My new , favourite,poignant love song.
Lyrics here, You Tube performance embedded below.
“If only I had known you, in the time of coral reefs, before we lost the permafrost when there were Bears up there, were Bears up there.
We could have met, fallen in love, could have got married and had kids, If we wanted, it could have been simple for us two simple for us do you think we could have travelled, could we have managed a mortgage,sent our kids to local schools and campaigned to change the rules so that we wouldn’t pull the ladder up behind us like our parents did to us.
Could we have been better, done better?
If we’d loved before the seas swallowed the coasts before the wild fires spread our heads only full of love, I would have loved you.
We would have made our vows on a Island nations drowned we’ve let them go ’cause we were richer they were poorer, we were better, they were worse … off.
So we watched them sink without a word, ignored the screams, ignored the screams, ignored the Gulf Stream slowing down, ignored the drip of melting ice,the drip drip drip of melting ice.
Do you remember when we still had time, if not to reverse things well at least not to cause worse things we decided not to, it was, easier not to.
Remember when we thought that it was windmills on hills that spoiled the landscape, remember the landscape? Remember the land?
If only I had known you in the time of coral reefs, before we lost the permafrost, when there were Bears up there, were Bears up there.”
I was interviewed for this show on Nuclear Hotseat due to a erroneous news item published in the US where it was reported that NZ has dropped our Nuclear Free legislation.
Whilst the US has been invited back by Prime Minister John Key he has Yet to jettison the Nuclear legislation. We will have to keep the acid on the quisling on that issue.
Nicky Hager asserts that the dropping of the ” neither confirm nor deny” position confirms that our legislation has prevailed. NZ Herald article quoting Valerie Morse for reference is here
We will be organising demonstrations both on the water and the streets when the most brutal military in the world returns to NZ in November.
In the early eighties my yacht was sunk by the NZ Police, the parallels with what happened to Harvey Wasserman and Mimi German on their yacht as mentioned in the interview are stark.
My sinking was covered in previous blog post here
I’d like to thank Libbe HaLevy for the opportunity to put NZ’s case on Nuclear Hotseat.
The interview can be heard here
Professor Guy McPherson will be touring New Zealand with me in November 2016 speaking about our unfolding climate catastrophe.
You can listen to his recent appearance on American Freedom Radio here
In the interview Professor McPherson discusses the phenomenon of Global Dimming.
There is a fantastic BBC documentary which is embedded in a previous post from this blog here
When Guy was in NZ in 2014 he had 39 feedback loops, now there are more than 65. His monster climate change essay with the list of positive feedback loops is embedded here
Guy mentions another superb article from Dahr Jamail, staff reporter at Truthout entitled Agriculture on the Brink which is embedded here
We are in the early stages of planning the tour but further details will be posted on this blog and Facebook Events will be created as the time draws closer.
If you are in NZ and want to be involved in hosting myself and Guy and / or organising a presentation in your area feel free to contact me here at the blog, via my Facebook wall or by email at kevin@iconicproperties.co.nz
Professor McPherson has a website GuyMcPherson.com and together with his colleague Mike Sliwa has a weekly radio show of the same name at prn.fm
If you have not already seen it, visitors to this blog will have an interest in this 50-min documentary, “BBC Global Dimming Documentary”, via Gail Zawacki at her Wit’s End blog.
It relates to evidence obtained from the three-day aircraft grounding that occurred after 9/11 and the profound effects that just the U.S. Commercial Aircraft Flying has on Earth’s atmosphere. (One degree Centigrade increase within three days.)
Quoting Professor Guy McPherson ;
“The impact of the aerosol masking effect has been greatly underestimated, as pointed out in an 8 February 2019 article in Science. As indicated by the lead author of this paper on 25 January 2019: “Global efforts to improve air quality by developing cleaner fuels and burning less coal could end up harming our planet by reducing the number of aerosols in the atmosphere, and by doing so, diminishing aerosols’ cooling ability to offset global warming.” The cooling effect is “nearly twice what scientists previously thought.” That this February 2019 paper cites the conclusion by Levy et al. (2013) indicating as little as 35% reduction in industrial activity drives a 1 C global-average rise in temperature suggests that as little as a 20% reduction in industrial activity is sufficient to warm the planet 1 C within a few days or weeks.”
Guy and I both believe a serious economic crash could be the end of us!
None of these risks operate in a vacuum, they are all connected.
Imagine what the carbon footprint of the largest most brutal military on the planet must be?
“According to its own study, in 2013 the Pentagon consumed fuel equivalent to 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil. This amounts to 80% of the total fuel usage by the federal government. If burned as jet fuel it produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of CO2. And the Pentagon’s figures do not include carbon produced by the thousands of bombs dropped in 2013, or the fires that burned after the jets and drones departed.” The Pentagon’s enormous, unacknowledged contribution to climate change
A reduction in US warmongering would buy the bio-sphere some critical time, fat chance of seeing that happen.
The documentary explains how global dimming fits within global heating, as well as reduced pan evaporation rate. (Sunlight photons serve as the most important variable in water evaporation, and global dimming reduces these photons by about 10%!). Increased small particle pollution turns clouds into sunlight mirrors because of water condensation on the small particles: at least ten times the number of particles and condensation than without the pollution. This greatly reduces the amount of the Sun’s energy coming through the atmosphere. Global heating (GH) due to CO2 tends to increase average atmospheric temperature while global dimming (GD) tends to reduce it, therefore reduced GD will greatly increase GH, within days, just as Professor Guy McPherson has emphasised in many of his presentations.
Guy McPherson references this documentary often and we will be speaking about this phenomenon on his upcoming November 2016 New Zealand speaking tour.
Guy discusses the phenomenon here .
When the Industrial Revolution grinds to a halt and we cease emitting particulate pollutants into the atmosphere, more solar radiation will hit the earth and the oceans, vastly increasing the warming which will compound all the other effects happening now, remember also though there is a 10 to 30 year lag in cause and effect with our emissions and the ones now being generated as a result of the multitude of feedback loops that are now kicking in .
Yet more evidence that we are absolutely fucked and can’t turn this unfolding catastrophe around. Brace for imminent impact, ” Only Love Remains” GMP.
I first dived the Great Barrier Reef about 15 years ago. At the time, a marine biologist in Cairns conducted a seminar that I attended, and said that the reef had only a generation of life left in it. Those we the days before abrupt climate change, when contemporary climate change awareness was in it’s infancy (George Perkins Marsh 1847 accepted) .
I don’t believe that my marine biologist tutor really understood how fast our climate change catastrophe would unfold, but his estimate on the reefs life expectancy appears spot on.
Read the below scientific analysis baring in mind the conservative default. I believe that they all know in their hearts that the reef systems on this planet are doomed to collapse and very soon, taking with it the oceanic incubator that forms the basis of the marine food web, that produces 50% of the human populations protein and 70% of the planets oxygen.
The biosphere of this planet is in dire peril. In your heart, the readers of this blog knows it. I’m not here to sugar coat anything.
Despite the conservative U.N. calculates that we will be losing 150 to 200 species/day, the real loses from the collapse of the marine food web would make those numbers pale to a fraction of what we could expect.
Cyclone Winston pummelled Fiji with wind speeds in excess of 220 miles/ hour then dumped an enormous amount of rain on the Australian coast and in the Coral Sea cooling both had not Winston wrought it’s havoc, consider that the reef would have been in far worse shape.
Jack Williams Extreme Weather Events: “The mechanism behind this incredible new trend is obvious and well understood. As Bloomberg Business week famously said on its cover after Hurricane Sandy, “It’s global warming, stupid.”
Since 1950, more than 90% of the excess heat our carbon emissions that have been trapped in the atmosphere, has gone into the oceans. As a result, their surface temperature has increased by 1C in just the past 35 years.
That puts the water,that much closer to the limit of what coral can bear. Then, when a surge of even warmer water comes through – often as a result of the irregular El Niño cycle – corals over large stretches get stressed, bleach and die.
So well understood is that mechanism, that satellite data on water temperature is a good proxy for coral bleaching. Using that understanding, the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration looks at satellite data and produces “bleaching alerts” that represent a predicted stress response from coral.
In data produced exclusively for the Guardian by Mark Eakin, head of Coral Reef Watch at Noaa, we can now reveal exactly how much stress ocean temperatures have been impacted the Great Barrier Reef over the 34 years that satellite data has been available.
Since 1982, just after mass bleachings were seen for the first time, the data shows that the average proportion of the Great Barrier Reef exposed to temperatures where bleaching or death is likely, has increased from about 11% a year to about 27% a year.
Looking at the data, Eakin says a clear trend that hadn’t been quantified before is upon us. “In seeing that what it immediately showed was that there was a real background pattern of increasing levels of thermal stress.
Combined with other stressors hitting the reef, this is having a devastating impact. Over that period, half the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef has been lost – and that’s before the mass bleaching this year has been taken into account.
That data has limitations – it’s not direct bleaching, but stress inferred from temperature readings. And it lumps extreme levels of stress – like what is being seen around Lizard Island now – with anything that is expected to cause mortality.” End quote from Jack Williams.
Richard Vivers, The Ocean Agency: “It’s one of the largest die-offs in History“. Within the Guardian article below, be sure to watch the two embedded videos which are shared there: The Great Barrier Reef A Catastrophe Laid Bare
“So Far We Have Survived Nuclear Armageddon By Luck” Paul Craig Roberts
“The long lucky streak can’t go on forever. President Reagan understood this and focused on ending the Cold War. This achievement has been overturned by the evil neocons operating through the last three US presidents.” click here for additional P.C.R. sourced article Ticking Closer to Nuclear Midnight.
“In a nuclear war, immense nuclear firestorms in burning cities would create millions of tons of thick, black, radioactive smoke. This smoke would rise above cloud level and quickly surround and engulf the entire Earth. The smoke would form a stratospheric smoke layer that would block sunlight from reaching the surface of Earth for a period of about ten years. Heated smoke in the stratosphere would cause massive destruction of the protective ozone layer. Huge amounts of harmful Ultraviolet light would penetrate the smoke and reach the surface of the Earth.Warming sunlight would be blocked by the smoke layer and cause the Earth to rapidly cool. In a matter of days, Ice Age weather conditions would descend upon all peoples and nations.”
I believe that this will be how they slow down our runaway climate change catastrophe. The concept of a nuclear orchestrated global dimming and hence cooling is laid out below: Nuclear War Threatens Human Existence.
An absolutely brilliant panel discussion on the nuclear precipice we are perched on. Edited into my blog post on December 8, 2024. WW3 is underway in Europe and West Asia, it’s the Military Industrial Congressional Complex!
For every 1 degree C we increase the temperature on the planet we see 7% more moisture in the atmosphere. We are heading to and beyond the IPCC worst case scenario of 6C minimum which will generate another 40% of moisture in the air. This will lead to a greater number of flooding events and increased number of lightning strikes and Tornadoes. This is an enormous amount of energy and associated warming as water vapour is in itself a green house gas.
“The impact of climate change may be worse than previously thought, a new study suggests”: “As world leaders hold climate talks in Paris, research shows that land surface temperatures may rise by an average of almost 8C by 2100, if significant efforts are not made to counteract climate change.”
Personally I disagree with the suggestion that it will take until the magic 2100 for our locked in 8C temperature rise. Factor in the myriad of feedback loops and we could be there in a few decades,not that humans will survive that long to bare witness.
“The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a green house gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.”
How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Studies show that water vapor feed back roughly doubles the amount of warming caused by CO2. So if there is a 1°C change caused by CO2, the water vapor will cause the temperature to go up another 1°C. When other feedback loops are included, the total warming from a potential 1°C change caused by CO2 is, in reality, as much as 3°C.
“A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and globally water vapour increases by 7% for every degree centigrade of warming.”
Editing this new information into the blog from Sam Carana 06/09/2024
“How much more water vapor currently is in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial depends on how much the temperature has risen since pre-industrial. The February 2024 temperature was 1.76°C above 1885-1915, which could be as much as 2.75°C above the pre-industrial temperature. A 2.75°C rise corresponds with almost ⅕ more water vapor in the atmosphere.” Water Vapor Feedback Update 28th of January 2025: Whilst this latest analysis of the interaction between the hydrological cycle and nitrogen runoff from land to creeks, rivers and eventually oceans, is based on a peer reviewed study in the Gulf of Mexico it is equally applicable in Aotearoa New Zealand. The full script of this analysis and hyperlinks to the sources can be found at Professor McPherson’s Substack post titled Science Snippets: How Climate Change Causes a Polluted Gulf of Mexico
At every twist and turn in our Runaway Abrupt Climate Change fiasco we have been lied to by the powers that be that they were acting and had the situation under control.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale was the first corporate shrill to suggest that 2C was both achievable and safe. It was neither but we were collectively sold the lie.
I have been moved to draft this blog after continually reading climate change articles that continue to reference 2C as being achievable as it patently is not and when the aware reader witnesses chaos unfolding at approximately 1.5C it is obvious that 2C will be catastrophic and is only a pathway to much higher global mean temperatures as a myriad of tipping points and self reinforcing feedback loops kick in.
2C is complete disaster
We have been thrown under the abrupt climate change bus and the lying before Cop 21 is under way
“At a meeting in London on 28 October, New Scientist asked the chief UN climate negotiator, Christiana Figueres, if it was now time for the world to accept that limiting warming to 2 °C is unrealistic and to start preparing for even greater warming. Figueres vehemently rejected this idea.”
“Would you want that for your children,” she responded. “This is about the quality of life on this planet.” The Paris treaty would “build a pathway” to 2 °C, she said, by paving the way for further cuts.
“Computer estimates of current climate sensitivity is demonstrated that they are dangerously low. They are based on an inadequate treatment of the system of amplification feedback which multiplies the effect of human interference of the composition of the atmosphere. The detailed analysis of the historical planetary response to the change in the concentration of carbon dioxide, temperature increase reveals an amplification of the eight times that of CO 2 (in contrast with the amplification of three times predicted by the climate modeling BY COMPUTER SET IPCC). Applying the corrected value of the sensitivity of the climate multiplied by more than 2 ½ times the earlier predictions of the response to any change given in the concentration of CO 2.
“One immediate consequence is the collapse of the “Carbon budget available” and the recognition that all future emissions add to the passing of the atmospheric gases of greenhouse effect. Significant reduction in the current population of CO 2 e is an essential element in the limitation of the increase in the global temperature to 2° c.
“On the other hand, the advances in the understanding of the implicit increase in the level of the sea and the dynamic response of global climate to small changes in the average temperature of the surface, show conclusively that the limit of temperature goal of 2° (C) has been set too high. It has to be reduced below 1° c if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. Implications of the new analysis are set out for the whole of the promises of reduction in emissions of offered currently before the cop21, as well as with the persistent stage bau high emissions”.
Comment from Chefurka:
“For those with a strong stomach for the bad news, the new paper of Dr. David Wasdell, given to meet before the cop21 in Paris. 7.8 degrees c by duplication of Co2 in place of 3 C? You say “Carbon budget”. Yes, we had one of these, maybe a hundred years ago. We now have a carbon overshoot that we can never pay.
“I firmly believe that Wasdell is correct. The situation that we face is much more serious than what we’ve accepted until now, because it was not taken into account the long term effects almost irreversible atmospheric co2. As usual, we’ve looked into the future only until the confines of our own life, and hemo ignored completely the lingering effects of the actions of today for those who live in the more distant future.”
Excerpt: “Conclusion: We have the United Nations, scientists, governments, global media, corporations, educational facilities, etc. etc. all echoing the three syllable term, the “2ºC target.” This term has been unremittingly reverberated throughout the echo chambers of corporate and so-called progressive media in tandem with the non-profit industrial complex. This constant reiteration did not reflect the 2ºC terminology, rather, it constructed it. Misleading statements, videos, interviews and both academic and scientific papers carefully and deliberately tone down any sense of immediate urgency, lending further “target” legitimacy to the 2ºC target, to which we acquiesce. Remember that the chosen word “target” is defined as “a goal to be achieved,” which strikes a chord, even if only on a subconscious level – which is far more powerful.
It has become normalized. The spectacle, comprised of a single number united with a single letter (with a little circle between them), must be considered a feat in 21st century hegemony – a creation by those whose interests are served by the spectacle; a pasquinade for the impoverished and those not yet born. The 2ºC discourse must be considered perhaps the most deadly game of psychological warfare ever played on human society. Using simple language and steadfast repetition, the acceptance by civil society of this so-called “two-degree target” represents an unsurpassed feat in modern psy-ops.”
After many decades of supporting Greenpeace and 350.org and similar organisations I have come to the conclusion that they are no longer the independent activist organisations I worked in many decades ago, they are now all beholding to the corporate money they receive and use to fund their corporate entities with.
Like Captain Paul Watson and Peter Wilcox, former Skipper of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior whom I was once arrested with for ” Obstructing a Nuclear Ship in the course of it’s passage”I have moved on.
I will be touring NZ with my dear friend and fellow climate warrior Professor Guy McPherson in November 2016, more details will be available on this blog in the near future;
I’m editing this post on the third of May 2020 to include the latest peer reviewed paper from my co-host on Nature Bats Last showing that we have already exceeded 2C
We have experienced 20% of all anthropogenic global warming in the last year.
That by definition is runaway Global Warming.
If Industrial Civilisation survives until November 2016 Professor Guy McPherson and I will tour NZ discussing the environmental and geo-political implications of this unfolding disaster nation wide, stand by for details on the blog and look out for a Facebook ” Event”.
Kevin Trenberth’s brief presentation is embedded below:
Climate scientists have been warning us of the tipping point issue and that we can’t see them coming but we do see them in the rear view mirror.
Remembering that there is a 10 to 20 year lag in the cause and effect between when we emit carbon and when we see the effects.
This blogger believes we have crossed sufficient tipping points for us to now be in Runaway Global Warming.
The Collapse of Industrial civilisation is imminent: “China manufactured more cement from 2010-13 than the US had produced over the entire 20th century. It could not last and so it is proving.” All this is allowed by the owners and controllers of capital without any consideration being given to the collapse of our biosphere, which is progressing contemporaneously.
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Below is a wonderful Crowd Funded documentary by ‘bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar‘ Nafeez Ahmed. ‘He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization among other books.’
It seems incredible to think that the human movie could be coming to an abrupt halt, but if you were able to ask the 150 to 200 species that go extinct every day, I’m sure that they would say it was rather sudden!
Being that oil it is now under $40, some people might question Nafeez’s comments about the price of oil to skyrocket.
I believe the reason for that, is that the Empire is artificially forcing the price of oil down as part of it’s undeclared war on Russia, Venezuela, Iran and the Brics Block.
Published on Jan 19, 2016 // “The Crisis of Civilization was uploaded to highlight the overwhelming about of scientific information pointing to human extinction by 2030. Governments and Universities they control are in denial.”
Nafeez explains the fantasy that is low CO2 Nuclear and much much more:
Professor McPherson will be touring NZ with this blogger in November 2016 discussing runaway abrupt climate change and collapse. Professor Guy McPherson is the worlds leading proponent of Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE). His website is called Nature Bats Last. His radio show with colleague Mike Sliwa has the same name and is hosted at PRN.FM
Kevin Hester is currently living on Rakino Island, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand, monitoring the unravelling of the biosphere and volunteering at the Rakino Island Nursery is currently developing a proposal to create a marine reserve near by. The Island has no grid tied electricity or reticulated water. I catch my own water from the roof and generate my electricity from the ample solar radiation on the island.
My Submission to the Ministry of the Environment
Kevin Hester, Dropping Anchor in an Exponential World
Kevin Hester 