BATTLING CARBON GIANTS IN PACIFIC NORTHWEST

SUMMARY: Pacific Northwest fights becoming a carbon colony. Vancouver protests American coal expansion (Kevin Washbrook, VTACC). Daphne Wysham: Oregon kicks out Canadian propane peddler. The unreported stories. Radio Ecoshock 150617

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. This week we investigate attempts by the fossil fuel industry to capture otherwise green-thinking ports in the Pacific Northwest, of the United States and Canada, to export carbon to Asia. It's a battle you hardly hear about. Citizens are lining up against huge corporations with huge money, to fight off giant coal ports, liquified natural gas ports, even propane ports. If we commit to that infrastructure, we commit to devastating climate change - not to mention the explosive, toxic and polluting impacts of these big projects on the Pacific coast.

We first hear from activist Kevin Washbrook reporting from Vancouver, Canada, and then from green radio host and activist Daphne Wysham from Portland, Oregon.

I wrap up with some new science presented at a Harvard University research talk. Dr. James Anderson talks about why climate change is coming much faster than anyone thought possible. And why it's irreversible.

It's eco-shocking radio. I'm Alex Smith. Let's roll. But I first want to thank George from Australia. George generously covered all the telecommunications and download costs, for all Ecoshock listeners, for the whole summer. That's a load off my mind for sure. Thank you George!

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

Or listen right now on Soundcloud!



"GREEN" VANCOUVER, CANADA TARGETED AS CARBON PORT

Multinational corporations would like to turn the gorgeous port of Vancouver, Canada into another fossil fuel colony. After coal port proposals were blocked by public outcry in the American Pacific Northwest, they want to ship out coal to Asia through Vancouver. There is an active proposal to steer dirty Tar Sands oil into hundreds of tankers through Vancouver's scenic inlets. Even liquid natural gas is trying to use Vancouver at an outlet.

We've reached activist Kevin Washbrook in Vancouver. He's part of the group Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, or VTACC.

NASA scientist James Hansen famously was arrested protesting mountain top removal for coal. But in Vancouver, Simon Fraser University Professor and world energy expert Mark Jaccard was also arrested, blocking a coal train. The scientists are increasingly fed up with the failure of governments and official "climate talks" while carbon to the atmosphere keeps rising.

Trying to stop fossil fuel exports is like playing the game whack-a-mole. You find one project, and then another pops up, like the recent proposal to ship out Liquid Natural Gas via the historic Fraser River. We get a rather scary update on that project, with information anyone living near a proposed LNG terminal needs to know!

THE FIREBALL RISK OF LNG SHIPMENTS

Here's the scoop. Canada hardly requires any environmental assessment for liquid natural gas ports. Remember, these are not just "ports" but large industrial operations where natural gas is frozen at hundreds of degrees below zero Centigrade, which compresses it for shipments (often to Asia). The company on the Fraser River just looks at their immediate site, to list what environmental impacts that might have, and IS NOT REQUIRED TO ASSESS POSSIBLE DAMAGE CAUSED BY RIVER SHIPMENTS.

So the VTACC group had to look to the United States, which does require a full assessment, right out to the ocean. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recognizes that liquid natural gas is a terrorist risk. The Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper talks a lot about the reality of terrorist theats to Canada, but doesn't assess the possibility of an attack on an LNG tanker or barge.

The U.S. Coast Guard also looks at possible risks. According to Kevin Washbrook, his group found a U.S. report by Sandia National Lab that says an "unignited" cloud of natural gas could spread up to 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) on either side of the ship used for transportation. Presumably, that cloud of gas could ignite into an unGodly big fireball. That's just one of the things they don't tell you.

Who knows what could happen if terrorists bombed and exploded a giant LNG tanker near any port or city. It would look nuclear.

You can find one report on all this from the U.S. Sandia National Lab, published in 2008, here.

AMERICAN COAL SNEAKS OUT OF CANADIAN PORTS

Tsawwassen, a suburb of Vancouver, Canada hosts one of the busiest coal ports in North America. It's called "Westport", shipping 33 million tons of carbon-loaded coal a year. About 8 million tons of that is American coal brought up from the Powder River open pit coal mines in Wyoming. It comes on U.S. trains owned by Warren Buffett.

The obvious question: why don't they ship this coal out of American ports? As we'll hear next from Daphne Wysham, that's because coal port proposals in Oregon and Washington States have been shot down by public resistance. Nobody wants them, and no wonder. The coal trains themselves leave unhealthy coal dust all along the way. The companies say they don't but photographs taken by activists show they do. Plus the trains are way above the World Health Organization guidelines for night- time noise. Every train going by leads to more storms, droughts, and heat.

Four out of six coal ports proposed for the US Pacific Northwest were shot down. The largest still being pushed by industry is for Cherry Point in Washington State, near the Canadian border. That's been rejected by the local tribe.

So as Kevin puts it, British Columbia has become the back-door dirty doormat to ship American coal to China and Asia generally. The coal industry always wants to expand their ports, to double their shipments and their profits, and to double their emissions into the already damaged atmosphere. There is another proposal to build a coal port in another Vancouver suburb, the City of Surrey.

Naturally, in the environmentally-conscious Vancouver area, there is lots of push-back from concerned citzens. The regional government has objected to the Surrey coal port. But the port system is not run by the City of Vancouver, but rather by the fossil- friendly Federal Government.

There is no democratic input into where these shipping facilities are built, and whether they should be built at all. Building coal ports now seems like such a waste of capital. It's like building barns and herds of horses in the year 1905, just as the horseless carriage was starting to take over. Coal is so done.

Keep in touch with Kevin Washburn on his Facebook page.

Listen to or download this interview with Kevin Washbrook, in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

"GREEN" PORTLAND, OREGON FIGHTS OFF CARBON EXPORT SCHEMES

What's happening on the U.S. West Coast, where fossil fuel companies race to export carbon to Asia? Let's tune in with a long-time friend of the environment, Daphne Wysham. For 8 years, out of Washington D.C., Daphne hosted the syndicated radio show "Earthbeat",on the Pacifica network. Her articles have been published by both mainstream and alternative media. Now Daphne is in Portland Oregon, as Director of the Climate and Energy Program, at the Centre for Sustainable Economy. At the same time she's an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Daphne and I were just on Post Carbon radio, on KWMR in Northern California, with Bing Gong and Karen Nyhus. It was a wide-ranging talk and you can listen to it here.

Green radio host, researcher, and activist Daphne Wysham

In this show we drill into what is happening in Portland, the state of Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest - when it comes to transporting fossil fuels. Note that Portland was the first city in the United States to have and implement a climate action plan. Even so, the Mayor pushed a proposal to open a propane loading facility.

The corporation involved, Pembina Pipeline Corp., operates in the Canadian Tar Sands of Alberta. For them, propane is just a bi-product they can sell. Of course it's wildly explosive, and adds more carbon to the atmosphere. Natural gas is lighter than air, so it rises when it leaks. Propane is heavier than air, so it flows along the water or land, into low spots, where it can pool and then violently explode.

Pembina tried to tell the public the propane would go to help poor women in Asia have lighting and cooking facilities. Environmental groups found out the real destination was for making propylene in Chinese factories. The carbon emissions from this one propane port over a few decades would be larger than the emissions from the whole city of Portland. What good are bicycle routes and electric cars if the propane port overwhelms all the green good we can muster?

The Portland propane facility has been turned away for now, being wildly unpopular. But the situation always requires vigilance, and these projects are seldom killed forever.

Meanwhile, there's another fossil fuel port proposed for Vancouver, Washington, right across the river from Portland. If approved, that could be the largest oil terminal in the United States - larger even than the giants in the Gulf of Mexico.

Daphne Wysham tells us the whole Pacific Northwest is in the cross-hairs of the fossil fuel industry. They want to build ports and shipping facilities that would allow a carbon river much larger than the Keystone Pipeline. Projects arrive, and small environment groups can't possibly match corporate funding for research and legal battles. The infamous corporate lobby group Alec, which funds politicians who write fossil-friendly laws, makes Oregon it's number three biggest target for funding, Wysham tells us.

That is why Oregonians are now demanding a moratorium on new fossil fuel infrastructure. That's the real answer. The moratorium movement is spreading to Washington State, and only needs British Columbia to get on board, to stop this fossil madness.

We all seen what happens when mega-corporations start playing with local or state politics. The money and big promises of jobs lure in the politicians. Are these forces compatible with democracy and self-determination? Is there still enough freedom left on the Pacific Coast to avoid becoming the kind of carbon colonies that developed in Texas, Alberta, and Louisiana?

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock interview with Daphne Wysham in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Follow Daphne Wysham on Twitter here. IRREVERSIBLE CLIMATE CHANGE: JAMES G. ANDERSON

In the short time we have left, I'd like to pass on some quotes and some notes from a deep and important talk from Climate Week at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The speaker is Dr. James Anderson and the title is: "Coupled Feedbacks in the Climate Structure That Set the Time Sale for Irreversible Change: Arctic Isotopes to Stratospheric Radicals."

Watch the full talk by James G. Anderson on Vimeo here.

This talk on April 8th, 2015 was part of a series of presentations. I found this on Vimeo thanks to a tip from a Radio Ecoshock listeners, and I'm so glad I did.

The talk, as Anderson tells us, is fairly high level, a presentation of on-going research into some important developments in the climate. Anderson covers a wide range of science. I can only cover a few important points.

James G. Anderson, Harvard

For example, research into past ages showed the stratosphere, that upper layer of Earth's atmosphere above the weather, was far wetter than today, in past greenhouse ages. The wetting of the stratosphere should be happening now, but until very recently, nobody knew how that could happen.

Anderson also points out a key difference between past hot house worlds and today. This time around, humans also injected chlorinate substances, like ozone-destroying CFC's, that were never there in past ages. How does that affect climate change?

And as we'll hear from this opening quote, scientists are gaining new knowledge on changes we've made that cannot be reversed, at least not in any time scale that matters to humans. Here are some key quotes from Dr. Anderson, speaking at Harvard.

Quote 1

"This is really a research talk about two aspects of the climate structure both of which are coupled through irreversible connected cycles. So I'm going to talk about experiments done 5 meters above the surface, and then experiments done 20 kilometers above the surface. And you'll see why those are linked.

I want to emphasize some points. The first is this global climate structure is changing far more rapidly than we believed was possible even five years ago.....

The next issue is the feedback in the climate structure because it's these feedbacks that set the time scale for irreversibility, and I'm going to take a very brief tour through the climate system to show how that functions."

Next we'll hear about the fragile Arctic and how that determines so much of our weather. Note how Anderson also stresses a point made again and again by our guest scientist Paul Beckwith, when explaining the new disruption of weather in the Northern Hemisphere: the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles, and as polar regions warm up, that difference is declining. The result is a slower and wavier Jet Stream.

Quote 2

"The climate structure depends in large measure on the temperature gradient between the tropics and the polar regions."

"During the Eocene there was very little temperature difference between the tropics and the polar regions, and in that particular structure the stratosphere had to be wet ... I don't think there's any possibility of having that climate structure without a moist stratosphere. And as we'll see, moisture entering the stratosphere today has a very different connotation because it triggers catalytic cycles involving chlorine and bromine that were not present during the Eocene.

I'll also talk about deep convective injection North of the sub-tropical Jet which, as we saw from Brian's talk, is a potential way of transitioning from the current structure of the climate to one in which there is a far smaller difference in temperature between the equator and the polar regions. So this convective injection of water turns out to be unique over the U.S. And it's couple to also anti-cyclonic flow over the U.S. that's created by the North American monsoon. So we have this convective injection into this anti-cyclonic motion which is a demonic combination created by the dynamics, but is has a very strong coupling into the catalytic chemical structure of the stratosphere."

GEOENGINEERING

As a side-note, Anderson explains why both the Left and the Right may support further research into geo-engineering. First he refers to the National Research Council report on climate engineering, particularly solar radiation management. Quote 4

"It [Geoengineering research] is being pushed, actually in a bi-partisan way. The right would like to have solar radiation management so more fossil fuels can be burned. And the Left believes that intruding in natural systems like this is a very dangerous adventure. So research on the topic is gaining bi-lateral support, which is highly unusual these days. And we'll see that it engages exactly the same catalytic chemistry."

"GLOBAL WARMING" - BAD NAME FOR THE PROBLEM

Next we hear why James Anderson thinks "global warming" is so horribly wrong as a term to describe the current climate shift.

QUOTE 3

"This term 'global warming' applied to this problem makes me shudder, because 70 per cent of the globe is covered by ocean with an average depth of 3500 meters, and it has massive heat capacity. So in my mind the most degenerate variable you can discuss is mean global temperature. And it also carries this connotation of something that's happening slowly. You know, 1 degree Centigrade per century doesn't carry a huge amount of political imperative behind it. It also carries the connotation that you could watch things slowly change and then if you don't like it you can just slow down the release of carbon dioxide and return to the initial [state] - and nothing could be further from the truth. I always avoid the term ['global warming'], and I cringe every time I hear it."

METHANE AND CLATHRATES

We'll never have time to get to all the great science in this talk, but I want you to hear this:

"The next point involves these methane clathrates. These are these beautiful structures: ice cages within which Nature inserts methane produced anaerobically [without oxygen] by decomposition of organic material. It's entropy that's driving this entirely because Nature of course abhors a vacuum. You want to stuff molecules into every possible nook and cranny in order to engage the inclusion of the energy states. And it turns out methane fits beautifully into these water cages. This is ubiquitous. Methane clathrates contain about three times the chemical energy of all known fossil fuel reserves in coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

And they reside not only in the surface soils of Siberia and Northern Alaska but also they are ubiquitous across the ocean basins."

Anderson gives the example of a clathrate pulled up off the West Coast, from a depth of about 100 meters, that could be ignited with a match.

"But the numbers, as Steve Wassi (sp?) pointed out are quite concerning. If you plot the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning in gigatons of carbon per year (so you have to convert back from CO2)....In 1990, about 6 gigatons of carbon was added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning - and that was basically a textbook number for many, many years. But in 2000 it started to take off, and when the 2007 IPCC report came out these were the release scenarios. This was the worst possible case this upper red line. And of course we've exceeded it every year subsequent to 2007.

The key point is that just a half a percent of the labile carbon in the suface soils of the North Slope of Alaska and Siberia - just half a percent release rate per year gives us around 8 to 9 gigatons per year which doubles the carbon added to the atmosphere by all fossil fuel burning world-wide."

So that constitutes the next exhibit for feedbacks.

EXHIBIT A - THE ARCTIC

Anderson starts with data produced at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington. Their research focuses not so much on the area covered by Sea Ice, but on the volume of the ice (which also accounts for it's thickness). Shockingly, in 2007, there was less ice in the Arctic than the 2007 IPCC report predicted for the end of the century.

"The volume allows you to calculate the heat, the internal energy going into the system to melt that amount of ice, per year. And that turns out to be about 1 part in 40,000 of the circulating infrared radiation between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere/water/carbon dioxide cloud structure. And so just a very small shift in the Meridional inflow of heat into the Arctic has huge ramifications in terms of losing this permanent ice."

"So the second point here is it's these feedbacks within the climate structure that are driving both the first and second derivative of that ice volume. And of course as ice pulls back, one of the feedbacks is that the ocean exchange brings in warm water from lower latitudes bringing heat into the Arctic basin. The other thing that happens is that as ice and snow disappear, the atmospheric transport that used to come in and radiate as T to the Fourth into the cold ground below it - would be stripped of it's internal energy before it even got into the Arctic Basin. That's not true any more. In fact about three quarters of the heat transport is by the atmosphere."

"Then of course the most obvious is the rejection of incoming solar forcing. Ice reflects 90 per cent of it, ocean water absorbs about 90 per cent of it. On the face of it that's important to the energy balance of the climate. But the University of Washington also discovered that what in retrospect is quite obvious but very important - and this that the dominant amount of that energy goes into just the upper few meters of the Arctic Ocean. And the mean depth of the remaining ice is only a meter and a half. The entire edges are slushy and gets broken up. And so all of that solar forcing goes right into the heat bath within which that remaining ice resides. And this is why you see such a dramatic combination of feedbacks."

Due to the multiple feedbacks in place "...from my perspective it's from the Arctic that all these problems evolve. This brings up the problem of high latitude melting of clathrates and permafrost. Of course the immediate question is can we lose 70 percent of the ice volume in 30 years and return to a stable condition. I don't know anybody who has suggested how heat can be extracted from this system to re-form the ice structure. All of these feedbacks are operating in the same direction. And there's no known mechanism that can extract heat to re-form these ice structures... and so when you look at this question [of reversing Arctic ice loss], the answer quite clearly 'no'."

LOTS MORE IN THE TALK

Well, we didn't get to the strange way chlorinated substances play back on other climate feed-backs in the atmosphere. Plus, and this is a spoiler alert, scientists have discovered a way the stratosphere can become wetter, as it did in past greenhouse worlds. Many, many hours flying around the world found the stratosphere has the same low amount of water vapor.

But in a kink in the system, a collision of weather factors over the continental United States creates a kind of heat funnel that does inject more water into the stratosphere. There are several other sites like that, Anderson says. They have the mechanism that will wet down the stratosphere over time.

As I say, there is a huge range of cutting science in this talk by James Anderson. Some of it is difficult for the lay person to understand. But most of it is very clear, and we learn of feedbacks which make this developing climate shift into a major geological event that cannot be reversed. We have already gone over the climate cliff. How far we fall depends on whether we can reign in our fossil burning emissions before they trigger much, much larger carbon or methane inputs from the previously frozen lands and sea bed in the Arctic.

Then Anderson wraps up with a passionate talk on why Harvard University MUST divest it's multi-billion dollar investment fund from fossil fuels.

OUT OF TIME

Ahh, we've blown through the time barrier again. Get all our past programs as free mp3s from our web site at ecoshock.org. Listen any time on the Radio Ecoshock page on Soundcloud. Support the on-going work of Radio Ecoshock here.

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

Who Will Control the Climate of the World?

Australian author Clive Hamilton on geoengineering & his new book "Earthmasters". Plots by big oil, Bill Gates & nuke scientists. Shocking new science shows Arctic could melt at current carbon levels. Plus world-wide growth of bike sharing with Janet Larsen of Earth-Policy. Radio Ecoshock 130522 1 hour http://tinyurl.com/mg5uj4w

Welcome traveller. Can you handle the truth?

I didn't think so. Me neither.

But it will happen anyway. Science is beginning to prove we have already changed the planet's climate in dangerous ways.

A small group of climate scientists, backed by a billionaire and big oil, are considering taking over control of the climate, to stave off disaster. Then we'll find proof our current 400 parts per million will melt so much Arctic and Antarctic ice, warming up to 8 degrees C, flooding the world's largest cities.

We'll wrap that up with one of the few positive alternatives growing in this disturbed scene: a wave of bike sharing around the world. Includes Europe, U.S., Mexico, South America, China.

FREE MP3 AUDIO DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show (1 hour) in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Clive Hamilton interview on "EarthMasters" (geoengineering 25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download Janet Larsen from Earth Policy Institute on world-wide bike sharing (24 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

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



==========

CLIVE HAMILTON - EARTHMASTERS



Clive Hamilton

Gather round boys and girls as we tell the story of the Earthmasters - the men who would take over from nature, to run the climate of the world. Or do they mean to save us from our fossil-addicted selves?

For all who love a conspiracy, geoengineering has it all. The oil companies, far-right think-tanks, nuclear weapons scientists, and even Bill Gates. But you'll have to hang in, while we first look at a few small problems in their plans.

Our guide is Clive Hamilton. After careers in the Australian public service as an economics and resource advisor, and several stints at Universitites like Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford, Hamilton founded and ran a progressive think-tank called the Australia Institute. Now he's Professor of Public Ethics in a program run by two Australian universities.

You may have heard of books Clive's written or co-written, including "Growth Fetish", "Affluenza", "Silencing Dissent" and more recently "Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change." But his latest is "Earthmasters, The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering."

We reached Clive Hamilton in Canberra.

We cover a lot of important points. One of the big questions: if we start cooling the planet, say with Solar Radiation Management, what happens if we stop? Answer: the temperature goes up very quickly in a matter of months or even weeks, as the aerosols are rained out. It could be a jump of several degrees.

That leads to an absolutely key point: the RATE if temperature increase is possibly more important than the overall increase. If we gain a half a degree per decade, some plants, animals and ocean species will have time to migrate further toward the poles, or higher up mountains, to survive. But if there is a relatively sudden jump of one or two degrees global mean temperature, (more in some areas) - then mass extinctions will result. That is one of the supreme risks of geoengineering.

It's easy to picture a scenario where a fleet of aircraft spraying sulfates, or a fleet of ships spraying up salt water continuously, could stop. A financial crash, war, plague, or terrorism could end the program. Then all of the heating we've covered up with geoengineering would strike the planet. No one has a tenable answer for this problem.

A second key issue: who will decide when and how to start geoengineering? A single country could do it, like Russia, the United States, or even Malaysia. It's possible a billionaire could decide to cool off the planet, with no public consultation. In fact, we learn that Bill Gates, the Microsoft Founder, has been pouring millions into a research fund to develop science - and patents! - to cool the planet. Some businessmen hope to make money controlling the technology that could save us from extreme climate change.

The Gates foundation has been advised by two scientists in particular, Ken Caldeira and David Keith. These are highly regarded climate scientists, Caldeira from Stanford and Keith from Harvard. David Keith is a great example of a man who seems to deny climate change, or at least thinks it won't matter to humans, we can adapt - and yet he gets money from Canadian Tar Sands billionaire N Murray Edwards to further the cause of geoengineering. How can Conservatives have it both ways? Another important player in this "geo-clique" is Brad Allenby.

Gates has started several companies investigating geoengineering, one called "Intellectual Ventures". The CEO is Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

Another associate at Intellectual Ventures is Lowell Wood, a former nuclear weapons researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and protege of the late Edward Teller, inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Before his death, Edward Teller was promoting a scheme to launch millions of mirrors into space to deflect the sun away from the Earth. Teller was a Cold Warrior who also championed the "Star Wars" scheme under President Ronald Reagan. Wood is one of a collection of people who moved from nuclear weapons research into geoengineering. And why not? If you think humans should control the Earth by force, why not control the climate the same way? In fact, some of these men want to control Nature entirely. Former Vice President Dick Cheney or the current Dictator of North Korea would probably agree that's a good thing.

Such schemes reduce sunlight for all creatures on Earth, including our own needs for agriculture. And they do nothing to stop the equally deadly acidification of the oceans from our fossil fuel pollution.

Obviously, big oil and coal companies would love to have a technological solution that lets them burn even more of their polluting produces. In the interview, and in his book Earthmasters, Clive Hamilton tells us how Exxon/Mobil and Shell are investing in geoengineering schemes.

Strangest of all, the right-wing think tank the American Enterprise Institute also backs Solar Radiation Management, or geoengineering, to stave off global heating. The AEI was previously given millions of dollars, and acted to deny global warming was even happening. That's quite a switch, going from denial straight to demanding emergency action to stop climate change!

Clive Hamilton suggests the problem of global warming indicates a failing of the free market system - since the true cost of polluting the atmosphere was never factored in. But now, with geoengineering, the capitalists system tries to vindicate itself by converting a horrible problem into a wonderful victory with technology it controls.

Due to time limitations, we didn't cover technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. People are going to have to buy the book to get that.

Part of the reason Clive wrote the book, and is now touring North America, is to wake up the public and get a real discussion going about who should control this tech, if we ever need it. Naturally, the far better solution is to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions before we lose the climate civilization depends on.

Find out more at Clive's web site.

Now in fairness, we have to say there are genuine and worthy climate scientists who are terrified about the way the climate trap is going. They don't get money from the military or Bill Gates. They just see the Arctic meltdown and species leaving the stage forever, and think "we've got to do something fast". What could we do that isn't too crazy or dangerous?

I think there will be a "climate emergency". We get two years where crops don't grow. It could be floods or extreme heat, whatever. Millions die and there is a call for action. The geoengineers step forward with a plan. Will we be able to say "no"?

That's why I didn't ask Clive about international negotiations or laws. It's still the Wild West of the atmosphere, where just one determined dictator, billionaire, or president could decide to cool the world.

NEW SCIENCE FROM THE ARCTIC: WE MAY HAVE ALREADY PASSED THE BIG MELTING POINT

In the last year, scientists discovered a climate record going back over 3 million years - long beyond the ice core records of 800,000 years. Research led by Professor Julie Brigham-Grette, from the University of Masschusetts, Amherst drastically changes our understanding of the world.



Julie Brigham-Grette

She's been studying a meteor-impact lake called El' gygytgyn on the Eastern tip of Siberia.Drilling into a lake in the Russian Arctic, created from a meteor strike ages ago, she found several periods where the Arctic was up to 8 degrees warmer than today. That despite carbon dioxide levels thought to be similar to, or below, today's 400 parts per million. Zoom out on this Google Map to see where that lake is.

The Greenland Ice sheets have repeatedly shrunk to half current size. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet completely disappeared 1.1 million years ago. The sea level was tens of meters higher than today.

All this happened not with carbon levels like the 600 parts per million and above projected by politicians and planners, but at only 400 parts per million, our current level. It appears we may have already arrived at greenhouse gas levels sufficient to drastically warm the poles, make sea ice history, melt Greenland and parts of Antarctica, and flood coastal areas around the world. All that may be only a matter of time.

In the radio show I play a selection of key clips recorded from a You tube video presentation by Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, at Amherst, in the summer of 2012 - almost a year ago, and yet hardly anyone has heard of these startling findings. Find out more at frontierscientists.com, hosted by University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

I highly recommend you watch this full Youtube video of Julie Brigham-Grette with all the graphs and charts. Scary stuff.

FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS: BIKE SHARING IS EXPLODING AROUND THE WORLD!

Quick quiz: what way of getting around is growing faster than "any mode of transport in the history of the planet?"

If you said cars, motorbikes, or skateboards... nope. The right answer is "bike sharing". It's almost enough to give us hope - and that's the intention of the the ongoing work called "Plan B" from Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute.

Here to brighten our day with news about the wave of carbon-friendly bicycle travel around the world is Janet Larsen. She's the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute. Over 500 cities world-wide have installed millions of share-able bikes.



Janet Larsen, Earth Policy Institute

There's plenty of bike action in North America, but we start with Europe. They have been the world leaders in urban biking, other than China. A few of us heard about free bikes in Amsterdam back in the day, but those were stolen to be sold off in Eastern Europe. We talk about bicycle solutions today in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen "Bycyklen" system just shut down at the end of 2012, as part of "austerity". There was such a big public outcry, the government has now promised a new modern bike sharing system to replace it.

The French were never known for their biking, but Citi Group helped pioneer a sharing system in Rouen that was very successful. Now every tourist to Paris enjoys the great bike sharing system there.

I wince with pain when I think about what happened in China. In the early 1990's, we all saw video of throngs of commuters biking into work in most of China's cities. Now that's been wiped out by the same polluting car culture developed in America, and pushed by many of the same car companies, like General Motors. That car-culture is beginning to fail them. China is still the world's largest bicycle maker, and some Chinese cities have installed a lot of shared bikes, up to 90,000 in one city alone. There are lots of exciting things going on with biking in China.

In our interview, we also look at the challenges facing bicycle transport in Mexico, and innovative programs in Central and South America.

NORTH AMERICAN BIKE SHARING

Another whole aspect of this is bike messengers and inner-city deliveries. We have a small fleet of tricycle "freight" bikes operating in downtown Vancouver.



Freight Tricycle Vancouver (photo Alex Smith)

No doubt you've heard that New York City will be opening a giant new bike sharing program later this Spring. The first 5,000 subscriptions for shared bikes sold out quickly. Other cities, even Tusla Oklahoma, are scoring successes with new bike paths and bike sharing.

The list of bike benefits is so long. They offer independence, even if the main grid goes down, or oil prices skyrocket. You help save the climate, and help save your health at the same time. I wonder, is anyone doing the calculations about how fast we need to develop the bicycle transportation network, to be energy secure, and to make a major dent in climate-damaging car emissions?

This bicycle update is part of a series on the positive news coming from the institute, covering everything from clean alternative energy to climate-friendly diet changes. It's called "Plan B" as advanced by the Institute's founder, Lester Brown.

Track it down at earth-policy.org.

============= Please support Radio Ecoshock if you can, at our web site, ecoshock.org And grab lots of our free mp3 downloads of past shows.

Are we out of time? Find out next week, as I look into human extinction. I'm Alex. Thanks for hanging in.

KILL THE CAR

Studies show humans rate driving and commuting as the most stressful time every day. They are not aware of the harmful fumes filling the car. Or the carbon pouring up into the atmosphere.

As times get hotter, they crank up the air-conditioning, burning more fuel.

Most people will work until mid-April just to pay their car costs. That's just their personal share. More is paid by all levels of government, to keep the road network going.

The auto, insurance,construction and oil gang dominate our lives and our world. It is a violent world, or hurtling steel and graveyards. Everyone in my immediate family has been either hit by a car or in a serious car accident. My cat was run over. My dog was hit. My son was run over, but lived. I've been injured in a car accident. All my family members ditto.

How about you? We take car injuries for granted, and know others who have died, just getting around one day or night.

The toll in lives lost, injuries and lives ruined is beyond any military action anywhere in the world. The car means war in our neighborhoods. Built those 8 foot fences for the back yard, the little jails where it is safe to let your kids and pets out.

One day it snowed hard, unusual for our city. The street was blocked off. Suddenly, like moles entering the light, all the neighbours and all the kids hit the street. They tobaganned and frolicked where the cars could not come. People met for the first time.

We didn't even need that street. Everyone had laneways in back, with garages. The street should be ripped up, and made into food growing and a play park. Give us room to live. Give us back life on a human scale. Kill the car.

This program lets you hear a fine speech on the true cost of car culture. Yves Engler launched his book June 27th in Vancouver. The title: "Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay". The African co-author is Bianca Mugyenyi. Find out more at yvesengler.com

The two tried a road trip by public transit through the wild suburbs of America. It was savage territory - but Yves will tell you all about that, and about your own life, in this recording for Radio Ecoshock.

Yves is introduced by Vancouver City Councilman David Cadman.

At the end of the speech, I toss in my question to the panel of Engler, Vancouver City Councillor David Cadman, and stopthepave.org's Carmen Mills. Why do people get angry when we tell them the truth about cars?

Yves Engler says car culture isn't working. Maybe we should kill it, before it kills us. With pollution, climate change, mass death and injuries from accidents. Not to mention the massive corporations behind cars, construction, oil, and the military that protects it all.

THE REVENGE OF THE SUBURBS

During the Q and A, one really interesting theme emerged from Vancouver Councilman David Cadman. He's talking about "the revenge of the suburbs." That drama could be coming to your area, to all cities.

First of all, any city government would be lucky to have David Cadman elected. He knows about Peak Oil and talks about it out loud, in any crowd. Cadman gave the audience a short update on where we stand with climate change. In my opinion, he's the kind of well-informed politican we all dream is in office. Most are a long way behind David Cadman.

So what is "revenge of the suburbs"? It came up when the former long-time Canadian Mayor of Toronto lost the recent elections to a man from the suburbs. The new Mayor is the representative of more free-ways, bigger mall parking lots, and less of your tax money wasted on transit. He seems like a representative of the dying oil past, and the car-dependent communities still stuck there.

Every major city is surrounded by suburbs, which may now be cities themselves. Often there is a regional government - where there is always stress between the central city and the car-based suburbs.

Metro Vancouver, population over 2 million, just had a war, where the Provincial or State government swept aside local elected officials, to take over the transportation system.

Councilman Cadman says the breaking point came as Metro Vancouver tried in vain to expand its rapid transit system. The Transit authority board was made up of elected respresentatives, often the mayors of the surrounding cities and towns. This Board was temporarily stalled on the issue of who got served next.

After all, from the persective of both Peak Oil and climate change - outlying municipalities served by rapid transit will likely survive, even as cars become too expensive, or too polluting, to run. There is a lag time of 5 to 10 years in planning and completion of new rapid transit. The most-clued in politicians realize this may be the last chance for a transit lifeline to the main city and jobs.

Especially when you consider the massive debt at all levels of government, and a rash of economic instability. Many States and cities will be stuck with whatever crappy system they have now.

What happened to the elected transit board? A right-of-center Premier, think of the State Governor, who was elected mainly by voters in rural and suburban ridings, dismissed the elected transit board. He appointed his own people, brought in far-flung towns from the very distant hinterlands, and gave them power of decisions.

Lo and behold, they chose to hire private companies for big construction projects, with guaranteed profits, with the public keeping all the risk. Ayn Rand smiled. The Premier then ordered a new transit line to the airport, to bring in his 2008 Olympic guests. It was exactly the opposite of the rapid transit plans the Mayors wanted, and had waited more than a decade to see. It is well known that Premier's party gets financial and media support from big construction and real estate interests.

The straw that broke that camel's back can also be called "the revenge of the suburbs." According to Councilman Cadman, the Provincial Government stepped in when the Metro transit board suggested a tax on parking spots in suburban malls. To pay for more public transit, they needed to raise revenues from car drivers. Tax cars going to the Mall? Heaven forbid!

Mall-owners rebelled. Apparently that was enough to bring in the big guns, and kick out those local politicians. Business solves problems, not Democracy.

This lost-in-the-past Premier then bribed his suburban car-driving voters by spending billions on new bridges and highways. These will all be complete around the time it is too expensive for the ordinary person to drive to work. The private company guaranteed the profits on this baby, will suck huge amounts out of the state. The new giant bridge will charge a toll, where the existing narrower one was free. But another brand new toll bridge, again built using a Public/Private joint venture, is losing millions. It's empty much of the time, well below the rosy projections. Drivers seek out the free bridges, or just don't need the bridge.

We don't need to search Google to know this is happening all around North Amerca, and even more in China. Politicians are nervous about the bad economy, and long-lasting unemployment, especially among the young. Lacking any imagination, without good information on Peak Oil or climate change, these leaders of yester-year plunge 80 years backwards in time for solutions. They try to recreate the Great Depression jobs schemes. They imagine that economy was restored because of road-building, when really it was by War. They don't believe jobs from a green economy.

It is a mark of our deep insanity that politicians keep promising and building more roads, highways, freeways, and bridges for the last days of the private car, the last decade or two of oil. Tell them to stop! Stop wasting our money, the last of the oil, our atmosphere, and our future!

The world's longest car bridge was openend July 1st. It flys out of sight over the ocean, connecting downtown Qingdao to the Huangdao city centre. The bridge is over 26 miles long, 8 lanes wide, and saves Chinese drivers about 20 minutes. There is no light-rail component. Does it have bicycle lanes? Will anyone use it 20 years from now?

In many cities of North America, Europe, and Australia - central cities are self-organizing. In these green-aware high density cities, 80% of trips are made by walking, bicycle or transit. City ordinances and zoning are being changed to allow gardening and chickens. The low-oil city of Havana Cuba was something of a model of urban self sufficiency in food.

But beware the revenge of the suburbs.

Panel guest Carmen Mills was a founder of car-free days in Vancouver.

She fought the Gateway project, and now sees a larger world-wide issue called stopthepave.org. She's an activist's activist. Check that site out. When Carmen started calling for car-free days on certain popular streets, the media scorned her. Now Vancouver has them regularly, in various parts of the city. People, big crowds of people, show up for impromptu street fairs, with buskers, costumes, delicacies to eat and the chance to just meet others. It's super!

In the recent 2011 hockey riots in downtown Vancouver, it turns out most of the angry youth were Middle class young men from the suburbs. There is a latent hostility to cars, that turned up in riots everywhere, even in Vancouver in June.

Think about it. What do we always see in riot footage? Humans smash cars, turn them over, and burn them.

It even happens at rallies and county fairs. I can remember public events where folks paid a buck or two to get a chance to smash a car with a sledge hammer. We work for our vehicles a lot of the time, we are trapped in them, we fear them when walking or cycling - there is a lot of anger out there.

People living in cul-de-sacs, with no walkable stores or supplies in reach, abandoned to falling property values, after the real estate bubble broke - they will be confused, unprepared, and angry. Gangs of armed sububanites is a looming possibility. Inner cities, now struggling for more self-reliance and resilience, may also have to consider the old solution: city walls.

Too sci-fi for you? Yeah, I can't believe that either. But who knows what will happen, as the oil runs out?

I don't know how it will work out. Everyone has to figure out the future for themselves. And then something different happens. The future is constructed of surprises that seem predictable in hindsight.

Kill the car, sure. But beware of the revenge of the suburbs!

I'm Alex Smith, just another voice on the radio. Thank you for listening.

Find our web site at ecoshock.org.

KILLED BY COMPLEXITY

Radio Ecoshock Show November 5, 2010

SHOW CREDITS: (for radio stations)

Jeff Tumlin recorded by Alex Smith, at the Gaining Ground Summit, Vancouver October 7th, 2010.

Odd clips from "Telstar" by the Tornados (1962); the Discovery Channel special (2006) "Perfect Disaster: Solar Storm"; global warming song (via You tube) from FLEP09, The Family Life Education Pasefika, New Zealand.

----------------------

There is optimism - and then there's the facts. Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. We have a triple-header for you this week.

The Watchman is going to rattle out danger - with a brain wave escape hatch - as I interview California author Rebecca Costa.

Transportation planner Jeff Tumlin gives a short, stark warning speech about how cars make us fat, sick, and dead. Good commuting fare.

And we'll wrap up with happy bad news for the inner Doomster - NASA's new project to blackout your city, before the next Solar Storm starts the Long Emergency. Could it be the knock-out blow?

I don't mind if the future is scared and miserable. I just want my toilet to keep on working - and now the Sun wants to screw with my plumbing!

Do you think I'm crazy? NASA said so!

Keep listening.... and reading.

READ MORE - for all the links, my comments on this show, and the Solar Storm script, with more links to follow.

HATE THE MACHINE

The deadly culture of cars and air-conditioning.

Radio Ecoshock Show September 10th, 2010

GO STRAIGHT TO SHOW TRANSCRIPT with all the links.

The program begins with a reading from "Autogeddon" by Heathcote Williams.

That was a quote from the long poem "Autogeddon" written by British writer HeathCote Williams and originally published in 1987, the fall edition of The_Whole Earth Review. It was released as a lavishly illustrated book in 1991, and even made into a radio drama by BBC2. The presenter was Jeremy Irons, who, it turns out - loved cars.

The background music was Gary Numan's 1979 song cars.

This is Radio Ecoshock I'm Alex Smith.

Welcome to my hate affair with machines.

Yes I have lived without them. Millions of people still do, but like the bush-men, or Neanderthals, they are pushed toward the distant fringes of our world. At least, until the center collapses.

Our entire lives have been car-jacked, no doubt about it. We'll talk with Anne Lutz Fernandez, co-author of the book "Carjacked - The Culture of the Automobile & Its Effect On Our Lives". My take: the car is a machine to such the money and life out of you. Really.

In our second half hour, more machines to wreck the planet: air conditioners. Our guest is Stan Cox, author of "Losing Our Cool, Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through Summer)." After the world roasted in 2010, with lots more to come in the coming greenhouse world, you might want to find out how to survive, when the big machine breaks down.

READ MORE (partial transcript with links)

GREENING PORTLAND - Your City How To

I tossed this recording of "Greening Portland" into a small line at the bottom of last week's Radio Ecoshock blog, thinking maybe a few people would be interested. To my shock, over 400 people downloaded it within two days! I didn't know that many people read my humble show notes... Thanks for being here.

I'll go into a description of this week's program and speakers, followed by a bigger question about the role of cities in solving climate change, now that we see big governments too paralyzed, or too corrupt, to act. We'll role through the latest Scientific American article, James Howard Kunstler's theory, Derrick Jensen's despair, and a glance at the ideas of Dr. Bill Rees. Maybe cities are the leaders, the only meaningful level of government?

What makes the city of Portland so desirable as a place to live? It's walkable, a national leader in bicycle commuting, and a green model in many respects.

Yet this West Coast allure also drives unique problems for Portland. Sure the economic crash brought high unemployment, as everywhere else. But Portland has become a refuge city, a place where people come seeking jobs and a comfortable social culture. That's raised unemployment and problems like homelessness. As other West Coast cities like Vancouver and San Francisco know too well, perceived success breeds it's own challenges.

To give you ideas for your own city, we're going to hear a brief from Portland's Green Mayor Sam Adams. But in a sign of the times, Adams cedes the stage to the two women who are leading the city's sustainability drive, Susan Anderson and Erin Flynn. Susan Anderson is the Director of the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Erin Flynn is Urban Development Director for Portland. She's also the driving force behind Portland's new Five-year Economic Development Strategy.

Mayor Sam Adams was elected in May 2008 with a good majority, after four years on Portland City Council. In addition to his outstanding green credentials, Adams "is the first openly gay mayor of a top U.S. city" (according to Wikipedia).

All this recorded by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock, at the Gaining Ground Resilient Cities conference in Vancouver, Canada, on October 20th, 2009. Download this presentation from the Cities page at ecoshock.org.

At the end, we'll also hear a clip from Sarah Severn of the Nike corporation, which has headquarters in Portland. Did you know the "air" in Nike running shoes was actually a terrible global warming gas? (Sulfur hexafloride). We'll hear how Nike fixed that, and their other efforts toward sustainable energy.

That same morning, Sarah Severn of Nike, the shoe maker, outlined their efforts to green the corporation. She covered such things as water usage, toxics in their materials and manufacturing, and this brief on Nike and climate change. You can download Sarah Severn's full 26 minute presentation from the Cities page at ecoshock.org. (26 min, 6 MB here)

Sarah has been the Global Director of Nike's Environmental Action Team (NEAT), a department of Nike's Corporate Responsibility division. She's also on the Board of Directors of the non-profit group "Focus the Nation" ("Community and the Road to Copenhagen")

The introduction is by Rob Abbott, the corporate greening consultant, and author of the upcoming book "Conscious Endeavors: Business, Society and the Journey to Sustainability"

Find out more about the conference at gaininggroundsummit.com.

CAN CITIES SAVE THE CLIMATE?

READ MORE

Oh, and by the way, we just added our 18th station to broadcast Radio Ecoshock. It's WRFA_LP 107.9 FM in Jamestown, in Western New York State. Another is coming, in Whitehorse, in Canada's Yukon. Please write, email or call your local radio station requesting Radio Ecoshock. It's free, and ad-free, all for the cause of a better climate.

Alex.

Thanks.

Gas Pump Blues - for 100,000 Years

MUSIC: GAS PUMP BLUES by Frank Ace

They're on practically every corner. Some people feel nervous at the gas pump. Others are outraged. Everybody knows prices are going nowhere but up.

Did you know a gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds - or 2.7 kilos? Almost all of it - 5 pounds, 2.2 kilos - goes straight into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, out the exhaust pipe. And that substantial weight, for every additional gallon or liter we burn, remains as CO2 for 100,000 years.

Don't believe it? Stay tuned. We'll talk with David Archer, a top climate scientist. He's the author of "The Long Thaw". That's what we're living in, the time all humans will live in, for ten times the length of all history. In our second half hour.

First, I want to know: when does the oil society seize up? What happens to the American way of life, if gasoline goes to $7 a gallon? That's what financial expert Jeff Rubin predicts. Think that's tough? What about $20 a gallon?

We're going to dive right into an interview with Chris Steiner. Christopher Steiner is senior staff reporter at Forbes magazine. His new book is Twenty Dollars per Gallon: How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives - for the better.

READ MORE
with more links.

OFF THE CLIMATE CLIFF? OR GREENER CITIES?

Every day tankers and pipelines carry black gold to power industrial society. The coal trains and ships deliver more carbon for the great bonfire of humanity. We know for a certainty, if we keep on burning it all, our planet will become hot, stormy, ice-free with dying oceans and extinction for most big species. Including ourselves.

Now the question: how much can we use, before we tip the climate too far?

This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith.

HERE ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL NEED FOR TODAY'S PROGRAM

Interview with scientist Bill Hare:

How much time left to burn fossil fuels? PRIMAP.ORG

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

George Monbiot column in UK's Guardian newspaper
"How Much Should We Leave in the Ground?"

Green Cities:

Grist article on 15 Green Mayors

Radio Ecoshock series on Green Cities

Resilient Cities (Australia's Dr. Peter Newman)

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil
Richard Register and Anthony Perl

Building Madness (various speakers)

Urban Meltdown (Clive Doucet)
Speech (53 min)

Clive Doucet interview

READ MORE

RESILIENT CITIES Peak Oil & Climate

Can a city really work without oil? How will we ever make the transition?

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock - and you are in for a treat. Professor Peter Newman has designed public transport in Australia, and studied sustainable cities all over the world. Now we'll hear his first speech of the book tour for "Resilient Cities - Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change."

The one hour talk, on January 9th, 2009, was hosted by Anthony Perl of Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver Canada. Professor Perl is the co-author of "Transportation Revolution" and a driving force in new city design.

In this speech, Peter Newman acknowledges the possibility of city crash, the "Mad Max" movie scenario as oil and the climate decline. Perhaps the rich will retire behind armed eco-friendly barracks. One of the best aspects of this speech: Newman doesn't gloss over the recent economic crash, or human nature under capitalism, as though city planners acted in a vaccume. He admits, we may well go down in a messy way, and outlines what that might look like.

But Peter Newman also sees a better way out. I dared to hope, after hearing him - which is a dangerous emotion in these times.

The place was packed to standing room only, mostly young people. There was a definite buzz.

Peter is no mere theorist. He's headed up sustainable city design in Australia, and is now an adviser for a 20 billion dollar fund for a green rebuild of Australia's infrastructure. He is plugged in to city designers all over the world, and much in demand.

In this program you hear the complete kick-off speech for his book tour. The title is "Resilient Cities - Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change." just published by Island Press.

Just when you think freeway dead-zones have conquered the world, Newman tells us about Seoul, South Korea. The city built a multi-land freeway right over the central river, which was considered sacred for centuries. A consumer-based political party got elected - and demanded the freeway be torn down! Within 5 years the huge mass of concrete was carted away, the river exposed, and redeveloped into green spaces and cafes on either side. The result changed the city and society for the better by far.

You'll hear about another city in Europe that made itself famous by "re-discovering" a buried river.

Peter Newman is huge on trains. He's instigated a few in Australia - and they've been packed from day one. More than that, new planning calls for "Transit Oriented Destinations" - a kind of complete walking suburb our on the rail lines. Developments happen around rapid transit nodes.

Newman also gives examples comparing American cities with European and Asian ones. Among all major cities, Atlanta is the most unsustainable city in his charts, with Houston not far behind. But it doesn't have to be that way, as he explains how to get out of the deep oil hole. Again, there is an example of Tyson's Corner in the U.S.A.

The book is not an academic dead-weight - it's quite user-friendly and compact. You want to skim though it, but get caught up in fascinating examples of how we can save cities, despite giant challenges. It hits you where you live.

You can download this speech, and the previous Radio Ecoshock on "Transport Revolution" by Perl and Gilbert from our web site at ecoshock.org. Select Transporation from our audio on demand menu. The whole site is loaded with free mp3 downloads.

A realistic but hopeful speech, definitely the best so far in 2009.

The Radio Ecoshock Show 090116 1 hour CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Recorded by Alex Smith.

FOUR HORSEMEN Cars, Coal, Climate & War

1. Testimony to Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming Dec 9.

On auto bail-out & real future of green transpo. Clips from Chairman Ed Markey, Member Jay Inslee, plus testimony from Joan Claybrook of the watchdog group Public Citizen (founded by Ralph Nader). Next up is a bit from Reuben Munger, Chairman of a start-up independent auto maker - of electric plug-in vehicles, called Bright Automotive.

Also, Dr. Peter Morici, Professor of International Business at the University of Maryland, thinks the bailout is a waste of money and won't work.

Finally, from the design side of the car business, there is Mr. Geoff Wardle, Director of Advanced Mobility Research, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California. He describes the need to design a real public transport system that is green and sustainable.


2. Frosty the Coal Man? Twisted carols and coal plant radiation. What, you didn't know coal plants emit bomb-quality radiation along with the CO2?

3. second half hour - Gwynne Dyer columnist, author, military historian on extreme climate change and resulting wars. Exclusive preview of new radio series.
Recorded at the Park Theatre December 6, 2008.

Radio Ecoshock Show 081212 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: 30 second music bed for station ID at 29:30. Can be run as two half hour shows. No copyright music. Cut end music as needed if more time required.

Highway to Hell: How Smog Kills

Polluted cities kills hundreds of thousands. Under-reported plague from vehicle emissions. 2 interviews.

We are honored to Dr. Joel Schwartz, Harvard's top expert on air pollution. I discuss Dr. Schwartz' testimony to Congress in late 2007. His presentation is still available on the Net, as a .pdf file. It is on Carbon Soot and Global Warming.

Schwartz presents one of the two most scary maps I have ever seen. (Number one was the map showing the new world regime under climate change, attached to a presentation to the Royal Society late in 2007, by Sir James Lovelock....)

The Schwartz map is simple: is just shows where particulate soot, dangerous to human health, is congregating. Gray means very unhealthy amounts of particulates, black means lethal levels.

In the United States, the whole of New England is gray, with black blotches. There is more heavy pollution over the Louisiana/Texas refinery area, and of course gray and black over Southern California.

But all of Europe is one gray area, with huge blobs of black. In our interview, I ask Dr. Schwartz whether the new diesel cars being sold in Europe have filters to preserve the air. Not nearly enough, was the reply. Apparently, about 70% of all new private cars sold in Europe are diesel, not gas. That means a lot of particulates. There are new stricter rules for emissions from these new cars, but it won't stop the rash of heart attacks, pneumonia, and prenatal damage from diesel particulates.

Worse, the Europeans have been buying diesels for a long time - and the engines can last up to 30 years. That means decades more diesel smoke from all the old engines still in use. Dr. Schwartz says anyone could tell, even blindfolded, whether they were breathing European or American air.

We cover a new study from England, by Professor George Knox, finding that pneumonia deaths, thousands of them, caused directly by transport emissions, have been missed by medical authorities. The situation now is killing more people than the famous killer smog of 1952, but the reporting system just doesn't pick it up.

The Joel Schwartz interview is a must - if you live in a city. We talk about smog canyons, how people die, and what could be done about it.

The program starts, though, almost at the other end of the world, in Alaska, with Dr. Riki Ott. Why would we call a marine expert on oil spills, to find out about city smog? Because after the Exxon Valdez spill, the American government spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research into the toxicity of oil. It was the first time such research was ever done. They found that even small amounts of oil was toxic not just to fish, but to mammals - including mammals like ourselves.

After the research, in 1999, the EPA quietly added one oil component, the PAH's, to the most deadly list of bio-accumulative toxic materials - along with things like DDT. The Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons are in your blood stream and mine. They persist, build up, and lead to cancer, birth abnormalities, and other ugly things.

Dr. Riki Ott has the expertise to explain how toxic oil is infiltrating our cities and our lives - and the bravery to speak out against a well-oiled system.

As you know, all the major TV newscasts now depend upon car advertising. So do the newspapers, which run full page ads, classified ads, and whole sections about cars they want you to want. This mainstream media is never going to tell you what this single Ecoshock program reveals.

Nanoparticles in your bloodstream - and carbon soot makes more global warming.

There are two basic kinds of air particles that impact climate. The sulphates, which come mainly from coal burning, can actually cool the planet a bit, by reflecting sunlight back into space. But these particles don't stay air-borne for more than a few weeks. It is a temporary effect.

Black soot, from coal plants and from vehicle emissions, absorbs the sun's energy, heating up the planet. It is the second largest cause of global warming. These particles also land on the snow regions, especially in the Arctic. White snow reflects a lot of solar heat back into space - but when it becomes darker, grayish, the energy is absorbed. The snow may melt earlier, or ice may not form as thickly.

I found it interesting that Dr. Schwartz, in his testimony to Congress, said that cleaning up coal emissions in North America, and car emissions, is a double win. We can save as many as 200,000 lives a year - and cut out the second largest emitter in the world. Why kid ourselves, and send money to China, or some forest project in Indonesia, when we can save lives, and reduce climate change, with action right at home. I agree.

Finally, we talk to both our guests about what we need - to breath better, live longer.

Radio Ecoshock Show 080425 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: end song "Highway to Hell" by Midnight Oil (cut in if you need more time for Station ID's); opens with Gino Vannelli clip "Wild Horses". No copyright on interviews. Major media, loaded with car ads, will never report this story. Please help get it out there.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

ADDICTED TO OIL

Why can't we kick the habit?

Interview w. psychologist Bruce Alexander, author of the upcoming book "Globalized Addiction". Bruce is a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He has worked with heavy drug addicts in the poorest part of town - but finds we are all increasingly addicted, to a lot of things, in the consumer society. We point to the junkie, while developing the same addictive habits, and brain reactions, as we over-spend on things we don't need.

Alexander won a prize for controversy, with his work.

We run a clip from Nate Hagens at ASPO (why we don't react to Peak Oil). Nate believes the rational brain has not yet conquered our earlier reptilian brains. Actually, he bases this on neuroscience, rather than any kooky idea. So we "know" oil may run out, or the climate may be wrecked, but are programed to choose reward now, over any future consideration.

Nate was previously a big time investor, before becoming an energy analyst. He is a co-editor at the popular web site The Oil Drum (theoildrum.com)

Plus clips on addiction and hope from Dr. Gabor Mate, Terry Tamminen. Terry was Gov Schwarzenegger's green adviser, and published a book on oil addiction, called "Lives Per Gallon". His full book tour speech is on our site, at ecoshock.org

Tim Flannery, author of "The Weathermakers" explains new plan to replace gas burning cars in Denmark with wind-powered electric. Even re-charging parking spots and battery exchange stations. We offer the full speech at our site.

Plus new quotes from Al Gore, from his April 2008 presentation at TED.

Plus an original radio play: "Ecovention"- a parody of the A & E addiction program "Intervention". They cover addiction to drugs, eating disorders, alcohol - but we think oil addiction needs its own show too...the drama, the tears, of kicking the oil habit.

Ecoshock Show 080418 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production notes: song "Addicted to Oil" by Bruce Kerr. Cut last two minutes of music if time needed for announcements or station ID's.

Peak Oil = Transporation Revolution

First a quick review of planet-shaking news.

Then, the book launch of "Transportation Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil" Authors Richard Gilbert & Anthony Perl. I recorded that on March 18th, in Vancouver, Canada.

You get the speech by Richard Gilbert, plus some of the Q and A.

Both the talk and the book are loaded with real facts and figures on future transpo, and how to get there, sustainably. Finally, some answers.

Are you ready to see U.S. airports shrink from 300 to 30, as the oil runs out? We learn why electric cars will dominate the road. Electric railroads.

Richard Gilbert, an energy expert from Toronto Canada, opens with a speech explaining (a) the inevitability of Peak Oil and (b) what we can do about it - if we start now.

Anthony Perl, a professor at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada - says we don't need any more road construction. Now that we know about Peak Oil, and ever-increasing oil prices, governments should "hit the pause button" on new highway construction, and airport expansions. We won't need them!

A great book for students, activists, bloggers, and citizens trying to contain the old-school enthusiasm for building new oil-based infrastructure.

As the economy deteriorates, you can bet governments will turn to new roadbuilding, bridges, and all the stuff that worked in the LAST depression. That's my opinion. This book shows why that is nuts, and gives us the graphs, facts, and figures to call for a future transportation system that actually works.

I like the emphasis on conservation and renewables, instead of promoting nuclear as an answer. Good. But I wish the authors had a little more push on climate change, as a reason to use these same solutions. I ask that question, during the Q and A that followed.

This book is expensive. It is loaded with references, and all the gear that lets people answer to government experts, and industry lobby people. If you want to get active in any serious way, this is a reference book that is well worth it. I predict people will use it for years. And yet the text isn't heavy going - it's clear and well written - an unexpected bonus these days, when it comes to authoritative books on any technical subject. Anybody can read it, and should.

Ecoshock show 080328 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.

The web site for the book is here.

Production Notes: no copyrighted music. No need to add station ID - the end minute contains ID's for all Ecoshock syndicated stations. If you need more time, cut that, do as thou wilt.

End of the Age of Oil - Kunstler - Part 2

How will we live as oil declines - and the price keeps going up?

In our previous program, we ran the first hour of a speech by James Howard Kunstler, given as the first visiting scholar to the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University, in Canada.

Today, we present the conclusion of the speech followed by a moving question and answer period, uncut. The audience reacts with admiration, animosity, and tough questions for author Kunstler.

Hear what your neighbors think, their worries, suggestions - and the brilliant wit of Kunstler as he fields all questions.

Recorded 080124 by Ecoshock.

This is the Ecoshock Show for 080208 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB was podcast, (or listen by clicking the title above) but you can also get the Lo-Fi 14 MB mono version if downloading by telephone.

Production Notes: 30 second music bed for station ID at 31:25 Also: Clip from David Rovecs song "End of the Age of Oil"

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock
www.ecoshock.org