HARD NEWS, TROUBLED PLANET

Summary: Australia fires climate scientists while expanding coal. Ellen Roberts of GetUp! reports. From Netherlands, scientist Arjen Hoekstra finds 4 billion people in water scarcity. From Hong Kong, Stuart Heaver on nuclear fear next door. Radio Ecoshock 160217

A new paper by Australian scientists find that that the number of bushfires in Australia is up 40 percent just since 2007. Find that study here.

Another hot summer is just ending in Australia, with another round of fires. Meanwhile, Tasmania is burning, with fires so hot they create their own lightning - self-sustaining fires.

What does the government do? It hires a thug to fire 110 climate scientists who report on the growing impacts of climate disruption. The premier climate study agency CISRO, is being converted into a for-profit tech research agency with industry in mind. Why? The new boss says climate change has already been proven, so why keep all those climate scientists?

Over 3,000 scientists around the world have petitioned to stop the carnage at CISRO. No matter. The government has other fish to fry, literally, as the waters around Australia heat up beyond the survival limits of the famous Great Barrier Reef (just look at this recent example from Fiji). That doesn't matter anyway, as the Australian government just approved a massive new coal mine complex, and a coal shipping port just a few kilometers from that reef.

That's the real reason climate science has to go. It's the coal business, mate.

We'll get to the scientist who led a study showing billions of people experience "severe water scarcity", and listen to more nuclear fears about reactor mania in China. Welcome to your dose of world news and science, this week on Radio Ecoshock.

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ELLEN ROBERTS, GETUP! AND AUSSIE COAL CRAZIES

There are crazy projects, and then there are plans so dangerous we can't believe any government or corporation would do it. Here is one of those. In Australia, just before Christmas, the government announced approval of a mega-coal shipping terminal just a few kilometers from the World Heritage Great Barrier reef. Australia is busy expanding production with absolutely giant mines, to ship more climate-wrecking coal to India. What could go wrong?

Here to tell us about it is Ellen Roberts of the Australian activist organization GetUp! The GetUp! group in Queensland covers a wide range of issues, from climate change to mistreatment of refugees. They help organize the public to get action, despite the current reactionary government in Australia.

Ellen Roberts. Photo credit: Australian Financial Review at afr.com

Here is part of a GetUp email to their members:

"Earlier this year, we helped the Mackay Conservation Group defeat the Carmichael mine in Federal Court. And in 2013 GetUp members funded two court cases that stopped the Abbot Point expansion in its tracks. They were historic cases that forced new laws banning dredge spoil from being dumped out at sea.

But, under huge pressure from the coal lobby and conservatives within his party, Greg Hunt has just re-approved Adani's destructive, unprofitable coal disaster.

This port will involve more than a million cubic metres of dredging in Great Barrier Reef World Heritage waters. It will make way for a company with a documented history of bribery, corruption and environmental destruction to build one of the biggest coal mines in the world.

The mine would create more carbon emissions than most countries. It will heat the oceans, bleach our coral and undermine international efforts to stop global warming. On every level, this is a disaster.

We've done it before. Now, we have no choice. To stop this project, we have to do it again."

If it makes you feel any better, the Adani Group in India have announced they will delay opening their super coal mines in Australia, and the new coal port. Perhaps they've noticed that stock in coal companies around the world have crashed so badly that many are going bankrupt. The Australian government is still optimistic though, hoping they can help crash the world climate with more coal. This adds to my conviction that only a major economic crash can possibly stop civilization from environmental suicide.

All along, the Aussie coal industry has foot tooth and nail against any subsidy for solar or wind power. Now that Asian coal demand has fallen, and Australia's mines running at a loss, here comes the coal industry looking for billions more in taxpayers dollars - aside from the multiple subisides they already get in public infrastructure.

More on falls in Asian coal demand lower down in this article.

By providing coal, Australia is helping India avoid the transition to clean fuel. India and that whole region is hard hit by climate change. Plus literally millions of Indians are killed every year by air pollution caused by burning coal. I think Australians need to take some responsibility for the impacts in India, but here we also have an Indian corporation using Australian coal to pollute their own people.

Here is the kicker. Coal companies in the United States and Europe are going bankrupt. Their stock is almost worthless. Nobody wants to invest in them. Why is Australia the last place to hear that the coal age is over?

Download or listen to this 17 minute interview with Ellen Roberts in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WATER SCARCITY EXPERIENCED BY 4 BILLION PEOPLE - ARJEN HOEKSTRA

Word about this scary study is spreading around alternative media, even as it fades from it's 15 seconds of fame on mainstream outlets like the Guardian. Hardly anyone has a full interview with him. Radio Ecoshock does.

If you need water, just turn on a tap. Take as much as you want. Unless of course you are one of the four billion people on this planet who often can't.

You heard that right. A new study from the Netherlands is titled "Four billion people facing severe water scarcity." It's another jaw-dropping signal from the real world in trouble.

Dr. Arjen Hoekstra co-authored the paper with Mesfin Mekonnen. I think it's safe to say that Dr. Hoeskstra is a world authority on water use. His latest book "The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society" was translated into Chinese, with his other titles appearing in many languages.

He advises governments and international institutions like UNESCO and the World Bank. He founded the Water Footprint Network. And he's Professor in Water Management at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.

Dr. Arjen Hoekstra

Essentially this study finds that 4 billion people experience at least 1 month of severe water scarcity a year. About half that number have to survive through many months of where water is hard to find, and some countries, like Libya, have severe water stress all year round.

To be accurate, here are the hard numbers from the Hoekstra paper:

""We find that about 71% of the global population (4.3 billion people) lives under conditions of moderate to severe water scarcity (WS > 1) at least 1 month of the year.

About 66% (4.0 billion people) lives under severe water scarcity (WS > 2.0) at least 1 month of the year.

Of these 4.0 billion people, 1.0 billion live in India and another 0.9 billion live in China. Significant populations facing severe water scarcity during at least part of the year further live in Bangladesh (130 million), the United States (130 million, mostly in western states such as California and southern states such as Texas and Florida), Pakistan (120 million, of which 85% are in the Indus basin), Nigeria (110 million), and Mexico (90 million)."

"The number of people facing severe water scarcity for at least 4 to 6 months per year is 1.8 to 2.9 billion.

Half a billion people face severe water scarcity all year round. Of those half-billion people, 180 million live in India, 73 million in Pakistan, 27 million in Egypt, 20 million in Mexico, 20 million in Saudi Arabia, and 18 million in Yemen. In the latter two countries, it concerns all people in the country, which puts those countries in an extremely vulnerable position.

Other countries in which a very large fraction of the population experiences severe water scarcity year-round are Libya and Somalia (80 to 90% of the population) and Pakistan, Morocco, Niger, and Jordan (50 to 55% of the population)."

Picture women walking a few miles, every day, with a jug of dirty river water on their heads, and you get the idea. Crops can't be watered. It's hard to wash dishes or keep kids clean. This is not a statistic, but a snapshot of very difficult lives that most of my listeners have never encountered.

I'm wondering about the possibility of more abrupt water shortages. For example, farmers in parts of India and China are drilling deeper and deeper to suck out groundwater. California is doing the same, and last year some of those wells ran dry. Is there a point where groundwater can no longer make up for rainfall losses - and could we reach that point soon?

Another comparatively abrupt cause of water shortage would be pollution of rivers and lakes. For example, many rivers in China that are now too toxic to drink or unfit for irrigation. Add in ever-growing populations, and the increased need for water to satisfy new demand for meat, and we have a mess.

This whole picture, as bad as it is, will change significantly with climate change.

In a previous paper, Hoekstra published with Wiedmann, in the journal Science June 2014, they found that humanity's total environmental imprint, not just water use, was "unsustainable". We all know this is true.

There are pressure points where countries are moving toward such extreme water stress that their economies, political systems or even survival are at stake. It's already happened in Libya and Syria, with many more to come.

Arjen's latest book is "The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society". We discuss his new paper, with co-author Mesfin Mekonnen, titled "Four billion people facing severe water scarcity." That was published in January 29 in the journal "Science Advances".

Download or listen to this 20 minute interview with Arjen Hoesktra in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Follow the work of Arjen Hoekstra though his web site here.

Here is a recent (January 2016) presentation by Arjen on You tube called "Breaking the Wall to Water Security."

Or try this You tube video: Prof. Arjen Hoekstra on Virtual Water: The Water Footprint of Modern Society.

DANGEROUS NUCLEAR NEIGHBORS IN CHINA - STUART HEAVER

Why am I back talking about the wave of nuclear plant construction in China? First of all, we all do care about other people, even on the other side of the world. A nuclear plant accident among tens of millions of people could be the greatest tragedy ever seen. It's bound to happen eventually.

When it does, there will be no place to go. Those millions will continue to live in radioactive hot zones. If you still don't care, remember that the plume of very radioactive dust spread from Fukushima in Japan all the way around the world. Uranium from Fukushima was found in New England, and radiation arrived in Europe and Scandinavia. A nuclear accident anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere pollutes the whole Northern Hemisphere, for thousands of years. Now maybe you care what happens in China, where dozens of reactors with new designs never successfully run anywhere else are being built right now.

Lately there have been riots on the streets of Hong Kong. It's about freedom of speech, about continuing a free market, about a way of life. Behind it all, there is a growing dark shadow of worry about the new reactors being build right next door on the mainland. Radio Ecoshock investigates.

Stuart Heaver is a journalist with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. His article in the Post Magazine, January 10, 2016, alerted me to this under-reported nuclear danger. The headline is: "Radiation fear in Hong Kong from China's unproven and possibly faulty nuclear reactors nearby."

Journalist Stuart Heaver from Hong Kong.

China is building and planning a wave of new nuclear reactors. There are eight under construction right now in Guangdong Province, all within 150 kilometers (93 miles) of the crowded super-city of Hong Kong. There are 120 million people in that small area. Trust me, there is absolutely no way to evacuate Hong Kong in any timely manner, should a nuclear accident like Fukushima occur.

There is a contingency evacuation plan for Hong Kong, Heaver tells us, but no one takes it seriously. The biggest and nearest fear is the multiple reactor complex at Daya Bay. There are at least two operators there. Suspicion abounds.

China is not famous for transparency. At least Western privately owned reactor companies have to file some information for their shareholders. The reactors being built by the Chinese government don't. Who knows if the public will even be told if there is a leak of radiation to the air or water? The Soviets didn't tell people in Kiev about the Ukranian nuclear blow-up at Chernobyl, until the Swedes outed them four days later!

One or the reactor complexes uses untested technology from AREVA, the French government controlled nuclear company. French regulators just revealed there is a serious flaw in the reactor core design. Chinese regulators did not inform the public. As we heard a few weeks ago in my interview with Mycle Schneider, this flaw is so serious, the current construction may have to be ripped down and start again.

China will also be the testing ground for the new Westinghouse AP-1000, so-called Third Generation reactors. It's almost like the government decided to try one or two of everything, to see what works and what doesn't. But it's a terrible thing when nuclear technology doesn't work!

Meanwhile, as Stuart Heaver tells us, Chinese industrial culture has a very bad record for safety. You may recall recent news footage of a major port in China blowing up. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Hong Kong media reports every week on deaths, explosions, leaks, and general accidents in industry on the Chinese mainland. The safety culture is not there, and that's terrible news when nuclear reactors are involved.

Even a government survey showed only 34% of Chinese people are confident nuclear power will be handled safely. Another reactor inland is built in an earthquake zone. The last big one was in 2012.

I don't want to pick on China. So far the nuclear record of other countries is worse. China is already a leader in alternative energy, and becoming pro-active on climate change. It's just that we now know nuclear power is literally a dead-end path. It's time to stop the construction and go for alternative energy all the way.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Stuart Heaver in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Follow Stuart Heaver through his blog here. His Twitter handle is @StuartHeaver.

I'm Alex Smith. Please support making and distributing this program if you can. Find out how here.

Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.

THE DEATH OF NUCLEAR POWER

SUMMARY: Lead author of "World Nuclear Industry Status Reports" Mycle Schneider on new Nuclear Leap Forward in China. Famous activist Helen Caldicott on plan to make S. Australia a world nuclear dump; and dangerous nuke waste in St. Louis, Missouri. Radio Ecoshock 160127

A tiny but powerful number of scientists, applauded by a few famous greens, urge us to accept nuclear power. They see it as the salvation of our civilization, our climate, our future.

It isn't happening. As you'll hear, nuclear power is shrinking, not expanding. World-wide, major nuclear companies are going bankrupt, or soaking up billions more of your taxes, or both.

Expert Mycle Schneider looks into secrets of the Great Nuclear Leap Forward in China. Remember, after Chernobyl and Fukushima, an accident anywhere in the world can irradiate the Northern Hemisphere. China's new untested reactors are your reactors. Their radiation can land in your backyard.

All our lives, we've been told the problem of storing nuclear waste for a million years will be solved by science and technology. Instead, you will hear how hot waste from 70 years ago continues to threaten and poison a suburb of St. Louis Missouri. Dr. Helen Caldicott also reports on the mad rush to turn beautiful South Australia into a nuclear waste dump for the world.

Boiling water with reactors has become a time-bomb, a failed technology, a path better not taken, a threat and a burden to all succeeding generations.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

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

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MYCLE SCHNEIDER: THE NEW NUCLEAR LEAP FORWARD IN CHINA

“Nuclear energy costs are cheap because we lower our standards.”

- He Zuoxiu, in the Guardian newspaper, May 25, 2015.

While our heads are filled with day-dreams of Hollywood stars and nightmares of financial collapse, China is taking another "Great Leap Forward". China is building to become the world's largest nuclear-powered economy. A Chinese nuclear expert says the burst of reactor construction brings, quote, "the 'most probable' period for a nuclear accident in China forward to between 2020 and 2030." [Hu Zuoxiu 19.03.2013]

In fact, He Zuoxiu, who has been a government supporter and well known scientist in the nuclear field, has called the current rush to nuclear expansion in China "insane". He's 88. He can get away with it.

The risks to very heavily populated parts of China are huge to unimaginable. As we learned from Fukushima, an accident anywhere can launch radiation around the Earth.

What is going on with nuclear power in China? From Paris, our guest Mycle Schneider makes it his business to know. He's the lead author of "The World Nuclear Industry Status Reports." Schneider has advised European governments and members of the European Parliament on energy issues.

China has become an experimental lab for untested nuclear reactor technology. All the dreams of nuclear scientists are either planned or already under construction in China. There are plans and hopes for "pebble reactors" and "thorium" plants. The experiment becomes even larger when we consider so many countries, all with their different technologies, are part of the new nuclear boom in China.

The Taishan reactor complex is just one example. There the French company Areva is providing 3 European Pressurized Reactors (EPR's). These are allegedly "3rd generation" designs (although Mycle says there are very few advances over current second generation models).

Mycle Schneider



Experience? They have never run one of these reactors for a single day, and their track record is atrocious. The EPR at Flamanville in the far north of France (just across the channel from Britain) was begun in 2007. It's completion date kept getting delayed and delayed, by years and years. Now they say it will be finished in 2017 - oops, now it's 2018.. But that's unlikely. Areva has recently admitted finding a serious design flaw in the inner reactor. It's so serious, Mycle suggests they might have to tear down and rebuild. The French regulator published information on this flaw, but it has not been communicated to the Chinese people.

The original cost of this single EPR reactor was supposed to be 3.3 billion euros. Now it's over 10 billion euros and who knows what the final cost will be, if it opens.

The situation of Areva's reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland is even worse. This is what Wiki says about it:

"According to Financial Times in December 2014 construction of unit 3 has descended into farce as it is currently expected to open nine years late and several billions of euros over budget."

China has also contracted to buy a couple of experimental, never-before-built "third generation" reactors from Westinghouse Nuclear, now majority owned by Toshiba corporation of Japan. It's the AP-1000. Who knows what it will cost, when it will be completed, and most importantly, if this design is safe?

Mycle Schneider also worries whether China can find the technical culture needed to run reactors flawlessly. Sure China turns out zillions of engineers every year, but none of them have been nuclear operators.

China joins other countries like France in having the builders, operators, and regulators all part of a government-owned structure. Very little is known about this industry in China. There is no transparency, and little room for citizen oversight or complaint. I'll have more to say about that in another program.

Schneider points out that the world has fewer operating reactors (supply power to the grid) now than existed in 2002, even with the construction boom in China. That's because old nuclear plants are being closed in many countries, and not replaced. It's a dying technology.

The few nuclear reactor makers are being killed off in the stock market. Nuclear shares are now at pennies on the original dollar. That's another serious worry. For example, the La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing site, again in northern France, has the largest supply of high-level nuclear materials in the world. It's run by Areva. Areva stocks have been hammered so low, and their sales so poor, that the company has announced big job cuts. When hundreds of staff are sent home from La Hague, Mycle asks "what were they doing that will not be done now?" Is safety being cut as well? What happens to all the reactors being built or operated by financially failed companies?

That alone is one reason why nuclear power is not a solution for global warming. The economic costs are far too high, and not enough could be completed before lasting damage has been done by the carbon economy it means to partially replace. It's too late.

The big reactor makers were almost toast in the west, despite billions in government subsidies. But they counted on a "nuclear renaissance" in China to survive. Schneider points out the Chinese have been blunt about their game. They are "technology shopping". They buy a couple of reactors from everybody (including from Canada) - and then break down the engineering so they can do it all themselves. There is no big market for reactors in China for any western company.

The end-game of all this nuclear "business" is sadly predictable. Taxpayers, somewhere, will pay and pay to prop up existing reactors, and then pay more or less forever for whatever dismantling and storage can be done. The current players will long-since be bankrupt. The nuclear sales executives will have run away.

All of this comes as the nuclear industry tried desperately, including at the Paris climate talks, to promote their industry as the answer to global warming. They didn't even make the agenda. The public doesn't want it. It's not happening. It's a dead-end.

Be sure and check out Mycle's interview. It's an eye-opener into a nuclear business built on secrecy and incredible risks. He's been an advisor on nuclear and energy to the French, German, and Belgian governments. His reports and expertise are in demand. He knows.

Download, listen to, or share this 27 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Mycle Schneider in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Use this small URL to pass on the Lo-Fi version of this interview. Tweet on! http://tinyurl.com/z5288cx Here are a few links to follow up:

List of Mycle's publications here.

Check out the World Nuclear Industry Status Report web site.

You can find out more about nuclear energy in China with this January 2016 update "Mind the China Effect".

HELEN CALDICOTT ON EVERLASTING NUCLEAR WASTE

In a populated suburb of St. Louis Missouri, nuclear waste from American bomb-making is washing into surface water. Now all that radioactive mess is threatened by an underground fire just 1200 feet away.

If that's the best the United States can do, what chance does Australia have, with their grand plans to make South Australia a dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste? It's time for another round of nuclear madness, and the doctor is in. That's Doctor Helen Caldicott, the most famous anti-nuclear campaigner in the world.

Download, listen to, or share this 27 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Helen Caldicott in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Pass on this interview with Helen in Lo-Fi, using this tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/z2u9n8r

Dr. Helen Caldicott

Along the way, Helen tells us about her role in founding the anti-nuclear movement in Australia in the 1970's. Then she spent 20 years in Boston. There she revived a dead non-profit called "Physicians for Nuclear Responsibility" and built it into an anti-nuclear powerhouse.

Helen met for over an hour with President Ronald Reagan. Sensing he knew little about nuclear weapons, she explained not only was any nuclear exchange unwinnable, it would cause a catastrophe where medical treatment was not an option. Reagan after that began talks with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons, and reduce political stress points. We owe a part of our survival of that mad nuclear age to Helen Caldicott.

Not that we are safer now. Nuclear weapons continue to be built all over the world, some in very unstable countries and/or dictatorships. The tension between nuclear neighbors has spread from just Russia and the West to places like Pakistan and India. Just yesterday, January 26th, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced the "Doomsday Clock" would remain at 3 minutes to midnight.

Helen continues to warn the world about the danger of nuclear weapons, but that is not why we talked this week on Radio Ecoshock.

First the Australian state of South Australia has a mad idea to replace the car plant jobs they lost. The government is pushing to become the nuclear waste dump of the world. There is a complicated back story, but that's the bald fact.

How they would do this has not been announced. So far it looks like a shed in the desert is the likely plan! South Australia called their own Royal Commission to get submissions on the project. Most of the submissions came from pro-nuclear people. The aboriginal people - who still own the land! - could not make direct entries to the Commission, because they lacked the Justice of the Peace system that was required. Their voices were ruled out.

The Royal Commission is due to release it's predestined "report" on February 15th. On February 16th Helen Caldicott will make an answering speech in Adelaide. It's all very sad.

BACK TO OLD ST. LOUIS

We've been told and told that there will be a new technical solution for nuclear waste. Here is a situation in America which shows what a great lie that is. The original nuclear waste from constructing the atomic bombs dropped on Japan - that waste is still very potent and dangerous. A great deal of it was just dumping in the ground near the airport in St. Louis Missouri.

It was badly looked after. A few tarps cover the ground. Rainstorms wash radioactive waste into local streams, and from there into rivers. The wind blows radioactive materials around. A recent study by scientists, including nuclear scientist Bob Alvarez, checked out an area about 200 kilometers around the St. Louis site near Bridgeton, a suburb. They found lots of radiation. The title is: "Tracking legacy radionuclides in St. Louis, Missouri, via unsupported 210Pb "[Lead] You can read more about that study here.

Guess what. There is a higher incidence of many kinds of cancer around this West Lake landfill site. Our old un-friend Exelon is the allegedly responsible party for this nuclear mess.

Now the kicker. An underground fire has been burning for years in the regular landfill site right next to the nuclear dump. This fire is now burning less than 1200 feet from the nuclear waste! If the atomic materials burn, you can count on radiation spreading far and wide. The US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a wall be built underground to deflect the fire, but really nothing has been done.

You can hear a local resident and columnist Byron DeLear describe the St. Louis situation here in the Nuclear Hotseat #237 with Libbe HaLevy, from January 6, 2016, here on You tube. (You have to scroll well into the program, but don't! The whole show is very revealing about the U.S. nuclear industry.)

So like the good doctor going to where the sick patient is found, Helen Caldicott is going to St. Louis. She'll help bring the spotlight back where it belongs, on this utter failure to protect even the first nuclear waste created by humans.

Tune in to all things Helen at helencaldicott.com. Be sure to check out the latest book edited by Helen Caldicott: "Crisis Without End, The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe."

MY CONCLUSION

Any more money spent on nuclear power is a waste of the dwindling fuel, resources, and carbon space in the atmosphere. Humans will have to be very fortunate to care for the existing plants over dozens of generations. Given our history, our failed economics, and the magnitude of climate disruption developing, some reactors, somewhere, will blow out, one by one, or in concert.

I hope I am not one of the unlucky evacuees if the radioctive tanks blow up at Hanford in Washington State. I hope none of you are predestined to abandon a whole region of your country, with all the beloved places, experiences, and resources lost to humans. Accepting that risk is a betrayal of Nature. It is a betrayal of whatever or whoever initiated the possibility of ever-lasting evolution of life somewhere in space.

That's what I think. That's how I feel.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock again this week.

At the end of the program, I play a bit from "Talkin' End Game It's The Radioactive Song" by Michel Montecrossa.

The High Arctic and Eco-Anxiety

SUMMARY: Disturbing climate news from high Arctic with Paul Beckwith. Handling eco-anxiety with Susie Burke of Australian Psychological Society. Radio Ecoshock 140903 kicks off new fall season.

A hearty welcome back to another season of Radio Ecoshock. I'm your tour-guide, Alex Smith.

In this program you'll get a review of some of the disturbing climate news in the high Arctic, trends which pretty well guarantees a hotter and less stable climate for all of us. The knowledgeable climate scientist Paul Beckwith is our guide. He's just back from the glaciers of Alaska.

If you've been experiencing a growing anxiety about our future climate, you'll appreciate an interview crammed with helpful tips from a senior psychologist in Australia. Our guest will be Susie Burke from the Australian Psychology Society. She specializes in mental prepping for disasters, and ways to cope with eco-anxiety.

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

You can also listen to this show right now on Soundcloud.



HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER...(remember those back to school essays?)

On a personal note, I've been back in nature, tubing down the river, soaking in the heat in a remarkably dry summer in British Columbia Canada.

I've also been following my own advice to get local food, and save money by capturing crops during the harvest, with a garden at home and another in the local community garden. In the community-owned canning kitchen, we canned dozens of bottles of plums and peaches, dried more dozens of pounds of cherries, and apricots, while cooking up tomato sauce and freezing our own beans for the winter.

As you know I've been learning to create home-grown music for Radio Ecoshock. This summer I had an opportunity to write pieces for a film score. The Pakistan-produced psychological thriller "Hotal" from Outfield Productions will premier in the New Delhi International Film Festival this coming December. There will be a music credit to Alex Smith, and no doubt I'll squeeze in a few samples for that. You can read a review about this film's big ambitions here. And here is a Vimeo trailer for the new film.

While stretching my music to the sitar, sarod, and tabla, I've also been thinking about the need to expand Radio Ecoshock to cover even more voices and issues from India, which is poised to become the world's most populous country in the coming decades. India's entry to the industrial revolution is powered almost entirely by coal.

At the end of the show, you'll hear a short interview I did over the summer, a kind of introduction for new listeners, with some news about a major mining disaster in Canada.

Plus - many thanks to those whose continuing donations helped pay the bills during the summer! We got a surprising number of downloads of recent and past programs as more people become aware of the program and the issues we cover.

I also appreciate those who ReTweet notice of the new Radio Ecoshock season, including @johnlundin @bluesuezoo @Pcamachobotero @PltBRos @TheEarthNetwork @JTToronto @philrandal @nicorajohns @ecodissident @ArcticBoundCom and more. The program doesn't have a publicity department - so I count on listeners to get the word out by social media. Get news of new programs from my own Twitter feed @ecoshock - and please forward those Tweets to your own lists of friends and followers!

If you'd like to Tweet about this program, here is a handy short URL for it, to save those precious characters: http://tinyurl.com/k2vhbh8

HIGH ARCTIC NEWS FROM PAUL BECKWITH

Before we get started, here are the two super sources Paul Beckwith recommends at the end of our interview. Both are loaded with real-time or very recent maps and charts showing climate change in action:

http://cci-reanalyzer.org/

http://earth.nullschool.net/

Be sure and check them out!

PAUL BECKWITH, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

So much climate change is taking place in the Arctic, and those giant events could soon sweep the world into a hotter age. There are a few good blogs, like Arctic News and Robert Scribbler, but really we need a full-time Arctic TV news station. Until that comes, let's get some of this summer's top climate stories in the north, from Paul Beckwith. He's the University of Ottawa climate undergrad, with two Masters degrees already to his credit. As it happens, Paul has just returned from a visit to Alaska.

Here are some of the big stories out of the Arctic we talk about. One that got a lot of eyeballs was that crater that blew up in Siberia. Apparently it was caused by a methane explosion - another sign that the melting tundra is removing the frozen cap from methane created millions of years ago. It's not a climate-changer in itself, but the start of something unpleasantly big.

We think the largest and worst amount of methane is similarly sequestered under the shallow Arctic sea of East Siberia. A multi-country research ship went up there this July, and found many methane vents bubbling up to the surface. The Arctic News blog is reporting methane from the ocean went up even further, after that research vessel left. I've also been reading some reports about much warmer ocean temperatures in the Arctic, another reason sea-bed methane could be released.

The well-known ice scientist Jason Box used the F-word in a Tweet, to describe our situation if Arctic methane gets released in quantity. Scientists are really worried about this, while the public has barely heard about it.

There have been heat waves again in the Arctic this year of 2014. Planetary warming may only be around 1 degree on average, but around the North Pole it's up to 8 degrees above normal. That reduces the amount of thermal tension between the Pole and the tropics, which many scientists think has slowed the Jet Stream. Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University has led research into this theory, with new support from a scientific paper released this summer by the Potsdam Institute.

A Jet Stream with less power tends to meander and stall, like a river in a big delta. The weather experienced in the Northern Hemisphere is greatly influenced by that. Jet Stream bends and weather blockage resulted in a generally cooler, wetter summer in the Eastern part of North America, with a hot dry summer in the West. That means soggy floods in the Mid-West and New England, and forest fires and drought from California north.

We had a week or two of forest fire smoke where I live in British Columbia, and a listener from Montana says it was even worse there. I know Washington State experienced its largest wildfire EVER this summer. Perhaps you've seen coverage of the continuing fires in California. Everybody has been warned food prices will go up, due to the drought there. Photos comparing reservoir levels in Northern California to past years are shocking.

There were huge fires in the Arctic this year, including some fires reported burning in the Tundra, where there are not even any trees. Smoke from those fires went around the world, but the soot particles falling on ice, especially in Greenland are a big concern. The darker surface helps the ice melt faster. Some scientists estimate up to half of the rapid ice melt of glaciers in Greenland are due to soot from industry and forest fires make the snow darker.

Arctic fires are fast becoming a positive feedback loop for global warming. More fires lead to a faster snow melt, extending the fire season, leading to more fires. The darker snow and ice lowers reflection of the Sun's energy into space (the planetary "albedo") leading to more heating, leading to more fires. I'd love to see the science that quantifies this feedback effect, now that runaway Arctic fires are common every year, from Alaska through Canada, and especially in Siberia.

Meanwhile in Canada, home of the Tar Sands, our Prime Minister Harper is giving photo-ops on board a military ship searching for the Franklin Expedition, lost in the 1800's. If the explorers had set out today, they probably would never have been trapped in the ice. They might have sailed right through the newly melted Northwest Passage! Prime Minister Harper doesn't see the irony of pushing more oil drilling in the Arctic, now that fossil fuels have melted the sea ice. Maybe he should spend that money re-hiring the climate scientists he's fired...

As always, Paul Beckwith has lots of stories and insight into developing climate change, especially in the Arctic.

You can listen to/download his 24 minute interview here in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

If you want to pass on a link to Paul's interview in social media, here is a tiny URL to save precious space in a Twitter or Facebook post: http://tinyurl.com/nf67hkz

Keep track of Paul's many blog postings, videos and You tube videos on his Facebook page here.

BECOMING PREPARED FOR CLIMATE DISASTER - CLIMATE "PREPPING"

Has knowing about climate change hurt your mental health?

Susie Burke is with the Australian Pyschological Society. She's made a specialty of studying the impacts of climate change on mental health. Susie has a lot of useful tips for keeping our own sanity, despite knowing the serious troubles we face in the future.

SUSIE BURKE, Australian Psychological Society

I first found Susie in an article titled "A Climate of Despair" in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. It begins with an environmental scientist with a developing depression about the future. I would think climate scientists are on the front lines, possibly encountering a kind of "pre-traumatic stress disorder." Are psychologists finding more people having difficulty imagining a positive future?

Think about leading climate scientists like Kevin Anderson in the UK, or the German expert John Schellnhuber, who spoke at the "Four Degrees or More" conference in Australia in 2011. I wonder how can they can cope knowing the extreme threats we face? Kevin Anderson has talked about this, and he finds it difficult. Former NASA lead scientist James Hansen is so concerned for the future of his grandchildren, he was forced to become an activist, including an arrest to oppose mountain-top removal coal mining.

What should we call a fear and sadness about wrecking the future for our descendants? Some call it "eco-anxiety". The Australian environmental Philosopher (at the University of Newcastle) Glenn A. Albrecht invented a new word for this condition: "solastalgia"

Here is his official explanation for the term:

"Solastalgia is the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the 'lived experience' of negative environmental change. It is the homesickness you have when you are still at home. It is that feeling you have when your sense of place is under attack. While I claim responsibility for creating the concept of solastalgia and its meaning, I am aware that that the existential experience underlying it is not new ... only that it is newly defined in English (but possibly represented in many other languages). The experience of solastalgia might well be ancient and ubiquitous and under the impact of relentless environmental change, ecosystem distress and climate chaos, it may well become much more common. It is my sincere hope that the negative experience of solastalgia can be overcome by the restoration of ecosystem and human health via every form of creative enterprise at our disposal."

Our radio guest Susie Burke recently gave a presentation at the Climate Reality Project hosted in Australia by former US vice-president Al Gore.

If someone comes to a psychologist or psychiatrist saying climate change is going to wipe out our future, and they are really down about that, would they likely be diagnosed with a mental problem and a drug prescription? Susie doesn't think so. It's more likely a person would get counselling to help them handle their feeling "down" and then get pointed into activism to get going again.

That seems to be the three point method:

1. Allow yourself to experience your real emotions, which may be painful once you admit them. These may include fear, a sense of mourning for what we have lost in nature, or even grief. More about that next week.

2. Find others who feel the same, and share what you are feeling.

3. Then turn outward into activism, in whatever way you can find, preferably with others.

In Australia, the Psychological Society has already had to deal with climate-related disaster victims. There have been extreme fires, including the deadly Black Saturday bush fires where 173 people died. The Murray-Darling River Basin experienced such a horrible long-term drought that many farmers killed themselves, as other Australian farmers have done due to drought. Australians also endured some of the freakiest of freaky flash floods.

You don't have to live in Australia, or wherever climate-driven disasters strike, to feel the pain. I talk to Suzie about "vicarious" climate anxiety. We'll all be feeling that watching TV news as this decade unfolds.

The Psychological Society prepared a pre-disaster planning guide. The main point is that we can think through what may happen, which helps us keep our cool during the actual event. Otherwise people tend to panic, and make bad decisions that endangers lives.

You can find their disaster guide on the Society web site, here.

Here is a link to their .pdf booklet on Psychological First Aid, An Australian guide ot supporting people affected by disaster.

This is where you can find the Psychological Society tips sheets on being mentally prepared - metnal "preppers"!

Next week, I'll talk with American psychologist Carolyn Baker. She's been counselling people to experience the grief of climate loss now. I ask Susie Burke about that - and find she endorses that idea, so long as people don't stop with climate grieving, but go on to climate action.

We also discuss the sad state of Australian climate denial, where the current government is disbanding previous efforts to combat climate change, including study institutes and the carbon tax. Burke reports that surveys show most Australians know climate change is real, and think something should be done about it.

You can download or listen to this interview with Susie Burke here in CD Quality or Lo-Fi. I think it's going to become one of my favorites.

Is it possible the whole world might enter not an economic depression, but an unexpected viral mental depression, as we see the climate deteriorate, with things like repeated extreme weather, countless storm incursions on coastal cities, and so on? I wonder how often people can rebuild their homes and their lives without becoming angry about life, or their leaders.

A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH ALEX SMITH

During the year you will hear little about me, and lots from the scientists, authors and experts that define Radio Ecoshock. In this 2014 kick-off show, I added one short piece with a bit about myself as host, and the vision behind this program.

This is part of an interview I did for the EcoCentric show for community radio in Nelson British Columbia. It followed the Mount Polley mine disaster in that Canadian Province. On August 4th, a giant tailings pond burst, wiping out wide swaths as it raced toward pristine Quesnel Lake. It's one of those mega-mining disasters that keep happening all around the world, in our quest for cheap metals and big profits. Here is that chat during August, hosted by Bruce Edson of Kootenay Co-op Radio. The program is called "EcoCentric".

As always, we've ran out of time, almost before we began. There is lots more to come in the coming year of new Radio Ecoshock shows.

NEXT WEEK: CAN WE SURVIVE EXTREME CLIMATE CHANGE?

Next week we'll ask the big question: can humans survive the big climate shift we are creating? Dr. Guy McPherson says "no". His co-author in the coming book "Extinction Dialogs", Carolyn Baker, tells us how to keep on living, despite knowing the worst is yet to come.

Then I'll be finding more answers for you, as we try hard to avoid wrecking the world we were born in. Expect strong voices and tough choices, right here on Radio Ecoshock.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you so much for listening.

Over the Climate Cliff

FRYING AUSTRALIA

Do you want to know what the future looks like? Try Australia, where bats falls dead out of the sky, and tennis players drop like flies in the heat. Coming right up: a report from the hot front with Cam Walker, Friends of Earth Australia.

Cam Walker is Friends of the Earth (FoE) Australia’s campaigns coordinator and has been active on environment and climate justice issues for more than 20 years.

How hot is it? When pavement melts and eggs fry on shovels, it must be Australia at the start of 2014. Its affecting the economy down-under. A lot of outdoor work has been cancelled as it's just too dangerous when temperatures are above 35 degrees C, hotter than 110 Fahrenheit. Some downtown streets look like a ghost-town, as people stay home, "hunkered down" against the heat.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock Show 140122 in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

The wildlife is taking it hard. No doubt you've heard about the tens of thousands, some say hundreds of thousands of bats who fell dead out of the sky. Animals from lemurs to Kangaroos are in trouble - as are cattle on farms. Water is so hard to come by in some places, the local governments advise people to put buckets of water out in the back yard for wildlife.

Wildfires have multiplied rapidly in the past week. Thankfully they haven't killed a lot of people yet, as in years past. But it's hot dangerous work fighting them, and the next tragedy may be waiting as all vegetation becomes tinder under the burning sun. Cam Walker relays reports of "heat storms" - lightning (that starts fires) and wind without any rain. Like a dry thunderstorm.

This all comes after Australia had it's hottest year ever in 2013

. The research on causes of this incredible string of heat waves in Australia isn't complete. There are so many factors, ranging from the record hot ocean temperatures, through changes in the Monsoon and Indian Ocean, to the same distortions of the jet stream seen in the Northern Hemisphere. All in all, as James Hansen says, the dice are loaded. This extreme weather would not be happening without climate change.

Amazing to me: Australians just voted in a government of climate change deniers. Tony Abbott is dismantling all the good climate work done by previous governments. Things like the carbon tax and environmental regulations are dumped overboard, as Abbott goes for a suicidal expansion of coal mining and exports! Let's see how hot we can make the world, and Australia, and how fast! There's lots of money in that, mate. Until the bill comes due.

Download/listen to just the Cam Walker interview on Australia in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS DROWN THE LAND

Then we're back to sky science. Atmospheric rivers move below the Jet Stream, carrying more water than the Amazon, and dumping it suddenly causing floods below. Expert David Lavers explains.

Why have there been so many strange floods lately in many parts of the world? Will this get worse as Earth's climate warms?

Dr. David A. Lavers is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar, formerly at the University of Redding in the United Kingdom, and now in the Hydroscience and Engineering department at the University of Iowa. His paper "Future Changes in atmospheric rivers and their implications for winter flooding in Britain" says we can expect more damaging floods to come.

We talk about why atmospheric rivers love to land in Britain. But really they hit the whole of Europe, from Spain through France and even Scandinavia.

Americans usually get more than their fair share of atmospheric river action. Just one of these giant wet streams in the air, as much as 1,000 miles long, and often only one to two hundred miles wide, can carry more water than the whole Amazon River. If the weather pattern sticks, delivering an AR to California for example, it can dump a foot or more of rain in one or two days. California could sure use one now, as they go into the biggest drought in recorded history!

There is scientific speculation that an atmospheric river caused the flooding in Boulder Colorado last year. They can even reach the East Coast.

In another show, I'll have to cover the mother of all rainstorms, the ARkStorm. The U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency, organized municipal disaster people in California a few years back. They found evidence of giant storms and floods that hit ever few hundred years. It's called "ARkStorm" as in Atmospheric River k (for one thousand year storm) storm. The last one hit California in 1862 and flooded much of the state. If that were to happen today, the food supply for much of North America would be wiped out, not to mention the human hardship and economic damage. It could even cause a world-wide Depression, give our current fragile state of the economy. I'll get to it in another show.

Meanwhile find out what atmospheric rivers are, and how they affect our lives (including in the Southern Hemisphere).

Download this Radio Ecoshock interview on atmospheric rivers in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

OUR LAST BEST HOPE FOR A FUTURE ON EARTH

Then it's journalist and author Alan Weisman. His previous book looked at the world without us. Now it's "Countdown, Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth". Are we headed for biological burnout?

I had my doubts about this book. After all, we've heard plenty about the threat(s) of overpopulation, and the usual answers (like women's education). Answers that hardly ever happen.

We are adding about 240 thousand more humans every day. Meanwhile the planetary impact of most people continues to expand, as we trample down more than half of all vegetation on Earth, and most of the species.

You know that. Apparently, just knowing is not "half the battle" as GI Joe says. We actually need to do something.

Alan Weisman presumes that most of us will not allow a government to dictate how many children we have, as China famously did. So he went on a several year quest, around the world, to find what latent capabilities there are in each culture to change the big family meme.

He found it, even in most religions. We talk about one Muslim example in Iran. The Supreme Ayatollah there said there was nothing in the Koran forbidding birth control. That country implemented a mandatory course in the cost of raising children, and birth control, for everyone getting marries. It worked.

I did read Alan's new book. He's a top quality writer (which is probably why Alan's work is published in the best known magazines.) The book is almost a travelogue, to places and mental spaces you and I have never been.

His stories from Pakistan are very revealing. That country is pretty well doomed by too many people for their resource base. There are already 180 million Pakistanis, in a country about the size of Texas. On their current path, it will be 400 million by the end of the century. Of course, the country will crash well before that. Are we all ready for the consequences?

Download/listen to the Radio Ecoshock interview with Alan Weisman in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Here is the Facebook page for Alan and this book.

HOW TO CONTACT ME

I get some of my best tips from you, the listener. Sorry I can't cover it all, but I follow up on every one. Feel free to send along news and ideas, to radio //at//ecoshock.org

The show web site, with all our previous programs as free .mp3 downloads, is ecoshock.org.

By the way, you are the publicity department. I have no staff to cross post the program, forward it on Facebook, or Tweet it all over. I count on you to do that, to get this vital information out as widely as possible.

This is Alex Smith, signing off - and thank you for caring about your world.

A Warning From the Future

Coming up in this program: leading scientist Dr. David Karoly says record heat and fires in Australia are a warning to the world. But we are not alone in the big change. Insects may adapt or die faster than humans, as told by "the bug guy", University of Maryland's Dr. Michael Raup. Then Steven Davis explains why climate solutions advanced just 9 years ago are no longer possible. A new report says existing technology is not enough to stem the climate tide. Now what?

Welcome to another full load from Radio Ecoshock.

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Radio Ecoshock show 130130 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Interview with Dr. David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne,Australia in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Interview with Dr. Michael Raupp, University of Maryland Entomologist in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Interview with Steven J. Davis, Assistant Professor Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

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TOP SCIENTIST SAYS AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE EXTREMES A WARNING TO THE WORLD

Dr. David Karoly

You've heard about extreme heat and fires in Australia at the start of 2013. Is it climate change? We go now to one of that country's leading climate scientists, Dr. David J. Karoly. He's been a lead IPCC author and advises the Australian government through the Climate Change Authority. After a stint teaching Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, Karoly is now at the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne.

It must have been a bit of culture shock to teach at the University of Oklahoma - a state known for oil and climate denial. But Karoly was invited there to add climate experise, as he taught Meteorology. While there are denialists in Oklahoma, don't generalize! There are plenty of people in Oklahoma who know fossil fuels are damaging the atmosphere.

Listen to the program online with this player:



I called Dr. Karoly to get a top scientists' guage of the extreme weather there in late December 2012, running all through January 2013.

For a taste of Australia's extreme weather lately, try out this video from the Telegraph newspaper in Britain. Australia's Prime Minister says "whether it's bush fires, whether it's floods, we are being challenged by nature."

Karoly tells us heat record after heat record was smashed. The longest run of heat. Many all-time heat record's smashed. And most worrying of all, likely for the first time the whole continent of Australia was under a massive heat dome. Australia is as large as the continental United States, and comparable to the size of Canada. As in North America, it is common to experience very different weather between the coasts, or north to south. California may be cool, while the Mid-Atlantic states roast.

But this time, the whole of Australia was very hot. The country set an all-time record AVERAGE high temperature, indicating it was above 37 degrees C. or 100 degrees F - everywhere on the entire continent. This is new, and it's not good.

Tune into the whole interview with arguably one of the best climate and weather experts in Australia, a fine scientific mind at work.

More here: What's Causing Australia's Heatwave? (written by authors with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

The recent report by the Australian Climate Commission, authored in part by David Karoly, is here as a .pdf : "Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat".

MICHAEL RAUPP - "The Bug Guy"

Dr. Michael Raupp

Television entertains us with weird weather striking all over the world as the planet warms. We see people coping with drought, flooded out, burned out, or blown away. It's all about us, but we are not alone here. The insects are also responding to climate change.

Here to explain is "the bug guy", University of Maryland Entomologist Dr. Michael J. Raupp.

Scientists studying leaf fossils found greatly increased signs of insect damage during the last great global warming event around 56 million years ago. Is it possible we could see a similar bug explosion in just the next hundred years?

We talk about what insects will thrive as climate change develops, and which ones could be in trouble, just like us. Mosquitoes go to the top of the list, because of the tropical diseases they carry. Are you ready for Dengue Fever?

But agricultural pests are also important. We talk food in the future.

I want to add an alert for all our gardener listeners. Be sure and watch Michael Raupp's You tube videos on pest control, including his useful and fun "CSI Garden Pests". One of Mike's books is "26 Things That Bug Me". And check out Mike's weekly insect update at bugoftheweek.com

STEVEN J. DAVIS - BROKEN SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE

Way back in 2004, two Princeton scientists, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, wrote in the journal Science, "[h]umanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the first half of this century, simply by scaling up what we already know how to do". They broke up the problem of greenhouse gas emissions into sections they famously called "wedges". Each represented a sector of pollution with ways to scale that back over 50 years. The authors called it the "wedge stabilization game."

One author, Robert Socolow reaffirmed wedge theory in a 2011 edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Although that same year, Socolow publicly worried that wedge theory made the solutions sound too easy, and so stalled real action.

We didn't do much of anything, except increase emissions. A new article published in the journal "Environmental Research Letters" suggests we've lost that chance, with just those 8 years of delay.

Let's dig into that deeper, with one of the lead authors of the new assessment. Dr. Steven J Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. He's part of a team of scientists who reassessed the famous wedge theory of solving the climate crisis. Find that article "Rethinking Wedges" in the journal "Environmental Research Letters" published in January 2013.

Or start with this good article by Tim Radford at the Climate News Network.

Radford begins:

"LONDON, 11 January – A nine-year delay in starting systematic carbon emission reductions to stabilise the climate has made the challenge ahead almost impossibly large, US scientists say.

They argue in Environmental Research Letters that a programme of action proposed in 2004 could have been achieved with existing technology. Now it cannot.

'We need new ways to generate the vast quantities of power that we now use worldwide,' says Steve Davis of the University of California Irvine, one of the authors. “Current technologies cannot provide this much carbon-free power quickly enough or affordably enough.”

Ken Caldeira is a climate scientist working for the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University in California. He says: 'It’s not enough to freeze greenhouse gas emissions at current levels. To prevent climate change, we need to stop dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an industrial scale.'"

ABOUT GIVING UP

Don't. And don't stop living the only life you have. We are all born into a generation with many circumstances beyond our control. While the world seems to ascend, with a positive spirit, it can also descend, with a general malaise or even despair. Within that national or global cycle, individual lives move by their own tides. You might experience happiness, and should, without guilt.

Coming up on Radio Ecoshock, I'll have an extended chat with Dr. Kathy McMahon, the clinical psychologist who helps people rethink their lives, even in times of great social crisis (whether it's peak oil, climate disruption, or a fall of the fake economy.)

Meantime, Kathy cautions me: this is not the time to give up on the great opportunity of being alive. Enjoy, and remember the future is always constructed from the unexpected.

Thank you for listening. Lots more next week. Be sure to tune in and act out.

Alex

Radio Ecoshock

Can We Avoid Collapse?

"Population Bomb" author & Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich on his Royal Society Paper "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?" From Tasmania, forest expert Dr. David Bowman: wild fires drive more global warming. Economist John Talberth suing the U.S. Government over risky ocean oil leases in the Arctic. Three interviews from a world of trouble. Radio Ecoshock 130123

FREE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

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

Listen to/download the Paul Ehrlich interview (18 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the David Bowman interview (23 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the John Talberth interview (19 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Welcome to another triple-header with Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with three interviews with three great guests.

I'll call Tasmania to learn why it burned and why climate-driven fires threaten all of us. Our guest is world-recognized fire expert David Bowman.

Then we'll investigate why the Obama Administration is rushing to sell off oil and gas rights on the dangerous Outer Continental Shelf. Is that fire-sale meant to fatten a Ponzi scheme of big oil stock prices? Economist John Talberth explains why his group, The Center for Sustainable Economy, is suing the government.

But first, But first Stanford's eminent biologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich (author of "The Population Bomb" and a dozen more) on his new scientific paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The title of this peer-reviewed paper is "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?"



Please don't forget to support Radio Ecoshock. Help pay the bills. Please donate at our web site ecoshock.org, or right here at our show blog at ecoshock.info. PAUL EHRLICH: CAN COLLAPSE BE AVOIDED?

Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich

I'll bet you know who Paul Ehrlich is. But just in case: he's a Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. Maybe you know him for the world-famous book co-authored with his wife Anne, the 1968 classic "The Population Bomb". Since then Paul, with Anne and other authors, has published dozens of books. In February 2011 we interviewed Paul for his latest: "Humanity on a Tightrope", written with Robert Ornstein.

Now Paul and Anne ask a rather extreme question, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society no less: "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?" This peer-reviewed paper was published online January 13th, 2013 in the Biological Sciences section of the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Climate change is on our minds, especially as America comes out of it's hottest year ever, and Australia burns. Yet there are other big threats out there. In fact, I counted nine developing ecological nightmares in Ehrlich's paper, not counting climate change or over-population.

We can't talk with Paul Ehrlich without population. Humans cannot multiply forever. But population is not the focus of this interview.

There is a disaster porn industry these days. But Paul has published in a journal known for science. Is there science behind the possibility civilization collapsing? A couple of dozen scientists reviewed the work and found it solid. Ehrlich notes that 160 different scientific papers were cited. Indeed, if you just followed up on those papers, you would probably develop the equivalent of a college course in the realities of today.

A good part of this Ehrlich paper is devoted to food production. The Ehrlichs have some suggestions on what could be done to avert a crisis. No food crisis for you? There is for more than a billion humans who do not have enough food today. It could get worse, threatening global stability.

I have to pose an inconvenient question. I interviewed Dr. Timothy Garrett from the University of Utah. Two years ago, he published a scientific, peer-reviewed paper showing only a complete collapse of our fossil-based civilization, right now, could avoid crushing climate change. We are a deadly species creating a mass extinction event. Maybe we should help this suicidal system collapse, instead of trying to save it?

Paul replies that for the sake of the people he loves, and the people he knows, he doesn't want to see such a harsh solution.

Paul told Stephen Leahy of the Independent Press Service "We are all scared." The people frightened are not just scientists, but anyone who either has the expertise, or educates themselves, on the various challenges to our civilization, a system which is far more fragile than we want to believe. By the way, I wouldn't have found out about this paper without the independent environmental journalist Stephen Leahy. Please visit his web site, and support his efforts.

There is far too much to this interview, with one of the grand older men of science and popular culture, to list here. Please listen for yourself.

DAVID BOWMAN: FIRE AND GLOBAL WARMING

Professor David Bowman, University of Tasmania

Sydney and Melbourne his more record highs this week, as the Australian super heat wave continues. This is our future friends - so let's tune in for a listen.

The image of kids in the water clinging to a dock, under a fire-red sky, captured the situation. The great Australian heat wave of 2013 also struck the southern-most part of the country, the island of Tasmania. Maybe this is the future anywhere trees grow, as global warming heats the planet.

Professor David Bowman is at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, teaching and researching Forest Ecology. He's a published expert on fire in the earth system.

When Dunalley Tasmania burned, Bowman was out of contact in the bush. He told his research team fire conditions were catastrophic, the worst he'd seen. Just last year Bowman was so concerned about the growing fire risk, he wrote the media a warning (which was ignored).

Listen to the 20 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with David Bowman.

While the public thinks a couple of wet seasons after a drought is a good thing, forest experts around the world know that is the most dangerous time. The rain creates new fuel for bush fires - which are more likely as the planet heats up.

It gets worse when slow-growing tree species get burned over in relatively quick succession. Fires that would normally return in perhaps 75 years come back in 5 years. Bowman says some forest ecologies in the Southern Hemisphere are converting toward super fireweed species. For example the Australian Alps are in danger of an ecosystem change.

The climate impacts from fire soot has also been underestimated in climate models, Bowman suggests. The black particles absorb the sun's heat, raising warming. Fire smoke is a complex mix of chemicals which are also responsible for many deaths around the world. Much more needs to be understood about them.

We also discuss the extreme fire risk of the trend to plant Eucalyptus trees around the world, including in California and the Mediterranean. The Eucalyptus, Bowman thinks, may be a real fire tree.

David Bowman has also been working with an extended family of aboriginal people in Northern Australia over the past 15 years, trying to learn what they know about fire. That relationship is unique, with fire being a part of aboriginal culture. Too bad the colonists didn't learn from them.

Learn a lot in one short interview. This kind of fire becomes a positive feedback effect on the climate. More fires lead to more warming, which leads to more fires.

STOPPING DRILLING ON THE U.S. OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF - JOHN TALBERTH

John Talberth

John Talberth is the senior economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy, which is based in New Mexico.

In our final interview this week, I bring you a case you probably haven't heard about. The U.S. Federal Government seems permanently on the edge of bankruptcy. The public always wants lower gas prices at the pump. Now the Obama Administration is auctioning off huge tracts of the Outer Continental Shelf to big oil and gas companies. Our guest, economist John Talberth says that's a bad idea, on so many levels. His group The Center for Sustainable Economy has taken the government to court to stop it.

There are many angles to this story. In a nutshell, the Center is suing a branch of the U.S. Government, called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, saying their assessment of the risks and benefits of awarding new leases on the Outer Continental Shelf did was not proper. If you haven't heard of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, it's the former "Minerals Management Service" (MMS) disgraced by the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling accident (and so renamed).

The Center for Sustainable Economy says the BOEM simply presumed America should sell off huge areas for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the high Arctic above Alaska, to make a buck and bolster big oil. The BOEM, and the EPA, did not consider the true risks, the suit says. And here is the novel argument: the agencies did not consider the benefits of leaving those fossil fuels in the ground. Just consider the climate costs of burning those fuels for example - $60 billion dollars in damages from Hurricane Sandy alone, with more to come.

The group also wants the government to weigh the advantages of saving these resources for future generations. As though we give a damn about our kids and grandkids, and what they might need, instead of driving around pointlessly now.

IS BIG OIL A PONZI SCHEME?

What I found fascinating was guest John Talberth's calculation these leases might have been awarded in part to bolster the stock price of major oil and gas companies. Even if the resources are not developed for some years, the alleged oil and gas go on the big corporate books as assets, keeping stock prices high.

Oil will end eventually. And public pressure due to climate damage might bring that day sooner than later. But the companies need to keep the fascade that oil exploration and development will go on forever, to keep the Ponzi scheme going.

I also dig up possible corruption by the House leader pushing this oil drilling, none other than former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. The report by the Congressional Budget Office, and released August 9, 2012, was requested by Ryan analyzed a proposal to open both Outer Continental Shelf areas, but also ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge).

Look here at Climate Progress blog for the details of Paul Ryan's connections to the dirty fossil fuel industry. And here. By the way, Paul Ryan is also a global warming denier.

Here is the industry's take on this lawsuit, as found in Refinery News.

Keep in mind some of the proposed drilling areas are in the Arctic, in the Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas, where no possible solution could be found for an accident like the Deepwater Horizon. The Arctic would hold on to the oil mess almost forever. The drill sites are shown, in government maps, to be within the ice fields needed by both polar bears and aboriginal Inuit hunting. What could go wrong?

Details of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plan are here.

The maps show giant areas for the "Proposed Final Program Areas" - two of which are in the Arctic, including the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. All of the proposed drill areas appear to be within the area described as "Polar Bear Critical Habitat - Seaward Extent". Many are also within the area shown as ""Subsistence, High Use" (I presume by aboriginal people).

Join us again next week for more Radio Ecoshock, for more reporting from around the world. Thank you for listening.

Some show music provided by Vastmandana at soundclick.com. We'll go out with a bit of a new song from Kukulcan "Mother Nature, Mother Earth"