Hot Minds in Motion

SUMMARY: The coming unstable tropics, seen through an ancient world. From the UK, Dr. Jessica Whiteside. Former NASA scientist James Hansen says 2 degrees warming is unsafe and "crazy" to set that as a goal. Huge Canadian rainforest on cusp of mega-deal to save it. Activist Valerie Langer. Radio Ecoshock 150701.

I begin with the voice of James Hansen, one of the world's most respected climate scientists. He spoke recently on Radio National in Australia. I have more on this mega-warning of the developing climate emergency later in this blog entry.

We'll also investigate a Canadian deal to preserve ancient old-growth forests in an area the size of Ireland. Is The Great Bear Rainforest agreement a model for the rest of the world? Our guest is long-time campaigner Valerie Langer from Vancouver, Canada.

But first, let's bust the myth that the tropics won't change much as the climate rearranges. Businessmen and government leaders keep rattling on about our future with 1000 parts per million or more of carbon dioxide. New science explains that even big dinosaurs couldn't live in that kind of world, ravaged by swings of climate so huge that plant life was unstable and unpredictable in the tropics.

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

Download or listen to this program in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

Or listen right now on Soundcloud!



BREAKING NEWS: July 1st: MASSIVE FIRES ACROSS WESTERN NORTH AMERICA, from California to Alaska, and all Canadian western provinces.

The Western half of North America is breaking into massive fires. In Alaska, over a million acres have been burned in just the month of June. The real fire season is yet to start.

Fires in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan are so large, satellite pictures show smoke blowing all the way down through the central United States, as far south as Missouri. Air quality is hazardous in some cities in Saskatchewan and nearby Manitoba. There are, at last count, over 200 large wildfires burning in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, including some near Fort McMurray, home to the infamous Tar Sands.

The coastal Province of British Columbia has major wildfire problems, already burning ten times what was consumed by fire all of last year - again with the hot summer still to go.

Major wildfires are also burning in Washington State and Oregon.

Nobody is even reporting on the monster fires in the Canadian Arctic. Some parts of Siberia were up to 6 degrees C hotter than normal this Spring. Deadly fires are already common there. At what point do we acknowledge that great parts of the Northern Hemisphere will burn, releasing all that carbon, every year as climate change develops?

Stay tuned next week for a replay of our in-depth program on fire risk: "The Age of Super Fires".

ECOSHOCK NEWS

My climate action song "Time of Trials" has been selected this week by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in their on-going series of climate inspiration music leading up to the 2015 Paris climate talks in December.

You can find their write up in Spanish here. I'll be adding the English version shortly.

You can listen to "Time of Trials" right now on Soundcloud here.

COMING TROUBLE IN THE TROPICS: JESSICA WHITESIDE

Businessmen and gloomy scientists have predicted our fossil-powered lives mean carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will reach 1,000 parts per million or more. What would such a world look like? We can get a glimpse by going way back, hundreds of millions of years, to a troubled hothouse world.

Our tour guide will be Dr. Jessica Whiteside, a lecturer in Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton in the UK. She's the lead author of a new study that's been getting a lot of press. The title is "Extreme ecosystem instability supressed tropical dinosaur dominance for 30 million years." - as published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of the strange things about "land" is that it actually floats around on the Earth's hot core. A group of scientists travelled to New Mexico, where they found rocks that were much earlier in the tropics. There was no North America, or Europe - just one big continent on the earth, known as "Pangea".

Scientists investigating the history of dinosaurs were always puzzled when no bones of the giant herbivores (picture a Brontesauraus) were found in rocks formerly in the tropics. What kept them out for around 30 million years?

Now, through a series of methods cross-checking one another, this new paper suggests the climate of the tropics was far too unstable to grow the vegetation necessary to support very big herbivore dinosaurs. Over millions of years, the tropical climate swung violently from huge droughts to very wet periods. The vegetation would build up during wet times, and then burn with very hot wild fires during dry times. The scientists found carbon deposits from fires that burned at around 600 degrees - enough to sterilize the soil. Nothing grew back afterwards for a long time. I noticed with special interest the very hot fires that burned in that ancient tropical world. A Canadian fire expert on Radio Ecoshock told us about fires current fires so hot they sterilize the soil. More on that next week.

At that time the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were 4 to 6 times modern levels, running from 1200 to 1600 parts per million CO2. Our guest Jessica Whiteside notes that is the expected level, on our current course, in the next one or two hundred years.

This extreme instability was stronger in the interior of the continent of Pangea, away from oceans that might modify conditions. That's very much like what is expected in the interior of North and South America, as well as the interior of Russia and China.

I asked Jessica if humans could have survived in the conditions of these ancient tropics. She says that is doubtful, because the average temperature was ten degrees C higher than today.

We also discuss the lag time between higher CO2, and large climate changes. More conservative scientific thinking attributes "only" a 1 degree C rise for every doubling of CO2. But this is contradicted by studies of ancient climates (paleo-climatology) which saw 3 or even 5 degrees C of average temperature rise with each doubling of CO2.

The scientists doing this study were well aware that the high carbon past they looked at might serve as an analog, almost a prediction, of what we will experience with a lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Dr. Jessica Whiteside in CD Quality of Lo-Fi

JAMES HANSEN: 2 DEGREES IS NOT A GOAL - IT'S "CRAZY"

Let's get to that disturbing new interview with James Hansen. He's the former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He's also the scientist who warned the U.S. Congress about the dangers of climate change in 1988. If only we'd listened then.

On Tuesday May 5th, 2015, Hansen was interviewed for the Australian breakfast show on ABC Radio National. Here's what happened.

ABC RADIO NATION INTERVIEW WITH HANSEN

Here is the key passage:

HANSEN: "I refused to sign the Vatican Declaration which had the 2 degree limit and the reason I do not sign that is that the 2 degrees is actually a prescription for disaster. That’s actually well understood by the scientific community.

We know that the prior interglacial period about 120,000 years ago – it’s called the Eemian in Europe –but it was less than 2 degrees C warmer than pre-industrial conditions and sea level was a least 6 to 8 metres higher, so it’s crazy to think that 2 degrees Celsius is safe limit.

The only thing you can argue is that, well, it might take a while for the sea level to rise that much, but we know that it would happen because once the fossil fuels are burned to reach that level they are not taken out of the systems for millennia, and it does not require millennia for the ice sheets to disintegrate.

RN: If you say it would be crazy to shoot for two degrees but that is exactly what we are going to be shooting for in Paris at the global climate talks

HANSEN: That number (2 degrees) was chosen because it was convenient and thought that well that will give us a few decades so we can set targets for the middle of the century.

Actually what the science tells us is we have an emergency, this is actually a global crisis and the science for that is crystal clear. It’s not obvious to the public because the climate system responds slowly, the ocean is 4 kilometres deep, these ice sheets are 3 kilometres thick. They only respond over time scales of decades to centuries, but once the processes are started it’s going to be extremely difficult if not impossible to stop them.

So what the science actually tells us is that we should reduce emissions as fast as practical, bearing in mind the economic consequences, but in fact the actions that are necessary are not economically harmful. You just have to make the prices of fossil fuels honest."

FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE.

Note that James Hansen, just in the last few years, believes we need more nuclear power to stop climate change. The Australian pediatrician and activist Helen Caldicott pretty well demolished that argument in her book "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else." If Helen missed anything, it was shouted out to the world by the triple melt-down of three reactors at Fukushima Japan in 2011. If you want to bet on nuclear power, you are gambling with terrible stakes for the present and the future, in my opinion.

That said, James Hansen is one of the world's greatest heroes of the science of climate change. Now he's saying that on our present course, within 40 or 50 years, the seas will rise several meters, demolishing the capacity of many of the world's great cities along the ocean. I hope New York, London, Shanghai and all the rest are listening. Hansen also says it is not too late, even yet, to prevent that kind of disastrous outcome.

THE GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST: SEALING THE DEAL

There are not many truly wild places left in this world. Environmental activists have been fighting to save one of them for 18 years. It's known globally as The Great Bear Rainforest.

Situated on the central and northern west coast of Canada, this rainforest is home to giant trees, some thousands of years old. In countless coastal inlets, a rich mix of plants and animals thrive, including the iconic white bear, the Kermode or spirit bear.

Supposed enemies met to find a solution. Dedicated green activists including Greenpeace, Forest Ethics and the Sierra Club met in marathon negotiations with executives of giant forest companies, First nations leaders and stakeholders preserve this great legacy. Eventually the government of British Columbia made a promise. Now, almost a generation later, that government is within 60 days of sealing the deal - a model of multi-party efforts to conserve nature that has inspired hope, around the world.

To help us understand what's at stake, we have reached one of the long-term campaigners to save the Great Bear Rainforest, Valerie Langer. She's the Director of BC Forest Campaigns, for ForestEthics Solutions, and works for the convervation and markets group called "Canopy" as well.

Valerie Langer

Here's the thing: the Great Bear Rainforest is an area the size of Ireland - much of it untouched by modern civilization. Canadian and American-owned logging companies wanted to log the whole thing. They had to be stopped.

Why would big forest companies give up some of the most valuable timber in the world, just to accommodate a few environmentalists? Because of activism from all three groups making this rainforest wood untouchable in the market place. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts were cancelled. Companies like Home Depot swore they would never buy the wood from the Great Bear. Other companies pulled out of British Columbia altogether.

Feeling the heat, the forest company executives agreed to something they had never considered before: meeting with the environmentalists to make a deal. Some major foundations kicked in money to keep the negotiations going.

One of the major problems was to keep the Great Bear without leaving First Nations (aboriginal) communities in poverty, without even logging jobs. Private foundations and donors raised $60 million dollars, matched by $30 million each from the Federal and Provincial governments, to help the First Nations communities create their own alternative economy. Eco-tourism was just a part of that big picture.

All this had never been done before. It took 18 years to get it this far: the next 60 days are the final period for public comment, before the Great Bear deal is made into law.

The fight isn't completely won yet. There is a rogue company logging in the Great Bear at a furious rate, trying to get as much as possible before the government gives final approval. It's called Timber West. The Province of British Columbia needs to rein them in, but the province has laid off most of it's enforcement staff. Public pressure on Timber West is still needed.

Still, a deal involving all parties, settled peacefully with dialog, stands as a model for other endangered forests all over the world. Valerie Langer is a powerful speaker and power-house campaigner, so give this interview a listen.

Download or listen to this interview with Valerie Langer in CD Quality of Lo-Fi

STUNNING COURT VICTORY IN THE NETHERLANDS

I can't wrap up this show, and this season, without a few words about a stunning court victory in the Netherlands. Regular listener and green radio journalist Mark Beekhuis brought this to my attention. Mark writes, quote:

"This week a climate campaign group won a case against The Netherlands. A judge ordered the government to reduce carbon emissions by 20% relative to 1990 - by the year 2020. This is a first in the world. The main legal argument is that the State should protect all of its citizens - also the ones not yet born."

Imagine, a government must protect future citizens, our grandchildren and descendants! In their ruling, the judges said:

"The state should not hide behind the argument that the solution to the global climate problem does not depend solely on Dutch efforts,"..."Any reduction of emissions contributes to the prevention of dangerous climate change and as a developed country the Netherlands should take the lead in this."

The current Dutch government is a coalition, where Beekhuis tells us, one party appears to accept this ruling, while another hopes to overturn it.

The Dutch environmental group "Urgenda" has put all it's legal documents on the Internet. They have been translated into English as well. The group wants other countries to follow their lead in the courts. Activists in Belgium have already done it, and groups in Norway are working on it. This could be a world-wide movment to force governments to do their job protecting the future for all to come.

Here is a link to a story on American National Public Radio about this case, so you can listen in to that. The Guardian write up is here.

COMING UP THIS SUMMER

This program concludes the first half of my 2015 season. I'm hard at work collecting some of the most powerful interviews for a "best of Radio Ecoshock" series. Since we have not resolved or really responded to the climate threat, the science and the activism going back several years is still very valid today. I hope you'll keep listening through the summer, as we go deep into the issues we all face, with a wide variety of voices.

At the end of the summer, in the Northern Hemisphere, I'll return with a whole new energy, and a whole new series of programs.

Of course that's assuming I can keep quiet even for a little while. Right now it's 107 degrees, about 42 degrees Celsius, in any shade you can find, outside my studio walls. That's in Canada, with summer barely started. Scratch, that, its gone up to 111 degrees F in the shade, 44 degrees C!!! This is insane!

We may have to begin with replays of our powerful interviews with top fire experts. There's lots more to come on Radio Ecoshock, so please say tuned.

I'm also working on more new climate music to help spark the Paris climate talks. Watch the Radio Ecoshock page on Soundcloud for that.

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

WILD HUMANS (doing wild things)

National Geographic reporter Scott Wallace on trips to deep Amazon for his book "The Unconquered". How oil, gold, and illegal logging chase the last un-contacted tribes. Plus reports on Canadian Boreal failure, serial climate hacker Russ George, and shaping Nature in the city. Radio Ecoshock 130529 1 hour

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with a packed show. Are you counting on off-grid humans to survive if we don't? We'll track the last wild humans in a report from South America. You'll hear an update on the reported collapse of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, the further adventures of serial climate hacker Russ George, and a debate on trying to re-make nature in your city.

Off we go.

SHOW SUMMARY

The first 32 minutes of the show is a wide-ranging discussion with Scott Wallace, journalist for National Geographic magazine.

We talk through his book about the last Amazon un-contacted tribes "The Unconquered". Why oil, gold, and tropical timber are corrupting the Amazon, a fundamental source of biodiversity for the planet. Wallace made a three month trip to find signs of "the Arrow People" - plus multiple trips to the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru. At times it was pretty hairy.

I provide an update on the "collapse" of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. Following my story 2 weeks ago on the green group Canopy withdrawing, this week the largest forest company, Resolute, quit. We hear from the remaining NGOs that the process may not be dead.

Serial climate hacker and plankton "farmer" Russ George was booted off the Board of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. The aboriginal Haida people say they have fired him, George says that's not possible, he owns nearly half the company. An update on the incredible disappearing $2.5 million.

We hear briefly from NOAA lawyer Richard Mannix on the need for an international agency to oversee geoengineering attempts like the Russ George/Haida case.

The show wraps with a sample from ""City Mouse, City Flower: A Discussion of Urban Nature." presented by Erik Hoffner of Orion Magazine.

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

Listen to/download my 32 minute interview with Scott Wallace in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

LISTEN TO THE RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW (courtesy of archive.org)





SCOTT WALLACE: WILD IN THE AMAZON



Waorani Hunters, Yasuni Rainforest, photo by Scott Wallace.

What if a solar flare knocks out power to the world? Or the latest disease escapes becoming a great plague? At least we have the consolation there are still so-called "wild" humans out there on the fringes to survive. Or is that just another strangely comforting myth?

We are joined by a man who knows, long-time international journalist and reporter for National Geographic Magazine, Scott Wallace. His latest book is "The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes".

We have a lot to talk about. There's Ecuador's promise to leave Amazon oil in the ground to save the rainforest and global warming. There is the whole issue of biodiversity and whether the great Amazon rainforest can survive - not to mention the last of it's unconquered peoples.

But first, why do we hear so little in mainstream media about South America? Here in the North, it's like the lost continent. Why is that?

Maybe most Western-style people are just interested in others like themselves. But I also wonder if the major newspapers and networks have owners who don't want to talk about very different political systems in South America.

THE LAST STAND FOR MAHOGANY

Anyway, Scott brings South America into the picture with his articles in National Geographic Magazine. Check out his April 2013 feature "Mahogany's Last Stand".

In the interview, Scott explains mahogany was running so short in Brazil, that country banned further export of the product. The mahogany loggers moved across the borer into Peru, where central government contol of the Amazon is weak to none. They try. In his blog, Scott tells us the Peruvian cops just seized some illegal timber. But that leaves the local tribes fearing for their lives, afraid of the violent loggers.

ECUADOR: LEAVING OIL IN THE GROUND, TO PROTECT MOTHER CLIMATE

We talk about the magnificent Yasuni National Park in eastern Ecuador. Scott writes:

"Downpours are a near daily occurrence throughout the year, and there are few discernible changes of season. Sunlight, warmth, and moisture are constants."

"Over the years, oil concessions have been drawn over the same territory as the park, as economic interests have trumped conservation in the struggle over Yasuní’s fate. At least five active concessions blanket the park’s northern section, and for a poor country like Ecuador the pressure to drill has been almost irresistible. Half of the nation’s export earnings already come from oil, nearly all of it from its eastern provinces in the Amazon."

"In a proposal first put forward in 2007, President Rafael Correa has offered to leave indefinitely untouched an estimated 850 million barrels of oil inside Yasuní’s northeastern corner in a tract known as the ITT Block (named for the three oil fields it contains: Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini). As payment for preserving the wilderness and preventing an estimated 410 million metric tons of fossil fuel-generated carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, Correa has asked the world to ante up in the fight against global warming. He is seeking $3.6 billion in compensation, roughly half of what Ecuador would have realized in revenues from exploiting the resource at 2007 prices. The money would be used, he says, to finance alternative energy and community development projects.

Hailed by supporters as a milestone in the climate change debate when it was first proposed, the so-called Yasuní-ITT Initiative has been hugely popular in Ecuador. National polls consistently show a growing awareness of Yasuní as an ecological treasure that should be protected. But the international response to the initiative has been tepid. By mid-2012 only about $200 million had been pledged. In response Correa has issued a succession of angry ultimatums, leading detractors to liken his proposal to blackmail. With the initiative stalled and Correa warning that time is running out, activity on the oil frontier continues to advance through eastern Ecuador, even within Yasuní’s limits. Every day, another bit of the wilderness succumbs to the bulldozers and backhoes."

Read more in Scott's January 2013 article "Rainforest for Sale: The Story of Oil" in National Geographic Magazine.

President Correa of Ecuador is one of the few world leaders anywhere to offer to leave some oil in the ground, to reduce global warming. All countries will have to come to that position to stave off climatic disaster, that we know. The leadership apparently is in the global South.

There were two great droughts in the Amazon Rainforest, of all places, in the last couple of decades. Biodiversity is under threat or crashing. Some climate models show vast swaths of the Amazon rainforest converting to grassland, as a great drought develops there. First it would be logged or burn. If the rainforest goes, cloud formation will change, precipitation for Africa will fall (in another area slated for drought and desertification). Plus, a huge carbon sink becomes a carbon source.

Please check out our conversation with Scott Wallace on Radio Ecoshock.

Visit his web site at scottwallace.com. I recommend watching the little bio clip on that home page.

Find Scott's blog posts for National Geographic here.

Don't forget his book. Scott is a gifted story teller, with important issues to communicate. The book is "The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes"

You can take that Scott Wallace interview as the first installment in a series on human extinction. Next week, we'll investigate the growing chorus saying the human species will go extinct before the middle of this Century. I'll tell you who's behind it, and what real science says. It's a tale with a twist, tune in next week for sure.

THE BOREAL FOREST AGREEMENT "COLLAPSES"?

Meanwhile I have to update you on stories you heard first on Radio Ecoshock. In our program on the first of May 2013, you heard Nicole Rycroft of the green group Canopy explain why they pulled out of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. It was a key effort to preserve at least half of the necklace of slow-growing trees across the top of Canada - now being clear-cut logged by dozens of forest companies.

Listen to/Dowload the Nicole Rycroft interview (Canopy) 22 minutes in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Or watch the Nicole Rycroft interview on Youtube instead!

Rycroft told us after three years of direct negotiations with major logging companies, promises were not kept, deadlines were not met, and not a single hectare of the Boreal Forest was legally protected. Canopy is going back to the 700 companies promising to avoid old-growth timber from Canada's Boreal Forest.

Now the largest forest company, Resolute Forest Products, formerly known at AbitibiBowater, has pulled out of the talks.

Resolute says the environmentalists are asking too much. They would have to close mills, and the impoverished northern aboriginal communities would suffer, if they don't continue massive logging operations in the north of two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec.

Some Canadian newspapers reported the agreement had collapsed, now that Greenpeace, Canopy, and Resolute pulp and paper were out. Other large timber companies have not announced they are leaving the talks, although they may, if they feel they will be at a competitive disadvantage. Three large environment and conservation groups said they will continue to push for protection of the Boreal Forest. One major funder, the Ivy Foundation, put at least five million dollars into this effort.

In the program, you hear a press conference statement by Tod Paglia, Executive Director of Forest Ethics, followed by Tim Gray, Program Director for the Ivey Foundation. I recorded this from a media conference call on May 21st.

Both groups still support the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement process, despite the loss of other major environment and company participants. I don't know if the process can continue, or if they can protect enough of the Boreal to protect the endangered Woodland Caribou.

The real issue, from my perspective, is not just the value of this intact ecosphere of the North - but the big impact rampant logging will have on climate change. The Boreal Forest could turn from being a carbon sink, moderating what is left of our climate, to a carbon source. This huge Northern forest could take hundreds of years to grow back, it it ever does.

Meanwhile, we witness another positive feed-back loop, heating the globe, and created by the human impulse to grab natural resources at any cost.

Environment groups like Greenpeace and Canopy will push Resolute Forest Products to meet the needs of nature. You can help by disinvesting in this rogue company, and making sure your pension plans and corporations are not supporting their products.

RUSS GEORGE IS BACK AGAIN IN THE NEWS



From Steve Krivit collection "Russ George Gives Vatican Certificate for Fictional Carbon Credits"

On to another story brought to light by Radio Ecoshock. Over the years I've investigated the claims and activities of Russ George. On September 7th and 14th 2007 I did a two part interview and critique of George's attempt to modify the climate by stimulating plankton blooms with iron. That effort failed. The multimillion dollar stock promotion of his company "Planktos" went bankrupt.

PLANKTOS: Offsets Real and Imagined Planting trees, seeding seas, grabbing CO2, for money. Full show interview with Russell George, CEO of Planktos, controversial carbon offset company. Part 1 of 2. Interview transcript here. Ecoshock Show 070907 1 hr 14 MB

Find a transcript of my full-length interview with Russ George in 2007 here.

PLANKTOS II: THE INTERVENTION Who are they, and will it work? Part 2: three critics respond plus Alex Smith's take. (Ecoshock show 070914 - 14 MB 1 hr) Greenpeace (9 min)Science Unit, ETC Group (9 min), and David Baines (16 min)(newspaper business columnist)

In the middle of October 2012, I did interviews and clips from a Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation press conference at the Vancouver Aquarium. Leaders from the Haida Village of Old Massett attempted to explain to the world press how and why they secretly performed a geonengineering experiment, possible the world's largest, in the Pacific Ocean near their home on the island of Haida Gwaii. The village spent 2.5 million on Russ George's dream to create carbon credits for sale, and allegedly replenish the failing salmon stock. No carbon credits were sold, and it appear the villagers lost their money to this scheme.

Here are the resources from October 2012

"Geoengineering Plankton at Haida Gwaii Serial climate hacker Russ George (Planktos) leads indigenous villagers to dump iron into the sea - a secret geoengineering project off Canada's West Coast. Press conference statements (recorded by Alex Smith) by the Haida Old Massett Village Chief, Ken Rea and Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation President John Disney (16 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi; statement by HSRC marine lawyer James L. Straith CD quality or Lo-Fi. See Radio Ecoshock 121024 blog here. Transcript of Chief Rea and Disney at Press Conference. Transcript of Question and Answer period Press Conf. (prepared by Alex Smith)."

Find all the links for that October special on this page.

On April 10th, I announced the offices of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation offices were raided by armed officers of the federal agency, Environment Canada. All computers and files were taken away.

Despite this, Russ George told the Times Colonist newspaper in British Columbia that he and the First Nations people would run a second experiment on the wild algae in the summer of 2013.

NOAA FINDS "A WILD WEST" LACK OF LAWS ON GEOENGINEERING

On April 30th, I attended an online briefing by the American National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration on marine geoengineering, and possible legal barriers against unilateral experimenters like Russ George. It was titled "Ocean Fertilization, Marine Geoengineering and the London Convention/London Protocol".

The audio quality is poor, but you can make out these two quick clips. First, Richard Mannix, a legal expert from NOAA's Office of General Counsel notes the Russ George/Haida Village experiment may have damaged clam beds on the island. The Haida had to dig them up. We don't have scientific proof that was due to the massive plankton bloom created off shore by the experiment.

Second, lawyer Richard Mannix points out there is no central legal authority to regulate or stop geoengineering experiments. Dumping iron into the sea should be controlled by the London Dumping Convention and the London Protocol. But there is nothing controlling who might spray sulfates into the atmosphere, or launch mirrors into space, to reduce sunlight arriving at our planet. Without such an agency, Mannix feels we are encouraging a "wild west" of geoengineering.

I managed to get in a question at the end, saying Russ George promises to repeat his ocean dumping scheme this year, and what could stop him? Mannix replied he was confident the Canadian authorities were investigating thoroughly, and it was possible Russ George could end up in "the slammer". His words.. "the slammer" is slang for jail. We'll see.

THE HAIDA "FIRE" RUSS GEORGE

The story continues. On May 23rd, the Haida villagers announced on Canadian News Wire they were severing all ties with Russ George. The HSRC said, quote "it has removed Mr. Russ George as a director of the company. In addition, the HSRC has terminated Mr. George's employment as an officer of the corporation."

"Old Massett Village Chief Councillor Ken Rea stated: 'The board and our community has decided to recalibrate this business so that it moves forward in a constructive fashion and effectively responds to legitimate concerns raised by various stakeholders around the world'."

Sounds like Russ is out of a job. But not so fast! Russ George told the Vancouver Sun he can't be fired! George said the Board of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation did not have the authority to remove him. We learn from Russ that he owns 48% of HSRC through his own company called "Ocean Pastures Corp." All along we were led to believe it was strictly a First Nations business (and that's why the company claimed it could issue it's own permits).

George promised to keep going on the project. That's moxy! His data and equipment were seized by the Canadian government, with likely legal action pending. The Haida villagers, a potent group to say the least, insist they have severed all ties with Russ George. Village Chief Ken Rea told the Times Colonist "We have parted ways". I would read that more or less as a ban from the island, especially since the senior governing body of the Haida already denounced the experiment. Ken Rea says no plankton seeding experiment will be done this year.

That should end the story, but Russ George never really goes away. He's back on his blog touting his other persona, the amateur physics experimenter with a world-saving technology in cold fusion. His former company D2Fusion went bankrupt years ago. On his blog, George says he's worked on cold fusion since its discovery in 1989. His "work" was making a documentary film about it.

Find a full record of the activities of the two Russ Georges on Steve Krivit's page "Investigations of Russ George's Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction Research (LENR) and Plankton Carbon-Credit Activities".

With the failure of his plankton scheme, again, Russ George could next reappear as a businessman advocate for Cold Fusion. It's never over for Russ George with his big dreams, and multimillion dollar losing schemes.

ORION MAGAZINE: CITY MOUSE - A DISCUSSION OF URBAN NATURE

Moving on, I have one more recording for you. On May 16th, Erik Hoffner of Orion Magazine hosted a web chat called "City Mouse, City Flower: A Discussion of Urban Nature." Guests were Beatrix Beisner, co-editor of the new urban ecology guidebook "Nature All Around Us", Liam Heneghan of DePaul University/Chicago Wilderness Science Team, and Kevin Anderson, proprietor of the blog Marginal Nature.

Find out more about Liam Henegan, both a bio and a video of his talk at New York University, here.

I was intrigued with the struggles and ideas in the discussion between Liam Heneghan, working from an academic planning perspective, and Kevin Anderson, who by day is a water and sewage worker for the City of Austin Texas. Anderson definitely gets his hands dirty, and laments the trend of cutting down "foreign species" to create the imagined past landscape of "native speciers" - during one of the worst droughts in living memory.

We tune in as Erik of Orion Magazine brings up adaptation to urban conditions. Kevin Anderson weighs in with the hot debate: should humans try to engineer nature again, this time right in the cities where we live?

Find the full 80 minute discussion "City Mouse, City Flower: A Discussion of Urban Nature" as an audio file at Orionmagazine.org.

Next week we'll ask the question: are we humans doomed to an early extinction? I hope the answer is "no". You'll hear the arguments as Radio Ecoshock continues to cover the biggest pictures.

I'm Alex Smith. You can support my work at the show web site, ecoshock.org.

Catch up on any programs you've missed as free mp3 downloads at the site. http://www.ecoshock.org/

Please tell your friends about Radio Ecoshock and thank you for listening.

From Occupied Earth

This Ecoshock program features two interviews. We start out talking about South America, and how changes to the Amazon rainforest could impact the climate of the whole world.

I also cover two jaw-dropping stories this week:

#1. the complete fake-out as General Motors claims to pay back billions to the American and Canadian governments. Wow, car sales must be great! Nope. The whole thing was a sham, as GM used some TARP money to repay the government. Kinda like paying your mortgage with your VISA card.

#2. the giant Canadian media chain Canwest failed to report it’s paper the National Post, and denialist “journalist” Terrance Corcoran – are being sued by Canadian scientist Andrew Weaver for libel. Details below – but the point is, we hear all about the opinions of the pro-fossil fuel guys, but not the news they are being called liars by top scientists. It’s more media censorship on climate affairs, in my opinion.

Then we switch gears, looking at how the evolution of our brains has failed to keep up with the problems generated by technology. Meanwhile, brain and psychological research is being used against us, in the consumer society. Don't miss this important interview with Dr. Deirdre Barrett of Harvard, as we discuss her new book "Supernormal Stimuli."

Let's start with the situation in South America, touching on the recent Cochebamba climate conference, the drought situation in Venezuela, and then the Amazon climate debate.

Avatar director James Cameron was just in the Amazon, meeting with tribes people who will be displaced by a new dam slated for the deep jungle.

I'll give you the links you need to track all of this. And we feature a new Earth song by Vanessa Richards, called "Occupying Army."

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