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
File photo from the Arctic News Blog
The podcast is embedded here
Todays episode is embedded here:
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!
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:
“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;
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.
I’m editing this post on 11/12/2021;
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.
I live on a small island in the Hauraki Gulf of Aotearoa, New Zealand. The country was stolen from the indigenous Maori at the point of a blood soaked bayonet on a gun being held by British Imperialists.
The permanent resident population on Rakino Island is currently 21 humans, thousands of birds and millions of insects….for now. The island has neither an electrical grid nor reticulated water. I generate electricity with a solar array built with rare earth metals unscrupulously mined in ‘developing’ nations with close to no environmental controls and naturally tonnes of carbon. I store the energy in toxic batteries full of acid and catch soon to be irradiated water from my roof.
I head into Auckland more or less weekly to buy provisions on a gas guzzling ferry, with on average, 20% occupancy, often 5% and less.
Living in relative isolation, off grid, gives me a somewhat different perspective on industrial civilisation, as almost everything I see when I go to the city seems insane. Frantic looking sapiens scurrying around, almost none smiling and many eyes glazed over as they stare gauntly into small screens. George Orwell was sadly spot on.
For the last 6yrs I have been studying full time, the ecological armageddon unfolding around me. The official statistics according to the conservative U.N. guesstimate is 150 to 200 species going extinct every day.
It will almost certainly be many more and we are soon to follow the rest of our victims. Why is this not the first item on the news every night? The answer is because the entire culture is insane and in an insane asylum you can ignore anything including that the asylum is on fire.
If I sail into Auckland City in the evening, I see multi story buildings lit up on every floor whilst a handful of underpaid and under-appreciated class warriors clean up after the white collar workers who have gone home to whine about their soulless jobs and odious work colleagues and to beat their wives and impress their neighbours with gratuitous consumption and their success at grinding the living planet into dust.
I have just witnessed my 57th Xmas and each one sickens me more than the last. I clearly remember my mother being tortured by Xmas, by not having enough money to buy presents for her numerous children that would some how show us that we were loved and so we wouldn’t be envious of our friends presents. 8 children is a legacy of her being, to quote Ma “A Former Prisoner of the Catholic Church”. The sacrifice I watched Ma make for over 50 years clearly showed us that we were passionately loved. The Christian church says that “God created man in his own image”. The misogyny aside how about the arrogance of the species that created a god in it’s own image!
The vast majority of what has been purchased in the last few weeks by hundreds of millions, was bought on credit and will be in a land fill by the end of next month, washing up on my beach or to be ingested by the plummeting numbers of fish still alive in the irradiated, acidic ocean .
George Monbiot who writes at The Guardian recently wrote; ” Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. Climate breakdown, soil loss, the collapse of habitats and species, the sea of plastic, insectageddon: all are driven by rising consumption. The promise of private luxury for everyone cannot be met: neither the physical nor the ecological space exists.”
Infinite growth on a finite planet is insane nonsense and virtually no one challenges it. To quote Edward Abbey the desert anarchist “Infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”. More on Monbiot’s take on this aspect of the insanity here; Everything must go.
The evidence is clear that we are in the early stages of non-linear runaway warming covered previously on this blog, but every where I look it is “Business as Usual” or half arsed solutions that are nothing of the sort.
We can all see that a B-grade reality show TV ‘Star’ now has his small “Pussy Grabbing” hands on the White House Ipad with the nuclear codes. That in itself is patently insane but the insanity goes much, much deeper.
Some believe that the solution to fiat currency is crypto currency’s like Bitcoin and a host of other pretenders. This store of value depends on the internet of things working every day. Turn the electricity off at your place and let me know how that pans out for you. I have Tulips from Amsterdam and a bridge for sale at a good price if anyone is keen?
The insanity of the large corporate NGO’s and “Green Parties” is another more insidious aspect that concerns me.
Many of us have been involved in environmental organisations like Greenpeace and 350.org for decades, trying to slow down the ecological armageddon unfolding. This was good honourable work but now those organisations have been co-opted by the dominant culture to be little more than agents and brokers of ‘sustainable’ products as we bare witness to the 6th Great Extinction and are trying to guess where in the extinction line we sapiens are.
They used to talk about tipping points but now that we have crossed so many the subject has been dropped, don’t mention the elephant in the room. At what point will these organisations admit that the game is up? Not as long as their paid ‘activists’ need paying from your donations or in the case of 350.org from the Rockerfeller Foundation.
Our youth are under more pressure than ever before in the 300,000 yr history of our species and we are still dumping on them that they have to fix the unfix-able chaos that we have bequeathed them. I find that immoral, heartless, brutal and cruel.
I stressed for many decades that my humble contributions to slow down the armageddon were having little effect and I strove to do better but one consequence of me understanding that we are over the cliff and descending into oblivion is now I am no longer burdened with such a responsibility.
One of the straw man arguments against accepting that collapse is locked in and unfolding is that people will no longer make an effort. I strongly refute that argument. The good people amongst us will do whatever they can, as long as they can, irrespective of the outcome but none of it now will make a dog shit of difference as long as the Military Industrial Complex carries on it’s murderous way prompting any and all independent nations to invest heavily in military equipment and training in a feedback loop of it’s own.
For more on the collapse of complex societies like ours check out Joseph Tainters’ The Collapse of Complex Societies
My personal “Antidote to despair” is to volunteer at the not for profit Rakino Island Nursery where we propagate native plants to re-wild the island. I’ll be surprised if I see any of them grow 1 metre, so much for the accusation that I have given up.
First with civilisation and then with the discovery of fossil fuels our species went down the inevitable cul de sac of extinction. Industrial civilisation is unsustainable in any form, forget the myth of renewables saving us, it’s a great white lie.
Cut the youth some fucking slack, surely they are entitled to that?
I have a monthly show on The Progressive Radio Network called Nature Bats Last, that I have taken over from Professor Guy McPherson. I will continue to chronicle the great unraveling and the attendant insanity until either the lights go out or I quit to maintain my own sanity.
Have a great extinction everyone, it’s been nice knowing you. Very soon the living will envy the dead. The new denier position is to deny early stage runaway. Don’t be the last generation of humans to lie to our youth, they deserve better.
In this episode of “The Progressive Radio Hour” Gary Null and I discuss the severity of the climate crisis and how far over the cliff we really are.
The podcast is embedded here:
We discuss the on-going, never ending ionising radiation nightmare that is and will forever be spewing from the three exposed coriums at Fukushima Daiichi. The triple meltdowns and melt through of both primary and secondary containment at Fukushima Daiichi is never, ever going away.
Whilst Tepco admits to hundreds of tonnes of radioactive water spewing into the acidifying Pacific Ocean every day for over 6 yrs now, they never mention the ionising radiation that is being released into the atmosphere. My personal view is that we will be spared the multi-generational genetic destruction of the nuclear nightmare by our imminent extinction. The situation simply could not be anymore dystopian.
My blog post on the inevitably of a Nuclear Winter being inflicted on the planet is embedded here;
Years ago, before we crossed a multitude of tipping points the large NGO’s and “green” political parties talked about the danger of crossing tipping points. Now that we have done so the subject is being avoided. Cognitive dissonance much?
Gary played a clip taken from Professor Guy McPherson’s Read more ›
Professor Guy McPherson and I were interviewed by Tim Lynch the founder of Green Planet FM in Aotearoa New Zealand on the 2/12/2016.
This post is linked to #thetalismanproject
The show notes and interview are embedded here; Read more ›
In my recent interview with the amazing Professor Paul Ehrlich titled, Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM featuring Professor Paul Ehrlich we discussed climate scientists dishonesty/ reticence in understating the severity of the climate crisis.
I’ve toured Aotearoa New Zealand twice with the courageous Professor Guy McPherson, one award winning academic who does call the Sixth Great Extinction event exactly what it is. We attempted to speak truth to power on our two tours and we addressed the mis-information and dishonesty in the climate community from NGO’s like 350.org , Greenpeace and WWF ,which incidentally was set up by the British Royal Family. ( I’ve embedded this link for proof that the entitled British Royal family were instrumental in founding WWF not that I think that the gratuitous bowing and scraping to the British Empire disguises the Crimes of Britain and the role that Colonialism and Imperialism have played in this disaster).
How on earth would you expect the truth from them in the midst of an existential crisis? When the paid activists within, need to project insupportable ‘solutions’ whilst ignoring the evidence that we have crossed a multitude of Tipping Points. They project ‘Hope’, thereby deceiving those they are leading down the extinction cul-de-sac. Both the jobs of the paid activists and the corporations these multi-million dollar NGO’s have become depend on the Millions of Dollars they suck from the same supporters they are lying to. Of course they won’t admit to the severity of the crisis. Follow the money.
“Clive Hamilton is an Australian public intellectual who’s written books about global warming, among them: Requiem for a Species and Defiant Earth. His books were intended to enlighten the public. But as he says: “anyone who engages publicly in the climate change debate has been subject to threats and abuse from a global army of climate science deniers. There are a lot of disturbed, angry people out there, which is, of course, socially worrying.”
In the embed link and podcast Are We F–ked? Decoding the Resistance to Climate Change Clive Hamilton discusses the phenomenon of climate scientists saying one thing in public and another in private. I urge you to listen to the podcast embedded above.
Here’s a teaser; “No one wanted to pay attention to the implications of a world four degrees warmer… It’s too horrendous to think about. And no one talked about it. Then a few scientists said let’s have a conference and actually talk about it. They held this conference in Oxford and I went along. As the conference started, there was a kind of suppressed emotional intensity, except in the coffee breaks. It was then that I would buttonhole a couple of scientists and say: ‘Well, you know we’re speculating about this. But what do you really think is the situation?’ And one of them just looked at me and said: ‘We’re f–ked.'” — Clive Hamilton. Remember the flack Dr Jason Box received for his famous Tweet? “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re f’d.”
“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.” At the edge of extinction only lies remain
BP and Shell planning for catastrophic 5 degrees C Global Warming despite publicly backing Paris climate agreement
In this one hour long presentation by Professor David Wasdell of the Apollo Gaia Project he explains that we have no available carbon budget and that we are on a trajectory of well over 10 degrees C. This sort of global temperature rise guarantees the total collapse of the biosphere as we know it. Professor Wasdell does have a hopium moment at the end with his “ I have a dream” segment but the presentation is stunning and is a major call out of the dishonest IPCC. Business as usual brings us to 800 ppm to 900 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere which guarantees collapse of industrial civilisation and the melt down of 430 odd nuclear power stations and there attendant spent fuel pool fires.
| “It is with the utmost concern that we draw your attention to the fundamental methodological flaw in the determination of the value of Climate Sensitivity that is embedded in the Summary for Policymakers of the Scientific Workgroup of the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC. The error was replicated in the Reports of Workgroups 2 and 3 and carried forward into the Synthesis Report. It has been used as the given basis for every subsequent publication. Our radical analysis of Climate Dynamics has generated a new and robust value of “Earth System Sensitivity” which has profound implications for:
• The relationship between temperature change and cumulative carbon emissions. |
|
I’m editing this blog on the 29th of October 2024 with the video below from my colleague and dear friend Professor Guy McPherson analysing a peer reviewed paper indicating that 14C is baked in.
Todays guest on Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM was Professor Paul Ehrlich, author of over 30 books and numerous peer reviewed science papers.
Kevin Hester and Professor Ehrlich discuss the unfolding collapse, the nuclear implications of climate change, the Trump regime’s abject failure in Puerto Rico and many other aspects of the unfolding train wreck that we are all a part of wittingly or not
Todays show on Nature Bats Last is embedded Here
Professor Ehrlichs’ latest paper entitled; Biological Annihilation via the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction is embedded Here
Abstract;
The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction (indicative of population shrinkage and/or population extinctions according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature) using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species. We find that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is extremely high—even in “species of low concern.” In our sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851/27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which we have detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species have experienced severe population declines (>80% range shrinkage). Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.
“The strong focus on species extinctions, a critical aspect of the contemporary pulse of biological extinction, leads to a common misimpression that Earth’s biota is not immediately threatened, just slowly entering an episode of major biodiversity loss. This view overlooks the current trends of population declines and extinctions. Using a sample of 27,600 terrestrial vertebrate species, and a more detailed analysis of 177 mammal species, we show the extremely high degree of population decay in vertebrates, even in common “species of low concern.” Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This “biological annihilation” underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.”
We discussed the loss of 80% of flying insects in Germany in the last 27 years. That aspect of collapse was covered brilliantly by George Monbiot of the Guardian entitled “Insectageddon”, embedded here and by the great blogger Robert Hunziker via Counter Punch entitled “The Ecosystem is Breaking Down”, embedded here
Paul and I discussed the recent announcement from new Prime Minister Jacinda Adhern who has committed to a new climate change category visa which may be introduced in New Zealand in response to our pacific neighbours’ displacement caused by climate change. More information on that brilliant news is embedded Here
All previous shows on Nature Bats Last are embedded Here
Professor Guy McPherson, former host of the show has previously been in a conversation with Paul Uhrlich which is embedded Here Guy is currently touring Canada and will soon travel to Norway, his schedule is continuously being updated at the Current Events Tab at his blog Nature Bats Last
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Kevin Hester 