CLIMATE WAR

SUMMARY Humans pumping more carbon, faster, than in last 66 million years. Lead author Dr. Richard Zeebe from U of Hawaii. From The Center for Climate and Security, Shiloh Fetzek on origins of Syrian conflict, Ret. Brigadier General Gerald Galloway, on what the Pentagon knows about climate threats. Radio Ecoshock 160330.

Humans are tossing more carbon into the atmosphere ten times faster, and in much greater quantities, than at any time in the last 66 million years. We'll talk with the lead author of that study, Richard Zeebe.

Then, with the turmoil of the Middle East spreading into Europe, Africa and beyond, we ask two specialists on the driving role of drought, heat and climate change. Our guests are analyst Shiloh Fetzek and retired American Brigadier General Gerald Galloway.

I'm Alex Smith. Welcome to your world.

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RICHARD ZEEBE: MOST CARBON, AND FASTEST IN 66 MILLION YEARS

In the Guardian newspaper on the 21st of March, we find this headline: "Carbon emission release rate ‘unprecedented’ in past 66m[illion] years." It then says "Researchers calculate that humans are pumping out carbon 10 times faster than at any point since the extinction of the dinosaurs."

To understand what this staggering situation means, we go to a new paper published the same day in the journal Nature Geoscience. The title is "Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years." The lead author is Dr. Richard E. Zeebe. He's published or co-authored about 75 scientific papers since the 1990's. Richard is a Professor at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii.

From Honolulu, we welcome Richard Zeebe to Radio Ecoshock.

We are looking for clues to our current fling with heating the world. I'll bet many listeners hear "66 million years" and think this will be all about an asteroid hit and the end of the dinosaurs. But really the focus of this paper is on a climate changed world about 10 million years closer to us, around 56 million years ago.

I've had a couple of scientific guests who describe relatively rapid global heating, say in 50 years or less, but always moving from a time of massive glaciation toward a warmer period. The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM, is more useful for us, because there was a spike in global temperature even when the Earth was already ice-free.

One reading of this new paper is that perhaps we have been lulled to sleep by earlier paleoclimatology. We looked back at ice cores, for example, and decided climate change is a long drawn-out process, so we have time to change our energy systems and adapt. Zeebe and his co-authors say this research uncovers: "a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections."

Then finally, his team ends with this short statement: "future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM." It sounds like we are in a free-fall where conditions on Earth may become hotter and more changed than the hottest period known to science since the dinosaurs. That's frightening.

The stunning new research paper was published in the journal Nature Geoscience on March 21st, 2016. Here is a link to the abstract, But if you use the link provided in the Guardian newspaper article, and wait patiently for a few seconds, the full paper shows up in your browser as a .pdf file. It's one of the most important papers so far this year. This interview with Richard contains some stunning perspectives on where we stand, and where we are going.

Listen to or download this 15 minute interview with Richard Zeebe in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

SYRIA: THE CLIMATE CONNECTION WITH SHILOH FETZEK

A new kind of creeping war is developing in Europe. It constantly threatens to re-appear in the United States and Canada. Meanwhile bombed cities spread across the Middle East . We hear rumors that climate change is a hidden factor driving Middle East discontent. Is it true?

Our guest Shiloh Fetzek writes about deep connections hardly reported by the press. Shiloh provides research for a non-governmental organization called "The Center for Climate and Security" - where she is a Senior Fellow for International Affairs. She is also Senior Fellow for Environment, Climate Change and Security at International Alert in London.

Shiloh Fetzek

In an article about Syria with Jeffrey Mazo, Fetzek writes:

"More than 70% of the country’s freshwater resources come from transborder flows, the bulk from Turkey via the Euphrates River."

What is the over-all status of that regional river water system. Has Turkey taken more, and left less, via up-stream dams? Is precipitation lower? How much is "water politics" and how much real climate pressure? We talk that through.

It is fair to say the agricultural collapse in Syria was badly mishandled by the Assad regime. As Fezak tells us, the Assad government cut fertilizer subsidies, and subsidized prices for farm diesel, at the critical time, during the drought.

When rainfall is low, farmers all over the world try to pump up the difference from ground water. Why didn't that work in Syria? For one thing, as we've said, the subsidies for diesel fuel needed to run the pumps was cut. But the real problem developed over time. The Syrian government favored large scale agriculture of water-hungry crops. The irrigation system was often based on open canals, which lose far too much by evaporation in the hot desert sun.

All over the world, displaced peasants and farmers are moving toward cities that are not prepared to handle their numbers. One author described Earth as slum city. Why was this global movement so much more serious in Syria? That's because there were already over one million refugees from the Iraq war living in Syrian cities. That's added to hundreds of thousands of long-time refugees from Palestine. Even the slums were full when the Syrian families started pouring in from the countryside. They lived in tent camps on the outskirts with no services.

Do we know for certain that displaced Syrian farmers formed part of the opposition to Assad government, or added to attempted revolution? Those statistics are not available. We do know the farmers were very upset with the lack of aid, and the way most of the country's wealth was channelled toward an ethnic minority living near the coast. It was a tinder box of discontent. Some of those same families are now in tent camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Some of them made it to Greece, and on to Europe. Some of them drowned trying to get out.

When I study climate projections for the Middle East during the second half of this century, most sources predict even fewer water resources, greater desertification, and longer periods of dangerous heat. That heat, linked with humidity in some Gulf regions, is projected to go beyond the tolerance of humans to go outdoors. I wonder if we will see an even greater exodus, even more migration - to anywhere cooler.

We've had several guests who explain the medical consequences of a high heat-humidity index. But hardly anyone can explain the social impacts of finding more days too hot to go out, too hot to work, and nights too hot to sleep. This is a hidden factor that can drive individuals crazy, and societies to the breaking point.

Listen to or download this 21 minute interview with Shiloh Fetzek in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

THE MOSUL DAM: THE NEXT MEGA-DISASTER IN THE MAKING

Before winding up, I would also like to point out this critical article at The Center for Climate and Security: "US Embassy in Iraq Issues Mosul Dam Failure Warning". It's incredible.

The dam in Mosul Iraq could break.

Here are some points from a Factsheet issued by the U.S. State Department, courtesy of the Climate and Security article: (any bold type is my addition)

"The State Department Factsheet lists a series of ways in which the failure of the Mosul Dam and the resulting floodwave will have catastrophic consequences in a region already facing significant threats, and gives new meaning to the concept of “cascading disasters.”

Here is a sampling of some of the potential consequences of a dam failure drawn from the factsheet:

The approximately 500,000 to 1.47 million Iraqis residing along the Tigris River in areas at highest risk from the projected floodwave probably would not survive its impact unless they evacuated the floodzone. A majority of Baghdad’s 6 million residents also probably would be adversely affected— experiencing dislocation, increased health hazards, limited to no mobility, and losses of homes, buildings, and services.

The flood will severely damage or destroy large swaths of infrastructure and is expected to knock offline all power plants in its path, causing a sudden shock to the Iraq electricity grid that could shut down the entire Iraqi system.

Two-thirds of Iraq’s high-yielding irrigated wheat farmland is in the Tigris River basin and probably would be heavily damaged.

Some parts of Baghdad would be flooded, which could include Baghdad International Airport.

Much of the territory projected to be damaged by a dam breach is contested or ISIL-controlled, suggesting an authority-directed evacuation is unlikely, and that some evacuees may not have freedom of movement sufficient to escape.

Evacuation warnings that occur in the narrow window between the detection of a breach and the impact of a flood wave would be subject to electrical blackouts, technical and bureaucratic delays, or rejections by communities that probably would not grasp the urgency and scope of the threat, suggesting that prior awareness of risk could improve mobilization time in the event of a breach..."

It's huge, and so far, no one is acting to prevent this catastrophe!

It's not just Iraq. Check out this article: Peter Gleick on Syria: Water, Climate and Conflict. Climate Change and Trouble with Pakistan's Reservoirs and Dams"

SURF AND LEARN RESOURCES ON SYRIA'S CLIMATE CONNECTION

Shiloh and her colleagues, including Francesco Femia, sent me a good list of articles for further research. Here are some of them. Surf and learn!

Syrian climate change, drought and social unrest. NOAA on climate change and Mediterranean droughts. April 2012: The Other Arab Spring: Tom Friedman writes an Op-Ed on the subject, citing the work of the Center for Climate and Security, and interviews with others.

February 2013: The Arab Spring and Climate Change: The Center for Climate and Security and partners release a multi-author volume on the subject, edited by Caitlin Werrell and myself and including a preface from Anne-Marie Slaughter. Our own piece in the volume includes a slight update of the 2012 article on Syria, as well as a look at Libya's post-conflict water and climate woes. Dr. Troy Sternberg writes about climate, China, Egypt and wheat prices, which builds on his previous journal article in Nature.

January 2015: Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought: Kelley et al publish a study in PNAS which makes an important contribution to the literature. While we had drawn a connection between the dramatic precipitation decline in the Middle East and Syria from 1971-2010, the drought in 2006/7-2010/11, natural resource mismanagement, and social unrest, this study demonstrated that the drought that lasted from 2007-2010 was "2-3 times more likely" because of anthropogenic climate change. Big deal.

February 2016: Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the past 900 years. The recent study by Cook et al.

Still thirsty? Here are more key resources on Syria, and the climate change connection, from Shiloh:

https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/sais_review/v035/35.1.werrell.html

http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2011/en/bgdocs/Erian_Katlan_&_Babah_2010.pdf

http://thebulletin.org/climate-change-and-syrian-uprising

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263206.2013.850076#.VucBdZwrKUM

WHAT DOES THE PENTAGON KNOW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE? GERALD GALLOWAY

There are institutes where top scientists regularly prepare projections of a world thrust into severe climate change. You can bet there are parallel "war-rooms" where the military plans out their role in a stressed-out warming world.

Here to tell us about preparations and planning in the American military is retired U.S. army Brigadier General Gerald Galloway. He is a Visiting Scholar at the US Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources. After 38 years in the U.S. Army, Galloway joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. He's worked at Westpoint and the White House, always with a focus on sustainable water use. Gerald has three Master's degrees, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of North Carolina. He is also a member of the Security Advisory Board at The Center for Climate and Security.

Gerald Galloway

There are plenty of high-placed politicians who continue to question the importance of climate change to our security. Does the Pentagon think it's real? Yes indeed, says Galloway. The American Military has involved climate change in all their planning. There have been a series of reports for the Pentagon, including this one which found that climate disruption is a far greater threat than terrorism.

Dr. Galloway specialized in water resources for decades. And for decades we've heard about the coming water wars, especially in the Middle East. Have they arrived? Surprisingly, the answer is "no" and "not yet". Galloway says that so far nations have managed to negotiate reasonable water deals with each other, realizing that water supply is so vital, the only other option is war.

Here is a fascinating Al Jazeera article, with excellent coverage by Mansur Mirovalev, explaining why Uzbekistan may be the location of the first real water war. I'd love to have Mirovalev on this show, but so far I've been unable to reach him.

It doesn't take an expert to see that many millions of people in Bangladesh are going to be displaced by sea level rise in that low-lying country. When they move, there is no where to go, in a region already heavily populated and impoverished. Could that become a military situation?

I'm also thinking of China, and their war on terror with the Muslim Uyghur people on their Western flank. That's also part of a region expected to be hit harder by desertification, and temperatures too high for traditional crops. I'll bet that's a watch-point for the American military as well.

But the classic cases so far are in North Africa and the Middle East. Libya is constantly water stressed. Egypt is barely coping, and now has to import most of it's grain. The drought that hit Syria for several years also impacted southern Turkey, Iraq, and the list goes on. Gerald Galloway gives us a tour.

THE U.S. MILITARY - THE WORLD'S LARGEST SINGLE EMITTER OF GREENHOUSE GASES

On a tactical level, the armed forces have to work out how to power themselves in a world where fossil fuel use becomes constrained. I ask Gerald what the U.S. military doing to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. We are also told the United States military is the largest single user of fossil fuels in America. Is there an awareness that all those emissions are actually fuelling a more dangerous world, through climate change?

FYI, the US military was exempt from reporting on greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. They lost that exemption in the Paris climate talks of 2015.

It's fascinating to get Galloway's insider view of how the Pentagon is working to (a) adapt to a changing climate (b) reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and (c) think about how to protect America, it's allies, and American interests in the coming climate disruption. Despite the misgivings many of us have on all this, it's still true that when hurricanes or typhoons flatten a country, or millions of desperate people need aid, it's usually the U.S. military that shows up for large-scale food drops, evacuations, and medical aid. We expect the American military to be there to help.

Along those lines, the new Canadian government under Justin Trudeau has announced a return to Canada's long-term role of using their military for aid in emergencies, and peace keeping, instead of war. We'll see.

AMERICA: STILL NOT READY FOR ANOTHER GREAT FLOOD

In the 1990's, Gerald Galloway chaired a report for the White House on the Great Flood of 1993, along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Parts of the south have flooded again this year. In fact, we've seen more extreme rainfall events in many parts of the United States. Galloway says we are NOT prepared for flooding well beyond the ordinary, and could do a lot more to prepare for that aspect of climate change. You can read Galloway's 29 page report here. A lot of military planning is necessarily kept secret. But I think climate response is not a good candidate for secrecy, because we all face a global problem. Is there a way for the Pentagon to involve the American public more on this issue?

I would like to thank The Center for Climate and Security for helping to arrange this interview with Retired Brigadier General Gerald Galloway.

Listen to or download this 19 minute interview with Gerald Galloway in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE FIRST NUCLEAR TERRORIST ATTACK?

One final word: background news reports indicate the Belgian/French terrorists were planning an attack on a Belgian nuclear facility on the outskirts of Brussels, but felt too pressured by police searches to wait. Washington had already warned Belgium of lax security at privately run reactors there. Footage of a Belgian reactor official was found in a terror hide-out. A security guard for a Belgian reactor company was shot dead on Thursday. Two employees with complete clearance to the Belgian Doel nuclear power station left to join ISIS in Syria in 2012. What did they tell ISIS?

Belgium is about the size of the State of Maryland, or one and a half times the size of Wales in the UK. A plane crashing into poorly stored spent fuel there, or a bomb inside a reactor, could irradiate the entire country. Instead of confronting the mega-risk, the government of Belgium keeps extending the life of already old and unsafe reactors. That's a kind of self-terrorism.

A dirty radioactive bomb, or even blowing up a working reactor, remains the golden dream of those who hate. The United States, Canada, pretty well every European country, and even dear old Australia are always prime targets for nuclear terrorism.

In her weekly nuclear update, Australian campaigner Christina MacPherson reminds us of this:

"Nuclear terrorism a possibility in Belgium – and elsewhere. But oh no, not in Australia! Except – has everyone forgotten Willy Brigitte? Brigitte was sent to Sydney in 2007 as part of a cell that trained terrorists in Pakistan, with a plan to bomb the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, was convicted in France."

Keep up with Christina here on the Web, and here on Facebook.

We only have to slip up once, and they only have to win once, to illustrate why nuclear power is not safe for anyone. There is still time to shut down the nuclear industry.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

COMING UP

Assuming nothing too big blows up in the next week, our next program asks: in the face of government unwillingness to protect a safe climate, is revolution is justified? Stay tuned, and thank you for caring about our world.

I am fundraising partly to pay for a new web page and blog set up, which should communicate this important message better and farther. If you would like to help Radio Ecoshock keep going, please consider becoming a monthly supporter. Find out how here.

Paris Climate Vs. A Real Future

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I have lots for you in this program. Two reports direct from Paris, plus an interview on the best, maybe the only, way to really save the future.

But first I want you to hear 10 minutes from the former NASA scientist who warned us all about climate change, back in 1988. Here is Dr. James Hansen speaking December 2nd, at a press conference at COP21, the big climate summit in Paris, as posted on You tube by envirobeat.com

Dr. James Hansen

Statement by Dr. James Hansen, at a COP21 Paris press conference, December 2, 2015. Video on You tube. Transcript by Alex Smith, with bold face and sub-titles added by Smith.

"The problem is that fossil fuels appear to the consumer to be the cheapest energy. They're not really cheapest because they don't include their full cost to society. They're partly subsidized, but mainly they don't include the effects of air pollution and water pollution on human health. If you child gets asthma, you have to pay the bill. The fossil fuel company doesn't. And the climate effects, which are beginning to be significant and will be much larger in the future are also not included in the price of the fossil fuels.

So the solution would be fairly straight-forward. Let's add in to the price of fossil fuels the total cost - which you can't do suddenly but you can do it gradually over time, so that you can... people have time to adjust.

So I argue this should be done - and it has to be across the board, across all fossil fuels - coal, oil, and gas, at the source, at the domestic mine or the port of entry. And I also argue that that money should be given to the public, given equal amount to all legal residents of the country. That way the person who does better than average in limiting their carbon footprint will actually make money. In fact two thirds of the people would come out ahead. And it would also address the growing income inequality in the world, which is occurring in almost all countries, because low income people would tend to have a lower carbon footprint. People who fly around the world and have big houses would pay more, but they can afford to do that.

That's a transparent, market-based solution, a conservative solution which stimulates the economy. The economic studies in the United States show that after ten years, if you had a ten dollars a ton of CO2 carbon fee, distributed the money to the public - after ten years if would reduce emissions thirty percent. And after twenty years, more than fifty percent. And it would spur the economy, creating more than three million new jobs.

[SOLVING THE INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM]

Furthermore, this is the only viable international approach. You cannot ask each of 190 countries to individually limit their emissions. What we have to do is have the price of fossil fuels honest. That requires only a few of the major players to agree 'Let's have a rising common carbon fee'. And those countries that don't want to have that fee, we'll put a border duty on those countries and furthermore we will rebate to our manufacturers that carbon fee when they export to a non-participating nation. This, economists agree, is a fair way to do it, and it could rapidly move us off of fossil fuels.

But what we are hearing, is that although Christiana Figueres says many have said we need a carbon price, and investment would be so much easier with a carbon price, but life is much more complex than that. So what we are talking about instead is the same old thing. The same old thing that was tried in Kyoto asking each country to promise 'oh I'll reduce my emissions, I will cap my emissions, I'll reduce them twenty percent' or whatever they decide they can do.

You know, in science when you do a well-controlled experiment, and get a well-documented result, you expect that if you do the experiment again, you are going to get the same result. So why are we talking about doing the same thing again? I don't like to use crude language, but I learned this from my mother, so I'll use it anyway. This is 'half-assed' and it's 'half-baked'.

"HALF-ASSED AND HALF-BAKED"

It's half-assed because there's no way to make it global. You have to beg each nation. So I went to Germany to speak with... I was hoping to speak to Merkl but I got cut off at Sigmar Garbriel, the Minister. He said 'Oh, we're gonna do cap and trade, cap and trade with offsets.' And I said 'But that won't work, we've tried that.' So I said 'What's the cap on India?' And he said 'We'll tighten our carbon cap.' Well Germany is now two percent of the world emissions. So him tightening the German carbon cap is not going to solve the problem. You've got to have something that will work globally.

And it's half-baked, because there's no enforcement mechanism.... You know what I hear is all the Ministers are coming here, the heads of state, and they are planning to clap each other on the back, and say 'Oh we're really doing great. This is a very successful conference, and we're going to address the climate problem.' Well if that's what happens then we're screwing the next generation, and the following ones. Because we're being stupid and doing the same thing again that we did eighteen years ago.

"WE CAN'T PRETEND WE DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN"

So what's the effect? You know you try very hard and you reduce our nation's emissions. Or an individual reduces their emissions. One effect of that is to reduce the demand for the product, and keep the price low. As long as fossil fuels are dirt cheap, they will keep being used. Burning coal is like burning dirt. You just take a bulldozer and you can bulldoze it out of the ground. It's very cheap but it does not include it's cost to society. It's a very dirty fuel with some negative effects which we now understand very well. We can't pretend that we don't know what's going to happen, if we stay on this path.

This is the path we're on, you know. To pretend that what we're doing is having any effect... It might slow down the rate of growth, but that's not what's needed. Science tells us we have to reduce emissions rapidly. And furthermore, the economic studies show that if you put an honest price on carbon emissions, you would reduce emissions rapidly. But if you don't have that price on there, you are not going to reduce emissions. You will reduce emissions some place, but then it keeps the price low, so somebody else will burn it.

[Another panelist asks: And that economic study you are refering to also found that if you put ten dollars per ton, and increased it ten dollars per ton over ten years, what was the effect in jobs?]

James Hansen: Well in the case of the United States economy, that's where the study was done in detail, it was three million new jobs in ten years and a significant increased in GNP [Gross National Product]. We need energy. But people thinking 'Oh, we have to do less...' - yeah we should have energy efficiency, but that would be encouraged by a rising price.

[ENERGY SHIFT]

We do need energy. We need energy to raise the poor people out of poverty. That's the best way to keep population under control. Those countries that have become wealthy now have fertility rates that are below the replenishment level. And the reason these countries became wealthy is because they had energy, and that energy was fossil fuels. Unfortunately we can't continue to use that as the mechanism to get out of poverty.

We need clean energies. And the way to make that happen... You know, I've met with 'Captains of Industry' I call them - leaders of not only utilities but even oil companies. These people have children and grandchildren. They would like to be part of the solution. If the government would give them the right incentive, by putting this across-the-board rising carbon fee, they say they would change their investments and they could do it rapidly.

It's not that the problem can't be solved. But it's not being solved. And nothing that I've heard so far indicates that we're intending to ... it's not too complex. It's the simplest approach you could have: an honest, simple rising carbon fee."

End of transcript of James Hansen in a Paris press conference, Dec 2nd, 2015.

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LINDSEY ALLEN, RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK, REPORTS FROM PARIS

Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of RAN













Next up, Lindsey Allen, the Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, or RAN, dials in from Paris.

I was glad to talk to Lindsey, partly because world media has failed to report non-governmental actions and voices in Paris (giving us the impression the NGO's and aboriginal people are not even there - they are). And partly because the Rainforest Action Network has done some great climate work.

For example, RAN has led the pack in exposing which big banks are loaning out billions to fund the construction of new coal plants around the world. They are profiting from the destruction of the climate. Check out that campaign here.

During our phone interview, Lindsey reveals that the very bank that is funding so much of the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP21) meeting in Paris - the French giant BNP Paribas - is one of the top funders for coal expansion around the world! Lindsey Allen says BNP Paribas has invested about 17 billion dollars in coal. That tells you a lot about the world we live in, and the UN Climate talks.

But yes, climate activists are in Paris, and they are speaking out, despite clamp-downs by French police in the name of anti-terrorism. I notice crowds are allowed to gather for memorials, and for sports events, but not to call for real climate action...Naomi Klein agrees, and calls for a big march in Paris anyway.

Listen to this interim report from Paris with Lindey Allen here.

A PARIS REPORT FROM SCIENTIST PAUL BECKWITH

Paul Beckwith has been a regular on Radio Ecoshock. He's the scientist with two Masters degrees, working on his PHD in climate science at the University of Ottawa, in Canada. Paul takes the late Stephen Schneider's call for activism by scientists very seriously. Paul has his own You tube channel with lots of great videos, a new web page, and an active Facebook following.

Don't miss some fine videos Paul took in Paris. These include a financial panel with UK Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and American billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Paul was encouraged to hear some billionaires and financial heavyweights are prepared for serious action on climate change. We talk about that.

Beckwith also recorded a Paris keynote presentation by Al Gore, found here.

One thing we briefly discuss is the effort by climate deniers to look like legitimate participants in the climate "debate". The Heartland Institute, which is partly funded by the infamous Koch Brothers, has organized a press event in Paris, with the usual suspects - scientists and others, some of whom are known to accept funding from fossil fuel companies in order to say carbon dioxide is great for us! See this hot Greenpeace expose of climate deniers admitting they get paid by Peabody coal and other fossil fuel interests.

Paul, and other at the hostel where he is staying, debated whether to go and expose the false science being presented - or would that just add the conflict that media is always looking for, and thus spread these falsehoods? My opinion is go ignore the extremists. Most of the world knows them for what they are - while climate damage is becoming much too obvious to ignore any longer.

Download or listen to this report from Paris by Paul Beckwith in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Use this tiny url to share Paul's talk in Twitter or other social media: http://tinyurl.com/hs94gfc

BENOIT LAMBERT - THE BIOCHAR SOLUTION

Now it's time to talk about real solutions in the real world. This is part of my continuing coverage of ways to stuff carbon back into the soil, with nature-based agriculture and biochar.

After interviewing many guests and scientists, I've come to the conclusion that our best way out of the climate mess is to use different agricultural methods to sequester carbon back into the soil.

It's just common sense. We have too much carbon in the atmosphere already (at least 430 parts per million carbon equivalent, when we need to be below 350 parts per million to keep our current climate.) Where will be put the extra carbon from the atmosphere? We don't have the technology to put it into the oceans. We do know how to put it back into the soil, and into the deeper ground as biochar.

Benoit Lambert lived in Europe for a couple of decades, returning to Quebec Canada to found a company which advises on biochar, and related carbon capture technology. It's called Biochar Generation.

Benoit Lambert

As world politicians and their experts meet in Paris for the COP21 climate summit, most will seek industrial answers for what they see as an industrial problem. Perhaps, they'll hear about machines to capture carbon and feed it back through a maze of new pipelines to old wells. Dangerous geonengineering will be on the menu.

But they almost didn't hear about the least known source of greenhouse gases, and the single best solution to reducing carbon in the atmosphere. I'm talking about clearing land for food, industrial agriculture, and ways to put carbon back in the soil. All that wasn't even on the menu, until a recent move by France to put it there.

I didn't know the role of the French Agriculture Minister, Stefane Le Foll, or the special ambassador for France at COP21, Laurence Tubiana - until I heard it from Benoit.

Just to be clear, our current industrial farming uses loads of fossil fuel products, including fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. It is a major SOURCE of greenhouse gas emissions, not a help. How big a factor is food production to the overall burden of greenhouse gases?

According to Wikipedia: "Food systems contribute 19%–29% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, releasing 9,800–16,900 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2008. Agricultural production, including indirect emissions associated with land-cover change, contributes 80%–86% of total food system emissions, with significant regional variation."

So we need a huge turnaround in our food systems. First of all, we need to get to zero emissions farming. But that's just the start! Then we need to turn the food system into a carbon capture mechanism.

We discuss how long carbon stays in the soil, the carbon cycle, and the truly amazing role played by biochar. Benoit thinks Canada is the perfect country to start the biochar industry on a huge scale, with all the forest waste in the country.

Lambert also explains the French "4 out of 1000" campaign. Get more on that here. It could really save the world climate.

Others have already called this one of the most important Radio Ecoshock interviews.

Download or listen to this interview with Benoit Lambert in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Use this tiny url to share the Benoit Lambert interview on social media, including Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/omrtuzf

My thanks to everyone who Tweeted about last week's show with Dr. Kevin Anderson. It literally went around the world. I also appreciate the listeners who continue to donate money to keep this show going. If you think you can help, find out how on this page.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening, and let's get together again next week.

CLIMATE CATASTROPHE INDONESIA!

Over the past few weeks, Planet Earth has experienced a severe climate crisis, and it hasn't made the front page, or the top story on TV news. This catastrophe will hasten warming of oceans and land, add to rising seas, threaten more species with extinction - and change our whole view of environmental action, and what we need to do to save the climate.

Massive fires have been burning in Indonesia. In satellite images, large parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were buried under smoke. Red dots of fires and hot spots want to cover the whole map of the islands.

In a few minutes, I'm going to bring you interviews from two very informed people. We get a report directly from the scene, with Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso, at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor Indonesia. Then I'll thrash this crisis through with one of the long-standing reporters on tropical forests, Mongabay founder Rhett Butler.

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INDONESIA FIRES LINK-FEST AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG

Scroll down to the end of this blog for a selection of links to satellite images, news coverage and must-read reports on the Indonesian fire catastrophe of 2015.

PEAT FIRES ARE NOT ORDINARY FOREST FIRES

These are not common forest fires as experienced in Western North America, as bad as those were. For one thing, unless climate change prevents it, Western forests are expected to grow back, recapturing some of the carbon. Indonesia tropical forests are not expected to return. They are being replaced with either palm oil plantations or just waste land.

At least half of the hundreds of major fires in Indonesia are burning peat. You know, like the peat bales purchased by gardeners. Or the peat formerly used as fuel in the Middle Ages. It's a thick layer of very compressed vegetation, built up over the ages.

About 12% of the land in Southeast Asia is peat swamp forest. Eighty three percent of that is in Indonesia. Peat there can be one meter, or 3 feet deep, or up to 12 meters, or 40 feet deep. When peat dries out, it begins to emit both carbon dioxide and the more powerful greenhouse gas methane. When peat burns, it releases a mix of toxic dust and gases with grave effects on human health, and animal health, and the climate of the world.

You can't put out a peat fire with a water-bomber or ground crews. The fire goes underground. It smolders and smokes until seasonal rains or snow comes. Some peat fires last for years, resurfacing every year.

INDONESIA CATAPULTS PAST U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

Tropical peat fires release phenomenal amounts of greenhouse gases. Calculations by the World Resources Institute find that Indonesian fires over the past three months have released more greenhouse gases than the entire annual emissions of highly-industrialized Germany. For the past month or so, Indonesia has been emitting more greenhouse gases daily than the entire United States economy.

This is a burst of carbon not seen since the last great Indonesian fires in 1997. The Indonesian greenhouse burst throws off all previous calculations of how much carbon we could still burn before crossing the 2 degree C unsafe level. It will force a re-draw of our models, and will create, sooner or later, more swift and unpleasant surprises in our climate system. The unknowns loom larger.

You would think that a sudden jump in emissions would be raised at the Paris climate talks coming up in December. But Indonesia didn't mention control of tropical fires in their emissions reduction plan.

Oh, and by the way, there are massive forest fires in the Amazon of Brazil at this same time!

Some of us know that our actions now are determining the fate of the planet for the next few thousand years at least. But now our plans, actions, and environmentalism have to change.

A THIRD STAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Previously, in my own ignorance, I suggested there are two major stages of climate change. In the first, human greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, create climate disruption, and then a hotter world. This is a process we hope can be changed, as coal goes bankrupt, and renewable energy becomes the main source of power. Or it might change because economically recoverable oil runs out. We are talking about the scale of human agency.

After that, very large natural systems, operating as positive feed-backs, kick in. For example, scientists know that once giant glaciers begin to retreat, in some parts of the world simple geography dictates nothing can stop them from melting into the sea. NASA says we are already at that point with the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica. Another example would be melting frozen methane from the sea bed, known as clathrates. When these big "natural" system kick-in, there may be little humans can do but run toward the mountains and the poles, trying to adapt, while killing off the fossil civilization that makes it worse and worse.

But now we see there is a third force. The small number of campaigners who work trying to save tropical forests have been trying to tell us for years. But they've always been a smaller party among the environmentalists and scientists who struggle to stop orgy of fossil fuel burning.

Now we have to open our minds to a horrible new truth. If humans continue to convert the gigantic biomass of tropical forests and peat bogs into carbon in the sky, it may not matter if you install solar panels on your home, or stop flying. The current crisis in Indonesia shows us that a less-developed country can create more greenhouse gases than the largest industrialized countries. Think about what that means.

One result is that environmental campaigners, and the public, have to quickly become global citizens, rather than nationalists. Let's admit it. Hardly anyone in the America's, and few in Europe, know anything about Indonesia. We don't need to know. Our societies are self-contained. We go to work, we hope to buy things, we have our family. Who cares?

HALF A MILLION HOSPITALIZED DUE TO SMOKE

I know some of you will be surprised to learn Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. There are at least 250 million people spread out over thousands of volcanic islands, north of Australia, and south of the Philippines. Actually, the population is not spread out very much. In 2012, 141 million Indonesians lived on the single island of Java. That's the real center of the country, and of the culture. Periodically, the central government in Jakarta, on the island of Java, tries to pursuade more people to move out to the less populated islands, like Sumatra, or their part of Borneo, known as Kalimantan.

We'll hear about Kalimantan in our guest interviews. That's where dense and toxic smoke has covered everything for over 100 days. The Indonesian government considered an evacuation, but hasn't been able to mount it. Kids play in the smoke, while hospitals fill up with babies and the elderly.

That's another side of this disaster. At least a half million Indonesians have been hospitalized due to breathing difficulties and other health problems caused by the smoke. If the Indonesian economy managed to grow at all this year, all was lost due to the damages from these fires. Indonesians pay now and directly for this crisis. We will all pay, possibly for centuries, for the greenhouse gases released.

This isn't the only terrible climate news recently. Perhaps we'll have time to summarize more of it toward the end of the show. But as UK Guardian newspaper columnist George Monbiot wrote this week: the fires in Indonesia are "the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st Century (so far)".

Let's go to our guests. We'll start with the view from inside Indonesia, and then get an activist perspective.

FROM INDONESIA: TOP FORESTRY EXPERT DR. DANIEL MURDIYARSO

In Bogor Indonesia, I reached one of the top forestry scientists in the country. Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso is senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research, or CIFOR. He's led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. He has served as Deputy Minister of the Environment for the government of Indonesia.

Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso

Download or listen to my Radio Ecoshock interview (18 minutes) with Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

THE FOUNDER OF MONGABAY: RHETT BULTER

When you want to know what's happening in the wild places of the tropics, you need to go to mongabay.com. Rhett Butler founded and ran that web site and news service starting in 1999. It's expanded a lot of places since then. That includes a mongabay project in the main Indonesian language - which may explain why Rhett gets those hard-to-find photos like illegal fires burning in an Indonesian National Park.

Rhett Butler

Western environmentalists focus on cutting tail pipe emissions and closing old coal plants. That's important, but we've just seen Indonesia skyrocket to almost the number one global source of greenhouse gases, surpassing the USA. The cause is not fossil fuels or industry. What does this tell us about the NEW need to protect tropical forests, not just to save exotic animals, but to save ourselves?

Download or listen to my 25 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Rhett Butler in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

NEXT UP: THE ARCTIC PEAT

Here is yet another aspect of the Indonesian peat fire crisis. Despite the sky-high emissions coming out of the tropics right now, that could be just a preview for an ever bigger show. I'm talking about peat in the Arctic and sub-arctic.

The peat areas in the far north are even more vast than in Indonesia. Currently a huge portion of that is frozen all year round, in the permafrost. Just a few years ago, I listened to expert permafrost scientists at the convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver. They were a fringe study slowly being recognized as key to our future. You can listen to that whole Radio Ecoshock program, with talks by 3 prominent permafrost scientists, here. Or read my blog about it here.

Those scientists were not overly worried, thinking melting of the permafrost would take centuries, if not thousands of years. Now, we're not so sure about that. For example, scientists working in a tunnel in Alaska found that melting Arctic soil can lose half it's organic carbon in only seven days. About half of that carbon was grabbed by micro-organisms. The other half went into the atmosphere. In just one week upon thawing.

The study is titled "Ancient low–molecular-weight organic acids in permafrost fuel rapid carbon dioxide production upon thaw" with lead author Travis W. Drake, and published in September 2015 by PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an easier to read summary of that science on Phys.org blog.

We know permafrost is melting all across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia. The study looked at a type of Arctic soil called "“yedoma” - formed about 35,000 years ago and kept in the deep freeze ever since. Scientists assumed yedoma was already degraded, but instead found it contains a lot of carbon. In fact, as Robert Scribbler reports, a significant methane pulse has already been detected from yedoma soils in Siberia.

Arctic peat bogs contain even more carbon. They are loaded with it. The largest permafrost peat bog is in Western Siberia. It's bigger than France and Germany combined, and it's been thawing for well over a decade. If these bogs stay wet, most of the emissions will be in the form of methane, the greenhouse gas at least 70 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

If a climatic drought dries the Arctic peat, it will release carbon dioxide, pretty quickly, even without catching fire. The ancient plant material, frozen for over 10,000 years, will finally decompose into the atmosphere. Of course dryer peat is likely to catch fire, as fires in the rapidly warming Arctic have been rampant so far this century. When peat bogs bigger than most countries catch fire, thee is no one there to put them out, and now way to extinguish them if we tried. If and when this happens, it will be Indonesia on steroids.

HOW LONG BEFORE THIS NEW BURST OF CARBON HITS US?

Scientists have generally said there is about a 40 year time lag between a large injection of greenhouse gases and the start of real climate impacts. Dr. James Hansen and others published a paper which estimated about 60% of the effects of added greenhouse gases would kick in between 25 and 50 years. That is mainly because the ocean absorbed so much carbon, and then mixed it down to deeper levels.

Theoretically, about half the impacts of the Indonesian carbon burst of 2015 would appear around the year 2055. Thawing of Arctic peat would change the climate toward the end of this century. I have serious reservations about this estimate, and I think it's likely the timetables will have to be revisited.

First of all, there have been a series of papers in the past two years showing the climate is far more sensitive to even small temperature changes than previously thought. See here, here, here and a million other places.

Secondly, the oceans are already hotter than before. Some scientists wonder how much more carbon and heat they can absorb. The ocean sink may be ramping down, meaning climate impacts would come sooner. Everything is coming sooner.

I'm not a scientist, but my guess is we'll see the impacts from 2015 emissions as early as 2030. Even if I'm wrong, global emissions started to skyrocket around 1990. That means we'll find out what we've done around 2030. Right now, according to Hansen's estimates, were only feeling the impacts of oil, gas, and coal burning from the 1970's.

Just so you know, greenhouse gas emissions were 75% lower in the 1970's, compared to 2004. And look at the record storms, rainfall, droughts, and fires we've already got. When it comes to climate disruption, the worst is yet to come.

DISAPPEARING POLAR ICE: IF WE BURN IT ALL, WE LOSE IT ALL

Add into the lose/lose column: a scientist from the Potsdam Institute in Germany has calculated that if we burn all the fossil fuels, all the ice on Earth will disappear. An article in the New York Times September 11th 2015 quotes Ricarda Winkelmann saying "If we burn it all, we melt it all".

This piece in the ClimateCrocks blog has a whole bunch of videos with scientists on this question of how much it would take to melt all of Greenland and Antarctica.

There is an excellent radio special with short recent talks by Ricarda Winkelmann, produced by Maria Gilardin of TUC Radio in San Francisco. TUC stands for "Time of Useful Consciousness" and this program certainly is.

As an example, I play a clip explanation from Winkelmann on why the melting of Greenland is self-sustaining and unstoppable. In the end, she says on our current course, we are headed toward a world 5.8 degrees C hotter by the year 2100. That would threaten our survival on this planet, and certainly doom many ecosystems and species to extinction.

Ricarda also says the giant West Antarctic ice sheet is committed to melting, and the sub-sea based glaciers of East Antarctica are also going to go. We already know that Miami will go underwater, along with many other port cities around the world. Hear selections from Ricarda Winklemann at the conference "Our Common Future" on TUC Radio at tucradio.org.

I found this TUC program here at radio4all.net

Great work Maria.

MIDDLE EAST TO BECOME TOO HOT TO SURVIVE OUTSIDE

In fact, we learned last week that scientists predict by the end of this century parts of the Middle East will be too hot and humid for humans to be outside. Six hours outside, without air-conditioning, and you die. That's in a paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Elfatih Eltahir and environmental scientist Jeremy Pal from Loyola Marymount University. The title is "Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability", as published October 26, 2015 in the journal Nature Climate Change. Or read this story in Science Daily.

Other scientists on Radio Ecoshock told us a whole belt around the tropics, even into parts of the subtropics, will be too hot for humans to work outside. Whether it's fatal to simply be outside depends on a high humidity - because humans can only keep their organs cool enough when sweat can evaporate. Once the wet-bulb temperature, that combined measurement of heat and humidity reaches 35 degrees C, we humans, and most mammals, cannot live there.

Add in the known historical trend of bands of deserts circling the Earth during hothouse ages, and we know that humans will have to leave large parts of the Earth as uninhabitable. That's the game we're playing now, as we change the atmosphere.

WHEN INDONESIA BURNS, OUR FUTURE CATCHES FIRE

So when Indonesia catches fire, we all catch fire in the long run. The world is not an island of isolated events. When the big alarm clock goes off, anywhere in the world, we need to wake up, get up, and get to work making a future worth living in.

Please Tweet, Facebook, or share this program with as many people as you can. You can use tools found in my blog, or our soundcloud page, at soundcloud.com/radioecoshock.

I'm about to launch a funding appeal for Radio Ecoshock. The show piggy bank is getting low. And while listeners are covering the costs of the show for now, to be frank, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep working 40 hours a week to produce this thing, for nothing. That's right, I'm a volunteer who doesn't get paid. That was OK when I had a bigger income, but now I'm on a tiny pension. Things are getting tight. I sure could use your financial support, if you can afford it. Can you help? Please visit this page to see how.

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

A SELECTION OF LINKS TO THIS KEY STORY OF 2015

Washington Post on links between El Nino and Indonesia peat fires.

World Resources calculations of Indonesian carbon surpassing U.S. emissions.

Plans to evacuate children from worst smoke areas.

The economics of fire and "haze".

Greenpeace calls on Indonesia to adopt a fire action plan.

The connections between palm oil and these deadly fires.

Satellite photos of the smoke.

Mongabay calls on Indonesian President to act.

INDONESIA FIRE RESOURCES FROM CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research)

What is in the smoke? Science looks at the toxic contents.

Fact file from CIFOR: ‘Clearing the Smoke: The Causes and Consequences of Indonesia’s Fires’

B-roll footage of fires and haze in and around Palangka Raya.

Video: ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s toxic gas’

DG’s Column: ‘Preventing fire and haze: sustainable solutions for Indonesian peatlands’.

Photo story: ‘Life amid the fires and haze of Central Kalimantan’

Future Past

SUMMARY: Bojana Bajzelj of Cambridge finds raising food for 9 billion will take all our carbon emissions. Benjamin Blonder tells us how the current plant world was shaped by the last big meteorite hit. Eelco Rohling: sea level rose 5 meters (16 ft) in the last big warming melt. Radio Ecoshock 141015

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with a show crammed with science that matters. Three new papers on climate change: rising emissions from our food system, seas rising 5 meters, over 16 feet in a single century, and the big bang of a meteor strike.

Let's go.

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

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SOON FOOD PRODUCTION TAKES UP ALL OUR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

Several scientist guests on Radio Ecoshock warn we will never be free of carbon emissions because our food system creates greenhouse gases. It comes from clearing forests for fields, from stirring up the soil, from petrochemical-based fertilizers, from cows and other animals (as methane), and then whatever we use to transport the food to your home.

How bad are those food-based emissions? Figures vary from 20% of our total emissions, all the way up to 50%. They are large enough, and growing so much, that in a few decades all the carbon we can possibly afford to release will come from our food system. That means all industry, transportation, and products must be carbon free - or we live in a dwindling damaged climate.

A new study led by Cambridge University in the UK, assisted by Scottish scientists calculates the carbon future of agriculture. I reached the study's lead author, Dr. Bojana Bajzelj. Bojana is from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. The paper published at the end of August 2014 is titled "Importance of food-demand management for climate mitigation".

That's in the journal Nature Climate Change, a closed journal, but you can get the abstract and some of the charts in this article.

The more scientists look, the impacts of overpopulation are impossible. A new study from the University of Washington projects world population by the year 2100 will be 12 billion people, 3 billion higher than figures accepted by the United Nations.

Even if it's 9 billion people, a study out of Cambridge University calculates the greenhouse gases just to feed that population will swallow the entire budget for greenhouse gases. Even at our current 7 billion plus people, we are cutting into rich biological forests like the Amazon and Congolese rainforests, to grow more food, especially for meat production.

The Cambridge study predicts the world will lose yet another 10 percent of existing forests in the scramble to feed ourselves. Are you worried about losing half our wildlife in the last 40 years? Bojana tells us that agricultural deforestation is the Number One cause of loss of biodiversity.

These scientists tell us that by 2050, emissions from the food system will be 80% higher than they were in 2009 (when they were already at a record high amount).

I asked Bojana if their study also included a scenario where the world population went DOWN. That seems like a fair question in these days of Ebola. They did not consider this. She recommends the work of Dr. Hans Rosling on population predictions. Rosling offers many statistics on why we shouldn't panic on population. I disagree, but you can see his video "Don't Panic, the Truth About Population" here.

When we burn or cut forests, we lose carbon to the atmosphere twice. The trees themselves are made of carbon. That is released to the air. But forests also buffer some of our carbon pollution, and we lose that too.

ANOTHER POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP

We encounter rapid human population growth as yet another positive feedback mechanism. Bajzelj covered that in another paper, released this summer with Keith S. Richards. The title is "The Positive Feedback Loop between the Impacts of Climate Change and Agricultural Expansion and Relocation". I'll pass this one to Dr. Guy McPherson, in case he's missed this for his grand list of positive feedback loops. Find Guy's list here. Scroll down to "Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loops"

If the population does increase to 9 billion, we have to clear more land for agriculture. That deforestation creates more global warming. Climate change causes more damage to agriculture than benefits. So climate change means we would need to clear even more land for farming, especially given the current global trend toward inefficient meat consumption. We clear more land, raise more methane producing livestock, get more warming, get more climate damage, clear more land.... and that's the loop. The author of the study doesn't think it classifies as a major positive feedback loop, but it is definitely another one.

The really stunning thing is the need to do these two studies. Here we are with a population that keeps booming, and keeps demanding more meat. Both subjects are almost taboo with politicians who hope to get elected. There isn't a zero-population, veggie-promoting leader anywhere on the planet, that I know of. How the heck can we get a few billion people to take off the blinders, and see where this train is headed?

TRIMMING FARM EMISSIONS

Yes, this problem includes you, assuming you eat food, and don't grow it all yourself. So what can be done?

First of all, about half of all food grown in the world is simply wasted. Even in a hungry country like India, over half the crops grown are lost to pests, lack of refrigeration, poor transport, and uneven distribution. Here in the developed world, we also waste about half the food grown, but in a different place in the food chain: restaurants, grocery stores, and homes toss out mountains of food. We could greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by cutting out that waste.

The second big move is too obvious. We need to greatly reduce meat consumption in the developed world, and head off that ominous trend in the developing world. China has moved big-time "up" the food chain, eating billions of tons more chicken and pork. At least those animals produce less methane than cows do. Cows are the number one biggest emitters - personally as they give off methane, but also in the huge amounts of food required to produce a single pound of beef.

The relationship of vegetables to meat is something like 10 to 90. Growing vegetables producesabout 10 percent of the greenhouse gases versus 90% for the same amount of food power from meat. See my interview with Kip Anderson "Cowspiracy".

Personally, after talking with many scientists, I think any carbon budget for 2050 is not workable. By then, we must find a way to reverse our civilization, so that we are drawing carbon back out of the air, rather than adding any at all. Assuming we are going to continue eating, this study emphasizes the huge amount of carbon draw-down we'll require just to break even, just to take out as much carbon as agriculture requires.

WHEN OUTER SPACE HITS BACK: THE GREAT METEOR STRIKE

Humans seem set to trigger a climate change at amazing speed. We could experience a greenhouse world from just 150 years of fossil-fuelled civilization. It's likely one of the most rapid world-scale changes in nature in this planet's 4 billion year history.

We're going to journey back millions of years, to explore the fastest mass extinction event we know much about. Maybe we'll learn something about our future. Our tour-guide is Dr. Benjamin Blonder, from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of Arizona.

Blonder is the lead author of "Plant Ecological Strategies Shift Across the Cretaceous–Paleogene Boundary" It is published in the journal PLOS Biology, which is open to the public. Anyone can read the full paper here.

THE BIG BANG THAT ...

Seventy million years ago, Earth's climate was in flux, changing from ice-house worlds to greenhouse times. Then 66 million years ago, a chunk of rock 10 kilometers across hit the Earth. We think it landed on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, creating a crater in the Gulf of Mexico. A kind of matter called "Iridium" spread all over the world. Iridium comes from outer space, so we know approximately when this disaster happened.

Immediately there was a giant tsunami, but also a great cloud of smoke and particles that went round the world. We don't know how long it was dark, but possibly for years. About half of all plant life on the planet died off. So did many animals, including most of the dinosaurs (except those which could fly, becoming our modern birds).

The event has been compared to a nuclear winter, but much bigger. It's thought the meteorite exploded with the force of 100 teratons of TNT. That's such a big number. I did a little math. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested, the 1960's Soviet "Tsar Bomba" - that was 58 megatons of TNT. It looks to me like this 100 teraton meteorite blast was the equivalent of about 2 million of the largest nuclear weapon ever made, all blown off at once. That's a big bang.

... SHAPED OUR WORLD.

One result of that meteor impact, and this was the major point of Blonder's paper, is the widespread deciduous plants we see today, in the Fall colors of North America, Europe and Russia. Prior to the impact, most of that region was clothed in slower-growing flowering evergreen plants. These survive today in things like ivy and mistletoe.

When the sky went dark, plants had several possible survival strategies. One was to drop their leaves, and wait for the next patch of sunlight. Evergreens couldn't do that, and died in great numbers. Plants also migrated, invasive species filled up the ecological holes, and so the Earth saw many of the responses we might see again with a rapid climate shift.

It's difficult to apply this meteor-strike science directly to modern times, because the research method cannot be more accurate than 10,000 years. That means they just don't know what happened in 100 years, for example.

The science involves the study of fossil leaves, which can tell us a lot about the ecology and biology of formerly living things. It's similar to the work explained by Dr. Robert Spicer to Radio Ecoshock listeners in our 2008 interview. Find that here.

My friend and correspondent Dr. Andrew Glikson in Australia made a time map and catalog of all the known meteor stikes during the last billion years or so of Earth's history. Things arrive from space from time to time. is there anything stopping another big comet or meteor showing up and hitting the Earth again? Not at all, says Blonder. His University of Arizona is a leader in tracking activity from outer space, (the "Space Watch program") - but surprises are always possible.

Personally, I don't worry about rocks from space. The most dangerous thing around here is a species that can't live up to it's name "homo sapiens". Dr. Blonder says there is no point in worrying about such a meteor strike, as there is absolutely nothing we can do to prepare for it, or survive it. There may be no big strike in the next 50 million years, or it may come next year. Nobody knows for sure.

GIANT SEA LEVEL RISE UP TO 5 METERS (16 FEET)

In a warming world, we picture sea level rise creeping up slowly, measured in inches or milLimeters. Maybe not. According to new science, at the end of the last five ice ages, the seas rose several meters per century, more than 10 feet. There was such a case about 14,600 years ago.

Eelco Rohling is a Professor of Ocean and Climate Change at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, in Australia. He's the co-author of the paper "Sea-level variability over five glacial cycles." That was just published in the journal Nature Communications. As that is a closed journal, here is a good science-based article about this new study.

Dr. Eelco Rohling

We should stress that sea level rise comes from land-based ice, and not the more well-known melting of the sea ice cover at the North Pole. Right now, Rohling tells us, land ice is melting rapidly from Greenland, from West Antarctica, and almost anywhere glaciers are found. The recent NASA science showing that Antarctica is also losing ice mass was stunning. I covered that in my Rado Ecoshock show for May 21st, 2014. Listen to, or download that here. The show blog with links is here.

The scientists led by Rohling managed to date several major de-glaciations in the last hundred thousand years, and about 120 lesser melt periods. The largest amount of sea level rise was indeed over 5 meters in a single century (over 16 feet). BUT that record amount happened when Earth was covered by more than twice as much ice as today. North America, for example, was half buried in a glacier more than a mile deep. To look at what could happen today, Rohling says we need to look at the lesser melt events.

For example, there were similar size melts 240,000 years ago, and 330,000 years ago, Rohling tells us. These resulted in about 1.5 meters of sea level rise (almost 5 feet) in a single century. That's pretty close to what the IPCC is predicting as well.

Five feet is catastrophic on it's own. Just think of the amount of delta farming land lost, the major world cities that would need to relocate, the mega-changes to nature on the coasts. And that doesn't include the storm surges from climate-driven monster storms. Add another 20 feet or more for those.

Two more things stand our for me in this study.

1. We shouldn't even be talking about what happens in one century. Rising seas will continue for many centuries. In some case the greatest sea level rise happens 400 years after the melting begins.

2. Related to that, the past history of de-glaciation shows that once this melting process begins, it is "irreversible" (says Rohling). Past major melts were begun in part by changes in the Earth's orbit, slowly leading to warming on Earth. The current melt is being cause by human-induced climate change. It doesn't matter what triggers the melt. Once it's begun, it will continue to unfold - even if humans managed to cool things down, say with geo-engineering or quitting the carbon habit.

We're committed to ever-changing coastlines already. We are imposing a constantly rising sea, an ever-changing coast line, on all humans, animals and plants to come, for hundreds or even thousands of years.

It's hard to picture a civilization where the coast is always changing. I suppose cities now by the sea, and that's many of the world's largest metropolises, would have to be abandoned. Living by the sea will become more dangerous, especially during storm surges.

I also worry that the current melting may not follow the patterns of the past. We may heat things up so fast, that we get the 5 meters of sea level rise anyway, much sooner than anyone expects. Nobody knows for sure where this experiment with the atmosphere is leading.

Blogger Robert Scribbler has a good article, saying "Current sea level rise is faster than at any time in the last 6000 years."

I NEED YOUR SUPPORT

I hate bugging people for money. In my ideal world, science journalists and radio producers would live from some magical grant money. I don't get any grant money, don't run advertisements, and won't take corporate funding.

Right now I need your support to pay the bills, and keep on going. I may have to mount an official fund-raising drive. We'll see. If you can help, please either send a one-time donation, or sign up for the $10 a month membership. Both kinds of donors have kept this radio show going for the past year. Can you help? Visit this page for details.

COMING UP

Coming up: we'll talk about why Progressives (maybe you and I) are part of the problem, rather than the solution. I've got a special on new radioactive leaks into the Pacific from Fukushima coming up. You know, the big storms that hit Japan, and nobody mentions the already flooded reactor cores down there somewhere.... Later in the month, Naomi Klein joins us. Stay tuned.

That's our program for this week. Download all our past programs as free .mp3 files at our web site, ecoshock.org. I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for listening, and please share the news about Radio Ecoshock on social media. Once a week I Tweet out the show announcement. Follow @ecoshock.

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