EXTREME ARCTIC FEAR

SUMMARY: Abrupt warming in Arctic could lead to catastrophic consequences says top scientist Dr. Peter Gleick, ICCI Director Pam Pearson, and the founder of Paleoceanography, Dr. James Kennett. Three must-listen interviews.

"What is happening in the Arctic now is unprecedented & possibly catastrophic."

That's the Tweet heard around the world at the end of February. It was picked up by the Independent newspaper in the UK, and many other places in the alternative and climate-savy media. Robert Hunziker did a strong piece about it in CounterPunch called "The Arctic Turns Ugly".

The Tweeter is a world-known scientist. Dr. Peter Gleick is a member of the US National Academy of Science, he's a MacArthur Fellow, and President of the Pacific Institute. He was a guest on Radio Ecoshock in March 2014 (find the blog and links for that audio here).

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

Or listen on Soundcloud right now.



DR. PETER GLEICK WARNS OF POSSIBLE ARCTIC CATASTROPHE

Why is it warming so much - is it just "El Nino" or is it really climate change? Generally, scientists say El Nino affects the Pacific, but not the Arctic. Most of the strange warming in the Arctic this past winter (with record low sea ice) is due to our heating the atmosphere, and not El Nino.

I ask Peter Gleick, why he is alarmed about this, and is that concern shared by other scientists?

Dr. Peter Gleick

The United Kingdom has practically been buried by storm after record-breaking storm this winter. Peter Gleick thinks abnormal weather is directly connected to big changes in the Arctic. That's the new understanding, led by scientists like Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University. The Jet Stream has been altered by the fact that there is less temperature difference between the poles and the equatorial zones. The oceans are hotter. The land is hotter, and in some places drier. All these things change the weather.

I worry an abrupt shift in climate could happen, and the corporate media would still bury us in Donald Trump and the Kardashians. Do you think climate silence is a conspiracy by a few major media corporations - or is it possible that all of us are so addicted to fossil fuels, we really don't want to know?

To be honest, I can barely bring myself to read the latest news. Maybe the problems in the Arctic are just too big to comprehend, or just too scary to face? Is it worthwhile to keep fighting, if all we can do is slow down the loss - and the damage, for the next generation?

There is, says Gleick, a big difference between a civilization facing severe challenges as the Earth warms, and a planet where climate changes so far and so fast that civilization cannot cope or adapt. We'll have to make major efforts to adapt to what we have already done. We can't continue to make it worse. So "yes" it is worth keeping up the fight.

Let's say Greenland ice loss doubles or triples, and the Arctic sea ice disappears for most of the year. Gleick agrees nobody knows what would happen. When we change the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are running a giant experiment on the Earth. It's already out of control.

Gleick is a senior scientist, recognized around the world. When he suggests a "catastrophe" might be developing, is that language too extreme? He tells us that again, no one can say for sure, but our current path is taking us to climate changes so extreme it could easily become a catatastrophe.

Find out more about Dr. Peter Gleick, at the Pacific Institute. The web site is pacinst.org. Peter is author of many scientific papers and nine books, many of them reporting on world freshwater resources.

Download or listen to this 13 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Peter Gleick in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

You can Tweet out this interview with Peter Gleik using this tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/h53exrb

PAM PEARSON - CROSSING THRESHOLDS OF THE CRYOSPHERE

A surprising amount of Planet Earth is frozen. It's been that way for millions of years, all during our life and evolution. Last December, the world's leading experts on this frozen land and sea - warned Earth is heading into irreversible loss in the cryosphere. Nothing short of an ice age can avoid incredible changes that will re-arrange sea levels, cities, and life as we know it. Practically nobody heard them.

Scientists and civil servants who know this danger gathered into a largely volunteer group called the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, known as ICCI. They've issued a report called "Thresholds and Closing Windows, Risks of Irreversible Cryosphere Climate Change". We are joined by one of the co-ordinators of that report, Pam Pearson, the Director of ICCI. In fact, she founded this network of ice science specialists just as the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks failed.

Pam Pearson

Get an overview and link to download report "Thresholds and Closing Windows" here.

Here is what the ICCI says in a summary about this report:

"Policy makers and the general public alike now largely accept that the Arctic, Antarctica and many mountain regions already have warmed two-three times faster than the rest of the planet. What is less understood, outside the scientific community, is that the very nature of the cryosphere – regions of snow and ice – carries dynamics that once triggered, in some cases cannot be reversed, even with a return to lower temperatures or CO2 levels."

The Cryosphere breaks down into 4 important components, all acting differently on different time scales:

1. Ice sheets (polar land-based ice)

2. Mountain glaciers (retreating everywhere around the world)

3. Permafrost (up to 20% of the Earth's land mass is "permanently" frozen, except it's not. It's thawing.)

4. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice (floating on ice surface, does not add to rising seas, but does increase warming when melting back and exposing darker ocean water to sunlight.)

The report also covers Polar Ocean acidification.

I think the first thing to grasp is that politics and propaganda can't change a simple fact of physics: once the temperature goes over 0 degrees C, or 32 Fahrenheit, water changes state from ice or snow to a liquid. We can't talk our way out of that. The report says:

"Cryosphere climate change is not like air or water pollution, where the impacts remain local and when addressed, allow ecosystems largely to recover. Cryosphere climate change, driven by the physical laws of water’s response to the freezing point, is different. Slow to manifest itself, once triggered it inevitably forces the Earth’s climate system into a new state, one that most scientists believe has not existed for 35–50 million years."

The Arctic has been unbelievably hot this past winter. It rained in the dark of December, and I just read the Arctic February was more like the temperature expected in June.

But the ice-world is not just thawing at the Poles. I remember years ago the famous nature TV star Steve Irwin lamenting that tropical glaciers were disappearing. Now this report says that even if the Paris climate deal is carried out, we can still expect: "Complete loss of most mountain glaciers."

IRREVERSIBLE LOSS OF ICE

The Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, DID say that many aspects of climate change are "largely irreversible on human time scales." But they buried that on page one thousand and thirty three of a fat report that hardly anyone reads!

About two dozen scientists published an open letter in the Guardian newspaper last December, urging more action to protect the cryosphere, at the Paris climate talks.

I found it fascinating that this ICCI report devoted a chapter to acidification of the polar seas. We know oceans become more acidic due to a chemical reaction with the carbon dioxide we keep adding to the atmosphere. But I haven't seen much about this at the Poles. It's happening even worse there, as colder water can absorb more carbon, which becomes carbolic acid. Northern fisheries and all marine life are threatened by this change.

THAWING PERMAFROST

I've done several shows on thawing permafrost. Scientists in Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Alaska are most interested, but so are the people who live in those lands full-time. Is there a tipping point where once permafrost starts to go, it can fuel it's own further thawing? Apparently so.

The ICCI report says of permafrost thaw: "any carbon release [is] not reversible even with [a] new Ice Age, except on geologic time scales." I found that in a couple of places in the report. Even a new Ice Age may not be able to return Earth to the state known for millions of years! Most scientists say that the next possible date for an ice age, based on the tilt of the Earth's axis, - that ice age will not happen due to the warming gases we have already added to the atmosphere. So count that out.

You can find out more about melting permafrost as a driver to global climate change here.

WHAT ABOUT THE FROZEN METHANE - THE CLATHRATES?

One thing I found missing in this report is the threat of melting of frozen methane on the sea-bed, known as clathrates. Other scientists see clathrates as a likely driver in past extinction events. Why isn't it in this ICCI report? Pam tells us the science about clathrate melting is not yet sure. Some scientists say that for now, the methane released in Arctic waters is likely to be absorbed in the water column, before it reaches the surface and the atmosphere. Others, like Dr. Shahkova, say their research shows methane is already being released in the Arctic, more and more.

The authors of the ICCI report already had four irreversible certainties to report. They didn't want to add the clathrate problem until more finished science is in. Some of their scientists disagreed. It's not settled. See what our next guest, Dr. James Kennett has to say!

ABANDONING OUR COASTAL CITIES - IS THAT "ADAPTING"?

Here is one more paragraph from the stunning introduction to this report "Thresholds and Closing Windows":

"Adaptation to the levels of projected climate-related disruption, particularly sea-level rise that cannot be halted and accelerates over the centuries, simply will not be possible without massive migration and other changes to human centers of population and infrastructure, that will carry enormous economic and not least, historic and cultural costs."

Basically: humans will have to leave their coastal cities behind, and the some of the most fertile near-ocean river estuaries that now support many millions of people.

According to this ICCI report: "The only way fully to avoid these risks is never to let temperatures rise into these risk zones at all." After the climate is broken, and the cryosphere starts it's unstoppable melt, there is no way to "fix" it.

Find out more about the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative at iccinet.org.

Download or listen to this 27 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Pam Pearson in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

You can Tweet out this interview using this tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/hauvzt6

DR. JAMES KENNETT - ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE FOUND IN THE PAST

Just 10 years ago, scientists told me melting the world's ice system would take thousands of years. Since then, with the shocking ice loss at both poles, we're not so sure. Abrupt climate change is possible. We're about to explore what can happen within one lifetime - that has already happened in the ancient past.

To find the clues, we dig into the sea bed with a founding expert in the field. Our guest is recognized as the father of that science, called Paleoceanography. He started publishing in the 1960's. He wrote the standard college textbook "Marine Geology", and founded a journal on this subject.

Dr. James Kennett

Dr. James Kennett is Emeritus Professor of Marine Geology and Paleocoeanography, in the Earth Science Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

For me, the startling results of this study, published October 2015 in the Journal Paleoceanography, is what could happen in just 50 years, easily within a single lifetime.

The paper name sounds very technical, but don't let that scare you off this interview. Kennett explains things very clearly, and it's one of the most important interviews I've done recently. The title is: "Abrupt termination of Marine Isotope Stage 16 (Termination VII) at 631.5?ka in Santa Barbara Basin, California".

You can read about this Santa Barbara Basin research in this helpful AGU article by Julie Cohen.

We learn in this paper that about 630,000 years ago, there was a relatively rapid shift out of a cold glacier period, to an interglacial period that was a lot warmer. The whole process took about 700 years - BUT it started with an abrupt temperature rise in only 50 years! Kennett tells Julie Cohen:

“Of the 13 degree Fahrenheit total change, a shift of 7 to 9 degrees occurred almost immediately right at the beginning.”

WHEN YELLOWSTONE BLEW UP

What do catastrophic events in Yellowstone Park have to do with all this? Well first of all, Kennett has studied and written papers on the Yellowstone Caldera, the giant hole in the ground blown out in an ancient explosion. He told science journalist Julie Cohen:

“Our tests showed that this particular ash was ejected from the Yellowstone volcanic caldera in Wyoming, which has exactly the same fingerprint. This huge caldera formed about 630,000 years ago, with most of the enormous volume of ash blown to the east. However, this eruption was so explosive that the ash reached the Santa Barbara Basin, forming a layer one to two inches thick. The discovery of this ash helped with dating the core.”

Kennett tells Radio Ecoshock listeners there were in fact two gigantic blasts at Yellowstone, about 200 years apart. The first was followed by a cloud that rolled around the Northern Hemisphere, blocking out the summer sun, and creating an instant cooling, similar to a "nuclear winter". The second created an even longer constant winter.

ANOTHER SCIENTIST WORRIED ABOUT CLATHRATES AND ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE

Some of our listeners are deeply worried about much more global warming methane being released in our current climate shift. This paper talks about: "repeated discharges of methane from methane hydrates associated with both ocean warming and low sea level." Did that methane erupt from the West Coast of North America, or from the Arctic? Kennett says more methane has been measured all down the Canadian and American West Coast in recent years, bubbling up from the sea floor. Hotter oceans are already starting the first signs of clathrate melting. It's happening off the U.S. East Coast too.

This seasoned scientist is deeply concerned about the potential super warming effect of methane releases, as the oceans warm. He's not shy to tell us that, and you should listen. Dr. Kennett suggests that melting clathrates likely triggered the rapid 50 year warming found about 630,000 years ago. But we do not know for certain yet.

This paper did not speculate on a comparison of this 50-year shift a few hundred thousand years ago, and human-induced warming today. But personally, I wonder if we will see a similar deglaciation within a single human lifetime. Have we already entered this process?

I wonder what climate modellers like David Archer will think, after his book "The Long Thaw". Is there disagreement about how fast deglaciation can take place? Yes and no, says Kennett. Everyone who studies ice knows it can take hundreds to thousands of years for a giant glacier like the one covering Greenland to melt. On the other hand, he tells us, there is a big scientific consensus that quite rapid temperature changes have taken place many times in the past. It's both.

After the call, Jim told me that their research team wants to return to the Santa Barbara Basin to drill even deeper cores. These would tell us a lot about the history of Earth's climate and life, including methane releases, going back 1.2 million years. However, there is a lot of oil and gas drilling in that same basin, plus a very environmentally concerned community in California. So far, the scientists have not received permission to go back and open up this critical chapter in Earth's records.

Dr. James Kennett has published hundreds of papers, starting in 1962 right up to the present.

Download or listen to this 21 minute interview with Dr. James Kennett in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

You can Tweet out this Kennett interview using this tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/zd9mwrk

Here is a You tube video on abrupt climate change: "Expecting the Unexpected" with senior scientists like Richard Alley warning us all.

EARTH NOW WARMING FIFTY TIME FASTER

Here's an important article in the UK Guardian newspaper "Earth now warming 50X faster than coming out of last ice age".

That article says:

"What humans are in the process of doing to the climate makes the transition out of the last ice age look like a casual stroll through the park. We’re already warming the Earth about 20 times faster than during the ice age transition, and over the next century that rate could increase to 50 times faster or more. We’re in the process of destabilizing the global climate far more quickly than happens even in some of the most severe natural climate change events."

This paper, led by R.E. Kopp, is covered here in the Real Climate blog here.

The full citiation for the new science is:

R.E. Kopp, A.C. Kemp, K. Bittermann, B.P. Horton, J.P. Donnelly, W.R. Gehrels, C.C. Hay, J.X. Mitrovica, E.D. Morrow, and S. Rahmstorf, "Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pp. 201517056, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517056113

The actual paper abstract is here.

That was one fully loaded Ecoshock show. I hope you found it useful. You can download all our past programs as free .mp3 files from our web site at http://www.ecoshock.org/ You can also listen to our more recent programs, for free, using the player at our soundcloud page.

Alex Smith, your host and producer at Radio Ecoshock.

Crashing Climate Change

SUMMARY: Climate scientist Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa rejoins Alex Smith to investigate the latest record heat, melting, and emissions. Are we already entering an extreme climate shift?

Among the news covered:

* 2015: hottest first 3 months ever

* the new highest carbon dioxide levels ever recorded

* methane and melting permafrost in Russia

* record extreme heat in Spain, Portugal and Italy

* will the California drought last 30 years? (and is it time to get out)

* Australians lose billions with heat waves (even indoor workers affected)

* Canadian scientists protest government muzzling

* Arctic sea ice at new record low for May

* Obama approves Shell Arctic drilling

* even more ice loss in Antarctica then we knew.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



From Pole to Pole, and around the world, climate news is streaming in, and it's not good. We are crashing into the age of global warming.

Here to help us is one of our favorite guests, scientist Paul Beckwith. Paul has two Masters degrees, and is currently working on his PHD in climate science at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

I began this show by saying: "Paul there's so much hot climate news, it's very hard to keep up. I keep expecting somebody like CNN will start the first 24/7 climate news station. That's the level of coverage we need now, don't you think?"

That turned out to be too true. Hardly had we hung up the phone last Friday, that news poured in about more than a dozen killed by extreme flooding in Oklahoma and Texas. Eleven inches of rain fell in the Houston area in 24 hours. Even concrete bridges were knocked out of the way by the raging flood waters.

As Scientific American reported, "Climate Change may have souped up the record-breaking Texas deluge." May have? The United Nations IPCC and many other climate scientists released papers on the advent of extreme weather now that the climate system is breaking down. Extreme rainfall events have been happening around the world. We know the role that increased water vapor in a hotter world plays, and we know the heated oceans play a part too. It's not a secret.

Maybe it's still a secret in Texas and Oklahoma, who keep voting in climate deniers to Congress, like Senator James Inhofe. I have to wonder what it will take to get the average American to wake up and stop voting for people who stop action to save us from even worse climatic events.

Also on the weekend, the supreme heat wave hitting India. It's especially bad in the Southern Indian states, where temperatures hit 48 degrees, and then flirted with 50 degrees C in some places (188-120 degrees Fahrenheit). More than a thousand died. In our interview, Paul Beckwith tells us why babies and seniors tend to die first.

The Indian government advised people to stay inside. Let me tell you, I've been to India, and to Southern India. Millions of people must work every day, or begin the process of starvation for their families. Or course they are going to work in the heat. They must. And many die. Air-conditioning? Don't forget at least 200 million people in India don't have any access to electricity. People in developing countries die because of our carbon-rich lifestyles. It makes me angry.

Anyway, let's go through just some of the top climate stories, as we move around the globe, starting with two very disturbing records. First this.

RECORD LEVELS FOR CO2

"New Records For Atmospheric CO2

"CO2 averaged 404.11 parts per million the week beginning May 3, a new weekly record.

Since we are now passing the annual spring peak, this record will probably stand until next spring. The week beginning May 10 averaged just under 404. The reading of 404.54 on May 16 set a new single-day record."

My comment: It's no big surprise. This whole civilization is based on transferring fossil fuels from underground into gases in the sky. That's what we do...expect to read this story every year.

THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2015 MARKS A NEW RECORD FOR WORLD HEAT

"The first quarter of 2015, a transcendental for the fight against climate change year, has set a new world record high temperatures in the recent history of the Earth.

Data from the National Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicate that in March recorded the highest temperature for this time of year since 136 years ago were initiated record, surpassing the previous record, 2010, at 0.05 ° C. The first quarter of 2015 was the warmest period of history in the middle of the land and ocean surfaces in the world, at 0.82 ° C above the average of the twentieth century, surpassing the previous record-from 2002 to 0, 05 ° C.

The average land surface temperature was also overall record for the January-March period. Most of Europe, Asia, South America, East Africa and western North America have had an onset of warmer than normal year, according to the official news agency of the United States.

Regarding the data of the surface of the oceans, last quarter marked the third highest level in the period of 136 years of record, 0.53 ° C above average."

Get another take on this story here. Maybe every year won't break the records, but most will.

Let's go to the regional view, starting with this story out of Russia.

CARBON TIME-BOMB IN SIBERIA THREATENS CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE

"A DEVASTATING and sudden acceleration of climate change which is currently being sparked could result in 'awful consequences', a leading scientist has warned.

"Climate change expert Professor Sergey Kirpotin, [in Tomsk] 51 said this could result in 'awful' consequences.

'Bogs are extremely important for humanity. They function as a sort of natural freezer as they don't let the carbon build up in the atmosphere,' he told The Siberian Times.

'However, the permafrost in northern areas of western Siberia has started melting. As the permafrost thaws, it creates new lakes and old ones get bigger.

"All the organics trapped in permafrost start decomposing rather quickly.

"Obviously, a lot of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are released into the atmosphere.

"Methane is a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.'"

EXTREME RECORD-BREAKING TEMPERATURES IN SPAIN (and Portugal, Sicily)

Here's a headline from one of my favorite weather guys, and repeat Radio Ecoshock guest, Dr. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground:

"Jeff Masters: extreme, record-breaking temperatures in Spain

All-Time May Heat Record for Europe Falls For the 2nd Time This Month

by Jeff Masters, wunderblog, May 14, 2015

An extreme May heat wave unprecedented in European recorded history has invaded Spain and Portugal, bringing the hottest May temperatures ever recorded on the continent. According to the Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, at least four stations in the Valencian Community of eastern Spain hit temperatures today in excess of the previous European May heat record set just eight days ago -- a 41.9 °C (107.4 °F) reading at Catenanuova, Sicily (Italy) on May 6. Today's European record-breaking May temperatures in Spain included:

Carcaixent: 42.9 °C (109.2 °F)

Xativa: 42.7 °C (108.9 °F)

Algemesi: 42.6 °C (108.7 °F)

Valencia: 42.6 °C (108.7 °F)

Many stations in Spain's Valencian community went above their June records, and were near their all-time records for any month. The record set at Valencia Airport today was 6.6 °C (11.9 °F) above the previous highest May temperature, was 4.4 °C (7.9 °F) higher than the record for June, and was the 3rd hottest temperature since records began in 1869 for any month!

This week's heat wave began yesterday, when hot air from North Africa flowed northwards over Spain and Portugal, setting all-time May heat records at Madrid, Sevilla, Cordoba, Ciudad Real, Granada, and many other cities. Portugal beat its all-time May heat record with a 40.0 °C (104.0 °F) reading at Beja EMA (old record: 39.5 °C, 103.1 °F, at Regua on May 28, 2001). The most remarkable record yesterday, however, was from the Canary Islands to the southwest of Spain, where Lanzarote Airport hit 42.6 °C (108.7 °F), breaking its old record for the entire month of May by 6 °C (10.8 °F)! The old record was 36.6 °C (97.9 °F) on May 24, 1986."

NOAA: 90% CHANCE OF EL NINO

The last big El Nino we experienced caused new records in heat, during the winter of 1997/98. That was the year Indonesian peat fires turned that country into one of the world's biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The smoke covered most of southeast Asia. What will burn down this time?

Here is how our recent guest Robert Marston Fanney described it in Robert Scribbler's Blog:

"Well, it’s official. According to NOAA’s May 14 update, we are now looking at a 90 percent chance that El Nino conditions prevail through Northern Hemisphere Summer and a greater than 80 percent chance El Nino will last throughout all of 2015..."

RELATED: CARBON EMISSIONS INCREASE RISK OF U.S. MEGADROUGHTS.

California drought continues despite weak El Nino conditions. NASA says on our current carbon course, the whole US Southwest will experience a drought like the 1930's dustbowl, but lasting for 30 or 35 years - a whole generation. That will happen this century they say. "Carbon emissions could dramatically increase risk of U.S. megadroughts" says NASA.

ARCTIC SEA ICE AT HISTORIC LOW

This from the Arctic News blog.

"THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015

Arctic Sea Ice At Historic Low

On May 20, 2015, Arctic sea ice extent was only 12.425 million square km, a record low for the time of the year since satellite measurements began in 1979."

Our guest Paul Beckwith explains it takes 80 calories (a measure of heat energy) to melt 1 gram of ice. When the ice is gone, it takes just 1 calorie to raise the temperature of water 1 degree. Theoretically, the same 80 calories of heat falling on ocean instead of ice could raise the surface temperature by 80 degrees! (It doesn't because there is mixing with cooler water below - but this shows the huge difference between having ice in the Arctic and not.

EXTREME HEAT POSES A BILLION-DOLLAR THREAT TO AUSTRALIA'S ECONOMY

I'll bet the cost is far higher, if you include loss of forests, the costs of fighting fires, the toll on farm animals and crops, etc. The key insight to this article is that extreme heat doesn't just affect outside workers. Even people who work in air-conditioned offices lose productivity. Why? Because humans don't sleep as well during hot nights.

"May 4 2015

Extreme heat poses a billion-dollar threat to Australia’s economy

When heat waves hit in summer, do you have trouble sleeping? And the next day, even though you are working in air-conditioning, are you a bit slower, your judgement a bit off, or your patience a bit frayed?

In a paper published today in Nature Climate Change, we and colleagues show that heat stress probably cost the Australian economy nearly A$7 billion in 2013-2014 through productivity losses such as those we’ve mentioned above.

That bodes ill for the future, with heatwaves forecast to get hotter and more common thanks to climate change. While we should continue to attempt to mitigate climate change, we need to take steps to adapt.

One of our most surprising findings is that you don’t have to work outside to feel the heat. Although outdoor workers report greater levels of productivity losses from heat, indoor workers aren’t immune. Poor sleep is one possible explanation."

Find the original paper in Nature here, as published online May 4th.

COLD WEATHER IS MUCH DEADLIER THAN EXTREME HEAT, STUDY SAYS

Here on Radio Ecoshock, we like to follow the truth, whether it is convenient to theories or not. So far, the greater number of deaths are still caused by cold. But that ratio will change, says Paul Beckwith, as the coldest parts of Earth appear to be warming much faster than the global average.

Just look at Alaska this past winter. It was often warmer there than in New England. We've just heard from Jonathan Mingle the same is true in the Himalayas, often called the world' Third Pole. And I've reported on news that Antarctica is melting more rapidly that we thought (more on that below).

"Cold weather is much deadlier than extreme heat, study says

Extreme weather gets more attention, but moderately cold weather is most deadly by far, a study says, analyzing deaths in 13 countries.

By KAREN KAPLAN

Extreme weather gets more attention, but moderately cold weather is most deadly by far, a study says

In the U.S., 84% of days are colder than the 'optimum,' least-deadly temperature. Extreme heat waves like the one that killed more than 70,000 Europeans in 2003 may be the most visible examples of deadly weather, but cold days actually cause more deaths than hot ones, a new study says.

After examining more than 74 million deaths that occurred in 13 countries from 1985 to 2012, researchers calculated that 7.3% of them could be attributed to cold weather and 0.4% to hot weather.

In another counterintuitive finding, extreme weather — either hot or cold — was responsible for only 11% of the weather-related deaths, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet.

'Heat stroke on hot days and hypothermia on cold days only account for small proportions of excess deaths,' the international research team wrote.

The researchers collected daily data on weather conditions, air pollution and deaths from 384 cities around the world. For each city, they calculated the temperature at which deaths were least likely to occur. All other days were compared to days with this 'optimum' temperature.

With the bulk of the days in all areas being below the ideal temperature, days rated cold but not extremely cold were blamed for the most deaths — 6.7% during the study period.

Extreme cold was responsible for about 10% of all deaths on cold days. However, extreme heat was responsible for about half of all deaths on hot days.

Although the study included data from a range of nations — Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Britain were also included — no countries from the Middle East or Africa were represented. That means the results don’t necessarily apply everywhere."

PROTESTS in Seattle re SHELL ARCTIC DRILLING

Paul and I discuss the paradox of US President Barack Obama saying that climate change is an extreme threat to the nation's security - and then approving drilling in the Arctic by Shell! What the world does not need is more fossil fuels, especially in the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

Shell has their giant platform in the Seattle harbor. Scads of Kayakers turned out to surround the rig in protest.

Photo credit: Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via AP

Shell says their drilling is perfectly safe, even though (a) their last attempt ended in a dangerous failure when their rig broke down and had to be towed back and (b) there is no reliable secondary drilling rig to try to stop a blowout, like the BP giant spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And remember that the Arctic also lacks the warm-water bacteria the helped eat up some of the BP oil. What spills in the Arctic stays in the Arctic, possibly for thousands of years.

Paul wonders if Obama isn't picking his battles carefully. Perhaps it will take one spill or breakdown in the Arctic to bring the public call for banning all drilling. One allowed might stop thousands of planned rigs invading the Arctic in search of more fossil fuels we cannot afford to burn.

YET ANOTHER ANTARCTIC ICE MASS DESTABILIZED

A few weeks ago I tried to wrap up all the Antarctic news with Dr. Roland C. Warner, the Tasmanian scientist. As I said at the beginning of this post, new and bad climate news just never ends. NASA now announces they've discovered another ice shelf that passed a tipping point of no return in 2009. We're just finding out about that one.

"Yet another Antarctic ice mass is becoming destabilized, scientists report

By Chris Mooney May 22

The troubling news continues this week for the Antarctic peninsula region, which juts out from the icy continent.

Last week, scientists documented threats to the Larsen C and the remainder of the Larsen B ice shelf (most of which collapsed in 2002). The remnant of Larsen B, NASA researchers said, may not last past 2020. And as for Larsen C, the Scotland-sized ice shelf could also be at potentially 'imminent risk' due to a rift across its mass that is growing in size (though it appears more stable than the remainder of Larsen B).

And the staccato of May melt news isn’t over, it seems. Thursday in Science, researchers from the University of Bristol in Britain, along with researchers from Germany, France and the Netherlands, reported on the retreat of a suite of glaciers farther south from Larsen B and C along the Bellingshausen Sea, in a region known as the Southern Antarctic Peninsula.

Using satellite based and gravity measurements, the research team found that 'a major portion of the region has, since 2009, destabilized' and accounts for 'a major fraction of Antarctica’s contribution to rising sea level.'

The likely cause of the change, they say, is warmer waters reaching the base of mostly submerged ice shelves that hold back larger glaciers — melting them from below."

Chris Mooney does great work on climate reporting. Here is another verion of that same story.

"Glaciers Are Crumbling in Southern Antarctica Faster Than Previously Thought

Victor Luckerson @VLuck

Previously stable glaciers have been melting rapidly since 2009

Multiple large glaciers that were previously not thought to be in danger of melting have been crumbling since 2009, according to a new study published in Science. Researchers have discovered that glaciers on the southern Antarctic Peninsula’s coastline have been steadily thinning over the past several years, with some dwindling by as much as 13 feet per year. The glaciers had not shrunk significantly before 2009.

The rate of melting makes the region 'the second most important contributor to sea level rise in Antarctica,'lead study author Bret Wouters told NBC News. Overall, 80 trillion gallons of water were added to ocean by the Southern Antarctic Peninsula between 2009 and 2014. Continued melting could raise sea levels by another 14 inches."

So Antarctica is into "unstoppable" melting. Greenland is pouring ice water into the sea at terrific rates. How far is sea level really going to rise? I recall a few months ago Paul Beckwith put out a You tube video asking if it's possible the world might experience 7 meters (!!) of sea level rise by 2070. That's 22 feet.

At the time I really didn't get it. In this interview, Paul explains his methods and reasoning, and now I wonder if he isn't right. We know for sure that scientists who take a linear view are kidding themselves and everyone else. If we say there is 3 centimeters of sea level rise now, and then extend that to the rest of the century, it looks like a meter of sea level rise by 2100. That's what the IPCC has said.

But once you find out that melting is doubling every few years, that's all nonsense. We'll get a lot more than that! Check out how Paul explains it, in this interview. Or watch Paul's explanation in this You tube video.

CANADIAN SCIENTISTS PROTEST MUZZLING BY THE GOVERNMENT

As I've said before on Radio Ecoshock, if I want to get a quote or explanation of climate research by Canadian government scientists, I have to submit my questions in advance. That request is sent to the Office of the Prime Minister, where junior know-nothings will tell the scientist what to say - a few weeks after the news has passed.

Now Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken his religious fundamentalism, and his love for the Tar Sands, much further. It's not just climate scientists who are muzzled, but all sorts of people, including biologists and more. Research paid for by the Canadian tax payer is hidden away, made secret. It's something Stalin would do.

In the past two weeks there have been multiple demonstrations by government scientists and workers demanding the right of free speech. It's easy. Just as the American scientists do (after the bravery of Dr. James Hansen) - the scientist merely has to say they are speaking for themselves, and not the Canadian government.

It's been sad to see scientists in their lab coats out with signs, demanding basic human rights. Shame on the government of Stephen Harper. This is an election year. A big change is needed, because Canada has joined the likes of Saudi Arabia in trying to tear down and weaken any effort to forestall the worst of climate change. Until recently, Canada did not even have a plan to reduce emissions. We love the Tar Sands! Who cares if people in India die of heat, if Texans are flooded out, if Canadian forests are ravaged by out-of-control insects. Money drives Canada.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEWS

Throughout this whole interview, we get more than snapshots of a planet in trouble. Paul gives us a lot of the reasons behind things, explanations of the way the Earth systems really work. It's an education - and that's no surprise because Paul gives lectures at the University of Ottawa. He's a teacher, a communicator, and a research. It's a rare mix.

Paul has two Masters degrees, and is working on his PHD in climate science. He's tasked himself with the specific project of investigating whether a rapid shift in our climate is possible, what would drive that, and what are the signs.

We had record heat here on Canada's West Coast last week. We're getting the hottest of summer weather in the Middle of May. Is this it? Given all we've talked about, could we be going into a shift in the global climate regime, the one Paul has been researching?

Follow Paul Beckwith on his Facebook page here.

Here are some links to just a few of Paul Beckwith's You tube videos.

Abrupt climate system change NOW: Part 1

Abrupt climate system change NOW: Part 2

Abrupt climate system change is underway.

EXTREME WEATHER Caused By Polar Warming

Global food shocks from climate disruption.

On necessity of geoengineering to cool Arctic

NEXT WEEK: EXTREME MEDICINE FOR AN EXTREME CLIMATE DISEASE

I've given you a lot of bad news this week. Next week, we'll talk about what we need to do about it.

Next week we'll talk about the Climate Pledge - a call for a mass mobilization and a change as great as America's sudden shift in 1942, to fight the Axis powers. The President told the car makers to stop making cars. Everyone, from housemakers to farmers were called to support the war effort. Over 40% of U.S. produce was grown locally, in Victory Gardens.

Now that President Barack Obama has admitted climate disruption is a much greater threat than terrorism, it's way past time to act.

You can download all of our past programs as free mp3's from our web site, ecoshock.org. There's a lot of solid science there, plus our authors and activists. You can support Radio Ecoshock by clicking on the donate button on this page, or get more options here. This program continues only by support from listeners.

SHOW ME

Following all the news in recent weeks, are we already entering a climate shift? How would we know? Those are questions I asked myself, in my newest song, called "Show Me". This piece was written with female vocals courtesy of Mike Greene of realitone.com, and Tantra, from Dmitri Sches.



You can also download this song from Soundcloud, or easily make a link to pass this music on to others.

As always, thank you for listening, and caring about your world.

Five Stories Seldom Told

SUMMARY: Science fiction author Robert Marston Fanney selects 5 stories of science truth from his Robert Scribbler's Blog. Excerpts from oil guru Nate Hagens.

What is really going on? What are the big stories the media leaves out, while they fill the news with quirky headlines and fluff? All over the world, from pole to pole, the Earth and her species are going through big changes. The atmosphere is trapping heat into the oceans, air, and land.

This week I'm going to cover five of those big stories, with the help of one of the world's best risk watchers. He's author Robert Marston Fanney, and his launching pad is called Robert Scribbler's Blog.

At the end, we'll squeeze in a few words about the new oil poverty creeping into our lives, with a recent talk by former financial advisor and Oil Drum editor Nate Hagens.

I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.

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

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



ROBERT SCRIBBLER ON EMERGING THREATS

We know humans and all species are about to live through a huge change not seen on this planet for over a million years. We have no memory of this planetary shift. No one has experienced it. The first stages are already happening.

As a science fiction author of Luthiel's Song and other works, Robert Marston Fanney has the imagination and ability to communicate. As a former specialist on emerging threats for the prestigious military publisher Jane's Information Group, he's learned how to research and pry into things. All of that, plus a special something else that is hard to define, leads to one of the most stimulating climate change blogs on the Net. It's called Robert Scribbler's Blog.

Robert Marston Fanney

Here's the catalog of recent blog posts we cover, or uncover:



* world-changing ocean currents

* cracks in the ice castle of Antarctica

* drought and fires in South America

* methane and blown craters in the Arctic

* the coming heat

HIDDEN CHANGES IN OCEAN CURRENTS

In an interview on KPFA radio Robert Fanney said North Atlantic current news should be a major story in the mainstream media, every night. It's not. If we went down the street asking about it, we won't find much comprehension. What makes a major driver of our weather, and civilization as we know it, so boring, so off the radar?

That KPFA radio interview with host Caroline Casey can be found here.

Here is Robert's blog on why we should worry about big climate-driven changes in ocean currents.

ANTARCTIC MELTING

I interview scientists about Antarctica, but they are often very, very cautious. In a way, science can only study the past, and barely captures the present. The future seems beyond it. What do these developments in Antarctica really mean?

I've just read a couple of papers about sea level rise expected from the melting of Antarctic ice. Some scientists suggest we might see about 1 meter of global sea level rise from Antarctica by the end of this century.

James Lovelock famously said humans might end up as a few breeding pairs huddled around a tropical Arctic ocean. It seems inevitable to me, that if we survive, humans a thousand years from now may be settled on Antarctica, as that continent is revealed by global warming.

Oh boy! - a whole new continent to plunder!

Check out Robert's most recent blog on Antarctica. And here is my feature interview on Antarctica with scientist Roland Warner from a few weeks ago on Radio Ecoshock.

SOUTH AMERICA - DROUGHTS AND A MAJOR CITY OUT OF WATER

Robert Maston Fanney, you've been one of the few bloggers who really pays attention to South America. I wonder if some of the climate disruption going on in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil may be related to changes in relatively nearby Antarctica. We know that changes in the Arctic have affected the Jet Stream, and weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

I haven't seen much science saying Antarctica is changing things in the Southern Hemisphere. That's because there is less land in the Southern Hemisphere and more oceans. In fact, the Jet Stream there has more or less intensified and moved closer to Antarctica. Scientists say that's one of the reason less rain is coming to Australia.

Let's get to what we do know for sure. Last Fall Robert raised the alarm about drinking water in one of South America's biggest cities, Sao Paulo. How many people live there, and what is happening now? I can imagine the non-stop media attention if water in New York was cut off for hours or days. Yet we hardly hear about Sao Paulo. Why?

We can definitely tie the drought in Brazil to deforestation or other changes in the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon was the constant rainmaker for Souther America, and now it's smaller and not as potent. This even affects cloud formation and rain in North Africa.

There's also been dry times, and an extended fire season in Chile. Robert just reported on that in Robert Scribbler's blog.

THE ARCTIC

Let's head to the other end of the Earth, the Arctic. There is a school of people who think methane eruptions from the Arctic sea bed could wipe out the human species in this century. Are you part of that crowd?

Right now, it is carbon emissions, coming from cities where we live, that is endangering the future of civilization and helping the on-going mass extinction of species. We'd like to put it far away, in the Arctic, but it's us, here in the "civilized" sub-tropics.

There are some strange signs in the far north. Robert tells us about dozens of craters that have appeared in Russia. They are likely methane explosions.

(The Yamal Crater, as seen above, would be miniscule compared to a Yakutia Crater reported by Russian Scientists yesterday. Image source: The Siberian Times via Vasily Bogoyavlensky.)

We talked earlier about the power of ocean currents. What is happening with warm waters entering the Arctic Ocean around Alaska, via the Barents Sea?

IS A FASTER WARMING COMING?

Let's talk about something that worries me. I keep hearing new science that suggests we may be entering a new warming phase. Things have been delayed, and now the heat is coming, this decade or the next. Here is Robert's blog on the prospect of heating: "Bad Climate Outcomes".

Let's say we get a warming event, in a single year, or over three years. What do you imagine that would look like?

Again, ocean currents may be a factor. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a cycle of warmer or cooler surface waters in the Eastern Pacific - could that play into a heating event. It may have artificially cooled us (or minimized the warming we are due for) these past few years. When that changes to El Nino, we may be a burst of heat, as the planet did in 1998. But with added global warming gases, each heating event could be hotter than the last. Always setting records.

In a way, I think some climate hawks would like to see a really visible heat wave. At least that might galvanize the world and it's leaders into action. Could it be a good thing in a way?

On the side of pessimism, we may just get a slow, slow ramping up of warming, where we don't get enough impulse to react. It's the boiling frog effect. (That's not true by the way. Frogs will jump out of boiling water, even if we don't as a civilization.)

Robert Scribbler's blog has turned into a monster. It's become really popular with those in the know, kind of a thought-leader thing. I also appreciate the community of informed commenters that have built up around it.

From Washington Grove Maryland, we've been talking with science fiction author, emerging threats specialist, and climate blogger extraordinaire, Robert Marston Fanney. In literature, he's best known for the science fiction seires called Luthiel's Song. Find out more about Luthiels's song on Facebook. His previous Radio Ecoshock interview titled "I Have A Confession to Make" continues to be downloaded by people all over the world.

Check out Robert's blog for new postings on the rampant fires in Siberia (way to early in the season for that!)(he calls it "Siberia's Road to Permaburn Hell") and his update on the terrible drought in California.

NATE HAGENS ON OIL & ECONOMY

In the little time we have left, I'm going to give you a taster of a simple but important talk by former Oil Drum editor, financial advisor and academic Nate Hagens. This is from my recording at the launch of the World Watch Institute State of the World 2015 Report, on April 13, 2015 in Washington D.C.

This is where Nate Hagens explains -through the lens of energy - why real growth ended in the 1970's for most people in Western countries. Since then, as the cost of getting energy goes up, more poverty is created. At this point, about 40% of Americans are pretty well broke, and 52% don't have enough savings to survive 3 months out of work. GDP may go up, but real wealth is declining, - a fact that is hidden by ever increasing debt.

I invite you to listen to Nate Hagens' full 25 minute talk at the World Watch Institute. You can download it as a free mp3 here.

Meanwhile, we'll zip forward to Nate's quick summary of his presentation.

Get all the details, with some video, and the full World Watch report, at www.worldwatch.org.

CAN YOU HELP THIS RADIO PROGRAM?

Thank you so much for listening to Radio Ecoshock.

If you can afford it, I can use more help from listeners to cover the costs or producing and distributing this show. I'm shy about fund-raising, but the Ecoshock account is getting low, just as we approach the summer season. The bills will keep coming in.

I have a small crew of folks who donate $10 a month - and I'm really grateful for that steady support. You can do that easily and automatically from this page.

If you prefer a one-time donation, that's great too.

I know I should do a fancy fund-raising drive, but so far just making the program has taken up most of my time. Let's see if you can help this week, to keep Radio Ecoshock going.

Meanwhile, thank you everyone for giving me the opportunity to talks with amazing minds, and stay in the loop of people who are trying to change the world for the better.

Alex

Radio Ecoshock

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Abrupt Climate Change - Yes

Scientist Paul Beckwith speaks out on Arctic methane and abrupt climate change - and ways to stave it off. Scientist Douglas McCauley, University of California: industrializing the ocean could lead to mass extinction of marine animals. Radio Ecoshock 150128

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

Or listen on Soundcloud right now!



It's a long blog this week. There are so many big stories to cover. You may have to take it in pieces. Anyone who followed all the links, and watched the videos on offer, would likely get the equivalent of a week or two of a college course on climate change.

If you came for the big story on extinction in the oceans, scroll down a couple of page/screens to my interview with Dr. Douglas McCauley.

INTO THE RED ZONE

According to one climate scientist, "We are at the extreme weather stage and rapidly heading into the red zone." That is when "all hell breaks loose". Who else says so? Your insurance company. Both Lloyd's of London and Zurich Insurance in Switzerland just warned of extreme weather events coming this year of 2015.

The climate scientist is Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa. He has two Masters Degrees, and is working on his PHD in climate science. Paul lives out the late Steven Schneider's call for scientists that communicate. I follow Paul's Tweets, Facebook page, and You tube videos to see what's new and what's hot.

Paul is this week's feature guest on Radio Ecoshock.

We've tons to talk about, after the hottest year on record, climate talks in Lima, Peru - Paul was there - and still more alarming news coming out of the Arctic.

SHOULD YOU FEAR A 50 GIGATON METHANE BURST IN THE ARCTIC?

Before we get to that important stuff, I ask for Paul's help in a little fact-checking. A couple of people seem to have misunderstandings about the possible 50 gigaton burst of methane suggested by Dr. Natalia Shahkova from the University of Alaska, and her Russian colleagues.

One You tube speaker says this 50 gig burst has already begun. As Paul tells us, that is not correct. Yes methane emissions from the Arctic are increasing due to melting of frozen methane ("clathrates") on the sea bed, and from melting permafrost. But the increased methane is in the order of millions of tons, not billions of tons (also known as gigatons.)

Another scientist on You tube says the Shakhova's 50 gigaton release could happen "any day now". Yes, that's technically true. But the eruption depends on more than just melting sea ice. It also requires some sort of undersea event, whether an earthquake, or a land-slide under the sea, for example. That would release the methane held many meters below the sediment.

I give the example of Vancouver, where seismologists say an earthquake is over-due, based on past records. They've been saying it could happen any time for the past 35 years or more. The great West Coast quake could happen tomorrow, or it could happen 200 years from now, or 500 years.

I'm not a scientist, but I think I heard the last major release of methane from under the sea is thought to be over 8,000 years ago. [See more on this from P. Beckwith below.] So don't sell your house and move to Alaska or the Yukon based solely on fear of a methane burst.

That doesn't mean I'm saying it won't happen, or that I'm not seriously concerned about rising methane levels in the Arctic. It is a mega-threat, as some Arctic scientists say. There will come a point, and we don't yet know when, that methane from the Arctic could overwhelm our own carbon dioxide emissions. We may already have crossed an unseen tipping point where this is unstoppable.

I'll have more about unseen tipping points in my coming interview with Dr. James White. Meanwhile, Paul Beckwith and other scientists in the Arctic Methane Emergency Group say we should try extreme means to restore the reflective cover of white ice on the top of the world. Paul says we could cool ocean currents going in the Arctic, while mimicking the impact of volcanoes, which can cool the Earth, or parts of it, for a few years.

One final fact check, before we head off into the real science. One scientist who needs to check his facts says in a You tube video that the British Parliament predicted all the Arctic sea ice could be gone by 2015. I thought this was really a presentation made by John Nissan of AMEG, and that the Parliamentary Committee rejected his prediction. Certainly the whole UK Parliament never met and agreed on a 2015 date for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Anway, Paul writes:

"The undersea landslide idea that Shakhova is talking about is well covered in th[is] book by [James] Kennett: "Methane hydrates in Quaternary Climate change: The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis" [published in 2003].

[online book listing here. See also this free online paper by Kennett "Role of Methane Hydrates in Climate Change: Compellling evidence and debate."]

Beckwith continues:

"In particular, there were 3 "Storegga Slides" (see it in Wikipedia) that were amongst the largest known landslides. The latest was around 8200 years ago, and they may have released large amounts of methane.

Interestingly, rapid sea level change either up or down can trigger landslides. Down, since the pressure on the seafloor decreases that could trigger a methane release and cause a landslide, and up, since glaciated continents rebound from rapid ice loss."

Here is a key passage from Natalia Shakova, taken an interview by John Mason, in the Sceptical Science blog:

John Mason, Skeptical Science:

"With respect to future events, in your EGU 2008 abstract it is stated that "we consider release of up to 50Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time". This represents a colossal quantity of gas. How quickly could such a release occur and what would be the most likely mechanism?"

Shakova:

"There could be several different triggers for massive releases: a seismic or tectonic event, endogenous seismicity caused by sediments subsiding pursuant to hydrate decay, or sediment sliding on the shelf break; the shelf slope is very steep, and the sedimentation rates are among the highest in the ESAS."

In our interview, Paul Beckwith also references an influential paper by another member of the AMEG group, Dr. Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Institute at Cambridge. Here is the listing for the paper "Climate science: Vast cost of Arctic change" in the Journal Nature. Below the title are a number of blog articles you can use to follow up.

This article from the University of Cambridge hits the bleak note: "Cost of Arctic methane release could 'size of the global economy' warn experts."

The UK newspaper the Guardian has a good article on it too. "Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe - scientist."

Do keep in mind that there is a whole school of scientists, including NASA's Gavin Schmidt and David Archer from the University of Chicago who either disagree that Arctic methane is a threat, or disagree that it warrants our attention. They suggest we keep our focus on man-made carbon dioxide, which we can control, and which will determine the fate of the earth for tens of thousands of years. Find my interview with Dr. David Archer on Arctic methane here.

METHANE COMING UP IN THE KARA SEA

Some new science out bears on what we've been talking about. Sub-sea permafrost is melting in the Kara Sea, unexpectedly releasing methane in shallow seas. This isn't the East Siberian shelf other scientists studied. How could those frozen balls of methane, the clathrates exist in such shallow water in the Kara Sea? Paul explains this well.

People who want to follow up on this story can search for the paper title: "Offshore permafrost decay and massive seabed methane escape in water depths less than 20 meteres at the South Kara Sea shelf" The lead author is Alexey Portnov.

Here is a good article about this Portnov paper.

The full paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, is available free here

Paul Beckwith adds this comment on the Kara Sea research:

"The Kara Sea info adds more support to what I have said in the past to David Archer, and goes against the mainstream view that it will take 100s of years for heat to move downward in the permafrost to cause significant thawing."

Speaking of scary, Paul pointed me to a press release from NASA about increased solar radiation in the Arctic. We talk about that. Since 1970, the amount of heat being absorbed from the sun, in the Arctic with less sea ice cover, has gone up almost 5%. That doesn't sound like much, but it's a huge bump in solar heating of the Earth, because we are talking about a gigantic area. Read about it from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science here.

OH YEAH, AND ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE IS UNDERWAY!

Here is a link to Paul's video on abrupt climate change.

The cats in this video seem distracting but (a) you can't get anything to go viral on the Net these days without cats and (b) I think it's symbolic of how distracted we all are as we discuss these amazing threats. Even while you watch, you may also be thinking of your job, a TV series you like, the next Facebook post, and some trip you'd like to takes. And oh yeah, the climate may shift so Montreal Canada feels like Miami, and crops don't grow anymore.

In our interview, Beckwith says:

"...and the probability is very high, and increasing all the time, that we will have an abrupt change. I think it's going on myself, and that's the hypothesis of my whole research."

We talk about abrupt climate changes that have happened in the past. In times 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, the Greenland ice cores show a warming of 5 to 6 degrees C within one decade. (Imagine that today!). It has gone as high as 16 degree C change in one decade or two. (Unimaginable.)

"The planet is capable of very large, rapid swings in temperature. We've changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and CO2 and temperature and things, they are increasing at least an order of magniture, at least 10 or maybe 20 times faster than anything in the geological record."

"I think there's no question that we will have abrupt warming again on this planet. The only question is 'what is the time scale?' Is it going to be 10 years? Is it going to be a hundred years? Is it going to be a thousand years?

The system does change quickly. It goes from one state to another state. I mean it's not a linear thing. There's so many non-linear feed-backs at play that the system is quite capable of switching and switching very quickly."

I strongly suggest you listen to the interview.

Download/listen to this 33 minute interview with Paul Beckwith in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

GLOBAL RISK EXPERTS WARN OF TURBULENT DECADE AHEAD

The world's biggest insurance companies agree. Check out this report from Lloyd's.

"Risks to the environment outnumbered economic threats in the report this year, with experts negatively assessing the preparations in place to cope with extreme weather and climate change."

That report was prepared for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 2015.

And then we have Zurich, another of the world's biggest insurance companies. Here are the five biggest risks rated by impact, according to a new report from Zurich:

1. Water crisis

2. Spread of infectious diseases

3. Weapons of mass destruction

4. Interstate conflict

5. Failure of climate change adaption.

I would say four out of the top five risks in terms of impact are climate-related. See if you can pick which ones. Strangely, Zurich lists biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse at only number 10 in terms of impacts!!! If we experience "ecosystem collapse" it's all over, in my opinion.

Zurich also predicts extreme weather events are likely to occur this year.

Regarding an abrupt climate change, whether stimulated by methane or not, it's a doubled-edged sword. If we could experience just a little abrupt warming, and then plateau for a while, maybe humanity would be forced to act. On the other hand, if we just slowly and gradually warm, we may experience the boiling frog phenomenon, where we go over the climate cliff bit by bit, decade by decade, without reacting.

GOOD VIDEO SERIES ON GREENLAND MELTING

During our Radio Ecoshock interview, Paul recommends You tube videos of scientist Eric Rignot talking about the rapid and unexpected melting of ice on Greenland (which will eventually flood our coastal cities). Here are the links: ERIC RIGNOT You tube videos at the AGU, on Greenland melting:

Part 1 (4 min)

Part 2 (2 min)

Part 3 (4 min)

THE LIMA CLIMATE TALKS - PAUL'S REPORT

We also discuss the results, or lack of them, at the recent Climate Conference in Lima Peru. Paul was there, giving a series of press conferences. Here are the links to several of those You tube videos.

1ST PRESS BRIEFING:

COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #1 (12-4-2014 in Lima Peru)

2ND PRESS BRIEFING:

COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #2 (12-5-2014 in Lima Peru) (Paul Beckwith briefing)

3RD PRESS BRIEFING:

COP20: Global Arctic Methane Emergency #3 (12-6-2014 in Lima Peru)

Paul's presentation (in the 2nd Press Briefing) is the best, but I also highly recommend this briefing by Stuart Scott on "Ecology Vs. Economy in the Age of Climate Change".

Paul and I get into some wild discussions about science and climate change, as we always do. This is one of my favorite interviews. I hope you think so too.

INDUSTRIALIZING THE OCEAN CAN LEAD TO A MASS EXTINCTION - Dr. Douglas McCauley

We all fear there is something terribly wrong at sea. Call it extinction, or call it something else, stories of dwindling ocean life are daily washing ashore. A new paper published in the journal "Science" says we are at a cross-roads for marine life. The lead author, and our second guest this week, is Dr. Douglas J. McCauley, head of the McCauley Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

For once this was a science story that did get out to the world. The New York Times and the BBC covered the new science on mass extinction in the ocean. But did they get it right?

The paper is "Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean." It was published in the journal "Science" on January 16th, 2015.

First of all, note the term "defaunation" rather than extinction. Basically defaunation means removing animals (the paper is about animals, not plants) from their essential services in the ocean. For example, suppose there are still sharks hiding out in some faraway reef (so they are not extinct) - but not enough sharks left to clean up weakness in the food system.

McCauley gives the example of garbage workers. Suppose there are only 100 left in the world. Technically, they are not "extinct". But mountains of garbage pile up everywhere, because there aren't anywhere near enough workers to carry out their function.

This defaunation is happening at sea. It's very hard to say for sure that a species is extinct, everywhere in the hard-to-reach ocean. But we can say they are not where we expect them to be, doing the things we expect them to do.

INDUSTRIALIZING THE SEA

That's point one. The second warning, and this is really new from the paper by McCauley and his colleagues at Stanford and Rugers. Their overview of a huge collection of papers on threats to sea life finds that we are on the verge of industrialization of the ocean.

There are under-sea mines, and many more planned. Mass feeding lots, similar to cattle feed lots, already exist for Tuna. We plan to harvest tidal energy with underwater propellers looking like undersea wind mills. Some countries cramped for land have already built things like airports (Japan) into the sea. We are stripping away protective mangrove swamps to build suburbs in Asia.

The fishing industry is already heavily industrialized. Masses of trawlers are essentially bull-dozing the bottom of the sea flat. It's wrecked the Baltic and parts of the North Sea. Chinese fisheries are flattening all around that country. The Canadian Grand Banks were wiped clean of cod with trawling. That's an industrial fishery. Add in the ability to use sonar, and even satellite guidance, to find fish at any depth.

So McCauley and his co-authors discovered that we are at a knowable point in the history of marine life. Essentially, we are about 200 years behind where humans are on land with the industrial revolution that began in the late 1700's. We know what happened, and is still happening to the species on land as we industrialize.

Image courtesy of University of California

About 500 land animals have gone extinct in the last 100 years or so. Marine scientists think only about 15 animals have gone extinct in the ocean, although, as I said above, it's harder to tell.

I ask McCauley point blank if we are entering the 6th Great Extinction in the sea. The answer is "not yet". But we are headed there.

Creating giant marine parks (sea animals need more space than land animals) is one solution. We've begun to do that, but not yet on a scale to prevent more extinctions.

Marine protected areas also face the challenge of climate change. As ocean waters warm (and that's where most of our excess heating is going) - some marine species can move toward the poles to find cooler water. Sadly, they can't take the estuaries, shallow seas or other breeding places with them. We just don't know what will happen with the hotter seas.

There are other very desperate reasons to hope, not mentioned in this paper. For example, the large scale industrialization of the ocean may not happen. Maybe we run out of fossil fuels, or this civilization has to retreat, due to economic or climatic failures.

We also talk about another study about mass die-offs just came out in mid-January, led by scientists at the University of California Berkeley, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy. They found increasing mass-die offs in the past 75 years. Fish and marine invertebrates are among the hardest hit.

And then we have another study released last November, this time led by scientists from the Smithsonian Institute. They warn dead zones are increasing, and will greatly expand as the climate warms. Are these dead zones tiny, or are they signficant in the big picture of threats to ocean life?

The paper by McCauley et. al. doesn't attempt to catalog every threat to sea life. I'm alarmed by the huge masses of plastic particles in the sea, and by radiation leaking out of Fukushima, but those aren't in this work. Instead, the point of this new science is to ask "where are we" on the timeline of industrialization and extinction, when it comes to marine animals.

The answer seems to be that we are on a precipice. The optimists (including McCauley) say we can see what happened on land, and so wisely avoid the same slaughter of species in the oceans. The pessimists will say we will fall off the cliff, because we are too blind to change. Is the ocean cup of life half empty, or half full?

PERMACULTURE IN BELIZE

I got a message from our friend Albert Bates, at the Farm. They still need another half dozen students to pull off the planned permaculture workshop in Belize. Personally, I think the carbon from flying to Central America might overcome the carbon saved by permculture. But maybe not. This is not just any course. It features biochar, and knowledge from Latin America, plus Mr. Bates himself. Albert is at the center of a flurry of activity teaching how to restore carbon to the soil.

If those who attend eventually become soil-masters and permaculture leaders themselves, then the carbon savings could snowball. It's your call, if you want to get the in-depth grip on permaculture and soil/climate management.

Albert writes:

"We offset everyone's air travel with the trees we will plant and biochar we will make in Belize, no worries. My guarantee."

Here is the blurb, with some powerful guests:

============================================

"come to Belize...

Travel far south; to the back of beyond; to a remote valley accessible only by dugout canoe. Study permaculture surrounded by a lush, productive forest of edibles, medicinals and tropical hardwoods. Eat organic food, sleep in dorms powered by renewable energy, bathe in a sparkling pure river....

Teachers/speakers:

ALBERT BATES STARHAWK MARISHA AUERBACH CHRISTOPHER NESBITT

Permaculture Design Certificate Course Dates Feb 21 to Mar 6 2015 Place: Maya Mountain Research Farm San Pedro Columbia, Belize

To register, please see http://www.mmrfbz.org or contact Christopher at info(a)mmrfbz.org.

===============================================

There you go, my first classified ad in the Radio Ecoshock blog. Now Albert owes us, perhaps he'll show up as a guest after the course. We have lots to talk about, especially if restoring carbon to the soil is basically humanity's greatest hope.

Next week we'll talk more science, about abrupt climate change, and those invisible tipping points.

Thanks for all your encouraging emails and tips! Feedback from listeners enriches my life, and this program. Find a handy "Contact Me" form at my web site, http://www.ecoshock.org/contact/

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

Why Lie to Ourselves About Methane?

Welcome to another packed Radio Ecoshock show. I'm your tour guide, Alex Smith.

This week we look into why the U.S. government, and governments around the world, continue to kid themselves about the power of methane, the number two global warming gas in the atmosphere. With a threat this serious, coming from the melting Arctic, warming oceans, fracking, agriculture, and all or natural gas use - it isn't "kidding". It is lying to ourselves at great cost. A group of esteemed scientists have written to top levels of American government calling for a change toward reality on methane.

Then we'll investigate some of the costs of carbon pollution, with seasoned journalist and author Mark Shapiro. His new book is called "Carbon Shock" The show wraps up with a turn toward the spiritual, a kind of scientific change in our whole story. Andrew Beath is our guest.

Onward and upward.

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

Or listen to/download this program right now on Soundcloud!



SCIENTISTS WARN AMERICAN GOVERNMENT ON METHANE

While the world's focus is on carbon dioxide, a group of powerful scientists have written an urgent letter to the directors of five U.S. government agencies. More than 21 scientists wrote the letter on July 29th, 2014. It's just now surfacing in public, brought to my attention by Paul Beckwith.

The scientists worry the American government, like other governments around the world, is not paying attention to the big risks posed by methane. That's methane from the Arctic, as you've heard on this program, but also methane from gas fracking, which our guest Robert Howarth warned us about years ago.

One of the lead agents behind this letter is Anna Moritz, known as Mickey. She's a legal fellow at the Center for Biological Diversity. Moritz has published a lot, including as co-author of this just released paper on "The Worst Case and the Worst Example: An Agenda for Any Young Lawyer Who Wants to Save the World from Climate Chaos". She's also a co-author of the university level book "Climate Change: A Reader".

This letter is one of those rare historic and extraordinary warnings from scientists to top levels of government. It reminds me of the letter written by Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt, warning atomic power is real, and could be used to make a super-bomb never seen before on Earth. Now we have the methane bomb.

Read the letter for yourself here.

THE METHANE SITUATION: A LAYMAN'S PRIMER

I am not a scientist. I've learned from my guests and research. I welcome any corrections to this primer.

Here is the situation in a nutshell: carbon dioxide is measured as a global warming by it's climate forcing over a 100 year period. That is given the value of 1. There are other greenhouse gases that are many time more powerful than carbon dioxide, so they get a higher number which is meant to compare them to CO2.

Methane (CH4, also known as "natural gas") deteriorates in the atmosphere, devolving into more carbon dioxide, among other things. The life of methane at it's most powerful levels is around 12 years. In order to compare methane to carbon dioxide, it was given a comparative number of 20. If we look at the warming potential of methane over 100 years, pound for pound, or kilo by kilo, it would be 20 times more powerful at trapping warmth than CO2.

Here's the trouble: during it's (approximate) 12 year life in the atmosphere, methane is actually at least 86 times as powerful as the same amount of CO2, according to the most recent science, and it's very good and dependable science. Other scientists suggest that for very short periods, perhaps a year, methane could be 150 times more powerful than CO2, or even higher. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has moved a bit, raising methane's Global Warming Potential (GWP) from 20 to 34 - but that's still based on 100 years, and is still misleading and dangerously low.

Previously, say in the 1990's, governments took the long-term view of global warming. It was something that would develop over centuries, and wouldn't likely be seen much until later in this century. They talked about limits for greenhouse gases for the year 2100. Then big impacts of climate change showed up at the START of this century. Arctic sea ice melted away to levels not seen in human history. Glaciers began to disappear. The weather went strange, heat records climbed, ocean acidity rose, and the weather went wonky. It turns out the Earth's sensitivity to greenhouse gases was far great than science previously thought.

So now it matters very much what happens in the short term, including in the 12 years methane is in the atmosphere. Worse: that 12 year term assumes methane appears, and then disappears. But what if we have a steady source of methane, something that keeps on replenishing the load in the atmosphere, or even increases it annually, and decade by decade?

We've found many such steady sources of methane. As the human population increases, and there is more demand for meat all over the world, methane from crops (like rice paddies) and from animals (principally cows) goes up. Let's add the big expansion of natural gas drilling, especially fracking. Over-flights measuring methane in the United States found certain fracking regions are "super-emitters" of CH4. "Natural gas" is also leaking from transmission pipelines, and aging city delivery systems. We've had several guests on Radio Ecoshock explain this, including Dr. Robert Howarth (blog and interview here), Dr. Adam R Brandt from Stanford (blog item and interview available here) and Scott Miller (interview here)

Paradoxically, the Environmental Protection Agency has a chart on their site saying methane emissions from the United States have actually gone down a little in the 12 years from 1990 to 2012. They don't post more recent information, which would include fracking. Radio Ecoshock guest Scot Miller from Harvard was part of a group of scientists that found real methane emissions in the atmosphere are at least 50% greater than EPA calculations. The EPA used a ground-up figure, trying to add up things like gas wells, wetlands, and cows. Meanwhile other scientists flew in the air and measured what was up there. It's almost like the Agency doesn't want to know, or is stuck in the past. Can this letter give them a push in the right direction?

NEW METHANE MONSTERS IN THE NORTH

Added to those human sources of methane, we have two new giants on the block. The first is frozen methane in the ocean, blobs of methane and ice called clathrates. These are found in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. The Japanese talked about mining them for energy. But the biggest threat appears to be clathrates located on shallow sea beds in the rapidly warming Arctic. There's a lot of hurried, almost desperate, research going into that now, with a focus on the shelf off the coast of Eastern Siberia. Scientists have already found funnels of methane bubbling to the surface, more than a kilometer across.

How methane erupts. Source: TerraDaily.com

Here is an interesting article about that "Arctic Seaved Methane Stores Destablizing and Venting" from TerraDaily.com.

THE "PERMAFROST" ISN'T PERMANENT

The second fearsome giant is more widespread, and possibly impossible to measure at this time. There is methane trapped below the permafrost, the permanently frozen cap covering the northern part of this planet. At least we thought it was permanent. Now with Arctic temperatures soaring 10 or even 20 degrees Fahrenheit above the previous normal, the permafrost is starting to melt. Check out this NASA factsheet on permafrost methane: "Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?" NASA is trying to monitor Arctic methane with a project called "Carve".

As I understand it, melting permafrost opens two great methane risks. The first is release of methane trapped in pockets below. This is thought to be the cause of at least two explosions and craters found recently in Siberia.

The second is more insidious. As the surface levels melt, there are plant materials that have been kept frozen for many thousands of years. These are already starting to melt, and then rot. Plant materials on the ground will release CO2. Those under the millions of shallow ponds in the Arctic will decay without oxygen, and release methane, clouds of methane.

HOW AMERICA CAN CHANGE THE METHANE MAP

For all these reasons, it is a dangerous fallacy to only count methane as "20", as though it comes up once in 100 years and then disappears. That is why a group of illustrious scientists have written the American government, asking for the higher scientific standard of 86 to be used, instead of the old number of 20.

If we use the new standard, the real risks of methane become apparent, and that adds heat to the government's responsibility and effort to limit methane emissions in every way we can. It certainly means new regulations to force gas drilling companies to stop venting methane, at drill and storage sites, and to repair leaking equipment and pipelines. It certainly means going further to capture methane from land-fill sites, and push an international effort to change agriculture to minimize methane emissions.

I ask Mickey Moritz why the standard hasn't changed already. After all, as she tells us, other standards for gases have been changed as new information comes along. We can guess the natural gas industry, with all its political donations, is against the change. But Mickey also says there is a problem with international reporting. Countries calculate their emissions using the old standard of 20. If America leads the way to the new methane standard, U.S. emissions will suddenly appear to go up. The scientists suggest America could use a double accounting standard for now: a value of 86 for domestic regulation, and a value of 20 for international reporting, until that can be changed by international agreement. That can easily be done, Moritz says.

For me, and I'm sure for the scientists involved, this urgent letter is more than about book-keeping. To get the kinds of action that have any hope of saving a habitable climate, we need to stop lying to ourselves about the power of methane. It's the second largest source of warming on the planet. Paul Beckwith tells me the "Present radiative forcing of methane is 1 W/m2 [Watts per square meter] compared to 1.7 W/m2 for CO2".

Be sure and listen to this interview with Anna "Mickey" Moritz, available in CD Quality, or Lo-Fi.

Among the 21 scientists who signed this letter are some names you may recognize from Radio Ecoshock. You can find their interviews or speeches by search our program archive at ecoshock.org

* Robert W. Howarth, * J. David Hughes, * Michael C. MacCracken, * Scot M. Miller, * Drew Shindell

The letter was addressed to letter to John Holdren, Gina McCarthy, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Ernest Moniz, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, among others. That was a month and a half ago. So far there has been no reply, but Mickey thinks the wheels are turning.

When America leads on methane, we need to see the world community act in the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris. At the very least, we can stop lying to ourselves about methane.

CARBON SHOCK: THE WAY WE ALREADY PAY AND PAY TO SUBSIDIZE FOSSIL FUEL PROFITS

There are two kinds of climate denial running around: theirs and ours. Some people and politicians still say climate change isn't happening, even as extreme weather events pummel the globe. Others know global warming is coming on much too hard and too fast. That can become to a despair so deep we don't want to talk about the phoney solutions coming from business, national governments, and those failed international talks.

Despite all the green hype, carbon emissions are rising, and the increase is increasing. Face the facts: this is a human problem requiring human solutions. If you don't like the idea of new taxes on carbon, our next guest says we are already paying plenty for climate damage.

As an experienced journalist, Mark Schapiro tackles the whole messy climate problem. His new book is "Carbon Shock, A tale of Risk and Calculus on the Front Lines of the Disrupted Global Economy". Schapiro has appeared everywhere intelligent reporting is allowed, from PBS specials, to features in magazines like Harpers and the Atlantic Monthly. As an award winning environmental journalist, one of his previous books was "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products."

Here are some of the stories we talk about in this interview:

* the many ways the real cost of fossil fuels is hidden from us (direct subsidies to oil and gas companies, huge health care costs of carbon pollution, all those taxes going into roads, it's a big wild list!)

* the reasons for the California drought (one huge factor: the snow pack is now falling more as rain, and melting too fast and too early to be stored for summer crops)

* why cherries need some cold in the winter (and aren't getting it in recent years in the big California cherry orchards)

* the scandalous loop-hole in carbon accounting, where humans pretend airplanes are not a major source of emissions, and no-one has to take responsibility for aircraft greenhouse gas emissions (Schapiro alerts us to aircraft emisisons as the first shot in an international trade war over climate change)

* a few hopes for the 2015 Climate talks in Paris

* some climate initiatives "breaking out all over the world" you may not have heard about

* why some "Conservatives" want to fight climate change with carbon taxes and clean energy (no, the climate movement is not just something that happens in New York or San Francisco).

* the thorny problem of China, verging on being the world's biggest polluter, and needing still more development

Mark Schapiro is now out on a large-scale book tour to promote "Carbon Shock". He'll be blogging all over the place. Keep track of Mark and his work via his Twitter feed: @schapiro.

You can download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Mark Schapiro in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

(I apologize for mis-spelling Mark's last name in the file name, but that can't be changed at this point)

Along with the book I received a fact sheet which says "Just ninety companies are responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gase emissions". We all need to know who those biggest polluters are. It shows once again that real climate talks can't just be in New York, Lima or Paris. They need to happen in the Board Rooms of multinational corporations.

"Carbon Shock, A Tale of Risk and Calculus on the Front Lines of the Disrupted Global Economy" is just out from Chelsea Green books. Find it here.

A NEW CREATION STORY WITH ANDREW BEATH

When I consider the climate movement, it seems almost split into two camps. One is very science-oriented, fending off any suggestion of spirituality. The other is spiritual, where science is almost a side-line. While most of Radio Ecoshock is devoted to science, we all know there are deep movements within us that science can't really touch or fulfil.

I used to think if you gathered all the science-oriented people in one room, and all those concentrating on the spiritual approach in another, you would have more men in Room A, and more women in Room B. Is that sexist, or does there tend to be that difference between genders? But then, all those preachers, mullahs... old-time religion was not just created by men, to worship a man-God. It continues to promote sexism, including denying women leadership roles in the church. So it's little wonder some women are looking for spiritual alternatives.

While science has been dominated by men for a generation, there is a whole crop of really smart women scientists coming up now. It's a breath of fresh air for sure. Meanwhile more men are realizing just staying nailed to jobs and football, while avoiding our inner needs is harmful, if not fatal.

Our next guest has been a green activist for 30 years. He founded the environment group Earthways Foundation in California back in 1985. More recently, Andrew Beath has been considering our green needs for spirituality. For example, he's the author of the book "Consciousness in Action, The Power of Beauty, Love and Courage in A Violent Time." The Earthways Foundation is still going, with some helpful projects in Los Angeles, but also in Latin America. Beath was also instrumental in founding "Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs" which guides people into setting up non-profits for social change.

Beath has helped save Wetlands in L.A., and assisted in starting up Amazon Watch. He's got a long trail of organizations he helped birth.

Now Andrew is publishing a trilogy of books which look at a new story of creation, one based on the amazing discoveries of science, but also new ways of looking at the world. The Trilogy is called "The New Creation Story, Spirit, Eros, and Climate Chaos". Find out more here at the book web site.

Books One and Two are already on sale. Book Three will be released shortly. The new creation story goes right from The Big Bang to modern times, with illustrations of life in between.

Previous religions have begun with an act of God, followed by just a few thousand years of history. Then the bones of dinosaurs and the study of geology showed that timeline was flawed. Now we have amazing views into the galaxies, and with it, into deep time. We need new narrative about the beginnings of things, to know where we are.

We also discuss whether life on this planet has a consciousness, something we could call "Gaia".

We don't really know how human consciosness connects us, or why sudden waves of thought pop up all over the world. The psychiatrist Carl Jung called it "synchronicity". There are lots of people out there who hope, maybe even pray, that a wave of awareness could spread rapidly across the globe, driving us toward action not just on climate change, but in our whole relationship to nature. I ask Andrew if that is his hope, and are there any signs of it? Ever the realist, Beath says right now it looks more like we are going the wrong way. "Business as usual" is still in triumph.

But, in the end, Andrew Beath has not given up. He knows and feels the depths of our damage to the Earth. But Beath tells us: "the destruction we've caused is the catalyst for the next step in human consciousness".

You can listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock interview with Andrew Beath in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

RADIO ECOSHOCK NOW BROADCAST BY 87 STATIONS

Once again, we are totally out of time. Thanks for sticking with the program.

It's been a while since I updated our stations list, or counted them up. Good news! Radio Ecoshock is now broadcast on 87 non-profit radio stations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom (we can still say that), Australia, and now Paris, France.

You make it all happen, by passing on the Tweets, Facebook links, emails and word of mouth. Let's get the word out there.

My thanks to those who donated this past week, to keep Radio Ecoshock going. You covered the electric and internet bills for this month.

I'm Alex Smith, and let's get together again next week.