguing insider's look at all kinds of energy. For example, if Germany doesn't want nuclear power, they are saying "yes" to more Russian natural gas. But gas is still a greenhouse gas, it's limited, and supplies may drop quickly if we are depending on fracked gas. The jury is still out on how fast those fracked wells deplete.

Laughlin, who is at the Department of Physics at Stanford University, seems fairly impartial about nuclear power. After admitting he may have worked on classified nuclear programs (weapons?) - Laughlin says "we haven't had the nuclear conversation yet". Those decisions may come AFTER oil, gas and coal become hard to get and ridiculously expensive. New generations of humans may make very different decisions.

By the way, his Stanford students from Kazakhstan say the uranium trains that used to run to Moscow are now going to China. China has NOT backed away from nuclear energy, even after Fukushima.

We talk about the potential and pitfalls of solar energy. Laughlin is excited about the Andasol I project in Spain, where solar reflectors heat up a salt mixture to a liquid state. That acts like a battery which can store the sun's energy, to generate electricity via steam generators, even after the sun has gone down. Laughlin thinks the same technology could be used to store any kind of energy, even wind power. He's involved in a patent and a project to develop that.



Andasol I solar power station, Spain (courtesy of Wikipedia)

If you doubt what Laughlin says, be prepared to follow up through the last 81 pages of the book - his towering collection of end notes. If we just went through those, it should be worth a degree in itself.

The book "Powering the Future" is provocative, and crammed full of useful perspectives. It was a privilege to spend quality time with Robert Laughlin, and I hope you enjoy our talk as much as I did.

SUPPORT RADIO ECOSHOCK

You are tuned to Radio Ecoshock. This is my seventh year producing radio that matters for non-profit college and community stations around the world. You can help keep this big ball of ear waves going, by offering your support at our web site, ecoshock.org. Then share the blog, at ecoshock.info, and our Facebook page at radioecoshock.

Find your local radio station broadcasting Radio Ecoshock here.

NEW SCIENCE FROM THE ARCTIC - HOW SUNLIGHT CAN MAKE GREENHOUSE GASES

Now back to one of our specialties here, keeping you up to date with the latest climate science.

As Robert W. Service wrote: "There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun." You are about to learn something new going on, powerful but unseen, in the melting far North. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

In the past decade, satellites, scientists, and aboriginals looking at the Arctic find larger areas without snow cover, for longer periods . Arctic heating is greater than anywhere in the lower temperate zones.

A huge portion of planet Earth is frozen, we thought permanently frozen, calling it "permafrost". It's beginning to thaw, and we have fresh science showing new pathways for greenhouse gases to enter the atmosphere.



Dr. Rose Cory

Just out is this paper titled: "Surface exposure to sunlight stimulates CO2 release from permafrost soil carbon in the Arctic" It was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 4, 2013. We have the lead author on the line, Rose M. Cory, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill.

In a nutshell, this team of scientists discovered that lack of snow cover is leading to more greenhouse gases releases as sunlight stimulated microbial action on the formerly frozen plant matter of the permafrost.

Vast, I mean vast, Arctic plains in Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, and Alaska, are popping up with new lakes and puddles. These come from a process called "thermokarst" failures. Watch a short video about it here.

Picture a kind of slurry of organic material washing around in streams, run-off and ponds. The real news in this paper is a new actor: the role of sunlight itself. It isn't just the microbes feeding on newly released organic material. Sunlight itself can release greenhouse gases directly. Rose Cory describes how that works.

We knew that exposing more permafrost to the warming Arctic air would result in the release of more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. We just didn't understand how it worked, how much, or how fast. Now scientists have new figures to work with - including an estimate 40% higher than previously thought. That's a big number. Here is the quote from the paper:

"Our results suggest that photostimulation will rapidly (days to months) increase conversion to CO2 by an additional 40% or more in thawed and released C compared with that remaining in the dark, and that photo-stimulated bacterial use of this C in natural streams may equal or exceed its degradation in the dark alone."

Rose Cory confirms they have found yet another positive feedback loop in the Arctic - home to more than a half dozen feedback loops already. It's serious news we all need to understand, as formerly snow-covered lands become exposed to the warming Arctic sun.

Read about this new science in the New Scientist magazine here.

Rose says its "jarring" to return from the Arctic, where such major and dangerous changes are taking place, to here home in Chapel Hill North Carolina. Most people in the U.S. (and around the world for that matter) have no idea of the big developments in the Arctic. With your help, listeners, we can spread the word. Tell someone about this research, and make more people into "Arctic watchers".

Radio Ecoshock has a number of programs devoted to the melting permafrost, the disappearing sea ice, and loss of glacier ice on Greenland. I recommend our December 19th show, 2012 "Climate: the Arctic Thermostat Blows Up" and also in 2012, our February 15th program with 3 scientists "Arctic Emergency - Global Threat".

I also did a special from the February 2012 meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, titled "What If the Permafrost Thaws?"

Please listen and pass those links along.

OUR FEATURE SONG THIS WEEK: "NO SUCH THING AS WASTE" by the band Formidable Vegetable Sound System

A sustainability-based electroswing ukulele show all about permaculture called Formidable Vegetable Sound System is touring through Canada from Australia from May-August. Here are just some of the tour dates:

22nd April- U-Mass for Earth Day, Amherst, MA

26 June - Glastonbury Festival, UK

27 July - Secret Garden Party, UK

2 Aug - Bass Coast Festival, BC, Canada

7 Aug - Shambhala Festival, BC, Canada

If you check out this You tube video, the audience is swaying and dancing.

The album will be launched worldwide on April 6 (with a launch party being held at Ceres Community Environmental Park in Melbourne, Australia.)

Anyone interested in buying the album pre-sale can head to permaculturesongs.com or our facebook page (Permaculture Ukulele)

IF ONLY WE COULD SEE IT...

The process that might do our civilization in is happening right in your city or region. If we had eyes to see gases, we'd see the carbon and methane pouring up into the sky, from our streets, homes, factories, and farms. Billowing clouds of climate change in the making, and very little human change on the ground. Check out a camera technology that makes greenhouse gas emissions visible in this ABC News piece.

Still, green nature pops up in the cracks of the sidewalk. In coming programs we'll cover action in the big picture, and ways a million longing hearts can steer in a different direction, including me, including you.



I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock again. Please support the program, spread the word, and join me again next week.

The Coming Greenhouse World

“Look. I’m going to do my best to end up in a kind of hopeful optimistic place. But – I am by nature, by sort of profession, I am kind of a professional bummer-outer of people. So we’re going to have to deal with that for a little while. Because there’s no use not. We need to figure out just where we are, in order to figure out where we need to go.”

Yes, it's ugly being Green these days. That was Bill McKibben, opening a speech in Colorado, touring with his new book "Eaarth", the post-Copenhagen capitulation to a new and damaged planet. Download the whole speech as an mp3 from our Climate 2010 page.

I'm Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock, where reality becomes the new horror genre.

Not the oil blowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Not the BP dispersants, the largest chemical experiment on the ocean, ever. Not even the phony permits, non-existent backup plans, the cover-up.

The real unreported tragedy: nobody gets this story. Humans now know they are shifting the climate toward a Greenhouse world. We just had the hottest January to April global temperatures ever recorded. Over 200 scientists just put out a warning, that press didn't bother to print.

And yet the Green champions in the Senate still brought out a bill calling for more offshore drilling. The Canadian government still approves even deeper wells on the East Coast, drilling now as you hear this, with even less hope of recovery from an accident. And they want to do it in the Arctic, on the West Coast.

The shame, we say, is that we didn't get a chance to burn all that oil, to send the carbon into the atmosphere, where some will fall back into the ocean anyway, into the Gulf of Mexico, and all oceans, turning them acidic, killing off life at the basis of the food chain.

Nobody wants to say, if we cared for our children and grandchildren at all, if we cared about the world, we would stop all oil exploration, anywhere, today. Call it off! The atmosphere can't take another drop hauled out from under the sea, from under the land, from the Tar.

We will all drive away from this accident, as though the Greenhouse world isn't coming, arriving slow and almost unstoppable, visible and denied.

In this Radio Ecoshock special on the coming Greenhouse World, I'll interview Melanie Lenart, a scientist from the University of Arizona, and author of the intriguing new book "Life in the Hothouse - How A Living Planet Survives Climate Change."

Plus clips from a new speech by Professor George Kennedy from the University of California, Riverside. Title: "What Awaits Us In the Greenhouse World" (transcribed in the full blog entry below).

And I'll review a book "The Cretaceous World" - the time of the dinosaurs - which may give us a clue where we are heading next.

READ MORE (with loads of links)

The Unknown Climate

Music Credits: "Slow Me Down" by Emmy Rossum, Album: "Inside Out" 2:34; "White Flag" by Dido, Album: "White Flag EP" 4:00

In the Spring of 2010, the East Coast of the United States was nearly drowned in an extreme precipitation event. Ditto parts of Australia, and Rio in Brazil. This is the other half of "global warming" - global wetting. Scientists have been warning about it for years - now it's happening. Can anyone say "Extreme Rainfall Events?"

Right afterwards, Eastern Canada went way above any temperature records, hitting summer beach weather, the eighties - 25 degrees C - in the first week of April. Still, hardly a single Network weather person mentioned "climate change". That's because a George Mason study shows that 67% of "weathercasters" believe that global warming is a natural event, and 27% think it's just a scam that isn't happening at all.

About half of those authoritative (but good looking!) faces on TV, telling us about the weather, have a degree in Meteorology. The other half just have the pretty or handsome face. Practically none have any scientific training in climate - but they talk like experts anyway. It's very damaging.

Our first guest says humans are very close to climate collapse. David W. Orr is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, at Oberlin College, in Ohio. He's been a pioneer in greening higher education. He advises many leaders and foundations. His latest book is "Down to the Wire: confronting climate collapse."

Gaia theorist James Lovelock has just given another disturbing interview to the BBC in London. Lovelock claims it's too late, we shouldn't waste our money on things like wind energy, but spend it all on adapting to the inevitable climate shift. How do you answer that?

Another worry proposed by Lovelock, is that climate change may not develop as a steady rise in either temperature or sea levels. It might happen as sudden jumps and reversals. He says previous climate records show a long-term heating can include intervals - perhaps decades or more - of cooling as well. Given all the global cooling nonsense from last winter's snowfall in the U.S., can any climate action plans can survive unsteady weather?

But Lovelock is making increasingly bizarre statements as well. Like this one: China is planning on moving it's population to Africa. Really? In this show I look into "Twelve Batty Things About James Lovelock".

I raised Lovelock's worries about irregular progression of climate change, partly because of another paper almost unknown to the general public. A theoretical ecologist at University of California Davis, Alan Hastings, says that climate tipping points may not be predictable at all. According to his work, there may be no signals or warnings, before a radical shift. For example, temperatures could go up rather suddenly, and stay there.

Hastings' paper didn't get much press, but it's quite important. As far as I can tell, Radio Ecoshock has the only original interview on the new paper from this distinguished scientist.

I'll send out a second blog entry, with more links for you to follow.

Enjoy,

Alex

DOUBT IS OUR PRODUCT - THE BLOG

MUSIC CREDITS:

Opening music from Thamnos. Great new duo from Germany and England. Green aware. Check out their sample audio and video.


Songs: In the Year 2525, two versions: the original #1 hit from 1969 by Zager & Evans, album Exordium & Terminus, RCA End version from Venice Beat, featuring Tess Timony, released 2005.


RADIO STATIONS: If you need time for station ID, download two 29 minute segments from radio4all.net - posted Sundays.

NOTES AND LINKS FOR THIS WEEK'S SHOW:

Why do media run "scandals" about climate science? They get full page ads from car and oil companies, and they don't give a damn about our future. It's all in the latest ratings, the quarterly profit statements.

But why do we accept it? You know why... today, there's a good chance you got in your car, turned on a coal-fired light bulb, ate an agro-business meal. We want to believe we are not guilty of polluting the atmosphere.

Some people need to believe that so badly, they are ready to shoot the messengers. Literally. Our climate scientists.

And this anger (at unemployment, declining health care, degraded nature, who knows what all) - is developing from a cult of the few, into a mass movement. The madness of crowds, as we head into the greenhouse world.

That is what this Radio Ecoshock program is all about.

CLIVE HAMILTON

We go to Australia, to talk with Clive Hamilton. He's a Professor of Public Ethics, supported by Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. Clive is lighting up the media, with a fantastic new series on climate denial. Plus his controversial new book "Requiem for a Species, Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change."

His previous books include Affluenza, Growth Fetish, Scorcher, and Silencing Dissent.

I've been reading about harassment and death threats to climate scientists, most recently in an excellent 5 part series by Clive Hamilton. The most recent installment, published in Scientific American, has the sub-head "Researchers must purge e-mail in-boxes daily of threatening correspondence, simply part of the job of being a climate scientist."

Clive Hamilton is a Professor of Public Ethics, supported by Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Previously, he founded and ran a progressive think tank called the Australia Institute.

His five part series includes:

February 22, 2010: Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial
February 23rd: Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?
February 24th: Think tanks, oil money and black ops
February 25th: Manufacturing a scientific scandal
February 26th: Who's defending science?

- all published on the ABC National web site.

I wouldn't have believed the death threats and low blows, if I hadn't heard Stephen Schneider's own story. If I hadn't talked with other climate scientists who say the same.

As we heard from Clive Hamilton, the world's best climate scientists, and green activists, are under attack.
Now we'll hear directly from one of them.

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER

Stephen H. Schneider is Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University. He's a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Schneider has advised the federal government during the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He is one of America's pre-eminent climate scientists, one of the driving forces behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We'll hear an exclusive interview with Stanford's famous climate scientist, Stephen H. Schneider. His latest book has been frozen out by major media. His teaching has been harried by attacks from climate deniers. Schneider talks candidly about death threats, and attempts by some in Congress to charge him as a criminal. Shades of Joe McCarthy, as humanity reacts to the bad news - with more madness.

The interview comes in a telephone conversation between Professor Schneider, and one of the few independent environmental journalists left on the planet - Stephen Leahy of IPS, independent press service. Dr. Schneider opens up with news of his alleged crimes against the nation.

[Schneider-Leahy interview]

That was Stanford's Stephen H. Schneider talking with Stephen Leahy. Find links to Schneider's web page in my Radio Ecoshock blog entry dated March 11th. And you'll find links to Stephen Leahy's IPS article "Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists," as published on the Tierramérica network, hundreds of papers, on March 8th.

Canadian climate scientist and IPCC contributor Dr. Andrew Weaver told Leahy "'We're in a bizarre time, powered by greed and fear. The general public is more confused than ever,' 'And good scientists are saying to themselves, 'Why would I want to participate in the IPCC?'

The newspaper world is falling into bankruptcy, due to debt-laden mergers and acquisitions, competition from free information on the Internet, and a generational move from print to audio and video. Hordes of good reporters have lost their jobs - and would you believe it, newspapers tend to let environment reporters go first. Are they protecting their big-business advertisers? Of course not. It's just co-incidence.

You can help. Stephen Leahy may be the new model - a journalist who works directly for his or her readers. Stephen is off on a whirl-wind tour on three continents, covering conferences ranging from forestry to the oceans. He is your reporter - but Stephen needs help to keep going. Please visit his web page at stephenleahy.net, where you can "Adopt An Environmental Journalist" with a small donation by PayPal. Steve has two kids to feed, and we need to keep him going. Do it.

--------------

This is the last gasp of the fossil fuel age. The men who make billions every quarter, the longer they can stall, are buying whoever they can in the media, the blogosphere, and the houses of government.

And this is all tied into a long-standing conspiracy that goes deeper than mere money. It finds a home in Libertarians and ideologues who fear big government, or hate it.

A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center says disgruntled Americans are being whipped up by well-known media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Somehow, in muddled minds, the science of climate change has been deftly attached to 911, unemployment, and the new extreme "patriot" groups. That report is called "Rage on the Right."

The militias, and the haters are back. They fly planes into the IRS, or attack the Pentagon single-handedly. Both Leahy and Schneider worry it's just a matter of time before a climate scientist is shot as well. I hope they are wrong - but just imagine the coming madness of crowds after a series of strange climatic events. After a heat wave kills thousands, after a mega-storm wipes out another city. After the crops fail, again. Our picture of society may fall off the wall, as anger takes over.

NANCY ORESKES: MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

We'll go now to a real conspiracy. Three scientists who frightened the world, who morphed from cold-warriors to anti-environmentalism. The founders of the current climate denialism. The institute they founded, named after World War Two warrior general George C. Marshall - took tobacco money, and then oil money, to stop government action, to endanger millions of lives, and future generations.

We'll get the story from the author of a new book "Merchants Of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth About Climate Change". Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. She spoke at the University of Rhode Island, on March 2nd, 2010.

You'll hear 15 minutes from that speech. Find the whole thing on the climate 2010 page or our web site, ecoshock.org.

1 hour speech as mp3, CD Quality 56 MB (recommended, only mediocre audio quality)

Or Lo-Fi 14 MB(for telephone or slow download locations).

[Oreskes clip]

That was Naomi Oreskes, on a tour for her new book "Merchants Of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth About Climate Change". The recording comes from the Vetlesen Lecture series, at the University of Rhode Island, March 2nd, 2010.

I remember battling Frederick Seitz back in the early 1990's, on a whole series of environmental fronts. If there was an evil chemical needing regulation, something killing off people or the biosphere, Seitz and his industry backers were against taking any action.

Now the three old men have finally almost faded off the horizon, but their George C. Marshall Institute was taken over by the American Petroleum lobby. The web site exxonsecrets.org lists grants by the Exxon Mobil oil company to the Marshall Institute totaling $840,000 since 1998. The Institute funded and published a who's who of climate deniers, including the late Sallie Baliunas, Frederick Seitz, Patrick Michaels, Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, and Richard Lindzen. The tiny crowd who continue to mislead the public about climate science, while whipping up anti-government feelings.

According to Wiki, the executive director of the George Marshall Institute helped develop the doubter's strategy for the American Petroleum Institute. Wiki continues, quote:

"The institute's CEO William O'Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, is a registered lobbyist for Exxon Mobil."

So there is the real conspiracy - not by climate scientists to take over the world -but by industry hacks and cold warrior ideologues - to keep us upset and stupid, while the world burns. Beware the doubters and deniers.

But that was history. Now, in 2010, the anti-science belief system sprouted by three American scientists, has grown into a cult for now, and threatens to become a popular movement.

Nature - and physics - don't care what you believe. What is coming will come.

I'm Alex Smith. As always, I appreciate you taking time to listen to Radio Ecoshock. Write me any time, radio at ecoshock.org.

Gas Pump Blues - for 100,000 Years

MUSIC: GAS PUMP BLUES by Frank Ace

They're on practically every corner. Some people feel nervous at the gas pump. Others are outraged. Everybody knows prices are going nowhere but up.

Did you know a gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds - or 2.7 kilos? Almost all of it - 5 pounds, 2.2 kilos - goes straight into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, out the exhaust pipe. And that substantial weight, for every additional gallon or liter we burn, remains as CO2 for 100,000 years.

Don't believe it? Stay tuned. We'll talk with David Archer, a top climate scientist. He's the author of "The Long Thaw". That's what we're living in, the time all humans will live in, for ten times the length of all history. In our second half hour.

First, I want to know: when does the oil society seize up? What happens to the American way of life, if gasoline goes to $7 a gallon? That's what financial expert Jeff Rubin predicts. Think that's tough? What about $20 a gallon?

We're going to dive right into an interview with Chris Steiner. Christopher Steiner is senior staff reporter at Forbes magazine. His new book is Twenty Dollars per Gallon: How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives - for the better.

READ MORE
with more links.

Burned Out: Crops and Climate Change

Food and climate change with two speakers: Dr. Geoffrey Heal, an eco-economist from the Columbia School of Business, NY, speaking at the London School of Economics; and author/food activist Wayne Roberts at McMaster University, Canada. Wayne Roberts courtesty of Maggie Hughes "News from the Other Side" at CFMU FM McMaster U Radio.

No copyright music.

IMPORTANT NOTES FOR RADIO STATIONS AND PODCAST SUBSCRIBERS:

This is the last show of our 2009 Spring season. Rebroadcasting stations, podcast listeners and regular downloaders: please note - I've laid out 8 key re-runs of Radio Ecoshock for the Summer. The download list will show up on Wednesday July 8th, as well as on our archive page. Radio stations can find a list of any music used, or other production notes, in the expanded listing at http://www.ecoshock.net That's starting July 8th.

These are the most important, and most downloaded programs we've ever done - as chosen by the listeners downloading from our site. The e-votes are in.

I'll be out of email contact from July 11th to August 11th. I'll check out all email then, please don't expect a reply. There is no electricity or phones where I'm going.

I'll be back with a whole new season, 48 news Radio Ecoshock Shows, starting in Late August. Don't change anything on your podcast - the new shows will show up as soon as they are ready in August.

Here are the links to full speeches by our feature speakers:

Geoffrey Heal to London School of Economics (about 57 min)
CD quality 52 MB
speech Lo-Fi 12 MB
Geoffrey Heal Q and A (about 30 min) Lo-Fi only 7 MB

Wayne Roberts "Food and Climate Change" about 1 hour. Maggie Hughes "The Other Side of the News"


Here is the basic script for this week's show:

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock - home of the awful truth.

We could talk about a half million more people kicked out of their jobs. The record number of regular mortgages 2 or 3 months behind. Collapsing states, budget slashing towns, bankrupt banks.

But hey, why bother with all that bad news, when the biggest story ever told is unfolding before our eyes. I know disappearing coral, birds and plants nobody has heard of doesn't sell. How about this: the food we all eat is under pressure even in these early days of the climate shift.

[Geoffrey Heal Quick Clip: No One is Working on Hotter Crops]

That is economist Dr. Geoffrey Heal speaking to the London School of Economics. He's going to tell us about agricultural loss already underway, and projected in the coming decades. Why fertile California will take a hit. Dr. Heal wonders why America is so slow to react. Could it be the fossil fuel lobby? Did the oil and coal boys twist the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill?

Then food activist and author Wayne Roberts works through the challenge of feeding a world where nature is disrupted. Food and global warming, in a speech recorded by Maggie Hughes.

Personally, I'm heading out tomorrow to buy a couple more sacks of hard red wheat for our emergency supply cupboard. Each bag is 44 kilograms, or about 50 pounds, of the best organic. I'll pour the wheat into Mylar bags, toss in two or three oxygen depleters, and seal it all in a 5 gallon bucket. That should keep at least 10 years, maybe 20.

The wheat news is good and bad. In the Summer of 2009, wheat prices are going down, because so many new acres have been planted. That doesn't mean it will all survive until harvest. Canada is a big wheat producer, and the Canadian Wheat Board predicts a 20 percent cross loss due to a drought in Western Canada. So dry, the seeds never sprouted, or tiny blades of wheat died. It's the Northern tip of a new Dust Bowl expected to fill the North American West as carbon levels rise in the atmosphere.

Two other big wheat producers, China and Australia, are also in big trouble as the rains stop reaching the fields. Increasing heat waves are also a threat to wheat.

Did I mention the new unstoppable wheat disease called ug99. It was first found in Uganda, but has now spread to the Middle East, including Iran. The only response is to burn the crop. So far, we have no resistant varieties, and experts in both Europe and North America say they expect ug99 to arrive sooner of later. That could devastate wheat production.

I like bread. I like some every day. Maybe this year, maybe three years from now, wheat and bread products could rocket up in price, or disappear for a while. That's when I'll crack open my buckets and make my own.

On to the show. First of all - American climate politics. The U.S. Supreme court recently gave the Environmental Protection Agency control over carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Why didn't the Obama Administration use their green appointees to get busy on greenhouse gases, through the EPA? Suddenly, a new piece of legislation appears in the House, where political contributions reign. Suddenly, a bunch of Republicans vote for the Waxman-Markey Bill, which is really a license for the coal and oil companies to carry on.

Let's get a different perspective from Dr. Geoffrey Heal, an economist from the Columbia Business School in New York. His speech on May 6th 2009 second guessed the Obama energy deal - and went on to explain why America has been hustled backward on climate change. Then Heal, who has been working the connections between economy and the environment since 1979, paints a dire picture of agricultural losses - as high as 40 percent world wide, as the climate shifts to it's new hot state.

Heal3 Waxman Markey end of speech.wav 5:31

Why is the American government the last to know we need action to save the climate? Geoffrey Heal gives us three bad reasons, in this speech as first visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, the LSE.

Heal1 Anti Science Companies.wav 2:05
Heal4 Corporate AntiScience.wav 2:04
Heal5 US is a Petro State.wav 5:27

Is it true that the United States is the third largest oil producer, and second biggest natural gas producer, in the world? No wonder American climate policy seems to Saudi Arabian.

There you have it: fossil fuel corporations fought to cloud our minds, aided by a history of Conservatism and anti-scientific religious interests. I think he should have added all of us. We love our big cars and leaving all the lights on. We love to fly around on holidays while eating far too much. We're all in this climate tragedy together. Never forget the power of the people to empower a wrong-headed civilization - on our charge cards, no less.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. I'm hungry to get on to our main topic this program: how climate change will affect our dinner plates. Here is more from Dr. Geoffrey Heal, from his speech "Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change"

Heal6 Farm Loss.wav 3:37
Heal 7 World Hydrology Calif Farms.wav 4:15

Finally, Dr. Heal wrestles with the economic cost of mass extinction. Sad but true, we need to enter this fact into the company books: up to 40 percent of all species on Earth could go extinct by 2100. How will that affect sales, you ask?

Geoffrey Heal is not your standard corporate accountant. He knows extinctions impact the environment in many strange ways. Take the Pacific Sea Otter for example. It was almost wiped out in California - and what happened? The fisheries also died out off that coast. It turns out the Sea Otter is a "corner-stone species". The otters were eating other creatures that kept things in balance for fish. When Sea Otters from Oregon were brought back to California, the local fishing improved.

Other connections between the species are harder to see. Let's hear Dr. Heal explain how the extinction of the Passenger Pigeons may have boosted Lyme disease in the United States.

Heal 8 Cost of Extinction.wav 11:14

That was Dr. Geoffrey Heal, from the Columbia School of Business, speaking on "Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change". This presentation was at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics in Britain, May 6th, 2009. Audio enhancement by Carl Hartung and Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock. Find the full 55 minute speech plus Q and A on our climate pages, at www.ecoshock.org. And in the links at the top of this blog entry.

[Radio Ecoshock Station ID]

I'm Alex - and we're talking climate disruption of the food supply.

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That's author and food activist Wayne Roberts, currently employed as a sustainable food advisor for the city of Toronto, Canada. He spoke at McMaster University in Hamilton on May 5th, 2009 - on “Food and Climate Change”.

Here is the first part of that speech by Wayne Roberts.

OSofNews_090519_WayneRoberts_For Radio 18 min.wav 18 min

You have been listening to Wayne Roberts, a long time food activist, making the connections with the polluted environment and climate change. This talk at McMaster University in Canada was part of a college radio program called "The Other Side of the News" on CFMU FM. Producer Maggie Hughes just announced she had to give up her weekly radio program for health reasons. But she'll continue to get the facts others miss, in specials posted on the audio exchange web site radio4all.net That's radio the number 4 all dot net for Indy producer Maggie Hughes past work, and coming shows. Thanks Maggie.

Or check out her web site at www.oside.ca

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Find the full speeches by Dr. Geoffrey Heal and Wayne Roberts as free mp3 downloads on our web site. Choose "climate" from our Audio on Demand menu, lower down on the main page, ecoshock.org. Or get Wayne Roberts full speech as broadcast on "The Other Side of the News" here.


Load up your IPOD, mp3 player or computer with hot programs and speeches from Ecoshock. It takes a lot to really grasp this developing storm, in your heart.

I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for being on the journey with me.

Have a great Summer. Enjoy yourself - and put away the harvest as it comes.

ENJOY YOURSELF (It's Later Than You Think)

It is already too late to stop rampant climate change? An emailed blog posting asks: "Do we just enjoy the time we have left?"

Scientist James Lovelock thinks so. He wanted the sub-title of his new book "Vanishing Gaia" changed from "Final Warning" to "Enjoy it while you can."

Is it really that serious? We'll hear top American and British administrators say it is.

But I want to contrast the response by two scientists: James Lovelock, who at age 90 plans to blast out into space, and NASA's James Hansen, the first world-class climate scientist to put himself up for arrest, to stop mountain top mining in West Virginia, this week. (Hansen was arrested, along with 31 others, including actress Daryl Hannah, on a West Virginia road, outside a humoungous toxic coal ash dump.)

Doubting coal barons, the black secret of George Soros, U.S. climate dodgers in Canada - from outer space to the deepest pit - enjoy yourself. This is Radio Ecoshock.

The program is also loaded with music clips – from Guy Lombardo’s opening 1950 hit “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)”, another version by The Specials UK concert, samples from country music star (and anti-mountain top removal activist) Kathy Mattea, talk and music from Tom Petty, an oldie by Lee Dorsey – and a lot of fun clips, including stuff from the trailer for “Skipjack” and even Winston Churchill.

But the question is deadly serious. Should we give up?

Find all the video and audio links used in this Radio Ecoshock program here. Click on through to the source material – on our climate crisis.

READ MORE

AMERICAN CLIMATE CHANGE

The star of today's Radio Ecoshock Show is the American climate.

We'll start with the most important Press Conference of 2009: the release of the multi-agency report "Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States". It's the list of violent storm warming, heat wave predictions, cities and parts of whole states either going under-water, or roasting without water. Everyone will know the climate is badly out of balance.

Welcome to our special coverage of new report "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" from the White House briefing. After years of denial, terrible changes already happening in U.S.

This one hour version of Radio Ecoshock contains:

a) clip from Dr. Jane Lubchenco (see bio notes below)

(b) full presentation of Dr. Thomas Karl (outlining terrible impacts for the U.S.)

(c) analysis interview with Joe Romm, from climateprogress.org

(d) full presentation by Dr. Jerry Melillo (more terrible impacts)

Plus a special interview with Dr. Anthony Barnosky on his new book "Heatstroke, Nature in an Age of Global Warming"

This is the most important report on climate change ever released by the American government. The picture is bleak. Many Southern U.S. cities will become hot like Baghdad during the summer. Crops will burn out.

On the coasts, new flooding estimates show more than 3 feet of sea level rise before 2100 - enough to flood New York subways, rail-lines, and much more. That doesn't count surges from storms expected to be much worse.

Please listen to this compelling audio.

The book "Heatstroke" is also quite important. Antony Barnosky is a field researcher and curator at University California Berkeley. He realized climate change was coming in the early 1980's - and set out to document how Nature (especially small mammals) responded to previous climate shifts. He fears mass extinctions for many reasons, especially since there may never have been a warming starting in an already warm period, and likely never one so fast (one century) as we are inflicting on the Earth. Solid science from 30 years of research shows big problems for all the creatures of the Earth, as we continue to pollute the atmosphere.

Radio Ecoshock 090619 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes:
Presentation recorded from official release of the report at the White House, April 16th, 2009.

Here are quick bio notes of speakers:

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans & Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center, lead for NOAA’s climate services, and a
lead author of the report
Dr. Jerry Melillo, Director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,
Mass., and a lead author of the report

There is no copyright music. It is OK to take clips out for your own use in non-profit radio, to blog or pass on to friends.

Those with a shorter public affair program can use this 24 minute version, if you remove the Green 960 Station ID at 14:03

U.S. government Press Conference Video and slides here.

Get report copy here.

Get the word out there!

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

Climate Catastrophe - Can the Economic Crash Save Us?

News can be a poison sometimes. Newspaper owners learned years ago that people buy frightening headlines. The motto of TV news: if it bleeds, it leads. The most horrific stories get top billing.

We all need to turn away from time to time, to those we love, to amazing Nature, and the trivia that convinces us for another day.

Lately, the climate news is too shocking even for Radio Ecoshock. In the last two weeks, I've been rebuilding myself, and listeners, with back-stop nourishment. We had programs on your food security, and how to be the change you desire.

Meanwhile, I've looked for a way to communicate the probability of catastrophe, without knocking out our will to live, and our activism.

HERE ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL WANT FOR THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW:

Thomas Homer-Dixon
Presentation to the UK Parliament's Peak Oil & Gas Subgroup May 6 2009
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698157/e5a0c9c/thomas_homerdixon.html

Q and A session at UK Parliament presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698159/e9e2219b/thomas_homerdixon_q_and_a.html

PowerPoint Presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698158/9ee5110d/thomas_homerdixon_ppt.html

All from this site: http://appgopo.org.uk
(and thanks to Ecoshock listener Chris from Riseup.net for tipping me off to this speech!)

Phil England and Climate Radio
www.climateradio.org

Hope shows up in the most improbably places. In the last half of this program, after an overview of our predicament, we'll explore how the economic crash may delay the worst of climate disruption. Isn't that twist? We may get time to save the ecosphere, due to our incompetence and criminality.

Hang in, as Phil England of Climate Radio arrives with experts calling for a planned economic contraction to save the remains of the natural world. He'll interview Tim Helweg-Larsen, Director of the Public Interest Research Centre at www.pirc.info.

Phil has a regular program on Radiance FM in London, UK. That's in our second half hour, along with a little black depression humor, called the "Global Meltdown Darby".

Before that, you'll hear an overview of climate and Peak Oil, from Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. I've prepared a digest of his new presentation to a Committee in the British Parliament. It's crammed with science and analysis from his new book "Carbon Shift", including a re-think of how we can respond, given the near bankruptcy of governments and financial institutions.

But first....

The Horrible Climate News

READ MORE....



PHIL ENGLAND CREDITS:

"To listen to this programme and for a list of references visit the Climate Radio archive at www.climateradio.org. The 300-350 Show is made for ResonanceFM in London and syndicated free to not-for-profit community radio stations and independent media outlets around the globe. The programme is named after what is now believed to the safe level in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This finding is based on the work of James Hansen and his team in a paper titled "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim." [http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126]

The Global Meltdown Darby performed by the Irish poet known as "Grassy Knoll".

The Thomas-Homer Dixon piece contained a clip from the new movie trailer "Steam Bath" with action man Val Kilmer. Find the trailer here:
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/03/13/val-kilmers-global-warming-steam-bath-flick-gets-a-trailer/

We also played a clip from "The End of the Age of Oil" by David Rovics http://www.davidrovics.com.

Find all our past Radio Ecoshock programs at our web site.

Alex Smith
your host.
Radio Ecoshock

THE GREEN SIDE OF DOWN

Some big icons like General Motors go crash, but most of it just goes quietly, with little announcement. I'm talking about all the small shops going dark, the once-famous magazines gone and hardly remembered.

Just a couple of years ago, I wished I'd taken videos of some of our major streets. Little malls and corner garages disappeared overnight, replaced with a big hole and a sign advertising Fenway Gardens, another deluxe condo tower. The building boom was disorienting. It's easier now. Nothing new - and the old is slipping away.

I should be happy. Finally the fake consumer world is caving in. People are driving less, to fewer jobs. Did we pull back just at the edge of carbon disaster? Just before the oil ran out? The collapse surprised common people and the Left, who didn't care much about banking and stock talk. Maybe we should have paid closer attention.

You'll hear from Max Keiser, the lefty stock expert who did know, and tried to warn us.

In today's program you'll also hear Professor Lord Anthony Giddens from the London School of Economics. He explores the links, good and bad, between the financial crash and the climate crisis. Lord Anthony also offers up three reasons why humans just don't get the climate predicament. We hear about it, and do mostly nothing. Find out why.

We'll touch on disappearing media and adaptation fairs. A couple of songs but no dance.

But first let's get right to an interview with Stephan Faris, author of "Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley." He's traveled the world only to find that climate disruption is already with us. His new book is one of the must reads of the season.

Most important links for this show:
speech by Lord Anthony Giddens, London School of Economics, February 28th, 2009 on "The Economic Crisis, Climate Change and Energy."

Max Keiser Radiance FM Podcast: "The Truth About Markets" March 28th 2009

Christian Aid Climate Demo (You tube)

“Melting Ice Eco Rap” by Lil Peppi (You tube)

"Morbid Magazines" by Bill Dyszel

More....including a summary of Lord Anthony Giddens 3 Engines of Climate Defeat, Monbiot, etc

Forget the Economy - Is It Too Late for Our Climate?

This is the Radio Ecoshock Show. I'm you're host and tormentor, Alex Smith.

Yes I know the economy is crashing around the world. Eastern Europe threatens to bring down the Austrian and Italian banking systems. Britain is in the tank, along with Spain, Greece and Ireland. Everybody is hoping the Germans have saved enough to bail out the European Union.

It's as bad or worse in Asia. Japan's exports have plummetted, the results so terrible the Japanese Finance Minister was dead drunk at his press conference. Singapore was stung badly by Wall Street scams. Dubai, the fabled playground of the Middle East rich, is tumbling. South Korea wants to jail bloggers who reveal how bad things are in that country.

Now the latest American scamster, Allan Stanford has ripped off billions from investors all over the world, especially in Latin America. ABC News is reporting the Texas big man, lately based in Antigua, is connected to money laundering for Mexico's most vicious drug gangs. And speaking of off-shore pirates, the giant Swiss bank UBS is paying up 780 million in taxes ripped off from the American government, as the Swiss advised the very rich how to avoid paying their share. Really, it's been a pirate economy all along - and the worst scams were run by the very best companies.

Against the backdrop of kicked out families, closed factories, and worried populations, our climate threatens changes worse than any all-our nuclear exchange. Scientists warn the coming changes are huge, irreversible, and likely fatal to most species we know. Including us.

In this program, I'll pass on some of the horrible climate news, hot off the scientific press. Then we'll ask: is it already too late? Major scientists, in the United States, Australia, and Germany say the world is loaded up for at least 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming - that's over 4 degrees Fahrenheit AVERAGE global change. Temperature increases over land, and especially over the Arctic, will be much higher. The only thing saving us so far is smog, which can dissolve in a matter of weeks.

These warnings come not from fringe scientists, but key advisers to governments in Western countries. I'll tell you who. This is major news: global warming has already taken place. Television and newspapers have not told the public, who are living in an illusion, a fairy tale, about their future. Things are not going back to normal. Not for thousands of years.

As we will hear, one of the co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits their reports greatly underestimated our real situation. We'll cover the latest news, and then work with reports from V. Ramanathan, of the Scripps Institution, and Joaquim Schnellenhuber, a science top adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The music for this program is "Don't Let The World Swallow You" by Canadian artist Andre Ethier.

Read more from this Radio Ecoshock program.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE ATMOSPHERE

[opening Quote from John Kerry on the looming catastrophe in climate change]

That is Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, and you are about to get 20 minutes of the latest from Al Gore. In our second half hour, I'll interview Pieter Tans, one of the top scientists measuring greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. In fact, he is Chief Scientist at the Earth Research Lab, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. I'll ask him about the state of the atmosphere, and who's watching the store.

Surely this is the worst time to talk about climate change. According to the IMF, the international banking system is teetering on the brink of disaster. Really, we're just propping up the illusion. 65 thousand Americans laid off in one day. Now, predictions that 50 million humans will lose their jobs in 2009. Where I live, construction crews have walked away from unfinished buildings. The government is rushing in to operate a bankrupt pulp mill, with no visible owner, before the chlorine blows up. The Jack Nicholson golf course and condos will never open.

Britain is going bankrupt. Who can compete with a headline like that?

Top world scientists now tell us the natural world is dying. In just one example, trees in the Western United States are dying from climate change. In fact, the whole West is heading into a drought that may last hundreds of years. Cows are falling over dead in Texas, finding nothing in the dried up vegetation. Bush's home state is headed into climate disaster.

The Obama administration is rushing to undo the damage of eight years of denying science. Of muzzling, firing top scientists. Of wantonly lying to the public, about the bankruptcy of our atmosphere. In a flurry of appointments, the deniers have been cast out, and actual scientists and experts appointed to a wide range of posts all pointing to climate action. Even foreign affairs, as we'll now hear from John Kerry, depends upon saving the climate.

[Kerry explains military experts say that climate disruption will lead to disturbances, failed states, wars and terrorism.]

That is why the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited former Vice-President Al Gore to testify on January 28th, 2009. He spoke for 27 minutes, and then answered questions for another two hours. We'll just hit the highlights. You can download the testimony, and the Q and A, as free mp3 files, from our web site, ecoshock.org. I'll give you the links in just a moment.

After Kerry's introduction, Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana spoke. Now that the public knows climate change is real, Lugar can't trot out a denial. Instead, he promoted big bucks for biotech. Lugar said Africans will starve without biotechnology. He wants America to pressure Europe, forcing open their markets to lab-made food. Just a lobby announcement.

Let's clear our palates, with a taste of Al Gore.

[listen to a digest of Al Gore's key testimony, and answer to questions, in this week's Radio Ecoshock Show]

Remember, I'm just playing you selected clips from 2 and a half hour of testimony. Get the real thing from our web site. Here is the testimony link (6 MB, 27 min), the first hour and 24 minutes of Q and A with Gore and the Foreign Relations Committee (20 MB) and the last 37 minutes of Q and A. A lot of questions you would ask, along with political considerations, i.e. how can this transition to green energy happen in the real world.

Mr. Gore goes on to explain that the Arctic Ice remains at the lowest levels ever seen since the last great ice age. West Antarctica is also warming up. As it melts, along with Greenland, each 1 meter rise of sea level means another 100 million climate refugees. He showed new maps of huge horrible dead zones developing in our oceans.

But you know that. You know.

Naturally, the Committee wanted to know what we can do. Al Gore did offer a range of solutions. He said solar thermal energy alone could meet the electricity needs of America, with just a hundred square miles of desert.

But we're going to focus on the step he thinks need to happen first: the construction of a unified national smart grid to distribute the power of renewable energies. Here is John Kerry in dialog with Al Gore.

[in the Radio Ecoshock Show]

CAP AND TRADE OR CARBON TAX?

Although he has supported a revenue neutral carbon tax in the past, Mr. Gore testified he thought the cap and trade system was the most viable option now. Some European countries, and two Canadian provinces have already brought in a carbon tax. The revenue is not kept by the government, but returned to taxpayers. Some Americans are not ready for that, or don't trust the government.

We also need to realize that Al Gore, in addition to his famous role as climate educator, is now a multimillionaire successful businessman in the green energy field. The industry alliance he represents wants cap and trade - they think they can make money in a pollution market. Given the collapse of self-regulated capitalism, many environmentalists don't trust cap and trade either.

A DEAL WITH CHINA?

Part of the focus of this testimony is preparation for the climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. That will be the first international opportunity for the new Obama administration to work for a climate solution. However, Al Gore suggested that the U.S. should be negotiating an agreement with China, even before Copenhagen. If the two biggest polluters can really reduce carbon, the worst of climate disruption might be avoided. And Gore says China has seen the green light, and is willing to reign in their greenhouse gas emissions. We shall see.

WORKING WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

While Gore brought out a lot of technical solutions, he made surprising emphasis on the role of protecting the last great forests of Earth. Deforestation causes 20 percent of our emissions. Gore also wants to see a program where the world's farmers can get credit if they capture more carbon in the soil. There is four times more carbon in the soil, than in all the trees.

THE LAST CHANCE

Al Gore told the Senate that top scientists are screaming from the roof tops: this is our last chance for action to stop a massive heat shift on planet Earth.

Dr. James Hansen of NASA wrote to President Obama, saying the climate will be saved, or lost, in the first four years of this administration. Other scientists from Germany, Australia - many parts of the world, have the same angst, the same conclusion of deadline, the need for swift action.

The most dire comes from one of the oldest voices: Sir James Lovelock. The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, that living things regulate their own climate, told New Scientist magazine that we have, quote, "one last chance."

In fact, Lovelock worries it is already too late for emissions reductions. He doesn't trust carbon trading at all, and has even given up his love for nuclear power. The only hope he sees is a giant program to bury charcoal in the Earth, agrichar. But Lovelock doesn't think that will happen either. He expects a cull of human population, dropping down to perhaps a billion or less surviving.

Lovelock told Gaia Vince of the New Scientist, quote:

"We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK."

I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Did you want me to lie to you? To sugar coat the facts?

The climate situation is far more serious than any banking scandal. That is why Al Gore went to Washington.

WHY ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD CAN'T MAKE US RENEWABLE...

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you heard Senator John Kerry ask Al Gore the perennial question: why hasn't safe renewable energy taken off? The obvious reason is opposition from an entrenched oil and coal oligarchy. But is that really all? Are we innocent?

Here is a quick quote from next week's Radio Ecoshock Show. The speaker is Martin Burger, CEO of Blue Energy, and a campaigner for tidal energy. We'll examine power from the tides, but Burger raises a deep and difficult point. Just how does a society transform itself? Can any amount of money from the Federal Government, or even mega-corporations, really change things? Or does it take a tidal wave of consciousness in humanity?

Let's listen to Martin Burger for two minutes.

"And this is a long talk, in of itself. And we are in the infancy of our consciousness evolution as individuals, but in this collective mind field.

Our Western perspective has not, or has failed to integrate the quantum perspective, and field effect. There is a fundamental truth, in physics and in reality, to what Chief Seattle said, when he talked about the web of life, that how all the animal kingdom - the birds, the forests, the beasts, and all of us - are all connected at some dimensional root level.

And out of that arises a signal that generates and manifests our shared experience called our future.

If we haven't contemplated the possibility of a low-cost clean sustainable energy future, that signal is presently weak. And that signal is displaced and dominated by those with an agenda that serves a narrow element and segment, rather than the broader segment of society.

So consciousness is really more important in creating this future, and in realizing the opportunities of significant efforts that have come long before this one [referring to tidal power]. But this one is still under the same limits of a feeble signal to the future.

Meetings like this, your book, your effort, the New Energy Movement, creates that monkey [the "hundredth monkey"] that has to ride that what-could-be train. And every one of the efforts needs that hundredth monkey.

So they [the public] will behave quantumly until that quantum mass is achieved in attention and consciousness. But then there's a tipping point where they can't be stopped.

Money won't do it. Money will take - and you can put something into a technology, and have a great flurry go on, but if it's going to change the world it has to occur with consciousness, before the money will make it stick.

So there are other technologies out there, raising more money. But when you look at it from a vision, versus a good idea, most of them are just good ideas. They're not going to change the future. They don't have a future."

What is he talking about? Einstein conceived the field theory of physics around 1905. You could say that each of us is less a distinct body, and more a collection of atoms held together by a field. These fields interact, forming larger fields.

Biologists such as Rupert Sheldrake opened the idea that animals really operate as large groups. You've seen large flocks of birds wheel in the sky as one, like schools of fish in the sea. Next week we'll hear about the hundredth monkey theory - that groups of animals reach a critical mass, where change occurs.

99 monkeys may not bring alternative energy to our lives, but the hundredth adopter might be the tipping point where suddenly everyone realizes the route to sustainable power.

Money can't do it. A change in mass consciousness needs to happen.

We'll explore all that next week on Radio Ecoshock, along with Burger's inside look at the state of tidal power around the world. Yes we could power everything using the gravity of the moon and stars, as they pull the ocean surface.

Oh yeah, we'll also take a trip into other engines and technologies waiting in the wings.

Don't miss the interview with top Earth Research Lab scientist Peter Tans in the audio of this week's Radio Ecoshock Show. We start with his ability to really speak the truth, without government interference. I ask how we know humans are altering the atmosphere, for sure. It turns out there are several ways to prove that, including a different form of carbon that humans emit when they burn fossil fuels.

Near the end of the interview, Tans worries that there is a chance, perhaps even a one in six chance, that the average temperature over land could increase by as much as 10 degrees Celsius (!!!!) due to feedback effects which we are only beginning to realize.

That is what we are trying to stop now, as each of us rises to consciousness about the danger, and the solutions just waiting for our eyes to see.

Listener tips make this almost a group project. This week "jon q public" tipped me to the Laurie Anderson live performance on You tube. The song "Only and Expert (Can Deal With a Problem)" contains a great verse about experts denying climate change. Sadly, due to time limitations, I had to cut another powerful verse about countries that bomb other countries. Listen and watch the whole song here.

Our background music at the half time break is "Clubbed to Death" by Rob Dougan.

A half hour cut-down version of Radio Ecoshock plays every Saturday morning at 11:30 on Green 960 Radio in San Francisco. In America only, you can hear it live on the Net.

I'm Alex Smith. Write me any time. The address is radio [youknowwhatgoeshere] ecoshock.org

CLIMATE PANIC & BIOFUEL SCAMS

Jack Nicholson: "You Can't Handle the Truth"

All right, I admit it. I can't handle the truth. Friends and family losing their jobs, and their self respect. Even German billionaires are throwing themselves under trains.

It used to be so easy out on the edge. Nobody took the truth seriously. Economic doomsayers were just nuts then. Now they dominate prime time TV.

In last week's show I did a feature on tools for tough times. Now I open up a blog on Wired magazine and they do the same thing - except their includes an Apple Ipod instead of my axe and shovel.

In just a few minutes we're going to three features on the biofuel mess. I know how boring that sounds - that's what I thought too. Then I get audio that turns our cosy green vision right upside down. It seems the big agribusiness corporations couldn't make enough monopolizing the world's food production. They decided to become energy companies too. Wearing green overcoats, they stomped into the last remaining reserves of biodiversity, hacking it down to grown palm oil, and the soy beans we displaced with corn ethanol.

Did I mention this great green rush may have caused the hottest year on record in 1998? You'll hear how tiny Indonesia passed the world's largest carbon polluters, in a climate tipping tsunami of greenhouse gases. We'll hear voices from the Amazon and Asia, where biodiesel production has replaced food for indigenous people. And Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University explains how we use a gallon and a half of ordinary oil, to produce a gallon of ethanol. It's just a bubble, a magic machine that transmutes oil into taxpayer subsidies and dead zones on the coasts.

President Bush made so-called biofuels boom. What could go wrong?

CLIMATE NEWS, CLIMATE BLUES

First I want to get you a bit of the news that gets buried.

Here's a surprise. Carbon emissions to the atmosphere are still going up. Last summer, Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre told a stunned conference that carbon dioxide emissions were rising faster than anybody predicted. He thought it "improbable" that levels could be kept to 650 parts per million, the doomsday scenario. That means at least a 4 degree centigrade average rise, and likely the tipping point at which ancient climate shifting mechanisms take over. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Governments are doing next to nothing about it. Two European groups, Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, have measured the Climate Change Performance Index. It shows which countries are actually working to save the climate. Sweden, Germany and France are in the top ranks, while the U.S. comes in 58th. U.S. emissions are up 20 percent since 1992. Canada's are up more than 26 percent. Canada is the 59th worst performing country, second worst only to Saudi Arabia at 60th.

On the positive side, some OPEC countries are cutting oil production, trying to get prices back up. But the drop isn't enough to stop spiralling carbon emissions. Still, Goldman Sachs analysts say the low price of oil may halt development of expensive sources, like Brazil's Tupi, billed as the largest oil find in the Americas since 1976. Also endangered are other deepwater drilling projects around the world, including one off Angola.

Development of Canada's oil sands is also slowing, but not stopped. The Norwegian company StatoilHydro and Royal Dutch Shell has put off investments in Canada's tar sands.

Too bad! Too good for the climate.

The train to climate change is still rolling along. We've just slowed it down from 180 miles an hour to 175. Still, the economic crash could give us a little more breathing time, before we run out of livable weather.

There is a lot of debate about the cooler weather in the Northern Hemisphere this year. Climate deniers say it's the coming ice age. I just saw Lou Dobbs on the infamous CNN looking very wise, as he explained the melting glaciers around the world come not from us, but from sun spot activity. Television loves the car ads so much, they'll spit out anything.

To show the depth of interdependence of televison and auto advertising, here is a clip from a press conference given by the National Auto Dealers Association:

[NADA clip][a car honcho explains to camera crews covering the event that car and truck advertising is the largest single source of their paychecks - if car ads go, so do the television stations...]

Get it? If the Big Three go bankrupt, and the Asian companies can't afford to advertise, commercial televison may disappear. What a shame that would be. Think of the propaganda we'd miss. Oh wait, the government would nationalize TV too. Knock out the middleman - those wise corporate heads like Rupert Murdock - and get your government pablum directly. Although non-commercial stations worked out OK, in the UK, Canada, and other countries. At least you don't get 10 minutes of commercials every half hour.

Back to the winter storms. We don't really know what caused this burst. It is compatible with scientific predictions in one way: the appearance of extreme precipitation events can appear as rain, or if the temperature is cold enough, as snow.

Most of the media is blaming the storms on the appearance of the Pacific ocean cooling phenomenon known as La Nina. Last April, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab rats announced that the Pacific has entered a ten-year cool phase - after 29 years of warmer currents. The ocean has occillated between those states for a very long time.

The combination of La Nina, with warmer currents in the Atlantic, may lead to drying in parts of South America, but more rain and flooding in the Pacific. Planting in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could be affected. Weather instability may add to growing world hunger. Our friend on Climateer Investor blog says "um foks, maybe we should start thinking about rebuilding our grain reserves."

My thoughts exactly.

Despite the snow storms in North America and Europe, 2008 ended up in the top ten warmest years, according to various climate centres. Remember, we are talking about the GLOBAL average temperature, which includes the other hemisphere we seldom hear about. Even here in Vancouver, we had one of the warmest Novembers on record. 2008 is likely one tenth of a degree cooler than last year. Back when Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the 2008 average of 57.9 degrees would have been the warmest year on record.

As you heard in our two interviews last week, papers presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in December show climate change is hard upon us, no matter what the doubters say.

Here are two clips from a speech by Dr. Graeme Pearman of Australia

Find his presentation in Australia last summer on Youtube. Search for pearman and climate.

A growing chorus of scientists think it is already too late to save the climate as we know it - unless humans take over management of the atmosphere. That is geo-engineering.

One of the biggest worries: the Earth's covering of ice is disappearing. You have seen the comparison photos of various glaciers all around the world, retreating or disappearing altogether. Even Glacier National Park may have no glaciers in just a few years.

But now a NASA satellite can measure the loss of ice in places like Greenland and the Antarctic. The GRACE satellite is actually a pair of insturments which can determine changes in mass below. As reported by rawstory.com, the latest data shows "over 2 trillion tons of ice has melted since 2003." That's the headline to Google.

The Environmental News Network has the story as well. NASA geophyicist Scott Luthcke told them "'More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite."

There have been many signs that Greenland is melting. Instant lakes on top in Summer. Rumblings the size of earth quakes. No we know for sure. The world's largest supply of ice is melting fast. It guarantees the sea level will rise, endangering major cities and crop deltas. Changes to climate and ecosystems as far away as the U.S. SouthWest result from the loss of the Arctic ice. The process may be irreversible.

Here's a human view of that debate, in a curious setting. One of the world's top climate scientists and modellers is Stephen Schnieder. A couple of years ago, Schnieder found out he had a rare and deadly form of cancer. With little hope from existing treatments, he decided to apply the decision and risk models from climate to his own medical case. That resulted in a new approach of aggressive maintenance, rather than a cure. It has kept him alive so far.

Here is a quick clip from Schnieder's Youtube video - which is a 68 minute comparison of risk decisions for the world's climate, and for himself as a man with deadly cancer. It turns out there are many parallels between his disease and ours.

[Schnieder clip]

If you get time to view the video, you will appreciate why we need the mind of Stephen Schnieder to keep going.

Over in Britain, the former head of the IPCC and now chief scientist for the UK environment department, warns the world needs to prepare for a 4 degree centigrade rise in global temperatures. That means get ready for millions upon millions of climate refugees, countless climate caused deaths, and possibly extreme shortages of food and water.

Watson said: "We must alert everybody that at the moment we're at the very top end of the worst case [emissions] scenario. I think we should be striving for 450 [ppm] but I think we should be prepared that 550 [ppm] is a more likely outcome."

Australian economist Ross Garnaut, hired by the government, also predicts future climate agreements will struggle to accept 550 parts per million as a goal!

In Britain, the Independent newspaper carried an article January 2nd, 2009 titled: "Climate Scientists: It's Time for Plan B". They continue "Poll of international experts by The Independent reveals consensus that CO2 cuts have failed – and their growing support for technological intervention."

Just like Stephen Schnieder, some scientists are now calling for a maintenance mode. They want geo-engineering projects, on a mass scale to protect us against the worst heating, until we can transition our energy economy to safe and renewable sources.

Good God. We're back to fertilizing the oceans with algae blooms, as Russ George tried to do. Or spraying ocean water into the air to create more cloud cover. Hopefully, the idea of launching a billion tiny reflective mirrors into space has died a quiet death?

Anyway, the Independent newspaper surveyed 80 international climate scientists, and found that 54 percent, quote, "agreed that the situation is now so dire that we need a backup plan that involves the artificial manipulation of the global climate to counter the effects of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. About 35 per cent of respondents disagreed with the need for a "plan B", arguing that it would distract from the main objective of cutting CO2 emissions, with the remaining 11 per cent saying that they did not know whether a geoengineering strategy is needed or not."

Politics has failed. Our own social network has failed. The corporate system has failed. We are killing off the climate system that supports us, while continuing to shop at the mall. We still hope for a new car, or a vacation get-away.

BIOFUELS

OK. We need a little less of this (scream from the Wall) and a little more of this... our Radio Ecoshock Special on the biofuel scam, and how it warms the world while talking green.

There follows a digest version, from a longer speech, by Dr. Ted Padzek of Berkeley - on why biofuels could never power our civilization. Full speech available at ecoshock.org in the alternative energy section of the Audio on Demand menu, of from Unwelcome Guest #443.

Next on Radio Ecoshock: Cornell's Dr. David Pimentel will explain the cruel idiocy of burning corn for car fuel. Dr. David Pimentel quickly laments the 5 billion dollar fuel fiasco in America, courtesy of alternative radio, Unwelcome Guests.

Then the radio premiere from the Canadian National Film Board. You'll hear voices from the global South, where biofuels displace local humans - and Nature's last reserves.

We wrap up with 15 minute podcast from the National Film Board of Canada. They've recorded some voices from the global South, where the poorest of people are pushed off land by our schemes to fuel cars.

Next week we'll look at better solutions: cities that work. I'll be out recording Dr. Peter Newman, author of the new book "Resilient Cities". His interesting theory: the Peak Oil crisis, the first wave of high energy prices, exposed all the cracks in our rotten urban design, and transport system. THAT triggered the fall of the finance Ponzi system.

That it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Find our web site at ecoshock.org. Alex has left the building.

CLIMATE CODE RED: SCIENCE AND PROSPECTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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