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.

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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.

STORMS OF RIGHT NOW

SUMMARY: Sandy, climate & coming superstorms: Kathryn Miles & Dr. Adam Sobel. Plus new science says our carbon hits in 10 years, not a generation later. Dr. Katharine Ricke.

WELCOME TO THE SHOW

Dr. James Hansen wrote his pivotal book "Storms of My Grandchildren". But in 2012, the Atlantic experienced the largest storm ever recorded. It was Hurricane Sandy, the most expensive storm ever, causing billions of dollars in damage. Manhattan was flooded. Parts of the New Jersey shore were demolished. Two hundred and eighty five people were killed. It was also the big new show-case for both rising seas and storm surge.

Was Hurricane Sandy a freak once-in-century storm, or can we expect more and worse as planet Earth heats up? What about Asia and the Pacific, where Japan was raked by a series of tropical cyclones this fall. A giant storm just battered the Philippines - again. Are those climate related? Radio Ecoshock investigates.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (55 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



KATHRYN MILES: "Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy"

These days, you and I face situations we've never encountered before. It's climate change, terrorism, a new disease, or maybe an economic crash . But humans and their governments act on experience, not the future. As our next guest can tell us, responses based on the past can fail badly.

Kathryn Miles has an exciting new book out about Hurricane Sandy. That's the monster storm that flooded New York City, and wrecked much of the New England shore, in late October 2012. Miles tells the gripping tale in "Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy." But I think the storm and the book are also a lens for looking at preparedness during a time of climate disruption.

Kathryn has written several books. She's a science writer published in Outside Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and many other periodicals. Miles is currently writer-in-residence at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

Kathryn explains this was the largest Atlantic storm ever, at over 1,000 miles in diameter. Operators in the International Space Station were amazed to see a continent-sized storm. It was larger than all of Europe.

After Hurricane Sandy raked the Caribbean Islands, 39 out of 40 weather models showed it spinning harmlessly out into the Atlantic. That's normal, as both the prevailing winds, and the spinning of the Earth, takes storms toward the East. I didn't know, until Kathryn told us, that hurricanes do not have much propulsion on their own. They more or less float with the prevailing wind and pressure systems.

The European weather modellers said Sandy would take a left hook into the area around New York City. Kathryn did exhaustive research with weather and climate scientists for this book. She says a combination of factors, including hotter seas, and a blocking high pressure zone over Greenland, pushed Sandy into combining with a different type of storm known as a "Nor'easter".

When "Hurricane Sandy" became this hybrid - the National Hurricane Center stopped sending warnings to top government agencies. Their aging software couldn't handle this hybrid, and they are only directed to work on "Hurricanes". So warnings fell to local stations of the National Weather Service.

No wonder then that various authorities fell into confusion! In this interview we cover the big difference between the approaches taken by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Having been stung by unnecessary evacuations for the previous Hurricane Irene, Bloomberg held a press conference telling New Yorkers not to worry. Then a 34 foot high wall of watery storm surge washed over the city, flooding downtown Manhattan, subway lines, businesses and homes.

By contrast, Chris Christie told people in no uncertain language to "get the Hell off the beach" and evacuate. No doubt he saved some lives. But even so, and this is critical in evaluating human response to extreme climate events: 70% of the people told to evacuate did not. They stayed put, were flooded out, and some died.

Author Miles looked into that too. It turns out humans need at least three days of warning, with repeated warnings, before they will really act. Apparently it takes us that long to believe. Maybe that applies to government officials as well? I'm thinking of the terrible fires in Australia - "Black Saturday" in February 2009. The government wrongly advised people to stay and defend their homes, facing an incredible climate-driven firestorm. 173 people died.

In the story of the late Robin Waldridge, the Captain of the sailing ship "The Bounty", Kathryn brings out a case study of our weakness in judging risk. That human flaw in risk judgment applies directly to our ability to survive a lot of things, including droughts, heat, storms, and fires. If we haven't seen it before, or we were always fine in the past, we don't get out of the way, or change our behavior. You can expect to see this time and time again. It may even happen to you!

Predictably, the only fiery criticism Kathryn received after writing "Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy" was from Meteorologists! Some weather specialists still don't get the long-term storm implications of climate change. Some continue to deny climate change plays a role.

Others, and certainly the climate scientists she interviewed, are certain a warmer world plays several key roles in extreme storms.

1. this warmer world holds at least 4% more water in the atmosphere. That gives storms more power, and can cause extreme rainfall events, as happened during Hurricane Irene.

2. the oceans are measurably hotter. It turns out, the ocean off New England is quite bit hotter during the last few years. That also adds to the power of extreme storms.

3. the seas are rising. I'll talk more about this with our next guest Adam Sobel. The water around New York City is about one foot higher than it was in the year 1900. There are several reasons for that, it's not just climate change. But a higher sea adds to the storm surge, and that was the most damaging part of Hurricane Sandy.

Climate scientists are less certain about other impacts of a warming world. Most think we may get fewer hurricanes or tropical cyclones, but the ones that do come will be more powerful. There's a lot we don't know for sure about that.

The U.S. currently has 500 un-staffed positions in the National Weather System, including staff needed to run radar and work. Their budget cut by 8.5%. America has Doppler radar that crashes, satellites beyond their lifespan. The Hurricane warning service has to borrow from other countries, including some excellent work done by Cuba. This weakness in predicting extreme weather is a national crisis, and a personal threat.

Aside from all the science and research in Kathryn Mile's book, it's a terrific drama, wound around a series of personalities well-drawn by the author. It's literally hard to put down.

You can download or listen to this interview with Kathryn Miles in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

ADAM SOBEL: SANDY, CLIMATE AND EXTREME WEATHER

We are lucky to have an extreme weather specialist and atmosphere scientist here to help. Columbia University Professor Adam Sobel just published his new book "Storm Surge: Hurricane Sandy, Our Changing Climate, and Extreme Weather of the Past and Future".

Adam wrote me saying he's just returned from the Eighth International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones (IWTC-VIII) organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That was held at Jeju Island, South Korea. It's invitation only for the world's top forecasters and researchers. They go over the past 4 years of new science on tropical cyclones (which are also called hurricanes or typhoons).

The Philippines was just rocked by cyclone "Ruby" also know in Asia as "Hagupit". I'm beginning to wonder if some places in the world will be so badly damaged by repeated storms that people will abandon coastal settlements. Certainly some Pacific Islands are already threatened, with Kiribati likely the first to go underwater during storms.

But will we have more storms due to climate change? I remember back in 2006 when the New England scientist Emanuel Kerry produced papers saying hurricanes would be more frequent due to climate change. Then he backtracked, and it seems to me they haven't been more frequent since the year 2000, compared to the late 1900's. Adam Sobel agrees, but cautions we don't know how this experiment with climate will translate into weather. Some scientists think we will see more large storms. Forget the "storm-of-the-century" lable. We'll see plenty of them.

Let's talk about the sea level around New York City. Sobel says the water is about one foot higher now than in 1900. Like many coastal cities, New York was actually partly build on former swamps and lowlands. Some of it is extended with landfill into the former ocean. Adam says about 2/3 of that foot higher water around NYC is due to rising seas, due to simple expansion of the hotter ocean, and new water pouring in from Greenland and Antarctica. The other 1/3 of a foot is due to a pattern of sinking coastlines, as a slow reaction to the retreat of the heavy glaciers thousands of years ago. It's called subsidence, which means the land is sinking.

Our guest last year, J. Court Stevenson from the University of Maryland explained that for 10 billion dollars New York could build tide and surge control gates at the three entrances to New York harbor. These would be like the surge gates on the Thames in London, or in the Netherlands. So far, following the Bloomberg lead, this is not part of the plan. I think it's only a matter of time before the next Sandy floods New York.

We also got a harsh lesson on the real value of coastal real estate. There's no doubt that during this century, humans will have to exercise a planned withdrawal from many parts of the coast-line. That will include from parts of mega-cities from New York to Shanghai. As Dr. Peter Ward warned, sea level rise will reshape geography and economies around the world. (Ward's You tube lecture on his book "The Flooded Earth, Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps" is here).

It seems strange that many New Yorkers think more about a single day terrorist attack on their city, than they do of a coming century of floods and multi-billions of dollars of damage from climate change. In 9/11 we found out how critical New York City is to our economic system. I think if New York is faced with rising seas, high storm surges, and probably killer heat waves, that is also a national security issue.

Here is a climate central article on new wave of research into impact of climate change on severe storms.

You can download or listen to this interview with Dr. Adam Sobel in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

If you want to get more detail on the damage to New York City during Sandy, try this fascinating interview by WNYC Pacifica host Leonard Lopate, talking with Dr. Adam Sobel.

STARTLING NEW SCIENCE ON PEAK CO2

Every now and then there's a game-changing scientific paper about climate change. I saw this one , and right away invited our next guest. Katharine Ricke, known as Kate, joined well-known scientist Ken Caldeira to investigate a critical question: how long does it take the carbon we emit today to reach it's peak heating potential. If you answered 50 years or more, you are in for a shock.

The title of the new paper is a give-away: "Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission". That was published December 2nd, 2014 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The lead author is Katharine Ricke, a Post Doctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science, at Stanford University in California. She is our guest in this segment of Radio Ecoshock.

This study is a bombshell. We've been told for years that carbon emissions will really impact our children and grandchildren, not us. Now we find out the peak heating is only ten years after emissions.

Or course it doesn't end there. The warming action of carbon dioxide goes on not just for centuries, but for tens of thousands of years. That's because carbon dioxide is a relatively inert chemical in the atmosphere. It doesn't change much chemically over time.

Contrast that with methane. After only ten years or so, methane starts to break down - mainly into carbon dioxide. That is why scientists like David Archer argue that we must concentrate on carbon dioxide, rather than fear methane emissions. That's another whole argument we've been carrying in various Radio Ecoshock shows.

An obvious question from a non-scientist would be: why does a puff of carbon dioxide take ten years to become most active in trapping heat radiation? Why doesn't it have the maximum impact as soon as it rises up into the atmosphere? Katharine answered it's because the oceans are slow to react, but to be honest, I still don't understand the answer to this question. If any scientists are reading this right now, or if you think you know why this delay occurs, please email me. The address is radio //at// ecoshock.org. Or post your response in the comments below.

Former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said "It may take 100 years to heat up this huge thermal mass so it reaches a uniform temperature ... The damage we have done today will not be seen for at least 50 years."

I found plenty more like that. This is a long-running misconception. It has shaped climate negotiations and government responses. Now we have science that shows CO2 in a different light.

This discovery is personal too. If I think my crappy low-mileage car won't affect me, maybe I won't try to bike or use public transit. But it's a different story if my emissions could change the climate just ten years from now, isn't it?

Drawing from over 6,000 runs of the best climate models on the planet, about 90% of the results showed CO2 hitting it's great heating potential around 10 years. The window was something like 6 years at the earliest, with a few showing a period as long as 30 years. But the science is pretty clear on 10 years.

There are some large uncertainties, including climate sensitivity, and the reaction of the carbon cycle (including carbon used by living things) and thermal inertia of the oceans.

This paper was written partly in response to a school of scientific thought, lead by Matthews and Solomon's 2013 paper, saying our past emissions do not determine future warming. Our future emissions do. It's a tricky problem to explain. The paper is "Irreversible Does Not Mean Unavoidable" published in the journal "Science" on April 26, 2013.

WARMING IN THE PIPELINE

Following their paper, the excellent science blogger John Cooke bluntly says there is no warming in the pipeline. Future warming is only determined by future emissions, so we can control climate change by controlling our emissions. More warming is not "baked in" they say.

My understanding was that people like Dr. James Hansen talk about up to 1 degree, or more, in the pipeline, because of heat stored by the oceans and global dimming, or the aerosol pollution that diminishes sun arriving to the surface. Dr. Ricke agrees there is warming "in the pipeline" beyond the ten year lag you found in this new research.

AS AN ASIDE: WOULD "INDUSTRIAL SHUTDOWN" START RUNAWAY CLIMATE HEATING?

This debate about what happens if our air pollution clears up (likely a burst of heating) is discussed in yet another seminal paper by Andrew H. MacDougal, Avid and Weaver titled "Significant contribution to climate warming from the permafrost carbon feedback". For you doomsters out there, these scientists look at a case they describe as "industrial shutdown".

A guest article by Peter Cooke at Climate Progress says:

"Thawing permafrost will release carbon to the atmosphere that will have an appreciable additional effect on climate change, adding at least one quarter of a degree Celsius by the end of the century and perhaps nearly as much as one degree (about 1.5°F).

The permafrost feedback response to our historic emissions, even in the absence of future human emissions, is likely to be self-sustaining and will cancel out future natural carbon sinks in the oceans and biosphere over the next two centuries."

Thus, even if we "stopped emissions tomorrow" the MacDougall study suggests, contrary to Matthews and Solomon, that CO2 would not decrease (and so warming would continue) if only because of the warming set in motion now that the Permafrost is melting.

This Climate Progress article also discusses "the industrial shutdown experiment". The authors (MacDougall et al, including Canadian scientist Andrew Weaver) imagined a complete shut-down of carbon emissions in 2013, and in 2050.

It notes that because the added permafrost heating could be balanced by ocean and biosphere uptake, this feedback effect does NOT equate with a runaway greenhouse effect.

"Note that a self-sustaining feedback is not the same thing as a runaway greenhouse effect."

The shutdown in 2013 results in CO2 stabilizing around 400 ppm for at least the next 300 years. A shutdown in 2050 yields a stable level around 550 ppm, on average, with a higher or lower level dependent on the as-yet-uncertain climate sensitivity.

Find more on the "industrial shutdown" experiment in this article by John Cooke. It's deep.

A further article on this study can be found here.

My thoughts:

Scientists generally consider the "industrial shutdown" scenario so unlikely, they either ignore it, or just look at "what-if" scenarios. However, it is conceivable that an industrial shutdown could occur due to a mega solar storm knocking out electric grids, a major nuclear war, an unstoppable disease in humans (think ebola on steroids), a meteor striking the Earth, or even a collapse of the current system (similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but globally, and on a much larger scale).

A cessation of human caused carbon emissions sounds possible by 2050, but is not really viable if we keep our present system of agriculture, and persist in terraforming, such as deforestation, both of which contribute to substantial emissions even without an industrial culture.

BACK TO PEAK CARBON DIOXIDE

In a well-written article at climatecentral, Andrew Freedman found scientists who temper your discovery for several reasons. Some say the timing doesn't matter, all that matters to the climate system is the total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, whenever that comes.

Another caution is from Zurich scientist Reto Knutti, who tells climatecentral, quote:

"It takes only a few years for the climate to respond to emissions, but it takes a generation, at least, to change the emissions. We are slow, not the climate.”

We discuss all that in our interview.

After reading this study, I was left wondering how long a particular carbon emission can stay active in the atmosphere. Your graphs appear to stop after 100 years, with the carbon impact still pretty high. In fact, it doesn't decline much after the 10 year peak. How long does carbon dioxide stay potent as a warming gas in the atmosphere?

I interviewed David Archer about this. In his book "The Long Thaw", and in his Radio Ecoshock interview, Archer said that CO2 emitted today would remain in the atmosphere for at least 50,000 years, if not 100,000. You can see a You tube video of that Radio Ecoshock interview here. Archer did not mean a particular molecule of CO2, which is recycled through the biosphere, but that additional molecule level would be maintained for a very long time. The paper by Ricke and Caldeira stops at 100 years not because they disagree, but because that was the time frame of the best data sets - and all they needed to answer their principal question: how long does it take for CO2 to reach it's peak potential for heating the atmosphere?

This was also published in this scientific paper: Archer D et al 2009 Atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel carbon dioxide Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 37 117–34

EVEN IF CARBON REACHES A PEAK IN 10 YEARS, THE TRUE IMPACTS MAY TAKE MUCH LONGER

From the paper by Ricke and Caldeira: "While the maximum warming effect of a CO2 emission may manifest itself in only one decade, other impact-relevant effects, such as sea level rise, will quite clearly not reach their maximum until after the first century (see, e.g., figure 2(c) of Joos et al (2013)). For many impacts, such as changes to natural ecosystems, degradation is the result of the cumulative effects of consecutive years of warming or precipitation change (Parmesan and Yohe 2003). Ice sheet melting can persist for thousands of years following a warming (Huybrechts et al 2011). As such, even if maximum warming occurs within a decade, maximum impact may not be reached until much later. From this perspective, Steven Chu's statement that today's damage 'will not be seen for at least 50 years' may well be accurate."

THIS NEW SCIENCE PUSHES MORE URGENCY TO ACT ON CARBON REDUCTIONS

This new science may help push climate negotiations into high gear in Paris next year. Now we know we don't have time to set long-term goals and slowly reduce CO2. Our emissions now will hit us hard and fast within 10 years!

From the conclusion of this paper:

"Our paper corrects a potential misconception that the largest effects of today's emissions will be felt only by future generations. Benefit from avoided CO2 emissions will most likely be manifested within the lifetimes of the people who act to avoid those emissions."

Find links to this paper, a video of Katharine explaining it here.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Katharine Ricke in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

CONGRATULATIONS IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR!

I admit this week's blog is too long. But I got almost a year of education just researching for this week's guests. There was way too much to cover on the radio, and I found deep tunnels going into science that can determine how our future develops, and maybe whether we will survive our own carbon civilization.

I invite you to follow up on the links, and ask yourself the same hard questions.

A NOTE TO N. IN BOSTON

I need to tell my anonymous donor and supporter "N." in Boston: I got your letter and I'm looking into your suggested reading and guests. Thank you.

COMING UP

We have some more tough questions in coming shows. I found a great radio documentary on the perils of dreaming about eco-community, and survival after oil. Then I'm going to challenge another green dream: alternative energy. Is it real, or just another carbon-dependent mirage. Stay tuned.

You can download all our past programs as free mp3 files from the web site ecoshock.org. Listen to our most recent programs on Soundcloud here. There have been so many top scientists, authors and activists on Radio Ecoshock its almost an open university, cruising the past interviews.

As always, I sincerely thank you for listening, and for caring about our world.

Alex

Ocean Geoengineering: Serial Climate Hacking

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 by the Haida Old Massett Village Chief, interview with Living Oceans' Karen Wristen, Russ George clips from interview by Guardian's Martin Lukacs. Radio Ecoshock 121024 1 hour.

Here are the audio files for this week's program:

CD quality (56 MB)

Lo-Fi (faster download, lower quality, most popular, 14 MB)

AUDIO FROM THE PRESS CONFERENCE, Vancouver October 19th. Recorded by Alex Smith.

Old Massett Chief Ken Rea and Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation President John Disney (16 min)

CD quality or Lo-Fi

HSRC Attorney James L. Straight on the legality of the project (11 min)

CD quality or Lo-Fi

The raw audio of the question and answer period with reporters (28 min)

CD quality or Lo-Fi

There are also two transcripts from the press conference. One transcript is of the Chief Rea and John Disney statements. The second transcript is the Question and Answer period.

WHEN THE WORLD MEDIA STORMED A TINY ISLAND

The world was stunned last week to find a small village of indigenous people had performed a massive experiment off the Pacific Coast of Canada. To no-one surprise, the so-called "rogue climate hacker" Russ George was a lead actor.

How did the salmon beliefs of the Haida combine with the long-time dream of the former CEO of Planktos Corp? Why would an economically challenged village of 700 people spend millions on a high-tech, high risk venture?

As nature shows signs of dying, we can expect more desperate acts.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

The Old Village of Massett is on the north end of the islands of Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands. It's a hamlet where First Nations people have suffered 70% unemployment the past 15 years. The village on an inlet is partly sheltered from some the strongest storms in the world, washing the island rainforests much of the year.

The salmon runs of Haida Gwaii are much more than the main source of food. There are salmon ceremonies, rich salmon art, the whole culture is infused with this emblematic fish. But the salmon have almost stopped coming. That is why one Haida village was willing to risk millions of dollars on a scheme mainstream science had already abandoned, and formally condemned.

The Haida people were known as fierce warriors, making slaving missions down the Pacific coast in their great sea going canoes. They are are still proud and respected in British Columbia.

The villagers were dealing with one of the world's most persuasive men, a big dreamer certain he knows how to fix the planet, with limitless nuclear energy, with protected forests, or by conquering the oceans for humankind as new fields to be farmed.

Russ George

Russ George fought for years to mount an experiment dumping iron into the open ocean, to create a massive plankton bloom. He almost made it in 2007, with the Weatherbird II. His company, Planktos, came tumbling down amid over-blown claims that never materialized.

Two needs, two dreams met. The Haida villagers set to sea again, longing almost mystically to see the return of their salmon, by feeding tons of iron as a stimulant to plankton. Russ George was onboard the rented fishing boat "Ocean Pearl" promoted to the title of "Chief Scientist".

The evidence indicates Russ George is not a scientist at all, as most people understand that word. He's a social artist, almost a savant, maybe a visionary, but I wouldn't call him a scientist, as I will explain.

Were people misled? Was money misspent by a poor community? Is the world one-step closer toward trying to redesign the land and the sea, in the wake of industrial pollution? We'll hear the voices of those who were there, and investigate some claims, evaluated by real scientists.

I will not demonize anyone here. These are human players, with something to give us, some huge lessons written on the real living canvass of history. We are not talking about tobacco or oil barons killing millions, but rather well-meaning people who perhaps went too far. You will hear for yourself, and reach your own conclusions.

FROM THE HSRC HAIDA PRESS CONFERENCE

We'll start with an extraordinary event. The unauthorized scheme to fertilize the ocean was uncovered by the ETC Group while at an international conference on biodiversity in Hyderabad, India. Suddenly on October the 15th, the ETC Group broke the story in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The Haida group involved, and Mr. George, were caught off guard, as a storm of media broke upon the little island community. Representatives from the Old Village of Massett traveled down to Vancouver, to face a solid wall of TV cameras, well-known national newspaper reporters, and this radio producer.

Village of Old Massett Chief Ken Rea

I'm going to play you now my recording of Old Massett Chief Ken Rea, and the Village administrator John Disney, at the press conference October 17, in the Vancouver Aquarium. The event was hosted by Vancouver lawyer Joe Spears. I'll run this straight through, withholding my comments to the end.

Rea/Disney transcript here.

You've just heard Old Massett Village Chief Ken Rea, and village administrator John Disney, explain their venture to drop iron into the Pacific Ocean. They had two goals: to provide more food for salmon, and to claim valuable carbon credits.

HAIDA NATION REJECTS OCEAN FERTILIZATION

I must add the main government on Haida Gwaii, the Council of the Haida Nation, has renounced any involvement in this scheme. In a letter published October 18th, 2012, we read the following:

"The Hereditary Chiefs Council and the Council of the Haida Nation are in no way involved in artificial fertilization through dumping of iron compounds in the ocean around Haida Gwaii.

The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predicable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment.

Our people along with the rest of humanity depend on the oceans and cannot leave the fate of the oceans to the whim of the few."

President of the Haida Nation, Guujaaw

It is signed by the President of the Haida Nation, Guujaaw, and the 8 members of the Hereditary Chiefs Council. Read that statement here.

So it is unfair and incorrect to say "The Haida did this". As Chief Ken Rea told the world press, this experiment was undertaken only by the single village of Old Massett, acting on its own authority.

How could that happen? A little later we'll get an explanation of the politics of aboriginal rights, from none other than Russ George. It's an eye-opener on how this little group bypassed every Canadian authority, issuing its own permits, almost as a sovereign village.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

First, we should look at the money trail.

When asked where a tiny village with sky-high unemployment came up with two and a half million dollars for a high-seas adventure, this is what Chief Ken Rea said in the press conference Q and A.

From the Press Conference Q and A (full transcript here)

"CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]: Whose money is it?

Ken Rea: It's the community's money.

CBC: ??? from the taxes, from the government, or transfers? What's the biggest source of money?

Ken Rea: We've had monies available from other funding sources that belong to the community. We've had money from proper management and shared revenue sources from various resources. And we've, over careful management over many years we've built up a reserve. "

Considering the money belonged to the villagers, and some of it came from Canadian taxpayers, this is hardly a transparent answer.

LIVING OCEANS SOCIETY PROVIDES FUNDING DOCUMENTS

Living Oceans Society Executive Director Karen Wristen

A Canadian ocean NGO, the Living Oceans Society, released documents from Massett Village, and from the North Coast Community Credit Union, detailing the application for a loan of two million dollars for the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation.

You can find a copy of the internal emails and financing documents for the Old Massett Village here.

I interviewed Karen Wristen, Executive Director of the Living Oceans Society - the group who found online documents detailing the $2 million loan application by Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) to the North Coast Credit Union. That Credit Union's due diligence raised questions about ocean fertilization, the legality of the project, and the scientific credibility of Russ George. Read what they had to say. There is also a proposed budget breakdown for the project in those papers.

The Living Oceans Society also warned Environment Canada on August 19th that a geoengineering experiment was on-going, giving them the name and location of the ship. Apparently nothing was done.

Wristen, herself a lawyer with experience in environmental case law, concludes there is no big monetary payback possible from this project - the people of the Village of Massett stand to lose a lot of money. The salmon, she says, "got a very expensive lunch".

As you can tell, there are still a lot of questions about the way this money was allocated, the wisdom of the expense, and whether these millions can ever be repaid.

THE BIG HOPE FOR PAYBACK WAS SELLING CARBON CREDITS

Despite talking so much about salmon, which were certainly on the minds of most villagers, documents and interviews show the larger hope of repayment was to come from selling carbon credits.

There is a theory that plankton will capture more carbon dioxide from the air. Then on dying, that carbon will fall with them to the deep sea bed, where it will be sequestered. If done on a large scale, this might somewhat reduce the carbon dioxide pumped into the air by polluters. Major polluting industries, especially in Europe, will pay a price for each ton of carbon captured.

As you will hear later, Russ George believes with 100 percent certainty that creating plankton blooms does capture carbon dioxide. And now he claims this latest venture proves it beyond any doubt.

The fact that Russ George does not express scientific caution, and has never published any peer-reviewed evidence of his claims, is one sign that he is not following the accepted scientific method.

Other trained ocean and zoological scientists, some of them onboard previous plankton seeding tests run off government ships, have cautioned that carbon dioxide may not be reduced, or not sequestered long-term, or that other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide may be produced. The consensus of world scientists is that plankton seeding should not be done. Committees for international Conventions representing 192 countries recommended a moratorium on such activities.

None of that deters Russ George. Through his former company Planktos, George was so confident of success that he pre-sold carbon credits, even to the public online, long before he captured any carbon dioxide. I can't find any indication that money was returned when George's company forests were not planted in Hungary as promised, and his ship the Weatherbird II did not dump its iron.

When we investigate the tangled web of corporations and corporate shells set up by Russ George, along with the convicted Canadian financier Nelson Skalbania, we become even more leery of George's claims.

In fact, there are several versions of Russ George. The first is a tree-planter, and his experience is strong there. But you can also find Russ George in his persona of a self-taught nuclear scientist, expert and businessman in the field of nuclear fusion. His company D2fusion sold stocks, which crashed, and promised products, which never appeared. On You tube there is a presentation by DR George to the American Chemical Society in 1999.

RUSS GEORGE IS NOT A "SCIENTIST" IN THE WAY COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD BY MOST PEOPLE

But Russ is no doctor. That's just his initials: D R George. Why doesn't he correct people who address him or post him as Dr. George?

In the Old Massett Village presentation you heard earlier, Russ George was touted as the Chief Scientist on board the Ocean Pearl. I think that is misleading.

What is a scientist? In the 1800's, many scientists were gentlemen of leisure investigating basic things. They made many discoveries. But today, in a very complex world, we developed a university system which trains scientists. It takes many years to earn a PhD in any field, including life sciences like biology, zoology, and oceanography.

Russ attended the University of Utah for a few years and apparently dropped out without a degree. That is, he does not appear to be a university graduate. Most people would find that surprising in the resume of a "Chief Scientist".

Another part of the definition of a modern scientist, is the requirement to develop theories which are published in peer-reviewed journals. That is a check and balance system to make sure facts follow theory.

As far as I can find out, Russ George has never been published in an accepted peer-review journal. So he can make quite extraordinary statements, and the rest of the scientific community has not checked them.

None of this denies Russ George is an extraordinary man, even a brilliant one. I see him more as a social and media artist, with an ability to learn the language of scientific disciplines. He is also a visionary, with the strength to inspire people - even a small village of people on the wild side of the ocean. Visionaries also have their limitations. Some believe in their vision 100%, without any doubt, or desire to check with others.

WE CANNOT SAY USEFUL IRON DUST DEPOSITS HAVE DECREASED IN THE NORTH PACIFIC!

For example, let's start with this founding statement repeated often by Russ George over the year, and given again in the Power Point provided by the Old Massett Village for the Vancouver press conference. That slide says:

"Over the past half-century there has been a decline in atmospheric dust deposition from the deserts and dry lands of Asia - the most important season[al] source of iron for the North Pacific Ocean."

Really? I wondered if such a study had even been done. Looking in the references for these slides, the first is a paper "Atmospheric global dust cycle and Iron inputs to the ocean" by Natalie M. Mahowald of Cornell, and a half dozen other world experts.

Natalie M. Mahowald, Cornell University

I read the paper. It didn't say anything about the decline of dust from Asia to the Northern Pacific. The paper is a key summary of all the top dust science, a survey to see what is known. It talks about research, and looks at two more important questions: has the chemistry of industrial-laced air changed the availability of iron to plankton in the sea? And will climate change alter dust deposition?

Baffled, I wrote to Natalie Mahowald over the weekend. She gave me a helpful reply almost immediately.

First, I asked, is this dusty statement by Russ George, echoed by the Haida village, true?

Her reply: "Probably not. More important than dust is soluble iron from Asia, which is likely to have increased."

Second: could such a statement be derived from that paper?

Answer: "I don't think there is anything in that paper on this."

She adds: "There is almost no data describing the trends in dust coming from Asia over the whole 20th century. There is some evidence that dust maximized in the 1950s in Chinese dust sources (e.g. Mahowald et al., 2007), but this is not true of all of Asia and that data is only available after 1950 or so.

What is more important for ocean iron, is the amount of soluble iron going into the ocean, not dust or total iron. Several studies have suggested that economic growth in Asia has substantially increased soluble iron inputs to the North Pacific by direct emission of soluble iron from anthropogenic emissions (e.g. Chuang et al., 2005) or by supplying acids like sulfate, which make the dust iron more soluble (Meskhidze et al., 2003) and we estimate from that an increase in North Pacific soluble iron inputs from atmospheric deposition (e.g. Luo et al.., 2008; Mahowald et al., 2009)."

Mahowald continued: "In this region, sedimentary sources of iron are likely to be quite important, so that inputs from the atmosphere may not be driving phytoplankton growth (e.g. Lam and Bishop, 2008).

Thus, overall I would say, no, I do not agree that soluble iron inputs to the North Pacific have decreased over the 20th century, but rather have likely increased but the uncertainty is large."

So what! you say? Everything in the story of this ocean seeding experiment depends upon this fundamental premise that nature is not doing its job. Less dust is falling, the plankton are starving for iron, and that is why we must go out to sea and spend millions of dollars dumping iron into the ocean.

But here we have the venture's cited world expert saying that is probably not true, more iron may be available anyway due to industrial pollution. There is inadequate scientific information to make sweeping statements about a decline.

With Russ George, you can be inspired if you want, but you have to check every detail of what he says. It's a heady cocktail of three quarters truth, well worth listening to, and one quarter exaggeration bordering on blarney.

EXPERT SCIENTIST SAYS "SALMON STARVING AT SEA" IS NOT THE ROOT CAUSE OF DECLINE

Surely we are not just dealing with volcanos and dust when it comes to salmon decline. It's a shame the Old Massett people couldn't wait for the upcoming release of a comprehensive report by the Cohen Commission inquiry into the disappearing sockeye salmon.

In my opinion, and not only in my opinion, the Old Massett Village leaders are also over their heads. For example, during the press conference, two actual ocean scientists from the University of British Columbia were allowed one question each, with no reply. Note there were no microphones for the press, just one mic for the presenters, carefully controlled by two of their lawyers present.

Maite Maldonado, University of British Columbia

Again I wrote to a person who asked a question at the press conference, but was not allowed to comment. She is Maite Maldonado, a professor in the Earth, Ocean and Sciences Department at UBC. Maite is also familiar with the fisheries on the Pacific Coast, and a Canada Research Chair in Phytoplankton Trace Metal Physiology.

Maldonado says the Haida Salmon Restoration project leaders were greatly over-simplifying a complex living system. After quoting from the most-cited paper on the volcanic ash and anomalous plankton bloom of 2008, by Hamme et all 2010 , Maite concludes the bottom line is that YES, a volcanic eruption in 2008 enhanced phytoplankton production in the subarctic Pacific that late summer/early fall, but there is NO evidence to support that this phytoplankton bloom in August 2008 resulted in the high salmon returns of 2010.

In fact, the non-scientist Russ George may have missed the target altogether on two counts. First of all, Hamme et al concluded from their study of the Alaskan volcanic eruption and plankton bloom of 2008, hardly any carbon dioxide was sequestered, "implying that even large-scale iron fertilization at an optimum time of year is not very efficient at sequestering atmospheric CO2.”

Maite Maldonado adds other studies and citations showing the real cause of the sockeye salmon decline is still unknown to science. Their best guess does not focus on alleged starving salmon out at sea, but rather the growth conditions for juvenile salmon as they emerge from the coastal waters. There is plenty of plankton for them there Maldonado says, and real scientific studies indicate there must be other factors in that near-shore environment affecting longer term survival.

Maite writes: "Salmon survival has been linked to the quality of feeding and growing conditions during their early marine life (from smolt to adult), while the smolts are transitioning from the rivers to the open ocean. So the conditions in inlets and sounds are key."

As our guest Karen Wristen said earlier, this Haida Salmon Restoration project may only have provided a multi-million dollar lunch.

OK, it's time to play some Russ George reality, but as I hope I've shown, apply some healthy scientific doubt to everything.

Russ George is talking with Guardian newspaper journalist Martin Lukacs.

What was the rationality for secretly pouring iron into the ocean? George explains that to Lukacs, and I run part of the clip for you in this radio program.

Guardian journalist Martin Lukacs

Martin Lukacs broke this story in the Guardian about the Haida Salmon Restoration venture breaking UN rules.





THE SOVEREIGN VILLAGE

How could a single Haida Village perform geoengineering without getting any government permits? They claim they are the government.

This is amazing. Essentially Old Massett declared itself to be the world's first sovereign village! Russ George tells Lukacs that due to a 2005 Supreme Court of Canada decision, the Haida have the same rights as the Government of Canada.

But the Haida Nation (which distanced themselves from this scheme) is like a federal government with two main provinces: the Village of Skidegate, and the Village of Old Massett. These two sub-groups apparently also consider themselves to be sovereign governments, Russ George told Martin Lucaks.

That was the rationale for Old Massett to write its own laws, and to ISSUE ITS OWN PERMITS for this Haida Salmon Restoration project. Russ George says "you choose your regulator". He chose the same group that were taking the loan, paying the bills, and running the whole experiment on the ocean. They didn't feel the need to apply to the Canadian Government, or the Province of British Columbia, for the environmental and other permits anyone else would need, for a ship leaving a Canadian port.

That explains a lot. When asked by reporter Lukacs where these self-issued permits are, George replies they are hanging on the wall of his Vancouver office.

WHO WERE THE SCIENTISTS ON BOARD? (THERE WERE NO PhD LEVEL EXPERTS ON THE VOYAGE)

The fishing vessel Ocean Pearl

Who were the scientists on board? I asked that question at the Press Conference. At first they dodged it, claiming privacy issues, and then gave me a very short list. Here is that exchange:

From the press conference transcript:

Joe Spears [lawyer for HSRC]: Alex Smith from CFRO Radio.

Alex Smith: Please name the scientists that were on board the Ocean Pearl for this project. You mentioned science.

Joe Spears: The question is: name the scientists on board the fishing vessel Ocean Pearl. John? Jason?

Jason is the Operations Officer and I know he spent many weeks at sea and it was really sunny once in the four weeks I think, and there was only a thirty foot groundswell happening. So Jason?

(talk among organizers, including Disney and Spears): "Russ for sure."

Jason McNamee: Hi. Yeah we had a number of scientists. We had a number of scientists on board. Uh, obviously Russ George was one or our scient... key scientists.

Other journalist: Could you also possibly include their training? What their scientific background is?

Jason: I don't have their CV's with me.

Joe Spears: I think there's a question of privacy of individuals. We'll get you that information and on the video that's on here, you'll see the deck hands and the technicians that are walking around trying to deploy equipment at sea. So there was lots of people. I think we can, we'll get that information. It's not a guess; we don't want to guess here.

(Jason starts to leave the microphone)

Alex Smith: So you are not answering the question?

Jason McNamee: Russ George was our Chief Scientist. Right. We've got Peter Gross who is our Senior Oceanographic Engineer. He also doubles as our Sonar expert.

We had a plankton biologist on board named Tegan Sime. The chemist on board... I did some of the chemistry work, and we had a number of technicians. A lot of our work was collaborative, and so a lot of the technical work was done on the ship.

Asked the same question by journalist Martin Lukacs, Russ George replied with a very short list, long on bafflegab.

All the crew were undergrads, with Russ George as the supposed Chief Scientist. They had minimal training in the high tech equipment on board, and at one point required direct coaching by satellite by Professor Doug Campbell at Mount Allison University. Several of the crew listed their qualifications as technical geeks in things like audio. Apparently, there was not a single doctorate level scientist on the ship.

CAN WE TRUST THE DATA FROM THIS VOYAGE?

Why does this matter? It all has to do with confidence in the gathering methods, and the chain of custody.

At the press conference, we were told Russ George was not present because he was too busy analyzing data. So Russ George, whose record we know too well, is in charge of all that data? John Disney told the press "some" of the data would be released for verification by independent parties. Will only supportive data be released? Who knows?

Russ George bragged to one reporter that 100 PhD dissertations would emerge out of the data he had collected. I doubt it. Who will trust it?

RUSS GEORGE DENIES THERE IS A MORATORIUM ON OCEAN FERTILIZATION

Russ George denies there is any Convention or even a moratorium against ocean fertilization.

May he's right. Maybe the holes in International Law are so big that every village encountering hard times around the world can start out to change the whole Earth to suit themselves.

This Haida Salmon Restoration project is a wake-up call to governments to act before it is too late. To at least regulate, with criminal penalties, rogue geoengineering. We manage to investigate and penalize many crimes, no matter where the act takes place, but not unilateral changes to species, the biosphere, or the ocean? We need real laws for the high seas.

Meanwhile, Russ George continues his pursuit of fame and recognition. In the Martin Lukacs interview George describes trips to the World Bank in Washington, and to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. When asked if the HSRC was getting funding from the World Bank, George replied no, it cost "us" money to go there and make a presentation.

Who is paying for those travels? The poor of Old Massett Village, for the next ten years? These finances should be more transparent.

BEFORE THE DATA IS IN, REVIEWED OR PUBLISHED, GEORGE CLAIMS PREVOUS SCIENCE DEBUNKED

But don't worry. Russ George is 100% certain their experiment has disproven all scientific fears. He gives Lukacs a laundry list of past criticisms and scientific worries about plankton seeding - and says all of that is disproven by his new data.

There is no absolute certainty in science. But Russ George offers it to us, just as he offered absolution to the Vatican for their carbon sins. You can't make this stuff up in Hollywood.

Vatican presentation by Russ George on You tube here.

By the way, the Vatican's carbon emissions are still up there in the atmosphere, but the planned "Vatican Forest" in Hungary was never planted. Maybe the Vatican should repent and drastically slash their emissions instead. Maybe we all should do that.

RUSS GEORGE CAN BE RIGHT AND INSPIRATIONAL (BUT CHECK EVERYTHING HE SAYS)

I did say Russ was often also right. In a clip from the Lukacs interview, he tells us our personal carbon pollution is killing the ocean far more than overfishing.

George is also right to warn us the oceans are dying, and that climate change is the major cause.

But come clean about your science credentials George. You are a brilliant fast-learner, a self-taught man. That's a lot. You don't need the misleading labels.

FORGET THE WILD OCEANS - WE'LL RUN THEM LIKE A FARM - GEORGE'S ULTIMATE VISION FOR THE SEA

Intelligent or not, I can't follow Russ George, or the Haida villagers, to their ultimate goal.

Saying the ocean is dying, George tells us humans must take over these last wild places on Earth. We'll convert the open ocean into "pastures" like agribusiness on the seas, farming plankton and the fish. We'll dump iron every year. I'm thinking maybe we'll introduce new genetically modified species, who knows? The dying ocean is ours to play with and command.

Russ George explains all that to Martin Lukacs in a clip in this Radio Ecoshock program.

Is that your vision? It's not mine.

I'm Alex Smith.

My thanks to Martin Lukacs of the Guardian for putting his reporter's audio notes into the public domain. Martin Lukacs of the Guardian, who broke this story with the ETC Group. Lukacs placed over an hour of that recording in the Public Domain at archive.org. Part 1 here. Part 2 here

Download this show as a free mp3 from our web site ecoshock.org

Thank you for listening, and join me next week.

What If The Permafrost Thaws?

Music theme this week: "Only an Expert" by Laurie Anderson

Gas pipelines in Siberia are rising out of the ground, while in Alaska oil pipelines sag.

Houses and factories built on permafrost are tipping. Evergreens are slanting in so-called "drunken forests". Under the whole north, land is becoming unstable as the climate warms.

I'm Alex Smith. We're going to find many answers to a simple question: What if the permafrost thaws?

I attended a conference session on that very subject, with expert scientists, at this year's meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. We'll hear the latest.

But it was rough going. After the session, which was technical and carefully hedged with scientific doubts, I ran into the soil expert for the European Union, Luca Montanarella. I told him, in spite of all I'd heard, I still didn't know whether we should be worried or not.

"You'd like to worry, wouldn't you?" Luca replied, "But we have many more things to worry about now, further south."

Of course Luca is Italian. There were riots in the streets of Italy. The government had fallen, and the banking system might soon follow.

In the course of preparing this program on permafrost, I ran into as many opinions as experts. The permafrost may thaw over hundreds of years. The carbon stored there will come out slowly, one said. Another suggested when that thaw comes, it will already be too late for our civilization, ruined by a changed climate further south.

Other scenarios predict 50 to 80% of permafrost will thaw during this century. Maybe the released greenhouse gases will only equal ten or twenty years of our current emissions, one of our guests says. Only!

Another brand new scientific paper suggests permafrost melt may have caused the great mass extinction 55 million years ago.

We've never seen it. The frost was supposed to be permanent, and has been during human time on Earth. Now the signs of big changes are all around in the Arctic. What is coming? We can only model the future, with very imperfect tools, and guess the rest.

Before we dive into expert level testimony about the latest science, let's start with a more user-friendly Radio Ecoshock interview.

See my detailed notes below on my interview with Antoni Lewkowicz from the University of Ottawa. He's one of the world's recognized experts on permafrost, and yet quite good at explaining these issues to the public.

See my detailed notes from the Lewkowicz interview below. Our theme music this week is from Laurie Anderson's latest album.

The big question for this program, and for the world, is "What if the Permafrost thaws?"

I was unable to find a figure for the amount of the world soil and rock that is frozen. The BBC clip we ran earlier claimed 60% of Russia is permanently frozen ground. There is some permafrost in the Andes of Chile, but most is obviously in Russia, Canada, and Alaska. The United States Permafrost Association estimates about 25% of Earth's surface is frozen, and permafrost may account for up to 40% of all soils on the planet.

As you hear from Dr. Lewkowicz, interest in these frozen northern soils and rocks dropped - until scientists began to calculate a carbon budget for the world. The Wikipedia entry, which is still under construction, says this:

"The most recent work investigating the permafrost carbon pool size estimates that 1400–1700 Gt of carbon is stored in permafrost soils worldwide. This large carbon pool represents more carbon than currently exists in all living things and twice as much carbon as exists in the atmosphere."

Maybe so, but as we'll learn from our next expert, not all of that will reach the atmosphere. And we don't know how long it could take to get there.

CHARLES KOVEN: WHAT DO CLIMATE MODELS PREDICT?

Dr. Charles Koven is a permafrost and soils expert in the climate sciences department of the Berkeley National Lab in California. Along with the renowned Canadian northern soils expert Charles Tarnocai, Dr. Koven was asked to present at the February meeting of the National Academy for the advancement of Science session called "What If The Permafrost Thaws?"

I recorded that session in Vancouver. You can order the whole recording as an mp3 from aven.com as item number AS219.

I'm going to play you some select audio from the Charles Koven talk. It isn't easy, for you and me. First of all, Koven was speaking to experts, not the public. Second, to be frank, neither Koven nor Tarnocai are good public speakers. I think it's too much to ask of our best scientists that they also be master speakers. They spend years in a forbidding field, literally in the cold, and more years working through tedious data in the lab. Their many scientific papers are their voices.

So I've selected the best, and edited out some of the repetitions and pauses, for better radio listening.

Before we begin, you'll also need to understand a few phrases and tools used when trying to answer these difficult problems of permafrost. Dr. Lewkowitcz gave us a leg up. We found out there is no sharp dividing line on a map where permafrost ends, but fingers and islands jutting out from a completely frozen polar area. There is now a free book "The Soil Atlas of the Circumpolar Region" available from the European Union.

There are three different major types of soil, and that matters, since each releases more or less carbon when exposed to decay. As a group these are called Cryosols, in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources, or sometimes Gelisols in official soil lingo.

Complicating it all: the permafrost can be shallow, or very, very deep. You might think that once ancient plant material is buried many feet or meters below the ground, below the reach of living roots, it would stay there. But as anybody in cold winters knows, the soil is always heaving. In the Arctic, with summer surface melt and extreme winter cold, soil layers are tossed about in a process called "cryoturbation". You'll hear about that in the Charles Koven talk.

In the program, I play you a quick clip from Steven Chu, currently the Secretary of Energy for the United States, in the Obama administration. Dr. Chu explains that once the permafrost reaches a certain pace of thawing, it will continue to feed more warming and melting, no matter what humans do. Obviously he takes thawing permafrost seriously, as should we all.

Finally, since we won't know the climate impacts of permafrost melt until it's much too late, the best we can do is make models from huge masses of scientifically collected data. Talk of complex climate models can turn off a lot of radios, I know. I'm only including a short bit on that, from Dr. Koven, because I think you need to get a feel for what we know and don't know. And how good the guesses are so far.

There are at least a dozen serious teams of climate modellers, some running football field sized buildings stuffed full of super computers. Everything from weather records, ocean temperatures, chemical formulae, ice formations, soil types, and even areas of permafrost are fed into these computers, trying to forecast what happens if we burn all the oil, coal and gas, or just some of it.

The results, as you know from the periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are divided into possible scenarios, with varying levels of confidence. Dr. Koven quickly references the latest models used for the upcoming IPCC assessment - called CEMa, short for Climate Envelop Matching. He also talks about the RCP Level 5 scenario, which is a "moderate" projection of 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere by the year 2100. And the RPC 8.5 scenario, which would take us beyond 4 degrees of warming by 2100 - the pedal to the metal scenario of human greenhouse gas emissions.

Hang in there through that modeling talk, and you will be rewarded by some courageous assessments of what really happens if the northern lands thaw. Plus a surprising and controversial suggestion that Arctic methane may not be the boogeyman some suggest.

Good luck to us all. Here are selections from Charles Koven speaking at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting, on February 19th, 2012.

NOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH ANTONI LEWKOWICZ

When we think of planet Earth, we don't picture a frozen planet. But a huge area underground is always icy. We call it the permafrost. You won't find it in your backyard, unless you live in the far north.

Geologists and other scientists have only begun the task of cataloging this underground world. Now, as Earth warms, we all need to know. Because if all the carbon locked up in the north is released, our climate, and our civilization will change beyond recognition.

Professor Antoni Lewkowicz is a central figure unraveling this mystery. From the Department of Geography at Canada's University of Ottawa, Lewkowicz studies, leads doctoral researchers, and advises international groups on permafrost. He's a co-author on a new paper on the impacts of climate change on permafrost in Canada.

Why care about the permafrost? 3 reasons

1. it's a good thermometer. Unlike measuring air temperatures, which is tricky, measuring deeper in the ground is more solidly known. We know the melting is real, permafrost doesn't lie, proves global warming is happening.

2. Large emissions of carbon could result from melting, but we don't yet know how much. It will affect people all over the world. We know there are massive stocks of carbon locked up there - but how long will it take to be released?

3. It costs money. Governments, corporations, and individuals have to spend money to protect infrastructure or deal with changes in the ground, from "drunken forests" to sagging pipelines, to tipping buildings and sinking roads.

For example within 100 miles of the border between the Canadian Yukon and Alaska, the Alaska Highway is full of dips and rises from melting permafrost. That highway is a huge investment by both countries and continuing costs will be high. It already costs tens of millions to maintain the Alaska Highway.

Coastal erosion, as frozen ground gives way, is also a huge problem. Most of the Northern settlements are on the coast. The First Nations aboriginal people were dependent on fishing and hunting sea mammals - now their settlements are either tipping over, or in some cases, falling into the sea with coastal erosion.

Longer ice-free season can lead to bigger waves and more storms. Erosion can be tens of meters per year in some cases.

The depth of permafrost is quite variable. At the far northern tip of Canada at Ellesmere Island the permafrost is several hundred meters thick, probably five to seven hundred meters thick. Its temperature is about minus fifteen.

As you go south, it gets thinner. In the far north, the permafrost is continuous, under everything. Further south, some places have permafrost, others not. It becomes dispersed and localized.

Again, in some areas the organic material, which could be released as either carbon dioxide or methane, has been accumulating for thousands of years. In other areas it may be just hundreds of years. It’s like a jig-saw puzzle with many different pieces.

Parts of Alaska were not glaciated in the last great ice age, and continued growing plant life. Those accumulated much more organic material. This was gradually incorporated in the frozen ground, to be stored without decay.

Lewkowicz is a lead author of a new paper published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. The title is "Climate and Ground Temperature Relations, Sites Across the Continuous and Discontinuous Zones in Northern Canada, with co-authors Jennifer Troop and Sharon Smith, from the Geological Survey of Canada. As part of the International Polar Year, which ended in 2009, they developed a new series of bore hole temperature readings.

As you would suspect, the climate does determine ground temperatures. While some of the far North is still very cold under the surface, a little further South is just below zero, on its way to melting. These scientists were able to form a continent-wide reading of the permafrost.

I raised the fascinating videos showing up on You tube of thousands of new small lakes appearing in Siberia as the permafrost thaws there.

Although there is very strong warming in Canada, particularly in the Mackenzie Valley, Professor Lewkowitcz doesn't think Canada is experiencing the rather sudden appearance of so many lakes as in Siberia. In the Western Canadian Arctic average annual temperatures have risen by as much as a degree Celsius in a decade.

Some Canadian peat lands are decaying relatively rapidly and you can see that through satellite photos.

In one area of discontinuous permafrost areas in the Southern Yukon and Northern British Columbia, half the sites measured have thawed since 1964.

But if we go to the extreme North, like Alter Bay, the ground may be a degree warmer, but it has only moved from about 14 degrees below zero C. to perhaps 13 degrees. It is relatively warmer, but now where close to thawing yet.

Scientists prefer to use the word "thaw" rather than "melt". Lewkowicz gives the example of a frozen turkey. If you thaw a turkey, you still have it to eat. If you melt something, it's gone. Permafrost isn't just ice. It can be only frozen rock for example. That may thaw without melting. Technically, "permafrost" is defined by sub-zero temperature for two or more years, no matter what is frozen under the surface. Professor Lewkowicz just attended a post Polar Year conference in Montreal. The hot topic was: how much carbon will be released as the permafrost melts? There is a lot of new research into this question, partly because we don't yet have firm answers. We don't know.

We do know that where the organic material decays without water, it will release carbon dioxide. If the decay happens in water, methane is released instead. So there are many further calculations about how much comes out of lakes, bogs, and swamps - versus how much material will thaw and rot in simple exposed ground.

The second big question is: how fast will it happen?

Again this is complex, and one factor is water. If ponds form, as they do in Siberia, that water efficiently transfers the heat from the Sun and warmer air down into the ground. More greenhouse gases will be released there. This can become a positive feedback effect, where smaller ponds warm to form larger ponds, and so more warming.

Regarding the coming greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, Lewkowicz says "We don't have the answer yet, but we know it's a really, really serious question."

There is a potential for a positive feedback effect, where thawing permafrost releases warming gases which melts more permafrost, increasing that cycle at a faster rate.

Like the melting Arctic Sea Ice, "it's difficult to imagine how we can revert to a previous condition" [of permafrost]. "It's quite difficult to thaw ground, but it's actually quite difficult to freeze ground... once we thaw it, I don't know how we are going to freeze it again."

I think this is a key point about thawing permafrost. There isn't any realistic geo-engineering scheme to reverse it. The area of permafrost is so huge, and the amount of energy require to freeze it so gigantic, this process is beyond human control, once we initiate the warming and thawing process. It is an irreversible change to the planet.

Lewkowicz says there will still be permafrost left in all our lifetimes. The question is how much, and what will the impacts of the thawing be?

Listen again to this show, or pass it around as a free mp3, from our program archives at ecoshock.org.

Should we worry about the permafrost thaw? Maybe not today or tomorrow. The big thaw is happening slowly. It will define the history of the planet. As the Russian expert Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk University says: the process is already underway. We can delay it, with smarter energy choices, and greenhouse gas control, but unless a miracle happens, over the next century or three, planet Earth will thaw.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. I appreciate your patience and your brain power. Thank you for caring about your world.