HEAT JOLT

SUMMARY: Global heat Jan & Feb hits hard, worries scientists. Bob Henson from Weather Underground explores the loss of normal. Australian scientist Ben Hankamer on new study: world will warm faster than you think. Radio Ecoshock 160323

The jolt. That's what scientists are calling the absolute heat records set around the world in January and February of 2016. Expert meteorologist and climate science writer Bob Henson takes us on a tour of the new normal.

But hang around too for our second interview, with Australian scientist Ben Hankamer. He's co-author of a new peer-reviewed paper that says warming will happen much faster than you think.

Hankamer tells us:

"If what the models suggest are correct, then by 2020 we might have to have about emissions reductions of 50% if we want to stay below a 1.5 degree climate change level. And if we want to stay below 2 [deg C] it might be 50% by 2030. And it really depends if you want to go with this pro-growth strategy or whether you want to carry on with business as usual... Of course you can say 'we're not going to do that' but then you have to also make the assumption that you will keep people in poverty."

A fifty percent cut in emissions needed by 2020! That's a call for crisis-level action. Sure, we can continue to splurge on fossil fuels in the developed world, but keep in mind (a) we need almost half the world's population to keep living in desperate poverty (less than $2.50, a day) and (b) we accept a rapid transition to a ruined state of nature for all coming generations.

That's coming up in our second half hour. First, let's get past the weather porn, to explore another step up the staircase to climate catastrophe.

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THE NEW HEAT JOLT - WHAT DOES IT MEAN? BOB HENSON

"February Smashes Earth's All-Time Global Heat Record by a Jaw-Dropping Margin" That's the headline at wunderground, the influential Weather Underground blog. What does it mean? Is the new carbon-loaded atmosphere stretching it's muscles? Is this the new normal, or the end of normal?

Joining us to talk about all this is a seasoned meteorologist, journalist, and one-time storm chaser, Colorado's Bob Henson. Bob co-wrote one of the most widely used college textbooks on weather, "Meteorology Today" - now out in it's 11th edition this year. For more than a decade Bob had a front row seat as writer and editor for AtmosNews, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His articles are published all over the world, and his latest book is "The Thinking Person's Guide to Climate Change." Bob often teams up with Wunderground's Jeff Masters to bring out all the facts and figures about the strange changes we see today.

Bob Henson, Weather Underground

Let's be clear, we are talking about a global average temperature that in February almost reaches the 1.5 degrees C the supposed "safe" level raised at the Paris climate talks in December. Not in 2100, or 2050, but almost right now. NASA released their report forFebruary temperatures - the world is 1.35 degrees C above the baseline, which they choose as the period from 1951 to 1980.

But that's a recent baseline that minimizes real warming! There was at least a half degree warming from pre-industrial levels (say 1850). So we are already above the 1.5 deg temps agreed as really safe at the Paris climate talks.

Even taking the low-ball NASA starting point, as the Guardian newspaper reports, global temperatures in February 2016 broke all records not a little but, but by "a shocking amount".

The only good news is that we still have the rest of the year to go, which might cool down. Experts think the current El Nino is winding down over the next few months. For all we know, 2017 might be a La Nina year, and cooler. Henson says it takes a few years steady at 1.5 or 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels to qualify as permanent warming. He thinks we are several decades away from that point. I disagree.

It's also important to note that CO2 levels, as measured at the Mauna Loa lab in Hawaii, go up during an El Nino year, and never come back down. The reasons for that are complex. For example, drought during El Nino, coupled with climate-driven heat, causes more forest fires, which releases more CO2 into the atmosphere.

But the essential point is we are now well over 400 parts per million CO2, and much higher if we count the more realistic CO2 equivalent (which includes ever-increasing methane, plus rarer but more powerful greenhouse gases).

I remember the late Dr. Albert A. Bartlett of Colorado spent a lifetime teaching how important and threatening exponential math can be. That's where we get an increase on the increase. Is that happening now with greenhouse gas emissions? Sort of. Henson tells us CO2 was going up about 1 part per million a year during the 1960's. It became 2 parts per million annually during the early 2000's, and since 2015 has been hitting 3 parts per million increase. So yes, that is exponential, and ever-more dangerous.

Here's one of my worries. Every time the Earth takes another jump in temperature, a great number of irreversible feed-backs get a push. So we might be going up a stair-case, step-by-step, which only goes up. For example, what is the condition of the Arctic sea ice this winter? Yes, it is the lowest on record for February. The extent is low, and the ice is thin.

However, that does not necessarily mean we will hit a new record low sea ice level in the Arctic this summer, Henson says. The main factor that can break that record is whether it is cloudy in the Arctic during the key months of June and July, when the polar sun is strongest, or wide open and sunny. So we'll have to wait and see.

It's been just plain weird in the Arctic. It rained at the Pole in the December darkness, and there's been a lot of open ocean north of Scandinavia. Henson tells us about conditions around Svalbard for example. North of Norway, where the ice should be surrounding Svalbard, it the sea is open. And that northernmost city in the world (at 78 degrees latitude) has been strangely warm. Some days it was 20 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual. That's a huge jump!

Mark Sereze of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center says this past winter is the strangest he's ever seen in the Arctic. For example, Anchorage Alaska had the warmest weather ever, with the least snow ever.

DID EL NINO BREAK THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT? YES AND NO.

Did this El Nino manage to break the long California drought, as advertised? It did not go as expected. The big deluges from El Nino tracked hundreds of miles north of California, hitting Oregon and Washington State. At least there has been some snow in California mountains, which should ease water supplies somewhat. Water supplies for Sacramento and San Francisco have half recovered.

But it's an "ominous sign" Henson says, that this El Nino did not fully break the California drought this year. That's partly because projections are for the U.S. Southwest states, including California and Arizona, to get drier and drier as this century rolls on.

HEAT RECORD IN LOWER ATMOSPHERE

We've talked about heat records set on land. But it's not just there. Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville has persistently talked down the threats of global warming. He often interprets satellite data to find the lowest estimates. But even he reports the lower atmosphere is hotter than ever.

SEVERE IMPACTS ALREADY THIS YEAR

As Bob and Jeff Masters picture in their blog, there have been severe impacts of this combined El Nino and a jolt in climate-induced heating. Extreme drought has cost Vietnam and Zimbabwe at least 10% of their Gross Domestic Product. That has not been reported in mainstream news at all. We did hear about the strongest typhoon ever recorded hitting the Pacific island of Fiji. That country has continued it's state of emergency for another month, as thousands of people remain in temporary shelters. Their homes and businesses were demolished.

As Henson blogs: "For comparison, nine nations had their most expensive weather-related natural disasters in history in all of 2015, and only one did so in 2014."

Henson tells us scientists predict with the warming of the Pacific Ocean, there is a better chance we will get more El Nino heat years in the coming decades. You can guess what that means, from what happened this year. Our guest predicts we will see dramatic rises in temperatures, and surprising extreme weather, in this coming decade.

On another front, Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority has just issued an alert about widespread coral bleaching. Coral guru Thomas J. Goreau has been privately warning this could be another huge coral die-off.

Bob Henson is that rare combination of meteorologist and journalist. He's been published all over the world, but my favorite spot to find him is at the Weather Underground blog, at wunderground.com. His Twitter handle is @bhensonweather.

PROFESSOR STEFAN RAMSTORF - "CLIMATE EMERGENCY"

Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, from Germany's Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, told Australian newspapers "We are in a kind of climate emergency now." In the show, I run a few minutes from a short interview of Stefan Ramsdorf done by by Phil Stubbs of theenvironmentshow.com

FASTER AND SOONER - BEN HANKAMER

Look out. The world may warm much faster than we thought. That could create an energy-squeeze. It's all in new a big-picture study from Australian researchers. Let's peer into a real future, with Professor Ben Hankamer from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, near Brisbane Australia.

Dr. Ben Hankamer

Now we know the choices. Let half the world's people live in poverty, and keep up our energy-intensive lifestyles for an extra ten years. Then we all struggle to survive with rising seas, heat waves, drought, fires, and weather so unstable crops and species are doubtful. OR the world's leaders and people somehow wake up from the fog, to begin the war on carbon emissions, to make the transition to a low-energy, all-renewable world. We have four years to cut our emissions in half. It's beyond the days of worry,now. It's do or die.

The title of this new paper suggests giant topics: "Trading Off Global Fuel Supply, CO2 Emissions and Sustainable Development". It was published in the open access journal PLOS one. Anyone can read the full paper, and please do.

In the interview, we look more deeply into this concept of personal energy use. Here in North America, we like to think personal energy use is going down, as cars become more fuel efficient, bike use increases, and things like LED light bulbs slash utility bills. Is that assumption wrong? Yes and no. It's true many appliances, cars and stuff are becoming more energy efficient. But it appear we are using the saved money to buy still more appliances, cars and stuff.

One of the paper authors, Dr. Wagner says "“Simply put, as we get more efficient at manufacturing, goods get cheaper and we buy more." That sounds to me like a restatement of the classic Jevons Paradox, which was originally applied to coal. So it's still true.

I'm also assuming that a huge portion of demand for personal energy use will come as billions of people in the "developing world" get motorbikes, electric appliances and all the things we take for granted.

So here is one thing new in this study: previous studies did not include the relationships between energy use, climate and poverty. Add in population, and the amount of carbon left to safely burn takes a nose-dive. In my opinion, we don't have much of a chance of staying below 2 degrees C warming in the next 20 years. So buckle up your seat belts for world-changing extreme weather, and the relentless rise of the seas.

But Ben Hankamer is much more positive. He thinks there is plenty of solar energy to power the world. If global leadership recognizes the crisis in time, and organizes us all to act, maybe we can pull out before a real climate catastrophe is inevitable.

Again, most of our fossil fuel use is in liquid form, especially for transportation, I wonder how much renewable energy can really replace that? That is exactly the question being investigated at the Solar Biofuels Research Centre in Queensland Australia. It's co-ordinated by the University of Queensland, with major corporate partners. They are testing algae that grows in the sun, which can then be converted to a number or widely recognized liquid fuels.

Large-scale projections by necessity assume a future economy similar to what we have now. But I worry that the economy will slide into a Depression, where wealth shrinks instead of grows. That may come from unsustainable debt levels, and all countries will be buffetted by increasing costs of replacing infrastructure and crops damaged by an unstable climate. Most studies do not include that possibility.

THE WORST PREDICTION: ALMOST 4 DEGREES OF WARMING (OR MORE!) BY 2026

The most dire prediction comes from Sam Carana.

The post in Arctic News is not a scientific paper, but a blog with some scientific contributors. This blog is sometimes too extreme, and sometimes spot on. I don't have the expertise to say what is right or wrong with Sam's calculation of 3.9 degrees C warming by 2026, shown in the graphic, part way down in this post. Sam Carana draws on a number of warming factors which I've seen listed separately in scientific papers, but which are too seldom brought together. I ask our guest Ben Hankamer if he thinks a warming of 3.9 degrees C by 2026 is possible. Ben says it could be possible!

Graphic by Sam Carana of Arctic News blog.

And that is Carana's low end number. His worst case scenario is so bad we can hardly conceive of it.

Mind you, one of the original climate change scientists, Dr. James Hansen, has just released a paper with a gang of other scientists warning that heating is coming, and seas rising, faster than anyone thought possible!

THANKS!

I'm Alex Smith. My thanks to everyone who has helped get this radio message out through social media, and especially the non-profit radio stations who tell the truth.

I also want to shout out my thanks to the supporters who donate $10 a month to keep this program going. You really do make it possible for me to continue doing these key interviews, and getting it out to a global audience.

And thank you for listening.

RETURN OF ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Extreme rainfall events are cropping up around the world. In England, once in a thousand year floods have repeated 3 times now, in five years. Records are falling in many countries. In a warmer world, we've gained 7 percent more water vapor in the atmosphere. It has to come down somewhere.

The short news clips about extreme rainfall events around the world came courtesy of BBC, Reuters, Fox, ABC, CBS, Euronews.

WASDELL VINDICATED

A few weeks ago, our guest David Wasdell suggested the outcome of our current path of emissions would eventually be a world at least 8 degrees C hotter on average, maybe more. Some questioned that. It is now the most heavily downloaded interview I've posted on soundcloud. If you missed it, listen in here.

This week the University of Edinburgh released a paper echoing Wasdell's climate. Eight degrees is possible, according to Professor Roy Thompson, as published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Find the University press release here.

DARK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE

Climate change does not occur in a steady economy, or a peaceful time. This Fall we saw in Paris how terrorism empowered politicians to ban climate action, in the name of public safety. The terrorists knew they were attacking before the world flooded to the COP21 climate talks. They succeeded in disrupting the essential public voice.

But in this show, we ask two questions: will the fossil-based economy collapse just as extreme weather events punish property and infrastructure. What if we are too broke to rebuild or cope? There's a blog for that. It's theeconomiccollapse blog, with millions of readers. We'll look at frashing warning a new depression is forming, with blogger Michael T. Snyder.

Then, believe it or not, there are darker things to consider. If climate disrupts agriculture, as expected and already happening, social violence and wars may become worse. Our guest Professor Tim Snyder explains why climate change may open the door to more mass murder. It needs to be said.

Off we go, with black clouds hanging over economies around the world.

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RETURN TOWARD COLLAPSE - MICHAEL SNYDER

The Federal Reserve just said the U.S. economy is so rosy they can raise interest rates by .25%, the first rise in about 7 years. So why is this environment reporter covering just the opposite?

Remember Hurricane Sandy, all pumped up with rising seas and a hot ocean off the U.S. East Coast. The damages from that one storm were estimated at $60 billion dollars, or about 55 billion euros to "fix". That didn't include bolstering the shore-line, or the estimated $10 billion dollars our Radio Ecoshock guest Professor J. Court Stevenson recommended to create flood-gates to protect New York Harbor. Download that 21 minute interview here.

What about the billions lost in the California drought, or more tens of billions with Hurricane Katrina? Politicians, and we the public, always presume there will be money to rebuild. Except we're already in the total debt economy, nationally, regionally, and personally. If the massive global economic system experiences a crash, there will be no money to recover from recurring climate damage. We will get hit - that's pretty well guaranteed from rising seas, extreme rainfall events (I report on a few of those in this show), agricultural losses, record wild-fires - you know, a lot of bad things.

The good news could be that only a global economic crash can prevent us from terra-forming the planet into a dying world. Things like the tar sands won't be worth developing, and ditto for dangerous Arctic drilling. The history of the past few decades shows only an economic collapse, like the fall of the Soviet Union, has led to genuine reduction of emissions.

The bad news is a lot of bad news. For example, if there is no money to invest, we may not make the transition toward cleaner solar and wind energy, or electric cars. We may be stuck with whatever inefficient grid and coal power plants we've got, not to mention aging nuclear hulks run way past their best before date. We may get stuck in the 20th century.

Of course there's a lot more. Pension funds could go broke. Governments could go broke (some already are). People will lose jobs, the poor will get even less, some of us will lose hope. It's a Depression with a capital "D".

Ever since the last "recession" of 2008, when major institutions teetered on the brink of global ruin - Michael T. Snyder has been writing a blog saying nothing has been fixed from that time, and in fact, most things have become even more precarious. For the past few months he's been posting various warning from the internal workings of the macro economic system that tell us another crash is developing. In the past few weeks, a lot of what Michael warns about is coming to the surface, even in the mainstream popular press.

Michael T. Snyder

In our interview he gives a list of about ten big warning signs. For example, the junk bond market has already collapsed, as it did before stocks fell in 2008. "Junk bonds" are really higher risk loans to corporations, like Chrysler for example. Most big pension funds are based on a presumed rate of return much higher than "safe" guaranteed interest rates. These funds need money just to pay out retirees now on the roles, much less the baby-boomers hitting the decks. Pension funds were more or less forced into the junk bond market.

Just in the last week, a big junk bond company called Third Avenue had so many demands for payouts (people bailing) they had to deny requests. There wasn't enough money. This triggered a run on many other junk bonds. It's a run on the junk bond bank.

That's just one sign. The near death of international shipping and trade is another. In fact, there have been a series of major banks, well-known international banks, who have warned a "downturn" is just around the corner. Private investment banks are warning their clients about the same. Michael Snyder has lists of them in his blog!

THE "PROPAGANDA MATRIX"

So why isn't Fox News and the general mass media telling you how serious this is? Snyder reminds us that six major media corporations control about 90% of what we see, hear - and talk about. The average American now watches 293 minutes of TV a day. Add in all the other media, like the Internet, social media, radio, newspapers - and those six corporations fill up an astounding 10 hours of the average person's day! Snyder calles it "the propaganda matrix".

It's little wonder that whatever they are blaring out over multiple outlets gets talked about in the office, at home, and on the street. It could be the Kardashians, terrorism, refugees, Donald Trump, somebody to hate, some awful crime - but it's seldom, very seldom, the raw facts that our economy isn't working for 99% of the people.

The world's fifth largest economy, the big hope of the developing world, is officially in a "Depression" according to Goldman Sachs. Do you know what country that is? Probably not. A few dozen stock markets around the world have already crashed. Did you know that? That's why you, and anybody who cares about the future, should listen to this interview with Michael T. Snyder.

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WHO IS MICHAEL SNYDER?

Who is he? As we learn in this interview, Snyder was a practicing lawyer. He was one of the many working in Washington D.C. in the shadow of the Capitol buildings. When the last recession hit, Snyder got out. He's happily living now in the mountains of Idaho. Snyder's blog, theeconomiccollapse.com gets about a million views a month. But it doesn't stop there. I've seen his posts on dozens and dozens of other blogs, including the biggest, like Zero Hedge.

Maybe you think Michael Snyder isn't qualified, or he's over-zealous. Go ahead, but first argue with the facts he packs into his blog posts - all with links to the original source, which you can check for yourself. Eventually you'll find his blog is a definite worthwhile watching post, as I did.

Snyder isn't adamant about everything. He'll ask the question, and wants you to check things out. Plus, Snyder doesn't say we'll wake up one morning to find everything closed, and start a new civilization from scratch. Rather he sees a downward staircase, where things fall apart, maybe over years. That was the reality of the last Great Depression in the 1930's. But this collapse would be global, and maybe the end of the fossil fuel civilization as we've known it.

I'd like to have Michael back again next spring, when we'll see whether Janet Yellen's official optimism, or Michael Snyder's deep suspicion, turn out to be reality.

During the interview we also discover Michael has a new novel out. It's kind of a thriller, but contains all sorts of projections into the future, from what he sees now. The title is "The Beginning of the End".

Michael also has two other online projects: a blog "End of the American Dream" and his new news web site "The Most Important News".

PROFESSOR TIM SNYDER: THE NEXT "HOLOCAUST" MAY BE DRIVEN BY CLIMATE CHANGE

I heard about the work of Professor Timothy Snyder in a controversial op-ed in the New York Times. It was published September 12th, 2015 under the title "The Next Genocide". He says climate change could drive us again towards mass murder.

The idea that rampant climate change will take hundreds of millions of lives was not new to me. For example, when the major delta of Bangladesh, where hundreds of millions live, becomes too salty for agriculture, due to invading seas - millions of environmental refugees will stream north. The only places they could go are already over-populated and very undeveloped, like Eastern India. It's not going to end well.

But Snyder has thought deeper about the possible consequences of climate change. First of all, he is an internationally-known scholar of the mass murders that happened during the mid-20th century in Eastern Europe. We call it "the Holocaust", but it turns out most of us still don't understand what happened there.

For example, most people were killed by the Nazis in the infamous death camps right? Wrong, says Snyder. While the death camp toll was horrendous, even more millions died outside the camps, slaughtered wherever they were. I ask Snyder why we don't know this. One major reason was that Eastern Europe was behind the iron curtain of communism, where people couldn't travel or speak freely.

Professor Snyder is fluent in at least 10 languages. Most of us couldn't read the original documents, even if we could find them. In 2010, Snyder, a Yale historian, published a book on his research, "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin". The two dictators supervised the death of about 14 million people in the Eastern European lands between them.

Professor Timothy D. Snyder

I know from my own reading, the Holocaust was also the first case of turning advanced technology into machines for mass murder. Hitler's death camps used a punch-card system designed, provided (and maintained during the war!) by the American company IBM. Ford trucks carried the victims and troops around. Radio transmitted hate propaganda.

So where does climate change come in? I can't do justice to Snyder's arguments. You can find them in the New York Times article, or this one in the Guardian. But news articles just scratch the surface. The real juice comes from Snyder's new book "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning".

In the interview, we talk about how Hitler and his cronies viewed the environment. In some senses, the Nazi's had a tinge of "green". They wanted to restore some natural species (so they could hunt them), and used "nature" in their propaganda. But like modern climate denialists, Hitler also had a phobia, bordering on hatred, for real science. In some cases, like Einstein's theories, he denounced it as "Jewish science". That may be one reason why the Nazi's never developed the atomic bomb.

Tim Snyder tells us Hitler sold the Germans a fear that they could never feed themselves, so they needed "living space" - to be taken by force from others (like the Poles) who would be eradicated. Germans would run out of food, he thought, because fertilizers, hydridization, and other promises of science were false. It turns out he was totally wrong, and after the war Europe became a major exporter of food, using scientific methods.

MY INTERPRETATION OF THIS INTERVIEW

One of my key take-aways of talking with Tim Snyder is that mass murder does not require a state where people are at or near starvation. All it requires is that people fear it COULD happen, to justify terrible things.

In fact, it may not require a food shortage. Part of Hitler's argument was that the Germans, as a superior "race", should have the highest lifestyles. He specifically pointed to the developing riches of America. Tim Snyder thinks that someone, or some nation, could justify mass murder solely because people thought their lifestyle was threatened (not just their food). Does that raise any thoughts in you? What if there is an economic crash, or fear of one, and Americans, or Brits, think their lifestyle is going downhill? Could we turn that into an excuse to bomb the hell out of some other people far away? Or justify mass-murder at home?

The worst fear is that a national government will purposefully plan, over time, the mass murder of another population, as happened in Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. We're not talking about murderous riots in the street, although those can be arranged. We're talking about applying computer tech, advanced weapons, money, and administration to depopulate some part of the world, or a sub-set of a national population.

That kind of mass-murder as policy could develop in times stressed beyond imagination by climate disruption. Timothy Snyder explains how. As Snyder writes in the New York Times:

"Denying science imperils the future by summoning the ghosts of the past."

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THANKS FOR GIVING ME THIS OPPORTUNITY

We're pushing the end of our time - at least for Radio Ecoshock this week.

My special thanks to those who reached out with financial support for this program, without much prodding from me. Aside from the help, it also makes me feel appreciated. Find out how you can help here.

I put in about 40 hours a week to produce this program. It's my "job" but I don't get paid for it. As I hope you can tell, each guest sends me on an adventure of research in preparation, plus time spent distributing the program, answering listener emails (write me radio //at// ecoshock.org), staying abreast of global news feeds, this blog, the web site, and all that. It's a life work, and I'm just glad you encourage me to do it.

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

SCIENCE OF THE COMING CATASTROPHE

Summary: Oil company BP says recoverable oil runs out in 50 years. American scientist James H. Brown publishes study saying this means a crash of economy and population is "very, very likely". Then Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver on our prospects, and why he ran for the Green Party. Radio Ecoshock 150923.

Warning: If you are already feeling depressed, this may not be the program for you. Maybe you should take a walk outside instead. Really. That would be OK.

For those still listening/reading, according to one of the world's biggest oil companies, their primary product may not be around for much longer than 50 years. In this program, a senior scientist follows that logic to find a catastrophic crash of our economy - and world population is "very, very likely".

We'll follow up with a chat with one of Canada's top climate scientists. He says we don't need more science, we need action to save ourselves. So he ran for the Green Party and got elected.

Speaking of politics, Catholic legislators in the U.S. Congress saying they will boycott the Pope's speech there because of his views on global warming, let's go to our favorite source, the father of all that's right, former President Ronald Reagan:

"Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense. Let's be sure that those who come after, will say of us in our time, we did everything that could be done."

Australia's great climate denier and coal-lover Prime Minister Tony Abbott just got the boot from his old party. His replacement is at least on record acknowledging that climate change is real and dangerous. One more to go: Canada's Tar Sands Prime Minister Stephen Harper is up for election in October, with polls showing him running dead last in public opinion.

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Of course, the political theater may all be far too late. Pop a few anti-depressants for our next guest, as Radio Ecoshock rolls on into the dystopic future.

SCIENCE OF CATASTROPHE: DR. JAMES H. BROWN

In about 50 years, oil and gas will run out . But our bubble of economic growth and increasing population will crash before that. It has to. That's according to our next guest James H. Brown, a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. He's also the head of the Brown Lab.

This interview is not our usual fare. First of all, the crash will come less from climate change, although that is not minimized, but from the simple fast that economically retrievable oil and gas will run out. Eventually, Brown says, that means this planet will no longer be able to support billions of people. A great dying is likely, if not inevitable.

This all comes not from an out-there blogger, but from a highly reputable scientist. His paper on the subject was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) - one of the top American scientific journals. It's peer-reviewed and inspected, and was published August 4th, 2015. The title is: "Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind".

I begin by asking Brown to describe what is meant by "the Earth-Space battery". Essentially, as I understand it, this is a system where solar energy is stored in two main forms on Earth: (1) the total mass of living matter, on land and sea (plants, animals, insects, the lot) and (2) the energy stored in longer-term forms like fossil fuels, and peat.

Brown makes the case that both forms of energy on Earth are being rapidly depleted. As they are exhausted (by us, and by systems stimulated by humans) - Earth moves toward the general state of (outer) space, becoming less hospitable for living things.

In the abstract for that paper we find this scary little sentence: "With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of outer space with fundamental ramifications for the biosphere and humanity."

Since the authors (the other being John R. Schramski from the University of Georgia) find that fossil energy drives most of our civilization, and that supply of fossil fuels is limited - therefore there can be no such thing as "sustainable development". That is just a myth.

Long-time listeners will find echoes here of the peak oil theory, described by guests like James Howard Kunstler and especially Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute. But there are also parallels to the work of Dr. Tim Garrett of the University of Utah. Garrett likewise found a formula where the economy, indeed "wealth" are mathematically bound to carbon burned, and therefore to emissions. There will be no meaningful cut to emissions, Garrett told us, unless and until the economy drops so precipitously it will be a crash larger than the Great Depression of the previous century. Here is a link to a transcript of my 2010 interview with Tim Garrett.

Brown also shows, scientifically, how closely world population mirrors energy availability and use. Given that BP, a source of industry data trusted by others in the industry, says we only have 50 years of economically useful fossil fuels left - what else can we see coming but a concomitant crash in population sometime in the next 50 years. That's a disaster beyond anything seen in human history, headed into the lives of anyone under the age of 30 now.

You can see this research developing in an earlier paper with Brown as lead author: "Energetic Limits to Economic Growth" as published by the American Institute for Biological Sciences on March 25, 2012. Find details on that here. Here is another Brown-led article in press for the journal Ecological Engineering: :Macroecology meets macroeconomics: Resource scarcity and global sustainability"

I have trouble with Brown's argument that economic growth has stalled due to scarcity, whether it's energy or other resources like copper or iron. It seems like we are swimming in excess oil right now, with prices dropping. Other commodity prices are also crashing, partly because Chinese demand has fallen. How can Brown you cite scarcity as a driver of a global recession, during a period of apparent abundance?

His answer is intriguing. Consider a sick person on a fixed income. If they are too sick to eat, their grocery bill might go down, and so they actually appear to have more available wealth. But really that "abundance" is a (temporary) sign of how sick the economy really is.

We also discuss the relationships between climate change and dwindling fossil fuel resources. It's always hard to tell which will hit us harder or faster. Either way, in a presentation in Baltimore last August, one of Brown's slides says : "A catastrophic crash appears inevitable."

James Brown's thinking also evolved around another big concept, the co-relation between metabolism and ecology. We won't have time to develop the whole theory this time around, but you can learn about it in this You tube video (1 hour 4 minute intriguing lecture).

Here is another useful review of this important paper by the real journalist Andrew Nikiforuk in the Canadian publication the Tyee.

I don't agree with everything Dr. Brown said in our interview. For example he says renewables cannot replace fossil fuels for cars and factories. But they can, although our lifestyles and expectations would have to change drastically. But certainly, if oil that is economical to get runs out in 50 years, we're in for a crash, if not an age of crashes. We've had a lot of guests say that. Maybe it's true.

You can download or listen to this 23 minute interview with Dr. James H. Brown in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

AGE OF HUMANS MUSIC

Just to finish off that mood, we play a short song from Dana Pearson: "Age of Humans". Find all of Dana's work as Vastman on Soundclick.com.

FROM SCIENTIFIC STUDY TO POLITICAL ACTION: DR. ANDREW WEAVER

Let's keep going, with a climate scientist who quit science, at least for now, to become a political activist.

Is climate change unstoppable, even if we drastically cut back emissions? Are these mega-changes on our planet "irreversible"? Our guest Dr. Andrew Weaver is one of Canada's top climate scientists, most recently with the University of Victoria in Canada. He's been a lead author in many reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the 2007 report that won the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Andrew Weaver has been featured in the film "Running on Climate". As a Canadian climate expert, Andrew has been a cornerstone of a series of reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and published over 200 scientific papers of his own. Now he's the first Green Member of the Legislative Assembly in the Western Canadian province of British Columbia.

Dr. Weaver was a Lead Author for the Working Group I contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. Published in 2013, the title is: “Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility.”

In the past couple of years, I am seeing more statements by official scientific bodies that some aspect of global warming is now "unstoppable" or "irreversible". NASA says melting of the Totten glacier complex in Antarctica is now "unstoppable". The most recent 2014 climate report of the American Meteorological Association says warming of the oceans is "unstoppable." So it's with great interest I ask Dr. Weaver about the "irreversible" changes to the climate system, and our ecological systems.

I ask him if he thinks that melting of the permafrost, during this century and the following centuries, has reached the state of "unstoppable"? And could emissions from melting permafrost and melting of Arctic methane ice cages, the clathrates, create more greenhouse gases than humans currently do?

Scientists have painted a frightening picture of massive changes to our climate, sea level, agriculture, weather extremes and extinctions if we proceed along the higher emissions pathway. I ask Dr. Weaver for his thoughts about possible results from the upcoming "Conference of the Parties" climate negotiations in Paris at the end of November 2015.

Despite his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which advises governments on pathways and climate decision-making) - Weaver says the whole series of COP talks have been a colossal waste of time. He likewise expects nothing of importance to come out of the Paris talks. In particular, Weaver finds talk of ending emissions by the end of this century (as the G8 countries agreed) is just posturing that actually delays the quick and big action we need right now.

DO WE NEED MORE CLIMATE SCIENCE?

Even more surprising from a long-time and well known climate scientist, Weaver questions whether we need more climate science. We already have plenty of data and proof of the nature and causes of the developing climate change. What we need is real action from our leaders. No more science needed? Shocking stuff.

Weaver told that to so many young people, he decided he should lead by example. Andrew ran for the Green Party in the Provincial elections in British Columbia Canada. He was elected on Vancouver Island, the first and so-far only Green in the Provincial government.

Like Michael Mann in the United States, Andrew Weaver was also attacked personally by a series of opinionated writers in some of Canada's major publications. When they said he wasn't even a bonifide climate scientist (among other weird accusations) Weaver sued for libel. He won the case, with damages. At least one publication often a home for climate denial issued an abject apology and fired the writer, removing all his past articles. Other publications have appealed the decision, so that battle is not over. But it certainly set an example of climate scientists fighting back against calumny.

Although we didn't talk about it this interview, Weaver is also the author of two books. As his Wiki entry says:

"His book, Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World was published by Viking Canada in September 2008 (ISBN 978-0-670-06800-5). His second book, Generation Us: The Challenge of Global Warming was published by Raven Books in 2011 (ISBN 978-1-55469-804-2)."

In the interview, we return to the science, discussing many topics that listeners have raised with me in email and in Facebook comments. You can listen to or download this 29 minute interview with Dr. Andrew Weaver here, in either CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

LOVE SONG TO THE EARTH - MEGA MUSIC

We'll close out this week's program with one of those mega-productions that seem hopeful. The so-called Official "Love Song to the Earth" was directed by Jerry Cope and Casey Culver. If you listen closely, you'll hear guest appearances by a long list of stars, including Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Fergie, Colbie Caillat, Natasha Bedingfield, Sean Paul, Leona Lewis, Christina Grimmmie, and Victoria Justice.

According to the song notes at lovesongtotheearth.org, "Every time the song is purchased, streamed, or shared, the royalties go directly towards the efforts of Friends of the Earth to keep fossil fuels in the ground and lower carbon emissions, and to the work of the U.N. Foundation to inspire international action on climate change."

Watch and listen to "Love Song to the Earth" on You tube here.

That's a good reason to go get this song and share it with others. So maybe, just maybe, if we find the last wave of human will, we can avoid the coming catastrophe.

Despite the tsunami of warning signs coming our way, I remain, as South Africa's Desmond Tutu says, "a prisoner of hope."

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock this week, and for caring about our world. Please don't forget to help support this work. Find out how here.

Planet Code Red

The amount of carbon we can burn and still have a safe climate is zero. One Australian calls it Code Red, time for emergency action. Plus new science on why New York City will flood again and again. Guests David Spratt and Dr. Stefan Talke, plus special on gardening in extreme heat with Marjory Wildcraft. Radio Ecoshock 140611 1 hour in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

In this Radio Ecoshock show: we find out the amount of carbon we can burn and still have a safe climate is zero. One Australian calls it Code Red, time for emergency action.

Then we'll zero in on one of the global cities that will flood time and time again. A new scientific report on why New York City is going under.

We end with a quick lesson from a wise garden grower in Texas. How and what to plant in the coming times of heat and water stress as the climate warps far from normal.

I'm Alex Smith. Get ready for Radio Ecoshock.



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

NOTES FROM THE DAVID SPRATT INTERVIEW

Our talk was pretty wide-ranging. You should listen to the interview if you have time.

We began by looking at who originally set two degrees (Centigrade) as a safe level for the world to warm. We've already seen major melting at both poles, plus storms, droughts and weird weather in between, and that's just at 1 degree hotter over pre-industrial times.

The two degree "safe" limit was from William Nordhaus, who wasn't a climate scientist at all. He was an economist when he made that limit in the 1970's. We've found out a lot since then!

Find out more in my notes on a Guy McPherson speech. Search in that document for "Where did the 2 degrees "Safe" Limit Come From".

David Spratt hit it dead on when he said the politicians think the 2 degree limit is coming from the climate scientists, while climate scientists think the 2 degree mark is just political!

Neither is right. David Spratt explains why 2 degrees is far from safe, and anyway on our current path of fossil fuel burning we are heading to 4 degrees or more. By the way, each 1 degree of warming, David says, adds another 15 meters of sea level rise (almost 50 feet!!)over time.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with David Spratt in CD quality or Lo-Fi.

You can listen right now on Soundcloud here.

Here is a short URL for this David Spratt interview, in case you want to Tweet about it.

http://tinyurl.com/n76comk

4 DEGREES OF WARMING EQUALS PLANETARY DEPOPULATION

If we do get to 4 degrees what happens?

"If we get to 4 degrees of warming, we think, our best expert guess is that the carrying capacity of the planet will be under 1 billion people. So that's a very strong statement.

Other people were - James Lovelock said that many years ago. And more recently at a presentation in England Kevin Anderson [Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research] said 'I think four degrees is incomaptible with the continuation of human civilization.'

So I think there's a widespread view that it's simply - we could not go on as we are. And obviously at 4 degrees of sea level will in the end go up to 70 meters, that's going to drown most of human civilization. So it's a very dramatic scenario."

On the road to the alleged safe level of 2 degrees, a whole series of reports, from the Stern Report in Britain to the Garnaut Report in Australia, to the IPCC - they all try to calculate "the carbon budget". That's the amount of carbon we can still burn before going over 2 degrees. They talk about gradual reductions of fossil fuels over decades because that pleases industry, politicians, and classical economists.

That whole exercise is not just a farce, says David Spratt, it's an illusion so dangerous it could endanger most of humanity.

Spratt explains the real numbers. Humans so far have put up about 550 billion tons of carbon. Then the real odds chime in.

"If you want a 33% chance of staying below two degrees, then you can have 1500 in your budget. If you want a 50% chance it comes down to 1200. If you want a 66% chance of staying below 2 degrees then it's 1,000. And then if we take gases other than carbon dioxide, because we're putting up methane and nitrous oxide, and so on - then perhaps the budget is 800."

So if you want a two in three chance that we won't ruin the entire planet for all succeeding generations and most other species, the real amount left to burn could be 250 billion tons.

We are currently emitting about 10 billion tons a year, so ostensibly we can go on with our current emissions for another 25 years, and if we are lucky, get away with "just" 2 degrees of warming.

But wait. There are huge holes in even that estimate. For one thing, it doesn't account for increases in emissions. We are emitting more every year, as we fixate on global "growth" of economies. Nor does it count any growth in natural emissions, from positive feedbacks like a warming ocean due to disappearing sea ice. There is no spot in this "carbon budget" for any increase in methane in the warming Arctic, due to either frozen methane balls melting under the sea (the "clathrates"), or from melting permafrost.

Then David Spratt brings in another budget killer. We need to allow for future emissions from agriculture, to feed the growing human population. We may be able to de-industrialize somewhat, to switch to renewables, etc. - but we will still want food. Commercial agriculture, as we learned recently from our guest Kip Anderson, releases more greenhouse gases than our whole transportation system. Humans also deforest and slash burn for agriculture, which means continuing emissions.

Spratt says once we account for the future food emissions, there is no carbon budget left at all. Zero! His solution is calling for a recognition of this planetary emergency. We talk about the way Britain totally transformed their economy and way of living in 1939, as World War Two developed, and cessation of automobile production in the United States in 1942, for the same reason. We have made a major change before. We can do it again, and we must.

Getting rid of the illusion of having a "carbon budget" left to spend, like secret money in the bank, is one first step to waking up the extreme danger of our situation.

In 2008, David Spratt published his important book "Climate Code Red, the Case for Emergency Action." With his blog, and especially his recent post "Carbon budgets, climate sensitivity and the myth of 'burnable carbon'" - Spratt continues his campaign to get people and world leaders to face the facts raised by science.

Keep in touch with David Spratt's work at his influential blog Climate Code Red.

WHY NEW YORK CITY WILL FLOOD AGAIN AND AGAIN

We saw it in Hurricane Sandy. Parts of Manhattan were flooded, including streets, subways, and buildings. Expect a lot more of that as sea levels rise. But you won't have to wait a century to find more flooding in America's largest city.

A recent scientific letter suggests the odds of storm tides overflowing sea walls in New York City have increased 20-fold since the mid-1800's.

Dr. Stefan Talke has a PHD in civil and environmental engineering. He's studied the way sediments work in rivers and estuaries in Europe and on the Pacific coast, where he teaches at Portland State University.

Along with scientists Philip Orton and David Jay, Stefan Talke just published these startling findings about New York City flooding in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. It's titled "Increasing Storm Tides in New York Harbor, 1844-2013". Find the abstract and paper details here.

Here is one scary quote from that paper:

"Three of the nine highest recorded water levels in the New York Harbor (NYH) region have occurred since 2010 (Mar. 2010, Aug. 2011, and Oct. 2012), and eight of the largest twenty have occurred since 1990."

OK, why is New York flooding? The answers (and there are several) aren't easy, but each one leads to a greater understanding of the planet we live on.

I hesitate to explain what Dr. Talke said eloquently in the interview, but my impressions are these:

1. New York, and much of the coast of New England is sinking. It's called "subsidence". One cause of that was the glaciers of past ages. Not because New York was covered by a glacier, but because it wasn't. Land further inland, that was flattened lower by the huge weight of ice miles deep. That land sank, and is now rising, while the coast is sinking. That is one reason New York will flood more.

2. Another factor is a huge cycle of weather in the North Atlantic. It's called the North Atlantic Oscillation. I wont' go into that here. Google it, or listen to an excellent explanation of that, and it's impact on storm surges and storm tides, in this Radio Ecoshock interview.

By the way, Stefan Talke carefully explains the critical difference between a "storm surge", and a "storm tide". The latter is when a storm surge builds on top of a rising tide, as happened in Hurricane Sandy.

3. Human interference in land use in New York Harbor makes it easier for high water to come in (and get out). There is less friction when wetlands are gone, and most of the sea side is lined with concrete.

4. Finally, as you might expect, there is the issue of rising seas as the planet warms. This adds to all the other factors. In the long run, it will become the biggest driving factor.

All this adds up to America's largest city, the hub of communications and finance, having to spend more and more trying to repair flood damage. Think flooded subways, damaged underground pipes and electrical systems, continual flooding in Manhattan and some boroughs. It's going to weight the economy down, and eventually drive part of the city underwater.

There are possible harbor defences, like tide gates which cost about $10 billion for NYC, as suggested by our guest J. Court Stevenson in my Radio Ecoshock interview linked from this show blog.

But that just adds a few more decades to New York's life. After that, it's retreat from the sea. The Wall Street bankers who finance oil and coal don't really understand that. Or it they do, they obviously don't care. It's a problem for the next generation - or is it?

We also discuss how port dredging can lead to ecological dead zones, and some strange stuff about the health of San Francisco Bay. It's real science in the real world. I like this interview.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Stefan Talke, in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

Or listen on Soundcloud here.

GARDENING IN THE HEAT

I've been out gardening in some hot weather. I wonder how we'll grow food when it get's even hotter!

We're all wondering how to survive in a heat stressed world. In this program I play you the 8 minute audio from the best short You tube video I've found on this subject.. It's by Marjory Wildcraft, recorded in a garden farmyard of Texas, during their incredible drought and heat wave two years ago. Listen and learn, grasshopper. Here is the link to that You tube video.

Marjory covers several things. First, the old farmers in Texas really had two seasons: spring gardens and fall gardens. Not much grows in the 108 degree heat that's been coming in summers of recent years.

Then she describes at least three food plants which can survive the heat and even drought. It's good survival prepper information, and good for the family budget, even as the climate changes.

This wise advice comes from Marjory Wildcraft at marjorywildcraft.com. It's called "Gardining in the Heat" posted on You tube in November 2011. And check out her influential DVD called "Grow Your Own Groceries". I'm going to ask Marjorie to join us on the program.

I'll be doing more on gardening in the heat in coming shows.

That is our program for this week, from one species in trouble on the living planet. Get our past programs free from the web site ecoshock.org. Encourage your friends to listen on their local non-profit radio station, or on the Radio Ecoshock Soundcloud page.

My special thanks to those listeners who donated this week to help keep this project going out to the public.

I've also posted my new song "All the Beasts" on Soundcloud. In addition to some rocking dance music, it features quotes about an earthly paradise of plants and beasts, just waiting for you. Sadly, the recording is from Jim Jones, the deadly preacher who led his flock into a mass suicide. We live in an ironic universe.



Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock this week (instead of Jim Jones), and thank you for caring about your world.

Alex

Rapid Collapse

Are we headed for collapse? A study partly funded by NASA says a combination of crisis could bring down the global system we count on. It's not guaranteed to happen, and we can't know when. But the world supply chains, just-in-time, makes the possibility of a sudden unravelling more possible. Would you believe everything from food to power to gasoline could disappear in just a matter of weeks? From Ireland, David Korowicz explains how. Radio Ecoshock 140402.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

DAVID KOROWICZ

There is a small industry of pundits warning something is about to collapse. A large and growing public who suspect they are right. It's hard to pin down what sets analyst David Korowicz apart from the pack. Maybe it's his detailed big picture outlines that just make sense. Is that why he's in demand across the world, advising governments, business, and non-profits alike? Strangely, most of those organizations could become dis-functional very quickly, if David Korowicz is right.

It doesn't hurt that David is based in Dublin. Ireland just went through an economic beating ahead of us all. He's part of an organization named Feasta, advises government there, and runs his own business called "Human Systems Consulting". We're going to talk about two of his papers that explain why fragile systems, from the economy to the environment, could fall apart much faster than we think.

Here are the two papers we discuss:

1. "Trade-Off: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse"

This paper is available free from feasta.org here.

2. The second is: "Catastrophic Shocks Through Complex Socio-Economic Systems: A Pandemic Perspective"

Download that paper as a free .pdf file here.

First, we note Ireland didn't go into the Dark Ages when it hit a financial brick wall a couple of years ago. Public services still work, the roads are open, the supermarkets well-stocked. Why did Irish society surive its flirtation with utter bankruptcy? David explains.

On You tube, I watched one of David's lectures. It was titled "The Modern Economy, Civilization, Complexity, and Collapse". He began with a picture of life in Kyrgyzstan, and how that local and resilient economy will be sucked into our globalized scheme, like everybody else. Won't they be better off? Yes probably, but they will be dependent on a super-system which is in itself very fragile, and open to rapid collapse.

History shows that once a country decides to join the global economy, its difficult if not impossible to go back to self-sufficiency.

We all like to blame the bankers or Wall Street manipulators for the current economic woes, David disappoints many a conspiracy theorist by saying there is no real organizing power behind the global economy. It works the way a forest does, he says. Things work together, but there is no one in charge. That's difficult for us to accept, so this was a good talk.

We also look into how a shut-down of relatively small commodities could ripple into really big events. We discovered that when just one or two factories in Japan shut down after the Tsunami of 2011, much larger car plants in the US and Europe had to close temporarily.

Some system losses are more critical than others. A failure in the perfume supply chain is survivable. A failure in our electrical, food, or sewage systems may not be. Even a small or publicly unknown component, such a rare earths, could trigger a much larger event.

One of the cases we examine in detail is the fuel truck protest on the United Kingdom in September 2000. Refineries were blockaded, and local gas/petrol stations ran out. All sorts of business and government offices had to close or go to a skeleton staff. Supermarket shelves were about to become empty, when leaders in the food industry warned the government to take action. It was a valuable lesson.

So what could happen. Korowicz looked at the case of a failure in the European banking system. We all know Spain, Italy, and Greece banks are close to bankruptcy, requiring aid. If there is a major failure, that will not stay in Europe, Korowicz says, but echo all over the world. In just a few weeks, masses of people could lose their jobs, and maybe their food supply. It's amazing how fast those coupled system breakdowns can happen in these modern times.

It is frightening to realize that most of our goods are no longer in warehouses. The rolling trucks are the only storage for outfits like Walmart or Tesco. If the trucks stop, for any reason, supplies end, with no backup. We see this in miniature when severe weather closes roads. How many days food supply does the average city have now? Maybe 3 to 5 days worth?

The second of his papers considers what could happen if a virulent disease erupts somewhere. It could be a new strain of Bird Flu in Asia, or SAARS or something we haven't seen before. With international air travel, it could spread widely in the world in just days. Our health systems might be overwhelmed. People would be afraid to go to work.

What if 50 million people died, as happened in the 1918/1919 outbreak of Spanish influenza? David tells us when at least one third of Europeans died during the Black Plague, around 1348-50, society was far less specialized. No technology was lost. But today, if we lose just a small number of key scientists, experts, or highly specialized workers, others cannot simply fill in those gaps. Systems begin to collapse.

I won't go on about solar storms - other than to say even the U.S. Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission, FERC, quietly admitted that if just 9 key electric substations went down, the whole of the United States could be without power for weeks, or maybe even months. Don't believe me? Check it out here, here, and here (last one is a paywall Wall St Journal).

These substations could be attacked by terrorists, as we now discover happened last year when a unit was shot up by snipers. A single solar storm could do it. Or they may just fail because the U.S. hasn't invested in it's electricity system in decades.

Picture a modern country without electricity. No gas pumps, no supermarket checkouts, no heating or cooling. Municipal water systems would fail. You wouldn't have a TV or the Internet to hear about it. Social chaos is guaranteed.

That's just one scenario among many. We return to David Korowicz, who studied the possibilities due to an infectious disease, like Bird Flu, SAARS or even Ebola getting loose. Are you ready? Nobody is.

Don't miss this in-depth interview. Find out more about David at his web site or on Facebook.

Still hungry? Try this History Channel special, packed with experts, on what happens with a global pandemic, on You tube. THANKS FOR SUPPORTING RADIO ECOSHOCK!

Radio Ecoshock is listener-supported radio. My thanks to those who keep it going. Download this program, and all our past programs as free mp3s from our web site at ecoshock.org.

As we close up shop for today, I've got one last musical comment on the push to distract everyone with a new version of the old Cold War. The TV talking heads and right-wing politicians want you to get pumped up for a new enemy, 1984 style. Never mind the weather has gone strange. A nice little war, and some fat military spending, might cover up the holes in our economy, the shady banks, and all the coal and oil we burn every day.

Feel free to use my new song in any way you like, except selling it. I'm Alex Smith. Thanks so much for listening to Radio Ecoshock, and caring about your world.

Listen to this song, "Let's Have A War" or download it, here.

It was all written using my beloved DAW program Ableton Live 9 and the Massive Synthesizer from Native Instruments. My thanks to the Ableton crew in Germany for getting me this software at a big discount to help Radio Ecoshock's non-profit effort.

I Have A Confession To Make

Emerging threats analyst and author Robert Marston Fanney on new frontiers of climate change. Dr. Alex Rogers of Oxford: State of the Oceans 2013. Radio Ecoshock 131016 1 hour.

Illustration by Marek Okon for Luthiel's Song by Robert Marston Fanney.

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

WE ARE IN TROUBLE

Yes, we are in trouble. Last week, in this interview with Nicole Foss, we peered into the impending crash of the economy. It may dance on for a while using funny money from the Federal Reserve and other central banks. But fall it will.

A mere Depression would be good news, if the climate could stay the same for humans and all creatures. But even during hard times, we'll keep on dragging more and more dirty fossil fuels out of the ground. It's a burning party, maybe a funeral pyre.

Coming up we'll talk it all through with emerging threats analyst and author Robert Marston Fanney. You'll also hear an interview with a top marine biologist from the UK. Alex Rogers is the co-lead author of the new State of the Oceans 2013 report.

Alex reminds us that global warming is more a story of the oceans than our experiences of floods, fires, and storms on land. Most of our excess carbon is going into the sea, changing its chemistry, temperature, and the basis of the food chain. The ocean is where it's happening, and the ocean is a news nowhere land where reporters don't go, and humans don't care.

Going through the emerging science, I'm also alarmed to discover big changes in Antarctica can reshape our world. Climate change is like the many-headed Hydra. We think we know it, but we don't. The Earth is re-arranging in all the places humans don't look: at sea, at the poles, deep in the melting permafrost, and in the farthest forests and mountain tops.

In our opening show this Fall of 2013, climate scientist Paul Beckwith suggested warming could come very suddenly, even in a decade or two. A new paper by Morgan Schaller and James Wright of Rutgers finds, as Joe Romm writes, "When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Earth May Have Warmed 9°F In 13 Years". It's a shocking example of what could happen.

The helpful Rutgers press piece on this study is here.

Business and political leaders have already announced they expect, or will tolerate a doubling of CO2 levels from the pre-industrial level of 270 parts per million to over 600 parts per million. We are already on our way, touching 400 parts per million this year, and adding more carbon faster every year, as the fossil fuel party expands around the world.

Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, Brazil, and every country who can is promising to develop more fossil fuel resources. We are investing billions, possibly trillions, into more mega-coal mines, more fracked gas and Liquid Natural Gas plants, bigger tar sands and shale oil projects. Humans seem intent on fossil suicide.

Next week we'll talk with Morgan Schaller to find out what can happen in a mere 13 years on this fragile planet.

2047: WHEN OUR HOTTEST YEARS BECOME OUR COLDEST YEARS

Look at it another way. Another paper released this week says that by 2047 the coldest years will be hotter than the warmest years of the last two decades. We've already set new temperature records, and those will be the old years we look back on.

This paper was published in the Journal "Nature", by a team of post-grads at the University of Hawaii, led by Dr. Camilo Mora.

In an article by Justin Gillis of the New York Times, Dr. Mora says: quote

“Go back in your life to think about the hottest, most traumatic event you have experienced.” “What we’re saying is that very soon, that event is going to become the norm.”

Do it. Remember the heat wave you prayed would end. The day the sun seemed to be the enemy. You waited impatiently for the cooler darkness. That's the new day in 2047. Just 34 years from now. How old will you be then? How about your kids or grand-kids?

Other scientists suggest a concerted effort to kick the fossil fuel habit, going with reduced energy from renewable resources, could delay that heating by at least 25 years. That's more precious time for humans to move away from the rising seas on the coast, to re-think the whole food supply system, to work out ways to survive the coming heat. We must at least give our children that time.

WHY THERE WILL BE MASS EXTINCTIONS AROUND THE EQUATOR

That climate hydra pops out of this new paper again. I thought, and many scientists have suggested, that climate change would be less stressful around the equator. Most models suggest the extra heating will be the most extreme in temperate areas, and even more closer to the Poles. Certainly that's where we see the big news stories, about storms and fires in North America, Europe and Russia. Plus those crazy heat waves developing around the Arctic.

Dr. Mora says it only takes a small change in the tropics to create major damage. Why? Because the plants and animals there developed into a stable climate that doesn't change much during the year. Even a degree or two, combined with some changes in ocean or atmospheric currents, could bring down the rainforests, wreck the coral reefs, and cause mass extinctions of species. Tropical plants and animals are less able to adapt.

We simply haven't thought it through. Our unintentional geoengineering of the Earth has created a maze of cascading changes beyond our imagination. We are heading to a different world, if we survive to see it.

I'm asking for your help. I'm asking you to use every engine of communication, and every link to all the people you know, to raise the alarm. Join with me in this pledge I make for Radio Ecoshock: say it. We will speak the truth about what we are doing.

Our political and corporate leadership is bankrupt and dangerous. They don't know what they are doing, or their short-term gain seems worth risking the whole future. We let them, because we are comfortable and most of us too well fed. Geared to hunt and migrate as a species, now we have super powers to travel and kill. All of us have a thousand energy slaves to serve us delicacies every day. We're addicted to fossil fuels.

I don't know what twelve-step program can break us out of this master complex. I don't know if we will survive the fossil trap. But we have to try.

Nobody want to hear this. Your friends and family don't. But honestly, when we add up the science and our experiences in the real world, when we look the unstable weather in the face, there is no choice but to speak up.

Forget the envy of a better car or truck. Forget chasing paper wealth. Look at the young innocents and the other un-knowing species, the other passengers on this planet. Even in small steps, whatever changes we can make in our own lives matters most. Whatever sign we can make, whatever we can do, matters now.

Become a climate activist. Start with this interview with Robert Marston Fanney.

ROBERT MARSTON FANNEY ON EMERGING CLIMATE THREATS

Download/listen to this Robert Fanney 34 minute interview in CD Quality (31 MB) or Lo-Fi (8 MB)

We begin with Robert Marston Fanney reading from the introduction to his new book "Growth Shock, Tragedy and Hope at the Limits of a Finite World".

"I have a confession to make. One that is not easy to vocalize. One that is equally difficult to listen to. My confession is not one of a personal nature. I am not revealing my own, petty, individual sins. Instead, I’m making a confession for us all. A revelation of the ongoing and maturing tragedy of our race. One we will each need to be made aware of soon if we are to effectively act. For the age of excess is rapidly coming to a close and we are now entering a difficult and hard to manage age of consequences.

My confession is simply this: we are in trouble..."

We'll get to the book, but that isn't why I called Robert. He captured my undivided attention with his searing analysis into large-scale patterns of climate change, based on real-time events happening around the world, right now. That's in his blog called "robertscribbler" at wordpress.com.

There it is, the scientific maps and satellite shots of extreme weather events and danger, brought together in ways we can all understand. Then Robert tops it off with analysis that I think raises whole new questions about our future together.

Maybe that's Fanney's previous training as an intelligence analyst, and years gathering scientific and technical assessments, as Editor for Jane's Information Group's emerging threats books, magazines, and electronic publications.

But there's another side to Robert Fanney that helps him imagine the future. He's the author of the science fiction series Luthiel's Song, which attracted a cult following, including many artists. You heard a few snippets written for the book "Luthiel's Song: Dreams of the Ringed Vale" by multi-media artist Ethan Jackson.

Details on composer Ethan Jackson here.

STATE OF THE OCEANS 2013

We humans have always believed the sea is so vast we can't seriously damage it. A new report warns this isn't so. It's called "The State of the Ocean 2013: Perils, Prognoses and Proposals". We've reached one of the lead authors, Professor Alex Rogers of Somerville College, Oxford, and Scientific Director of IPSO, The International Programme on the State of the Ocean.

The informative press release about this State of the Ocean is here. It contains a fast summary of the gravest concerns.

Copies of the report can be found here.

The United Nations' latest climate report concludes most of our carbon pollution is falling into, and damaging, the oceans rather than the land.

Download/listen to my 16 minute interview with Alex Rogers in CD Quality (14 MB) or Lo-Fi (4 MB)

HELP RADIO ACTIVISM

That's it this week for radio activism. Download our past programs and help the cause at our web site, ecoshock.org. Next week, the climate scientists speak freely.

Our opening music was DANCE Live at the Labyrinth at Shambhala Music Festival 2011. That closes the show as well.

Preparing Personal Solutions

Are your clothes safe? Alina Bartell, owner of The Natural Clothing Company advises on fabrics, chemicals, and organic clothes. Dr. Joe Alton, MD on learning emergency medicine "when help doesn't come". Woody Tasch helps develop local food with "slow money". Radio Ecoshock 130703 1 hour.

Radio Ecoshock is back with more local solutions for global problems - from the Mother Earth News Fair.

This time I've picked three of the most intriguing interviews. Each seemed at first like a small problem, and each guest - all feature speakers at the Fair - takes us much deeper, into the industrial and financial mess - and out again with practical things we can do.

DOWNLOAD/LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to my interview on organic clothes with Alina Bartell in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Download/listen to Joe Alton, MD on emergency medicine in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Download/listen to Woody Tasch on "Slow Money" in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

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



ORGANIC CLOTHING - ALINA BARTELL

Alina Bartell surprised me. I mean, do we really need "organic clothes"? Our discussion went from the poisoned fields of Asia and Central America through the industrial fashion machine that feeds the store shelves. The Earth and the workers are damaged at every step.

"Organic" clothing means more to Alina than just a lack of chemicals when you buy it, although that's important too. She started her search for safe clothing after her son developed difficulties. Alina and her husband moved to the country, changed to the purist possible foods, and their child improved.

But many Americans suffer from allergies and skin reactions to the chemicals used in clothing manufacturing. There is a residue of pesticides. Did you know that cotton is the most sprayed crop in the world? Alina tells us cotton occupies only 3% of farm land, but uses almost 25% of farm chemicals. It is not uncommon for pesticides to be sprayed on cotton while workers are in the fields below. There are very high disease rates, especially cancers, in some cotton growing areas.

Since the seventeen hundreds, woven materials like cotton have been treated to make the fabric strong enough to handle machine handling. It is called "sizing" and it used to be common starch. Now sizing is a wide-ranging combination of chemicals. That is why we know enough to at least wash a new shirt of dress before wearing it.

Rayon is made out of wood, combined with chemicals to press it out into fabric. Where did that wood come from? Alina says wood fabric like Rayon can come from sustainable forestry. Or you can buy clothes made out of bamboo. I felt a bamboo t-shirt, and it was soft like very fine cotton.

That is preferable to all-oil fabrics like nylon or polyester. These are made straight from crude oil - not a bi-product, but from crude oil. Did you know nylon manufacturing is a major, MAJOR source of greenhouse gas emissions?

We all need clothes, and every type of fabric comes with it's costs and compromises. The best we can do, Bartell says, is find out where the fabric comes from, was it made safely and ethically? Is it chemical-free?

Apparently the market for organic clothing has not yet taken off. There are only a few organic cotton producers left in America, for example. You will pay more for organic clothing - but the earth benefits, and the clothes should last a long time if well cared for.

You can contact Alina Bartell for more information at her web site.

EMERGENCY MEDICINE - WHY IS IS SUCH A SECRET? JOE ALTON MD

Joe Alton MD

I'll be frank. At first I thought Dr. Joe Alton, and his wife "Nurse Amy" were kind of fringe characters. Having met Joe, and listened to his story, I've changed my mind.

Alton and Amy put out a series of You tube videos under the name "Doom and Bloom". The bloom part came from their origins as gardeners. Alton is a Master Gardener in the state of Florida. He's also a genuine surgeon, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Amy is a registered practical Nurse, with further training and lots of experience in midwifery.

Their basic premise is our fragile and high-priced medical system (at least in the United States) may not always be there when you need it. Just think of the three days or more in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. You couldn't call 911. No ambulances were in service, the hospitals were closed. What if a loved one had a huge gash from blown debris? Would you be helpless?

The Altons also worry a financial or political crash could make medical care unavailable. Plus there are homesteaders and farmers who live too far away from a hospital to treat a serious injury.

Now that you think of it, it's a bit strange none of us are taught any health care these days. Schools don't teach it. Maybe as a Scout or a Guide you might learn how to dress a serious wound.

Dr. Joe thinks the medical establishment is holding on to essential information a little too tightly. By all means, he says, if there is a hospital available, seek professional treament from the system. But if not, why no prepare in advance with some training of your own? They have published a handbook called "The Survival Medicine Handbook (2nd edition)."

Here is their You tube video about that book.

As "Dr. Bones" and "Nurse Amy" the pair put out a series of You tubes with basic information we can all understand. Since there has been a heat wave going in the U.S. West, with lots more heat waves to come with climate change, I ask Dr. Joe about the signs and treatment of heat stress and the sometimes fatal heat stroke.

You can learn about that right in this radio interview.

This medical pair also compile lists of equipment you might need to help your family and your neighbors in a disaster. You can complete your own kits, at different levels, using their lists for free. Or you can buy the equipment from them. Some doctors and emergency workers buy their disaster packs to take to developing countries that have been hit with a hurricane, earthquake or other disaster.

My rating: their presentation is quirky but interesting; the information they teach is important. I'm going to take a look at my own medical supplies, and learn what I can from their videos and site materials.

WOODY TASCH AND SLOW MONEY

Woody Tasch

Woody Tasch is a man who worked the finance industry, and then reevaluated his life. He longed to find a way to stimulate the growth of local food-sheds, with local finance. That developed into his book "Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered."

But he didn't stop there. Tasch has crossed the country helping seed slow money organizations. These are non-profits who try various ways to hook up small investors and people in the local food chain. Customers might be a Community Supported Agriculture organization, a small "truck" farmer, an organic dairy, and so on.

The investors are ordinary people who want to put part of their investment money into making sure there is local food that is good to eat. Woody doesn't recommend putting ALL your money into one of these small ventures (he doesn't). He also recommends diversifying, investing in several ventures.

These small loans are kind of the American equivalent to the "Grameen" banks established by Professor Muhammad Yunus in Benglash, and now issuing micro-loans (as little as $50) to people in developing countries all over the world. In the United States a "small loan" might be $14,000 required to buy a used refrigeration truck needed to get produce to the market.

Tasch recommends two different styles of Slow Money. In North Carolina, there is a match-maker linking up investors to food producers needing money. Carol Peppe Hewitt has become a whiz at linking people up. She's written a book "Financing Our Foodshed: Growing Local Food With Slow Money."

At Slow Money Maine, it's a different story. They hold meetings where people looking for small loans make presentations in front of a crowd of possible investors. Slow Money in California does the same, with perhaps a couple of hundred people showing up for a meeting in a tent on a farm.

There has been a national Slow Money conference, where dozens of presenters get five minutes each to make their pitch, hoping to lure the investment money they need.

This isn't a way to get rich. It has risks like any investment - but it's probably no riskier than the stock market. Plus, you are not sending your money to strangers, who may invest in ways to harm the world, on the far side of the Earth. Slow Money investors know exactly who is getting the money, why, and that it will help the local community in eco-safe ways. That's got to be the future of our financial world, if we are going to survive.

Plug in here.

THANK YOU LISTENERS!

My thanks to the listeners who chipped in to pay my gas to the Mother Earth News Fair. We ended up with a bounty of interviews with thought-leaders in the underground movement to found a new and sustainable civilization. All these things are seedlings now, but they will grow into mighty things.

You can support Radio Ecoshock by telling your friends about us. Feel free to share or re-broadcast any part of this program for non-profit use. You can donate at our web site at ecoshock.org or at the top right side of this blog.

I'm also asking you to support your non-profit radio station that takes this message out to three continents. Many stations are struggling to pay their costs, even with few staff, or all-volunteers. You never know how many people your donation to a college or community radio station might reach. Your pledge of support can change minds, and change lives. Please put your money where your ears are. Here are the stations that carry Radio Ecoshock.

My special thanks to all the listeners who send me links and suggestions for Radio Ecoshock. I couldn't do it without you. Write me any time. The address is radio [at] ecoshock dot org.

I'm Alex Smith. Let's meet again next week.