Connecting the dots on the unfolding 6th Great Extinction

Posted on April 5, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 4 Comments

Todays guest on Nature Bats Last is evolutionary biologist Professor Guy McPherson former host of the show. This latest episode is embedded here, please bare with the brief opening audio hiccups!

Professor McPherson and I discussed the tragic die off of Little Blue Penguins on the coast line around my home on Rakino Island and the Noises Island Group “Penguin habitat destroyed, chicks wiped out by storms battering New Zealand coastline” Sadly it’s adults as well as chicks that are sucumbing! The marine ecosystem is collapsing on my coastline now, not long off in the future.
“In 2014, one of New Zealand’s most respected scientists, Alison MacDiarmid, commented that, “Rock lobster was the third most trophically important benthic invertebrate group in the region [Hauraki Gulf ] before human arrival. Rock lobster are now the least important”. “Backing her is another scientist, marine ecologist Tim Haggit. In 2016 Haggit said the numbers of crayfish are so low in the Gulf that they no longer contribute to the marine ecology. Crayfish are “functionally extinct”.
A link to the marine heatwave in Tasman Sea breaking records which we discussed is embedded here

Professor McPherson mentioned the danger of a sea ice free Arctic occuring at any time and I quoted President Niinisto of Finland speaking in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’
Central to the discussion was the collapse of the global insect populations first covered on this blog in the November 2017 interview with Professor Paul Ehrlich.
Subsequently we have discovered that this aspect of the extinction event is also happening in Australia, France and no doubt world wide. Not only are we losing insects we are losing scientists to monitor the event: Fewer Scientists Are Studying Insects Here’s Why That’s So Dangerous
‘The sound of crickets could become a thing of the past’, imagine that?
Another important presentation from Professor Paul Ehrlich titled: The Present Mass Extinction: How do the Tropics Fit from which the quote about “Blizzards of moths” was derived.
“The 2016 version of WWF’s biennial Living Planet Report, published Thursday, found a 58 percent overall decline in vertebrate populations from 1970 to 2012, the latest year with available data. The nonprofit warned that if current trends continue, the world could lose more than two-thirds of wildlife by 2020.”
In case anyone thinks that the dominant culture has any intention to slow down the armageddon: “Within the next two years, more than 60 million acres of monarch habitat will be sprayed with an herbicide that’s extremely harmful to milkweed, the only food for monarch caterpillars, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity.” Via Desdemona Despair

“Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a historic high of 32.5 gigatons last year, after three years of being flat, due to higher energy demand and the slowing of energy efficiency improvements, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.”
So much for us taking capitalisms foot off the pedal! 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars

Also mentioned via Kevin Lister the author of The Vortex of Violence and Why we are losing the war on climate change:
“The UN Talanoa Diaolgue is the key initiative that came from COP21, which said that “ambition must be increased on climate change to limit temperature rises to 1.5degC,” and it is the attempt to garner ideas and ways forward to this end.”
“Our submission to this has just gone in; a summary of the key points in the 70 pages that make it up are:
Atmospheric CO2 is already at unsurvivable levels which will lead to sea level rises of up to 30m and catastrophic temperature rises, yet it is still increasing at a rate that is faster than exponential.There is an unspoken paradox with climate change; as climate change intensifies then the increasing competitive rivalries between nations that it causes prevents the co-operation needed to agree to the mutual sacrifices needed for a zero carbon economy.The coal reefs started dying and the Arctic polar ice cap started melting in 1980 when CO2 was 336ppm, thus the world then was already well on the way to disaster. So, planning for a 1.50C temperature rise is a suicide note; this target needs to be replaced with a new target, which is that the maximum temperate rises should not exceed 0.5OC over the pre-industrial baseline. ANY temperature rise will lead to catastrophic heating due to the interacting nature of the amplifying effects such as methane, sea ice melt and increased water vapour content, so if the temperature increases to 1.50C (which is where we most likely are today) it will lead to unstoppable temperature increases. It also means that even the more radical 0.50C target that we propose could be too high.”
“NO measurable levels of CO2 have been sequestered by natural processes since the start of the industrial revolution and natural processes will take approximately 250,000 years to return the planet to an upper CO2 threshold of stability (approx 300ppm), and even at this level of CO2, then sea levels would be at least 10 meters higher than today. So even the emergence of a zero-carbon economy tomorrow would not help due to the persistence of legacy CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans.”
“There is a very high level of hysteresis (irreversibility) in the climate system caused by ocean heat content and ice albedo loss, but in particular due to the logarithmic relationship between CO2 and radiative forcing. The implications of this have been completely ignored by policy makers.”
“Proposed methods for CO2 removal from the atmosphere that the COP temperature projections are based on, such as BECCS and DAC are so fundamentally flawed, they are likely to add more CO2 to the atmosphere than they will take out.”
“The only way of removing CO2 is through bio enhancement, such as increasing carbon content in soils and biomass in the oceans, but natural limits means this will most likely take thousands of years to remove sufficient CO2 for a return to stability.”
“To survive we must immediately start a solar radiation management program, and marine cloud brightening is probably the only option, in as much that it is scalable, controllable and sustainable over long periods. The scale of the cooling needed will increase at least exponentially with delay, and as we will soon be at the point where the climatic changes under way will be irreversible then there is a moral imperative to make an immediate start.”
“The techniques that we develop now for climate restoration (cooling and bio enabled CO2 sequestration) must be capable of continued operation by future societies that have become dysfunctional due to the pressures imposed on them by climate change.”

Here’s the link to the Deep Green Bush School where I will be speaking next month:

To explain the dire predicament we find ourselves in Robin Westenra has just published this article showing with data from Sam Caranas’ excellent Arctic News blog that we are now at 1.73 C above the true baseline

Professor McPherson was interviewed for an article in the New York Magazine titled “The Unhabitable Earth” This article went on to become the most read article ever published by the magazine. In a total breach of journalist ethics David Wallace Wells failed to credit Professor McPhersons input.

At NBL we acknowledge what is happening in our dying biosphere and we refuse to lie to the youth.We are sleep walking to extinction. The true severity of the crisis can only be understood when you “Connect the Dots” and also remember that we do not know the whole story and the unknowns can only make the situation worse than we know. We are staring at the ultimate Black Swan event, one like no other.
Many thanks to the callers who phoned in with interesting, emotional responses. Managing our grief going forward will be one of our greatest challenges.
We’re Sleepwalking Ino A Mass Extinction’ Say Scientists

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Collapse, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE, Podcasts

What to Do at the End of the World?

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 9 Comments

I didn’t write the title to this article but it sums up the tone and direction of the conversation perfectly when considering the attack the living planet is under!
I was interviewed recently by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume for his website and then the article was subsequently published on Counter Punch.
Sonnenblume: There’s very little awareness of the United State’s imperial status within the United States.

Hester: Yes, it’s extraordinary for us anti-imperialists on the outside, looking in. It’s incredible. But one of the points I make all the time about imperialism is that you can’t be an environmentalist and not be anti-imperialist because the US Pentagon is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, so the carbon footprint of the US military machine is enormous. And then there’s the massive carbon footprint of all the nations responding to it in kind and warming up. So the warmongering of the planet is probably the single individual contribution to climate change.

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Interested in more? Click here to go to the article on the Counter Punch Website

Previously on this blog, I have interviewed Professor Paul Ehrlich about the collapse of the flying insect population in Germany. The latest information from Europe is that the same is now unfolding in France and no doubt across the continent.
I lived in France in the late 80’s and when staying in a lock keepers house on a disused canal in the country side, whilst sitting around reading, I noticed there was neither birdsong, birds nor insects. I asked Auvray Fabrice my host why and he pointed to the vast fields of rape seed and mono cropping around us and he casually mentioned it was all bathed in herbicides and pesticides and he had watched all the birds and insects disappear. That was 30 years ago!! The situation is now infinitely worse and deteriorating quickly.
In Professor Paul Ehrlich’s interview on my radio show “Nature Bats Last” on PRN.FM I questioned Paul about his latest paper titled; “Biological Annihilation via the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction”, we discussed the collapse of the flying insect populations in neighbouring Germany. So now I know it’s happening in both these countries!
We are in an undeclared planetary emergency and no one, not one government on the planet is doing anything except tinkering around the fringes while Rome burns. We are left leaderless in the perfect storm with just a few scientists like Dr Mike Joy from Aotearoa New Zealand, Professor Guy McPherson, Paul Beckwith and Sam Carana raising the alarm.
Below is an article from the conservative Guardian documenting the insect population collapse in France. Everywhere I look collapse is unfolding;
‘Catastrophe’ as France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides.

Posted in Uncategorized

“He is a superb journalist, in the most honorable tradition of that craft.” -Howard Zinn describing Dahr Jamail

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 6 Comments

Todays guest on Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM was Dahr Jamail staff reporter from Truthout.org
Nature-Bats-Last-KH
The show is embedded here;

We covered a wide range of subjects around the ongoing climate crisis, including the idiocy of building Nuclear plants on coastlines being battered by rising sea levels and ever stronger storms and how during Hurricane Harvey, which had sustained wind speeds of 135 mph, nuclear plants were generating at 100% capacity fulfilling their contractural obligations! #Followthemoney.
On the 11th of this month we remembered the 7th anniversary of the tsunami and triple melt downs’ at Fukushima Daiichi. I chronicle that never ending disaster with my colleagues on the Facebook Page Nuclear Genocide
The latest episode of Nuclear Hotseat covering the Fukushima Anniversary special is embedded here
Dahr and I discussed the immense danger a Sea Ice free Arctic poses with the potential release of a 50 gigatonne’s pulse of methane as hypothisised by Dr Natalia Shakova and colleagues from the University of Fairbanks in Alaska. Dahr has written about this previously here: Dahr Jamail: The Methane Monster Roars:
“Based on the new results obtained by comprehensive biogeochemical, geophysical and geological research made in 2011-2016, we can conclude that in some areas of the Eastern Siberian shelf the permafrost layer has thinned and reached the stability zone of hydrates, the destruction of which might lead to massive emissions of methane bubbles,” Natalya Shakhova, professor at the university’s Geology and Exploration Department, was quoted as saying.” This quote from an article titled “Underwater permafrost on the Arctic shelf melting faster than expected
The Arctic has seen temperature anomalies of 20C above ‘normal’ when the arctic is still in 24 hr darkness. Robert Hunziker writes about this aspect in this article published at: Counterpunch.
I brought up the issue of a fishing trawler plumeting down a methane plume in the Arctic,the article from The Telegraph is embedded here: Giant methane gas bubble ‘sank trawler’.

The New Scientist article on the same subject is titled “Swallowing Ships”

The former host of the show Professor Guy McPherson called it to ask Dahr and myself a few questions and brought up the critical issue of Global Dimming. If you haven’t watched a documentary on this aspect of our predicament, I have covered it previously on this blog here , It really is a must watch documentary.
Guy will be back touring in the continental US in the next few weeks, details at the “Coming Events Tab” at Professor McPherson’s website
Recently I interviewed Dr Andrew Glikson on the show and coincidentally he sent me his latest paper yesterday titled ” Onset of Climate Tipping Points”. Robin Westenra covered it on his brilliant blog at the hyper link directly above.
Dahr mentioned two scientist whose work I was unaware of, they were Daniel Fagre Ph.D. and Harold Wanless, scroll down the staff list at John Hopkins University for more on Dr Wanless. Harold R Wanless Ph.D.

Fukushima is much worse than you think by Dahr Jamail

” “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. 17 Jun 2011

I took this photo of Dahr Jamail on our research trip to and dive at the Poor Knights Marine Reserve,additional photo’s of the dive trip are here:
Dahr

Posted in Uncategorized

Sam Carana answers questions about the Arctic.

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 4 Comments

On the 1st of February, I narrated the Q & A between Sam Carana and Wolfgang Werminghausen where I speak for Sam initially and then offer my own conclusions.
We discuss the methane threat and the threat of a blue ocean event this year in the Arctic.
Additionally; Alaska’s Bering Sea Lost a Third of It’s Ice in Just 8 days

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File photo from the Arctic News Blog

The podcast is embedded below

via FTE24 Arctic ~ Sam Carana about the Arctic and global temperature

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Methane, Podcasts

Dr Andrew Glikson interview on Nature Bats Last.

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 11 Comments

Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and Paleo-Climate scientist and Visiting Fellow at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University and author of the recent book entitled “The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth”.

“Barring effective sequestration of carbon gases, and given amplifying feedback effects from the melting of ice sheets, warming of oceans, and drying out of land surfaces, Earth is bound to reach an average of 4℃ above pre-industrial levels within a time frame to which numerous species, including humans, may hardly be able to adapt.” We may survive the Anthropocene, but we need to avoid a radioactive ‘Plutocene’

Dr Glikson and myself discussed the consequences of a 4C + world and I mentioned the expose’ published by The Independent on 27th of October 2017, covered previously on this blog, where the Oil Giants Shell and B.P. admit that a 5C increase is ‘baked in’ before mid century: Oil Giants admit to a 5C Temperature Increase being baked in but no one else will.

Issues canvassed during the interview include possible nuclear war and the meltdown of the 450 nuclear power plants after the collapse of industrial civilisation, which will leave the planet bathed in ionising radiation of an order of magnitude greater than we have already spewed into the biosphere. There is a widely accepted theory that Industrial Civilisation will not survive a 4C global mean temperature increase. I personally will be surprised if it survives 3C.
Additionally we discussed the slowing down of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the effect this is having on the meandering jet streams, allowing warm ocean currents and air to enter the Arctic region and polar weather to escape further south than normal. There is no normal any more!
Todays episode is embedded here:

I became aware of Dr Glikson’s brilliant work after listening to him being interviewed on Radio Ecoshock in an episode titled “Can Humans Survive”

In a very generous and informative email exchange I had with Dr Glikson he sent me the following link documenting his and colleagues work: ANDREW GLIKSON 2.0 minutes to midnight in the clock of the atomic scientists This embedded link will take the reader to http://johnmenadue.com where more of Dr Glikson’s work is archived.

One point of difference between Dr Glikson and myself is whether or not humans will survive as a species. Dr Glikson believes there will be some survivors. I struggle with that possibility as I believe that habitat is collapsing now and we are terraforming this planet into something very different to the one we evolved on. I suppose it is the 7.6 billion people question that I will leave my readers to ponder. “Soon the living will envy the dead” author unknown.
In our email exchange Dr Glikson referenced the recent Washington Post article written by Michael E Mann et al titled: Doomsday scenarios are as harmful as climate change denial This from the same Michael Mann who along with colleagues came up with the “Hockey Stick Theory”. Now that all our graphs show that level of exponential ramping up of carbon and temperature Mann no longer sees the risk.
Speaking as I and Professor McPherson do about the imminent unraveling of the biosphere is sometimes deemed as ‘alarmist’ and we are often accussed of demotivating people. I reject that position entirely. Good people will continue to do the right thing irrespective and the military industrial complex within the corporate culture will continue to grind the living planet into dust. If you’re an environmentalist and not an anti-imperialist you’ve missed one of the primary drivers of the 6th great extinction.

Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section and subscribe to the blog for updates. As long as the civilisation holds together this blog will continue to report on “The Great Unraveling”!
Nature Bats Last:

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Collapse, Habitat, Podcasts

Oil Giants admit to a 5C Temperature Increase being baked in but no one else will!

Posted on January 9, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 16 Comments

“Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century. The level is more than double the upper limit committed to by most countries in the world under the Paris Climate Agreement, which both companies publicly support.”
I believe a temperature increase of 5C and more will occur much, much sooner than mid-century. This is clearly an extinction event for most if not all complex life on planet earth.
In my May 2015 Oral Submission to the N.Z. Ministry of Environment, I pointed out that both the IEA and Shell Petroleum admit that close to 5C is baked in but none of the large NGO’s nor the global Green Party’s nor their networks are prepared to face the reality of the crisis. I received zero feedback from the Ministry minions but a standing ovation from the concerned members of the public at the hearing process. My oral presentation is embedded in the above hyperlink:
According to the conservative blogger Joe Romm at Think Progress the planet may have warmed 5C in 13 years once before;
“PETM shocker: When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Earth May Have Warmed 9F In 13 Years

I have written to both David Parker, Environment Minister and James Shaw co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa in the new Labour led coalition government in New Zealand challenging them both to face up to the reality of the situation, I have yet to receive any reply. My emails are copied below, feel free to email them yourself( both of their emails are embedded in the two links directly above) and ask why they are holding back;

Kia ora David,
I have had a long email dialogue with James Shaw M.P. over his failure to address the climate crisis in a meaningful way.
Below is my latest email to him about Shell and BP admitting that 5C is baked in by the middle of the century. I’m sure you’re aware that 5C is an extinction event for most if not all complex life on the planet. When we exit stage left we will see 450 nuclear melt downs and over 1200 spent fuel pool fires which will be infinitely worse.
When are we going to start telling the truth about the severity of the climate crisis?
Surely the youth deserve the truth?

Best
Kevin Hester
Rakino Island
Hauraki Gulf
“Hi James,
Just in case you missed it; “Oil giants Shell and BP are planning for global temperatures to rise as much as 5°C by the middle of the century. The level is more than double the upper limit committed to by most countries in the world under the Paris Climate Agreement, which both companies ( and yourself) publicly support. FYI I believe it will happen much sooner.
What will it take for the Greens and the new government to come clean on the crisis?”
Best
Kevin Hester
Rakino Island
Hauraki Gulf

The planet and all species inhabiting it face an existential crisis and it seems that almost none of us have the courage to face what is now a “Fait Accompli.” What I find even more repulsive is the burden being cast on our youth to fix the un-fixable dilemma we have bequeathed them.
I see young people in my family and circle of friends continuing to have children. I firmly believe many children would be spared the impending horror if their young parents were aware of the armageddon bearing down on them. To quote David Attenborough “Population matters”

I took this photo whilst standing on the crater edge at Tanna Island in Vanuatu. From this point you can see down into the volcano crater, a boiling cauldron of molten lava, somewhat like what our entire planet is soon to look like;

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Our youth are lied to from birth. Let’s not be the last generation, at the edge of extinction, lying to the youth.
It is only a matter of time before the living will envy the dead. Let’s start the grieving process while the situation is still relatively stable.

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE

U.S. Environmental Lawyer and Activist William Bibb on Nature Bats Last

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 3 Comments

On today’s episode of Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM, my guest was U.S. Environmental Lawyer and activist, William Bibb who has practiced for over fifty years helping people and victims of careless corporations and individuals. “We are all victims now of corporate greed in a system where profits are placed above the rights of the individual, safety, and the environment.” Bill is a graduate of UCLA and Southwestern College of Law in Los Angeles and is in private practice in Encinitas, San Diego, California . Bill took Environmental Law back in 1976. He was a member of the Environmental Law Section of the State Bar of California and is currently the President of a Non-Profit Corporation that serves as a Petitioner in California Environmental Quality Act cases. Naturally we gave U.S. President Donald Trump the serve he deserves and we discussed the possibility of the psychopaths who own us using nuclear weapons to cause a nuclear winter to slow down the runaway aspect of this predicament.
The show is embedded here;

During the show I mentioned that BP and Shell are planning for a catastrophic 5 degree C global warming by the middle of the century, despite publicly backing the Paris Climate Agreement. Readers of this blog will know I believe it will happen much, much sooner. A general consensus amongst scientists is that industrial civilisation cannot survive a 4C temperature increase. As covered on this blog previously that means 450 nuclear power plant meltdowns and 1200 + spent fuel pool fires.
In his 2008 article in the Guardian, Oliver Tickell hypothesized that “On a planet 4C hotter all we can prepare for is extinction”

We are currently in a La Nina phase of the southern oscillation with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology predicting an El Nino in the southern hemisphere Autumn, when it manifests, I believe it will put our climate catastrophe on steroids and quite possibly be the death knell for the Great Barrier Reef and could easily be a tipping point for civilisation itself.
“2017 was the second-hottest year on record according to Nasa data, and was the hottest year without the short-term warming influence of an El Niño event: In fact, 2017 was the hottest year without an El Niño by a wide margin – a whopping 0.17°C hotter than 2014, which previously held that record. Remarkably, 2017 was also hotter than 2015, which at the time was by far the hottest year on record thanks in part to a strong El Niño event that year.” The record was decimated by a 10% increase in warming. This is the equivalent of a sprinter beating the world record in the 100m sprint by a whole second!
2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Nino, thanks to global warming.

Friends, we are ‘imho’ a day to day proposition now, live life to the fullest, be nice to each other and tread lightly on Gaia as she is hurting like never before in her billion plus year history. Managing our grief will be one of our biggest challenges.
My climate change endeavours are part of my committment to Climate Justice and my dear friend Mia Straka’s ; The Valere Talisman Project. “The Valere Talisman Project is an interactive social object project aimed at questioning and re-affirming a universal code of human rights in a climate of rising global xenophobia and mass population movements.” #thetalismanproject

Like it or not; Nature Bats Last.

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Energy Industry

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