WAKING UP TO ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE

Signs climate has entered abrupt shift. Includes Dr. James Hansen's video abstract of new science. Special report on smoke pollution from Indonesian peat fires by correspondent Yew Jin Lee, with 3 experts. Sample from "Unwelcome Guests" #726 "The Flight from Death". Radio Ecoshock 160420

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BECOMING AWARE OF ABRUPT CHANGE (again)

It's funny how things build up, how they leak out, finally reaching us. A couple returned to my village from their winter in the Philippines. She grew up there. They had never been so hot, and so dry. They are religious, and they prayed for at least a cloud, to get relief from the relentless sun.

Then I get an email from a radio friend abroad. He's Robin Upton, the producer who revived the deep alternative show "Unwelcome Guests" when Lynn Gary retired. Google it, or go to unwelcomeguests.net. As an aside, Robin said the heat was in the unbearable range. Heat laced with humidity - over 35 degrees C, or 95 Fahrenheit became the daily normal, flaring up above that at times. Upton was writing from his adopted home in Bangladesh.

A headline flickered in my brain, a one-off story asking if India was experiencing the worst drought ever. Or maybe the worst since 2002. Hundreds are dying of the heat. Fields have burned off dry. The only hope for millions, maybe hundreds of millions, is an above-average monsoon season, this June to September. In the meantime, in parts of the State of Maharashtra, a Criminal law forbids more than five people at a time at any water supply. The authorities fear conflict, maybe violence.

By the way, the super hot weather is melting snow and ice on Mount Everest faster. Changes in the cryosphere in the Himalayas may even create more heatwaves in Europe! Everybody is included in climate change.

Temp of 44C (111.2F) at VIDP (New Delhi, India) only 1.3C (2.3F) away from all-time April record of 45.3C (113.5F). pic.twitter.com/GDQAbsqWfd

— Anthony Sagliani (@anthonywx) April 16, 2016

One of highest temps in world today was Wardha, India with high of 45C (113F). Heat wave warnings much of India. pic.twitter.com/CL9XW2qv2y

— Anthony Sagliani (@anthonywx) April 16, 2016

Vietnam flashes up in my news and Twitter feed. Along with India and Bangladesh, Vietnam is going through a hot punishing dry period. Vietnam is normally a major exporter of rice. This year, not. A band of suffering has taken over south Asia. Yes, its partly because of El Nino, but a super El Nino adding it's might to the upward pace of global warming. That is one of the world emergencies being blotted out of our minds and screens by endless celebrity trivia, and fake political choices.

Drought in Vietnam









READY FOR EXTREME SOLUTIONS? PAUL BECKWITH ON COOLING WITH NUKES

During this past week, climate scientist Paul Beckwith ventured into our darker places. Paul is frustrated with scientists who are constantly surprise the climate beast is roaring already, in so many ways. The global community has had 21 COP meetings, the Conference of the Parties to a Treaty that has done nothing to stop escalating emissions and committment to a climate-damaged future.

Maybe, Paul wonders, a regional nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would stir up enough dust, to block enough sun, to cool us down for a few years. The dust of a decent sized nuclear explosion would spread throughout the northern hemisphere, likely cooling the planet an astounding one to one and a half degrees, within weeks. It might put a halt to the wildly growing melting of Greenland. The cooling might save the last of the reflective Arctic Ice cap.

Paul's second video on local nuclear war, explaining further, is here.

It's not just Paul talking about this. You can find a 2010 article on the same subject by respected scientist Alan Robock (and Brian Toon) as published in Scientific American here.

Paul explains we have lots of nuclear weapons. Just one big one from Russia or America would do the job. The cooling would last at least five years, maybe ten. Of course then the world would jump to new heat levels, because we've just hidden another ten years of huge greenhouse gas emissions under the nuclear cloud. Maybe we'd have to blow off two the next time.

As Beckwith stands in front of a screen explaining nuclear winter, I spy in the right hand corner another graphic explaining the nuclear explosion would also demolish most of the protective ozone in the Northern Hemisphere. Those who go outside without wearing a protective bag would ratchet up their risk of cancer. Everyone would have to wear eye protection to prevent blindness - at least everyone who could afford the special sun glasses. I suppose that didn't happen during nuclear tests in the 1960's, but then many seniors are getting multiple skin cancers. I just had one removed.

The whole project goes crazy, and Paul knows that. I think he's just telling us how serious this climate shift is, how we We are deluding ourselves about climate action, and the fact that we are not ready to cool the planet in this emergency.

JAMES HANSEN EXPLAINS WHY THE NEAR FUTURE WILL BE MORE EXTREME

Which brings me to James Hansen. Many of you know Dr. Hansen, the former Director of the Goddard Space Center of NASA - as the man who warned the U.S. Congress about dangerous climate change in 1988. He's struggled with this threat ever since. Last summer, Hansen and a collection of prestigious academics around the world, broke scientific protocol by publicly speaking about their research.

Paul Beckwith did a series of nine videos to explore and explain what Hansen and his co-scientists were saying. Find that video series on You tube, or at paulbeckwith.net.

This March, they officially published their study. It got some press. It's huge. Why haven't I said anything about it on Radio Ecoshock?

There are problems. First, of course I invited Dr. Hansen to appear on this program. I got no reply. I have no inside track to reach him. Hansen can pick his world media for appearances.

Second, there has been a fairly strong chorus of criticism of this paper. Of course a few complained that the process was broken. But Hansen says this scientific warning is much too important to wait a year before telling the population what is coming.

Other scientists simply disagree with either his conclusions, or his method of reaching them. A few have said, for example, that Hansen and team did not reach their vision of an ultra-stormy future in a ruined atmosphere by using models.

The paper refers to evidence of super storms, that could move 1,000 ton boulders inland from the shore. We can see these mysterious boulders on Caribbean islands. This is part of the paleoclimate record, but there are questions about how the Hansen team connected those time to these times. It is possible that the vision of dangerous and damaged decades to come was assumed, rather than proven. At that point, and really before then, I am not skilled enough to judge.

Plus, I think Hansen can be mistaken. I believe his promotion of nuclear energy as a solution for climate change is mistaken. I hope to have more on that in a future show.

That is partly why I haven't covered this story. Another part is a deep feeling that I might not be able to bear knowing what Hansen knows. You see, we've all been sold a picture of slowly developing climate change. In countless interviews scientists have cautioned that melting glaciers like Greenland and Antarctica will take hundred of years at least. The global mean temperature has only been going up slowly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is discussing how we can still burn more fossil fuels, peak in a decade or two, and gradually come down, with quite survivable impacts. The seas will only rise slowly. It's the mantra of changes in geologic time.

If James Hansen is right, all this is wrong. The stakes are enormous, far larger than anything humans have experienced, bigger than the Earth has seen in more than 50 million years. The speed of change may be absolutely new.

I'm slowly collecting my files and links on the Hansen paper. He's gone to the press saying James Hansen is not an extremist. The science is what it is, the rapid changes we are seeing speak loudly. On March 21st, Hansen put out a video on You tube, explaining the work. It's 15 minutes long. If I can't interview the man, we still need to hear him speak. Here is James Hansen with "Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms Video Abstract."



In a way, Hansen spoke partly to other scientists. The full impact of what could happen is not explained, although I suppose for a scientist of his calibre to warn "all Hell will break loose in the North Atlantic" is pretty clear. Losing most of our coastal cities by the end of this century is clear enough. The time of the great storms is left to our imagination.

I'm going to re-read this paper, watch another dozen videos, listen to the scientific back talk. I'll come back to this paper when I know more. I'm also in touch with some of the co-authors of the paper, to get their views in coming programs.

MORE RECORD RECORDS IN ABRUPT CLIMATE SHIFT

Meanwhile the recording of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at Manu Loa Hawaii hit another frightening record of 409 parts per million. We started at 280 ppm at the beginning of the industrial revolution. During most of my life it has climbed slowly but surely. Now it's peaking, so that the new lows will be the old highs, and the new highs have never been seen on Earth for many millions of years.

Greenland has begun its summer melt season in early April. That's another record. Worrying news is pouring in from a wave of scientific papers around the world. My jaw drops, my nerves tingle, at least a dozen times a week. No one can keep up. All we know is that it's coming, and we are sleepwalking into a new more dangerous world. Sometime soon, or maybe yesterday, we reach the damage that can never be undone in thousands of years.

We are writing our wills for our descendants. Through our actions and inactions, we promise them a damaged atmosphere, with unstable weather and strange seas. The bugs, the plants and the other animals will move and change as they can. The future of our species cannot yet be written, even by the most imaginative science fiction writers, or poets of tragedy. Unless we can pull off a miracle of collective action, the future will be distorted beyond recognition. That is the only certainty.

INDONESIA IS BURNING AGAIN, COVERING EAST ASIA WITH SMOKE - A SPECIAL REPORT

We talked about the dry heat in East Asia, and the possibility of creating dust to cool the world in an emergency. But there is already a long season of smoky haze hanging over a lot of Asia, especially over Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Unfortunately, that smoky is unlikely to cool anything. It comes from burning tropical forests in the islands of Indonesia. There is black carbon in it, which will soak up sunlight and heat. Even worse, a lot of the fires are actually burning peat, that compact vegetative matter just one step below coal for carbon pollution. When the biggest peat fires erupted in Indonesia in a previous El Nino of 1997-98, it launched that country into the top three greenhouse gas polluters in the world. The peat fires continue, as big corporations and small land holders clear and drain the tropical forests, transforming them into palm oil plantations.

Check out this image of smoke from Indonesian fires covering Thailand and beyond

I got an email from listener Yew Jin Lee, offering to ask the experts why haze was covering Malaysia and Singapore yet again. Yew Jin is a Master's student studying Environmental Sciences at the University of Cologne in Germany. He carefully crafted this report for Radio Ecoshock.

For Radio Ecoshock, Yew Jin Lee interviews Dr. Helena Varkkey, senior lecturer at the University of Malaya; Alan Tan, professor of the National University of Singapore Law School; and Dr. Rachel Carmenta, Post-Doctoral Fellow at CIFOR " the centre for international forestry research in Indonesia.

Under the smoke, endangered creatures like the Orangutan, and tropical plants, are disappearing as the forests are cut, and peatlands burn. My thanks to Yew Jin for digging into this, with original radio for Ecoshock listeners. Don't forget, you can download this radio report, or share it with others, using thesse permanent links:

Asian haze interview (17 minutes) in CD Quality.

In "Lo-Fi" (lower quality mono, suitable for those with low bandwidth or listening/downloading via mobile phones)

If you want to Tweet or share this on Facebook, here is a shorter URL for the Lo-Fi version: http://tinyurl.com/jnpwxz8

CLIMATE DENIAL AND OUR DENIAL OF DEATH... UNWELCOME GUESTS

Near the beginning of this program, I mentioned Robin Upton, now a resident of Bangladesh. Robin rescued one of the most popular underground radio shows, called Unwelcome Guests. It was founded by New York State resident Lynn Gary, who ran produced the show for years and years. Unwelcome Guests covers alternative speeches and ideas in depth, with a two hour show each week. You can get it at radio4all.net, or at unwelcomeguests.net.

As we play out this week, you will hear just the start of a full program #726 on the work of Ernest Becker. His book "The Denial of Death" won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1974, just before Ernest died. Only the Western culture struggles so hard to deny the reality of death, and I think that is directly connect to our parallel denial of abrupt climate change.

Good bye from me, Alex Smith for this week.

Sick Food & Black Carbon

SUMMARY: Agricultural economist John Ikerd explains why factory food fails our health needs. Jonathan Mingle on black carbon, the second largest cause of climate warming, melting Arctic, and killer of millions.

In this Radio Ecoshock show, we'll find out why factory farms are wrecking the health of millions. Then on to the second largest cause of climate warming, and no, it's not methane. I'm Alex Smith. Let's get going.

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DR. JOHN IKERD: WHY FACTORY FOOD FAILS US

When young people want local food, safe food grown organically, when they spend a few cents more for eggs from a free-range chicken - they may not realize there is a long-term champion for all of that and more.

John Ikerd was raised on a Missouri farm before going all the way to his doctorate in agricultural economics. He's worked in the big farm system, and taught at the University of Georgia, the University of Missouri, and more. Since retiring as Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics, John didn't go quiet. He's written a half dozen books, and continues to speak in America and abroad.

His book include: "The Essentials of Economic Sustainability", "Sustainable Capitalism: A Matter of Common Sense", "Small Farms are Real Farms: Sustaining People Through Agriculture", "Return to Common Sense", Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture", "Revolution of the Middle… Pursuit of Happiness", and "The Case for Common Sense". The Case for Common Sense is available free online here.

John objects to the "industrial paradigm" in modern agriculture: "specialization, standardization, and consolidation of control."

This creates "animal factories" set up like "biological assembly lines." It treats animals as though they were raw materials running through a factory. These animals are not healthy. They factory system kills them at a very young age, and it's likely they may not have lived much longer. There is a lack of concern that these animals are living sentient beings.

DO WE NEED INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE TO FEED PEOPLE?

While there is a saving in labor, Ikerd says, there is no saving in fossil fuels, or in capital required. Big food operations require more of both. Studies show that if we changed to a really sustainable and organic system, using techniques learned in the 1930's and 40's - retail food prices would not go up more than 10 to 12 percent. In the U.S., food prices already rose more than that, as a consequence of the biofuels program, where food was turned into a gasoline substitute or additive. Up to 40% of the U.S. corn crop went into ethanol production. We can feed the people without an industrial agriculture system, at a reasonable price, says this experienced agricultural economist.

It is not true, Ikerd says that we need factory farming to support our large population. The industrial farm can produce food with less labor, and particularly less skilled labor. I would add that fewer farmers means a depleted sense of community in rural areas. These large farms tend to inhabit a kind of social dead zone, with fewer people to volunteer or organize community, and less need to do so.

WHY IS FOOD PRODUCTION SO SECRETIVE, CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC?

Most people never visit a factory farm. In fact, in many places we are prevented by law from seeing these secret massive pig and chicken farms, much less taking pictures. How did the act of farming become so closed off - that anyone questioning where our food comes from can be called a "terrorist"?

Part of economic theory, Ikerd says, is the ability to carry out impersonal transactions. We do it all the time in the market place.

"The local food movement, that is booming all across the U.S. today, and the organic food movement before that, was really and is really an attempt by consumers to gain some knowledge of where their food comes from. I think they are increasingly losing confidence in the industrial food system - including the government that supposedly is regulating that system to ensure them of the quality and the safety, and kind of the ecological and social integrity of how the food is produced. They are increasingly turning to more localized production so they can know the farmers, or they are in a situation where they could actually visit the farm if they wanted to. They are ensuring the integrity of the products through this sense of personal connectedness with the farmer."

POOR HEALTH IMPACTS OF FACTORY FOOD: OBESITY, DIABETES AND MORE

Obesity, diabetes, and many diseases unkown when we were kids are sweeping the Western World. Can we tie massive health problems to industrial agricuture?

John says industrial agriculture is part of this poor outcome, while more rests with the next stage of packaging and marketing.

AN INTRIGUING THEORY OF HOW CROP MAXIMIZATION CAN LEAD TO UNHEALTHY FOOD

Scientists predicted this problem in the 1930's and 40's. This includes Professor William Albrecht at the University of Missouri.

"He said when you turn to focus on the economics, as he knew was coming, with the chemical fertilizers and pesticides and things of that nature - he said what you will end up with is you select crops for the maximum yield rather than the quality. And what you end up with in crops with maximum yield is crops that are higher in those nutrients that come from the air - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. And he says, they will be deficient in those essential nutrients that come from the soil, because that will be the nutrients that limit production, whereas those that come from the air are basically limitless. If you think about that, what is coming from the air is carbohydrates - carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. And so you end up with crops that are high in carbohydrates, high in sugar and high in calories, and lacking in some of the essential nutrients. That was his hypothesis.

That is what you will end up doing. People will end up over-eating in the calories. You'll have crops that are too high in calories relative to those essential nutrients. And [people] will overeat on the calories in the process of trying to get enough of those limited nutrients that come from the soil."

Albrecht famously said:

"NPK formulas, (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) as legislated and enforced by State Departments of Agriculture, mean malnutrition, attack by insects, bacteria and fungi, weed takeover, crop loss in dry weather, and general loss of mental acuity in the population, leading to degenerative metabolic disease and early death."

You can read John Ikerd's 2011 Albrecht Lecture "Healthy Soils, Healthy People" here.

Ikerd says our food system is directly related to problems of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. The industry actively discourages research into the possibility that "people are overweight today because they are starving for essential nutrients that have been taken out of the industrial food."

John doesn't discount other factors, like lack of exercise and changes in lifestyle - but even those may be related to lack of vitality from a poor food supply.

ANIMAL FEEDLOT WASTE

In a You tube video, John put out a fact that stunned me. He said "If you've got even 200 cows you've got as much waste as a city of 10,000 people". There are operations with thousands of cows, and tens of thousands of pigs, not only in America or Europe, but in China too. What is the impact of all that manure, and what can we do about it?

"We have the evidence that shows we are polluting the streams, the air and the water with agricultural waste from these operations." While there are differences between human waste and that from cows or chickens, in some ways they are very similar. Why do we treat human waste with sewage systems and other precautions, John asks, while we don't require farm waste to be disposed of safely? It's the same as telling a city of people to just dump their sewage in their backyards, and let it be washed away with storm water. We wouldn't allow that for humans, but that's what happens at large animal feeding operations.

"The problem is we are treating these big agricultural factories, as if they were traditional family farms."

An EPA report from the late 1990's found there were 35,000 miles of streams, in 22 states, that had been polluted with waste from these confined animal feeding operations (CAFO). The groundwater in 17 states was polluted.

"In the state of Iowa there's been a three-fold increase, a three hundred percent increase, in the number of waterways that are impaired with agricultural waste since the early 2000's.... The facts are there. I think there is a conscious attempt to keep the people from knowing, at you hinted at earlier on, to keep the people from knowing what's going on with the industrial food system."

WILL CLIMATE CHANGE LEAD TO MORE LOCALIZED AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE?

As we've seen in California, the climate can change for years at a time. John Ikerd, says the climate threat can actually boost better farming methods, and more localization.

In several speeches, John has said it's difficult to forecast the future. But there are underlying principles. With climate change the greatest impact is going to be the variability. That's key for agriculture, which is susceptible to extremes, whether untimely cold spells, heat waves, dry and wet years. That's a huge risk for agriculture, with more crop losses.

This may change the nature of agriculture away from the industrial type, e.g. large feedlots and mono-culture, which is highly risky with no diversification. Family farm operations tend to be more diversified.

With climate change, the public may soon become more aware of the huge tax cost of supporting industrial agriculture. Most people are simply not aware that most Western governments spend many billions of dollars supporting industrial agriculture. We pay attention to military spending, but not agricultural spending.

More than half the cost of crop insurance is compensation for a certain yield. Governments also provide low interest loans, subsidies, and other means of keeping up with disasters. The taxpayer assumes a lot of risks. Now futures even guarantee the price. Farmers can plant any amount of crops, without worrying about market prices which are guaranteed by the government. Then there are tax credits. For example, the polluting manure pits of hog operations are not taxed in property taxes in some states, like Iowa.

As climate change stresses crops, for example requiring more irrigation from dwindling water supplies, then the cost of production will go up, and so will the cost to the taxpayer through all the subsidies. Tax payers may start to object to this blank cheque for industrial food production.

The logical alternative is a move to more sustainable agriculture. Crop rotations, organic, and better livestock management. These can cope with risk, from the time before government and taxpayers took up the risk. They can produce as much as the industrial farm, he says. And they can adapt better to changes in the climate.

Here is another key point, as raised by many other guests on Radio Ecoshock: the sustainable farm can also capture carbon back into the soil, becoming a solution for climate change.

JOHN IKERD'S BOOKS

Ikerd is author of "Essentials of Economic Sustainability", "Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense", "Small Farms are Real Farms", "Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture", and "A Revolution of the Middle". More complete background information and a wide selection of writings are available at http://www.johnikerd.com.

In this interview John believes that we owe a debt to the people of the past who made our lives possible - and we can only repay that debt by leaving a sustainable society to the people of the future.

CHINA

I also ask John about his impressions from his trip to China (he just returned in the past week). Ikerd hopes the Chinese will avoid the mistakes made by America with industrial agriculture. The Chinese people have traditions and methods which could enable them to jump over the stage of industrial plunder of the land and animals, toward a truly sustainable system. He doesn't know if they will accept and complete that challenge. There are billions of rural farmers in Asia. There is no where for them all to go, in order to clear the land for large-scale industrial agriculture.

China and India cannot release the same per capita pollution that we did in the West - or our climate is doomed.

He talks about his long relationship with the Institute of Post Modern Development for China. This is associated with Claremont Lincoln University in Claremont, California. The group is associated with 23 centers in China studying everything from "process theology" to "sustainable urbanization". Finally, Ikerd takes some hope from the rapid growth of alternative farming in America. It's small, but growing fast. Asked if we can really hope that industrial giants like Monsanto or Cargill could fall, John says one advantage of being old (he's 75) is that older people have experienced a world much different from today. Maybe old people believe major change is possible, because they've seen so much rapid change already.

Find John Ikerd's personal web site here.

Download or listen to this 34 minute interview with John Ikerd in CD Quality or Lo-Fi (and feel free to pass on these links, they are permanent).

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL DISORDER

This one hour Radio Ecoshock show contains audio from this You tube video: Climate Change Denial Disorder by Funny or Die, uploaded April 16, 2015.

Coming up: the second biggest cause of climate change, driver of half of all Arctic melting, and killer of millions. Jonathan Mingle on black carbon.

FIRE AND ICE: JONATHAN MINGLE ON BLACK CARBON

Something is killing millions of people around the world, including in your city - but we don't want to know what it is. The same something is the second largest global warming substance after carbon dioxide. Few people know that either.

We'll investigate with Jonathan Mingle and his new book "Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World".

Here is the publisher's bio on Jonathan Mingle:

"Jonathan Mingle’s writing on the environment, climate and development has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, and other publications. He is a former Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism, a recipient of the American Alpine Club’s Zach Martin Breaking Barriers Award, and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. He lives in Vermont."

We have a long way to travel in this interview, to the Himalayas, so recently brought into the spotlight by the massive earthquake in Nepal. But we start closer to home: Why did US President Obama make his most recent climate announcement in a hospital?

Living in a city powered by fossil fuels is like smoking cigarettes. Everybody, men, women, children and babies are smoking in the smog. Why don't we hear more about it? The health impacts from burning fossil fuels are many and deadly: heart attacks, lung cancer and cancers of all kinds, asthma, birth defects - in fact, we don't know all the ways this pollution hurts us.

And that's not just in North America, or Britain (which recently had severe pollution alerts, along with much of Northern Europe). Of course you've heard about smog in Chinese cities, but did you know New Delhi India likely holds the dubious honor of being the world's most air-polluted city?

Jonathan travelled to a small valley in Nepal, which was a very poor nation even before the recent great earthquakes. There he found the village of Kumik, in the Zanskar Valley. These simple people will be among the early refugees due to climate change. Aside from a punishing drought which has gone on for years, the major source of water from nearby glaciers is starting to dry up. The glaciers are melting back. In the coming century, they will stop feeding these legendary rivers: the Ganges (reaching both India and Pakistan), the MeKong, the Yangtze (aka Yellow River in Tibet and China).

In a century, it's possible these could run dry, says Mingle. That's partly because the Himalayas, like the Arctic, are warming 2 to 3 times faster than the global average. In fact, there are a lot of comparisons to what is happening in the Arctic and the Himalayan mountains. The Himilayas have been called the world's "third pole".

The Kumik villagers, poor as they are, know they have to move. They will move, but no one knows where.

BLACK CARBON AND THE WARMING OF THE WORLD

"Black carbon" is defined as ultrafine particles that are the result of incomplete combustion. The common name is "soot". The small size of the particles is key, because they can get past our defenses, like nose hair, and go straight to the lungs, where they are very damaging.

Because this carbon is black, it also absorbs more of the sun's heat and energy, both in the air, and wherever it lands. Large parts of Greenland, for example, are now black, as scientist Jason Box has revealed, speeding up glacier melt there. The same factor is at work on Himalayan glaciers and snow. Quicker and earlier snow melt adds to climate change.

The third factor is harder to study. It's the way black carbon changes cloud formation. This can even change the monsoon rains that Asian agriculture depends on. There was some debate about whether increased clouds from smog may actually be a cooling factor. However, an exhaustive study led by Radio Ecoshock guest Tami Bond showed the net impact of black carbon is indeed global warming. In fact, black carbon is the second largest cause of climate change, after carbon dioxide in the air. It's more of a threat even than methane (so far).

Here is a link to my Radio Ecoshock show on black carbon, with Tami Bond and more, from April 23, 2010.

You can also find out more from in my Radio Ecoshock special for April 25th, 2008 "Highway to Hell, How Smog Kills". (Download that .mp3 here, or read the blog here.)

CHANGING COOKING

Black carbon comes from many sources, including forest fires and burning of agricultural waste. But a huge contributor in India and other places in Asia is the use of solid fuels for cooking. This includes burning dung in primitive stoves indoors, which is a huge health hazard, leading to early death of millions.

The Indian government and some NGO's have been trying to convert citizens away from using these fuels in cooking. But impoverished people cannot afford a modern stove, and there is no electricity or gas available for hundreds of millions of people. Even families who could afford to convert, say they prefer the taste of food from "traditional" cooking methods!

About 3 billion people, almost half the population of the world, still use solid fuel for cooking. As a result, satellite photos often show huge continent-sized clouds of smog over North India, and parts of China. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is just one group working to help solve this problem.

NASA photo shows smog over India.

Then we have hundreds of millions of people using kerosene lamps for light. That also produces black carbon. In fact, Mingle tells us, kerosene smoke is almost 99% black carbon!

This interview, and Jonathan Mingle's book, is a real adventure in climate change developing at a very human level. It contains the big, big picture of the second largest cause of warming, but it also has a portrait of early climate refugees, on a very human level. Mingle obviously fell in love with the place and the people. It shows.

The book is: "Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World".

Find a good article by Jonathan in the Huffington Post here.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Jonathan Mingle in CD Quality or Lo-Fi (and feel free to pass on these permanent links).

OVER AND OUT

That's all for this week. Check out all our past programs as free mp3 downloads at our web site ecoshock.org.

If you can contribue to keeping this program going, that would be great! Get details here.

Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.

The World of Radical Facts

SUMMARY: Super-scientist Mark Jacobson from Stanford explains soot-causing warming + a way to run the world on clean energy by 2030. We visit an Ultra-Mega coal power plant in India. Manzoor Qadir on the farm soil loss larger than France since 1990. Radio Ecoshock 141105

It's a full show for you this week on Radio Ecoshock. Super-scientist Mark Jacobson from Stanford explains soot-causing warming - plus a way to run the world on clean energy by 2030. We visit an Ultra-Mega coal power plant in India, ten times larger than U.S. stations. It's already killing people. The show wraps with Manzoor Qadir on the farm soil loss larger than France, just since 1990. You won't believe what's killing the land. I'm Alex Smith.

ECOSHOCK FUNDRAISING - IT'S ON!

This is the second week of our Fall fundraising drive on Radio Ecoshock. That's when I try to raise enough money to keep the show going over the Christmas holidays and into the New Year. It does't cost much, and doesn't take much. Please visit the "About" page on our web site at ecoshock.org for details. Or donate right from this blog (upper right). My thanks to the super people who stood up last week and said "yeah, this show matters - let's keep it going".

LISTEN IN

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MARK JACOBSON - THE MANY WITH MANY ANSWERS

Trying desperately to find some good news, I thought I'd call up Dr. Mark Jacobson, author of the 2009 article in Scientific American titled "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030". Read that article here. Mark could only spare 20 minutes, but how hard could it be?

Doing my usual background research, I discovered I completely underestimated my guest. Jacobson has two big fields of research. Finding answers to the climate threat is just one. Mark is also a distinguished atmospheric scientist with answers to many of the most vexing questions we've encountered on Radio Ecoshock. He's published over 100 papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and authored several books. The latest is "Air Pollution and Global Warming: History, Science, and Solutions", from Cambridge University Press, in 2011.

Mark Z. Jacobson is the director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program at Stanford University. He is a Professor of civil and environmental engineering.

This is important stuff. For example, Jacobson found that about 18% of all carbon emissions come from a source most environmentalists hardly ever think about. The paper is "Effects of biomass burning on climate, accounting for heat and moisture fluxes, black and brown carbon, and cloud absorption effects". That was published July 27th, 2014 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Here is a good article on the 18% of global warming from burning biomass figure. The original article containing that figure is here. So it's "burning biomass". What's that? Think of millions of acres of African grasslands burned every year, as part of agriculture. Actually burning the savannah doesn't help the soil as the farmers think. But it blows megatones of carbon into the atmosphere, including black soot. More on that in a moment.

Biomass burning also includes all the fires set to destroy forests for more farmland. That's happening in South America, and yes still in the Amazon. It's all over the world. Indonesia and Malaysia are forest biomass burning hotspots. This category of carbon sources also includes all the home cooking and heating fires. More than a billion people burn wood or dung to cook and keep warm.

What's wrong with biomass burning? Here is a summary from Wikipedia:

"Using computer modeling he developed over 20 years, Jacobson has found that carbonaceous fuel soot emissions (which lead to respiratory illness, heart disease and asthma) have resulted in 1.5 million premature deaths each year, mostly in the developing world where wood and animal dung are used for cooking. Jacobson has also said that soot from diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and burning wood is a 'bigger cause of global warming than previously thought, and is the major cause of the rapid melting of the Arctic's sea ice'."

Burning biomass is killing millions of people directly, warming the planet in a big way, and contributing to that "dark snow" and blackened ice in the Arctic (recall Jason Box's stunning photos of blackened glaciers on Greenland). Darker snow and ice attracts the sun's heat and melts faster.

Jacobson tells us these soot particles only stay in the atmosphere for a week or two, but that's long enough for them to sweep around the world, and accumulate in the Arctic.

There's more. In the interview I ask Mark whether the global dimming effect of burned biomass pollution will be greater than it's warming impacts. You know that soot in the atmosphere can block some of the sun's rays, and actually hides up to 1 degree of warming we have already caused, but not yet felt.

Jacobson's work is original and important in showing that cooling by global dimming is less, and less important, than the various warming impacts of this pollution. In a nutshell:

1. scientists forgot to include the actual heating from the fires themselves. That's right, massive forest and grass fires cause short-term localized heating, but it all adds up.

2. the black soot tends to disperse cloud formation. That means more sun reaches the surface, warming the planet.

3. as discussed above, once it lands, black soot speeds heating of the earth's surface, and melting of frozen places

Yes, some of the carbon from burned plant material will be re-absorbed when new plants grow, but the net impacts lead to significant warming. If you want to follow up further, I recommend this 2010 Jacobson paper: "Short-term effects of controlling fossil-fuel soot, biofuel soot and gases, and methane on climate, Arctic ice, and air pollution health."

Since Jacobson also emphasizes solutions, I ask him to outline some of the ways we could reduce the impacts of biomass burning. Also you can find a good article about soot and global warming here.

FOSSIL FREE BY 2030

Jacobson is one of the few scientists who study both the problems and the solutions. His landmark 2009 article in Scientific American claimed we could power the world with renewable energy alone. We could end the fossil fuel age by 2030. Others say that's impossible. How could we do it?

Mark outlines the huge untapped potential for renewable energy (solar, wind, tides, etc). He's very quick on his feet with facts and figures. Listen to the interview.

The National Geographic article sidebar says "The authors’ plan calls for 3.8 million large wind turbines, 90,000 solar plants, and numerous geothermal, tidal and rooftop photovoltaic installations worldwide."

THE USUAL OBJECTIONS

I raise the objections that listeners send me every time we discuss renewable energy. For example, what about the emissions from building the solar panels or wind machines.

Mark replies that there are several different solar technologies. The most energy intensive are the crystaline solar panels. Even there, it takes six months to a year of using a solar panel (depending on where you live) before you are gaining energy, and saving carbon emissions. Since good panels produce for at least 25 years, that means 24 years of saving carbon with solar. The large solar plants that use mirrors to reflect the sun to a central source use much less carbon to build. Wind machines also produce much more energy than they take to produce.

What about all the birds killed by wind machines, and large solar plants? Yes, the best estimates (by wildlife groups, not industry) are that wind machines currently kill about 500,000 birds a year. Just so you can compare, household cats kill 80 MILLION birds a year. Another 100 million birds a year die from hitting buildings. Maybe we should keep our cats indoors, or put a bell on them, instead of trying to stop wind power?

Mark's research into "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030" acknowledged two key limitations. The first was a possible shortage of relatively rare elements required for their production. In this interview, Jacobson gives us the numbers, showing there is enough lithium and neodymium already available to power the world with renewables.

The second main hurdle was social, especially finding the political will. We have to tell all the oil and coal workers their jobs are obsolete. Plus the richest people in the world, like the Koch Brothers, have to give up their fossil-fueled wealth. What if we could save a livable climate, but can't do it socially? That's a tougher one for a scientist to answer. But Jacobson does have figures showing there would be a net growth in jobs in a renewable civilization, over the fossil society. The Koch Brothers already have enough money, so we won't shed a tear for them.

Personally, I think a massive reduction in energy use is part of the answer. But if we don't go big on solar, wind, and geothermal - I'm reminded of the doomy map produced by James Lovelock for the Royal Society. It showed a wide band of deserts - dead zones - stretching around the world, where large parts of North America, China, and Europe used to be. It's hard to argue against that cost of not trying for rewewables on a big scale.

This is a really good interview, with one of America's important scientists. Don't miss it.

Download or listen to this Mark Jacobson interview (21 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

VISITING ONE OF INDIA'S MEGA COAL PLANTS

At 4,000 megawatts (when completed) the Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) is ten times the size of the average coal generating station in the United States. It's one of four such monster coal projects in India, as the world's second most populous country makes a deadly dash for coal power.

Prepare to enter a world of opposites. That's where a mega coal plant in India is classified as "environmentally friendly technology". Where electricity customers in Europe can buy credits from a coal plant as a "clean development mechanism". Where hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars help build that deadly coal project.

We're going to travel to a small place in the big State of Madhya Pradesh in India. That's the 6th largest state, with a population of 72 million people, right in the middle of the country. Our destination is the village of Sasan, in the Singrauli district. There we'll find the Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project being built by the Indian Government.

Unlike other big Indian coal plants, this one is not on the coast, ready to accept coal ships from Indonesia or Australia. The Sasan Power Project is fed by 3 Indian coal mines relatively nearby. Our guide today is Nicole Ghio of Sierra Club International.

Nicole Ghio, Sierra Club International

This one coal burning complex adds megatons of carbon to the Earth's atmosphere every year. India, and next-door neighbor Bangladesh will be hit hard by the climate disruption it helps create.

Sierra Club just teamed up with 4 other NGO's to publish the report titled "The U.S. Export-Import Bank's Dirty dollars". The sub-title reads "U.S. tax dollars are supporting human rights, environment, and labor violations at the Sasan Coal-Fired Power Plant and Mine, in India".

Find that report here. I've learned that the Sasan mega project is owned by Reliance Power, which is in turn part of a business conglomeration owned by Anil Ambani. The families of the two Ambani brothers are listed as the second richest family in the world. The Ambani's are something like India's Koch brothers. Reliance Power is a subsidiary of the corporate complex owned since 2005 by Anil Ambani. He is also one of the largest promoters of the Bollywood film industry, and owns 44 radio stations. His business is run from Mumbai.

At a cost of 4 billion dollars, the Sasan coal plant is listed as the single largest industrial project in India's history. Through a funding agency called the U.S. Import-Export Bank (EX-IM) - the U.S. taxpayer kicked in about 900 million dollars toward this project, as a loan. At first Ex-Im denied the funding for Sasan, as dirty coal. Then they turned around and approved it, after Reliance Power promised to build a comparitively small amount of renewable energy as well. Oh well - that makes all the pollution OK!

The Sasan plant is powered by 3 captive coal mines owned by the Indian government. These mining operations were just slapped by the Indian courts for improper license granting and corruption. They are also deadly, being responsible for severe accidents to miners, including child miners. Nicole Ghio says that when people protest pollution and working conditions, they sometimes "disappear", or their children do, courtesy, she suspects, of the mine or power plant operators.

Many people were displaced by this large power plant. Some got compensation, others did not. There are still people taking water right near the very toxic giant power plant sludge ponds. The mining overburden covers a big area, and is not well-controlled. It's an ultra mega mess.

I ask Nicole about the position of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who did not attend the world leaders' summit on climate change in New York this past September. Ghio says Modi is at least more friendly to renewable energy than his predecessors, and includes in the current five year plan. However, the country is firmly committed to coal, as a way to get electricity to the over 200 million Indian citizens who have no access to electricity.

The problem is, Ghio says, centralized electricity sources don't work for the power-less. It's always too profitable to route that power to the Indian Middle Class in urban areas, who can pay the bills. Plus there's the outrageous cost and power losses that come with establishing a new grid. Solar power right where it's needed, in the community, on the roof, is a far better answer.

It astounds me that the Sasan coal plant has qualified as a Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, under the Kyoto Protocol. Allegedly that's because these new coal plants are "super-efficient" getting more power with less coal. But the U.S. built "super-efficient" coal plants in the 1970's. It's old tech from an old power source.

If I'm a power grid customer in Europe, part of my bill could go to purchase better sources of power, using the Clean Development Mechanism. Of course, I'll never know my money is going to pay off the richest family of India, and their coal plant. However, Nicole says this Clean Development Mechanism money has not yet been implemented for the mega coal plants in India. Not yet. It's insane to call coal good for the climate!!

the big worry for all of us goes beyond the millions of people killed by coal pollution every year. It's even more serious than the warming and melting of glaciers hastened by the black soot coming out of those stacks. It's this: if the second-most populous nation of the world, projected to become the most populous, plans it's modernization on coal, global warming from those emissions could destabilize the whole world. what happens in India is a problem for all of us.

Listen to this 20 minute interview with Nicole Ghio of Sierra Club International in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Find out more in the Sierra Club blog "Compass". And follow Nicole Ghio on Twitter for the latest on the coal front.

LOSING FARM LAND THE SIZE OF FRANCE, DUE TO FAULTY IRRIGATION

It's amazing the things we don't know about the simplest things, like the air, the soil, and the water. Did you know that "freshwater" contains tons of salt? It carries enough that constant irrigation, without proper drainage, can kill off farmland due to salinization. That's happening all over the world, from Australia's Murray Darling Basin, to America's San Joachim Valley, to the Indus valley in Pakistan and India.

When I read that the world is losing 2,000 hectares a day, almost 5,000 acres every day, of valuable farm soil to salt damage - I thought aha! Rising seas are impinging on the deltas. No, this is a completely different problem brought on by human agriculture. Valuable crop land is disappearing just as our increasing population needs it most.

Here to explain is lead researcher Manzoor Qadir. He's the Assistant Director, of Water and Human Development, at the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Based in Canada now, Dr. Qaadir has taught in Germany and Pakistan. He was a senior scientist at ICARDA, the global agricultural research center.

There is a solution for salt degradation: proper drainage and water circulation. That's been done on a large scale in the Murray Darling Basin in Australia, and it's working. Governments have to take the lead. Individual farmers can't do it. Download or listen to this 15 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Manzoor Qadir in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Learn more about salt degradation of farmland in this Al Jazeera piece.

GREAT CLIMATE CONFERENCE COMING UP IN NEW ENGLAND

If you are in the New England region, plan to attend the "Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming" Conference at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. That's being held November 21-23, 2014. Find the details here.

Two of the big speakers that caught my eye are on Friday evening: Bill Moomaw, from the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, and Adam Sacks, the Executive Director of the organization Biodiversity for a Livable Climate. Full disclosure: I got this tip from Karl Thidemann, also with Biodiversity for a Livable Climate.

Karl's a remarkable man, being one of the pioneers of the electric car. He's never given up organizing for solutions to climate change. We've been email buddies for years now. Karl never misses a chance to tell people about Alan Savory and his technique to restore land with properly managed cattle. It may be one of the few ways to capture large-scale carbon back into the soil. You can find Savory's TED talk here on You tube. Even Richard Branson tweeted about that one.

Bill McKibben and Paul Hawken have been tweeting about this upcoming New England conference. Plus, expect to find a speaker from the New England group Mothers Out Front.

You may recall in my interview with George Marshall last spring, he told us young mothers are the least likely to want to talk about climate change. I said mothers are the people we need most in the movement. And here you go, Mothers Out Front is organizing, and hoping to spread. I'll see if we can get an interview with them.

THANKS FOR LISTENING!!

We are out of time in this triple header Ecoshock show. Get all our past programs as free .mp3 downloads at ecoshock.org, or listen live at our soundcloud page. Thank you for listening, and thank you for caring about our world.

Climate Change Has Arrived

Coming up in this program: a new report from the World Meteorological Organization tallies the big weather hits in 2013. Is it rampant climate change? Norway decides how to spend almost a trillion petrodollars, and Indian solar loses out. Plus direct from Yokohama Japan, the IPCC press conference promising we can somehow "manage" climate change, a food crisis, and maybe the sixth great mass extinction. Science and hopium on Radio Ecoshock 140409

"Politicians discussing global warming" by Isaac Cordal of Berlin. Great stuff.

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

JESSICA BLUNDEN AND NEW WMO REPORT ON CLIMATE 2014 - IS THE WORLD WARMING OR NOT?

If you live in eastern north America, it felt like the ice age is returning. Meanwhile millions of people in Europe got a winter of mild rain. So what is it, global cooling or global warming? We don't have to guess. Scientists measure temperatures all over the world, on the ground and by satellite. That information pours into the U.S. National Climatic Data Center. Jessica Blunden is a climate scientist and lead editor writing reports there.

Here is a blurb from NOAA:

"Have you ever wondered who writes the monthly global climate reports? Her name is Jessica Blunden, and she is a climate scientist with ERT, Inc., working here, at NCDC. In addition to writing those reports, which analyze global temperature and precipitation, Jessica is a lead editor for the annual State of the Climate series that is a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Jessica’s academic training is in atmospheric chemistry and air quality. She did her fieldwork and research in this area for both her Master’s and Doctorate degrees, but she wasn’t always an atmospheric scientist. Before she became a scientist, Jessica spent several years working in the hospitality and tourism industry. During that time, she always felt something was missing. 'I eventually came to the realization that atmospheric science was my true calling,' Jessica said. Her love of weather and climate first blossomed in Mrs. Heath’s eighth grade science class. Jessica found her teacher fascinating and loved studying clouds and weather phenomena."

The State of the Climate series doesn't attribute causes for changes in weather, doesn't suggest policy, and doesn't make predictions about the future. It's an accurate, triple-checked reliable assessment of Earth's climate, month by month, and year by year.

Although it was still pretty cold by our standards, the Arctic was way above average this past winter. The non-scientist, the average person, wonders whether that forced some wicked cold weather further south. What is behind the infamous Polar Vortex that kept pounding Eastern North America?

The World Meteorological Association just released their new report titled "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 2013". Find a good meaty press release summarizing the report here.

Read the full WMO 2013 report online for free here.

You can also access a fascinating interactive map showing the extreme weather events here. Be patient. It takes a bit to load, but it's worth it.

Get the latest climate reporting about the past winter from NOAA here. Despite what you may have experienced, it was the 8th hottest winter Earth has seen since we began measurements.

Find all the global and national reports on climate from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center here.

Jessica edits the monthly and annual State of the Climate Report.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock 18 minute interview with Jessica Blunden in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

OF NORWEGIAN PETRO-WEALTH AND INDIA'S SOLAR NEED - JUSTIN GUAY

Norway, right up to the Prime Minister, made important promises this spring. With a state investment fund of almost a trillion dollars, Norway suggested they would divest from coal, and invest heavily in renewable energy.

Pundits estimated Norway could put 5 to 10% of it's oil and gas fund into solar and wind energy. That would be 50 to 100 billion dollars! Considering the whole world invested about $215 billion in renewables in 2013, that would be a boost of almost 20%. It could make a HUGE difference in the markets and progress toward safer energy.

Justin Guay of Sierra Club India, and author Jigar Shah invited Norway to plug the gap of a measely $500 million needed to finance solar power for about 200 million people in India. They didn't want a grant or charity, it would be a good investment which could change a lot of lives.

Came the day of the announcement last Friday April 4th, the Norwegians pulled back. Instead they promised to study the whole problem for another year (another year of record greenhouse gas emissions on Earth). Even the coal investments stayed in place. There will be plenty of pressure on Norway to keep to their former promises. And along the way, the Norwegians got rid of their pesky ethics committee too. That should solve the problem.

Groups from India have been seeking this $500 million all over. They tried the World Bank, which definitely should have funded this, instead of the failed and dangerous coal plants in India. No luck.

What we're talking about here are millions of people who have no light when the sun goes down. Children can't do homework, home business must close, there are no fans for the brutal summer heat.

Those who have light pay far more than your or I, being forced to buy polluting kerosene for lamps. That's the irony, the poorest people pay more for light than the richest.

A project to install solar in Africa has really taken wings. It's called "Lighting Africa". Instead of having to buy panels up front, a prohibitive cost for the poor of sub-Saharan Africa - companies make loans so the consumer pays as they use the energy. That works!

Next door to India, the renewables company Grameen Shakti is installing solar in 30,000 to 40,000 homes a month. Bengladesh has over 1 million solar installations, already ahead of much bigger India.

As Justin Guay tells us, India doesn't need more centralized plants and money wasted on a huge inefficient grid. They've been trying that for decades, and failed for over 200,000 million residents still without power. Solar takes power right where it is needed, without the 50% loss of energy associated with big energy grids.

Tune in to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Justin Guay here in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

Here are some helpful links:

Jigar Shah is the solar entrepreneur and author of the influential book for developing countries, "Creating Climate Wealth".

Sierra Club India on the state of solar in that country. And this piece on solar in Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest states, with over 200 million people. Find Justin's piece on solar investment in India here and another here. These are all good reads with hard-to-find info seldom touched by the mainstream media.

THE SECOND BIG IPCC REPORT JUST RELEASED

IPCC REPORT - My take for Radio

No doubt you've heard the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has released it's second major report. This one is not about proving climate change is triggered by human emissions.

Nor does it suggest how to reduce that greenhouse gas pollution of the atmosphere and ocean.This report says climate change has arrived already, and that further warming will occur. It tries to use science to outline who is most vulnerable to coming impacts, where the greatest risks lie, and how humans can best adapt to changes in everything from rainfall to violent storms, rising seas and a hotter world.

The lead authors present very severe impacts, but remain strangely optimistic that humans will find a way to manage these risks. They assume global governments will react to public pressure, and find rational solutions. In the press conference, co-chair of Working Group II, Chris Field from the Carnegie Institute, still talked about making a better world, as did other speakers on the panel.

Really?

Let's go to my recording of the press conference held in Yokohama Japan on March 31st, 2014. First, Dr. Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Organization says we now have no excuse for ruining the planet. We cannot claim ignorance.

Then I play you about 10 minutes from the presentation by Co-Chair Dr. Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology.

As you hear, several lead authors remain optimistic we will somehow "manage" the risks of climate change, even as they conclude agricultural production could drop as much as 50% by the year 2100, even as human population increased by billions. At another point they admit some scientists fear we are already entering the sixth great mass extinction. One source of their optimism is due to the assumptions in the reporting process. Pressed by a reporter in the Q and A, Dr. Field admits they did not consider global warming beyond two degrees, because they had no dependable science to predict such a scenario. I've had dozens of scientists on Radio Ecoshock who fear we will go well beyond 2 degrees C of warming. That's a big one to leave out!

Remember that every word of this IPCC report has to be approved by consensus by all world governments. Of course it's going to be political, and watered down, despite this feel-good approach by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.

To be fair, Dr. Pachauri was the most realistic in his other assessments of our predicament, and I regret we didn't have time to run more of what he said. Pachauri warned that if we cannot reduce emissions soon, the whole of human society is in grave danger. Considering emissions have continued to rise despite more than 20 years of IPCC reports, it's hard to know where he finds even "guarded optimism".

Is is part of a culture of "hopium" at the point where science interfaces with governments?

In a couple of weeks, we'll have another brief round of media attention, as Working Group three releases their report on how to cut emissions. For one day, and one day only, the words climate change made the Google list of top story topics in the news. Considering we risk our future, and the whole ecosphere, should it not be a permanent fixture? Instead of the Karadashians or the latest juicy murder story?

This newest IPCC report is an improvement over the past reports. It has more current reporting, and is more blunt about the challenges we are facing. Even in it's watered-down form, it should be taught in every classroom in the world, starting next week. But who can tell the children what we try so hard to hide from ourselves?

I suggest you spend an hour of your life to watch the IPCC press conference in Yokohama on You tube.

Find the full IPCC Working Group II report "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability" free online here.

Get my full report on this IPCC release, complete with the key quotes from the Yokohama press conference, here in CD quality or Lo-Fi.

As always, you can help get the word out by reposting those links, or the whole audio piece.

SPRING FUND-RAISING DRIVE FOR RADIO ECOSHOCK - JUST 15 NEW SUPPORTERS CAN DO IT!

I'm on a fund-raising drive this April for Radio Ecoshock. I'm looking for just 15 brave subscribers willing to help carry the load and keep this going.

Just 15 people can make a huge difference keeping our big archives free and open for thousands of downloads each week, from all over the world. Subscribers also help me cover costs when equipment needs to be replaced, distribution costs, telephone bills, and all that.

Can you help? Head over to the web site at ecoshock.org to sign up for a small monthly donation. I'll send my personal thanks, opening up a chance to chat over email if you have suggestions or comments on the program. Monthly subscribers and one-time donations keep this whole show going. I appreciate your support - it inspires and drive me, every week.

By the way, this blog now gets over 10,000 views a week! Plus thousands of downloads. Since I have no advertising budget, that means a lot of you have spread the word about Radio Ecoshock. Thanks!

RADIO ECOSHOCK NOW ON SOUNDCLOUD

Take a look at our new SoundCloud page!

Trying to reach still more listeners using every medium, I've opened up Radio Ecoshock on Soundcloud. Please tell your friends. It's a good way to shop around different shows, and download the ones you want.

This will be filed every week. But all the past programs are still at ecoshock.org. Head over there, and browse through our free downloadable programs from the past 7 years of broadcasting!

I'm thinking of offering private downloads from Soundcloud of the music I'm writing. This would be for Radio Ecoshock supporting members and donors. To add extra value, I'll specify that the member or donor can use these bits of music royalty free for their own podcasts, organization, or whatever.

It's hard to find lively Royalty free music that's affordable for non-profits. Believe me I know. I started writing my own music, to save the costs of buying expensive short pieces for the show.

Let me know if getting some of my music interests you. You can write any time, to radio //at// ecoshock.org.

I'm Alex Smith, working for you, the listener, and maybe for some other species who cannot speak for themselves. Thanks for listening!

As Darkness Flourishes

Josh Tickell, Director of "The Big Fix" reveals the continuing BP Gulf oil spill cover-up. S. Dutta on mega coal plant construction binge in India. "GM Food Song" by Superweed. Conclusion of tar sands speech by independent scientist Dr. David Schindler.

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From the high desert, from the dry falls of ages past, this is Alex Smith. We have a full menu of audio for you this week.

You'll start out with a main course of awful truth about the continuing BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Director Josh Tickell joins us for a look at his dark reality pic "The Big Fix".

Then we go to the coal disaster you never hear about. The government of India has teamed up with one of its biggest corporations to build some of the largest coal plants on the Planet. S. Dutta reports from Delhi about the Tata Mundra mega plant. Their lives and your climate in one big story.

I'll play you a fine activist song about GM foods and wrap up with more from my recording of Dr. David Schindler's breakout speech against the Canadian Tar sands.

Bon appetite.

THE FIG FIX ON THE BP GULF OIL SPILL

Sales of oil and gas leases are the second largest source of revenue to the United States government. About forty percent of that happens in the Gulf of Mexico.

As we learn in this interview with Josh Tickell, only the Internal Revenue Service brings in more (from taxes, with a much bigger overhead). Is it any wonder the fossil fuel industry has so much control over the government?

There is hardly any oversight. That is why BP was allowed to drill in deep waters on the edge of a ridge in the Gulf of Mexico, even after companies like Exxon had abandoned drilling efforts there. The area was known to host pools of explosive gas as well as the oil.

Tickell goes over a long list of illness suffered by cleanup workers and many residents of the Gulf states. Skin rashes, asthma, and many other chronic conditions popped up after BP poured millions of gallons of the toxic oil dispersant Corexit into the Gulf. Exactly how many million gallons is still in dispute.

The Corexit was carried toward the shorelines, where waves and winds whip it up into water droplets which hit Gulf residents, to this day.

Tickell says despite the multi-million dollar advertising campaign saying the beaches are all clean, there are still workers cleaning beaches, and popular beaches have closures now and then. Tickell, who grew up in Louisiana, in a Cajun family, dug into "cleaned up" beaches and found lots of oil deeper in the sand. It isn't just a metaphorical "cover up", he tells us, but the oil is really just covered up for now.

We go into the Obama deception, the multibillions of shareholder profits paid out by BP even during and after the spill, why the military was co-opted by BP and more.

Josh Tickell first came to prominence after driving his grease-powered "veggie van" across America. That became the film "fuel". Now with wife Rachel, "The Big Fix" is winning acclaim at film festivals around the world. It got a standing ovation at Cannes. Our Radio Ecoshock correspondent in Washington D.C., Gerri Williams, saw it at a film festival there. She said the audience was wowed, and recommended this interview with Josh Tickell.

Since many standard theaters are afraid of blowback from the powerful oil industry, it may not play near you. Fortunately, the DVD will be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Netflix and ITunes in June. Or you can get it directly from the film web site, after the June release, at thebigfixmovie.com

COAL IN INDIA

You know Americans are blowing tops of Appalachian Mountains for dirty coal power. Warren Buffet's endless coal trains flow from the America West.

In early May, activists from Vancouver, including two prominent academics, Dr. Bill Rees of the ecological footprint, and energy expert Mark Jaccard, were arrested stopping a coal train there.

Everybody knows China built a coal plant a week. So why don't we hear about the mega mega coal plants springing up in India? Now you will.

Mr. S. Dutta joins us for an in-depth report from India about the growing coal binge there.

The coal mining industry is mainly nationalized, run by the government of India. Politicians have promised to electrify the country, and coal is their main fuel, even as India is hit hard by climate-driven drought, floods, and heat waves.

The center of attention now is the giant 4 gig watt Tata Mundra plant in Northwest India (Gujarat State). It is right on the coast, in one of the most ecologically sensitive and productive areas. Further inland is the great desert, so most people live and work on the coast.

The poorest people, small farmers and fisher people, will be most directly hurt by construction and operation of the many coal plants planned at Tata Mundra.

I ask Mr. Dutta to compare the many anti-coal plants there, and the Occupy movement in the West. Although many people have been arrested at both, there are major differences. The coal-powered electricity will benefit the middle and upper classes, so they are supporting it. The many poor people are those protesting. They do not speak Hindi, the language of their government, and are not consulted or compensated. These poor people need the help of non-profits like the one Mr. Dutta works for.

We go into the larger energy picture of India with lots of facts and figures which may surprise you. Along with the many coal plants either under construction or planned, goes a lot of corruption of land sales. The power will go to fuel shopping malls, which the poor people can never dream to visit. It's a deep interview, with many angles you should hear.

Before we go to our exclusive recording of Dr. David Schindler on the Tar Sands, you'll want to hear this smart new song about a dangerous idea: genetic modification of your food. From You tube, here is the band Superweed.

[Superweed] THE REST OF THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT THE TAR SANDS - DAVID SCHINDLER

A few weeks ago I played you part of a daring speech by one of Canada's most prominent and honored scientists, Dr. David Schindler. He spoke out about the many dangers of the Canadian Tar Sands, in a speech to a packed audience at the Wosk Centre in Vancouver. Here is David Schindler wrapping up, about the deformed fish, the fake restoration promoted on TV, and the lasting cost to us all.

For example, The First Nations people of Northern Alberta, who depend on fish to live, complained they were finding some too deformed to eat, or even feed to their dogs. Schindler set up a collection point, and in just the first year found fish with tumors, fish with two tails, fish with one big eye and so on. He concludes these are the product of embryos poisoned by tar sands waste.

Still on the subject of fish, we hear another scandal. When a mine pit is finished, the big corporations are allowed to fill them in with tailings, and then add 10 meters (about 32 feet) of water. They call this restored "fish habitat" - even though nothing can live in them. Starting 17 years ago, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans have approved over 25 of such "fish lakes". The first one from 17 years ago shows no signs of life, much less fish, but the Federal government doesn't care, Schindler says.

The Caribou stocks of the Tar Sands area have been wiped out. Under the law, they should have been treated as endangered species, but the Minister in charge says Canada has lots of caribou - we'll just stuff in some new ones later, when the lands are restored.

Schindler says very little has been restored, and even those projects are an ecological failure. Supposed forests are sparsely treed. The companies try to restore peat bogs - but the tailings are too salty, at least ten times too salty, to host the peat bogs. Instead of 300 species, the "restored" lands are lucky to host a few dozen.

Meanwhile paid "green" spokespeople like Patrick Moore appear on TV and You tube showing off the restored lands. Schindler says real biologist laugh when Moore points out a pleasant yellow plant as an example of new growth. The plant is exotic, shouldn't be there, and is known to accumulate cyanide.

The whole "restoration" game is a Ponzi scheme. The oil companies have saved about 10% of the cost to restore the easiest lands, those built up with removed top soil (not the toxic tailings). Schindler says Canadians under forty years of age will be stuck with the cleanup bill in years to come.

I doubt restoration will ever happen. As the oil runs out, or becomes too expensive for an industrial economy, these ravages lands will be abandoned, with their toxic lakes and pits, a scar the size of a small European country, left on the planet, as signs of a past oil age.

My thanks to Simon Fraser University for permission to record this speech. Dr. David Schindler is an award winning Canadian scientists, of international renown. That he would speak out at this point shows how bad the Canadian Tar Sands situation has become.

The big fix on the Gulf oil spill, the push for coal in India, Tar Sands propaganda - the fossil fuel industry is flourishing - while the species and climate thrash toward catastrophe.

Now you know, but knowing is only half the battle. Action is up to you.

I would say knowing is less than half the battle - but the with all the propaganda paid for by the fossil fuel industry, and the bought-out mainstream media, it is a bit of work to find out what is really going on. That is why I do Radio Ecoshock. To help you know.

Visit our new web site at ecoshock.org.

From Wi-Fi somewhere in America, I'm Alex Smith, thank you for listening and caring about your world.

How A Far Away Island Can Rock Your World

FAR AWAY PLACES WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD

I'm hoping my bank will still be open next Monday. Most of us are trying to get through the next week. Half of us can't live without the next paycheck.

Will Europe survive? Despite the smiling faces of banking experts on TV, too many signs say "Wecome to the Great Depression". And some 1930's-style slowdown isn't the worst that could happen.

In the constant drum-beat of beat-down times, it's pretty hard to care what is happening somewhere else, in places we don't ever hear about. That climate stuff, that's years away too, except for the weird weather this year.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. I'm going to convince you that a relatively small island on the other side of your world can break the climate wide open.

BURNING UP INTO THE ATMOSPHERE

Strange fires in Asia helped start the hottest year on record, before 2010. They are burning again right now, blanketing South East Asia with acrid smoke. And loading up the atmosphere with a new burst of carbon, possibly as large as the exhaust from every car on Earth.

The tropical forest blaze, larger than Amazon fires, is on Sumatra, which is part of Indonesia. What happens there, could determine whether we make it, as a civilization, or eventually, as a species.

We'll hear from Dr. Florian Siegert in Munich Germany, who can see it all from space.

Indonesia is also the world's second largest coal exporter. That feeds the second largest coal power race on the planet: India. 173 new coal-fired plants have been approved this year alone. It's a mania that is already failing, even while it destroys so much.

Peasants and fishermen have been killed by police protecting coal plant sites from protests. The scale of ecological damage is amazing. The threat to our climate frightening.

We don't hear anything about this, as we pray our jobs will keep going, or worry we'll never get another one.

But we'll talk with Indian electricity expert Shankar Sharma to get the real picture. You'll hear the sounds of protests, and learn how this global coal resistance is hooking up Indian peasants to the poorest people in Appalachia, USA.

GLOBAL DIMMING HIDES THE BAD NEWS

We won't have to wait until 2050 to find out what happens if the coal rush plays out. As Steve Connor, the Science Editor for Britain's "Independent" newpaper wrote July 5th, pollution from the one-new-one-a-week Chinese coal plants has hidden the true warming impact in a phenomenon known as global dimming. We started covering global dimming in this Radio Ecoshock show in 2006.

The new Indian coal plants, growing like mushrooms along the coast, will do the same. For a few years. But that protective smog lasts only a few years at most, and could clear in less than a month, if production suddenly stopped. Perhaps after a solar flare. Or a really big economic break-down. Or riots.

When the "wisp of smoke", as James Lovelock called it, is washed out of the atmosphere, we could experience a severe heating event. This could manifest locally, or globally. No one knows.

I asked Dr. Florian Seigert about this, but that was not his specialty.

We did discuss whether the peat fires of Indonesia in 1997 helped power the planet into the record-breaking heat of 1998.

[Siegert interview in audio]

Learn about peat fires and Professor Florian Siegert's work in this article.

These are my conclusions, based on Dr. Siegert's interview, but also on talks with other scientists.

* Indonesia is burning off tropical forests faster than anywhere else on Earth, including the Amazon. This releases vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

* even so, the carbon emissions from Indonesian peat fires is even greater.

* scientists calculated Indonesian peat fires amounted to 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity in 1997. A huge burst of carbon, that was measured immediately at the Hawaii measuring station. The rate of increase of CO2 doubled at the Manu Loa station that year.

* 1998 was the hottest year on record until 2010.

* this single "peat fire bomb" may have triggered the continuing increase of global warming gases around the world from other natural sources.

* research at the University of Exeter, led by Dr. Sebastian Wieczorek and Professor Peter Ashwin suggests that as global temperatures rise, peat can spontaneously catch fire, like an overheated compost pile. We don't know when that will happen.

* although up to a third of our carbon dioxide emissions has been sequestered by the ocean, the impact of carbon bursts from peat fires is more or less immediate. The greenhouse effect does not wait for years or decades. The existing carbon raises temperatures immediately, except for any temporary cooling effects from smoke.

* there is more tropical peat in the Amazon of South America, and in Africa. But we think Indonesia has the most by volume - up to 50 meters, or 164 feet deep.

* if the peat in the northern Permafrost thaws, dries, and then burns, a major extinction event is inevitable.

* more carbon is being released from forest fires in Indonesia and South East Asia than in the Amazon. Hardly anyone knows this. There is no campaign comparable to saving the Amazon.

INDONESIAN PALM OIL - THE GREEN FUEL SCAM

According to Dr. Siegert, the biggest releases from Indonesian peat fires are caused by corporations and foreign investors.

Some peat forests have been drained and burned for palm oil plantations. That is supposed to create a so-called "green' biofuel, some sold in Europe, claiming to help the climate.

In reality, when we remember Indonesia, palm oil from peat lands is among the most climate damaging fuels on Earth. Palm oil biofuel taken from cleared peat lands releases 5 to 10 times more carbon dioxide than the fuel burned in the final car or power plant. This project is dangerously insane.

THE PEAT FIRES ARE BACK

The peat fires are back in 2011. In mid-September, the Indonsian government acknowledged 1200 "hot spots" on their island of Sumatra. Thick smoke blankets Sumatra, and pollutes Singapore and Malaysia to the East. In desperation, Indonesia is trying to create rain. There is no other way to put the peat fires out.

Hundreds more fires have broken out on the nearby Kalimantan, which is Indonesia's part of Borneo.

That's a new name to learn: Kalimantan. Forests are being burned there to clear the land for more and more open pit coal mines.

A World Bank study in 2007 claimed Indonesia is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

The government of Indonesia disputes and protest this. Since there is no true country-by-country measurement of emissions, beyond untrustworthy figures given by national governments, we don't really know.

We do know this: on top of those humungous peat fires, and record breaking burning of other tropical forests and deforestation, Indonesia provides enough coal carbon to reach a high rating among world polluters.

This is information you need to know.

If the latest flooding from extreme precipication events missed your area, lucky you. Maybe drought hasn't burned away your local agriculture. Maybe the freaky summer beach weather in early fall is fun.

But we are only part way there. I still hope to pursuade everyone that on this small planet, no matter what the headlines about the economic break-down may be, events in Asia are set to destabilize the climate for thousands of years.

INDONESIA SECOND LARGEST EXPORTER OF COAL IN THE WORLD

Indonesia is the second largest exporter of coal in the world, following only Australia. Russia trails far behind at number three, with half the coal exports of Indonesia.

In 1985, Indonesia mined 2 million tons of coal. By the year 2000, that was 233 million tons. In 2010 it was 320 million tons, with 380 million projected for 2011.
Source here and here.

Indonesia depends on coal to power it's growing industrial base. In 2008, Indonesia burned 79 million tons of coal, mostly to produce electricity, and exported 160 million tons - twice domestic consumption.

The country's lower grade coal is only suitable for burning in power stations, so it is called "thermal coal". Indonesia is the world's largest provider of seaborne coal to power stations.

NO PLAN TO SAVE THE CLIMATE

The government of Indonesia does not plan to cut back it's carbon emissions to save the climate.

Locally, Indonesia intends to expand coal as a source of energy from 17% to 33% by 2025. That includes replacing oil by liquifying coal, a horrible dirty way to get energy.
The country has 35 new coal-fired power plants planned, but only about half of them are being built so far, according to Greenpeace.

Greenpeace has released a report on the heavy impacts of this coal mining and transportation scheme on Indonesians. (In English) (In Indonesian)

The national energy policy is to double coal exports. Indonesia has mostly lower grade coal, which burns less efficently, and is used almost exclusively to fire electricity generating plants.

While there are plenty of coal ships running from Indonesia to China, Japan, and every Asian country, the biggest customer is India. India will drink up the coal of Indonesia, in a wild national dream to build hundreds more coal plants. Really, it's a dark nightmare. If the Indian coal plants become reality, life as we know it seems doomed.

INDIA'S MAD RUSH TOWARD COAL-FIRED ELECTRICITY

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. Let us learn about India and electricity, with our next guest. I'll follow that with more coal activist news in India, our biggest hope at the moment.

[exclusive interview with Shankar Sharma in audio only]

I would like to thank Justin Guay of Sierra Club India for arranging this interview. This Justin Guay article in a Sierra Club blog has all the links to take you into the wild world of the Indian Coal Rush.

Pay special attention to this article from livemint.com - associated with the Wall Street Journal. Big Indian banks are at risk, could even go under, due to the massive growth of loans to coal plant builders. More on that below.

Never mind that a political dispute on one Indian coal mining region (Telangana, formerly Hydrabad) has caused hours long blackouts in nearby States. Even the tech services out of Bangalore are threatened with blackouts due to lack of coal. There goes your tech support.

INDONESIA AND INDIA - THE COAL CONNECTION

Let's get back to Indonesia, as the biggest provider of India's coal, and the CO2 emissions. Indoensia has big coal reserves on the tropical island of Sumatra. These are undeveloped so far. Most of their big mines are in Kalimantan, their part of the island of Borneo.

The Indonsian government owns the biggest mines. Some they run directly, others they contract out. The largest private coal miner is Bumi Resources. That company has two subsidiaries: Pt Artumin Indonesia, and PT Kalmin Prima Coal, called "KPC".

India's biggest corporate conglomerate, Tata, has purchased 30% of both these Indonesian coal mining subsidiaries. Tata has big coal-fired plants with more under construction.

The mad rush to build coal plants for India would blow the mind of any misinformed Western person. Because India is long past it's own peak coal production, the country must import from countries like Indonesia and Australia.

Coal plants require whole rivers worth of water for cooling, in those big towers. But India, as we heard from Shankar Sharma, is already parched for drinking water. The only solution is to buiild new power plants near the ocean. Part of the electricity generated would be used to power desalinization plants, just to get cooling water from the ocean. That uses a lot of energy, emitting still more carbon, before any power hits the transmission lines.

Take the single state of Andhra Pradesh, along the Eastern sea coast. Sixty three coal fired power plants, 8 times current production, 56 Gigawatts of coal powered electricity is planned.

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST COAL IN INDIA

In a country famous for corruption, environmental reviews and the rights of people already living in the area are thrown out the window. Seeing themselves thrown off, their agriculture and fisheries ruined, these poor people are fighting off the coal rush as best they can.

See this article, "The Struggle Against India’s Coal Rush" by Mary Anne Hitt in Grist.

Or listen to audio of the protest battles in this week's Radio Ecoshock show.

[clip from NDTV]
That report was from NDTV. Here is a bit more:

[more from the protests]

The coal companies claim to occupy waste land, but really it is thousands of acres of wetlands with villages and fisheries ages-old, being devastated.

INDIA'S COAL PONZI SCHEME

Meanwhile, Indoensia decided to raise their coal prices to meet international market prices. Suddenly, the cheap coal supplies for India are not so cheap. As we heard, on mega-project has stopped dead in mid-construction. Another is only partly operating.

The coal builders want to raise electricity rates, breaking promises. Consumers are up in arms, the government is dithering.

There are signs this Indian coal plant building was a kind of real estate ponzi scheme. With set-backs from public protests, court rulings and escalating coal costs, some projects are heading toward bankruptcy. This could damage or break some banks in India, whose loans to power companies rose 47% since 2009. Bank loans doubled. Another banking scandal is brewing in India. Will they ask for a government bail-out as well?

BETTER OPTIONS FOR INDIA

Most of Indian power generation comes from State government owned operations. They will likely continue to try to satisfy public demand for more power. If they keep on with coal-fired electricity, we may all be fried by greenhouse gases.

As we heard from Shankar Sharma, there are plenty of other options for India. Solar power alone has a much greater potential than all India needs.

Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute was on Radio Ecoshock discussing the problems of crop tolerance for climate change. Rice, he said, was already at the top of it's temperature range. Just two degrees added heating could threaten or end the Indian rice crop.

India is also dependent on the monsoon rains, which can be changed along with the climate. Northern India, and Pakistan, depend on the regular melting of glaciers. If those glaciers melt too fast, first floods, then an ever-lasting famine strike almost a billion people in the future.

India depends upon our climate of the past millenia, as much as well do. Coal cannot be the answer.

OUR PLAN IS TO WATCH THE PLANET DO DOWN?

People in the West need to expand their view, to see a global problem. There is no part of the world which doesn't matter. Not now.

When I visited India, trains in the South were still running on coal.

When I landed in Jakarta, the capital and mega-city of Indonesia, there was a new reef. It was formed of all the human-power rickshaws grabbed by the government, and tossed into the sea. That was modernization under the dictatorship of the early 90's.

There were two roads into central Jakarta. One was a new toll freeway, almost empty except for the odd Mercedes. Below it, a constant traffic jam of the real Indonesia, on the pot-holed free road. At that time, there was a Western-style mall downtown. Inside there was everything you might find in Dallas, including a MacDonalds.

Outside, there were army men with machine guns to keep out undersirables, most of the people.

There has been a big change since then. Indonesia threw off the worst of it's censorship. The hated Dictator was replaced with a Democracy.

But Indonesia apparently cannot control the peat fires sending dangerous burst of carbon into the world atmosphere. Cannot control world-record destruction of their tropical forest.

Indonesia plans to flood the world air with even more coal and carbon, by increasing coal mining, exports, and local burning. That is their national plan.

What is our plan, to deal with it?

Global environment organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have recognized the danger of just letting countries like Indonesia and India plunge into a coal-based economy. Both write reports you should read. Both help organize protests, and work to empower the local people displaced and polluted to death by the coal industry. Sierra Club has organized a workshop to connect coal protesters in India with coal victims in Appalachia.

We must support their work.

But really, our plan so far is to remain ignorant. To pretend that what happens on one part of the Earth will not affect us here. To pretend there is nothing we can do about it.

Is that our game? To wait, to hold conferences, to make rules nobody follows, until the climate is wrecked for all generations?

I hope we can do better than that. We have the all the renewable tools we need - to forget coal, to leave it in the ground forever.

Please join, become aware, become active, care, and act on your caring.

Feel free to visit our web site at ecoshock.org. Download our programs and send them far and wide.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for participating in Radio Ecoshock.