Todays guest on Nature Bats Last was Dr Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University. Dr Andrew Glikson is a geologist living in Australia. He is an Earth scientist and paleo-climatologist currently serving as Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He is the author of dozens of articles and ten books, notably including his 2015 masterpiece Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene.
Put your feet up, relax and enjoy, episode 129 of Nature Bats Last which is embedded here;
I’ve posted below corroborating links to the discussion.
We discussed Dr Glikson’s recent article titled: Beyond Climate Tipping Points: Greenhouse Gas Levels Exceed the Stability Limit of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets
I additionally quoted an article from Scripts Institution of Oceanography titled ; Research Highlight: Loss of Arctic’s Reflective Sea Ice Will Advance Global Warming by 25 Years
“The 4.3 million hectare fire – an area now larger than Denmark – is contributing significantly to climate change.
Since the beginning of the year, a total of 13.1 million hectares has burned.” A climate catastrophe that can not be stopped by human means! Russian fires now bigger than Denmark: 13 million hectares gone
I mentioned that both Dr Glikson and Professor McPherson are concerned about the methane threat and how they both respect the work of Dr Natalia Shakova and her colleagues. A link to a recent paper from Dr Shakova titled ” Understanding the Permafrost–Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf”can be found here; A video interview with her courtesy of Nick Breeze is embedded here;
As well as discussing the scientific aspects of what we are witnessing, we discussed the psychological roller coaster we are all on and Dr Gliksons’ Poetry and the role it plays in absorbing and expressing the psychological challenges this knowledge of the predicament we find ourselves in entails. Finding an emotional and artistic outlet we believe is imperative.
Mine is to volunteer at the not for profit Rakino Island Nursery on a rewilding program. It’s both my “Antidote to despair” as Edward Abbey wrote but also proof that just because I recognise the severity of the multiple crises we face it doesn’t mean I have ‘given up’, an accusation often leveled at Professor McPherson and myself.
Guy spoke about “Scientific Reticence”, he has covered it previously on his You Tube Channel and blog Nature Bats Last Here is an excellent edit on the subject via the Tim Bob Channel featuring Guy.
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” Ernesto Che Guevarra.
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Look after each other, be gentle, time is short, Only Love Remains
Q&A: Dr Andrew Glikson on the Plutocene age
Activist, sailor, passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour . Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Thank you as always for an excellent post. My only criticism, as always, is your pacifist response to our near-term extinction. For myself, my response is to be found in this poem by Dylan Thomas “Do not go gentle into this good night.” https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night
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For clarity: Che Guevara didn’t talk a revolution, he killed the people who were responsible for the inequalities of his time. Right now, with mass extinction here, happening around us in cascading, regional mass mortality events, the Universe demands no less of us.
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Yeah I concur, Utah Phillips was quoted as saying “The world isn’t dying, it’s being killed and the people killing it have names and addresses”.
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Kevin, He Never Gives Up and Never Gives in ,,You are the man..
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I have that Utah Phillips poster in my pictures doc file, Kevin. And he really did think like this!
I had the opportunity to sit and talk with the guy as I worked concert security for years down at Hog Farm and he came to the Kate Wolf Memorial Folk Festival one fine June weekend and ended up hiding out from all the PR and other flunkies they deal with. I don’t remember which year. That happened every once in a while when some ‘famous’ musician person would be sick of the ‘hospitality star zone’ crap and groupie/hangers on types and come hang out backstage with us in the crew coordinators’ and security Rovers’ camp (called Kenetic Camp) that was close enough to get to Main Stage but was hidden away under the trees and relaxing talking politics, economy, police state, war, and racism with us. Most of us were in our 40s then, been there done that types and fairly intelligent so it was a conversation between equals in that sense. He was one of the few that did this. As was who also came and found us at another concert held on that venue. Talked story with us, drank a couple of cold beers and puffed on a couple Humboldt County homegrown joints being passed around in camp before due on stage. You should have seen the flunkies trying to drag these musicians back to ‘their’ area! Managers really hated us because we didn’t fawn over their ‘stars’ and talked real instead.
caspermilquetoastwriter: oh no, I’m sure we all on this site understood what you were saying. And I certainly know that it’s the young that make the revolutions. My age group can’t run fast enough anymore and, honestly, we had enough beatings by cops back when. There are some pretty big shoes to fill by the up and coming young, too. If the planet keeps living and breathing. That is looking grimmer by the day in a number of categories.
Our species has always been like this (at least since the rise of city states and writing), and it has always been a Class War. This time, though, the wealthy think they are somehow immune to the absolutely cataclysmic collapse of the entire biosphere and climate…then the 500 nuclear reactors will go Fukushima-bad and the Northern Hemisphere will become, if not extinct, seriously mutated and they won’t be able to come out of their flipping bunkers they are hiding in….
Not something fun to ponder, that’s for sure.
Besides which there’s enough going on around here. I’m buried under heavy smoke and ash fall in 100’F+/38-40’C temperatures with another “abundant” lightning strike series of t-cells due in tomorrow night… I’m wearing N-95 particulate masks outside to be able to breathe when I do go outside (which ain’t much) and can’t open the windows at night to cool the house down. No AC but the swamp cooler and fans do an appreciable job. But things just ain’t looking all that good in this neck of the woods….or anywhere else, are they?
sealintheSelkirks
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The Tim Bob Channel on You Tube which often covers Professor McPherson’s work has just uploaded excerpts from the interview. I have posted multiple corroborating links sent to me by Dr Glikson in the comments section
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THanks SOO much Kevin!
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This is the nature of non-linear warming and reinforces the opinion of Dr Andrew Glikson our latest guest on Nature Bats Last where we discussed his recent research on “Tipping Points in the Earth Climate System.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/a-weather-station-above-the-arctic-circle-hit-94-6-degr-1837274379?IR=T
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“Stephen Pyne, who studies the history of fire at Arizona State University, in the US, says we are entering the “age of the pyrocene”.”
‘Pyrocene’, I don’t like the term but it is spot on.
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3025880/dark-days-ahead-huge-arctic-wildfires-spew-soot?fbclid=IwAR16VnMlcKc7QIjO_Iz99JW6dJKV839O9TeNRmyPwmIeLtTNSh_5nMr94pE
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…or hurricaneocene or typhoonocene or floodocene or meltocene or as the planet deforms from ice loss weight volcanocene and earthquakeocene…lots of ‘cenes’ are possible besides that one description. Depends on where you are. Combinations of different ‘cenes’ even! I’m definitely in the pyrocene living here…and I’m not in danger of flooding since I’m not in a valley below.
I’ve got the article downloaded, and the writer is STILL using the discredited term ‘climate change’ invented by WBush PR flack Frank Lutz!!! Haven’t they read the damn memo Nader put out about that last year??? Even the UK Guardian is discouraging the use of ‘change’ now.
And one sentence caught my eye (I glanced through it quick). The one about “could be contributing to the increase of lightning strikes” because that lightning storm of a few weeks ago I think I mentioned somewhere on your site, has now been upgraded due to a better satellite count. It went from 2,500 confirmed to 3,500. TWO HOURS of sky crazy! It was insane, Kevin. Very very spooky.
Pyrocene. Great. Not what I wanted to read but figured something similar out a while back on my own. Good term I guess. Us humans just love to label shit, don’t we?
Very High fire danger as I passed the fire station this afternoon in a pouring rainstorm. No lightning yet. The weather shifted yesterday morning early am rain, backed off in the afternoon, then came back in today. Everything is SO dry under the wet top cover. I checked when I got home. Not enough to make much difference yet. It’s freaking dusty under the wet overgrowth at least a finger depth down… But at least this gives some water to the plant growth, strengthen the root structures a bit.
Do I really want to read the article? Well, no. But I will anyway. You get SUCH interesting tidbits of information to read!
sealintheSelkirks
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The latest from Sam Carana confirming what no one wants to know.
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/critical-tipping-point-crossed-in-july-2019.html?fbclid=IwAR2Qg4UhvZcAjvdo_dCmUJ-s8HvdUSQC0sk7zPZ53tci_6YiTVFWBd4_-yU
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“In July 2019, a critical tipping point was crossed. July sea surface temperatures on the Northern Hemisphere were 1.07°C above what they were during the 20th century, as illustrated by above image which has a trend added that points at 5°C above the 20th century by 2033.”
Climate sensitivity has been grossly underestimated by the capitalist patriarchy, let’s not fein surprise.
Enter stage left Sam’s seminal work.
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/critical-tipping-point-crossed-in-july-2019.html
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I read the article the day it came out and figured you’d be posting it. First thoughts were What Now and How Long. Unfortunately I’m just not much of an optimist. About practically anything having to do with our species, and this…definitely has a wee little bit to do with us.
I’m assuming there isn’t a single word of this on any MSM outlet, but since I turned the TV off decades ago and don’t really listen to much corporate radio… I do ask people I know about what they heard on the ‘news’ about this or that and they’re always answering that they didn’t hear anything about that and am I sure? Yeah, well…
That Sept. 13th methane levels sat map (appropriately taken on the silly superstitious’ Friday the 13th don’t you think?) has such pretty colors. I’ve got Polartec fabric out in my sew shop of that exact light lavender purple. Maybe I should make a nice warm winter hat out of that bolt and then maybe people will ask me why I’m wearing such a shade and I can tell them why. Bet they will either not understand, not want to understand, or hold up their hand for me to wait while answer the text that just came in on their ‘smart’ phone…which are always more important than the person in front of you.
Well, we’ve known that the ‘official’ science positions have always been heavy on the conservative viewpoints, and predictions were always based along those lines, so is this truly that unexpected? I think not. How much this is going to positively affect the accelerating destabilization curve is anyone’s guess at this point. We’ve gone out of the realm of expectations and the ability to guess much less accurately see what the billiard balls caroming around the table are going to do next. This is the unknown, the never experienced, and we are grasping at mental images that we are unequipped to handle.
Truly, we as a species (including me) just cannot exactly get a clear mental picture of what ‘exponential’ means. And I always wonder if I’m just fooling myself when I try to let the pieces correlate on their own in my head and they add up to really, really scary shit.
Big sigh. On that note it has been raining all day, woke up to it after a weekend of chainsawing and moving firewood. I think I need to go walk around outside and breathe, smell the scents that have been released from the conifers and plant life and the ground. Do something fun today, Kevin.
sealintheSelkirks
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Even smaller doses of internet than usual, so little time – but for the past two interview links I’ve not seen a download option for ‘normal laptop’ downloads… perhaps I’m missing something in the hurried online checks. The audios load when on line (today at a restaurant) but don’t play when i am off line at home.
Presently there’s a crisis here in Ecuador, but thanks for the continued updates on our rapidly-imploding world.
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