In 1998 I dived the GBR for the first time and a marine biologist I studied under congratulated me for being the last generation to dive the reef before it died.
In 2011 I sailed across the Coral sea to Cairns from Micronesia and sailed 800 mls down the reef diving or snorkling every day for 8 weeks.
My sadness with seeing these reefs dying is overcome by the knowledge that it is the incubator of the marine food web and represents the collapse of the marine system which generates 90 % of the planets oxygen and most of our protein and sustains most of the planets species.
Our Carbon Experiment is drawing to a close, it can only end very badly.
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‘Australia is unlikely to meet water quality targets designed to protect the Great Barrier Reef, researchers from the federal government’s marine science agency have warned.
‘Scientists, including two from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, have published a study that says current efforts to reduce pollution run-off into the reef’s waters are not enough to meet set targets.
‘Their findings, published in the Global Change Biology journal on Sunday, came as the Queensland government gave the go-ahead for Australia’s largest coal mine to proceed.’ Article Reef Health Efforts Not Enough continues here.
20 years ago I dived the Great barrier Reef for the first of dozens of times. Whilst in Cairns I attended a diving seminar focused on the GBR. The fantastic Irish marine biologist conducting the seminar suggested we all congratulate each other for being the last generation to dive the GBR before it died.
What he didn’t explain thoroughly, is that the reef systems are the incubator of the oceans and represent beginning of the marine food web. That web is unraveling rapidly in a nonlinear, exponential manner. A full 90% of the planets oxygen is produced by the flora and fauna in the oceans and the bulk of the planets protein emanates from them. This will soon collapse and there will be no more food nor oxygen coming from those oceans, chaos, death and suffering will prevail on a planetary level.
Runaway abrupt climate change will extinguish most, if not all complex life on this planet much sooner than anyone other than Professor Guy McPherson is saying. More info on the NTHE at guymcpherson.com or follow his and Mike Sliwa’s radio show Nature Bats Last on prn.fm.
‘If scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef is on your bucket list, you might want to book tickets soon. This week, marine biologists dropped some horribly depressing news: the Great Barrier Reef is dying. The world’s largest reef is in the midst of a widespread coral bleaching event, and scientists aren’t sure whether it will fully recover.’ Full article, ‘A Nightmare Is Unfolding in the Great Barrier Reef, continues here.
10 years ago I sailed across the Coral Sea from the Solomon Islands to Cairns after sailing and diving in Micronesia and Guam.
I sailed 800 miles down the reef from Cairns to Brisbane, diving every day, never seeing a coral bleaching incident anywhere enroute. This collapse is sudden and abrupt as was the PETM extinction event which was also driven by the acidification of the oceans. The tiny marine algae essential to coral health is the foundation of the marine food web and these reefs are the incubator for effectively all complex life on this planet including the production of 90% of the planets oxygen.
In Cairns I spoke to a marine biologist who said we were the last generation to dive on the living reef. These reefs have been murdered by a combination of fertiliser and other pollutants from the adjacent rivers which Dr Mike Joy is fighting desperately for here in NZ against our own eco-terrorist P.M. John Key, carbonate saturation, climate change and human hubris, before long they will be laced with radionuclides from Fukushima Daiichi.
The final video in the link has Eric the Viking being accused of being alarmist, as was Winston Churchill in 1937 as is my friend Professor Guy McPherson who will be coming to NZ in November on another speaking tour about this disaster. Eight brutal years later, 50 million people were dead. This time will be infinitely worse. The scientist in one of the videos describes his feelings when flying over the reef, It reminded me of your experience flying over Greenland Jennifer Hynes prompting you to create the Arctic Methane Monster presentation.
See ‘Climate Denial Crock of the Week’, with Peter Sinclair: ‘Powerful report from Australian Broadcasting about damage to the Great Barrier reef, currently being observed. It’s one of the most widely predicted consequences of a warming, acidifying ocean. Spokesmen for climate denying politicians were quoted as saying, “This is not happening.” See below.’ This continues”
‘ABC – Australia: An aerial survey of the northern Great Barrier Reef has shown that 95 per cent of the reefs are now severely bleached — far worse than previously thought‘. Full article continues here: ‘Extreme Coral Bleaching in Great Barrier Reef‘.
Australian Broadcasting on Great Barrier Reef Bleaching 2016 // March 28, 2016
Another chilling report by Thom Hartmann who quotes Sam Carana’s blog “The Arctic-news blog” [1] about our unfolding extinction event obviously prompted by Dr. James E. Hansen’s latest paper.
Mass Extinction Is Closer Than You Know // Published on Mar 24, 2016
‘Climate change is real, of course, but two new scientific papers out this past week say that it’s happening a hell of a lot faster, and in a more dangerous direction, than scientists were even considering as a worst-case scenario just a few years ago. We need a rapid worldwide shift away from fossil fuels now – not even a decade from now, but today – and if we don’t get started, we, too, may go the way of the dinosaurs.’
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Thom posits that: ” If we to don’t get started we too might go the way of the dinosaurs”. Thom fails to grasp the 10 to 20 year lag in cause and effect.
Whilst Thom discusses the methane threat, he gives no reason why we won’t go extinct. We are emitting carbon at the rate of 10 times more than the PETM extinction. Games up folks, now the only debate is around how much time we have. Notice how many of these kinds of articles are being published just recently?
When not if the arctic methane lets go it will be game over for this ecosystem in a very short time frame.
Professor Guy McPherson collaborated with Pauline Panagiotou Schneider to develop this eventuality from a book Guy wrote called ” Going Dark” into a documentary available on You Tube.
Guy will be visiting NZ in November to speak about this
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Extinction Radio continues to produce excellent work, to help support us and inform us, as we navigate the end of civilization as we know it in the certain race to the bottom put upon us by bankers, politician, military leaders, major investors–no mistaking who they are.
You are encouraged, by all means, to listen to and share the entire episode, but for folks on the go who need the segment fast, I am here at the 39:52 mark. Its about 11:31 long.
Another chilling report by Thom Hartmann who quotes Sam Carana’s blog “The Arctic-news blog” [1] about our unfolding extinction event obviously prompted by Dr. James E. Hansen’s latest paper.
Thom posits that: “If we to don’t get started we too might go the way of the dinosaurs”. Thom fails to grasp the 10 to 20 year lag in cause and effect.
Whilst Thom discusses the methane threat he gives no reason why we won’t go extinct. We are emitting carbon at the rate of 10 times more than the PETM extinction. Games up folks, now the only debate is around how much time we have. Notice how many of these kinds of articles are being published just recently? When not if the arctic methane lets go it will be game over for this ecosystem in a very short time frame.
Professor Guy McPherson collaborated with Pauline Panagiotou Schneider to develop this eventuality from a book Guy wrote called ” Going Dark” into a documentary available on You Tube.
Guy will be visiting NZ in November to speak about this.
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[1] From Sam Carana’s Arctic News blog, Sunday 13 March, 2016. Rise 2016-2026: ‘If levels of carbon dioxide and further greenhouse gases do keep rising, there will additional warming over the next ten years. Even with dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, temperatures can keep rising, as maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission, so the full wrath of the carbon dioxide emissions over the past ten years is still to come’.
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As early as 1989 and probably much sooner the UN new that urgent action on climate change was imperative. They made a conscious decision not to do anything.
“UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
“Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.”
“He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”
“As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.”
“Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.”
″Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn’t have to worry about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?″ he said.
“UNEP estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to protect its east coast alone.”
“Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.”
“Excess carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere because of humanity’s use of fossil fuels and burning of rain forests, the study says. The atmosphere is retaining more heat than it radiates, much like a greenhouse.”
“The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.”
“The difference may seem slight, he said, but the planet is only 9 degrees warmer now than during the 8,000-year Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.”
“Brown said if the warming trend continues, ″the question is will we be able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.″
As I lie awake on Rakino Island NZ, 3400 miles south of Bikini Atoll, bullets of wind explode across the bay,as the ever increasing ferocity of the storm shakes not just the walls and windows of the house but the bed inside, I am shaken from my slumber and forced to ponder the arrival of Dr James E Hansen’s “Storms of our Grandchildren”.
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Hour by hour, day by day, our climate catastrophe unfolds as Hansen has said in his latest paper, in a non linear fashion. Exponentially now, as the situation spirals toward dystopia and an ungovernable world, I reach out for a dose of reality to pass these shaky times. Historian and chronicler of contemporary fascism, John Pilger joins me on my shaky isle.
J.P. makes the irrefutable point that the USA (Terrorist Nation #1) is stalking Russia via the first card carrying Fascist Government in Europe since Franco’s rule ended and China in the South China Sea, with the newly militarised Japan ready now to again wage war on overseas territories as a result of P.M. Shinzo Abe, himself from a long line of fascists, changing the Japanese constitution,which had, since the end of the “Second World War to end all Wars”, forbidden such action.
For today’s full article by John Pilger, click here: A World War has Begun: Break the Silence, who writes:” A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.” Very soon it will be obvious to everyone that the energy balance of this planet has been irrevocably lost and the bio-system we survive as a parasite within,is unraveling. In the coming days, weeks or months the psychopaths in the US who pretend to not believe in global warming, will reach for the ultimate geo-engineering tool, Nuclear War.
One hair-brained possibility to slow down the inevitable extinction of most if not all complex life-forms on this planet, is to detonate nuclear weapons with the purpose of throwing enormous quantities of dust into the stratosphere to increase global dimming and to reduce the amount of longwave solar radiation from entering the inner atmosphere. This eventuality is to me now a foregone conclusion, how they go about it will depend on how soon they act.
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I envisage a number of scenarios. A small nuclear device is smuggled into North Korea or Iran and surreptitiously detonated in the ultimate ” False Flag” and the government in which ever country is chosen is immediately lambasted for their incompetence and mendacity for developing such nuclear capabilities. Within days we will be able to measure the cooling effect this has had on the global temperature and computer modeling will indicate how many more need to be used and to what effect. This approach has the benefit of having ” A Rogue state”, an indispensable ingredient of US foreign policy.
Critics of the hypothesis will say that it will contaminate everyone equally which it will but runaway global warming will very quickly make this planet uninhabitable, limping along for the bunkered few will appeal to the most mentally ill of these nutcases. Buying some time and giving the psychopaths an excuse to use the weapons they have been itching to use in anger for the last 81 years is a dream come true on the scale of ” The Rapture”. Remember many of these people are fundamentalist Christians awaiting such a time ……. perhaps they think it is their gods will.
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Only time will tell and time is short. This will be a subject I will be discussing with Eric Draitser in an upcoming podcast for Counterpunch.
The greatest experiment in the history of human kind is underway This planet may have warmed 5C in just 13 years once before and those same dynamics are unfolding as we are chucked under the abrupt climate change bus by an indifferent global political leadership lead by capitalist interests only interested in BAU.
The worlds bankers like John Key will be running from the pitchforks when the world wakes up to the state of climate emergency we are obviously heading for like an out of control freight train.
5C by the way is probably unsurvivable for most complex life forms
‘If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared.
This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to what — that suddenly caused concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to spike, far higher than they are right now. The planet proceeded to warm rapidly, at least in geologic terms, and major die-offs of some marine organisms followed due to strong acidification of the oceans.’ Click here for full article continuation.
We have had the warmest winter in the Arctic in living memory with temperature anomalies of well over 10C.
This summer melt season will be like no other:
‘Climate Warming Accelerating Carbon Loss From Thawing Arctic Soils, Warmer, wetter conditions in the Arctic are accelerating the loss of carbon stored in tundra and permafrost soils, creating a potential positive feedback that further boosts global temperatures, a Dartmouth College study finds…‘ Click link here for continuation.
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El Nino did not play the largest role in why February was the most abnormally warm month ever recorded // Published on Mar 20, 2016
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If I wasn’t prepared for this I would be terrified of the consequences but I have been expecting this every day.
Good to see that they aren’t attributing the spike wholly to the El Nino.
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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 