CLIMATE HOPE & TRAGEDY

SUMMARY: First net-zero city fights off giant fracking leak in California.; Vancouver aims fossil free; 1st Nations vs. pipelines. Mayors & activists report. Scientist Paul Beckwith & RAN Exec Dir Lindsey Allen wrap up Paris climate talks. Carolyn Baker's seminar on how to cope.

WELCOME TO RADIO ECOSHOCK THIS WEEK

Reactions to the Paris climate agreement are all over the map. Unexpectedly, our correspondent Paul Beckwith suggests this may be a tipping point in human affairs, after extreme weather all over the planet. Lindsey Allen from RAN isn't so sure.

Before we talk with them, I want you to hear an extraordinary teleconference hosted by former Earthbeat radio host Daphne Wysham. We hear how West Coast cities are leading us out of the fossil age, even as they struggle with constant demand for more pipelines and ports. Oh by the way, one California mayor reports thousands are living under a toxic cloud, while fracking has poisoned the water system used for one quarter of North America's produce.

I'm Alex Smith, with all that and more, this week on Radio Ecoshock.

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

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MAYORS' REPORT ON GREEN ACTION

Just when things look bleak for the climate, we discover city Mayors are way ahead of national leaders. Daphne Wysham leads this story. She's the former host of the syndicated radio program "Earth Beat", and now director of the climate and energy program at the Center for Sustainable Economy.

I know good radio when I hear it. This conference call organized by Daphne contains some startling news, both good and bad. In this abbreviated for radio version, the guests are (in order of appearance):

Andrea Rheimer, Deputy Mayor of Vancouver, Canada

Rex Parris, Mayor of Lancaster California

Winona LaDuke, former Vice-Presidential Candidate and head of Honor the Earth

The whole purpose of the call was to unite more local politicians in the fight against constant pressure to approve or allow more and more fossil fuel infrastructure. By that we mean incessant pressure to build more ports for oil, gas, or coal, more pipelines, more storage facilities - all the instruments by which we can commit to a bankrupt economic plan, and a ravaged planet.

Daphne Wysham was among many who fought off such a proposal in Portland Oregon. Companies wanted to build a propane shipment facilities, bringing the propane from Alberta in Canada, to ship to Asia or who knows where. This in Portland, which has prided itself in being the first city in America to develop a green plan, a way out of fossil fuel dependence. It clashed, and was defeated at the civic level - not in Washington, not in Paris, but stopped in Portland. On November 12, 2015, Portland passed the strongest legislation against more fossil fuel infrastructure anywhere in America.

Activists realized they could not afford to fight off each and every such proposal, which are rampant on the West Coast, including in Canada, but also in the UK, in Australia, and around the world. The fossil fuel industry is still trying to grow, even as we know more must be left in the ground, even as we know humans must move AWAY from more fossil fuels, not toward them.

So a small non-profit web site was set up, simply named No More Fossil Fuel Infrastructure. As Daphne tells us in a preview interview, more than a dozen Mayors signed up almost overnight. In a surprising development, the Mayor of Richmond California, Tom Butts signed up from Paris- even though his city hosts a huge and polluting refinery owned by Chevron.

Andrea Rheimer, the Deputy Mayor of Vancouver, Canada, has some inspiring news. That city banned all new fossil fuel infrastructure in 2012. In 2013, Vancouver banned new coal ports. At the start of 2015, Vancouver was one of a handful of cities around the world declaring their intention to be fossil-free by 2050. Just this year, another 100 or more cities have said the same. The cities are far ahead of the politicians in Paris.

Mayor of Lancaster California, Rex Parris

I found Rex Parris's presentation loaded with ground-breaking and heart-breaking info. To mention just a little:

NORTH AMERICA'S FIRST NET ZERO CITY?

* His city of Lancaster passed a bylaw requiring all new homes to have installed solar power. As a result, the city now produces more electricity than it consumes. Lancaster California exports power to the grid, becoming a net-zero city (perhaps the world's first) as far as electricity goes. Mayor Parris expected complaints and push-back, but instead got a better economy and co-operation.

* The city is now engaged with a Chinese battery company, BYD, to install a 500 megawatt storage facility, to balance out the highs and lows of solar power. Again, this is a first for any city in North America.

THE PORTER RANCH BLOWOUT - CALIFORNIA'S BP

* Parris is a lawyer who now heads the class action suit against SoCal (Southern California Gas Company), and it's parent company, Sempra Energy, for a huge fracking well blow-out that has buried thousands of families under a toxic cloud. This one blow-out (still on-going, can't be stopped apparently) is thought to be emitting one quarter of all methane produced by the state of California. It's not just methane, but a toxic stew of cancer-causing chemicals like benzene. It's called the "Porter Ranch" disaster, or California's BP disaster.

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, SOURCE OF 25% OF NATION'S PRODUCE, POISONED?

In the teleconference, Mayor Parris says:

"Before the Porter Ranch blowout in the injection wells, what we discovered is that the water supply in the San Joaquin Valley that feeds 25% of our nation's food supply, grown food supply, comes from the San Joaquin Valley. And the aquifers appear to be poisoned. The cherry trees started to die, now the almond trees are dying. And the testing shows that in some cases we're getting benzene levels at a thousand times what what's acceptable. All kinds of hydrocarbon poisons are in there - and that's because the oil industry has been injecting directly into the drinking water of California.

The thing we should start recognizing is that this industry has no responsibility whatsoever. They have captive agencies regulating them, and as a result the impact they're having on the climate, the country and the citizens is beyond comprehension.

The Porter Ranch situation is an example of that. They used a 50 year old well, it was drilled in 1954, to pump oil, and they used that as an injection well to store natural gas under high pressures. The inevitable happened. It blew and now we have thousands of families living under this cloud, with very little we can do about it. We're trying to relocate them, the gas company is resisting. This is Sempra Energy which is responsible for this.

And we're going to have more and more of these situations develop as they take more and more risks in finding energy."

WINONA LADUKE - FIGHTING PIPELINES ON NATIVE LANDS

Winona LaDuke tells us the Ojibwe people are fighting no less than three new pipeline coming through their lands. The fossil fuel companies want to establish pipelines to a port on Lake Superior, to carry dangerous Bakken crude, or even-more polluting tar sands oil, out to the world by the East. They would bypass the barriers to the West in British Columbia, or Oregon, bypass the XL pipeline, and ship via the Great Lakes. Anything to make a buck.

Winona LaDuke

Find out more about Winona's activism here at Honor the Earth.

HOW TO FIND THE ORIGINAL TELECONFERENCE AUDIO

There isn't space here to tell it all. Please listen to this shorter report (edited for radio) on Radio Ecoshock, or listen to the whole press conference here.

Along with Mayor Parris, Andrea Rheimer and LaDuke, you will also hear from Patrick O'Herron from the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and Nia Rivak, an activist from Portland. Oh yeah, and Bill McKibben sent an introductory clip from Paris, for this teleconference.

It's well worth your time. And can you help organize or support a similar movement against more fossil fuel infrastructure in your own city, where democracy still has a hope? Then sign up at nonewffi.org.

Download or listen to this 14 minute report from Mayors and activists, as edited for Radio Ecoshock, in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

PAUL BECKWITH WRAPS UP PARIS CLIMATE TALKS

I thought Paul would trash the Paris climate talks as way too little too late. No, Paul tells us why this may be a turning point, even a tipping point in human affairs. Then he explains what needs to be done from here, to really save the climate. As always, a trip with this PHD student (with already two Masters degrees, and teaching climate science at the University of Ottawa) - is also well worth your time.

We talk about James Hansen, the new climate-aware billionaires, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, geoengineering, and much more.

I appreciate Paul taking the time to talk to us from Norway, where he is helping to found a new company, Gaia Engineering, which will provide climate-related technology. His two hour talk in Norway was recorded and will be found in a little while on the new web site being built.

Download or listen to this 21 minute interview with Paul Beckwith in Norway in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

LINDSEY ALLEN OF RAN ON PARIS CLIMATE TALKS

Lindsey Allen is the Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network. That's a group that has earned my respect. In addition to their campaigns to save the rainforests, for their own sake, and for the climate - RAN, as it's known, also dug furthest into who, exactly who, is funding the new coal plants that will kill off our hopes for a livable planet. That turned out to be big name banks, some of who also claim to be getting greener. Get some of the details here, and I hope to do an interview soon on coal financing.

Lindsey tells us about the non-profit organizations who were active in Paris, and the role that the people's voice plays in bringing politicians as far as we've come. She also reminds us that the "developed" world has a lot to learn from the people actually living in rainforests, the indigenous people on all continents. But we're not listening yet, she tells us - at our peril.

Download or listen to this 11 minute interview with Lindsey Allen of Rainforest Action Network in CD Quality.

CAROLYN BAKER'S NEW SEMINAR

Carolyn Baker is a life coach and certified in psychology. She's taught at the university level. Carolyn has specialized in helping people cope with the awful news about climate change, and our impact on the planet in general. What should we think and feel? How can we go on?

To that end, she's organized a seminar which will be live with some really intriguing guests, and then later available via recorded video. It's not free, because this sort of project costs money to organize. But it's not all that expensive either. Carolyn describes the guests, which include Andrew Harvey founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism, writer/teacher Stephen Jenkinson, deep green activist Derrick Jensen, Carolyn herself of course, Linda Buzzell, journalist Dahr Jamail, Janaia Donaldson from Peak Moment TV, Mick Collins from the University of East Anglia, and Becca Martenson, counsellor and life coach (and wife of Chris Martenson). If you don't recognize any of those names, perhaps you spend too much time with mainstream news?

The thing is - I've seen some great conferences with speakers like this where they expect you to drive across the country, or fly across part of the world, and pay a lot of money for the conference, plus lodgings, food and all that. I've been waiting for the alternative community to organize real online conferences, complete with feedback from us, the participants. It's starting.

The seminar is called "Living Your Passion & Purpose", and further "In the face of humanity's greatest challenge, an interactive online symposium." To find out more, listen to this 5 minute interview, or just go to her web site, carolynbaker.net. Then it's up to you, whether you want to participate, in what Carolyn hopes will become a new supportive community.

Download or listen to this 5 minute interview with Carolyn Baker in CD Quality.

Of course you can also listen to Carolyn and her guests every week on her radio show "The Lifeboat Hour" on the Progressive Radio Network.



Like the fossil age, we are out of time. If you can help support this program, find out how on this page. Radio Ecoshock is paid for entirely by listener support. We run no ads on this site, or in the program. We are not sponsored by guests or anyone else. Just you.

Thank you for listening. Be sure and join us next week on Radio Ecoshock, when I'll play a full-length talk about why a famous scientist who knows how serious the climate threat is, has finally begun to hope.

World on Fire

http://bit.ly/JfocDr Wild fires from climate change cause still more warming. Three experts from American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting February 19th recorded in Vancouver by Alex Smith. Michael Flannigan, U of Alberta on fire and climate. From UBC medical unit, Dr. Michael Brauer on health impacts and personal protection during smoke events. Tasmania's Fay Johnston' estimation of global annual deaths from landscape fire smoke. Best of Radio Ecoshock replay from 120418 1 hour.

Welcome to hot summer programming from Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, bringing together some of our best recordings and interviews. This week and next, we'll focus on the growing trend of monster forest fires - what one guest calls "the age of super fires".

I feel personally involved. As I prepare this show, it's 111 degrees Fahrenheit, or 44 degrees Celsius, in the shade outside my studio, for the second time this week. My valley is grey with smoke. While having dinner two nights ago, we watched a forestry helicopter drop load after load on a small fire in the hill behind our home. A violent blast of lightening started it. They got it out.

What should be the wet West Coast is tinder dry. Vancouver, Canada has filled up with smoke from huge fires in the region. Hundreds of fires have sprung up all along the West Coast of North America, from California to Alaska. More than a dozen started within 50 miles of my home in the past few days. And the big summer fire season is still ahead of us.

Even if it's cold and rainy where you are, the impacts of global forest fires affect the health of millions, the economy, and act like a positive feedback loop to increase the speed of global warming.

Next week I'll interview scientists and fire experts on the new super fires. This week, I'm replaying three talks I recorded at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Vancouver Canada in February 2012. We'll hear about the global fire situation, and the health impacts of fire smoke, including how you and your community can prepare for it.

This is the Radio Ecoshock show from April 18th, 2012.

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

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I've been working on the latest science about wildfires and climate change. The plan was to save the broadcast for summer, when the fires start.

Nature isn't waiting. From the first week of April major television networks like CBS reported wildfires all down the West Coast, instead of the East Coast as it was in 2012.

This follows a winter with very little snow. Gardeners started to feel like planting a month early. Farmers feared a continuing drought, with no snow to water the land before seed time.

Forget about normal. Wildfire season started ridiculously early this year in North America, in the first week of April.

TV and news reported thousands of heat records set in the Eastern United States, without ever mentioning "global warming".

It's time for the Radio Ecoshock special, my recordings of a special session on fire and climate. The fire experts gathered at the February conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver 2012.

You'll hear how fires make a hotter climate which feeds more fires, the cycle of positive feedback. An internationally recognized wildfire expert, Dr. Michael Flannigan reports on the latest science and experience in the field. Flannigan also describes a new risk that could tip the climate of the world.

You may have a personal stake in this. Anyone with lungs does. From the University of British Columbia School of Medicine, Dr. Mike Brauer explains new ways of tracking dangerous smoke, which can travel thousands of miles, across international boundaries. I like Brauer's talk, because he also tells us how citizens can protect themselves during a smoke event.

Finally we'll hear from Dr. Fay Johnston from the University of Tasmania. She was part of a team asking the big question: how many people die from fire smoke every year? The answer, and the places most at risk, may surprise you.

DR. MIKE FLANNIGAN

Let's get the big picture, from one of my favorite wildfire experts. Dr. Mike Flannigan is a Professor of the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta, and Senior Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service. His PHD is from Cambridge. He also trained in meteorology. Flannigan is Editor-in-chief of International Journal of Wild land Fire, and part of the U.S. Assessment on Global Change. Mike is a leader in newly formed Western Partnership for Fire Science.

In the program you hear excerpts from my recording of Mike Flannigan's presentation at "Forest fires in Canada: Impacts of Climate Change and Fire Smoke" delivered Sunday morning, February 19th, 2012, in a special workshop at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science general meeting in Vancouver.

Nobody says more in fewer words than Flannigan. When huge fires erupt, in Canada or internationally, Mike often gets called in. He begins by exploring the fire in Northern Alberta, Canada, where a town called Slave Lake had one third of the place burned out, including the municipal buildings the libraries. Video of that fire approaching the town here. Photos of the aftermath here. And this could happen to any town or city. Hundreds of homes were burned in Kelowna British Columbia in 20003. I don't have to tell anyone in California or Texas about the huge risks from out-of-control wild fires.

Australians know how deadly fires can be.

In 2012, Slave Lake in the Yukon had to be evacuated. This year it's towns in Northern Saskatchewan emptied out on short notice as a fires up to 100,000 hectares in size roar right up to the town limits.There was no way to fight such fires, and they moved fast with ferocity. Satellite images show the Slave Lake fire was actually the smallest of four infernos raging at the time.

Remember the fire leader in Texas who said "No one alive has seen fires like this". Except we are seeing them more and more, especially after heat events.

Mike Flannigan makes it clear that climate change is a contributing factor to these fierce fires. The underbrush is tinder dry, even in spring-time. The hotter weather creates a longer fire season. Heat also induces more lightening, which ignites the wild fire.

It's a positive feed-back cycle, at least in the near-term. The burning forests release all the carbon previously held in vegetative matter. Tree trunks are mostly carbon. That release of carbon, and the extra black soot, all drive more warming.

A few years after the fire, perhaps 7 years later, new growth will re-absorb some of the carbon back from the atmosphere. The fire zone changes from a carbon source to a carbon sink. But in the meantime, climate change has been further ramped up.

If you ever wanted to know the basics of wild fires, and why we hear more about them, or get hit with smoke from faraway places, Mike Flannigan is the man to learn from.

You can download my Radio Ecoshock interview with Mike Flannigan in May 2011 from the program titled "FLOOD FIRE WIND - Climate Shift" at ecoshock.org. (13 minute interview)

About two weeks after this broadcast, you can download a free mp3 of Mike Flannigan's full speech at the triple AS from our Climate 2012 page. All of today's speakers will be there in full.

HOW DO THESE FIRES COMPARE TO PAST AGES?

Can we say there are more fires now than at any time in human history? What about fires in the past hot ages, in previous greenhouse worlds? I listened to two presentations on the history of fire by Douglas Woolford, from Canada's Wilfred Laurier University, and Richard Routledge, Simon Fraser University.

The science was too complicated for radio broadcast. I came away thinking the field of fire archeology is still very young. Do we know enough to answer those questions, to compare our future to the distant past of fire?

I came away from these American Academy presentations thinking we just don't know enough yet. You can dig further into the research that has been done, by downloading those two speeches (for a fee) from aven.com.

We do know that fire smoke travels huge distances, sometimes smudging out part of a continent. In the soot below, human lungs don't do very well. As we'll hear in our third speaker, hundreds of thousands of humans die every year from inhaling smoke from natural and agricultural fires.

DR. MICHAEL BRAUER

But first, you should hear this Canadian medical expert Dr. Mike Brauer. He explains big advances in predicting the smoke plumes, so people with breathing difficulties can be warned. It's almost like tornado warnings, only more accurate. Pharmacies can know to stock up on inhalers. And Brauer ends with tips you can use to protect yourself, if smoke fills your air.

Mike was introduced by session organizer Charmaine Dean, of Simon Fraser University.

In the radio program, you hear major excerpts from Mike's speech.

In the first part, Mike explains several methods to predict where fire smoke will go. That's important to know if you are a health planner, a hospital worker or doctor, if you have health problems like asthma, - and if you just want to protect the lungs of yourself and your family.

I became even more interested in the second segment, as Brauer explains the public health efforts, and personal things we can do to protect ourselves. If there are going to be more fires, and more smoke, we all need to learn about this.

A smoke plume can travel hundreds of miles over a place like California, or New England (from Canadian fires). Whole parts of Asia have been covered in smoke - like the times Malaysia and Singapore went under a smoke cloud from fires in Indonesia.

We know, from Brauer's study, that in Western-style economies, visits to doctors’ offices and pharmacies will go up. Those places need to stock up on inhalers and other medicines.

People with certain ailments or low lung function need to stay indoors, with the windows closed. Driving around does not help, as Brauer says the smoke is actually worse inside the car.

Brauer struck a chord with me when he recommended simple HEPA air filters for people's homes. I have had one running for the past five years, because we live in a high traffic area. We used to need to dust the place way too often, now much less.

That air filter was running when the wave of radioactivity hit the West Coast about a week after the Fukushima nuclear plants blew up. About a month later I changed out the filters, which were no doubt radioactive. It saved our lungs a bit.

These filters also reduce indoor smoke from fires by about 65% Brauer says. That's better for everybody.

Once again, this is another reason to have at least a few days’ worth of food stocked up too. Nobody needs to go out to the store.

DR. FAY JOHNSTON

Our final presenter in this week's special on fire and climate change is Dr. Fay Johnston, a physician and environmental epidemiologist at the Menzies Research Institute in Tasmania, the Down Under of Australia. Here is a link to one of her smoke assessment projects. And here is a link to a public article "Fire Smoke Important Contributor to Deaths World-Wide".

Her topic for this session of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science is: "The Estimated Global Mortality Burden Attributable to Landscape Fire Smoke".

Let's find out who really pays the ultimate price for advancing fires in a crowded warming world. We only have time for a few excerpts.

First, what is a "landscape fire" and who is studying it?

Dr. Fay Johnston describes the first attempts to quantify the impacts of global wildfires.

As she says: "a world without fire does not exist." It is natural, but not when humans create the fire conditions, and then set those fires. Her team estimated about 90% of "landscape fires" around the world are set purposely by humans. We do it to clear new land for things like soy beans or palm oil.

Africa is a central location for fires. It is part of their agricultural cycle. The old crop is burned off to prepare for the new one. Radio Ecoshock has had other guests explain that method of agriculture is adding to global warming.

As far as deaths go, we find out there has hardly been any study in the developing world, where most of the fires are, and most of the death happen. To measure health impacts, Johnston's group had to use pollution studies generated in major smoggy cities. It turns out those impacts on lungs work pretty well for people smoked out in the jungle as well. Still, just like medical research, we take studies from the First World and apply them to developing countries, hoping it will work. There's no money to do the research in the heavily populated places where it is needed most.

Isn't that always the case, in this unfair world? Whether its medicine or smoke, almost all research is funded and performed in the developed world, where a minority of Earth's population live and die. It may take another generation to see how climate change and fire do their dance in the most populated, and the most plant rich places on the planet.

To be honest, this study finds smoke deaths from landscape fires are far less serious than deaths from smoking tobacco.

Whereas several millions die because of tobacco, this study estimates about 340,000 people a year die from landscape fires. Around 10,000 of those are in South America, where relative population is low. Over a hundred thousand are in the Sahel region of northern Africa. More than a hundred thousand die each and every year from air-borne smoke in Asia but that is still fewer than die from cooking over smoky fires indoors in Asia.

You can find the full speeches by Mike Flannigan, Mike Brauer, and Fay Johnston on the Climate 2012 downloads page at ecoshock.org. My thanks to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science for allowing me to record on February 19th, and to Simon Fraser University for organizing this session on forest fires, smoke, and climate change.

Our music in this program was from the 1968 hit "Fire" by Arthur Brown. News clips were from NBC12 Richmond, and CBS evening news.

I'm Alex Smith.

Tune in next week for our next big adventure into the future - on Radio Ecoshock.

RUNNING OUT OF FUTURE

SUMMARY: Super scientist Kevin Trenberth on why oceans now hottest in recorded history, why that can make Europe colder. Stephen Leahy: we bankrupt water supplies with consumer purchases. Rob Aldrich on a generation with Nature Deficit Disorder. Radio Ecoshock 141203

Welcome back to Radio Ecoshock. Not a week goes by without a new, strange, and dangerous threat emerging out of the shadowy future. We start with the biggest under-reported story: unseen by land mammals, the world's oceans are heating up. That determines the future and the new coastlines for hundreds of years. We'll talk with Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world's top climate scientists.

Did you know great rivers of fresh water are travelling around the world, hidden in the consumer products we buy? Environmental journalist Stephen Leahy explains his new book "Your Water Footprint".

Then Rob Aldrich says "yes, there is a growing health crisis in the Western world, and the cause is Nature Deficit Disorder".

[Sigh] It's Radio Ecoshock.

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

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KEVIN TRENBERTH ON THE HOT OCEAN

Not sure about global warming? Here's a little fact that should grab your attention. According to scientists at the University of Hawaii, the world's oceans are hotter than they have ever been in recorded history. It's a dangerous trend, and you and I may have triggered that fever.

We have one of the world's top climate scientists joining us now. Dr. Kevin Trenberth is a transplanted New Zealander. He's now the Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder Colorado. His advice and science is cited all over the world.

Dr. Kevin Trenberth

According to news reports, water off New England is warming faster than almost anywhere on earth. Why is that, and what does it mean? We find an interesting connection between colder weather in Europe in recent years, and a warmer North Atlantic ocean.

He says the hotter North Atlantic may be partly a decadal rhythm. Then he adds:

"We think part of the reason the North Atlantic is as hot as it is actually stems back to some of the actions in the Pacific Ocean, through what atmospheric scientists call "Tally connections" - large waves in the atmosphere that have been associated actually with cooler conditions in Europe at that time. So the main cold outbreaks that have occurred in recent years have been in Europe rather than over the North Atlantic. As a result, the North Atlantic has been more benign and the temperatures have warmed up there."

In his answer Dr. Trenberth mentions "Talley Connections" named after Professor Lynne D. Talley, Scripps Institution. Dr. Talley is an oceanographer and co-editor of a textbook and scientific reference used by millions.

EL NINO - YES

Even though scientists have not declared a full El Nino for 2014, Trenberth says:

"There's a developing El Nino and I think we are actually in El Nino conditions, and that has altered conditions throughout the tropics and sub-tropics, and is also having an influence over the West Coast of North America."

He also connects this developing El Nino for the very active hurricane season (with major and even record storms) hitting places in the Eastern Pacific (including Japan).

SEA LEVEL RISE IS THE BEST INDICATOR OF GLOBAL WARMING

One way we can be sure ocean temperatures are rising, beyond the wide-spread network of ocean bouys, is the steadily rising sea level. Since 1992, we have satellites accurately measuring sea level. It's going up at 3.2 millimeters a year, now. That's expected to increase as warming gathers strength. For non-metric people, that adds up to a rate of a little over a foot per century - caused by two processes: ice melt from land-based glaciers like Greenland or West Antarctica; and heating of the oceans (heated water expands).

He says that sea level rise is a better indicator of climate change than measuring just global atmospheric temperatures. Other new science suggests we have underestimated warming in the oceans.

IS THERE A WARMING "HAITUS" AND IS IT OVER?

I ask one of the key questions for both scientists and the public: a few scientists suggest this ocean heating may signal the end of the alleged haitus in global warming. Do you agree there has been a pause in warming, and second, does this imply a new warming spell is arriving?

Kevin Trenberth explains that ocean temperatures, global mean temperatures, and temperatures experienced by humans over land all operate differently. The alleged "pause" experienced on land temperatures has not been mirrored by any pause in ocean heating, or the rise of sea levels, which are steadily upwards. 2014 is on track to be the hottest year on record. I will add this note: even though North America is experiencing a cold spell, Australia is quite hot, and the Arctic is way over normal temperatures.

Trenberth also says starting from the previous hottest year on record, during the 1997/98 El Nino distorts our view. We need to start from at least 1990, and then the trend is up, up, and up. "The two thousands are certainly a lot warmer than the 1990's. The "haitus" could be over, but it's hard to tell, because the current El Nino conditions are releasing heat from the Pacific Ocean.

He describes the strange increase in Antarctic sea ice area (though not necessarily an increase in volume). A change in the winds are part of that. Just as the northern hemisphere Jet Stream has loosened into larger slow loops of weather, the southern Polar winds have drawn closer to Antarctica, reducing rainfall in Australia.

I ask if this just shows the different in polar geographies, where the North Pole is in an ocean surrounded by continental land, while the South Pole is itself a small continent, surrounded by vast oceans. He says that is partly true, especially since the Arctic sea ice can never expand beyond the boundaries imposed by land.

THE LINK BETWEEN THE OZONE HOLE AND ANTARCTIC SEA ICE

A second important factor is the ozone hole in Antarctica!

"And so the ozone whole has been a really big contributor to ....the 'polar vortex'. There's a very strong set of circumpolar Westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere. That is partly caused by the lack of ozone. That's for the most part a separate problem relative to global warming but it's contributed so some of the changes and is probably one of the factors in the differences between the two hemispheres as well."

MORE WATER IN THE AIR FUELS STORMS

Kevin reminds us that the warmer atmosphere means there is about 4% more water in the atmosphere now, compared to 1970. That adds energy to storms. It can also lead to extreme precipitation events (happening all over the world) which can be record rain, or snow if the air is colder. Sound familiar?

Increased winds have also created more ocean mixing. That means more heat is being drawn down into deeper levels of the ocean, thus hiding some of our warming impact. But that heat will also come back out at some time. Warmer seas, Kevin agrees, can lead to warming that goes on for centuries, even after we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Kevin Trenberth: "What we are doing now has consequences for decades and even centuries into the future. And this is why scientists are quite concerned, very concerned about the global warming phenomenon.

By the time we, maybe the general public recognizes that it's a serious problem, it's a bit too late to do very much about it, because a lot of it's going to continue regardless, and we will then have to live with the consequences. So this is one of the clarion calls of scientists that we need to worry about the fact that the oceans respond in a very slow and sluggish fashion."

Finally I ask Kevin Trenberth what he thinks of the observations by Dr. Jennifer Francis, that weather over North America has been heavily influenced by summer melt-back of sea ice in the Arctic. He's not entirely sure about that proposal. Instead, Trenberth points out the recent impact of tropical storm Nuri, which pushed Arctic air south. In any case, the Arctic sea ice is frozen over during winter, and so should not be affecting winter weather.

Something is twisting winter weather out of shape, that's for sure. Next week I hope to get in a short ramble about how the Arctic has been abnormally hot, while most of North America suffers through an unusually early deep freeze.

Download or listen to this interview with scientist Keven Trenberth in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

MORE WATER NEWS WITH STEPHEN LEAHY

Either you have enough water or you don't. Life of all kinds depends upon the answer to that question. Along with farmers, all big cities wrestle with water issues. And some of that precious water disappears half a world away, to make the products we buy.

That's all in the new book "Your Water Footprint, The Shocking Facts About How Much Water We Use To Make Everyday Products." It's by the professional environmental journalist Stephen Leahy.

Environmental journalist Stephen Leahy

This book takes us places I didn't expect. Just the cover is shocking. Really - does it take 240 gallons of water to make a modern mobile phone? How is that possible?

Steve explains all the components of that smart phone take large amounts of water to mine, process, and assemble. That's true when we add up the water required to make practically everything we buy.

Stehen Leahy says "I'm probably wearing about 20,000 liters of water right now. And that's just pants, a shirt, a sweatshirt, socks, and a pair of shoes." That's over 5200 gallons of water for one set of clothing!!!

I remember Lester Brown of World Watch saying on Radio Ecoshock that countries don't export wheat, they export the water used to grow it. Places like Australia can hardly afford to do that.

All this adds up to a hidden international water trade, via consumer and industrial products. If we could see it, Leahy says, these would be rivers of water flowing out of North America as food, and back in from places like China and Malaysia as clothing, gear, appliances and all that.

So what? Isn't there enough water? That depends where you live. There's been a lot of news about millions of people in Sao Paulo Brazil almost running out of water. In the United States, more millions of people depend on the big underground reserves in the Ogallala Aquifer. Folks joke without that, certain States would dry up and blow away. On the plains of India, farmers are drilling deeper and deeper. Water use is far greater than the rate of replenishment. Those wells will eventually run dry.

Leahy tells us right now about 1.2 billion people on earth face chronic water shortages. There's another 2.5 billion who occasionally have water shortages. "Only about half of the people in the world has access to piped water." The rest have to haul it. About 20 percent of people in the world have no access to clean water. They have to use whatever polluted water they can find, and of course many die from easily preventable diseases.

DIRE PREDICTIONS FOR FRESH WATER AVAILABILITY

Leahy tells us:

"Even by 2025, which isn't that far away now, three in five people will be facing water shortages, the experts predict."

That's partly because we need water to produce energy. The oil and coal industry sucks up millions of gallons of water. Fracking grabs mountains of fresh water, pollutes it terrible, and then removes that water from general cirulation by pumping it into deep wells.

Add in all the irrigation and other needs to grow food, as the population expands by more billions, and as that larger population demands more consumer products (and meat) - we are headed to a big, big water crisis.

Here's the thing I like about Stephen Leahy's new book (which is based on years of his reporting global environment stories for major news services): it's crammed full of charts and graphs which make it easy. Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to reading another thick book of print. So it was a welcome surprise to find this one beams shocking and important info directly to your eye and brain. Pretty well every page is a large well-illustrated and labelled graphic. It's staying near my desk as a reference.

You can find "Your Water Footprint, The Shocking Facts About How Much Water We Use To Make Everyday Products" wherever books are sold. Follow Stephen Leahy's reporting at stephenleahy.net.

Many times, I've read one of Leahy's stories, and then found it trending in major media up to six months later. He's one of the last true full-time environmental journalists around. Support him if you can.

TOXIC HOTSPOTS

As just one example, I ask Steve what he's working on. It involves stories about the next toxic waste sites springing up across the developing world. Factories with little supervision, with the blessing (or corruption) of local governments, are using old toxic techniques to create local labor (and wealth) at any price to the environment.

Think about "Love Canal" the toxic site famous in New York State. The U.S. has hundreds of "superfund sites" that are slowly being cleaned up (somewhat). That manufacturing moves East to China, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, and parts of South America. We can expect to find loads of places where it's unsafe to live, due to chemical or even radiological pollution. Due to poverty, people will live there anyway, and get sick, and their babies will get sick.

Someday a map of the ruined world will be published, and people will wonder why anyone let that happen. We don't ask about toxic pollution from factories that make our consumer goodies. And they don't tell. Stephen Leahy is one of the few journalists on that story. It's going to be huge, and you'll hear about it from mainstream media years from now, after the damage is done. So sad.

Download or listen to this interview with Stephen Leahy in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

For a surprising twist, try this article from the US Geological Survey people. In parallel with the slight US reduction in energy, Americans are actually used 13% less water in 2013 than in 2005. There is less industry, and those that remain have improved their water handling. All that is being counter-balanced by huge increases in water use in other parts of the world.

NATURE DEFICIT DISORDER - ROB ALDRICH

It's not an official disorder taught in medical schools. Yet. But as you'll hear in this interview with Rob Aldrich of the Land Trust Alliance, some doctors are prescribing time in nature for problem children.

The term and idea of "Nature Deficit Disorder" was originated by author Richard Louv in his 2005 book "Last Child in the Woods". The Land Trust Alliance joined other groups in raising the alarm, that this separation from nature is developing into a national health crisis in America, and likely in all industrialized countries.

Rob Aldrich is the community conservation director for the Land Trust Alliance, in Washington D.C. The Land Trust Alliance is formed by about 1200 land trusts, large and small, in the United States. In a land trust, the owners sign a covenant that prevents the land from being broken up, or from being wrecked. Taken together, these land trust are an important buffer where nature still exists.

The land trust movement is also growing because it has tax advantages, especially for farmers. A farmer may not be able to pass on the farm to the next generation, due to inheritance taxes. But if that farmer guarantees it will remain a farm, they can reduce the value of the land (because it won't be developed into suburbs), and so reduce the inheritance taxes.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH CRISIS

Meanwhile, I've had reports that teachers in inner city schools can find up to 20% of the students have an inhaler with them. Asthma is that bad. Obesity is worse. Rob Aldrich describes the awful slide to obesity, even since 1990, in countless American states. Actually, they have counted those states, and in some, a full 30% of all citizens are greatly overweight, meaning 30 pounds or more for a person of about five feet five inches. It's become a national health crisis.

Rob tells us another harsh story. Apparently some maximum security prisons are showing pictures of nature to their inmates, to help them cope with 23 hours of lock-up. But think about it - are some children now kept static in classroom seats, and then driven home to spend hours watching screens on phones, TV and video games - are they not also in a kind of 23 hour lock-down?

We hear about Dr. Robert Zarr and his Parks RX project. Parents with a "hyper-active" and hard to handle young girl came to them. He prescribed two or three hours a day, each weekend, in the largest park in the Washington D.C. rea. The girl didn't need drugs, or a fixed program of things to do in the park. Just take her there and let her run around, discovering things. She was cured. She really had "nature deficit disorder."

Here is an NPR story "To Make Children Healthier A Doctor Prescribes A Trip to the Park."

We hear about the "Wingspread Declaration" to get more people out into nature. Visit www.healthandnature.org to learn more about and endorse the Wingspread Declaration.

African Americans are getting on board with this health need for nature, with groups like "Outdoor Afro".

Nature Deficit Disorder: I think we all have it. I make myself go outside for at least a couple of hours a day, more during the warmer months. We moved from the big city to see hills and the night sky. It's working. How about you?

Check this interview out, for yourself, and for your kids. Download or listen to Rob Aldrich in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

That's it for another week of Radio Ecoshock. Please support your non-profit radio station, the people brave enough to tell it like it is. As always, you can listen again on our Soundcloud page, or download any and all of our past programs, from the web site, ecoshock.org.

MUSIC INFO

As an aside, I'm adding some Indian instruments to my new tracks, thanks to an amazing plug in for my computer music program. It's called "Swar Plug" from swarsystems.com. In Sanscrit, "Swara" means a musical note in the octave. You can listen to my first production with sitar and veena at the "Swar Cafe." Scroll down on this page. It's called "California East".

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening - and caring about your world.

The World of Radical Facts

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

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

ECOSHOCK FUNDRAISING - IT'S ON!

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

LISTEN IN

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

Or listen right now on Soundcloud.

MARK JACOBSON - THE MANY WITH MANY ANSWERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOSSIL FREE BY 2030

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

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

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

THE USUAL OBJECTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VISITING ONE OF INDIA'S MEGA COAL PLANTS

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

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

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

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

Nicole Ghio, Sierra Club International

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GREAT CLIMATE CONFERENCE COMING UP IN NEW ENGLAND

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

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

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

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

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

THANKS FOR LISTENING!!

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

Talk in Twisted Times

SUMMARY: Deep thinker Frank Rotering introduces his desperate new strategy to split the rich and plunge the world economy into steep contraction. Then Gail Zawacki savages what's left, while she campaigns against the unknown threat of ozone smog. It's a panorama of inner conversations in twisted times.

The weather has gone sideways. Emissions are up. Climate talks are useless. Protests are polite.

Revolution? Not likely. So...

Author Frank Rotering from British Columbia, Canada hosts contractionism.org He called for the usual progressive bottom-up revolution against the consumer society. Now it's too late for that, Frank says. We need to push a schism in the wealthy capitalists who control the game. Some billionaires are beginning to see they will be wiped out along with the rest of us in ecocide.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show (141022) here in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

FRANK ROTERING: SPLIT THE RICH

Politicians, bankers and businessmen religiously tell you the economy needs to keep on growing, with more products and profits for all. Any sane person can see there are limits to growth on a single planet. As wildlife goes extinct, food chains break, and the climate spins out, we have already surpassed those limits. Even a steady state economy, steady as we are now, would crush the biosphere we depend on.

The only and obvious answer is contraction until we reach a sustainable plateau. That's the territory of Frank Rotering. He's the independent thinker from British Columbia, Canada, and lord of the web site contractionism.org. Frank has two books out, including "The Economics of Needs and Limits". Prepare to have your basic ideas challenged.

Where to start... Let's say Frank thinks the analysis of capitalism by Karl Marx is still useful, while his solutions are not. Until relatively recently, and in his two previous books, Rotering yearned for the same bottom-up revolution many progressive people want. Stimulated by leadership by indigenous people, greens, and activists for social justice, the masses would wake up and demand change.

Now, and especially after reading Naomi Klein's new book "This Changes Everything", Rotering realizes (a) people in the developed countries are not going to revolt and (b) there isn't time left to educate the populace about the true state of affairs. Climate change is just one of several forces that indicate we have less than a decade left, if that, to make radical changes to avoid catastrophe.

While Frank has been a progressive person all is life, the cold facts drive him to a desperate conclusion. Our best and only hope is that enough capitalists will wake up to the dangers, and force changes themselves. That's not an impossible strategy. As you've heard on Radio Ecoshock in the past few weeks, former and current Secretaries of the U.S. Treasury warn climate change can sink our economy (read the wealth accumulated by the capitalist class). Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is on board the same train, worried about climate. Even the oil-rich Rockefellers say they are getting out of fossil fuel investments.

Rotering says as activists we can help speed up a split in the capitalist class. One party realizes we are engaged in the business of ecocide; the other are intent on making more profits while nature goes down into the sixth great mass extinction event. It will be a battle of the titans.

In the interview, I object that it may be a fantasy to depend on the "hero theory" - that the powerful will act to save us. That also relieves each of us from our own responsibility to make the millions of small changes needed to preserve a liveable planet. Frank points out that Naomi Klein also says a small group of billionaires (like Stayer and Branson) are not going to save us. He is not talking about a group of "heroes", but rather a division in a large class of people around the world - the people who have accumulated all the wealth. Their sea-side estates, their businesses, will be hit by climate change, not to mention other high risks faced by their kids.

It's possible, but I'm still not entirely convinced. You can take part in this discussion. Frank Rotering invites all Radio Ecoshock listeners to write him about this strategy. Pour out your objections to test the theory, ask your pointed questions, or make suggestions of how we can push this historic change. All this will be incorporated in Frank's new book, due out in 2015. Beta test social theory! Contact Frank through his web site at contractionism.org.

You can also watch a 2011 video interview with Frank Rotering here. Download or listen to the Frank Rotering interview in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

GAIL ZAWAKI AT WIT'S END

New England's Gail Zawacki is fed up. The Flood Wall Street protest never delivered on it's plan for civil disobedience arrests. It gave up and ate pizzas without ever reaching Wall Street. Zawacki covers a lot of ground in these times of despair and failure. She's also been on a one-woman campaign against the almost unknown threat posed by low-level ozone smog.

From Georgia to New England, leaves are blotchy, trees are dying. It's a sign of the same polluted air that puts up to 20% of our kids with inhalers in the classroom. Low-level ozone is a plague around the world. It weakens plants for a deluge of fungi, insects, and diseases. Yet hardly anyone knows about it. Gail does, and she tells all.

The blog is called Wit's End. So far, it's been read over 11 million times. The author - I want to say artist - is Gail Zawacki. She's edgy. She's on a campaign to save trees from air pollution. But mostly Gail's in a battle against the never-ending conceits humans use to pretend

LINKS FOR THE GAIL ZAWAKI INTERVIEW

We begin by talking about the Flood Wall Street protest. Gail's description of the way this degenerated into a happy pizza party is funny and sad. Revolution? Not!

Read that here.

I just love the photo Gail contributed this week. Gail's dog knows where Wall Street is on a map, why don't the protesters?

Gail talks about the book An Appalachian Tragedy. It detailed the on-going impacts of ozone pollution on America's forests, from Georgia to New England. Nobody in the EPA was interested, and in fact, one person Gail wrote snapped the only "tragedy" was that the book was written at all!

We also discussed the Jack Fishman lecture to celebrate scientist Paul Creutzen's 80th birthday. Fishman realized the threat of low-level ozone back in the early 1990's. View that presentation here.

After a few formalities for Creutzen, Fishman launches into a powerful case indicting ozone. The video is described as: "Tropospheric Ozone in the Anthropocene: Are We Creating a Toxic Atmosphere? Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie Published on Feb 19, 2014

"Talk of Jack Fishman Saint Louis University, USA at the Anthropocene Symposium, Mainz, 2 December 2013. The scientific symposium has been organized by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in celebration of the 80th birthday of Paul Crutzen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995."

Get this. This scientist asks if we are "creating a toxic atmosphere". How many people are interested. When I checked, there were 238 views on You tube. Yawn. Toxic atmosphere... who cares?

You can find out about Jack Fishman's "Ozone Gardens" in St. Louis in a .pdf here. School kids get to learn which plants die fastest from our air pollution.

Excerpts from Jack Fishman's 1990 book "Global Alert" are reprinted in this Zawaki blog post (scroll down past the gory photos of plants and trees blighted by ozone...)

Gail talks about the BBC "Global Dimming" documentary (which shows how our dusty pollution is shading Earth enough to hide up to 1 degree C of the greenhouse gases we've actually put into the atmosphere.

Find a transcript of that program here.

Watch the documentary here.

The Radio Ecoshock special on global dimming (20 minutes, 18 MB) is available as a free .mp3 here.

A transcript of Radio Ecoshock special on global dimming, (broadcast Sept 8, 2006) is here.

We also talk about what can happen if the smog on the air stops suddenly, say due to an economic crash, a solar storm knocking out electric grids, or whatever. Will the Earth experience a sudden burst of warming? Probably.

The Radio program Gail recommends is from Radio Lab, "Dust of This Planet" broadcast September 8th. She also likes the following program on September 19th, called "Staring into the Abyss".

Gail mentions Mark Jacobson, a Professor at Stanford who published a plan to switch the world to renewable energy by 2030. Dr. Mark Jacobson will be my guest on Radio Ecoshock soon.

Gails' Wit's End blog often features paintings by the Medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch. Find out more in this Wiki entry.

You can view the complete works of Hieronymus Bosch here.

Gail mentioned the World Bank applauding China's effort to impose a carbon tax. Find that news article here.

The New York Time article by Justin Gillis about ozone damage to crops is here.

Gail says pollution-damaged crops produce less at harest time, but also have less nutrition. Find the Article in the journal Nature "Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition" reference here. (Only the Abstract is available for free.)

Find the "Apocalypsi Libary at The End of the World" here.

For the Dead Trees - Dying Forests website, click here.

Find Gail's book "Pillage, Plunder & Pollute, LLC" as a free .pdf download on this page.

Or order the print version of the book here on Amazon. It's Gail's terrific summary of her almost one-woman campaign to wake us all up to the on-going damage caused by invisible ground-level ozone pollution. I recommend it.

And of course, don't miss her witty blog, here.

You can download or listen to the Radio Ecoshock interview with Gail Zawacki in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Gail sailed through a lot of cutting edge material. All of it is backed up by recent papers and articles you will want. Follow the links for yourself.

COMING UP ON RADIO ECOSHOCK

Frank Rotering talked about Naomi Klein's new book "This Changes Everything". Naomi will be my guest on Radio Ecoshock two weeks from now. Gail Zawacki mentioned Stanford's Mark Jacobson, who worked out a path to a world powered by renewables by 2030. Mark will join us soon on the show.

But next week I want to dive into a great gaping sink-hole of mainstream media news coverage. No doubt you've seen fast clips about the two typhoons flooding Japan lately. They don't tell you what is happening at the Fukushima nuclear disaster site, where tons of radioactive water flow straight into the Pacific Ocean on a good day. It's time for a Fukushima update, with our best guide, nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen. Plus, Arnie has been sending reports to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about California's most dangerous reactor, Diablo Canyon. As we found out from Fukushima, a blow reactor anywhere in the world quickly becomes everybody's problem, no matter where you live. Stay tuned to Radio Ecoshock.

Our Soundcloud page went over 10,000 listens this week. Check that out. Get all our past programs as free mp3 downloads from the show web site at ecoshock.org. They are only free to all the world thanks to the people who donate to Radio Ecoshock. You can help here.

Donors and subscribers also fund my work on 87 non-profit radio stations. These stations do not pay me anything, and they forbid any program to fund-raise. So I'm counting on you, the podcast subscriber and blog reader, to keep on going.

I'm Alex Smith, saying thank you for listening, and thanks for supporting this show on your non-profit radio station.

I close out the show with a bit of my latest music.

HOPE ON EARTH?

"Population Bomb" author and Stanford Prof. Paul R. Ehrlich and film-maker, activist Michael Charles Tobias on hope in the midst of danger. Stand-up comedian & economist Yoram Bauman on climate humor. Radio Ecoshock 140604



Knowing what we know about dwindling energy, the total debt economy, and a dangerously sliding climate, how can anybody talk about hope?

I know more people will tune in for the latest disaster news, and there's plenty of that to go around. But this show asks three really smart people how we could tilt all that into worthwhile good lives on a good planet. These aren't pollyannas or professional spin-masters. Our guests are famous in their fields. They've been around the block with human disgrace and our attack on nature.

After publishing "The Population Bomb", written with his wife Anne, Paul R. Ehrlich remains an essential public figure 50 years later. He's the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.

Ehrlich teamed up with a green giant of film-making for the new book "Hope on Earth, a Conversation".

The other end of that conversation is Michael Charles Tobias. You've seen his work on TV and films, whether you know his name or not. Animal rights activists respect his work too.

Basically, I grill them both, first about the real world situation, and then how they can find any self-respecting hope.

Then we veer off into the improbable: climate humor. We'll talk with a professional stand-up economist about climate change and comedy. Yoram Bauman has been on Comedy Central, does stand-up tours, and just co-authored a new book "The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change".

It's your long-lost hope and desperate laughs, right here on Radio Ecoshock.

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

WHY HOPE? PAUL R. EHRLICH



Hope is almost a cursed word, especially after disappointment with the first Obama campaign. Maybe it's even hard to hope in the certain knowledge we have disrupted the climate for generations to come. Is hope a damaged word, and what should we hope for?

Some of the rich dialogues in the book are about the intricate patterns of nature. How do these apply to people isolated in heated or air-conditioned boxes, plugged into the imaginary world of electronic selves?

In this new book "Hope on Earth", I was surprised to find discussions about butterflies and bugs - until I dug into Dr. Ehrlich's serious qualifications as an entomologist. I wondered how his professional knowledge of the insect world feeds back into our vision of the human. Are we like the insects in some ways?

Speaking of warring ants, I aks Paul what he makes of the resurrection of the Cold War, with the United States and it's allies against Russia, and maybe China? Considering all the real problems we humans have, Ehrlich finds posturing by the United States preposerous, but he's no friend of the politics in Russia these days either.

It's a wide-ranging interview from a mind exceptional even in his 80's. Erhlich tells us he's just getting started, with lots of work yet ahead of him.

Download/listen to this interview with Paul Ehrlich in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

FILM-MAKER MICHAEL CHARLES TOBIAS

He's an author, a true ecologist, and mountain climber. You've probably seen his work as a film-maker. Michael Charles Tobias created the 1991 "Voice of the Planet" series for Turner Broadcasting, with William Shatner as host. He's done a slew of documentaries since then, including "Hotspots" for PBS.

Back in 2006, I interviewed Howard Lyman, the Mad Cowboy who converted from raising cattle to becoming a vegetarian. But Tobias was there first, with his documentary in 2005.

Tobias is equally well known in the animal rights and conservation movement, where's received awards and accolades for his work. He leads the Dancing Star Foundation devoted to species preservation.

Now Michael has teamed up with Stanford's Dr. Paul Ehrlich for a deep conversation in the book "Hope on Earth".

As a radio host covering science, it still bothers me that all the talk about climate change, even among major environment groups, is the impact it will have on humans, our gross domestic product, or whether big cities will flood. Michael Charles Tobias has been speaking up about climate disruption on behalf of the rest of the species that inhabit this globe.

I suppose the media knows that humanism sells. We are interested in much beyond ourselves, except cat videos. How can we break this generation out of the electronic matrix, to really care about other creatures?

It's come to the point that anyone who speaks out our treatment of farm animals, or even photographs the awful truth, is branded a terrorist. But Tobias doesn't fear, and counts people like Ingrid Newkirk of PETA as his friends.

Michael found the Dancing Star Foundation, which among other things is involved in Animal rescue in California and New Zealand. But it's a lot deeper than that, using many venues in its mission "Helping humankind protect the natural world."

Here is Michael's own web site.

Download/listen to this interview with Michael Charles Tobias in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Or listen to this interview right now on Sound Cloud.

GLOBAL WARMING HUMOR? STAND-UP COMEDIAN (and economist) YORAM BAUMAN

You know it's global warming when:

Middle East oil producers feel at home everywhere.

Hot water comes out of both taps.

You find out ashphalt has a liquid state.

The four seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot and ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?

- found at http://www.die-klimaschutz-baustelle.de/climate_change_jokes.html

Our next guest is an economist who has assessed climate change. But wait, before you hit the snooze button, Dr. Yoram Bauman bills himself as the world's first and only Stand-up Economist. He tours the country doing comedy gigs that connect with ordinary people, explaining difficult concepts.

I suppose it's appropriate that from Comedy Central Yoram has moved on to publish a book on global warming - all in cartoons. I'll do anything to reach the public, and so will Yoram, so let's do it. Let's dare to talk about the economics of destroying the world's climate.

The book is "The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change" with illustrator Grady Klein, published by Island Press. I've looked it over, and I think anyone over the age of 8 could enjoy it. This should be a good tool to reach work-mates, family and friends with a simple and easy to access explanation of climate science.

Before we get to the comedy, I ask Bauman about his day job, which includes calculating ways and means to change our economy to reward carbon reductions, rather than our current system of rewarding carbon emissions.

It seems to me that billions spent rebuilding after something like Hurricane Sandy is money that isn't spent on public health care, rebuilding ricketty bridges, or replacing our wasteful electric grid. Does it matter what we spend the money on?

My theory is that climate damage - just the impacts of all the extreme weather events - will eventually cause an economic crash the likes of which we have not seen before. Can we run out of wealth to rebuild?

Bauman is more optimistic than I am about our continuing economy. I also don't agree with his opinion that the car economy will (and should) keep going for another few decades while emissions come down. Do we really have decades to keep polluting the Earth?

On the other hand, Bauman, through his act, his humor, and now this cartoon explanation of climate change - is taking these important scientific messages to people who otherwise might shut it out. I think he's doing important work.

Find Yoram Bauman's web site here at standupeconomist.com. Get a taste of his stand-up comedy here on You tube.

Download/listen to this interview with Yoram Bauman in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

How do Prius owners drive?

One hand on the wheel, the other patting themselves on the back

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Thanks for all your support!

Alex Smith