The Radio Ecoshock Show

Who Will Control the Climate of the World?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:49:55 PDT

Australian author Clive Hamilton on geoengineering & his new book "Earthmasters". Plots by big oil, Bill Gates & nuke scientists. Shocking new science shows Arctic could melt at current carbon levels. Plus world-wide growth of bike sharing with Janet Larsen of Earth-Policy. Radio Ecoshock 130522 1 hour http://tinyurl.com/mg5uj4w

Welcome traveller. Can you handle the truth?

I didn't think so. Me neither.

But it will happen anyway. Science is beginning to prove we have already changed the planet's climate in dangerous ways.

A small group of climate scientists, backed by a billionaire and big oil, are considering taking over control of the climate, to stave off disaster. Then we'll find proof our current 400 parts per million will melt so much Arctic and Antarctic ice, warming up to 8 degrees C, flooding the world's largest cities.

We'll wrap that up with one of the few positive alternatives growing in this disturbed scene: a wave of bike sharing around the world. Includes Europe, U.S., Mexico, South America, China.

FREE MP3 AUDIO DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show (1 hour) in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Clive Hamilton interview on "EarthMasters" (geoengineering 25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download Janet Larsen from Earth Policy Institute on world-wide bike sharing (24 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW (courtesy of archive.org)

==========

CLIVE HAMILTON - EARTHMASTERS

Clive Hamilton

Gather round boys and girls as we tell the story of the Earthmasters - the men who would take over from nature, to run the climate of the world. Or do they mean to save us from our fossil-addicted selves?

For all who love a conspiracy, geoengineering has it all. The oil companies, far-right think-tanks, nuclear weapons scientists, and even Bill Gates. But you'll have to hang in, while we first look at a few small problems in their plans.

Our guide is Clive Hamilton. After careers in the Australian public service as an economics and resource advisor, and several stints at Universitites like Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford, Hamilton founded and ran a progressive think-tank called the Australia Institute. Now he's Professor of Public Ethics in a program run by two Australian universities.

You may have heard of books Clive's written or co-written, including "Growth Fetish", "Affluenza", "Silencing Dissent" and more recently "Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change." But his latest is "Earthmasters, The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering."

We reached Clive Hamilton in Canberra.

We cover a lot of important points. One of the big questions: if we start cooling the planet, say with Solar Radiation Management, what happens if we stop? Answer: the temperature goes up very quickly in a matter of months or even weeks, as the aerosols are rained out. It could be a jump of several degrees.

That leads to an absolutely key point: the RATE if temperature increase is possibly more important than the overall increase. If we gain a half a degree per decade, some plants, animals and ocean species will have time to migrate further toward the poles, or higher up mountains, to survive. But if there is a relatively sudden jump of one or two degrees global mean temperature, (more in some areas) - then mass extinctions will result. That is one of the supreme risks of geoengineering.

It's easy to picture a scenario where a fleet of aircraft spraying sulfates, or a fleet of ships spraying up salt water continuously, could stop. A financial crash, war, plague, or terrorism could end the program. Then all of the heating we've covered up with geoengineering would strike the planet. No one has a tenable answer for this problem.

A second key issue: who will decide when and how to start geoengineering? A single country could do it, like Russia, the United States, or even Malaysia. It's possible a billionaire could decide to cool off the planet, with no public consultation. In fact, we learn that Bill Gates, the Microsoft Founder, has been pouring millions into a research fund to develop science - and patents! - to cool the planet. Some businessmen hope to make money controlling the technology that could save us from extreme climate change.

The Gates foundation has been advised by two scientists in particular, Ken Caldeira and David Keith. These are highly regarded climate scientists, Caldeira from Stanford and Keith from Harvard. David Keith is a great example of a man who seems to deny climate change, or at least thinks it won't matter to humans, we can adapt - and yet he gets money from Canadian Tar Sands billionaire N Murray Edwards to further the cause of geoengineering. How can Conservatives have it both ways? Another important player in this "geo-clique" is Brad Allenby.

Gates has started several companies investigating geoengineering, one called "Intellectual Ventures". The CEO is Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

Another associate at Intellectual Ventures is Lowell Wood, a former nuclear weapons researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and protege of the late Edward Teller, inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Before his death, Edward Teller was promoting a scheme to launch millions of mirrors into space to deflect the sun away from the Earth. Teller was a Cold Warrior who also championed the "Star Wars" scheme under President Ronald Reagan. Wood is one of a collection of people who moved from nuclear weapons research into geoengineering. And why not? If you think humans should control the Earth by force, why not control the climate the same way? In fact, some of these men want to control Nature entirely. Former Vice President Dick Cheney or the current Dictator of North Korea would probably agree that's a good thing.

Such schemes reduce sunlight for all creatures on Earth, including our own needs for agriculture. And they do nothing to stop the equally deadly acidification of the oceans from our fossil fuel pollution.

Obviously, big oil and coal companies would love to have a technological solution that lets them burn even more of their polluting produces. In the interview, and in his book Earthmasters, Clive Hamilton tells us how Exxon/Mobil and Shell are investing in geoengineering schemes.

Strangest of all, the right-wing think tank the American Enterprise Institute also backs Solar Radiation Management, or geoengineering, to stave off global heating. The AEI was previously given millions of dollars, and acted to deny global warming was even happening. That's quite a switch, going from denial straight to demanding emergency action to stop climate change!

Clive Hamilton suggests the problem of global warming indicates a failing of the free market system - since the true cost of polluting the atmosphere was never factored in. But now, with geoengineering, the capitalists system tries to vindicate itself by converting a horrible problem into a wonderful victory with technology it controls.

Due to time limitations, we didn't cover technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. People are going to have to buy the book to get that.

Part of the reason Clive wrote the book, and is now touring North America, is to wake up the public and get a real discussion going about who should control this tech, if we ever need it. Naturally, the far better solution is to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions before we lose the climate civilization depends on.

Find out more at Clive's web site.

Now in fairness, we have to say there are genuine and worthy climate scientists who are terrified about the way the climate trap is going. They don't get money from the military or Bill Gates. They just see the Arctic meltdown and species leaving the stage forever, and think "we've got to do something fast". What could we do that isn't too crazy or dangerous?

I think there will be a "climate emergency". We get two years where crops don't grow. It could be floods or extreme heat, whatever. Millions die and there is a call for action. The geoengineers step forward with a plan. Will we be able to say "no"?

That's why I didn't ask Clive about international negotiations or laws. It's still the Wild West of the atmosphere, where just one determined dictator, billionaire, or president could decide to cool the world.

NEW SCIENCE FROM THE ARCTIC: WE MAY HAVE ALREADY PASSED THE BIG MELTING POINT

In the last year, scientists discovered a climate record going back over 3 million years - long beyond the ice core records of 800,000 years. Research led by Professor Julie Brigham-Grette, from the University of Masschusetts, Amherst drastically changes our understanding of the world.

Julie Brigham-Grette

She's been studying a meteor-impact lake called El' gygytgyn on the Eastern tip of Siberia.Drilling into a lake in the Russian Arctic, created from a meteor strike ages ago, she found several periods where the Arctic was up to 8 degrees warmer than today. That despite carbon dioxide levels thought to be similar to, or below, today's 400 parts per million. Zoom out on this Google Map to see where that lake is.

The Greenland Ice sheets have repeatedly shrunk to half current size. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet completely disappeared 1.1 million years ago. The sea level was tens of meters higher than today.

All this happened not with carbon levels like the 600 parts per million and above projected by politicians and planners, but at only 400 parts per million, our current level. It appears we may have already arrived at greenhouse gas levels sufficient to drastically warm the poles, make sea ice history, melt Greenland and parts of Antarctica, and flood coastal areas around the world. All that may be only a matter of time.

In the radio show I play a selection of key clips recorded from a You tube video presentation by Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, at Amherst, in the summer of 2012 - almost a year ago, and yet hardly anyone has heard of these startling findings. Find out more at frontierscientists.com, hosted by University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

I highly recommend you watch this full Youtube video of Julie Brigham-Grette with all the graphs and charts. Scary stuff.

FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS: BIKE SHARING IS EXPLODING AROUND THE WORLD!

Quick quiz: what way of getting around is growing faster than "any mode of transport in the history of the planet?"

If you said cars, motorbikes, or skateboards... nope. The right answer is "bike sharing". It's almost enough to give us hope - and that's the intention of the the ongoing work called "Plan B" from Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute.

Here to brighten our day with news about the wave of carbon-friendly bicycle travel around the world is Janet Larsen. She's the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute. Over 500 cities world-wide have installed millions of share-able bikes.

Janet Larsen, Earth Policy Institute

There's plenty of bike action in North America, but we start with Europe. They have been the world leaders in urban biking, other than China. A few of us heard about free bikes in Amsterdam back in the day, but those were stolen to be sold off in Eastern Europe. We talk about bicycle solutions today in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen "Bycyklen" system just shut down at the end of 2012, as part of "austerity". There was such a big public outcry, the government has now promised a new modern bike sharing system to replace it.

The French were never known for their biking, but Citi Group helped pioneer a sharing system in Rouen that was very successful. Now every tourist to Paris enjoys the great bike sharing system there.

I wince with pain when I think about what happened in China. In the early 1990's, we all saw video of throngs of commuters biking into work in most of China's cities. Now that's been wiped out by the same polluting car culture developed in America, and pushed by many of the same car companies, like General Motors. That car-culture is beginning to fail them. China is still the world's largest bicycle maker, and some Chinese cities have installed a lot of shared bikes, up to 90,000 in one city alone. There are lots of exciting things going on with biking in China.

In our interview, we also look at the challenges facing bicycle transport in Mexico, and innovative programs in Central and South America.

NORTH AMERICAN BIKE SHARING

Another whole aspect of this is bike messengers and inner-city deliveries. We have a small fleet of tricycle "freight" bikes operating in downtown Vancouver.

Freight Tricycle Vancouver (photo Alex Smith)

No doubt you've heard that New York City will be opening a giant new bike sharing program later this Spring. The first 5,000 subscriptions for shared bikes sold out quickly. Other cities, even Tusla Oklahoma, are scoring successes with new bike paths and bike sharing.

The list of bike benefits is so long. They offer independence, even if the main grid goes down, or oil prices skyrocket. You help save the climate, and help save your health at the same time. I wonder, is anyone doing the calculations about how fast we need to develop the bicycle transportation network, to be energy secure, and to make a major dent in climate-damaging car emissions?

This bicycle update is part of a series on the positive news coming from the institute, covering everything from clean alternative energy to climate-friendly diet changes. It's called "Plan B" as advanced by the Institute's founder, Lester Brown.

Track it down at earth-policy.org.

============= Please support Radio Ecoshock if you can, at our web site, ecoshock.org And grab lots of our free mp3 downloads of past shows.

Are we out of time? Find out next week, as I look into human extinction. I'm Alex. Thanks for hanging in.

Unburnable: Risky Fossil Fuel Investments Vs. Climate Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:31:05 PDT

Two new reports say climate change could cause the next financial crisis. From London, Bob Ward, LSE lead author of "Unburnable: Carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets." From Australia's Climate Institute, John Connor on coal's risky future. Plus Nancy LaPlaca: why does sunny Arizona burn so much coal? Radio Ecoshock 130515 1 hour.

Could climate change bring us the next financial crisis? Yes indeed, say two new reports. We'll go London to get the low-down on the new report from the Grantham Institute of the London School of Economics. Find out why big institutions like Citi Group, HSBC, the World Bank and the IMF agree: fossil fuel companies have developed a huge bubble based on carbon reserves they can never burn.

Pay attention. Your pension funds and banks are heavily invested in the next financial crash. Everybody is.

From the Canadian Tar Sands to Australian coal pits, energy companies are loading up with yesterday's fuel - until the climate crunch, which is already arriving. John Connor of the Climate Institute says the coal industry is ripe for financial implosion.

I'll wrap up with a quick answer to another bothersome question: why is the super sunshine state of Arizona still burning so much coal? With Nancy LaPlaca.

Remember the few people who tried to warn the world about the mortgage bubble. This is that show for you.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FOR THIS SHOW

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the interview with Bob Ward, Grantham Institute of the London School of Economics (24 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download my interview with John Connor, Executive Director of the Climate Institute in Australia (19 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the interview with Nancy LaPlaca on solar vs. coal in Arizona (12 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW (courtesy of archive.org)

Any intelligent observer can see we are on a collision course between increasing mega-projects to produce even more coal, oil and gas - and the developing disaster of climate change. Either we make adjustments to our energy system, or we risk trying to live through the planet's sixth great extinction event, without going extinct ourselves.

Why do so many investors, likely including your pension fund, bank, or government - keep pouring billions and billions of dollars or Euros into a fossil fuel industry which has no long-term future? Everybody's making big money - but is it a bubble?

No one doubted the strength of the American home mortgage market, before that fell apart in 2007. It almost took down the whole financial system. But can we really believe the most profitable companies in the world, the oil and coal industries, could collapse?

The climate threat to our financial markets and civilization is no longer a subject just for radical greens. There are ripples of concern right at the core of the largest trading systems, echoed by some of the world's biggest financial institutions. Some say the carbon bubble could bring on the next crash.

In January of 2012, a well-regarded list of power players wrote the British Governor of the Bank of England, warning the London exchange was at the top of a fossil fuel bubble that could break with disasterous consequences. Now Lord Stern and a team of analysts have released a new policy paper that explains the risk.

BOB WARD

Bob Ward, Grantham Institute, LSE

In the spring of 2013 stock markets hit new highs. Leading the pack were the most profitable companies in the world, the big oil, gas, and coal companies.

At the same time, polls showed the majority of the public believe climate change is real. What happens when these two opposites collide? According to a new report from leading economists, the carbon bubble will pop, leading to another serious financial crisis.

To explain, I've reached a lead author of the report, "Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets." Bob Ward is Policy and Communications Director for the Grantham Institute, at the London School of Economics.

This new report is hard to believe. How could big money makers like Shell, Exxon/Mobil and the rest, lead us into the next economic crash?

We talk about this "carbon bubble". I ask how would it compare to the 2007 bubble of U.S. real estate prices, and all the securitization based on those mortgages? Ward says it is smaller than that bubble, because that 2007/2008 crisis involved all the banks, which are central to everything else in our economy.

Still, the over-valuation of these energy companies is not a small problem. Ward tells me the oil, gas, coal, and coal mining companies account for about 20% of the London Stock exchange, and similar numbers for other stock exchanges around the world.

If investors wake up all of a sudden and divest in a panic, say after more rounds of climate-driven violent weather, that could bring a very serious crisis. The Grantham Institute and Carbon Tracker hope their report will give the market time to make the necessary changes over time, rather than in a panic, and avoid a really serious crash.

The ratings company Standard and Poors is looking at how to re-evaluate the energy companies, given the claimed reserves can never be burned. The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Bank are now adamant that climate change is a real threat to the world economy, and are looking at action based on this new report. Even banks like HSBC and Citi agree this is a serious problem.

We are told the Bank of England was warned in January 2012 that big reserves claimed by the fossil fuel companies were a threat to the British economy, and the huge UK investment and banking industry.

Almost all of us are invested in fossil fuel companies one way or another. Certainly pension funds seek those big dividends and stock prices. Insurance companies, even our savings are loaned out by banks to big energy corporations. We are all at risk.

Naturally, I was sceptical that governments will act at all. Right now it looks like we'll just burn all the fossil fuels and to hell with coming generations. Literally. Bob Ward doesn't think so. For one thing, climate change is already interfering with the oil, gas, and coal business.

Consider rising seas and violent storms when it comes to offshore platforms and refineries. Think of the oil industry impacts of Hurricane Katrina for example. We also heard from Louisiana just the increased heat and changes in water flows are affecting pipeline operations. And we're just at the start of all that.

Add on the huge costs to government of storms like Hurricane Sandy ($60 billion on an already stressed United States) - and there is just no way our society and economy can go on with "business as usual" - especially if the global mean temperature goes over 2 degrees hotter. At some point, we don't know when, Ward says society will act to try to save what is left of the climate we need to survive. Taking action is not a "political" matter. It's physics and climate science that is based on what we emit. End of story. The fossil fuel companies might as well stop exploration to push up the supposed value of their reserves - because we can't even burn what we have already!

With Carbon Tracker, the Grantham Institute looked at the "carbon budget" - the amount of fossil fuels we could still burn and have at least a 50% chance of staying below the two degree danger zone. It's not much - and nothing like the reserves claimed by these big corporations.

I saved one last question from talking with Bob Ward from the London School of Economics. It's technical financially. I didn't really get it - until I heard John Connor say the same. Big pensions, insurance companies and banks are investing in the whole stock market, without being able to separate out the phony balance sheets of fossil fuel companies. That's a core risk which could shake the whole system. Regulators and analysts, even the ratings company Standard and Poors, are looking for a new metric, a new way to invest in a real future.

JOHN CONNOR

John Connor, Climate Institute, Australia

Naturally this affects oil, gas, and coal producers around the world. Australia is the world's largest exporter of climate-damaging coal. Australian mining companies recently announced even more grandiose projects to mine and ship still more.

From Australia, I've reached John Connor. He is the CEO of the Climate Institute in Sydney.

In the Guardian newspaper April 28th, John Connor told journalist Damian Carrington that Australia's coal industry is, quote, "ripe for financial implosion". We discuss how this carbon bubble could burst, and the impact on Australian economy, and the world economy. Find the Climate Institute "Unburnable" report on Australian coal here.

During the interview, John recommended these web sites to follow up:

The Vital Few - a site aimed at accidental climate change investors. That could be any of us, as our banks, pension funds (called superannuation funds in Australia), and insurance companies invest heavily in fossil fuel companies. Find out if your are involved and what to do here.

Connor also recommends the Asset Owners Disclosure web site and listings. It shows which investment companies are backing the energy sources that will wreck out climate. Check it out.

CAN INVINCIBLE OIL, GAS AND COAL COMPANIES REALLY CRASH?

The way I see it, Australia endures another few years of climate extremes, whether it's super fires, record heat and floods. Millions of people call for action, in time with an election cycle. That could bring a crash of coal company share-prices, or even a major bankruptcy for an Australian coal company. Impossible you say? Remember Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers were invincible too.

Here in North America, the gas industry is frantically drilling more and more fracking wells, even though the price is lower than production costs. I assume it's a scam intended to generate more investment money. Is it possible the same is happening with Australian coal?

Not likely, says John Connor. Unfortunately, there is far too much real coal in the ground. As he says "the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones." In the same vein, Australia won't run out of coal before the climate is absolutely wrecked.

The Australian government is subsidizing the coal boom with extra infrastructure, hoping to generate more jobs and tax money. The government, and the public, are addicted to coal revenues, especially in Queensland. It's pretty much the same picture in Canada with the Tar Sands operations.

The Climate Institute, along with Carbon Tracker, put out their own report on the impacts of Australian coal reserves, versus a change in market evaluation of companies. The big coal companies are quite aware that climate concerns may drive more demands for carbon limitations or carbon taxes. Perversely, this may drive them to get coal out of the ground even faster, to make more money before the market shifts against them. It's the coal rush, and Australian corporations have announced fantastic new plans for mega coal mines and a half dozen new coal shipping ports (some in the Great Barrier Reef!)

The Climate Institute report found two important developments. First of all, the majority of Australian coal companies are NOT owned and controlled by Australian companies. International investors, some from China, have taken over in many cases. This is also a risk: because international money can leave just as quickly as it came. That might happen because regulations in the home country of the capital means coal is no longer attractive. Or the money might move away for other reasons.

Secondly, the Australian coal expansion plans wrongly assume that China and other Asian countries will burn an infinite amount of coal. However, that leaves aside three key developments. China has put in a cap on coal use. China is investing heavily on alternative energy at the same time. Third, the Chinese public is demanding measures to clean up the air, and coal is the main pollutant. For all these reasons, Chinese importations of coal may slow down or even go into reverse. And that doesn't even include the growing awareness in China of the huge costs of climate change.

We are talking about Australia, but this applies to the multi-billion dollar expansion in the works for Canada's Tar Sands. Or the big money bet on Arctic drilling, or dangerous deep-sea drilling. If we look at the huge position of these fossil fuel companies on world stock exchanges - but these two reports say the whole world financial system is at risk, while we gamble on burning more and more fossil fuels.

Big financial institutions like Citi Bank and HSBC publicly admit we face a hidden risk with over-investment in a dead-end economy, based fossil fuels.

Honestly I feel some relief that people in the financial industry are finally talking about the danger investing in climate-killing fuels. When our wallets and bank accounts look as risky as Cyprus, maybe there will be a move out of the fossil catastrophe.

WHY IS THE SUNSHINE STATE OF ARIZONA USING SO MUCH COAL? NANCY LAPLACA

Nancy LaPlace energy activist, Arizona.

In the U.S. Southwest, the State of Arizona has more sunshine than anywhere. It should be the American capital of solar power. But instead big cities like Phoenix are powered by dirty coal. To explain this crazy situation, I've reached Nancy LaPlaca. Nancy was policy adviser to a state Power Commissioner, and now she's looking at taking a run for the Commission herself.

Last year about this time, I visited Page Arizona on the northern state border. I saw the Navajo Coal Power station belching out smoke. The EPA says it's a dirty plant, and needs new pollution control. There is a huge battle over the controls.

Complicating the problem, that Navajo plant contributes millions of dollars to the Navajo tribe. Lots of native Americans work either with the plant, or in the coal mines of Northern Arizona. Can we shut that dirty coal plant down, without tossing even more native Americans into poverty? LaPlaca says yes - because alternative energy produces three times the jobs compared to fossil fuels. There is plenty of sunshine - and wind - in Northern Arizona.

But "coal electrons" are dirt cheap right now. That's partly because of the economic slow down, leading to overcapacity of all kinds of energy. The neighboring state of Nevada is getting out of coal. That means they will purchase no power from the Navajo Coal Generating station.

At the same time, California is also cutting back on coal power. The Los Angeles Light and Power company will stop buying electricity from the Navajo station around 2015. Instead, they are signing contracts with solar power companies in Arizona.

California has a requirement to get about one third of it's energy from renewable sources by 2020. Arizona is far behind, going for lower requirements by 2025.

As always, the big power utilities have a monopoly, and don't want change or competition. Solar power can go up anywhere, and is closer to the user, so there are fewer transmissions costs and losses. Nancy says if the big box stores and commercial buildings start mounting solar panels, the Arizona utilities, which are mainly state-owned, would be in serious financial trouble. In my opinion, if they keep counting on coal, the energy source with no future, Arizona will be in big trouble.

Nancy LaPlaca has been going around Arizona giving presentation to explain the facts of climate and energy life. The Republican Party just issued a press statement calling her "an extremist" because she is calling for renewable energy. I ask you, who are the "extremists" who don't notice Arizona has warmed up over two degrees since 1950. The rains this past year were about one third of normal. The place is drying out and heating up - and coal is the way to go???

Check out Nancy's interview. It's a quick education on coal politics and the reality of new energy systems. Find Nancy's Facebook page, as she considers a run for the Arizona Energy Commision here.

WRAP UP

I hope you got the big picture need for a financial reform that protects investors from the fossil fuel bubble. The balance sheets of big oil, coal and gas are swollen with supposed carbon reserves we will never burn. Because the planet will heat up beyond any capability for business as usual, long before the oil, fracked gas, and coal run out.

More exploration is pointless for these companies. Nature and the human enterprise demand a business plan to phase out the fossil fuel economy.

Thank you for supporting Radio Ecoshock, at our web site ecoshock.org. With the help of listener donations, I've created two new You tube videos, based on interviews from this show. Just search Radio Ecoshock on You tube, and select the filter "by upload date" - to get the latest. Feel free to pass those along to people who need to know.

The latest is this You tube video version of my interview with John Betts, on "The Age of Super Fires".

I'm Alex Smith. Let's do it again next week, as we meet the men who want to run the climate of the world.

We end this program with a tune from Political Songwriter, Folk Musician & Union Activist Smokey Dymny. It's called "Talking Global Warming."

Fracking: Sacrifice Zones of the American West

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:09:31 PDT

Fracking: Sacrifice Zones of the American West. What can other countries expect? Four voices from the Bakken shale lands. Polluting oil & gas extraction impacts in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana & North Dakota. The dark side of the fracking boom. Radio Ecoshock 130508 1 hour http://tinyurl.com/cgkhq8s

INTRODUCTION: FRACKING HELL

Tonight and tomorrow, gas flares burn over the dry and dryer lands of the Western United States. There is a fracking boom exploding rock ten thousand feet down, and miles all around. In Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming villages become overnight towns, big trucks fill small roads, gas floats over prairie and foothills. The last waters in great rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers are poisoned, 50,000 years worth in ten years, billions of gallons a day. The frack water kills the ground it touches, or disappears forever into subterranean Earth.

As climate change works against the browning landscape of the American West, crazed humans use all the water they can find to make still more methane and carbon dioxide, to make more money with oil and gas.

We go to those sacrifice zones. You hear four voices. The ranchers and a native American woman are part of an organization calling for regulations and safety protection. Instead they have the enabling state where fossil fuel companies control the capitol, selling the dream of wealth to the people, while their environment careens beyond reclamation. Farming may collapse, and without drinking water, communities will eventually leave too.

It's happening all over the world, the invasion of the well-drillers, coming as close as 500 feet to homes, like-it-or-not. Ask the disgusted people from Queensland Australia about the fracking blight, or coal seam gas, as they would say. Get ready Britain, where the government sees fracking as salvation. Eastern Europe will be conquered and fracked. People all over North America, and all over the world, need to listen to our speakers today. Because when it's gone, it's gone.

Listen to this Radio Ecoshock Show right now, courtesy of Archive.org

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS THIS WEEK

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Free audio downloads: interviews with our guests -

Robert LeResche of Powder River Resource Council and the Western Organization of Resource Councils in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Bob Arrington, Chair of the Energy Committee of the Western Colorado Congress in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Pat Wilson, 4 generation rancher and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council in Montanna, CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Theodora Bird Bear, Fort Berthold Reservation & Dakota Resource Council in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

MUSIC CREDIT:

All music in this program is by the Desert Dwellers, from their new album "Far From Here" - courtesy of Black Swan Sounds. Find the band here.

ROBERT (BOB) LERESCHE

Bob LeResche is a biologist with lost of experience in Alaska. He twice held cabinet level positions, being in charge of natural resources, executive director of Alaska's Power Authority, and then the state's coordinator for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Now Bob and his wife are operating a small ranch in Northern Wyoming.

Bob speaks both for the Powder River Basin Resource Council - an area famous for giant coal mines, but now being flooded with rigs for hydraulic fracturing of shale gas and oil ("fracking"). LeResche also spoke for the umbrella group WORC, the Western Organization of Resource Councils.

Parts of Wyoming have become like overnight boom towns as the fracking rigs move in. Bob tells us the previous coal bed methane operations have mostly shut down because of gas fracking. That coal bed methane is mostly in shallower ground, and tends to reduce water in Wyoming's vital aquifers - as does fracking. Since 1992, when the State ruled water use for fossil fuel development was a "beneficial use" - the companies have been pumping "unlimitted" amounts of groundwater, with no accounting or cost. Nobody knows how much has been taken out, or what remains.

From 1997 to 2012, LeResche says a MINIMUM of 309 billion gallons of water was pumped out. Most of that was dumped on to the ground, with little being reinjected. The waste water was generally contaminated with various toxic materials, plus the salt from underground. Even some radioactive materials. Such water dumping destroyed pastures, croplands, and nature zones.

Some of these reservoirs recharge at 0.15 inches a year. That means it would take over 50,000 years to recharge what was taken out in ten years by the Wyoming energy industry. Bob LaResche worries agriculture may be harmed due to lack of water in the future. Even some communities may run out of water and have to "disappear".

About 300 deep horizonal fracking wells were drilled in the Powder River Basin since 2010, with thousands more coming.

After it's all done, Wyoming has at least 100,000 unplugged bore holes, which can lead back to contamination of the underground water supplies. LeResche feels Wyoming is a "sacrifice zone" for the energy needs of the rest of the country, and big company profits.

WORC, the Western Organization of Resource Councils, has put out a report on the misuse of scarce water supplies called "Gone Good, Fracking and Water Loss in the West" Find that here.

BOB ARRINGTON

Bob is a retired engineer living in Battlement Mesa. That's in Colorado, where up to 200 natural gas wells have been proposed in that one area alone. Bob is Chair of the Energy Committee of the Western Colorado Congress. He testified before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Bob champions the health impact assessments of oil and gas, has led local air monitoring efforts, and takes international media around the gas fields. Or find the Western Colorado Congress on Facebook here.

Each of these deep fracking wells can use from 3 to 6 million gallons for every "frack job" - when the explosives shatter the rock below. A single well may be fracked several times. Add this all up for tens of thousands of wells and you get an idea of the tremendous amount of water required by this industry.

In Colorado, the MacKenzie Report showed health impacts from bad air quality up to half a mile away from a fracking operation. But since most land-owners in the United States do NOT own the sub-surface rights, an energy company has the right to come very close to your home and set up a noisy, dangerous, and polluting fracking well. In Colorado they just got legislation requiring a 500 foot setback from homes. Five hundred feet away from your bedroom window!

Some fracking wells are even closer, if the homeowner agrees. Remember, the energy companies do not need your permission to drill those wells. You could be on a peacful ranch, farm, or country retreat and suddenly find yourself in industrial hell for a decade or two. Many people give up and try to sell out - but who would want to buy. There is no compensation for those lost dreams and homes.

Air quality tests of fracking operations in Colorado found lots of volatile organic compounds - like the poisons benzene and toluene, and carcinogens like xylene. The University of Colorado is planning a 3 year study, but that's way too slow and too late. A NOAA study has already showed benzene coming from fracking sites. Some of the fracked water turns out to be radioactive, and contains heavy metals plus salt. Some of it is just dumped on the ground, killing the vegetation. Some is trucked as dangerous cargo over America's highways. Accidents happen.

Doctors in Colorado were poorly trained to recognize health impacts from fracking, and industry-friendly legislation makes it illegal for them to share information about cases.

None of this counts the masses of methane billowing out of fracking wells. Methane isn't harmful to health, but sure hurts the global atmosphere, being at least 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Colorado is drying out, with a recent record of super fires. It's also been hit with drought - even as the fracking industry drains it dry. The State of Kansas won a lawsuit against Colorado for withholding water. The Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to drain out some reservoirs to serve the energy industry.

P.S. Blogger Peggy Tibbetts has a few articles on the Parachute Creek spill and Bob Arrington here.

PAT WILSON

Next up is a long-time rancher along the Missouri River near Bainville Montana. Pat Wilson's family has been there for over a century. Pat can tell us about the oil and gas rush in the famous Bakken shale field, and draining huge volumes of water from the Missouri River. He is a member of the Northern Plains Resource Council.

Pat does get some money from oil wells right on his family land. But he still thinks the fracking boom is a danger to the community and the environment. He's particularly concerned that the State Legislature is allowing water allocated for agriculture to be used for fracking instead.

The oil-bearing shale in his area is about 9,000 feet (2700 meters) below the surface. You can't see the Bakken oil shale formations on the ground above. There are about 800 Bakken wells in Montana, and another 8,000 in North Dakota. Companies are proposing seven times more wells!

The region only gets ten to fourteen inches of rain annually, so water is scarce even without all this drilling. Even when the State of Montana found 13 illegal water depots, instead of leveling charges, they made it easier for energy companies to appropriate the water!

Pat tells us about the social impacts of having thousands of people showing up, many temporarily, in the area of his home village of Bainville - former population 300. Schools and sewer systems can't keep up. There are two "man camps" on either side of town. There is even talk of building a Marriot hotel there!

You can find a good film about the social impact in this film by the University of Montana.

Read more about plans for super-development of Bainville in the Billings Gazette here. (Plus there's a video of Pat Wilson)

Pat Wilson isn't sure if he is living in a dream or a nightmare.

THEODORA BIRD BEAR

Beyond the old-time ranchers, humans have been living in the American North West for more than ten thousand years.

Theodora Bird Bear is a lifetime resident of the Fort Berthold Reservation. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Dakota Resource Council.

This is a fascinating interview, for it's insight into how some Native Americans feel about the fracking boom. Theodora tells us some tribal leaders are also involved in businesses serving the fracking industry, so there may be a conflict of interest.

When she attends local meetings of concerned citizens, white people complain they feel like they are being "invaded". "Now they know how we feel" says Theodora, when a federal government is pushing a migration into the West.

We talk about the impact on wild animals. With all the noise, trucks, new roads - deer are hard to find. We don't know how many have been poisoned drinking dumped frack water. In fact, without telling local residents, one company was digging a big pit right near the town to dump oil drilling waste. That was stopped when word got out.

The Fort Berthold Reserve is under Federal Government administration, not State - but Theoroda tells us there is precious little regulation going on. Don't miss this interview! Plus - Theodora offers us some wisdom on how to cope with and get out of this fracking mess.

WHAT COULD BE CRAZIER THAN TAKING WATER FROM THE DROUGHT-STRICKEN WEST?

As the American West continues it's breath-taking drought, what could be crazier than draining away the rivers, reservoirs and aquifers to power the underground war of fracking. To poison the last of the fresh water, with the great rives of the Colorado and the Rio Grande already a dry gulch before they reach the sea. All to fill the sky with more oily carbon dioxide, and gigatonnes of methane, a more powerful agent of climate change.

This is also a human positive feedback effect. The West, which has a history of natural drying cycles, has been triggered into another event by global warming. At the same time, we remove billions of gallons of water from any human reach, and right out of the water table, by polluting it an injecting it deep underground. It's a suicidal reinforcement of the drought.

And of course the product is more and more fossil fuels to heat up the atmosphere even more. It's classic positive feedback cycle created by human industrial civilization Hell-bent on sefl-destruction.

WATCH OUT IN OTHER COUNTRIES: IT'S COMING TO YOU People in the UK, where Saint Maggie Thatcher saved the country with the "dash for gas' in the North Sea, are now being sold on the new miracle of fracked gas. Hopefully they'll hear about the American experience in time to avoid their own sacrifice zones. I'm asking my podcast and online listeners in Europe to pass this program around as well. We may even have some warnings for Canada and Australia, where fracking and coal bed seam gas capture are already well underway.

If you have oil or gas bearing shale deep beneath your country, act early to prevent this trans-generational tragedy. See the new film by Josh Fox, Gasland II. Organize your own groups. Find more info on industry push-back on this film, plus the trailer, here at DeSmog Bog.

Let your elected representatives feel the heat. Protect your water if you still can. Protect your climate. Stop this fracking madness.

I'm Alex Smith. Try out our library of files at ecoshock.org. They are all free. You can donate if you want to. Look for my interview with Robert Howarth - how fracked gas ends up emitting as much greenhouse warming power as burning coal. The Howarth interview and a speech he gave as ASPO (the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) are both in my Radio Ecoshock Show for November 23, 2011 - found here.

It turns out "natural" gas as "clean fuel" is a bridge to the nowhere of extinction.

THANK YOU LISTENERS!

Thank you to the listeners who tune in each week, taking your chances on what you find. Opening your mind. I'm Alex Smith, and I am grateful you are there.

Plus a special thanks for those who donated or became a subscribing member for the show. (Find out about that here.) I've used a little of your money to get hardware and software to translate some Radio Ecoshock interviews and shows into Youtube videos - we'll reach a whole new audience.

Find my first-try video, Nicole Rycroft of Canopy on the Boreal Forest - right here.

Or if any problems, directly on Youtube.

The Age of Super Fires

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:29:11 PDT

The new age of super fires in N. America, Europe, Australia, Asia. Silviculturalist John Betts explains strange unstoppable forest fires. Then Nicole Rycroft, Exec Dir of enviro group "Canopy". Why they quit talks with industry, as logging ravages the Canadian Boreal forest. Plus MD Donald B. Louria says loss of faith in the future can kill. Radio Ecoshock 130501 1 hour.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/Dowload the John Betts interview on super fires (24 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/Dowload the Nicole Rycroft interview (Canopy/Boreal forests) 22 minutes in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/Download Donald B. Louria on loss of faith in the future (11 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

INTRODUCTION

In this program.... welcome to the new age of super fires. We talk with silviculturalist John Betts who explains the strange unstoppable forest fires rising up in the United States, Canada, Australia and even Europe.

Then we visit one of the last great intact forests on Earth - the Canadian Boreal. Loggers are chewing it up for paper, clothes, even cellulose in your ice cream. Now talks between industry and environmentalists appear to be breaking down. Nicole Rycroft from Canopy explains.

Top that off with Donald B. Louria, the medical doctor who says loss of faith in the future can kill. So think happy thoughts- or else! I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK PROGRAM RIGHT NOW!

JOHN BETTS: THE AGE OF SUPER FIRES

Are we entering the age of super forest fires? Our guest is John Betts, Executive Director of the Western Silvicultural Contractors' Association in British Columbia, Canada. He's in the gorgeous lake-side town of Nelson British Columbia - right in the path of the dead pines forest fire threat.

As a leader in an industry devoted to "managing" our forests, often by removing excess undergrowth, John advocates removing "fuel" from the forests before a disaster strikes. In years past, environmentalists have insisted such decay is natural and the woods should be left to their own devices.

Now it's different. With global warming and warmer winters, the Rocky Mountain Pine Bark Beetle has killed off entire valleys of pine trees. They will eventually burn - and some surround communities in the interior of British Columbia, and soon in Alberta too.

The same problem exists in the United States west, due to other bugs and general drying with climate pressures. Just consider the big fires in Colorado in 2012. The fires in Australia also look climate-related.

Betts adds a further cause: namely our success in stopping forest firest, (he calls it "suppression"). Most of these forests, especially in Western North America, were adapted to cycles of fires. The coniferous seeds could withstand a fire and regrow.

We know from studying forest soils there have been periods of fire for many centuries. But now with water bombers and new techniques, we stop them from burning, in our parks, on private lands, and around cities. John Betts says this means an abnormal amount of dead brush builds up beneath the trees. That's a recipe for a "super fire" - one we can't put out, until it burns out, or gets rained out.

In British Columbia, the dead pines can build into a kind of pyramid structure, just like you might build in a fire pit. That burns so hot it kills off any seeds. In fact, it can sterilize the soil even of helpful fungii and bacteria. So the forest doesn't grow back, and the ecology has been damaged.

Australia may or may not be a special case, with the eucalyptus trees and their oil, which act like instant torches. Note the Eucalyptus has been planted in California, in the U.S. South East, and around the Mediterranean. That could be a big mistake.

But with long drought, and excessive heat, we've seen many parts of the world burn as we've never seen in recent centuries. Consider the 2010 great fires in Russia which claimed hundreds of lives. Just previous to that, Serbia had giant fires, as did Greece and Spain. It's an ominous trend, which John Betts says is no accident.

As global heating continues, and the weather systems are thrown out of whack, we can expect a new age of great fires. Now you know the news before it hits your TV screen or headline. Expect it.

Betts advises communities how to prepare. Things like removing brush, or even if necessary, creating fire breaks around towns. And we should stop our home-building invasion of the woods, particularly in fire-ready areas. Having people living there drives more efforts to put fires out, which leads to the danger cycle again. Or people stay and try to fight the impossible flames, and die as they did in Australia. The government there has changed its advice - now telling people to get out, rather than remaining home with garden hoses against the inferno.

We need a lot of discussion and preparation to make sure our communities are safe, and our forests can return to some kind of natural cycle again - if "natural" is still possible in a big climate shift! It's possible some forests will never return, changing over to grasslands. We don't know yet, as we gamble away the future of the biosphere on a small planet.

NICOLE RYCROFT FROM CANOPY

The non-profit green group "Canopy" doesn't aim for high-profile public attention. Instead, it's been working behind the scenes with over 700 major corporations and media outlets, offering strategies to depend less on paper from old-growth paper. You would recognize big names, like the greening of the Harry Potter series, and major newspaper which are part of their efforts.

Canopy was part of the Great Bear Rainforest deal, and also joined a big initiative trying to save large tracts of Canada's Boreal Forest. That's the giant belt of a Northern forest type stretching from the Yukon to Labrador, but also dipping down into the U.S. mid-west and even New England. The big provinces of Ontario and Quebec hold vast swathes of Boreal forest.

Map of World boreal forest

Map of Canadian Boreal Forest (courtesy borealcanada.ca)

This region is the last stop of serious forest growth before reaching the treeless tundra in the Arctic circle. The same eco-type known as the Boreal in North America is called the "Taiga" in Europe and Russia. It's a green belt of climate control and one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet.

The Canadian boreal is one of only three great intact forests left in the world - the others being in Siberia and the Amazon. But it's being chewed up by dozens of forest companies doing clear-cut logging.

I asked Nicole, Executive Director and Founder of Canopy: if logging companies cut wood, and that gets sequestered as carbon into things like buildings, or even buried in land fills, that might actually reduce carbon emissions. Plus, we're told new trees growing during reforestation captures carbon. Couldn't logging in the Boreal be a good thing for the climate?

Her answer surprised me. I knew trees in the Boreal take a long time to grow back - as much as two or three hundred years to reach maturity. So the idea that new growth will capture anything like the carbon lost by logging is B.S.

But I did not know that trees change chemically when they are cut down. Living trees hold much more carbon than the lumber made from them.

Canopy has just withdrawn from the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. That was a consortium of logging companies, environment groups, and foundations talking for the past three years, trying to protect significant amounts of this eco-system, home to the shy and iconic Woodland Caribou.

Industry suspended logging on almost 29 million hectares of Boreal Forest within their alloted areas, and most of that included caribou habitat.

But that "deferment" has expired, with no firm protection for any of it. The companies are talking (for three years!) while they log. Details of where they will log next are not forthcoming. Canopy decided it was time to go back to the paper market customers. Greenpeace made the same decision to withdraw several months ago. The process has lost a lot of claim to legitimacy, leaving Boreal forest protection stranded.

There's a lot more to all this, as covered in our interview. Your own climate could be at stake - give it a listen.

We did see a fairly successful agreement for the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, but will this Boreal failure cool the whole idea of negotiating directly with polluters and resource companies? Will we see a return to more public activism?

DONALD B. LOURIA: LOSING FAITH IN THE FUTURE IS UNHEALTHY AND SELF-FULFILLING

If we lose faith in the future, can that help bring about the catastrophe we fear?

One speaker at the March 2013 conference on Fukushima in New York caught my attention with his off-topic introduction. Donald B. Louria, a medical MD and member of Physicians for Social Responsibility asked "Are we losing our faith in the future? If we do, what are the likely consequences?".

Donald B. Louria MD

Louria was leading in to his studies of the impacts of pessimism, and his book titled “reThink: A Twenty-First Century Approach to Preventing Societal Catastrophes.”

First I play you four minutes from his comments at the "Symposium: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident". All the talks from that symposium are now online here.

I think Donald raises a deep problem for us all. To fill out his comments, I'm just going to read directly from Louria's explanation of his book "reThink", as published online in September 2010.

==============quote:

"In 2005 and in 2007, I and my colleagues carried out national studies to assess the perceptions of people about their own future, the future of their country, and the future of the world. The respondents were divided into four age groups – 18 to 24 years, 25 to 44 years, 45 to 64 years, and over age 65. In every age group, more than 80 percent were optimistic about their own futures, but, in every age group, the majority were pessimistic about the future of the United States and the world. Importantly, the majority in each of the four age groupings believed we are not able to solve or significantly mitigate the major problems facing us (such as terrorism, global warming, the potential for nuclear or biologic warfare).

These studies suggested strongly that Americans of all ages are well on their way to losing faith in the future. Since our last survey, more than two years ago, a number of events have occurred that almost certainly will accelerate that loss of confidence in the future, reduce optimism about one’s own future, and increase the pessimism about the future of the United States and the world.

There has been a severe recession and, with it, a terrible toll in lost jobs and diminished confidence.

There is increasing distrust of a Congress that seems unable to deal effectively with our most serious problems. The cynicism about our political system is likely to be profoundly magnified as a result of the Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited and uncontrolled direct political advertising by corporations and unions (and others) in congressional and presidential elections.

The countries of the world, including the United States, appear unwilling to take the necessary actions to avoid catastrophic consequences of global climate change.

We are told that unless health care costs are contained, our healthcare system will eventually bankrupt the country. Yet, despite an extended and acrimonious debate, there is nothing to suggest our government has figured out a way to cope with or prevent this looming disaster.

I fear we are now in great danger of a large percentage of the public having their hopes for the future battered, being overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness in regard to our ability to cope with the major problems facing the society. If that occurs, there are substantial societal and individual consequences.

* There will be a dramatic increase in the frequency and severity of anxiety and depression.

* There will be a much greater focus on hedonism with increased risk taking and pleasure seeking, including the use of mind-altering drugs, both legal and illegal (alcohol included).

* There will be little attention paid to preventing or mitigating future problems and threats; politicians, even more than now, will focus almost entirely on present issues, thereby making the future even more bleak.

* The depression epidemic will have physical and other consequences with increased incidence of suicide and heart attacks, marital discord, inability to function effectively, and overeating (a well known response to depression) that will exacerbate our obesity and diabetes epidemics.

Make no mistake about it. Loss of faith in the future is very serious business – if widespread enough, it is society threatening.

There is, in my judgement, only one preventive: people, especially young adults, must be convinced that we as a society are still meliorist, that is able to solve the major problems facing us by the dint of our own efforts. That, in turn, means our politicians and leaders must give the perception they are approaching major issues in potentially effective fashion. To do so, they must know when to use and how to use what I have called societally-connected systems thinking. That is why I wrote the book “reThink: A Twenty-First Century Approach to Preventing Societal Catastrophes.”

========== end quote from Donald B. Louria

So stay positive - or else!

In my opinion, Louria's book is not aimed at the popular reader, but at experts and decision-makers. Someone needs to go through it a popularize his main thesis. Any volunteers to write a comprehensive review of this book?

Find Radio Ecoshock on Facebook.com/radioecoshock. Our Twitter feed is @ecoshock.

Please support Radio Ecoshock by visiting our web site, at ecoshock.org. My heart-felt thanks to the people who donated or signed up for a membership this week. You are enabling new outreach projects and covering the monthly bills.

I'm Alex Smith, saying join us next week, as we thrash through the big questions and the small answers.

Burying the Future: Tars Sands, Pipelines, & Melting Arctic

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:55:02 PDT

Canadian scientist Paul Beckwith explains how the Arctic warming emergency is changing your weather. But first, the story of an anti-pipeline media warrior, John Bolenbaugh in his own words. The leaks, scandals and deaths behind Tar Sands pipelines. Radio Ecoshock 130424 1 hour.

LISTEN TO/DOWNLOAD THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the John Bolenbaugh interview (27 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the Paul Beckwith interview (28 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Feel free to pass on or share those links. For Net use, most people prefer the faster loading/downloading Lo-Fi version.

JOHN BOLENBAUGH - ANTI-PIPELINE MEDIA WARRIOR VS. BIG OIL LIES

John Bolenbaugh, anti-pipeline warrior.

Are you sick of hearing about Tar Sands pipelines, from the Gateway project to the Keystone XL? Maybe you should hear from the people who are sick and dying from a leaking pipeline.

Watch this short video of sick residents.

I'm calling up John Bolenbaugh. He's a decorated Navy vet now qualified with Federal Emergency Management Agency, trained to clean up spills. John was hired after the Enbridge pipeline in Kalamazoo, Michigan had the biggest inland spill in the United States. That was on July 25, 2010 - but the cleanup and the story are far from over.

At his web site, John writes:

"...he exposed the truth with video proof, the fact that the Enbridge Company never cleaned up the oil; how they covered it up instead. One year after the oil spill, Enbridge and the EPA said that your kids could swim in the river, and that it was clean enough for you to eat the fish.

Two years later, in 2013, the EPA ordered Enbridge to re-dredge the Kalamazoo river, which cost Enbridge $175,000,000 dollars and proved that both Enbridge AND the EPA lied about the clean-up: The OIL IS STILL THERE. This makes it clear that tarsands oil is nearly impossible to clean up. John is also responsible for proving that over 12 tarsands oil spill sites were still contaminated, needing to be re-dredged, after the EPA and Enbridge had already signed off on them as 100% cleared, cleaned and restored in 2010."

John tells us how he got NPR and the Canadian CTV network to follow him as he demonstrated the oil was still there. Under media pressure, the EPA recently ordered the company to clean up the river.

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW!

"NORMAL" LEAKAGE OF PIPELINES

At 5 min 38 seconds of this video, a Nebraska land-owner claims there is a 1.5% leakage allowed in these pipelines with no need to report on it...

John tells us he heard about that, but didn't see proof until he visited Keystone XL protesters in Nebraska. He was shown web pages from the site of Transcanada Pipeline saying they can't even detect a spill until the pipeline pressure drops at least 1.5%. So there can be lots of bitumen oozing out of faulty welds, nobody knows, nobody reports it, until it starts showing up in the land, water, or a major aquifer.

Transcanada is now controlled by a conglomerate of Chinese corporations. Forget the "Canada" part. Bolenbaugh wonders if China is also interested in gaining rights to the aquifer water (30% of America's fresh water supply by some accounts) via this Keystone XL deal.

Remember, tar sands bitumen is so sticky is doesn't flow like oil. If normal motor oil has a viscosity of 5 or 6, bitumen is at least 11 on the same scale. They heat the pipeline, they pressurize it with pumps, and the companies mix in many, many other chemicals, including toxic benzene, to keep it flowing. All that comes out in small leaks, and big spills.

Bolenbaugh says this mixture from the tar sands is like sandpaper, always wearing away at any weakness in the line. That's what makes the recent crazy to repurpose old pipelines, and natural gas pipelines, to move tar sands bitumen - so crazy! The big spill in Arkansas is a case in point.

THE ARKANSAS SPILL - MUCH LARGER THAN THEY SAID

In late March, a pipeline built in the 1940's and owned by Exxon broke open in Arkansas near the community of Mayflower. While initial estimates said 5,000 barrels spilled, State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel now says the leak was much larger.

At first Exxon tried to say it wasn't tar sands bitumen from Alberta. Then the truth came out.

EXXON: - WE WON'T PAY FOR THE CLEANUP!

Exxon, really Exxon/Mobil, is possibly the world's most profitable corporation, making as much as tens of billions of dollars profit every quarter. But this oil behemoth says it doesn't have to pay for the cleanup because technically it wasn't oil, but bitumen. Under U.S. law, all oil companies pay a certain amount per gallon into a spill cleanup fund. But the legislation technically refers to "oil" and Exxon says bitumen from the Alberta tar sands isn't "oil" - so the world's most profitable company is ducking the bill for this nasty spill. We'll see who ends up paying millions for this "cleanup".

Exxon also claims the oil has not reached the nearby lake, just the "cove" of the lake. Arkansas authorities point out the "cove" is part of the lake. The horror is: this bitumen does not float on top of water, as normal oil or gasoline does, but sinks to the bottom. The entire bottom of any affected river, lake, or presumably in the case of ocean tankers, the sea bed, has to be dug up. Imagine the ecological consequences, cost, and impossibility of really restoring natural habitat.

John Bolenbaugh notes Exxon claimed they shut off their pumping stations within half an hour of the Arkansas spill report. What the company doesn't say is the line will continue to gush out bitumen for a long time, as up to 50 miles of pipeline empties by gravity. It's hard to say how much really came out.

It takes a lot of heat and pressure, plus a toxic mix of poisonous chemicals just to make tar sands bitumen flow. So why are oil companies putting that combination in old, old pipelines? Because they can't get approval to build new ones? John says it works out economically better for these companies to keep pumping, even knowing a spill will happen eventually, since insurance will pay for the cleanup and any lost profits. I haven't confirmed that. Still, it sounds like the nuclear industry: push the the old pipelines until they break, rather than replace them.

HELP JOHN IN THIS FIGHT

John had a whistle-blower lawsuit against the smaller contractor that hired him for the cleanup, after he outed the Kalamazoo Michigan spill. Bolenbaugh tells us the suit was settled. He got some money, without having to keep quiet. John says he spent all that money, and sold the truck he bought to visit other pipeline sites, to pay for protest t-shirts and signs (which he gave away free), and to travel to support people in places like Nebraska.

Now he's broke, and is appealing for donations, in part to help him get to Arkansas to help those people.

I know John is not perfect. But based on what I've seen of John's activism, he should be helped. Bolenbaugh is playing a vital role, helping others defend themselves against spills and abuse by large corporations. He's the real deal.

You can donate at his web site.

Here are some select John Bolenbaugh You tube videos:

1. Testimony of a Police Officer and oil spill victim

2. Environmental inspector calls Enbridge a liar

3. One of many John Bolenbaugh video proofs of buried oil and attempts to stop him from filming

BURYING THE FUTURE SONG AND PROTEST

On March 11th, 2013, over 100 young people invaded the offices of Transcanada Pipeline in Westborough Massachutsetts to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline. They carried a coffin to symbolize the Tar Sands burying our future.

Watch and hear the "Digging Us A Hole song" in this You tube video.

More info here.

Music and lyrics by: Melodeego. Hear the whole song, with improved audio, in this Radio Ecoshock program.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS TO RADIO ECOSHOCK!

Listener support gives me a lot of encouragement to keep going, and expand the number of people we can reach with alternative eco news. My next project is to visit the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup Washington June 1st and 2nd. Meet me there is you can (just look for my mobile solar-powered studio).

Your support makes this possible - I hope to get a show or two's worth of handy how-to interviews at the Fair.

Plus I had a minor equipment failure this past week, and your donations helped me pay those costs. Please choose a montly subscription or a donation of your choice from this page. It's listener-supported radio and you can help.

PAUL BECKWITH AND THE ARCTIC EMERGENCY

U of Ottawa scientist Paul Beckwith.

While we were fed news about a new Pope, the economic breakdown on the little island of Cyprus, and two crazy bombers in Boston - a major event occurred unreported in the Arctic. It's a very bad sign.

Let's go back to Paul Beckwith. He's the PHD student and part-time professor of climatology and meteorology at the University of Ottawa, in Canada. Paul is also a member of AMEG, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group.

Paul sent me a disturbing video, of the Arctic ice north of Canada and Alaska during the part of winter which should be frozen solid. Instead, we see a mega-vortex of breaking ice, with large cracks of open water. Yes, cracks in the winter ice have happened before, but never on such a scale! The only explanation is that after the 2012 record breakdown of Arctic sea ice, the much thinner regrowth has become unstable.

See the NOAA video based on satellite imagery here.

You can also listen to this excellent interview with AMEG scientist and Cambridge polar specialist Peter Wadhams. Hear how much thinner ice is now, than in the 1970's or even the year 2,000. It's from the Alpha2Omega podcast. Great interview.

Paul Beckwith wrote about this incident in the Beaufort Sea, and what the disappearance of Arctic sea ice (in summer) really means for all of us, in this blog entry.

SEA-ICE COULD DISAPPEAR THIS YEAR?

Beckwith says it is possible the Arctic sea ice cover could disappear this summer, in 2013! Even NOAA, the U.S. government agency, now predicts the Arctic Ocean will be "nearly ice-free" possibly within the next 10 years. They say "nearly" because small bits of ice may hang around the protected Canadian archipeligo (islands) - even while the rest of the polar sea is wide open, and sucking up the Sun's heat.

Paul notes that if you take the same amount of solar energy it takes to melt one gram of ice, and apply that to that water, the water goes up about 80 degrees C!

It's a huge heating affect, which will change the "air-conditioner of the world". With less temperature difference between the Pole and the Equator, the Jet Stream winds that separate our weather systems slow down and become more wavy. Beckwith explains how that brought the recent record cold spring to the UK and parts of Eastern Europe. Is it coincidence, Beckwith wonders, that there was an excess mortality in the UK this spring of more than 5,000 people? The final figures aren't in, but it's possible we are already seeing climate-caused deaths in Britain.

Weather in the Eastern part of the U.S. and Canada also went wonky this year, with late snows and record flooding.

You get an in-depth interview where science begins to make sense for all of us. Paul Beckwith is a cutting edge scientist at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He's willing to speak out. For example, Beckwith wonders whether the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) will stick with models that show Arctic ice disappearing after 2050 - even if it breaks up this year or next? The models have fallen far short of reality, again.

WILL WE NEED GEOENGINEERING TO SAVE THE ARCTIC ICE CAP?

If the Arctic goes ice free, then a group of heavy duty scientists suggest we may have to spray sulfur aerosols into the Arctic, just to save the remaining ice cap - while humans figure out what to do! Yep, that's geoengineering, and I am against geoengineering. But I don't see any good choices here.

Check out this short video with top scientist Ken Caldiera. He too supports saving the Arctic ice with geoengineering.

Other scientists have severe doubts about this kind of geoengineering, saying it could have unforseen consequences. For example, Jim Haywood from the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre just wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change: such fine particles sprayed into the atmosphere could increase horrible droughts in the Sahel region of North Africa.

Even talking about spraying sulfur from airplanes will trigger another popular Internet meme: that governments have been secretly spraying materials into the atmosphere for years. It's the chemtrail conspiracy theory.

So a move to save the Arctic ice doesn't happen on a blank social canvass. A whole group of Net -connected people already suspect it is happening, and may whip up opposition, not understanding the science or consequences at all. Others think global warming is not caused by burning fossil fuels, but by a plot by world bankers through the US government HAARP radio transmitters in Alaska. So there is warming, they way, but we can just keep on driving our SUV's! Any form of denial will do.

My take on HAARP is the U.S. military (and the Russians have a similar project) would LIKE to be able to send storms against an adversay, but probably have not yet managed to do it. I totally doubt (my opinion) the HAARP project is seriously meddling with weather on a day-to-day basis, as claimed by some of the You tube posters. There is zero science to back that up.

By the way, governments ARE openly involved in some kinds of climate modification. Just look at the efforts by China to seed clouds during their drought in Northern China. Plus, the U.S. military HAS published documents about using weather as a weapon of war. Are we already modifying the weather?

Back in the real world, Beckwith points out the sulfur needed in the Arctic to shade that part of the planet a bit is far less than volcanoes emit, and even less than the many coal plants of the world emit every year. We are already geonengineering the planet by using fossil fuels. You decide - but listen to the interview!

I admit trouble comprehending what such a massive change on Earth really means. All through human history the northern Pole has been frozen solid year round. It's part of the story of early exploration, a taken-for-granted feature of Planet Earth. I'm just stunned that a new sea is opening up, even in summer. Are scientists as freaked out as I am? Apparently some are deeply worried.

Do you want to follow up on this? Here is a link to Paul Beckwith's blog on the Sierra Club of Canada site.

His bio says: "Paul Beckwith is a PhD student with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology as a part-time professor. His thesis topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life."

SUPPORT NON-PROFIT RADIO

Please support this program, and all our non-profit radio stations. Your help makes it all happen.

Find a list of the 67 stations broadcasting Radio Ecoshock at our web site, ecoshock.org.

Sign up for our world-wide weekly podcast by clicking the podcast symbol on that same page.

Please tell your friends about Radio Ecoshock while there's still time to make the big change. Find Radio Ecoshock on Facebook. Our Twitter feed is @ecoshock

Thank you for listening, and we'll try it again next week, assuming there is a next week. We finish the program with a slice from Venice Beat's version of "2525".

Coping: Climate Anxiety. Preparing: Dehydrating Food

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:07:01 PDT

How to cope with climate despair. UK psychotherapist & co-founder of Carbon Conversations, Rosemary Randall. Then a practical alternative to industrial food: learn to dehydrate in season with traditional cooking expert Wardeh Harmon. Radio Ecoshock 130417 1 hour.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download my interview with Wardeh Harmon on food dehydration (23 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the Rosemary Randall interview on coping with climate change (29 min)

NEW MUSIC THIS WEEK

Our music this week is another tune from the Australian band Formidable Vegetable Sound System. From the album "Permaculture: A Rhymer's Manual" this is "Limits".

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW!

ROSEMARY RANDALL: COPING WITH AWFUL CLIMATE KNOWLEDGE

What if you woke up one morning and realized humans really have changed the world's climate? We show no signs of stopping this unfolding catastrophe. Maybe you already see it, and cannot bear knowing.

We need help. And a pioneering psychotherapist from Britain says we can help each other. Starting in 2005, Rosemary Randall was was part of a team founding a movement called "Carbon Conversations".

We have a conversation with her now on Radio Ecoshock. You can find "Ro" Randall's blog here.

The Carbon Conversations organization has become widespread. It links up people who want to talk about climate change, and puts them into six meet-ups which use the ideas from psychotherapy to talk through their fears and emotions. But it doesn't stop there. Each person develops their own plan to reduce their carbon emissions. It's a movement that needs to happen big-time in North America, and all over the world.

Rosemary Randall tells us about her pivotal paper "Loss and climate change: the cost of parallel narratives" found here.

The "parallel narratives" is best explained by Rosemary in our interview, but in a nutshell: media and scientists paint an awful picture of what will happen in the future due to climate change; meanwhile we try to live "normal" lives, ignoring the fact that climate change is not a future event, but is already happening now. This disconnection between our every day lives and the awful future actually reduces our motivation to make the large changes necessary (or at least fits in with our comfortable carbon lives?).

So when we focus on the Arctic melting by 2020, or the end of coral by 2050, that may also be a form of denial that cripples real action. Climate damage is happening right now!

Please listen to the interview to get a better explanation from Rosemary. It's important stuff and all too true.

I can't tell you how many times friends and listeners have fallen back on the model of coping with the ultimate loss of death, developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Does that work well for the end of a loved and stable climate? Randall says "no". the Kubler-Ross formula was developed for people who were dying. We need a way to handle the burden of knowing, while we keep on living. So Randall finds more help from a formula developed by William Worden, among others.

J. William Worden wrote the book "Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy" where he outlined "the four tasks of mourning".

Randall has adapted them for dealing with climate change, where we mourn disappearing species, changed places, lost stability of weather, sea level, and so on.

I'd like to pass on two things from that paper. First, we have this helpful table of four steps, each of which can go positive or negative, depending on our choices.

Table 1. The tasks of grief. Adapted from Worden (1983)

1. The task : Accepting the reality of the loss, first intellectually and then emotionally.

Possible negative responses

Denial of the:

- facts of the loss;

- meaning of the loss;

- irreversibility of the loss.

2 The task: Working through the painful emotions of grief (despair, fear, guilt, anger, shame, sadness, yearning, disorganisation).

Possible negative responses

Shutting off all emotion, idealising what is lost, bargaining, numbing the pain through alcohol, drugs or manic activity.

3 The task: Adjusting to the new environment/acquiring new skills /developing a new sense of self.

Possible negative responses

Not adapting, becoming helpless, bitter, angry, depressed, withdrawing.

4 The task: Reinvesting emotional energy.

Possible negative responses

Refusing to love, turning away from life.

A GLOBAL MEMORIAL FOR ALL THE LOST SPECIES

Then here is an example from the conclusion of that paper "Loss and climate change." Randall writes:

"My second example is from a public art project. The educational charity Memo is building a memorial on the Dorset coast, made from local Portland stone, to commemorate plants and animals known to have gone extinct in modern times. They describe it on their website:

'The memorial will be a stone monument bearing the images of all the species of plants and animals known to have gone extinct in modern times. It will incorporate a bell to be tolled for all extinct species, including the great many ‘unknown’ species which it is believed perish each year unseen by scientists. The bell will be tolled on the International Day of Biodiversity on 22nd May each year.'"

This memorial to the species project has not yet gone ahead, due to lack of funding. Find out more here, with glorious pictures.

The Independent newspaper in the UK published this powerful article about the Memo project (June 17, 2012)

In the end, Rosemary helps us to understand we are not alone in our anxiety about major changes to the climate, and thus the economy, food system, and the species we love. She offers a method and tips for coping with knowing how serious our situation is. This is already one of my favorite interviews of the year.

WARDEH ("Wardee") HARMON: FOOD DEHYDRATION AND "TRADITIONAL COOKING"

It's shocking so many city folk say they are not interested in cooking or preserving food. Don't they eat? Don't they read the headlines about toxic factory agriculture and fast-food restaurants? The awful wave of food-related diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, obesity, and colon cancer are the result.

Plus, we can save a lot of money, and tons of greenhouse gas emissions, when we grab food cheap when it's fresh, putting it away for times to come.

One of the easiest and best ways to store food is dehydrating. Humans have been doing it for thousands of years. You can too.

Our guest Wardee Harmon lives in rural Oregon. She serves up a wide variety of cooking and preserving courses online from the mysteriously named Gnowfglins.com. We're going to get some good tips from Wardee about drying food.

I can think of so many reasons to have good dried foods around. Someone may get sick, and need fast ready foods. We hope there won't be a big emergency like a power-outage from storms, but that is happening more these days. There really are too many advantages to list them all.

The importance of choosing organic whole foods is obvious. But the "grown locally in season" is so important too. A population who depends on fruit flown in from South America or New Zealand is in for some rude surprises, don't you think?

TRADITIONAL COOKING SCHOOL WITH WARDEE HARMON

I asked Wardee about the online traditional cooking courses she offers at traditionalcookingschool.com. That's the same as Gnowfglins.com site, but much easier to remember.

In Wardee's courses, you watch online videos, but also end up with print-it-yourself binders and logs. Knowing how fallible my own memory can be, especially after a year has gone by, keeping track really does seem important.

By the way, GNOWFGLINS stands for "God's natural, organic, whole foods, grown locally, in season".

Wardee let me try out her Gnowfglins course on dehydration, which is still in development. There are about 7 classes so far. Each one has at least one video, showing us how to do things (very helpful). That is accompanied by written documentation and worksheets which we can download and print, to create our own course binders. Other courses also have some audio as well.

Basically, you buy a monthly or annual membership to the Gnowfglins site, which lets you take all the courses plus get help from others in the members-only forums. There was some really good advice in those forums. Most of the participants are women.

I'm hoping more men will get involved in cooking and preserving food. The health statistics clearly show on average mens' diet leads to more health complications later in life, - and we die younger. Can we get more men back into the food dialog, and into the kitchen? If you want to be self-sufficient, it doesn't get any better than being able to prepare, cook, and store your own food.

MORE PREPPER RADIO RESOURCES

I want to thank my own source for this interview. I first heard Wardee Harmon on the "Get Real Get Prepared" radio show with Vikilynn Haycraft from realfoodliving.com. That was a great show Vikilynn. Listen to/download Vikilynn and Wardee Harmon talking dehydration here (Saturday March 13, 2013). The show description is here.

Wardee has own show on the Preparedness Broadcasting Network.

Here is an episode of "Know Your Food with Wardee" from April 12th, 2013. It features her meet-up with Gnowfglins folk in Arizona.

There is a prepper network in Canada too. It has handy how-to sensible advice, just as you would expect from Canadians.

The American version seems more prone to God, Guns, and a hidden food supply.

WHAT FOOD DEHYDRATOR SHOULD YOU USE?

Since we talk about the best food dehydrators in our Radio Ecoshock interview, I'm tossing in this You tube video of a comparison of food dehydrators from recent Radio Ecoshock guest John Kohler. Check that out before you get started.

Watch this You tube comparison of Excalibur and Sedona food dehydrators by John Kohler.

Many people start with the far cheaper plastic round dehydrators from places like Walmart. These do work, and may be a good place to try things out - BUT food tends to drip downward into the heater and fan (which you have to clean up), and they can't dry much at a time. Once you get hooked on food dehydration, you'll want a better machine. Many people say The Exalibur 3900 is the best. It's been around for over ten years, with good reviews. I've concluded city folk starting out should go with counter-top electric dehydrators, unless you are going to get bushels of fruit or veggies at a time. Many of us don't have room for an extra out-building to dry. But a solar food drier should be our ultimate goal if we have the right climate for it. It's natural and adds no greenhouse gases.

The food dehydrating and canning season starts right now. The aparagus and rhubarb are starting to come into the markets at seasonal low prices. In my area, rhubarb costs less than $2.50 cents a pound in the spring, compared to over $5 a pound in late fall and winter. It's a half price sale for anyone ready to preserve natural foods at their best.

LINKS AND RESOURCES FOR SALLY FALLON AND THE WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION

The new edition from Sally Fallon and Mary Enig is: "Nourishing Traditions" Revised Second Edition, October 2000.

Here is Part 1 or three from a DVD Video with Sally Fallon on You tube. She is a powerful speaker.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is very critical of the Fallon/Price diet recommendations for meat and fats, especially the Price Foundation suggestion that high cholesterol is good for us.

Here is a big long video (2 hours) of Sally Fallon on "The Oiling of America" re cholesterol and cholesterol lowering drugs.

For a shorter meal, try Sally Fallon on breakfast cereal (extreme cruelty to our grains andthe effects of eating extruded grains) 6 minutes

ALEX'S TAKE ON TRADITIONAL COOKING

I asked Wardee Harmon what she meant by "Traditional Cooking". There is more to it. Wardee credits Sally Fallon, co-author of the influential 1989 book "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats".

Sally and co-author Mary G. Enig co-founded the Weston A. Price Foundation.

According to Wikipedia, Weston Price was, "a dentist from Cleveland, Ohio, whose 1939 book, 'Nutritional and Physical Degeneration', describes the fieldwork he did in the 1920s and 1930s among various world cultures, with the original goal of recording and studying the dental health and development of pre-industrial populations including tribal Africans and Pacific islanders, Inuit, North and South American natives, and Australian aborigines."

You can watch a You tube video of Sally Fallon explaining how Weston Price judged a person's general health by the condition of their teeth. He visited various pre-industrial people and concluded their diets were the main reason their teeth were generally better formed, with fewer cavities than people living in Western economies.

The science behind the writing comes from the other major player in the Weston A Price Foundation, nutritionist Mary G. Enig. She's the real deal, with a PHD in Nutritional Sciences, experience in research labs, and published scientific papers.

However Enig's theory of the benefits of fatty foods, including butter and coconut oil, and her contrarian views that cholesterol does not lead to heart disease, has earned her criticism from other scientists.

WARDEE HARMON'S NEW BOOK ON FERMENTING FOOD

Fallon and Enig also take up Weston Price's promotion of fermented foods used by many ancient cultures, as an aid to full digestion of both plant and animal products. You may think of sauerkraut, but there is a whole universe of fermented foods out there. Our guest Wardee Harmon has a new book out on it "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fermenting Foods". I know little about this, and Wardee has promised to send me a copy. I'll let you know if I try out some of her recipes.

BACK TO SALLY FALLON AND "TRADITIONAL" FOOD - MILK OR NOT?

Sally Fallon has a devastating critique of soy products, especially soy milk. The Weston A. Price Foundation lobbies against the use of soy formula for infants. My opinion is: she is correct in this.

Both Fallon and Enig are major forces behind the push to legalize raw milk. They claim pasteurization kills off beneficial nutrients and reduces our immunity. Personally, I just don't know enough to judge those claims. It's my opinion, and nothing more than an opinion, that most mammals stop drinking milk as they mature, and probably we should too. Wardee says the Bible talks about milk drinking, which is an authority for her, and certainly proof that humans have been drinking milk for thousands of years.

From an environmental standpoint, the whole industrial milk system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and should be avoided on a mass scale, except for those few people who have pasture land to manage their own cows or goats organically and properly. As we know from Allan Savory, whose work was just featured on Real Time with Bill Maher, proper management of cattle or sheep is one of the few proven tools to take carbon out of the atmosphere, and return it to the soil.

Industrial milk animals are also abused in many ways, and injected with chemicals and antibiotics. I use very few milk-like products, and pour almond milk on my cereal. I don't trust big agribiz meat either, and don't eat it.

Now you have a general idea of what Wardee Harmon means by "Traditional Cooking". Do I endorse all her views? No. Can I learn a ton of things about canning, dehydrating, and organic food prep from her. You bet.

I learned how to graft fruit trees from a Catholic Nun. Simple You tube videos produced by Mormon women helped me prepare my food insurance and live cheaper. So far, I haven't become a Nun or a Mormon. Learn from everybody, that's my motto.

THANKS AND SUPPORT NON-PROFIT RADIO!

Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock. A special thanks to those who supported the broadcast this week. That will help me attend the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup Washington at the start of June, to get a lot of how-to interviews for you. Find out how you can contribute here.

I'm Alex Smith. Let's meet again next week.

Green Seas, Good Food, Bad Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:43:14 PDT

Serial climate hacker Russ George's office raided. Nick Saul takes food banks to a whole new level - feeding citizens during tough times. UC Berkeley political scientist Dr. Martha Campbell - how economists & women's advocates helped enable the next population explosion. Radio Ecoshock 130410 1 hour.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FOR THIS SHOW

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Nick Saul interview (26 min 30 sec) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download download my Martha Campbell interview (25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

PROGRAM INTRO

In the summer of 2012, Russ George, formerly of Planktos Corporation, lead the West Coast Haida Nation into a plot to unilaterally dump 100 tons of iron dust into the Pacific Ocean off British Columbia, Canada.

Now the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp offices have been raided by the Canadian government. The raid happened just two days before the Canadian Broadcasting Corp aired a TV documentary about this ocean dumping, and the disappearing 2.5 million dollars from the Haida Nation. Radio Ecoshock was consulted during production.

Nick Saul is author of "The Stop: How The Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement". He developed a template of food justice for the millions in the West being mal-fed by food banks instead of empowered to grow. Includes Nick's notes on how Brazil does better than North Americans feeding the poor.

UC Berkeley Professor Martha Campbell says UN population theory, and the economists, have it all wrong. We can't wait for "development" to rein in population growth. That never happens when the average family size is five kids or greater. How environmentalists and women's groups went off the rails.

Now Ethiopia is headed for 150 million, and Nigeria will have more than the current U.S. population. What could go wrong?

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW RIGHT NOW!

SUPPORT NEW RADIO ECOSHOCK OUTREACH

Please consider supporting Radio Ecoshock. I need to raise funds for two specific projects:

1. I'm booked to attend the Mother Earth News fair on June 1st and 2nd in Puyallup Washington. I hope to do a ton of interviews for you - but I could use some help for the gas money.

2. In a longer-term plot, I hope to reach still more people by doing regular You tube videos, including video postings of the Radio Ecoshock Show. That means an equipment upgrade for my studio, including a camera, some lighting, and video editing software.

It seems important to carry the message of climate demise, and social transition to a broader audience.

Your donations can help make this happen. Just go to this page, and choose either "Donate" (any amount) or "Subscribe" (with a monthly automatic donation.) I promise all money raised this year will be spent ONLY on upgrading Radio Ecoshock, to reach more people, and get you even better multimedia interviews!

NICK SAUL: MOVING FROM CHARITY TO SELF REALIZATION

Nick Saul, CEO of Community Food Centres (Canada)

Finding good food has become a kind of second job for all of us now, as the agri-business and fast-food empire serve up deadly fare. The left-overs from that giant system go to our poorest people through the food-banks. At least that's the old model.

How did food banks move from a stop-gap measure to an acceptable solution? Can they evolve into a real self-sustaining food movement?

Our guest Nick Saul has gone a long way down that road with an innovative food community in Toronto, Canada. With his wife Andrea Curtis, Nick has just published the new book "The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement".

In a nutshell, Nick describes the sad state of the food bank system. The food is not very healthy, and the "clients" are too often kept in degrading lines, with no input into the system.

Nick Saul transformed one food bank called "The Stop" in Toronto Canada. They began a community garden, to supplement the food and involve poor people in their own food production. Eventually they took over a former transit building to found the "Green Barn" which involves both production and a Farmer's Market. Health services and community were built into the system, partly run by those who needed the help.

Every city can and should do this. That is why after 14 years Nick left The Stop to lead a new organization called Community Food Centres. They are establishing multi-facet food for citizens in a program popping up already in several cities in Canada. It could be a model for any city.

Nick also tells us of the incredible difference in government attitude and support in Brazil. He visited there and found out how a fully-functioning food support system can work. Very inspiring. The book is well worth it.

I also took away the idea that if our current economic system collapses, which is a strong possibility, all of us may have to organize in the ways Nick Saul describes. That makes this an interview for everyone.

Is there a way forward beyond food banks? Can we live without them?

Don't think of this as a Canadian story, though it is that. I found the book has essential ideas for anyone in the Western world, who wants to see food justice done.

MARTHA CAMPBELL: BREAKING THE GREEN SILENCE ON OVER-POPULATION

Professor Martha Campbell, University of California, Berkeley

It is unthinkable that Ethiopia could double it's population to 185 million people by 2050. But what if that does happen? Can anyone prevent it?

We continue our series on population growth versus the fragile environment. Our guest is a political scientist who specializes in population. Dr. Martha Campbell lectures in the School of Public Health at the University of California Berkeley. She founded and runs the non-profit group Venture Strategies for Health and Development.

I found Martha in an essay in the new book "Life on the Brink, Environmentalists Confront Population". Reading her article "Why the Silence on Population?" my jaw dropped by the second paragraph, where she listed population projections for some of the poorest nations. For example, Pakistan, is just 20% larger than Texas. It is a desert-like country dependent on one major river for water.

Pakistan had 41 million people when I was born, and now 185 million. By 2050, Pakistan is projected to have more people than the United States does now.

The United Nations makes these projections. Of course they don't presume a pandemic or massive starvation will intervene. I ask Martha about all that.

But in just one example, a lot of people think HIV/AIDS has reduced the population in some African countries. Not at all. People have reproduced faster than that disease has killed, especially now that new treatment drugs are becoming available.

Martha says the United Nations and many economists have the population problem all wrong. They say get the economy and education going, and population will level off. In reality, says Campbell, no country with an average family size of five children manages to become developed. The ever increasing kids swamp efforts to build schools, there is very high unemployment of young people, and the economy stalls. Population control comes first!

To emphasize that point, Campbell has written an article "Do Economists Have Frequent Sex?" to show how unreal the various predictions by economists have been on population.

Her other main paper I recommend is "The Impact of Freedom on Fertility Decline".

Why have environmentalists, including Greenpeace, Friends of Earth, and the Sierra Club fallen silent on population, even though the U.N. says the additional people are a fundamental driver of climate change? (No! It's not just consumption in the West!) We have a politically incorrect talk about the reality on the ground in too many countries. How religion, including the new Pope, is preventing population sanity. Why we must criticize part of a culture of patriarchy and failure. It's hot stuff.

RUSS GEORGE AND HAIDA VILLAGE RAIDED IN CANADA

Russ George, American businessman

There are many big worries about geoengineering as an alleged "solution" to climate change. Since this program began, I've warned that a single individual, say a billionaire, or a small group of people could decide unilaterally to alter the climate for all of us.

Regular listeners know this happened in the summer of 2012, as the unstoppable Russ George, formerly of Planktos Corporation, lead the West Coast Haida Nation into a plot to unilaterally dump 100 tons of iron dust into the Pacific Ocean off British Columbia, Canada.

Now the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation offices have been raided by the Canadian government. The raid happened just two days before the Canadian Broadcasting Corp aired a TV documentary about this ocean dumping, and the disappearing 2.5 million dollars from the Haida Nation.

Radio Ecoshock has been part of this story since 2006. The CBC program called me during production, and used some of my investigative journalism into this case of rogue climate hacking.

In 2007, I ran an hour-long interview with Russ, and another hour show with his critics. Along with George-watcher and investigative journalist Steve Krivit, we dug into the mysterious stock manipulation and promoters behind Planktos Corp. That company went bankrupt, a disaster for the investors who were promised fabulous returns on the carbon credits George promised would come from stimulating plankton with iron dust.

RADIO ECOSHOCK RESOURCES FOR RUSS GEORGE, PLANKTOS, HAIDA OCEAN DUMPING

PLANKTOS: ALGAE SEEDING FOR CARBON CREDITS Company plans to create plankton blooms to capture CO2. Who are they, and will it work? Part 1: Radio Ecoshock full-show interview with Planktos CEO Russell George (56 MB 1 hr); Transcript of that 2007 Russ George interview here.

Part 2: "The Intervention" 3 critics respond + Alex Smith's take. (Ecoshock show - 56 MB 1 hr) Greenpeace (9 min)Science Unit, ETC Group (9 min), and David Baines (16 min)(newspaper business columnist.)

A description of the end of the Planktos venture is in this December 21, 2007 Radio Ecoshock Show

The new Russ George adventure with the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. is in this program:

GEOENGINEERING THE OCEAN: SERIAL CLIMATE HACKING Climate hacker Russ George with indigenous Haida villagers dumps iron into the sea - in a secret geoengineering project off Canada's west coast. Press conference by Haida Old Massett Village; interview Karen Wristen Living Oceans; Alex investigates with real scientists; Russ George with Guardian's Martin Lukacs.

Radio Ecoshock 121024 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB. Blog with links & transcripts here.

I interviewed Jim Thomas of the ETC Group about the ocean experiment in the Radio Ecoshock Show for October 17, 2012.

Exellent wrap-up on Russ George, in both nuclear fusion and plankton credit activities, by investigative reporter Steven B. Krivit.

Watch the CBC TV program Fifth Estate documentary on Russ George here. It's titled "The Iron Man".

When I investigated all this in 2007, another Russ George turned up - this one claiming to be an expert and inventor in the controversial field of cold fusion. Once again, Russ George became CEO of a company which promised to revolutionize energy and heating, while saving the world of course, by doing what had never been proven possible scientifically. I'm looking at a photo of the cold fusion furnace the company D2Fusion promised to deliver to hunrgy stock investors. There was no furnace. That company went bankrupt. Are we seeing a pattern here?

The question of fraud is so hard to prove, partly because it assumes the perpetrator knew a lie was being used for profit. But what if that person sees themselves as a well-intentioned visionary trying to save the environment, using the capitalist system? What if he actually believes his own mythology?

RUSS GEORGE COMES BACK

I presumed the Russ George story was over with the double bankruptcy. But he rose again. This time George used a relationship he built with the aboriginal people of Haida Gwaii in the early 2000's, again in a plot to sell carbon credits, this time by planting trees.

That fell through, but Russ George apparently pursuaded tribal leaders they could sequester carbon, and make millions of dollars, by seeding ocean plankton with algae. The theory, unproven by at least a half dozen experiments done by real scientists aboard multi-governmental research ships, was that the algae bloom would sink to the bottom with it's carbon.

Somehow the leadership of a tiny place called the Village of Old Massett cashed in previous government settlement money to raise $2.5 million dollars for a new try in the Pacific. If the villagers were not sold on carbon credits, the story changed. Now they would save the dwindling salmon, returning the fishing industry to the many unemployed native people.

In my Radio Ecoshock show for October 24, 2012 I found a scientist who disputed the whole basis of the Russ George theory of plankton starving for iron dust. Russ George is not a scientist, or even a University graduate, despite being called the Chief Scientist on last summer's ocean dumping experiment.

Canadian scientists say there is no way to prove the latest claims. The Canadian Government says Environment Canada advised the Haida Salmon Restoration group not to try it. Now the government has raided the offices. Russ George complains in his blog:

"Just days before Easter our small village research office in Vancouver was swarmed by 11 officers dressed in all black combat gear, armed and imposing beyond belief (similar to those in the photo above.). In the largest assault/raid in Environment Canada’s history the RAID team rushed into the office of 7 people, counting the 2 grandfathers and 2 women present."

Find an archive copy of Russ's blog entry on the raid here.

What did he expect? - after breaking the moritorium on such experiments, agreed by the London Dumping Convention, specifically after his previous attempts to capitalize on changing our oceans with the Planktos ship Weatherbird II?

Sadly, while George and the Haida may be charged with breaking environmental laws, I don't expect any justice for the highly unemployed people of the Village of Old Massett. Their 2.5 million dollars has disappeared courtesy of a serial dreamer and promoter named Russ George. Watch out if you see him coming again. It seems like nothing but prison could stop Russ George in his mission to save the world while making money.

But George is a small-time operator compared to the multi-billion dollar scams perpetrated on the rate-payers of Europe. They paid for carbon off sets under the World Bank Clean Development Mechanism, to stop climate damaging chemical plants that were never built, or built only to not produce a certain powerful greenhouse gas. Nobody stopped that rip-off for years, and no one was charged.

Even the Government of British Columbia has been making false claims that it offset it's own carbon. Despite a multi-million dollar fund, and many self-righteous green claims by the government, nothing has been offset. It's just like Russ George saying he made the Vatican the first carbon-neutral government in the world. It's all hot air, with nothing behind it.

Sorry, but the whole plan for carbon off-sets and carbon markets fell prey to human greed and self-delusion. We are carbon addicts who will say anything and believe it. The only true solution is to cut the drug off at it's source. Close down the tar sands. Divert military spending and oil subsidies into clean energy. Change our own lives, going carbon free. Anything else is human fraud on a massive scale, setting us up for mass extinction.

As the Arctic melt utterly, and the permafrost gives up it's long-held methane load, there will be more Russ George's to parade across the stage. Will we applaud?

In a coming show, we'll learn more about a call for geoengineering by real climate scientists. They are worried that if we lose the Arctic Ice cap, humans can never recover the climate they need to survive. Stay tuned to Radio Ecoshock.

Please consider supporting Radio Ecoshock. Find out more at our web site, ecoshock.org. Write me any time. The address is radio at ecoshock.org.

That's it for this week. Find all our past programs as free mp3 downloads at ecoshock.org. I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening, and please join us again next week.

Green Medley: Climate, Population, Off-Grid

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:38:47 PDT

American scientist Virginia Burkett: violent weather threats to coastal energy. Activist Dave Foreman on population & immigration. Sheri Koones "Prefabulous & Almost Off-Grid" green building. Radio Ecoshock 130403 1 hour.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS

Listen to/download this "Green Medly" Radio Ecoshock in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Virginia Burkett interview in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the Dave Foreman interview in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the Sheri Koones interview in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

DR. VIRGINIA BURKETT: WILL CLIMATE STORMS DAMAGE OUR ENERGY SYSTEM?

Dr. Virginia Burkett, USGS

In this show, leading American scientist Virginia Burkett explains how a more violent climate could damage the fossil fuel infrastructure we currently count on. Dr. Viginia Burkett is the Chief Scientist for Climate and Land Use Change at the U.S. Geological Survey. She has been a lead author in past reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr. Burkett is from Louisiana, and was a specialist there in the oil and gas sector. She well remembers the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and has studied the impacts of that 2005 storm on offshore facilities, coastal lands ripped away, and damage to both ports and refineries.

Up to one third of all oil imported into America comes through the Gulf States. When those are knocked out, even pipelines supplying heating oil as far away as New England are threatened.

Add in the constant rising seas, and we could see a situation where gas and oil products could be in short supply if climate change brings more violent storms to the Gulf Coast. Burkett expects those storms will arrive again, and more often.

Massive amounts of American highways also run near the coast. The damage to the bridged and highways of the Gulf States was extreme after Katrina. That means food and other supplies may not get through. Where, in these days of bankrupt governments, will we find the money to constantly rebuild coastal highway systems, including the interstates?

Burkett notes that after Katrina, some freight railway traffic was routed further inland, as far as St. Louis, to avoid the coast. We'll see more of that - but then what happens to the passenger rail trains near the coast, where about 50% of Americans live? Freight generally helps pay for passenger lines. The dream of using more passenger trains to help save climate emissions may be endangered by rising seas and storm surges from existing climate change.

In our interview, we also discuss this document: "Public Review Draft USGS Global Change Science Strategy: A Framework for Understanding and Responding to Climate and Land-Use Change", U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, Open-File Report 2011-1033, 32 p.

=================================================

Listen to this Radio Ecoshock show right now.

==================================================

DAVE FOREMAN SPEAKS OUT ON POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

Dave Foreman

Dave Foremen came to public attention in the early 1980's with his involvement with the Earth First! environmental activist movement. Few people know that Dave worked with more conventional conservation groups in the 1970's, before he realized that wasn't working.

Dave published "Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching" - disabling logging and other equipment to save the ancient forests and habitat for wildlife. The introduction is by Edward Abbey. That book is still available online here.

The authorities didn't like that book and that kind of eco-activism. In my opinion, the FBI entrapped him in the early 1990's, by charging Foreman with handing his book (remember free speech?) to an undercover FBI agent investigating the bombing of a power line in the South West. Dave had nothing to do with the bombing, but got labelled with all that by the media. Some people today still think he's guilty because of that media smear. Learn more about that case here.

In fact, Dave Foreman went on to become a Director of the Sierra Club. He left that group in 1998 when Sierra Club renounced it's previous policy of limiting the size of the U.S. population.

In our interview, Foreman emphasizes he is a "conservationist" rather than an "environmentalist". He wants to save room for other species, and does so through his group The Rewilding Institute.

We talk about world over-population, and immigration. Dave just published an essay on all that in the book "Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation." Plus he has his own book "Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife."

Dave Foreman doesn't hold back. We have a lively conversation which is sure to generate some comments from listeners.

Please remember the views expressed by our guests may not reflect my own, or those of our radio stations. On the other hand, unless we want to see Ethiopia go over 100 million people, and Nigeria to 300 million, we've got to start talking frankly about over-population (before the rest of the species and Nature get wiped out!)

SHERI KOONES: PREFABULOUS AND ALMOST OFF THE GRID

Radio Ecoshock is all about local and hand made. So why the heck am I enthused about factory-built homes?

It all started with my interview and recorded workshop on the Austraian super low energy "Passivhaus" design with architect Guido Wimmers. Google "radio ecoshock and Guido Wimmers" to find that on our site at ecoshock.org. That will take you to a two part workshop on Passivhaus design. Or listen to my 21 minute interview with Guido here.

Guido says in no uncertain terms that we cannot build super tight low energy homes using standard construction on site. They need to be build on jigs, inside, with very strict standards to make everything fit literally seamlessly. It's a new way of looking at Green construction. Plus, there is less waste in the factory production method.

My interest was further stimulated by the new book by Sheri Koones called "Prefabulous and Almost Off the Grid". Sheri uses photos and text to illustrate leading edge prefab homes across the United States - from New England to the South West.

Author Sheri Koones

For example, we find out Christine Tod Whitman, former New Jersey Governor and former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, built a model low-energy pre-fab home. Sheri Koones describes some of the choices Christine made. The home looks like it has been there for 100 years.

Robert Redford wrote the foreword to this book.

I was also interested to see a prefab go up in Chicago, where the building codes are notoriously difficult to meet.

My wife and I are looking into a green-enabled home at a much lower cost from Marlette homes, a subsidiary of Clayton Homes. That is controlled by Warren Buffett. Apparently Buffett decided factory homes are the future of new buiding at low cost, in times of high energy prices.

Check out the Sheri Koones interview for insight into all that. Find her blog here.

Please remember to support Radio Ecoshock at our web site, ecoshock.org.

Tune in next week, and thank you for listening.

From Growing Greens to Fukushima

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:35:33 PDT

Expert urban gardening tips from John Kohler, host of popular "Growing Your Greens" channel on You tube. Then speech by Dr. Helen Caldicott March 12, 2013 on medical and ecological consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Radio Ecoshock 130327 1 hour

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FROM THIS PROGRAM

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download Helen Caldicott's speech (31 minutes; edited for radio) from the New York City Fukushima symposium in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download my interview with urban gardener John Kohler (28 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WELCOME!

Hey welcome to Radio Ecoshock. This week it's a best of times, worst of times show.

We start out with John Kohler, the "growing your greens" guy on You tube. John is an enthusiastic learner and teacher about urban gardening. He helped push me further along the path to growing my own and juicing it as great raw plant food. Our interview is full of lots of things you can do. I've posted some links below of my favorite Kohler You tube videos to get you started.

Then it's off to New York City for a dose of the awful truth from the long-term nuclear guardian, Helen Caldicott. In her time to speak on the second anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi triple melt-down in Japan - Helen lays it out. Due to increased radiation, toxic chemicals, and climate change, life on earth is in the Intensive Care Unit. The aging Caldicott says it's up to us - we are all physicians for the Earth now. It's a powerful speech from a famous force for sanity.

First though, it's time to get you growing your greens.

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK PROGRAM RIGHT NOW!

MY LIST OF JOHN KOHLER YOU TUBE VIDEOS

John Kohler

Here is a whole browsing list of John Kohler "growing your greens" videos on You tube.

I like this one about aquaponics in Oakland.

This one of growing veggies in the winter in Cleveland has a lot to say, I think. We talk about it in our interview.

I learned a few more things about the power of growing sprouts from this pro sprout-grower in Florida. It features Shawn from gotsprouts.com.

Looking for plants for quick salads in winter, inside, with minimum equipment?

MORE OF MY FAVORITE GROWING YOUR GREENS VIDEOS

How to Make Compost Tea.

Why does John advise against planting potatoes in your urban garden?

How to grow a vegetable garden if you rent your home.

Is plastic bad to use as a container to grow food?

Grow 20 Square Feet of Vegetables in 4 ft Square of Space with the Phytopod Container Garden (245,00 views).

Edible garden on a condo patio.

Suburban homestead garden on 1/10th of an acre.

Suburban Homesteading Edible Victory Garden Edible Estate on 1/10th of an Acre (143,000 views).

Solar powered aquaponic system (plus examples of espalier fruit growing for small gardens)(plus two types of tower growing)(agrotower.com).

City Encourages Upgrooting Grass to Grow Sustainable Vegetable Gardens.

Best Way to Consumer Leafy Green Vegetables (Juicer).

How to Start A Raised Bed Vegetable Garden In Your Backyard - Planning.

Reduce or Eliminate WhiteFly and Aphids with Worm Castings.

Urban Farm in San Francisco Gives Away Thousands of Pounds of Food Free.

How to Keep Cats Out of Your Raised Bed Garden.

How to Build a 4' by 4' Raised Bed Garden From Start to Finish.

Extended Front Yard Urban Vegetable Garden Tour.

Growing Vegetables in the Shade - What Can I Grow?

John's plant-specific videos are hits, on growing cucumbers, or squash (often with over 80,000 views heading to 200,000 each)

HERE ARE SOME JOHN KOHLER WEB SITES

His business is discountjuicers.com (only ships within USA). But you'd never know that from watching his "growing your greens" You tube channel. John really does give away all he's learning, without pushing his business at all.

John Kohler founded Living Foods.com

His Facebook page is here.

To get more on John's vision of the healthiest diet visit his site OK Raw

And of course his main "Growing Your Greens" channel on You tube, where you can learn so much.

ALEX GETS A JUICER

John has re-inspired me. I was drinking vegetable juice in Los Angeles back in the '70's, and I was growing lots of veggies in the '80s. It's just one of those things that keeps coming back. We learn again, and start again. Sometimes life is more like a spiral than a line through time.

I bought a juicer this week, but not from John. He only sells within the United States. A local drug store chain had a sale on the "Big Boss Vita Press". It's a slow juicer that squeezes the veggies with a rotating auger.

The Breville high speed juicers are great if you are into hard fruits like apples, or maybe carrots or beets. But they don't do well with leafy greens. Plus, a Brevill has an 850 Watt motor, sounding like an airplane in your kitchen. It turns at about 10,000 revolutions per minute. By contrast, my slow-speed juicer needs just 150 Watts, meaning it uses less power. I can run if from my solar panel. The whole process with slow juicing is much more relaxing, I think.

The Vita Press cost me $169 dollars, with a one year in-store warranty, and a two year factory warranty. I seriously considered buying one of the Omega models John shows in his videos. They are probably better quality and may last longer. But like many people, I have a low income. I just couldn't afford more than $300 for my juicer.

I'll let you know how the cheaper one works out. Last night we had a super green drink, including a bargain on organic black Kale. It feels so much healthier than the overdose of bread, cereal, and potatoes I'd been falling into over the winter. I can't wait for the local farmers' market to open. Hopefully by next year we'll be in a place where we can grow most of our own.

John is pretty well feeding himself from a standard house lot in California. He's got several videos of tips for more northern folks, from the compost-heated greenhouse through sprouting greens anywhere inside, in the depths of winter.

MY LITTLE INDOOR GARDEN

For those who heard about my experiment with a little planter with indoor lights, I can report trying a couple of things. First off, I asked myself, what would some listeners do? I tried the Walmart brand planting soil, which promised it would need little watering. That turned out about as useless as I thought it would. The plants were starting to die off, because the soil stays way too wet.

I carefully removed my small plants, chucked the Walmart stuff, and went with a version of "Mel's mix" - one third peat, one third vermiculite (not perlite!), and some compost. I also added some clean sand, heated up in the oven to get rid of any outside life. Small containers benefit from sand, I think, to help drain the soil.

Now my kitchen herbs and lettuce are doing great. I had to cut back the hours of light for the lettuce, and move it back a bit, because it was heading straight to seed under all the light from the T5 flourescent, running 16 hours a day. Things have grown so fast, I had to move the lights up 6 inches in the first two weeks.

I like having the fake sunlight in my studio as I prepare Radio Ecoshock, in the dark spring of rainy Vancouver. Burning just 24 watts, it's not too hard on the atmosphere I suppose - plus all our power comes from hydro-electric dams. Pretty soon we'll have the real stuff from the sun.

My thanks to listeners who responded with ideas for a seed show. I've got something in the works for that. I've also appreciated the feedback on our Facebook page, the blog, and from the contact form on the web site as ecoshock.org. I can't promise to answer everyone, but I read it all. Listeners provide a lot of direction and tips for this program. That's the way it should be. I appreciate your support.

Stay tuned for one of the great voices of the environment, Helen Caldicott.

HELEN CALDICOTT - THE MEANING OF FUKUSHIMA

Dr. Helen Caldicott

Last week I ran selections from symposium "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" New York March 11-12 by Helen Caldicott Foundation & Physicians for Social Responsibility. That program covered 5 key myths about the Fukushima disaster. Things like: It isn't over, the unreported extra dangers to women and small children, and the myth that wildlife is thriving at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, despite the continuing radiation there.

That symposium was full of surprises. The key driving force behind it was the 75-year-old anti-nuclear campaigner, the world-renowned Dr. Helen Caldicott. She helped fund it, along with other medical professionals in the group Physicians for Social Responsibility.

By the second day, Helen was tired. It was her turn to speak. But nothing stops Helen. By the end of her talk, I was touched and restimulated by our duty here, to care for humans, wildlife, and all life. We are part of a giant living planet, attached and responsible. Helen Caldicott reminded me why I make Radio Ecoshock every week, and why you come to listen.

Use the links above to download her speech at the March symposium in New York City. To fit radio time, I removed her reading of a letter from Dr. Arjun Makhijani.

You can view videos of all the speeches as delivered at the symposium here.

I hope Helen is wrong about the future of genetic damage in humans. She says science shows it can take up to 20 generations for the damage from radiation to show up, being carried in recessive genes. If so, the atomic testing, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and every day releases from all kinds of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste - could add up to a future with hundreds or thousands of genetic diseases popping up in humans and wild life. You and I will not live to see it.

I hope she is wrong. But it's probably foolish to bet against Dr. Caldicott, with all she knows. Once upon the world stage, there can be a process where a strong honest person can grow bigger than most of us. That is how I think of her.

Personally I don't believe we are coming to an end, but rather a new beginning with a difficult and strange birth.

Life on Earth is in the intensive care unit, Helen Caldicott says. She passes her torch to us, saying we must all become physicians now, caring for life, for everything that lives. Nothing else in life - not the money, the prestige, the highs - nothing else matters more than we accept this role. We may have to sit up through the night with our patient, with no concern for ourselves.

Nobody around here doubts the night will come. I believe life will continue in a new morning.

I'm Alex Smith. Stay tuned next week for more hope and despair, with some great guests on Radio Ecoshock.

Please support Radio Ecoshock with your donations. You can use PayPal or any credit card, at the upper right of this blog. Would you rather donate a smaller amount per month? Subscribe at our web site, on this page.

Thank you for listening - and for caring about your planet!

Deadly Myths of Fukushima

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:25:15 PDT

Selections from symposium "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" New York March 11-12 by Helen Caldicott Foundation & Physicians for Social Responsibility. It isn't over. Danger to women, children, wildlife. Radio Ecoshock 130320 1 hour.

Download/listen to the Radio Ecoshock show in CD quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

POISONED FLAG

Last week I sent out by podcast a pathetic audio press conference from the New York City symposium. I called it "Poisoned Flag". Two U.S. sailors tell their stories of being soaked with radioactivity aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

The sailors tell a harrowing tale of being exposed to radiation blowing from Fukushima, over a period of two months, as close as one mile from shore. They were not told of the accident until weeks later, were never properly tested for exposure, received no preventative treatment, and even now get no medical help from the Navy.

Allegedly forced to sign waivers releasing the Navy from any responsibility, the pair are among more than a hundred American sailors suing TEPCO, the Japanese nuclear plant operator.

If you missed that, find it on the Radio Ecoshock web site at ecoshock.org. Click on "past programs" and you'll see this special news audio available for free mp3 download.

Or download the 28 minute press conference here: "Poisoned Flag" in CD quality or Lo-Fi

This press conferences kinda says it all for the common person. We do not get support from the governments allegedly elected to protect our interests. It's easy to see where we all stand when it comes to the military industrial nuclear complex: in the dark and in the radiation zone.

THE MEDICAL AND ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF FUKUSHIMA

In this week's Radio Ecoshock show we hear straight from the conference "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" held at the New York Academy of Medicine, March 11th and 12th. My thanks to the Helen Caldocott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility for getting out the truth about Fukushima, about the on-going impact of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion, and the radiation still with us from atomic testing. We'll hear scientists and activists explode the myths behind the catastrophe of March 11, 2011 at the TEPCO Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear complex.

From speaker Mary Olson, you hear about the unreported higher impact on women, children and babies. We hear a report about disappearing wildlife at Fukushima and Chernobyl from Dr. Timothy Mousseau, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina. Arnie Gundersen from Fairwindes, David Lochbaum from Union of Concerned Scientists speak out. Plus everything you wanted to know about Cesium, but were afraid to ask, from Dr. Steven Starr, University of Missouri.

That leave me little time to speak. Please listen to the "Deadly Myths of Fukushima".

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW right now.

MYTH #1 THE ACCIDENT IS OVER

Akio Matsumura

This is the huge lie politicians and power companies most desperately want you to believe. I present a clip from the Q and A period, from Akio Matsumura, Founder of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders. Who is he? Lets just say Mr. Matsumura meets with world leaders one on one. As he tells us, when he was invited to dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister, the whole cabinet was invited to join them. What did he tell them?

1. Japanese children will be part of giant nuclear experiment for hundreds of years.

2. Nobody knows where the nuclear fuel has gone, or what state it is in.

Government policies are based on wishful thinking, says Matsumura, because "Fukushima has no time". That is, the radioactive threat will last and last, beyond us and our descendents.

Then Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist for the non-profit group "Beyond Nuclear" demolished the "it's over" myth when interviewed by Karl Grossman Chief Investigative Reporter for VVW Hamptons TV. You'll hear some of that interview.

See that whole series of Karl Grossman interviews at the 2nd year anniversary of Fukushima conference in NYC on You tube here.

In just one of a thousand examples that the Fukushima accident is far from over, just listen to Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds.com in that morning Q and A session on March 11th at the symposium. That's right, 400 tons a day of groundwater is mixing with the loose hot nuclear fuel. The contaminated water is being pumping into hundreds of temporary holding ponds that are not rated to withstand an earth quake over 6.0. Fukushima gets lots of earth quakes.

MYTH #2 AMERICAN REACTORS ARE SAFER

David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists

You think so? Think the next nuclear melt-down isn't just waiting for the USA? Here are two quick clips from David Lochbaum, nuclear engineer from the Union of Concerned Scientists, again from that morning Q and A session. He explains the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission can't even enforce the "no-brainers" like putting vents on the aging Mark I reactors (as every other country has done except maybe India).

Or this one: why can't the NRC force the California nuclear reactors to meet the fire codes? They've had about 25 years to comply, and still get granted more time?

Lochbaum says Californians have won the nuclear lottery - they better hope their number doesn't come up like Fukushima.

MYTH #3 WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE BEING PROTECTED

Mary Olson, NIRS

This is one of the most important lessons of this symposium. A stream of scientists and investigators have found women, girls, and babies are far more sensitive to radiation than the 30 year old healthy male used to set acceptable radiation standards around the world. If you aren't outraged about what you are about to hear, you aren't paying attention.

You get clips from a presentation by Mary Olson, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Southeast. She spoke on "Gender Matters in the Atomic Age".

MYTH #4 JAPAN WILL RETURN TO NORMAL

Dr. Steven Starr

This talk March 11th is titled: "The implications of the massive contamination of Japan with radioactive cesium" by Dr. Steven Starr from the University of Missouri (and Physicians for Social Responsibility).

Here is a bio page on Steven Starr and another one with some of his history against nuclear weapons.

Find out everything you wanted to know about Cesium, but were afraid to ask. Yep, the kids get it first. Europe and Japan are loaded with Cesium from Chernobyl and Fukushima. A nice dusting hit the American West coast in 2011 too. Cesium never goes away, even though the news media stops reporting on it, and the government stops inspecting food.

MYTH #5 CHERNOBYL IS AN EDEN WITH ANIMALS RETURNING; JAPAN'S WILDLIFE IS RECOVERING TOO

Dr. Tim Mousseau

Dr. Tim Mousseau, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina. We hear a ten minute excerpt from his talk "Chernobyl, Fukushima and Other Hot Places, Biological Consequences".

The story that Chernobyl has become a wild Eden after the accident was founded on zero scientific studies. Mousseau and his team did the studies. They found one third fewer birds even 25 years after the Chernobyl accident. Many fewer insects and species of insects. There are so few mammals that the Ukraine had to install a petting zoo, to provide for the Chernobyl tourists who came to see all the famous wildlife (but they don't see any).

Same again in Fukushima, except the spiders there are doing better, now that there are so few birds to eat them. Radioactive "Eden" isn't going so well, and won't for hundreds of years.

DO BIRDS SMOKE?

Some so-called "experts" in the Ukraine and elsewhere in the nuclear establishment tried to suggest the growing death rates after Chernobly were only due to alcoholism or psychological stress. It's important to find out what happened to the wildlife, who apparently don't smoke or drink. We don't know if birds were psychologically depressed on reading news about the Chernobyl accident, but somehow I doubt it. Mousseau blows up that whole argument, and gets us outside the human-centric paradigm. As Helen Caldicott says, we humans are not the only living things with genes to be damaged by nuclear mistakes.

GETTING THE TRUTH ABOUT FUKUSHIMA OUT TO YOU

As mainstream media fails to report on this frightening new science of nuclear accidents, we have to depend on independent producers. In coming shows, Radio Ecoshock will bring you more from the conference. Maria Gilardin of TUC Radio San Francisco will also bring you more, at tucradio.org. Another stalwart of nuclear truth telling is Robert Knight, host of 5 o'clock Shadow on WBAI New York.

We'll hear directly from Helen Caldicott speaking at the NYC conference next week on Radio Ecoshock. She promises that a book with the full proceedings will be available in the next 6 months or so. That is very important for the record, as these things get buried so quickly by the pro-nuclear lobby and the mainstream media.

I'm Alex Smith. We are out of time. Join us next week.

Please help pay for this program if you can. Make a donation from our main blog at ecoshock.info - or subscribe to the show with easy monthly donations at our web site. Thank you to all those listeners who make Radio Ecoshock possible.

Alex Smith

host/producer

Radio Ecoshock

Citizens Lobby with Life on the Brink

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:20:42 PDT

Life on the Brink ...approaching the vanishing point for climate hope. As emissions hit new record, Citizens Climate Lobby Exec. Dir. Mark Reynolds teaches people to lobby the government for sane policy, like Hansen's "Tax and Dividend". Philip Cafaro on new book "Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation." Radio Ecoshock 130313 1 hour.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Mark Reynolds interview (27 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the Phil Cafaro inteview (25 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Kiss your old climate good-bye. That's the word from scientists and measuring agencies on all fronts.

John Vidal of the Guardian was among the first to report that measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere at Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory hit an all-time new high in February 2013 at 396.8 parts per million.

We are pumping out greenhouse gases as ever faster rates. The increase in 2012 was 2.67 parts per million. That is the second highest on record.

As hope for a "safe" climate "fade away", Mark Reynolds of the Citizens Climate Lobby shows how we can overcome the fossil fuel lobby machine. I didn't believe that either, until Mark explained what they do.

Then a fine new book of essays by environmentalists, some well-known, others new, on the untouchable issue: population. The IPCC knows over-population is one of TWO main drivers of climate change. Why do they only talk about fossil fuels? Why does almost every green group duck talking population (and immigration reform)? Not on Radio Ecoshock, where Philip Cafaro talks about "Life on the Brink".

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW NOW!

ON OUR WAY TO CLIMATE DISASTER

We are pumping out greenhouse gases as ever faster rates. The increase in 2012 was 2.67 parts per million. That is the second highest on record. The highest was in 1998 at 2.93 parts per million when the Indonesian peat fires made that developing country the third largest emitter in the world.

Scientists used to say we were increasing at 2 parts per million annually. Models were based on that. Now it's heading toward three, and increasing incrementally. The head of the gas measurement program at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Pieter Tans said the increase is from fossil fuel burning, and our chances of staying below the 2 degree C safe level are "fading away".

Other researchers from Oregon State University, published in the journal Science, quote " during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit–until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F."

Earth is hotter now than it has been for the past eleven thousand years.

So it's on. Should we just cry about it? Probably. But in this program I'll bring you two voices who claim we could still save a livable Earth. They won't give up on the outside chance humanity could turn back toward survival.

Is the fossil fuel lobby too powerful? Start your own lobby. Mark Reynolds tells us how.

Then we'll talk about the unspeakable. Did you know the IPCC admits there are TWO main drivers behind climate change, but only looks at one? Solar power, wind power, carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, tech, tech, tech, but our guest Philip Cafaro, editor of the new book "Life On the Brink" is ready to face the nasty issues politicians and environmentalists agree should never be mentioned.

Hot Radio for unstable times. I'm Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock.

MARK REYNOLDS - BE YOUR OWN LOBBYIST FOR THE CLIMATE!

Mark Reynolds, Executive Director

All the big corporations have lobbyists in Washington. Every Member of Congress has a posse of lobbyists who visit, make donations, or take them on golf vacations in exotic places. And that's not just in America, but in pretty well every country.

When it comes to climate, who lobbies for us? Who will speak for our descendants? Our guest is Mark Reynolds. He's the Executive Director of the non-profit group called the Citizens Climate Lobby.

We find out Citizen's Climate Lobby teaches people how to lobby their political representatives. It's mainly aimed at American legislators, but there is a Canadian chapter as well. This technique could work in any pseudo-Democratic country.

People gather and get a workshop on how lobbying works. It was modelled after the successful "BUILD" lobby blitz, that brought U.S. funding to fight Third World poverty up from practically nothing to many millions of dollars. After the workshop, there are once-a-month conference calls which feature some expert speakers (like Dr. James Hansen of NASA), plus drills in how to get results with elected representatives.

People also learn how to mount an effective campaign of letters to the editor or op-ed writing. Reynolds say politicians really monitor such things. These groups also try to get many different voices on board. Mark suggests someone from the military, or a preacher, may be quite effective when visiting the politician in their home riding. Once a year they do a full blitz on Washington, trying to see every Senator and Congressman about climate change.

Don't just preach to them, says Reynolds. Listen. Find common ground, something you can relate to, before going.

I know my listeners are already asking themselves a lot of hard questions about this. For starters, the people who control the current House of Representatives in America have publicly stated climate change is a hoax, most likely a plot to tax and ruin American freedom. Do climate lobbyists talk to Tea Party denialists?

Indeed they do. The Citizens Climate Lobby has visited climate denier Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma several times. Reynolds has a good story about that in our interview.

What is the Climate Lobby pushing for? Certainly not bogus solutions like carbon trading. They advocate the "Fee and Dividend" approach suggested by James Hansen. People do pay a "tax" on carbon (raising the price of gas for example). But ALL that money is kept away from government. Instead it is paid back to every citizen in a cheque which eases the pain of paying more. I call it bribing people to do the right thing, with their own money.

During the interview, Reynolds mentions "the Pigou club" Find out more on Pigou here, and the club's founder and premise here. Wiki says:

"[Greg] Mankiw has become an influential figure in the Blogosphere and online journalism since launching his blog. The blog, originally designed to assist his Ec10 students, has gained a readership that extends far beyond students of introductory economics. In particular, he has used it as a platform to advocate the implementation of pigovian taxes such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax; to this end Mankiw founded the informal Pigou Club."

Here is an op-ed by Mark Reynolds, explaining how Republicans could support this climate action plan.

I'm so disgusted with politics, I woulnd't believe this lobby idea could work. But Reynolds mostly convinced me this IS a worthwhile effort. Listen to the interview. Check out this workshop with Mark Reynolds on You tube. Then visit citizensclimatelobby.org

PHILIP CAFARO - CONFRONTING POPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Philip Cafaro, Colorado State University

The melting Arctic, that's far enough away. Electric cars or solar cities, that's far enough away too. But talk about fewer babies, those lovable babies, or stopping immigration, and maybe state control of family size - those are bombs that stimulate a kind of self-censorship even greens go along with. Start talking about population control, and even the best listeners start reaching to change stations.

When I add that our guest Philip Cafaro specializes in "ethics", that doesn't help. Ethics is hardly the hot buzzword of the day on TV or social media.

So Philip, we have about thirty seconds to convince our great Radio Ecoshock listeners they need to hear this conversation. Why drag up population, immigration, and birth control, just when we're finally getting the public on board with the reality of climate change?

Personally, I think there is a deep and embedded form of self-censorship at work here. I didn't really look foward to doing this program. The whole issue makes me uncomfortable and unpopular, and that's the point. Stopping climate catastrophe is not all happy thoughts and popularity.

Philip teaches philosophy in Fort Collins, at Colorado State University. He's the co-editor of a new collection of essays called "Life on the Brink, Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation." The contributors are real green leaders, some of them already guests on Radio Ecoshock, like Albert Bartlett, Lester Brown, and Paul Ehrlich. In the book, we hear from the academics, but from activists too, like Dave Foreman of Earth First!, and Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society.

We start with the contentious issue of immigration. In the United States, new polls show millions of Latinos are concerned about climate change. Now this book seems to be saying we should stop immigration. This is a hot issue not just in the U.S., but in Australia, Canada, the UK, and most developed countries in Europe. Why oh why, would environmentalists get involved in immigration debates? After all, the immigration debate nearly wrecked the Sierra Club of California at one point.

The trouble is: population growth is real and relentless. We can duck it, and the millions more keep coming every month. Earth hit 7 billion humans in 2012, and will be at 8 billion before 2024. The stats are real and undeniable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there are TWO major causes of climate change. One is fossil fuel burning, agriculture and deforestation. The other, though they never talk more about it, is population. Pure and simple.

Phil Cafaro, co-editor of the new book "Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation" pulls no punches. It's now or never to stop humans from over-running the last of the planet, last stop before die-off.

We could do something about it. It's not quite time to give up. Anyway, giving up is not an option.

Our guest Philip Cafaro is also the president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics, and president of the board of directors of Progressives for Immigration Reform.

The other editor of "Life on the Brink" is Eileen Crist, from Virginia Tech, known for her book "Gaia in Turmoil." The book is published by University of Georgia Press.

SUPPORT NON-PROFIT RADIO!

As always, please support your local non-profit radio station. One of the best since 1960, WBAI New York is in emergency fund raising mode, to keep their famous transmitter atop the Empire State Building. The station has not yet recovered from being flooded out by Hurricane Sandy. In fact, every non-profit and community radio station needs your help right now. Take nothing for granted. If you love freedom of the airwaves, without corporate control, please get online, or on the phone and put your money where your ears are, to support your local radio station.

A huge thank you to Radio Ecoshock supporters who keep this program on the air.

Rebecca in Australia, your generous donation gave me renewed determination to keep pumping out the awful truth.

I can't thank everyone personally, but listeners around the world make this show possible. I am grateful for donations coming in through our web site and blog. Help yourself to our big library of free mp3 audio downloads at ecoshock.org. Your support has made more than a million downloads of Radio Ecoshock program happen over the years.

DID YOU MISS OUR SPECIAL PODCAST - THE BRIEFING FROM THE FUKUSHIMA CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK?

Coming up on Radio Ecoshock: the new wave of low-energy homes, and new waves of rising seas - is it still safe to live near the Coast? Plus a suRprise guest who always puts Earth first.

We'll have to squeeze that in with some powerful talks from the conference in New York City organized by the Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility on March 11th, 2013, two years after the triple melt down in Japan.

Expect recordings from the conference "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" in upcoming Radio Ecoshock shows.

People who subscribe to our podcast should have received a taste with my special news podcast "Poisoned Flag: US Sailors Nuked by Fukushima". Two U.S. sailors tell their stories of being poisoned with radioactivity aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

It's a harrowing tale of being exposed to radiation blowing from Fukushima, over a period of two months, as close as one mile from shore. They were not told of the accident until weeks later, were never properly tested for exposure, received no preventative treatment, and even now get no medical help from the Navy. Allegedly forced to sign waivers releasing the Navy from any responsibility, the pair are among more than a hundred American sailors suing TEPCO, the Japanese nuclear plant operator.

If you missed this 28 minute press briefing from New York, download it here in CD Quality, or in Lo-Fi.

Even CBS News covered it. (Caution: this page can be slow to load, and puts you through an ad first, but still, you get to see the Vets talking Fukushima on TV...)

I don't do many between-shows news broadcasts, but if you want to receive them, click on the podcast symbol at our web site, ecoshock.org. That way you'll be sure to get all our programs, plus the extra podcasts that only go out to subscribers!

At the end of this week's show I squeeze in part of another song from Nimbin Australia. The group is Pagan Love Cult. It's their CSG Song, meaning coal seam gas, also known as fracking methane.

Find some of their music here.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening.

Poisoned Flag: Testimony of 2 U.S. Sailors Nuked by Fukushima

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:35:45 PDT

SPECIAL BULLETIN

Two U.S. sailors tell their stories of being poisoned with radioactivity aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

Quartermasters Maurice Enis, and Jaime Plym, now out of the Navy, speak in New York City, at a press conference organized by the Helen Caldicott Foundation and the Physicians for Social Responsibility on March 11th, 2013, two years after the triple melt down in Japan.

In addition to the sailors, we hear from Jeff Patterson, president of PSR, Helen Caldicott, and Robert Alvarez.

Download mp3 in CD Quality (28 minutes).

Download in Lo-Fi

LISTEN NOW

The sailors tell a harrowing tale of being exposed to radiation blowing from Fukushima, over a period of two months, as close as one mile from shore. They were not told of the accident until weeks later, were never properly tested for exposure, received no preventative treatment, and even now get no medical help from the Navy.

Allegedly forced to sign waivers releasing the Navy from any responsibility, the pair are among more than a hundred American sailors suing TEPCO, the Japanese nuclear plant operator.

Get more details at www.helencaldicottfoundation.org. This recording has been edited to improve sound and remove distractions, by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock. Expect more recordings from the conference "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" in upcoming Radio Ecoshock shows.

Growing Food Indoors Under Lights

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:23:09 PST

From herbs to food under new high tech, low-energy lighting. Inventor Philip Be'er. We can lower emissions by growing our own. Plus small scale farmer, author & anthropologist Walter Haugen. Song by Australian band Pagan Love Cult. Radio Ecoshock 130306

Part of doing right, is cutting out the big agri-food machine that is killing people, the soil, and the atmosphere. In this week's program, we'll consider a late winter remedy: growing food under lights. Our guest is Philip Be'er. We start with a show and tell experiment right here in the Radio Ecoshock studio. Later I'll pass on tips from my own career under the lights, plus a conversation with small-scale, low-tech farmer, and anthropologist, Walter Haugen.

We begin with a slice from an ode to the beat poet Neil Cassady, from the Australian band Pagan Love Cult. At the end of this show, you'll bet their full song "Everything I Know".

Sun glasses on. Flick the switch. This is radio that grows.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Download/listen to the Radio Ecoshock show "Growing Indoors Under Lights" 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to the conversation between inventor and Home Harvest Farms owner Philip Be'er (34 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Download/listen to my interview with low-energy small-scale farmer Walter Haugen (11 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

PHILIP BE'ER

My opening guest in the studio is Philip Be'er, owner of Home Harvest Farms in Vancouver, Canada. His company makes durable and portable container garden equipment. Philip also teaches sustainability, so we go beyond business, to talk about our general food supply, and why learning to grow your own makes so much sense these days.

The web site is homeharvestfarms.com.

I ask Philip to describe some of the products he sells, many of which he invented. You see, Philip began as a technical support person on a Kibbutz farm in Israel. As an aside, his farm developed a technique for pasteurizing vegetables (not milk, veggies!) using only hot water. It keeps them alive much longer, but Philip says although the technology is widely used and successful in Israel, it has not emerged in Europe or North America yet. That may be an opportunity for someone.

Be'er has developed stainless steel growing boxes that are deep enough to get good roots. These can be mounted on carts he provides, so you could wheel your plants out when it's sunny and warm enough, and then indoors at night, or during cold weather. Supplement the outdoor light with fluorescent grow lights that use very little energy (see my notes below). I bought the mini model, suitable for a condo table-top garden for kitchen herbs and lettuce.

In another suprising development, Be'er found that many urban gardeners end up having to move their planting area within three years. Perhaps that free lot is being built-over, or the person moves to another part of the city. Rather than losing all the work they put into developing soil, Philip offers portable growing boxes. These can be moved on a pickup truck for example. You could even move your whole growing box, plants and all, to a new location.

The idea of portable gardens has been taken to new extremes in Vancouver, where Sole Foods has several acres of raised boxes temporarily installed on a giant outdoor parking lot near the arena downtown. Sole Foods has hired some of the poor of Vancouver as workers, folks who might not otherwise get a job. The produce is sold to local restaurants, and gets out in other ways. It's been a real winner in Vancouver, and could be applied anywhere. Find it here (warning, this site may be slow to load, but is worth the slight wait.)

You can watch Philip Be'ers new video on You tube "One billion news jobs ... what we are not being told!" right here. And here is his Facebook page.

LISTEN TO THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK PROGRAM RIGHT NOW...

ALEX'S NOTES ON GROWING INDOORS (with helpful links)

The kitchen grow-box I bought from Philip Be'er. Note the home-built light stand, with the duller flourescent in the background. You can't see much of the brighter new T5 fluorescent - because the reflector is pointing all that light straight down at the plants. You can see the basil and oregano in front, with a new planting of two cilantro plants in the back. These are transplants, just 5 days in the box.

In my mind there is a hierarchy of home agriculture. First and foremost, we do most of our gardening under the sun, as Nature intended it. That's where most of your growing should happen, whether it's on your city lot, or pots on the patio.

Second, we grab the harvest when it's there. Get the book "Putting Food By" to find out how in detail, for every kind of food. Freezing has it's place, especially for the berries, but I still prefer drying food, and canning the rest. That way we don't depend on the grid, or use still more fossil fuels, just to keep our food over the winter. For the root crops, anybody with a yard can build a root cellar, or use a basement to store that harvest plenty, when prices are cheap, and local food abounds.

Only after that, or in unusual circumstances, would I supplement the real solar harvest with food and herbs grown indoor under lights.

FORGET WHAT YOU KNEW ABOUT OLD FLUORESCENT GROW LAMPS

It's super legitimate to get seeds and seedlings started early in the spring under a few fluorescent bulbs. Speaking of that, I dragged out my old 24 inch two bulb fluorescent grow lamp from 15 years ago, to compare it to the new model Philip Be'er brought me. There has been a ton of progress in fluorescent grow lamps, mainly due to stimulation from the multi-billion dollar pot industry.

My old fluorescent lamp is big, it has a ballast noisy with a hum, but the main difference is the lack of pure sun-like brightness. The old fluorescents, with 8 watts per bulb, look pale and pasty, compared to the T-5 Sumblaster I got from Philip. That's a single bulb, 24 watts in the 24 inch model. It doesn't hum, is slim and light weight. The T5 comes from a company called "Future Harvest Development" which has a web site here. FHD only sells wholesale, you have to look up your local dealer for their products.

Adding the optional "Nanotech T5 Reflector" forces all the light downward toward the plant. Just eye-balling it, this unit is far brighter, in the spectrums that count, than the old fluorescent grow tubes you may have seen a few years ago. It runs cool too, meaning you can get it closer to the leaves, where it needs to be. One 24 inch light, with an on-off switch, sells for $32 in Canada.

The reflector is another $20. You could make your own out of aluminum foil, but I like the reflector that fits the unit well.

My only beef with the low-end unit I got from Philip at Home Harvest Farms is the wire supports meant to hold up the light aren't reliable. They are just poked into the soil, and when that soil shifts, the light can fall down. I built a light stand using one 2 by 2 and a 1 by 1, both eight feet long, plus 8 screws and one metal "L" bracket. That way I can use cheap chain to raise and lower the lights as the plants start out or grow. Future Harvest also sells a light stand for the T5. It looks better, but I don't think it would extend high enough for the deep trays Philip provided.

My first intention was simply to have some fresh herbs for the kitchen when cooking. In that scenario, you hope the herbs will grow enough that you can pick them without killing the plant. You are NOT trying to get them to flower, and you don't want them to go to seed.

What if I did want to grow some lettuce, and then save the seed? Or even a small bush mini-tomato plant? When the plants were mature enough, I would have to change the light-bulb in the fluorescent. Most plants depend on subtle light signals to fruit or bloom - the kind of redness in the sky that happens later in the season. The normal "vegetative" bulb in my unit is rated at 6400 K. That's "K" stands for Kelvin. It's a standard way of measuring the mix of light waves, known as the color temperature.

Look it up in Wiki.

To stimulate fruit and bloom, I would change to a color temperature of 2700 K. That's more reddy orange. You would have to order that from a local dealer.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF BULBS - SOME HANDY VIDEOS AND RESOURCES

LED grow lights are storming into the scene. There's a lot of debate among indoor growers about how well they work, but some swear by them. I haven't tried LED grow lights (yet) but apparently just red and blue lights will grow plants. You can end up with strange science-fiction-like scenes, where plant leaves under lights look rather black, and the whole room looks like a bad acid trip. Remember, plant leaves only look green because that is the frequency they DON'T need, the color they reject. Green lights wouldn't grow anything.

Still... as you can see in the videos below, LED grow lights work, and have several advantages: (1) they run much cooler, reducing the need for a lot fans, ventilation and noise (2) the bulbs are not cheap, but last for years and (3) they use far less electricity (and so produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions). Plus, there is no mercury or heavy metal problem with this lighting system, as there is with CFL's (compact fluorescents).

Good video on growing cucumbers using an LED light You tube

Here is a description of the lights used in this video

Here is a handy article about an operation in the Netherlands using red and blue LED's to grow vegetables indoors

For absolutely weird ferris-wheel growing check out this video

Yep, its the "Volksgarden" (truly "revolutionary") a rotating hydroponic system. Yes, lettuce and tomatoes grow with their roots upside down and moving! It's $2600! From Omega Garden, in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia.

Want to get reallyt technical: this video compares LED light waves to Metal Halides and High Pressure Sodium

But its a sales video - read the comments below too!

Using their lighting type comparison, the LED's use far less power than a standard HID big bulb (say 600 Watts). If run continuously over a year, their 400 Watt LED would use almost $400 less power (at 12 cents a KWH in B.C.) instead of a 600 Watt HID (which issues comparable light).

There are also compact fluorescent grow lights (CFL). Use 2700 Kelvin for flowering. They run very cool, can even be touched by hands. Or just try the 6400 K "daylight" bulbs for vegetative growth, like lettuce or herbs. Note one blog comment: these CFL lamps only emit plant-growing light from the SIDE of the bulb. Hanging them upside down over the plants will deliver very little useful light to the leaves. The CFL bulbs need to be mounted horizonally.

BACK TO MY STUDIO EXPERIMENT

As soon as I set up my little grow box in the studio, I noticed other changes. When you transplant basil, its aroma fills the room for several days, until it settles down. I hope you like basil.

Next the cat showed up. She did not nibble any leaves, these were not on her menu. But kitty likes to lay down in front of the planter, under the fake sunlight, on a dreary day. Sooner or later some unwelcome insects will find my kitchen garden. They always do. I'll have to have some non-toxic insecticidal soap on the ready for the aphids.

Of course having some extra sunlight in the room adds some cheer. I've got the lights on a timer, running 16 hours, with 8 hours of darkness. That has worked well for me in the past, but if you have better info, let me know.

More than a dozen years ago, I did some indoor gardening for about a year. That was therapy really, as I recovered from two operations on my spine. I couldn't get outside, but still wanted to "get my hands dirty" (without growing pot!).

Due to my disability, we had to rent in a poorer part of town. A neighbor pot grower suddenly had to leave his set up, and was selling off grow lights very cheaply. I bought three: two 1,000 watt metal halide lamps (huge growing power!) and one 600 watt lamp. We painted a spare room white and set it up to grow veggies and even a few ornamentals. It was a lot of fun, and good for my health. Therapeutic gardening is a whole other topic - we could spend an hour just on that!

But now I'm looking at vegetative plants, like herbs and salad fixings. I bought some small herbs in tiny pots, already growing, to stock up: two of cilantro (we are Pesto fans here), a basil plant, two oregano, and one thyme. The rest of the planter will go to heirloom lettuce, likely with either very dark or colored leaves, started from seed.

We've already harvested some basil for a home-made pizza - it was really flavorful.

But what if I want more, like the holy grail of indoor gardeners, the tomato. Frankly, tomato plants are over-rated for the watts they consume. Why not plant things like beets, where you can eat the roots and the tops, instead of throwing out most of the plant?

If you want tomatoes, you need more serious lights, in my opinion. A 600 watt bulb would do one plant, or maybe a 330 watt LED light. A thousand watt bulb would grow several large tomato plants. Again, you would have to buy a thousand watt fruiting bulb, at 2700 K, to make it happen.

The electricity expense will never justify the cost of those tomatoes. But you can get fresh heirloom tomatoes when they are ripe, in December or any time. Perhaps if we subtract all the fossil-based fertilizers and insecticides you didn't use, the tractor fuel, and the trucking emissions to bring them north, the carbon cost might even out. If you know anyone who has done these calculations, please write me. The address is radio at ecoshock.org.

As I said, I wouldn't take on the big lights at all if your electricity comes from coal or nuclear fuel.

Could you grow with solar power? Certainly you could, using these modern high-powered fluorescents. The four foot long bulbs put out 54 watts of power. That's twice as bright, without using a lot of juice. You might still need either wind power, or the grid to back you up after a week of cloudy, rainy weather. Growing plants indoors requires dependeable light, every day. Otherwise the plants can stall, and you lose more than just a day or two of growth. Commercial greenhouses use the lights every day without fail.

It mainly depends on where you live. If you are in a sunny region, I'll be you could be growing, even during the cold times, using a combination of a skylight or greenhouse, supplemented with fluorescent grow lights. Please let me know your experiences.

HELP ME PREPARE A GOOD SHOW ON SEEDS

Before we get to our next guest, Philip Be'er brought up one scary point. The real bottleneck to the new local food movement might be seeds. What if we are too successful? Could the non-GMO seed houses keep up? What if a stock-market crash convinces millions of people to tear up their lawns and plant. Will there be enough seeds?

I posed this question to Chris at The Incredible Seed Company, a Canadian outfit the provides heirloom seeds. Chris doesn't sell so-called "Survival Packs", even though he could make some extra money at it. Instead, he recommend you start planting, anything, anywhere, and buy a book on how to save seeds. You can't save the seeds from things your grow from Home Depot seeds or Walmart. Unless it says "heirloom" and "non-GMO" right on the package, they will be hybrid seeds that won't grow true to the form you expect the next year. Your seed-saving will be wasted.

Chris isn't afraid we'll have a sudden seed shortage. He suggests the big seed companies would just divert seeds from farm sales (where bulk sales profits are low) to individual buyers, where profits are higher. That might be tougher for farmers though, and then we'd all pay later?

Just a note to my Canadian and overseas listeners. Many governments have regulations about what seeds can be imported. Some of the most popular American seed companies (like Mypatriotsupply.com) don't ship to Canada at all. Others must make substantial substitutions when shipping to Canada. Make sure you know what you will get. I don't know about rules for shipping seeds to the UK or Australia - if my listeners there know, please tell us!

I need to do a whole program on seeds, the survival packs, saving your own, and the various societies like Seed Saviours, and the Seedy Saturday events put on by an outfit called "Seeds of Diversity". You can help. Please send me your experiences, your recommendations for products or companies that worked for you. Or guests I should interview about seeds, for Radio Ecoshock. Send all tips to my email box: radio @ ecoshock.org With your help, we can do a good program on seeds.

WALTER HAUGEN

It's fun and helpful to talk with small alternative growers around the country, and around the world.

We're going to pay a short visit to a man I'll call the spread-sheet farmer. His new book is "The Laws of Physics Are On My Side" but he's no physicist, with training in anthropology instead. Walter Haugen is an educated wanderer, and former field worker turned food grower.

As always, I also ask Walter about how we can produce food even when the climate becomes unstable.

Listeners, you can find a new paper published in February 2013 by Tufts University titled "Climate Impacts on Agriculture: A Challenge to Complacency?" It's by Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton. I found that in Walter's blog.

Here is NYT blog article about this paper.

This is where a surprising chapter in Walter's book comes in handy. Walter grows so many different kinds of plants (including nut and fruit trees) that it's hard to keep track of what is actually growing well, when it was planted, how much produce resulted, and all that. So Walter keeps careful track in a common spread sheet.

Haugen learned during his university studies, direct data from the field, carefully noted, is quite important. For example, he weighs his produce every day as harvested, and notes the variety, planting time, and more. His spreadsheet revealed the farm work became more efficient in 2012. What took 2,000 hours of work in 2011 was done in just 1500 hours in 2012.

As Walter says, his book is about one third analysis (including an overview of the history of agriculture) and two thirds "how to" (including really useful tips on a wide variety of specific crops). Haugen spent more than a decade as an itinerant farm worker, helping harvest American crops. Then he went back to University. So he literally offers an educated hands-on perspective that few people have.

Here is the contact info you need to learn more from Walter Haugen. The web site, Walter says, is useful but fairly static. Find out more about his book here. But most of Walter's active writing happens in the Whatcom Country Transition news. Find that here.

MUSIC FROM PAGAN LOVE CULT

Thanks to a listener from Australia, I've discovered Pagan Love Cult, ""The only cult in the world that tries to brainwash its members to think for themselves."

paganlovecult.com

Visit that web site and for a limited time only, hear their inspiring song "You Are Here". We opened the program with a quick clip from their ode to beatnik Neil Cassady. We finish up with a full tune, complete with corporate angst and common folk rising. It's called "Everything I Know". That tune has been stuck in my brain for several days now.

Thanks to all those who donated to Radio Ecoshock this week, from this blog, or from out web site! Please keep it coming, so I can keep the Radio Ecoshock coming your way.

Alex Smith

How Will We Power the Future?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:17:10 PST

In-depth interview with Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin on his book "Powering the Future: How We Will Eventually Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow." Dr. Rose M. Cory's new science on positive feedback loop discovered in the melting Arctic. Plus song "No Such Thing As Waste" by Australia's Formidable Vegetable Sound System. Radio Ecoshock 130227

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Download/listen to Radio Ecoshock 130207 "How Will We Power the Future?" in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to the Robert B. Laughlin interview (38 min) in CD Quality (34 MB) or Lo-Fi (9 MB)

Download/listen to the Rose Cory interview (17 min) in CD Quality (15 MB) or Lo-Fi (4 MB)

Worried about prices at the pump? Or is it still way too cheap to save a livable climate? Even big fossil fuel executives wonder if we'll find enough energy, or retain an economy to pay for it. In just a minute, we'll encounter a powerful mind who drove through the options and calculations, to arrive at surprising conclusions about powering the future.

I'm Alex Smith. Later in this program, we'll talk with Dr. Rose Cory, lead author of a newly published paper. She found another surprise agent whipping up the production of greenhouse gases in the far North. It's yet another positivie feedback loop in the rapidly changing Arctic. About 24% of exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere is frozen under the surface. That empire of permafrost is disappearing quickly. Scientists estimate ten to twenty percent will melt in this century alone. The latest research says just 1.5 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels will tip the permafrost into a vast melting process, unleashing more carbon dioxide than we have in the atmosphere now.

That is a recipe for climate disaster unseen for millions of years. We are already half way there.

I'll also play you a new song, from an upcoming tour of North America and Britain, by a hot new Australian band. It's good green music for your ears.

But first, this in-depth conversation with a surprising mind, about your energy future.

Listen to this Radio Ecoshock program right now.

ROBERT B. LAUGHLIN

Everone knows our civilization is doomed and our kids will be digging through the rubble, for cans of dogfood.

Apparently Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin missed the memo. He wrote the book "Powering the Future: How We Will Eventually Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow". Laughlin is the Bass Professor of Physics at Stanford University, where he's taught since 1985. In 1998 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics. His previous books are "Crime of Reason" and "A Different Universe".

This is Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. I read the book. I called Robert up to argue with him, and that's a big mistake, because he's smarter than I am. Anyway it's a trap. Robert Laughlin wants us to argue with him.

The old saying is "Don't jump to conclusions." But that is exactly what Lauglin did in writing this book. He presumed humans will find the energy needed in the future, and then figured out how. I stewed over this book, thinking "well he hasn't counted on an economic crash" or "where is the climate damage?"

Laughlin says he expects both. There could be an economic collapse, and serious climate damage. But, he says, humans are more or less the same generation after generation. There is no reason to expect out descendants will be very different from ourselves.

When Laughlin addresses student audiences all over the world, he asks them: "Will we still have cars? Will we still fly? Will there be electricity?" Eventually, they say "yes" - because they envision the same basic desire and need to travel, and to power things.

We get into an intriguing insider's look at all kinds of energy. For example, if Germany doesn't want nuclear power, they are saying "yes" to more Russian natural gas. But gas is still a greenhouse gas, it's limited, and supplies may drop quickly if we are depending on fracked gas. The jury is still out on how fast those fracked wells deplete.

Laughlin, who is at the Department of Physics at Stanford University, seems fairly impartial about nuclear power. After admitting he may have worked on classified nuclear programs (weapons?) - Laughlin says "we haven't had the nuclear conversation yet". Those decisions may come AFTER oil, gas and coal become hard to get and ridiculously expensive. New generations of humans may make very different decisions.

By the way, his Stanford students from Kazakhstan say the uranium trains that used to run to Moscow are now going to China. China has NOT backed away from nuclear energy, even after Fukushima.

We talk about the potential and pitfalls of solar energy. Laughlin is excited about the Andasol I project in Spain, where solar reflectors heat up a salt mixture to a liquid state. That acts like a battery which can store the sun's energy, to generate electricity via steam generators, even after the sun has gone down. Laughlin thinks the same technology could be used to store any kind of energy, even wind power. He's involved in a patent and a project to develop that.

Andasol I solar power station, Spain (courtesy of Wikipedia)

If you doubt what Laughlin says, be prepared to follow up through the last 81 pages of the book - his towering collection of end notes. If we just went through those, it should be worth a degree in itself.

The book "Powering the Future" is provocative, and crammed full of useful perspectives. It was a privilege to spend quality time with Robert Laughlin, and I hope you enjoy our talk as much as I did.

SUPPORT RADIO ECOSHOCK

You are tuned to Radio Ecoshock. This is my seventh year producing radio that matters for non-profit college and community stations around the world. You can help keep this big ball of ear waves going, by offering your support at our web site, ecoshock.org. Then share the blog, at ecoshock.info, and our Facebook page at radioecoshock.

Find your local radio station broadcasting Radio Ecoshock here.

NEW SCIENCE FROM THE ARCTIC - HOW SUNLIGHT CAN MAKE GREENHOUSE GASES

Now back to one of our specialties here, keeping you up to date with the latest climate science.

As Robert W. Service wrote: "There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun." You are about to learn something new going on, powerful but unseen, in the melting far North. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

In the past decade, satellites, scientists, and aboriginals looking at the Arctic find larger areas without snow cover, for longer periods . Arctic heating is greater than anywhere in the lower temperate zones.

A huge portion of planet Earth is frozen, we thought permanently frozen, calling it "permafrost". It's beginning to thaw, and we have fresh science showing new pathways for greenhouse gases to enter the atmosphere.

Dr. Rose Cory

Just out is this paper titled: "Surface exposure to sunlight stimulates CO2 release from permafrost soil carbon in the Arctic" It was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 4, 2013. We have the lead author on the line, Rose M. Cory, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill.

In a nutshell, this team of scientists discovered that lack of snow cover is leading to more greenhouse gases releases as sunlight stimulated microbial action on the formerly frozen plant matter of the permafrost.

Vast, I mean vast, Arctic plains in Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, and Alaska, are popping up with new lakes and puddles. These come from a process called "thermokarst" failures. Watch a short video about it here.

Picture a kind of slurry of organic material washing around in streams, run-off and ponds. The real news in this paper is a new actor: the role of sunlight itself. It isn't just the microbes feeding on newly released organic material. Sunlight itself can release greenhouse gases directly. Rose Cory describes how that works.

We knew that exposing more permafrost to the warming Arctic air would result in the release of more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. We just didn't understand how it worked, how much, or how fast. Now scientists have new figures to work with - including an estimate 40% higher than previously thought. That's a big number. Here is the quote from the paper:

"Our results suggest that photostimulation will rapidly (days to months) increase conversion to CO2 by an additional 40% or more in thawed and released C compared with that remaining in the dark, and that photo-stimulated bacterial use of this C in natural streams may equal or exceed its degradation in the dark alone."

Rose Cory confirms they have found yet another positive feedback loop in the Arctic - home to more than a half dozen feedback loops already. It's serious news we all need to understand, as formerly snow-covered lands become exposed to the warming Arctic sun.

Read about this new science in the New Scientist magazine here.

Rose says its "jarring" to return from the Arctic, where such major and dangerous changes are taking place, to here home in Chapel Hill North Carolina. Most people in the U.S. (and around the world for that matter) have no idea of the big developments in the Arctic. With your help, listeners, we can spread the word. Tell someone about this research, and make more people into "Arctic watchers".

Radio Ecoshock has a number of programs devoted to the melting permafrost, the disappearing sea ice, and loss of glacier ice on Greenland. I recommend our December 19th show, 2012 "Climate: the Arctic Thermostat Blows Up" and also in 2012, our February 15th program with 3 scientists "Arctic Emergency - Global Threat".

I also did a special from the February 2012 meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, titled "What If the Permafrost Thaws?"

Please listen and pass those links along.

OUR FEATURE SONG THIS WEEK: "NO SUCH THING AS WASTE" by the band Formidable Vegetable Sound System

A sustainability-based electroswing ukulele show all about permaculture called Formidable Vegetable Sound System is touring through Canada from Australia from May-August. Here are just some of the tour dates:

22nd April- U-Mass for Earth Day, Amherst, MA

26 June - Glastonbury Festival, UK

27 July - Secret Garden Party, UK

2 Aug - Bass Coast Festival, BC, Canada

7 Aug - Shambhala Festival, BC, Canada

If you check out this You tube video, the audience is swaying and dancing.

The album will be launched worldwide on April 6 (with a launch party being held at Ceres Community Environmental Park in Melbourne, Australia.)

Anyone interested in buying the album pre-sale can head to permaculturesongs.com or our facebook page (Permaculture Ukulele)

IF ONLY WE COULD SEE IT...

The process that might do our civilization in is happening right in your city or region. If we had eyes to see gases, we'd see the carbon and methane pouring up into the sky, from our streets, homes, factories, and farms. Billowing clouds of climate change in the making, and very little human change on the ground. Check out a camera technology that makes greenhouse gas emissions visible in this ABC News piece.

Still, green nature pops up in the cracks of the sidewalk. In coming programs we'll cover action in the big picture, and ways a million longing hearts can steer in a different direction, including me, including you.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock again. Please support the program, spread the word, and join me again next week.

Survivor Soul Food

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:25:26 PST

African American culinary historian Michael W. Twitty interviewed by Gerri Williams on black crops, climate change, & safe seeds. K. Rashid Nuri from Truly Living Well urban farm in Atlanta, Georgia. Music by Mavis Staples ("Down in Mississippi") & Memphis Gold ("Mississippi Flatlands"). Radio Ecoshock 1 hour 130220

DOWNLOAD THESE FREE MP3 AUDIO FILES:

All I ask, please help when you can, with a donation or subscription to Radio Ecoshock. The helps pay not just for production, but the tens of thousands of free downloads each month, getting the message out all over the world. Find out more here.

Radio Ecoshock Show "Survival Soul Food" in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Gerri Williams interviews Michael W. Twitty 26 minutes in CD Quality (24 MB) or Lo-Fi (6 MB)

Alex Smith interviews Rashid Nuri (24 minutes) in CD Quality (22 MB) or Lo-Fi (6 MB)

This is Black History Month in the United States. It started me thinking about justice, for people and the environment.

We open the program with the song "Down in Mississippi". It is Mavis Staples, singing about her own life, from the album "We'll Never Turn Back". The song includes the guitar-work of producer Ry Cooder. You'll hear the whole thing at the end of this program.

We also play a selection from "Mississippi Flatlands" by artist Memphis Gold. He's from Tennessee, but is now living in Washington D.C. I really appreciate his style. The song is from the album "Pickin' in High Cotton" on Stackhouse Records.

Can we learn from the earliest agricultural workers? Are there Southern crops and techniques that we'll need as climate change develops? Yes on all counts. This dig into an unreported scene will work for listeners in every country.

We've got two fabulous guides. Michael W. Twitty is a culinary historian of African and African American foodways. He's just returned from a tour of the former slave states, living and recording those important self-sufficient ways of growing and cooking food, from seeds through open fire cooking.

Our Washington correspondent Gerri Williams, with her own expertise at the College of Agriculture, sits down with Michael Twitty.

Then it's off to Atlanta George with another remarkable mind. I talk with K. Rashid Nuri about everything from the decline of black farming, to the revival of urban agriculture and organic growing.

We can't do better than Rashid. He's a Harvard Grad who worked for decades in the international food industry, all over the world. Nuri was an adviser to the US Department of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration. Now he's come full circle to head up the Truly Living Well urban farm operation in Atlanta, and the Georgia Organic Farmers movement.

Get ready to learn about adapting to climate change, protecting your own food health, southern living, and the struggle for economic justice.

This is Radio Ecoshock.

AFRICAN AMERICAN CULINARY HISTORIAN MICHAEL W. TWITTY

Michael Twitty

When the African American Heritage Seed Collection was begun, organizers turned to culinary historian Michael W. Twitty. Michael has just returned from a tour of the former slave states in the American South. He was seeking his roots - and cooking them!

Michael recently met up with Radio Ecoshock Washington correspondent Gerri Williams. As a Research Associate at the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability & Environmental Science at the University of D. C., Gerri is tuned into African American culture, food production, and the environment.

Gerri Williams

I'm betting you don't know about "slave gardens", or the two foods that may move from the bird feeder to your dinner plate, as climate change develops.

Gerri begins by asking Michael Witty about his well-named "Southern Discomfort" tour.

I found this whole interview fascinating and useful. We pick up tips about adapting to climate change, the importance of natural food, and the crops that you might want to discover.

Michael's histories of African American foodways have been published all over, including his own recipes from beans to pork to "Michael Twitty's Heirloom Cowhorn Okra Soup". Find his web site here.

My thanks to Gerri Williams for knowing the right people, and the right questions.

K. RASHID NURI AND THE TRULY LIVING WELL URBAN FARM IN ATLANTA

Rashid Nuri

Why not farm in the city?

Our guest is a Harvard Grad with plenty of big-time qualifications in both industrial and organic agriculture. K. Rashid Nuri worked a dozen years with the world food giant Cargill. He served four years in the Clinton Administration, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as the Deputy Administrator of the Farm Service Agency and Foreign Agricultural Service. Right now, in Atlanta Georgia, Rashid leads an inspiring urban food farm called "Truly Living Well".

Right in Atlanta, Truly Living Well farms donated land in various plots. They sell top quality produce to high end restaurants, providing more than a dozen jobs for folks who really need the work. Truly Living Well also supplements food for the needy, either at low cost, or even free to those who need it.

We're learning from the survivors, from the deep south, during Black American History Month 2013. I'm Alex Smith. We all want to be survivors, so let's learn from those who know.

I spent some time doing Google searches about African American farming. Almost all of what I found was about history. In 1920 about 14% of U.S. farmers were African American, but by 2007 that dropped to 2%. What happened to the African American farmer?

According to Will Scott, president of the African American Farmers of California, in that agricultural superstate, out of 81,000 farmers, only 400 are African Americans. Will Scott is seen here at TEDx Fruitvale CA in 2011. The African American Farmers of California run a 15-acre demonstration and education farm to interest African-American kids in agriculture.

It seems pretty obvious there was an ugly twist to farming in the history of African Americans and that was share-cropping. For many, it must have an act of liberty just to get away from those farms.

Then it turns out the U.S. Department of Agriculture was turning down farm loans to thousands of black farmers, while giving them to whites. And that wasn't back in the 1950's. We're talking as recently as the 1980's and 90's. A 1.2 billion dollar settlement was finally agreed in 2011. Rashid Nuri is exceptionally well informed on all this, and says it's not satisfactory. A lot of the money goes to lawyers, and people who lost their farms were not fairly compensated. It is known as the "Pigford" case.

One way this discrimination worked: a "good farmer" (likely white and connected) got their loans for planting the year's new crop in January when it was needed. "Others" (mostly black and hispanic farmers) didn't get their loans processed until it was too late to plant, say in April or May. But they had put their farms up as security, and risked losing the land itself, not to mention the harvest they needed to keep on going.

Rashid Nurispoke at the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference. Some really shocking statistics came out of that. Let me quote a couple:

"Nearly 50% of African American children will develop diabetes at some point in their lives.

About four out of five African American women are overweight or obese.

In 2007, African Americans were 1.4 times as likely to be obese as Non- Hispanic Whites.

Deaths from heart disease and stroke are almost twice the rate for African Americans as compared to Whites."

Just out in the news this past month, is research showing the so-called "Southern diet" is actually lethal. Getting real fresh veggies into the southern diet can literally save lives.

Michelle Obama planted a garden at the White House. She congratulated Walmart when that company announced they would start selling fresh vegetables. But Nuri wonders how "organic" Walmat food is, when it travels all the way from polluted China.

We also discuss whether drought-resistant varieties, that can take the heat, may be needed further north, as climate change becomes worse. Nuri cautions against using genetically modified organisms (GMO's) saying our digestive system has not evolved to handle them properly.

After a distinguished career in agriculture, in many parts of the world, Rashid returned to Atlanta,Georgia to lead the non-profit urban farming operation called "Truly Living Well." Find that at trulylivingwell.com. I want to thank Heather Gray and Nadia Ali of the "Just Peace" program on WFRG, Atlanta for introducing me to Rashid.

CONTACT INFO AND MUSIC CREDITS

Write me, Alex Smith, any time with your tips or feed-back. The address is radio at ecoshock.org I really appreciate your time and attention listening each week.

We began this program with Mavis Staples. I've been a fan of "Pop" Staples and the Staples Singers since I was a kid, but I always got a special thrill when I heard Mavis open up. Late in life, this famous gospel, soul, and civil rights singer released a kind of musical biography in the album "We'll Never Turn Back".

Staples tells us about the struggle for justice, and the strong, deep hope that moved her through it all. The album was recorded in 2007 produced by another favorite of mine, roots and rocker Ry Cooder. Ry's guitar magic is all through this album. So we'll finish off where we began, "Down in Mississippi" with Mavis Staples.

Watch Ry Cooder and Mavis record this album on You tube!

Living on The Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:20:29 PST

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, is the father of "biodiversity". He advises Presidents and the World Bank. Thomas Lovejoy visits Radio Ecoshock. Next science vs. spirituality with Dr. Carolyn Baker She says: go positive in a negative world. Alex investigates why millions of people in America, Europe & Australia can't come up with $500 (300 Pounds). Song "Mother Nature" by Kukulcan. Radio Ecoshock 130213

Radio Ecoshock, living on the edge.

FREE MP3 DOWNLOADS THIS WEEK

RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Thomas Lovejoy interview (18 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Carolyn Baker interview (26 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Our feature song this week: "Mother Nature, Mother Earth" by Kukulcan, from their album "Earth"

Listen to the show right now (courtesy of archive.org)

THOMAS LOVEJOY

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy

Introducing our next guest on Radio Ecoshock is a problem. It can take 5 minutes to list out his posts, awards, and credentials. His time is too valuable, so I'll spare you most of that.

Back in 1980, Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy introduced the term "biological diversity" to the world. He's currently a professor at George Mason University, and the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center. Dr. Lovejoy has advised the United Nations, the World Bank, and 3 past Presidents. Beyond that, he's a tireless advocate for endangered ecosystems that have no voice of their own.

Here is Lovejoy's George Mason University bio page, but I find the Wiki entry better.

I first came to appreciate Dr. Thomas Lovejoy when listening to his Reith Lectures 2000 series on the living world. Find the full text of that presentation here.

Here is another speech I've collected, as Thomas Lovejoy opens a United Nations event in Paris in 2010, to celebrate the Year of Biodiversity. Lovejoy warns we are entering the sixth great extinction. Don't miss this powerful overview on climate change and the species. Recorded by Stephen Leahy, environmental journalist. Broadcast by Radio Ecoshock.

Download/listen to that 36 minute Thomas Lovejoy speech in Paris in CD Quality here or in faster downloading Lo-Fi here.

Lovejoy is perhaps best known as a champion for the Amazon rain forest and the creatures there. In this Radio Ecoshock interview, I ask him about another very endangered world ecosystem that gets less press: the African Savanna. The true wide open grasslands of Africa, likely our own human homeland, and the wonder of big species from lions to big herds, is down to just 30% of it's original size. That includes the famous Serengeti. Find out more about the Savanna from Blue Planet here.

The population of Africa is growing and needs to feed itself. Beyond that, countries like China are buying up Savanna to farm - to export food back to Asia. It's a renewal of agricultural colonialism. Add in big impact industry like mining, and climate change, and you can see the days of the fabulous Savanna may be numbered.

I ask Dr. Lovejoy whether we are in the sixth Great Extinction event recorded throughout time. He gives me a cautious "yes", saying we can see the shadow of this event already developing. It's not good news.

I know some listeners will be skeptical of a man who advises the World Bank. In fact, Lovejoy tells me he just had a one hour meeting with the new President of the World Bank last week. Lovejoy assures me President Jim Yong Kim really "gets" the immediacy of climate change. We'll see if the Bank can stop funding coal plants!

When I bring up the regrettable role of George Mason University's refusal to pursue the blatant plagiarism in the Professor Wegman report made to Congress, again Lovejoy says there is new leadership at the University. His basic position is that as a concerned biologist, he has to keep warning and informing whatever leadership exists, always trying to fight for a better chance for the planet.

Along those lines, Lovejoy gives us a three point plan he would give President Obama if he had the chance. First among them is this: two degrees of warming is NOT safe. Even then, we lose the coral reefs, and all kinds of species around the world.

We also discuss whether Nature should have her own rights, as Boliva has just granted her in law.

In my opinion, Thomas Lovejoy is one of the fathers of environmentalism, and protector of the species. It's an interview well worth hearing.

CAROLYN BAKER

Dr. Carolyn Baker

"The more rational a culture seems to be, the more irrational will be its underside when the dark times come, the veils lift, and more is revealed than most want to see."

Those are the words of Michael Meade, in his seminal book "Why The World Doesn't End". Watch a You tube of Meade about this book here.

It is also the opening quote in another piece called "The Really Big Transition: Saying Goodbye To The Enlightenment, Saying Hello To Consciousness". The author is a friend of this program, Carolyn Baker. Actually, that is Dr. Carolyn Baker, a former psychotherapist in private practice, and former adjunct professor of history and psychology, now living in Colorado.

I hear from Carolyn every day, through her email update of pithy news about a world in trouble. But at the bottom of the page, Carolyn also sends her solutions links with tips about things you and I can do. She's a thought-leader and writer for Transition Colorado.

I invited Carolyn to Radio Ecoshock because I am wrestling with my own problem. Science is telling us humans are in the process of ruining the world for life as we know it. Very few of us are responding. We just keep wasting the planet, polluting the land, sea, and atmosphere, as though there is no tomorrow. Why is reason failing? As we look for alternatives, how can we avoid the pitfalls of past superstition, not to mention the just plain craziness so prevalent on the Internet?

We also discuss the emails we both receive from people who are very distressed about the collapse of the economy and the environment, especially climate change. One person on my Facebook page said she decided not to have children after hearing my program. Another private mail suggested the writer was contemplating suicide.

Carolyn has good advice on how to handle very bad news. In fact, she feels we can turn these challenging times to our advantage, sharpening our "gifts" to help others. She doesn't offer feel good "candy" type advice. Carolyn is hard-headed but human, willing to help others face difficulty. She uses her past training to help counsel individuals and couples who contact her. She gives speeches and workshops all over the country, particularly to Transition groups. Carolyn Baker is a regular writer and organizer for Transition Colorado, and she tells us how it's going there.

It was well worth having her back on the show. I think Carolyn should have her own radio show, maybe the call-in variety. In the meantime, she offers a low-fee subscription daily headline sheet which I use to help me prepare for Radio Ecoshock. It carries some of the tough news mainstream media glosses over, but Carolyn always has a series of practical solutions coming out ever day as well. Get the details on her daily news service here.

One of Carolyn's most famous books is titled "Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse." Her newest is "Navigating the Coming Chaos A Handbook for Inner Transition".

THE BALLOON OF DEBT AND THE KNIFE POINT OF POVERTY

- a rant by Alex Smith (with real numbers from the real economy)

You know the rich are literally getting richer, while the poor get poorer. In every developed country, there are millions of people who are just one paycheck away from financial disaster.

I'm concerned about those people. You may be one of them without really thinking about it. Even if you are not, if crowds of people get kicked out on the street, can't afford groceries, or turn to crime to get by, that is certainly going to affect all of our lives.

Last week we mentioned Nicole Foss of the Automatic Earth blog. She started out thinking Peak Oil would collapse the economy, and then wondered if climate change might bring a crash first. Now she's traveling to many countries giving lectures saying the economy will crash even without a push by high energy prices and climate disruption.

Nicole is looking at the very big picture, where governments in the United States, the UK and the rest of Europe, are printing billions of dollars out of thin air. Just a push of a computer button, and $40 billion a month goes to the five biggest American banks to buy up their worst loans. That's just a fraction of the real support for industrial civlization, being billed to some future taxpayers.

WILL THERE BE ANY PENSIONS?

In Canada, payroll taxes are deducted for something called the Canada Pension plan. That money was actually set aside in a pool which has become huge over the years. The money is actually there, unless there is a global crash where everything is worth nothing.

In the United States, the government also deducts payroll taxes, but never did save that money. They rolled it into general revenues, and spent it on crazy things like foreign wars and oil subsidies. The money isn't there to support American seniors. You've heard of "unfunded liabilities" - well that's one for sure.

THE STUDENT LOAN SCAM HIDES REAL UNEMPLOYMENT AND ENSLAVES ANOTHER GENERATION

The other scam in the U.S., but also in Canada, and the UK, is to hide real unemployment numbers by herding people of all ages back into school, allegedly to improve their job prospects and eventual salaries.

Student loans in the United States have now topped 1 trillion dollars. Of this, about 15% of loans are already delinquent. Bankers expect that at least $200 billion of student loans will not be repaid. This education bubble is approaching the crazy levels set by the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008. Except those loans at least had a house attached, while student loans have no equity.

The banks don't need to worry. The Federal Government guarantees all these loans. The banks can loan out billions at low interest rates and the taxpayer is on the hook.

You can see how it happens. A person 30 or 40 years old, a good worker, is suddenly out of work. Their job has been automated or sent overseas.

Counselors and the media say that person needs to be retrained for another job. Anyway, getting tens of thousands of dollars or pounds in loans will pay for the mortgage and groceries while they figure out what to do.

Most do not find work in the field they trained for. Many will end up as waiters or other low-paying jobs, unable to repay the loans. Even so, the government can garnishee their pitiful wages, because there is not way to discharge a student loan through declaring bankruptcy in America, thanks to a law passed during the Bush administration.

It's far worse for youth, in Europe and America. When we count inflation, American college students are borrowing almost twice as much as they did just ten years ago. "According to FICO: 'While the delinquency rate is climbing, the average amount of student loan debt is increasing even faster. In 2005, the average U.S. student loan debt was $17,233. By 2012, it had ballooned to more than $27,253 – an increase of 58 percent in seven years.'"

One percent of the U.S. population has student loans over $100,000.

More than half of graduate students in one survey said they intended to move back in with their parents after finishing University.

University is a place where youth hang out when there are no jobs for them. Most of the supposed job growth has been for people over the age of 45.

I won't even go into the rates of youth unemployment in countries like Italy, Spain, and even France. Probably one quarter of people in those countries will never have a good-paying job.

Meanwhile, millions and millions of people in America, Canada, and the UK are really, really broke. They still watch TV ads for expensive pickup trucks. They may even buy a Starbucks every day. But a rude awakening could be just around the corner, with something as simple as a 1% increase in interest rates. Or a collapse of the unreal prices for stocks these days.

40% OF AMERICANS CAN'T COME UP WITH $500!!

At some point in the year, 77% of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. One third of Americans are contributing absolutely nothing to retirement savings. They can't. There is nothing to spare.

One survey found that 28% of Americans have nothing at all in savings for emergencies.

Another survey found 40% of Americans have $500 or less in savings.

CANADIANS ARE BROKE

Almost half of Canadians are living paycheck to paycheck. Forty seven percent of Canucks are in big trouble if their paycheck is delayed even by a week. That's actually an improvement. It was 57% in 2011.

As the Canadian government has warned, Canadians hold record amounts of personal debt in 2012. Total average debt - not including a mortgage, is around $27,000.

Those levels are rising rapidly, as Canadians keep spending on consumer items, bought with credit cards, or lines of credit on their houses, spending more than their income every year. The household debt to income ratio stood at 164.6 per cent. According to Statistics Canada, the average household debt is $103,000, and total debt load $1.6 trillion. Is that going to end well?

IT'S WORSE IN THE UK

Do I need to tell you how bad it is for the lower income person in the UK? In December 2012, the Independent newspaper reported one in ten families were forced to default on their household debts. Ten million families are in danger, struggling on the edge of that knife-edge, where a missed paycheck or sudden expense breaks them. Millions of families are already behind in their utility bills or home payments.

AUSTRALIANS HEAD FOR RECORD DEBT LEVELS

You would think Australians are doing much better. In some senses, bouyed by mineral exports and such, they are. But the average Australian has the highest household debt compared to disposable income. Higher than anywhere else in the world, and absolute leaders in the amount of credit card debt. The average Austrlian owes the equivalent of $56,000 America dollars, while Americans average out of $44,000.

Just recently, Australians started spending more than their total gross domestic product. Of course many are counting on their high property values as a piggy bank - but what if the market goes down?

WHEN THE BUBBLE BURSTS?

Everyone has been sold on the Middle Class dream, if not a route to being really wealthy. They want to live it right now, even if the paycheck isn't there to support it.

If that bubble bursts, and simply common sense says the pyramid scheme must fall eventually. It may break at the top with bankrupt governments and big banks. Or at the bottom with huge crowds of disappointed and yes, even hungry people, in the former "First World" countries.

It could break at the top and the bottom at the same time.

Either way, the old system is primed for failure.

One future is severe civil unrest, as we've seen in North Africa. Crowds in the street. Looting, a break down in social services and then government.

We all need to think about how we would supplement our food and fuel supplies. We need to organize local communities now, that can function even during a break down. We need to begin helping one another right now, with more food banks, barter systems and local currencies, markets for locally grown food. Reach out to those on the edge, with comfort and help. Big government is not going to solve this problem!

I'M NOT NOT SAFE EITHER

I'm not preaching from some safe place. Our major breadwinner was out of work for 10 months. My son-in-law was laid off, but fortunately found a good job a few months later. My own small pension was cut in half.

But we've stayed out of the consumer dream for years. Our home is graced with used furniture, and our closets with some used clothes. We save what little we have, and spend less than we bring in. We've lived poor before. We know how to grow food, chickens and all that. We know how to heat with wood.

Most of all, we know how to link up with others, to trade and enrich our lives with home-made music, child-care exchanges, and all the good things community can bring.

Watch out for the coming tsunami of poverty. But instead of digging a bunker for food, dig a lot of holes, to plant food all over your neighborhood and town. Prepare in the big sense of the word.

COMING UP ON RADIO ECOSHOCK

I'm putting together a program on African American food and farming in the South. It's an unreported scene. We can all learn a lot from that past and present - including a super report on urban farming in Atlanta from Rashid Nuri, and lessons from the times of slave gardens, from African American gourmet Michael Witty.

After that I have a show in development about indoor growing of food - under lights. I'll be talking with two entrepreneurs who are doing it, and I'll let loose a little of my own experience growing indoors. Food is key to our future, I think, and this may be one way to get city people started, learning what they need to know.

If you have suggestions or tips, please send them along to: radio [at] ecoshock /dot/ org. Or use the Contact form on our web site.

My special thanks to listeners who donated this past week. Your generosity makes if all worthwhile. Find out how to help me keep making Radio Ecoshock here.

If my voice sounds a little different lately, I've had a bad flu. But the show must go on...

I'm Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock.

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to play a clip from a song by Kukulcan called Mother Earth. Then my blog got chopped off in a technical glitch, and the band didn't get the link they deserved. This week in my one hour program I play you the whole thing! Thanks for sending me the song guys!

"Mother Nature, Mother Earth" by Kukulcan, from their album "Earth"

Has The World Gone Crazy, Or Is It Just Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:14:05 PST

Journalist and scientist Andrew Freedman: what new science is saying about freaky 2013 weather. Plus Dr. Kathy McMahon "the Peak Oil Shrink." Kathy tells us about Nicole Foss, "sucky collapse", and a surprising turn in her own life. Radio Ecoshock 130206

Remember normal winters? Actually, anyone under the age of 26 has never seen one. Maybe we thought global warming would just add a bit more slush. But January 2013 showed us what "climate disruption" can really do. One January day, people in Chicago were out jogging in 60 degree heat, 15 degrees C, with no snow. Just 30 hours later the temperature dropped 60 degrees F and more, with an Arctic blast for a couple of days.

January was a strange, strange month in the Northern Hemisphere. Here to help us figure out what is going on, we have Andrew Freedman. He's the senior science writer for the respected blog "Climate Central". Andrew is a professional reporter, published widely, and holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University.

Then you'll join me for a talk with a shrink. With all the bad news, we sure need one. Kathy McMahon is the "Peak Oil Shrink", a clinical psychologist who specializes in energy, climate, and the recovery that looks more like a Depression every day. Kathy tells us about Nicole Foss, "sucky collapse", and a surprising turn in her own life.

Time on and off the couch, with Radio Ecoshock. I'm your audio companion, Alex Smith.

FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS THIS WEEK:

The Radio Ecoshock Show February 6th, 2013 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

My interview with Andrew Freedman, Senior Science writer at Climate Central (20 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

The Radio Ecoshock interview with "Peak Oil Shrink" Kathy McMahon (37 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

LISTEN TO THE SHOW RIGHT NOW ONLINE:

Music Credit: "Whose World Is This?" Jim Page.

ANDREW FREEDMAN

Andrew Freedman is the senior science writer for the respected blog "Climate Central". Andrew is a professional reporter, published widely, and holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University.

Andrew Freedman

Freedman tells us Minneapolis, in the Northern State of Minnesota, finally broke a record streak of more than 4 years without going below zero degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 17 degrees C. That stuns me. That is nothing like the northern states winters I grew up with. And it's been really, really strange in Chicago.

People have been enjoying record winter heat, especially in 2012, and then they get battered by weather from some Arctic Hell. In fact, one day the news reported it was warmer at the North Pole than in the northern United States. How could that happen?

We go to the science behind this, starting with something called a "sudden stratospheric warming event". Andrew explains in this great article, which includes a good graphic showing how a dome of warmer air over the Arctic split the cold and pushed it further south.

I picked up on that story January 15th courtesy of this article in the Daily Kos.

Then we discuss one of the big scientific theories out there explaining the strange weather patterns. It was advanced by Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University. She describes observations connecting the massive sea ice melt in the Arctic with disruptions of the Jet Stream that determine much of our weather.

You can download my September 10th, 2012 interview with Jennifer Francis in CD Quality here, or in faster downloading, lower quality Lo-Fi here.

My blog for that program on the Arctic ice melt, including Francis plus Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and Arctic specialist scientist Cecilia Bitz (University of Washington) is here.

I've just watched a long video on You tube with Dr. Francis updating her research, at the Climate and Weather conference in Breckenridge, Colorado in early January 2013. She and her team found more evidence that the Jet Stream has changed. If you want to keep up to date with this science, put some time into that video.

More details on that conference presentation by Francis here.

In fact, in my Radio Ecoshock interview with Jennifer Francis, she objected to me calling her paper a "theory". She says it is really just about observations of events already seen.

Here are two important articles about freaky weather science in early 2013, by our guest Andrew Freedman at Climate Central.

1. Not reported by most mainstream news, there was a giant Atlantic storm in January. Andrew reported it here, and the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang did a decent job on it too.

2. Andrew Freedman was also contacted by other scientists who said there could be a tropical link to the strange winter weather. Find that story here, and learn about something called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO. I didn't know about it until now.

I learned a lot from Andrew, and hope to have him back on Radio Ecoshock.

HELP KEEP RADIO ECOSHOCK GOING!

Listener-supported Radio Ecoshock isn't selling anything. If you've been thinking about helping this program keep going, now is a good time. Find out how, at our web site, ecoshock.org.

KATHY MCMAHON, "THE PEAK OIL SHRINK"

Kathy McMahon

Has Peak Oil been postponed by fracking, the Tar Sands and deep sea drilling? Why does our society seem crazier by the day?

Do millions of people hope this system will collapse? How do they cope when it doesn't? How will any of us live with the never-ending bad news about climate change? How do we really feel inside?

For a way to find answers, it's time to check in with the original Peak Oil shrink.

Dr. Kathy McMahon is a clinical psychologist. She is recognized internationally for her writing about the psychological impacts of Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse. In October 2010, I interviewed Kathy about the "pathological optimism" of people who think this fossil economy will just go on forever, like a 1950's TV show.

Here is a description of that speech and interview with Kathy in 2010:

PEAK OIL VS PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM Why are we "the Doomers" for thinking oil is limited? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon ("the Peak Shrink") finds people all over the world are worried about fossil civilization collapsing. In this hot new speech, get answers for our own sanity, in a crazy world. Recorded by Alex Smith. Ecoshock 101029 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB. End music "End of the Age of Oil" by David Rovics. Extra 20 min interview Alex and Kathy here.

KATHY'S BLOG

Keep up to date with Kathy McMahon at her Peak Oil Blues blog here!

In this new in-depth Radio Ecoshock interview, we talk about the way aging baby boomers tend to clog up the airwaves and group thinking. Then we look at the plight of young people captured by big student debt. Check out Kathy's excellent article about the stress of student debt here.

Our main topic though is what Kathy calls "Sucky Collapse". It isn't zombies or fighting in the street. It's the slow and tortuous decline of so many things we take for granted. We hear about someone being assigned a second job, with the same pay, and fewer benefits. The cans of soup cost the same, but they are smaller. While we are waiting for some big event, money is worth less, and gas costs more, until the whole system kind of sucks us down.

I first heard Kathy talk about "sucky collapse" on the "C-Realm" podcast by KMO. That's a good place to check, find KMO's interview with Kathy here. Thanks for the idea, KMO!

Nicole Foss, also known as Stoneleigh from the popular financial blog The Automatic Earth just visited Kathy. We get that inside scoop on what Nicole is like, and what she's up to. Kathy will bring out her own personal interview with Nicole soon. And Nicole has a new 4 DVD set of her speeches and more. Check that out here.

Kathy says we need happiness in our individual lives, even if the larger world is grim. Is your own area overpopulated? If not, maybe it's good to have a child. Get it? Dont' confuse your personal life with the global situation. They are related but not the same!

This is your only time on Earth, you have a RIGHT to seek happiness, to live fully as you can, as ethically as you can, but live it! Don't give up when everyone else does.

It's a deep and helpful interview. If any of you have time to create a transcript, I know that would be useful. Email me first, so we don't waste time with duplicate effort. My email address is radio [at] ecoshock.org

NEXT WEEK ON RADIO ECOSHOCK

Next week on Radio Ecoshock, we'll have more science of course. I'll be talking with one of the big brains on biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy. He introduced the world to the word "biodiversity", helped found the PBS series "Nature", has advised Presidents, the World Bank and much more.

But we'll also go back to psychology and even (gasp!) spirituality. Why? It seems even when we know the facts, humans don't act. We'll explore those mental blocks, and the people who get past all that, with the popular speaker, author, and adviser Dr. Carolyn Baker.

Thank you for lending your brain toward recognition and real recovery. As Kathy McMahon said, we have but one life to live.

Grab lots of free audio from our web site. Please donate or subscribe to the program if you can. More info

here. I'm Alex Smith, saying: be kind to yourself, take it day at a time, and find others to help you through the big change.

We go out the way we came in, with Seattle's Jim Page singing "Who's World Is This?"

A8P7NHRK66XS

A Warning From the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:10:00 PST

Coming up in this program: leading scientist Dr. David Karoly says record heat and fires in Australia are a warning to the world. But we are not alone in the big change. Insects may adapt or die faster than humans, as told by "the bug guy", University of Maryland's Dr. Michael Raup. Then Steven Davis explains why climate solutions advanced just 9 years ago are no longer possible. A new report says existing technology is not enough to stem the climate tide. Now what?

Welcome to another full load from Radio Ecoshock.

FREE MP3 AUDIO DOWNLOADS THIS WEEK

Radio Ecoshock show 130130 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Interview with Dr. David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne,Australia in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Interview with Dr. Michael Raupp, University of Maryland Entomologist in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Interview with Steven J. Davis, Assistant Professor Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED

Be part of the program. Get the voices of cutting edge science and activism widely heard. Find out how you can help here.

TOP SCIENTIST SAYS AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE EXTREMES A WARNING TO THE WORLD

Dr. David Karoly

You've heard about extreme heat and fires in Australia at the start of 2013. Is it climate change? We go now to one of that country's leading climate scientists, Dr. David J. Karoly. He's been a lead IPCC author and advises the Australian government through the Climate Change Authority. After a stint teaching Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, Karoly is now at the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne.

It must have been a bit of culture shock to teach at the University of Oklahoma - a state known for oil and climate denial. But Karoly was invited there to add climate experise, as he taught Meteorology. While there are denialists in Oklahoma, don't generalize! There are plenty of people in Oklahoma who know fossil fuels are damaging the atmosphere.

Listen to the program online with this player:

I called Dr. Karoly to get a top scientists' guage of the extreme weather there in late December 2012, running all through January 2013.

For a taste of Australia's extreme weather lately, try out this video from the Telegraph newspaper in Britain. Australia's Prime Minister says "whether it's bush fires, whether it's floods, we are being challenged by nature."

Karoly tells us heat record after heat record was smashed. The longest run of heat. Many all-time heat record's smashed. And most worrying of all, likely for the first time the whole continent of Australia was under a massive heat dome. Australia is as large as the continental United States, and comparable to the size of Canada. As in North America, it is common to experience very different weather between the coasts, or north to south. California may be cool, while the Mid-Atlantic states roast.

But this time, the whole of Australia was very hot. The country set an all-time record AVERAGE high temperature, indicating it was above 37 degrees C. or 100 degrees F - everywhere on the entire continent. This is new, and it's not good.

Tune into the whole interview with arguably one of the best climate and weather experts in Australia, a fine scientific mind at work.

More here: What's Causing Australia's Heatwave? (written by authors with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

The recent report by the Australian Climate Commission, authored in part by David Karoly, is here as a .pdf : "Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat".

MICHAEL RAUPP - "The Bug Guy"

Dr. Michael Raupp

Television entertains us with weird weather striking all over the world as the planet warms. We see people coping with drought, flooded out, burned out, or blown away. It's all about us, but we are not alone here. The insects are also responding to climate change.

Here to explain is "the bug guy", University of Maryland Entomologist Dr. Michael J. Raupp.

Scientists studying leaf fossils found greatly increased signs of insect damage during the last great global warming event around 56 million years ago. Is it possible we could see a similar bug explosion in just the next hundred years?

We talk about what insects will thrive as climate change develops, and which ones could be in trouble, just like us. Mosquitoes go to the top of the list, because of the tropical diseases they carry. Are you ready for Dengue Fever?

But agricultural pests are also important. We talk food in the future.

I want to add an alert for all our gardener listeners. Be sure and watch Michael Raupp's You tube videos on pest control, including his useful and fun "CSI Garden Pests". One of Mike's books is "26 Things That Bug Me". And check out Mike's weekly insect update at bugoftheweek.com

STEVEN J. DAVIS - BROKEN SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE

Way back in 2004, two Princeton scientists, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, wrote in the journal Science, "[h]umanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the first half of this century, simply by scaling up what we already know how to do". They broke up the problem of greenhouse gas emissions into sections they famously called "wedges". Each represented a sector of pollution with ways to scale that back over 50 years. The authors called it the "wedge stabilization game."

One author, Robert Socolow reaffirmed wedge theory in a 2011 edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Although that same year, Socolow publicly worried that wedge theory made the solutions sound too easy, and so stalled real action.

We didn't do much of anything, except increase emissions. A new article published in the journal "Environmental Research Letters" suggests we've lost that chance, with just those 8 years of delay.

Let's dig into that deeper, with one of the lead authors of the new assessment. Dr. Steven J Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. He's part of a team of scientists who reassessed the famous wedge theory of solving the climate crisis. Find that article "Rethinking Wedges" in the journal "Environmental Research Letters" published in January 2013.

Or start with this good article by Tim Radford at the Climate News Network.

Radford begins:

"LONDON, 11 January – A nine-year delay in starting systematic carbon emission reductions to stabilise the climate has made the challenge ahead almost impossibly large, US scientists say.

They argue in Environmental Research Letters that a programme of action proposed in 2004 could have been achieved with existing technology. Now it cannot.

'We need new ways to generate the vast quantities of power that we now use worldwide,' says Steve Davis of the University of California Irvine, one of the authors. “Current technologies cannot provide this much carbon-free power quickly enough or affordably enough.”

Ken Caldeira is a climate scientist working for the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University in California. He says: 'It’s not enough to freeze greenhouse gas emissions at current levels. To prevent climate change, we need to stop dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an industrial scale.'"

ABOUT GIVING UP

Don't. And don't stop living the only life you have. We are all born into a generation with many circumstances beyond our control. While the world seems to ascend, with a positive spirit, it can also descend, with a general malaise or even despair. Within that national or global cycle, individual lives move by their own tides. You might experience happiness, and should, without guilt.

Coming up on Radio Ecoshock, I'll have an extended chat with Dr. Kathy McMahon, the clinical psychologist who helps people rethink their lives, even in times of great social crisis (whether it's peak oil, climate disruption, or a fall of the fake economy.)

Meantime, Kathy cautions me: this is not the time to give up on the great opportunity of being alive. Enjoy, and remember the future is always constructed from the unexpected.

Thank you for listening. Lots more next week. Be sure to tune in and act out.

Alex

Radio Ecoshock

Can We Avoid A Collapse?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:23:11 PST

"Population Bomb" author & Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich on his Royal Society Paper "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?" From Tasmania, forest expert Dr. David Bowman: wild fires drive more global warming. Economist John Talberth suing the U.S. Government over risky ocean oil leases in the Arctic. Three interviews from a world of trouble. Radio Ecoshock 130123

FREE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS PROGRAM

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Listen to/download the Paul Ehrlich interview (18 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the David Bowman interview (23 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to/download the John Talberth interview (19 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Welcome to another triple-header with Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with three interviews with three great guests.

I'll call Tasmania to learn why it burned and why climate-driven fires threaten all of us. Our guest is world-recognized fire expert David Bowman.

Then we'll investigate why the Obama Administration is rushing to sell off oil and gas rights on the dangerous Outer Continental Shelf. Is that fire-sale meant to fatten a Ponzi scheme of big oil stock prices? Economist John Talberth explains why his group, The Center for Sustainable Economy, is suing the government.

But first Stanford's eminent biologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich (author of "The Population Bomb" and a dozen more) on his new scientific paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The title of this peer-reviewed paper is "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?"

Please don't forget to support Radio Ecoshock. Help pay the bills. Please donate at our web site ecoshock.org, or right here at our show blog at ecoshock.info

PAUL EHRLICH: CAN COLLAPSE BE AVOIDED?

Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich

I'll bet you know who Paul Ehrlich is. But just in case: he's a Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. Maybe you know him for the world-famous book co-authored with his wife Anne, the 1968 classic "The Population Bomb". Since then Paul, with Anne and other authors, has published dozens of books. In February 2011 we interviewed Paul for his latest: "Humanity on a Tightrope", written with Robert Ornstein.

Now Paul and Anne ask a rather extreme question, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society no less: "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?" This peer-reviewed paper was published online January 13th, 2013 in the Biological Sciences section of the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Climate change is on our minds, especially as America comes out of it's hottest year ever, and Australia burns. Yet there are other big threats out there. In fact, I counted nine developing ecological nightmares in Ehrlich's paper, not counting climate change or over-population.

We can't talk with Paul Ehrlich without population. Humans cannot multiply forever. But population is not the focus of this interview.

There is a disaster porn industry these days. But Paul has published in a journal known for science. Is there science behind the possibility civilization collapsing? A couple of dozen scientists reviewed the work and found it solid. Ehrlich notes that 160 different scientific papers were cited. Indeed, if you just followed up on those papers, you would probably develop the equivalent of a college course in the realities of today.

A good part of this Ehrlich paper is devoted to food production. The Ehrlichs have some suggestions on what could be done to avert a crisis. No food crisis for you? There is for more than a billion humans who do not have enough food today. It could get worse, threatening global stability.

I have to pose an inconvenient question. I interviewed Dr. Timothy Garrett from the University of Utah. Two years ago, he published a scientific, peer-reviewed paper showing only a complete collapse of our fossil-based civilization, right now, could avoid crushing climate change. We are a deadly species creating a mass extinction event. Maybe we should help this suicidal system collapse, instead of trying to save it?

Paul replies that for the sake of the people he loves, and the people he knows, he doesn't want to see such a harsh solution.

Paul told Stephen Leahy of the Independent Press Service "We are all scared." The people frightened are not just scientists, but anyone who either has the expertise, or educates themselves, on the various challenges to our civilization, a system which is far more fragile than we want to believe. By the way, I wouldn't have found out about this paper without the independent environmental journalist Stephen Leahy. Please visit his web site, and support his efforts.

There is far too much to this interview, with one of the grand older men of science and popular culture, to list here. Please listen for yourself.

DAVID BOWMAN: FIRE AND GLOBAL WARMING

Professor David Bowman, University of Tasmania

Sydney and Melbourne his more record highs this week, as the Australian super heat wave continues. This is our future friends - so let's tune in for a listen.

The image of kids in the water clinging to a dock, under a fire-red sky, captured the situation. The great Australian heat wave of 2013 also struck the southern-most part of the country, the island of Tasmania. Maybe this is the future anywhere trees grow, as global warming heats the planet.

Professor David Bowman is at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, teaching and researching Forest Ecology. He's a published expert on fire in the earth system.

When Dunalley Tasmania burned, Bowman was out of contact in the bush. He told his research team fire conditions were catastrophic, the worst he'd seen. Just last year Bowman was so concerned about the growing fire risk, he wrote the media a warning (which was ignored).

Listen to the 20 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with David Bowman.

While the public thinks a couple of wet seasons after a drought is a good thing, forest experts around the world know that is the most dangerous time. The rain creates new fuel for bush fires - which are more likely as the planet heats up.

It gets worse when slow-growing tree species get burned over in relatively quick succession. Fires that would normally return in perhaps 75 years come back in 5 years. Bowman says some forest ecologies in the Southern Hemisphere are converting toward super fireweed species. For example the Australian Alps are in danger of an ecosystem change.

The climate impacts from fire soot has also been underestimated in climate models, Bowman suggests. The black particles absorb the sun's heat, raising warming. Fire smoke is a complex mix of chemicals which are also responsible for many deaths around the world. Much more needs to be understood about them.

We also discuss the extreme fire risk of the trend to plant Eucalyptus trees around the world, including in California and the Mediterranean. The Eucalyptus, Bowman thinks, may be a real fire tree.

David Bowman has also been working with an extended family of aboriginal people in Northern Australia over the past 15 years, trying to learn what they know about fire. That relationship is unique, with fire being a part of aboriginal culture. Too bad the colonists didn't learn from them.

Learn a lot in one short interview. This kind of fire becomes a positive feedback effect on the climate. More fires lead to more warming, which leads to more fires.

STOPPING DRILLING ON THE U.S. OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF - JOHN TALBERTH

John Talberth is the senior economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy, which is based in New Mexico.

Why Is the Economy Shrinking? - Richard Heinberg

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 21:15:48 PST

Endless growth is a delusion with consequences...The spiral of climate change, peak energy, and economic crisis, with author Richard Heinberg. Fresh interview on giant new book "Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth". Followed by speech to Chicago Bioneers "Life After Growth: Why the Economy Is Shrinking and What to Do About It”. Radio Ecoshock 130116

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show (1 hour) in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to Richard Heinberg's speech to the Chicago Great Lakes Bioneers conference (42 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Download/listen to my Radio Ecoshock interview with Richard Heinberg (17 minutes)in CD Quality or Lo-fi.

Please donate to Radio Ecoshock from our blog, or from our web site. Your financial help keeps me digging and broadcasting the awful truth.

NEW! 2 part video version of our Radio Ecoshock interview with Richard Heinberg, about the book "Energy: Overdevelopment" featuring images from the big book!

You tube Part 1 (9 min)

Part 2 (9 min)

And now, one with the show.

Richard Heinberg, California.

Eye-popping, jaw-dropping, - I'm out of words to describe the tsunami of agencies and experts admitting our troubles are bigger than our brains.

But this week we're going to step back from brink. I want to explore what it means. But who can assemble the currents of climate change, peak energy, and a delusional economy into a big picture? Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute is one of the few who consistently keeps track of all three. He's the author of 10 books including "The Party’s Over", "Peak Everything", and "The End of Growth".

I start by calling Richard up about a very big new book, and then we'll hear his assessment from his keynote speech at the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference in Chicago. I knew some of the facts Richard brings out, but I didn't know how these forces of collapse interact, or when.

THE BIGGEST BOOK I'VE EVER OWNED

I wanted to give Richard Heinberg Hell for wasting resources on an eight pound monster book - about wasting precious resources!

The book "Energy, Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth" is so big, I had to clear off my desk just to look at it. But then I got sucked in, by 2 foot photos of the-wide photos of the nasty industrial mess hiding behind our cars and smart-phones. Why didn't I know it's that bad out there?

The book has huge photos of even larger landscapes, places wrecked by our insatiable need for more and more energy. I began to wonder: why don't we see these images in the media, or in our daily lives? Are they censored, or is it because we don't want to look?

For one thing, Richard points out, if you don't have a private plane, you'll never see most of these energy reserves. They are generally in the out back lands. Plus, since 911, most of these energy farms have private security guards and the threat of being labeled a terrorist if you are there taking pictures.

I've seen horrible photos of the Canadian Tar sands oozing across the scarred landscape, as far as the eye can see. But until this book, I didn't realize the vast impact of conventional oil and gas production. Richard and I talk about "energy sprawl".

I was taken by the paper by the former Director of the C.I.A., R. James Woolsey. He says we are ready to spend billions fighting malevolent groups like Al Queda, but we totally unwilling to even talk about what he calls the "malignant threats" like system collapse of things like our electric grid, or the climate. Richard Heinberg has experienced that unwillingness to look, talk, and act for much of his professional life.

Surprisingly, this book includes green favorites like wind energy and solar farms as "blighted industrial landscape". And yet, despite the hard-headed figures on world energy sources and things like return on energy investment, I was surprised by the photos and essays on the importance of wild places and the species that live there. Is this a return to the old environmentalism?

Along those lines, I notice the flagship web site and discussion spot for the Post Carbon Institute has changed from the well-known "Energy Bulletin" to a completely new site, Resilience.org Richard Heinberg explains why, and notes some of the new resources aimed at helping us all relocalize.

He also says you can read some of the essays from the book online at resilience.org as time develops, from luminaries like Wendell Berry, James Hansen, David Orr, Amory Lovins, Sandra Steingraber, Juan Pablo Orrega and just too many more to mention. The essays are also found in the book "Energy Reader", available from the Post Carbon Institute. This Reader, Heinberg says, is already being used in some college classes.

The book "Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth" was published with the help of the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which also spearheaded other activist large format books, including CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and a great rainforest book.

Find the Radio Ecoshock coverage of CAFO - Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations The horrible truth about our meat production practices. Interview with Daniel Imhoff, editor of 2 new books on factory farm production. From Ecoshock 101015 Lo-Fi 4 MB 19 min

THE MEETING OF CLIMATE DISRUPTION, ENERGY DECLINE, AND ECONOMIC CRISIS or "Why the Economy Is Shrinking".

How do climate change, energy problems, and the fragile economy interact? And which will hit us worst and first? Let's hear Richard Heinberg add it all up at this keynote speech at the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference in Chicago, on November 2nd, 2012. This was recorded for Radio Ecoshock by Kelly Pierce of the Chicago Independent Media Center. The talk is titled “Life After Growth: Why the Economy Is Shrinking and What to Do About It”. We take you there. Find the links to listen to or download this speech by Richard Heinberg above.

Find Richard at richardheinberg.com. The helpful PCI news and discussion board is resilience.org.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock.

Thank you for listening to the big picture.

Burning the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:53:22 PST

Fires in Tasmania, typhoons in the Philippines, Mexican coal criminals - another work week for Radio Ecoshock. Environmental journalist for the Nation, Mark Hertsgaard on book "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth". Robert M. Hirsch of U.S. Geological Survey on real cause of floods. Radio Ecoshock 130109 1 hour.
Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
Download/listen to the Mark Hertsgaard interview only in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
Download/listen to the Robert Hirsch interview only in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Welcome to another attempt to save reality from a whirlpool of superstition, wishful thinking, and propaganda. You and I will work through the biggest change humanity has ever faced. But what is climate change, and what is not? Can we hear the signal through the noise?
Scientists know the world is warming, seas are rising, and ice is melting. The denial is all over. Economic realists also know the era of never-ending growth powered by fossil fuels is also drawing to a close. Like any population in nature, we cannot grow forever.
Those certainties reveal themselves in a slow grind, and in sudden jolts. There are still a lot of guesses bound to be proved wrong. There is still room for doubt in the details.
THE MYTH OF JELLYFISH
Here is just one small example: I have reported on the surge of Jellyfish in many parts of the world, especially in the Mediterranean. Ocean specialists have suggested this could be a result of overfishing, or ocean acidification caused by incessant dumping of carbon into the atmosphere.
But now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, says "Recurrent jellyfish blooms are a consequence of global oscillations." Here is an easier to understand version from Science Daily.
One author is Cathy Lucas from the University of Southampton. Another is ocean expert Carlos Duarte who I interviewed in our February 15th, 2012 show.
A careful investigation shows there has been no increase in jellyfish over the past two hundred years. It's a boom and bust species. There was another jelly wave in the 1970's but nobody paid much attention. Another myth bites the dust.
COMING UP IN THIS SHOW
Later in this program we're going to tackle a great divide between some climate scientists, and the flood engineers and experts in the United States. I've covered the wild floods in Nashville in May 2010 when the Grand Old Opry went underwater. There were more floods in Wisconsin and Minnesota that fall.
Are these heavily news-laden flood events a sure sign of global warming? Maybe not, says Robert M. Hirsch, research hydrologist and a former Associate Director for Water of the U.S. Geological Survey.. Hirsch isn't a climate denier. He knows the world is warming, and these floods are mostly human caused - but not from greenhouse gases. It's a tricky problem which will work our brains, as we talk with one of the prominent experts in American river systems and flooding.
If the hydrological cycle is still one of the wild cards waiting to be seen, the promise of growing heat on this planet is as sure as the laws of physics. More carbon in the atmosphere traps heat energy that would otherwise have bounced back into space. We've known that for more than a hundred years.
In just a few minutes, I'm going to chat with one of the best environmental journalists, Mark Hertsgaard. I've been waiting for this talk, while Mark wrapped up key articles for the Nation magazine and just recently Newsweek. While his seven year old daughter waits in the room, Mark has to explain what we will all have to explain to our children: the climate has already been disrupted, and will change still more. Hertsgaard's latest book is "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth".
AUSTRALIA: WELCOME BACK TO CLIMATE BURN-OUT

I want to welcome our first full-time radio station to broadcast Radio Ecoshock in Australia. 3CR has been one of those activist community stations pounding at the corridors of power and injustice since 1976. That furthers my own vision for a global English-language program as we witness and create the great change, in climate, energy, agriculture, and society, in order to survive the passing industrial civilization.
It's a strange synchronicity. I just wrote an Australian scientist for an interview, saying it seemed like the land down under was getting a break from the weird dangerous weather that struck that continent from 2009 onwards. Then on the fifth of January, starting out the new year in the Australian summer, I hear this from the Australian News Network.
news.com.au clip "Australia Boils as Extreme Heat Hits"
You heard that right. Parts of Australia went hit 47 degrees C and more, that's over 117 degrees Fahrenheit. The average for the whole country was 39, a sweltering 102 Fahrenheit. Find more in this article in the UK newspaper the Telegraph.
Here is what blows me away: the extreme heat was in the South of Australia, not in the tropical North where you might expect it. In the capital of South Australia, Adelaide, the thermometer went over 45 degrees. That's 113. Nobody goes outside of air-conditioned spaces in that kind of heat.
And then there's dear Tasmania, that coolish island pointing toward Antarctica. The Tasmanian capital of Hobart peaked out at 41.8 degrees C, the highest since record keeping began 120 years ago.
That's the kind of extreme we need to watch out for, as this relentless warming develops during the next decade.
The heat wave and lack of rainfall created ideal conditions for brushfires across southern Australia. Tasmania ignited into at least a dozen fires, in a land known for its wet cool forests. At least a hundred homes burned, and a town of Dunalley was destroyed, as we hear from ABC News Australia.
I played a bit of that clip to prepare all of us for the probability that super heat will stimulate burning forests in many parts of the world. Maybe even close to your home. What will you do? The Tasmanian bush will regrow, but some global forests will never regrow, converting over to grasslands, to entirely new ecosystems.
Australia is not escaping this year, from the signs that country is destroying its own living space, by ramping up their coal mining and exports. It's a race to the fiery bottom, mates. No more coal.
THE SUPER TYPHOON IN THE PHILIPPINES NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
Speaking of extremes, here is another wild storm the press in the Northern Hemisphere mostly missed. You've heard about Hurricane Sandy, but what about super-typhoon Bopha? Not so much.
All credit to CNN weatherman Tom Sater for picking up on another climate-powered breakthrough, reported December 4th 2012.
[CNN clip]
This time, only hundreds died in the Philippines, not thousands as in the much smaller Cyclone Washi, aka Sendong in December 2011. This study linked the Philippines storm directly to climate change.
I guess part of my point is there is a southern hemisphere. Big things happen in countries that don't have major international news services. The climate is going out of control outside London or New York. We need a system of monitors, blogs, news and alerts to remind us a global problem is unfolding. There are so many untold stories in South America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. And so many ears who tune all that out.
MEXICAN DRUG LORDS TURN TO COAL
I'll wrap up this ramble with just one more story that caught my eye this week. Al Jazeera reports the Mexican drug gang called the Zetas cartel, is moving into coal mining.
Reporter John Holman writes on January 4, 2013:
"On October 7, Mexican marines swooped in on one of the most powerful men in organized crime. But as the navy triumphantly announced the death of Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the Zetas gang, there was puzzlement over where he had been found. Far from the Zeta's strongholds and practically unprotected, he had been watching a baseball game in the small mining village of Progreso.
Theories abounded as to what exactly Lazcano had been doing in Progreso, a one horse town in the wide open spaces of the southern state of Coahuila. Humberto Moreira, ex-governor of Coahuila says that he has the answer: 'Heriberto Lazcano changed from being a killer, kidnapper and drug dealer to something still more lucrative: mining coal. That’s why he lived in the coal region, in a little village called Progreso.'
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Moreira says that the Zetas gang is fast discovering that illegal mining is an even more lucrative venture than drug running.
'They discover a mine, extract the coal, sell it at $30, pay the miners a miserable salary... It's more lucrative than selling drugs.'
"
The Mexican government has confirmed the drug gangs have infiltrated the coal mines in the State of Coahuila.
Why do I think this matters? It says everything about where we are going.
COAL IS CRIMINAL IN THE U.S. TOO
Sure there is already a criminal conspiracy to mine climate-damaging coal in the United States. In fact, two U.S. Senators have just called for an investigation into the low rates given to big coal mining corporations on publicly owned lands in the Powder River Basin of Eastern Montana and Wyoming.
After a call by western ranchers, the Reuters news service investigated how Cloud Peak Energy Corp, Arch Coal, and Peabody Energy Group got such low royalties, while making a fortune exporting the coal to Asia. Criminal charges are possible.
Everybody with a brain knows it's just as criminal to blow the tops of Appalachian mountains for coal. Plus the coal lobby has their dirty hands in the federal government in Washington for a generation or two, making sure the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't clear up the air too much. Millions have died breathing dirty coal pollution around the world. The Zeta gang could never kill so many as the "legal" coal industry does, or make so many billions of dollars doing it.
But I think organized crime is the future of coal. As more people around the world realize they can't cope with extreme climate damage, they will demand an end to coal. We can't rebuild fast enough from major climate damage, can't find the money or the will. We can't stand the floods, heat waves and droughts. Months of hot cities well over 35 degrees, in the hundreds, will motivate a lot of people. Eventually, many of us can't survive in a four degree warmer world.
When that social tipping point comes, there will be a "War on Coal" just like the failed wars or terrorism or drugs. Where governments try to suppress the last killing mines, organized crime will fill the need. Coal will come out of the "black market", literally the "underground economy". It won't surprise me if a minor war is fought in a coming decade, not to get the coal, but to stop it from reaching the damaged atmosphere.
And how will we survive then? Mark Hertsgaard is here to tell us.
ENVIRONMENT JOURNALIST MARK HERTSGAARD: HOT LIVING

Mark Hertsgaard and daughter
First climate change was coming. Now it's here in storms, rising seas, strange weather and much more. Our guest Mark Hertsgaard first came to my attention with his late 1990's book "Earth Odyssey: Around the World In Search of Our Environmental Future". That came after a quest of many years to find our impact on the natural world. Since then, I've read Mark's leading edge work in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, the New Yorker, and in his current post as environment reporter for The Nation.
Mark's latest book is "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth". Find his web site at markhertsgaard.com.
We talk about "the end of Pasta", why Latinos, African Americans and youth are the new environmentalists, and much more.
FLOODS: ENGINEERS VS CLIMATE SCIENTISTS - DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

Robert (Bob) Hirsch, USG
Are there more floods? Is it climate change? Our guest is Robert M. Hirsch, a well-known research hydrologist, and high ranking water expert for the United States Geological Survey.
I was surprised to find there is another whole community dealing with the year-to-year reality of floods in the United States.
I've been in correspondence with Geoff Bonnin at the National Atmosphere and Ocean Administration. He's very cautious about assigning a big role for climate change in the remarkable floods we've seen in the past 3 years or so. I'm thinking of The Mississippi River floods in the Spring of 2011, one of the worst recorded in the past century, or the strange 2010 flooding of Nashville.
Hirsch is an expert's expert on this subject. You need to hear his explanation. If I can paraphrase a difficult subject, Hirsch says yes the increased flooding is human caused - but brought about by changes to the water system on the ground. We're talking about paving over so much ground, putting rivers in concrete banks, building subdivisions on wetlands and so on.
Hirsch's study of wild rivers that have escaped this redevelopment shows they have not been flooding more against the historic record. And both Hirsch and Bonnin caution that strange floods, some that appear once in a hundred years, or five hundred, are just a fact of history.
In late 2012, Brisbane Australia and its surroundings experienced what some called "an inland tsunami". It was a flash flood. But Brisbane's streets turned into rivers back in 1893, before there was atmospheric change.
Some of the disagreement with the climate community comes down to a different definition of "extreme rainfall" and a different perspective on how we understand flood events.
Personally, I still have a lot more to learn about this subject, but at least came away with a more scientific caution about making climate change an assumed cause of all the weird weather we see.
I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening and tune in next week, as Radio Ecoshock takes on the world.
Please help this radio mission keep going, by making a donation. Find the "Donate" button at the top right of our show blog, or at our web site, ecoshock.org

Dragging Hope from the Mess

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:54:32 PST

After a look at weird weather around the world, passionate pleas from people victimized by nuke waste & plutonium. Recorded at NIRS Conference Chicago 121201. Then Your Environmental Road Trip film director Ben Evans on great solutions found at the grass roots. Radio Ecoshock 130102

FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality 56 MB

Or try the faster downloading, lower quality Lo-Fi version(14 MB)

You can listen to/download just the nuclear segment here in CD quality, or in Lo-Fi.

Here is the 24 minute lively interview with Ben Evans, the Director of "Your Environmental Road Trip" in CD quality or Lo-Fi

MORE ROGUE WEATHER

Welcome back from the holidays! And what a strange time it was for species in the Northern Hemisphere.

Let's take a quick look at Christmas day 2012 for example. In Southern France, people were sunbathing and swimming in the Bay of Biscay. It was 24 degrees C. or a balmy 75 degrees, 12 degrees above normal.

On the very same day, about 83 people were found dead of extreme cold in the Ukraine. A huge cold snap descended on Moscow, where the temperature dipped to minus 25 degrees Celsius, 13 below Fahrenheit. Russians expect that maybe later in the winter, but not in December. At least 125 people died in the extreme cold there, and dozens more in Poland, which suffered unusual cold.

That continent sized cold wave extended all the way to China. Beijing, temperatures dropped to about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. minus 15 degrees Celsius, the lowest temperature for the area since 1985.

Not in the UK. Britons suffered yet another deluge, in what has turned out to be the wettest year in the history of that famously wet island. Twenty twelve was the year the rain hardly ever stopped.

In the Southern U.S. rare Christmas tornados ripped in. Snow fell in Dallas, just the start of a one-two snow storm that traveled up through the Mid-West to New England and Eastern Canada.

At the end of December, Montreal Canada - a city fairly well-known for heavy snow dumps, experienced the heaviest snowfall in 24 hours ever. Not just for that day in history, I mean the most snow to fall in 24 hours in our records. At least 45 centimeters fell on Thursday, topping the previous high of 41 centimeters in March 1971. That's 18 inches - and over two feet fell in other parts of the Province. That is an extreme precipitation event!

Remember, it was like spring in Eastern Canada and most of the United States in early December, just two weeks previously. Over 400 heat records were set in the U.S. in December, with people in T-shirts at 70 degrees in Chicago, and jogging in shorts in Central Park. A huge change.

There are few instances in major American media revealing the cause of unstable weather. It's a wildly fluctuating jet stream, just as I've been documenting on Radio Ecoshock for some time. Looking at these weather swings in the Northern Hemisphere, I was haunted by the description by Ecoshock guest Paul Beckwith in our December 19th show. Paul nails exactly what is happening.

The European media is generally more up on their science, and less dependent on climate denial. When the BBC looks into Britain's never-ending rain, they find the scientists who explain the big waves of the Jet stream, that stick and stall in certain weather patterns.

Professor Tim Palmer, Oxford

Tim Palmer, professor of climate physics at the University of Oxford, explains: “When the jet stream moves up to the north, and then travels back down to the UK, it brings with it cold air, blizzards, very severe and unpleasant weather from that perspective.

“On the other hand, when the jet stream moves south, then we get these periods of intense flooding, which we have seen through the second part of this year.”

But Professor Palmer says that with climate change, the jet stream could become far more variable.

He says: “The question of how it will change is still a very active research problem, and we don’t have clear-cut answers yet.

“But I think there is quite a big possibility that what we will see is the jet stream undergoing quite dramatic and erratic excursions. And the UK’s geographical position under the jet stream means that we could see the worst of this."

Prof Palmer explains: “I think it is a bit unwise, and possibly even a bit dangerous, to think that the climate of the UK will just gradually warm and we’ll transition to a more balmy southern European climate.

And you'll recall that 2011 was just the opposite in Great Britain. They suffered a major drought that hurt agriculture. Wild, wild swings in extreme weather. What could possibly cause that? Who could have foreseen it?

Scientists have predicted exactly that scenario for more than a decade. Even the staid Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change felt driven to release a special report on extreme weather events in a warming world. Most of them thought, even I thought, we'd see big the really big disruption coming much later, perhaps by 2030 or 2040. But just like the record melt-back of the Arctic sea ice, and the quickening pace of glacier melt, severe climate change is coming much faster than we thought.

As Professor Palmer says, it's a mistake to picture a gradual warming that will make cool places more pleasant and winters a happy season. Instead, we're going to get buffeted by big temperature swings and extreme precipitation events, whether in rain or snow. Welcome to the new normal, when nothing is normal.

All that is going to hurt the plant and animal world. Which means unpredictable food prices as well. Who can predict when the flooded fields will allow planting in Britain, or when the U.S. West and mid-west will get enough water to feed cattle and corn?

These conditions also cost governments more and more. The paralyzed and nearly bankrupt American government still had not passed the sixty billion dollar aid package for Hurricane Sandy victims. That's not to speak of the multi-billions we now know are needed for storm surge protection for major American cities like New York, Washington, and many more.

The British government is also broke and slashing budgets - including the very flood defense money they need right now. As John Vidal reports in the Guardian newspaper December 28th, the UK government is cutting flood protection money. They'd cut 95 million pounds a year until the embarrassing floods in Wales this past October. Now there are bigger promises to spend more over many years, but it's still less than previous governments allotted to flood protection.

My point is simple: due to a combination economic fraud at the highest levels of banking, wild government misallocation of funds, continued militarism and the consumer dream of infinite growth - we are socially fragile just as climate damage is beginning. These are very early days of climate disruption and we are handling it badly if at all.

Our best hope is the continued cost of punishing climate change could divert military spending into climate resilience, concurrent with a demand for a rapid shift away from fossil fuels.

You can comment in this Radio Ecoshock show blog. Or write me with your tips and ideas. My email address is radio [a]t ecoshock dot org.

Don't forget to donate to keep this program going, if you can. Find the donate button on this page.

Meanwhile, watch out for those big waves in the Jet Stream, and hope you are on the right side of the bend. It will help is you can use what you learn on Radio Ecoshock to educate your friends, family, and neighbors to the real causes of the so-called "weird weather".

THE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE CONTINUES

Next up in this week's show we look at nuclear hot spots all around America. That's partly to honor the world's leading anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. After 197 shows, Caldicott is ending her radio show called "If You Love This Planet". She wants to concentrate on organizing conferences and books, starting with the Symposium on The Medical and Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, to be held at the New York Academy of Medicine in March 2013. Get the details at Helencaldicott.com.

There is a huge pile of stinking badness coming from the nuclear mafia in the United States. Two states are begging for tons of the worst radiation on earth, deadly plutonium. And a small village in Alaska is the testing ground for a new push of mini-reactors the big corporations want you to swallow, now that their so-called "renaissance" of giant reactors has failed.

Imagine you know and love your state, province or region deeply. You adventure through the highlands, gaze over rivers that seem almost sacred in their beauty. You imagine that timeless gift passing down through the generations. So how do you feel when your government teams up with some mega-corporation to experiment with radioactive materials that remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years? When they truck bomb-grade plutonium along your freeways and neighborhoods?

On December 1st 2012, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, or NIRS held their Mountain of Waste 70 Years High Conference in Chicago, USA. I got this audio courtesy of Dale Lehman at WZRD the free-form radio station operating from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

I play you the introductions to the guests for the panel at the conference, in case you want to download the full audio. Then we get to the fireworks during the Q and A.

The first-rate panelists were no match for the residents and activists that are hopping mad about horrible machinations to irradiate and endanger their home grounds, from South Carolina, through the South West, all the way to Alaska. You have to listen to the pain and betrayal in South Carolina, as the government works on "the factory to nowhere". That will mix super-dangerous plutonium with merely insanely dangerous enriched uranium to create the so-called "MOX" reactor fuel.

ROBERT ALVAREZ, Institute for Policy Studies

As Robert "Bob" Alvarez from the Institute for Policy Studies explains, by the time they finish this five billion dollar manufacturing plant, most of the nuclear reactors that could have burned this MOX fuel will be shut down. Other estimates show the lifetime cost of this boondoggle at $20 to $25 billion dollars.

The reactors only burn about 20% of the plutonium in the fuel, meaning the resulting "spent" fuel is so hot it has to cool for about 150 years before it could be stored in any geological facility, if America had a geological storage facility. That's one hundred and fifty years of babysitting and never failing to cool this radioactive nightmare waste just to power more outdoor lights and consumer electricity waste.

Susan Corbett of the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club was in the audience. She worries the U.S. government-controlled TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) reactors, old as they are, will be ordered to burn this billion dollar MOX fuel.

Even worse, the state of South Carolina is begging for the whole country's nuclear waste, now that Yucca Mountain has failed! That is such treason for Carolinians. We have to ask ourselves why governments go suicidal, even terroristic, on their own people? Only big lobby money and the hope of endless government subsidies could explain it.

The same dangerous plutonium game is going on in New Mexico, where tons of plutonium are being shipped to the Los Alamos facility to make more highly radioactive fuel rods that nobody wants.

We might as well poison the whole Yukon River basin with nuclear waste too. Why leave the Arctic without a whack of radioactivity. Thank you Toshiba Corporation. That Japanese mega-company is trying to sell a village of 800 people a "mini-reactor" to be buried 100 feet below the permafrost (until that melts) in the Yukon River flood plain.

NIKOS PASTOS

You hear from Nikos Pastos, co-founder of Alaska's Big Village Network. Find their blog entry about the Chicago conference here.

Now that the big reactor "renaissance" has died after the Fukushima melt-downs, expect to fight off these mini-nukes in your backyard.

To know why we don't want any of this, I play you a clip from former industry VP Arnie Gundersen, now with the consulting firm Fairewinds.com. When Gundersen was in Tokyo last spring on a book tour, he grabbed 5 samples of soil in Tokyo and bagged them in plastic. Back in the USA, Arnie had them tested - and all of them would qualify as dangerous radioactive waste under American law. Common soil in Tokyo is radioactive from the Fukushima reactor blow-out. Millions of people are living with radioactive materials - and that will last for centuries.

You can download the full audio for this session from radio4all.net or even the whole series. I found this audio courtesy of Dale Lehman at WZRD the free-form radio station operating from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL ROAD TRIP

What if you could spend a year on the road, visiting all the cool projects in America? You'd interview the big names, and cover the big cities trying to become sustainable. But you'd also hunt down interesting folks socked away on the back roads, with unique projects that really work.

Save your gas money and the greenhouse gas emissions. Now it's been done. You can go on a voyage discovering that unknown country, the really smart America, with a new film. It's called "YERT" standing for "Your Environmental Road Trip". Check out their web site - there is lots to do and see there!

The movie producer is Mark Dixon. A co-conspirator and YERT tripper is Julie Dingman Evans. Our guest is her husband and the film's Director Ben Evans.

This film is loaded. We have lots to talk about. There is a list out a bunch of the famous names interviewed, but the real stars for me are all the creative people I would never have known about, including rural back-to-the-landers, and people with great ideas to make cities where most us live more sustainable.

This is one of the big messages I got out of the YERT film. From bloggers to newspapers, it's all about how awful things are in America. Collapse is right around the corner, and Americans suck. But this film shows just how dangerous it is to generalize about a few hundred million people. To abuse George Bush's slogan, they found a thousand points of light out there in the darkness. It helps tip the doom meter toward the creative solvers found.

Dixon and the Evans attack some of the heaviest subjects without blinking. Yes, we're heading over several final cliffs. And yet I found myself laughing during the movie. The road-trip team seems to be having fun all along. They also take on some Survivor-like challenges as they go along, including packing all the waste they create into their already overloaded car. It ain't easy trying to be green on the road in America!

This is one of the best films of 2012 in my opinion. Lively, full of interesting characters and really helpful suggestions without being preachy at all. You can arrange a screening, or buy the CD at yert.com

Thanks for listening again this week. And welcome to our new Australian station in Melbourne, 3CR 855 AM, starting Sunday January 6th.

Alex

Annual Ecoshock Green Music Festival 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:42:20 PST

The Radio Ecoshock annual best of Green music festival. Eclectic mix of voices found or sent in by the artists, mood music for a climate-safe, species-friendly world. Radio Ecoshock 121229 1 hour.

Download in CD Quality (56 MB) recommended for this music show.

If you are on a slow connection, you can use this lower quality Lo-Fi version (14 MB)

****

Welcome to the annual Radio Ecoshock Green Music Festival. All year people send in their favorites, and even original recordings direct from the artists. Everyone has a different taste in music, and I've tried to touch a lot of countries and styles. But really, these are my picks. I have to enjoy the song, before it makes this mix. It's time to reflect on the bad news and the good vibes that only artists can bring us.

********************

PLAYLIST WITH SOURCES AND NOTES:

[1] Craig Anderton "When the Grid Goes Down"

Watch it on You tube.

We kick off with a vision of dystopia. Craig Anderton wrote and performed "When the Grid Goes Down", thinking of the electric grid knocked out by a solar storm. Radio Ecoshock has covered this awful possibility, where the whole system goes down for month or years. This is remixed and mastered version released in October 2012.

Craig has been doing the music scene a long time. He had three albums out when he was in his 20's back in the 1970's. Craigs a specialist in electronic music and mixing. Find him at craiganderton.com.

This is the mixed and mastered version of "When the Grid Goes Down," and includes a video. Written and performed by Craig Anderton. Drums: Greg Morrow, Damage. Bass: Juliette Duval.

------------------

[2] Jack Johnson "Gone"

*****

Back from the brink of disaster, we find the softer Jack Johnson singing about our the vacuum of consumer culture, in this song titled "Gone." Johnson is an American surfer singer with more than five albums out. He organizes the annual Kokua Festival in Hawaii.

See video and lyrics here.

------------------

[3] Karen Savoca "Two Little Feet"

******

Next up "Two Little Feet" by Karen Savoca. Karen stands and delivers with her big bass drum, and the excellent guitar work of Pete Heitzman. Her latest album is "Promise" recorded in their 19th century church studio in the hills of upstate New York. It's available from CDBaby.com - and check out her earlier album "In the Dirt" for some back-to-the-land music. Find more at karensavoca.com.

******

[4] Rachel Van Zanten "My Country"

********************

I love it when a rocker and singer gets active for what she loves. Rachel Van Zanten is from Northern British Columbia, but she toured 11 years with bands. Now Rachel as a solo artist, writes this powerful anthem "My Country" about the First Nations people and their battle against Tar Sands pipelines and fracking damage to their land.

******************

Official video for this song here.

--------------

[5] REM "Until the Day Is Done".

*****

Always biting on the social scence hitmakers REM brought this one out on the album "Accelerate". It's called "Until the Day Is Done"This is the American rock band from Athens, Georgia who conquered the world. After entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, the band split up in 2011.

********************

REM fansite.

--------------------

[6] Vastmandana "No More Denial"

****************

Out of Oakland, California, from the multi-talented musician and master gardener Dana Pearson, playing as Vastmandana. This sample clip "No More Denial" is one of many pieces Dana provided to Radio Ecoshock from his collection of one-man-band electronic instruments.

Listen to his music as Vastman at soundclick.com

************

[7] Red Valley Fog "Come Winter"

************

Part of the new climate awareness music coming out of the folk genre, Singer Ben Grosscup is with the Massachusetts Chapert of the Northeast Organic Farming Association. The song "Come Winter" was written by Ethan Miller, bu Grosscup and his buddy Dan Inglis have the only recording of it.

Find their music here.

*********************

[8] Dan Mangan "Sold"

**************

From Vancouver, Canada, Dan Mangan is an award-winning international writer and singer. After his hit album "Nice, Nice, Very Nice" Mangan shone forth with some gorgeous blends of music and dreamy electronica in his newest called "Oh Fortune". His web site is danmanganmusic.com.

We play his song "Sold".

*****************

His web site is http://www.danmanganmusic.com -------------------

[9] Gil Scott Heron "Shut 'em Down"

******************

This anti-nuclear song comes from the late African American poet, jazzman, musician and author Gil Scott Heron. He passed in 2011, and is sorely missed. One of Gil's best known spoken poems is "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." "Shut 'em Down" came out in 1979.

*****************

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron "Shut 'em Down" came out in 1979. Find it on You tube.

------------------

[10] Evan Greer "Even If the End Is Near"

******************

Love for the hardest of times, from Evan Greer and Friends. Evan describes himself as a radical queer social justice singer/songwriter. Greer's home base is in Boston. He or she has sung with all the greats, covered the big causes, and is pushing toward personal greatness in everything from folk to punk. His/her website is evangreer.org. Check out the latest song "I Want Something" but my pick for this show is "Even If The End Is Near".

*****************

[11] SkarKat "End of Days"

**************

Next up is the dark "End of Days" from Scarkat. This rapper was born in Dubai, then struggled to make it as an immigrant in Toronto, Canada. I cleaned up this version a bit for radio, but Scarkat sees it all happening. Find him here.

*********************

[12] Earthrise Soundsystem "Ajnabee - Stranger"

**************

OK this next short song "Ajnabee" or "Stranger" isn't a green song. I just find this short piece of Indian blend inspiring when things look bad. The music comes from a duo of techno musicians doing a lot of Yoga music for White Swan records: DJ, writer, and yogi Derek Beres teams up with producer/percussionist Duke Mushroom. Derek's yoga sessions have been on all the big networks. And check out their bio to find the astounding list of big name artists who worked with Duke Mushroom.

Their web site is earthrisesoundsystem.com.

**************

[13] Ben Sollee "Panning for Gold"

*************

I'm not religious, and yet this song clicked with me. Maybe it's the disarray we humans make. I heard it first in the new film YERT, Your Environmental Road Trip. Ben Sollee's "Panning for Gold" is from his latest album "Half Made Man" Ben is relatively young, from Kentucky, with a full range ear for performance art. Plus, Sollee plays his own Cello. Check out his song "Bury With My Car", and more at bensollee.com.

************

[14] Australian kids "Protect the World"

*************

It's time for the kids to sing. It's their future at stake. This group from Australia does a good job with "Protect the World". The music comes from an online video by Shakti Burke for Kyogle Climate Action Network. I found it at generationgreen.tv Search for their Top 6 Environmental Songs and you'll find some good green videos.

*********************

[15] Tina Turner. "A Change Is Gonna Come"

****************

We'll end with one of the most famous songs written by Sam Cooke, and first recorded in 1963. This live recording with master guitarist Robert Cray comes from the 1980's, when Tina Turner was touring in Europe. The American superstar Tina Turner can inspire us to carry on. I believe it. A change is gonna come. We will see it through together.

*******************

Her official web site.

Catch this on You tube.

*******************

Check out our regular programs each week on 63 radio stations in the United States, Canada, the UK, and occasionally Australia. Download Radio Ecoshock by Itunes podcast or from our web site at ecoshock.org. I'm Alex Smith, signing off from the annual Radio Ecoshock Festival of Green Music.

Thanks for being there.

Climate: Arctic Thermostat Blows Up

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:16:09 PST

The Arctic thermostat for the world is broken, with record heat & emissions in 2012. Four speakers from Arctic Methane Emergency group film: Peter Wadhams, James Hansen, Natalia Shakhova, and David Wasdell. Plus interview with AMEG member Paul Beckwith from University of Ottawa. How polar ice-melt derails climate of Northern Hemisphere, heading for uncontrollable heating. Radio Ecoshock 121219 1 hour.

FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS FROM THIS WEEK'S SHOW

Download/listen to the show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Download/listen to the audio-enhanced sound track from the short film "Arctic Methane: Why Sea Ice Matters" 19 minutes in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

The Paul Beckwith interview (29 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

In this Greenpeace photo, Dr. James Hansen of NASA looks over the ice. Hear James Hansen in this program.

YES, THERE IS AN EMERGENCY IN THE ARCTIC

This may not be pleasing holiday fare, but our time together is limited and valuable. Critically important news cannot go unreported, no matter what local tragedy dominates the mainstream headlines.

We are just beginning to understand why the sudden melt-back of the Arctic Sea ice could change the climate of the world. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, your own weather has changed already because of it.

As we will hear in this program, there is enough methane buried in the Arctic to drive us into an extinction event from runaway climate change, well beyond our ability to adapt.

I'm going to talk at length with Paul Beckwith. He's trained in engineering and physics, but is now working on his PHD in climate science at the University of Ottawa.

That connection began in our Radio Ecoshock program featuring Dr. Guy McPherson on the most alarming climate news. Guy mentioned Beckwith's claim that Earth's mean temperature could go up as much as six degrees in a decade or two. Beckwith confirmed the statement.

Surely it can't be true? So I going to call up Beckwith in Ottawa - hoping to find out more. I also know Paul is part of a group of scientists and activists called the Arctic Methane Emergency Group or AMEG. You can find my earlier interview with one of AMEG's senior scientists, Arctic ice expert scientist Dr. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. That's in the Radio Ecoshock show February 15th, 2012. I also interviewed critics of this theory that methane from melting permafrost and shallow northern sea beds pose an immediate emergency for the planet.

In September Greenpeace held a "UN Polar Emergency Panel" in New York.

Find the Greenpeace "Save the Arctic" campaign here. I'll ask Paul Beckwith about all that. But I also hope to get a better grip on how melting sea ice could possibly cause the unstable weather we've seen this year in North America, and Europe. Why did March of 2012 become more like summer all of a sudden? Why do sudden cold snaps hit in Europe, changing from balmy weather to the deep freeze in just a day or two? Why has a massive drought stalled over the croplands of the United States? Have changes in the Arctic destabilized weather in the Northern Hemisphere? We find out.

I'm also going to present for the first time a radio adaptation from a new movie by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group. You will hear from Dr. Wadhams, but also James Hansen, the NASA super-scientist, plus Natalia Shakhova, a Russian scientist now working at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and David Wasdell, founder of the Apollo-Gaia Project.

Here is a link to my intriguing Radio Ecoshock interview with David Wasdell in our December 10, 2010 show "Beyond the Tipping Point"

For some of the science, here is a critical paper on Arctic Methane from one of the speakers in the film, Natalia Shakhova:

Shakhova, N. and I. Semiletov (2012). Methane release from the East-Siberian Arctic Shelf and its connection with permafrost and hydrate destabilization: First results and potential future development. Geophys. Res., Vol. 14, EGU2012-3877-1.

All this comes against a chorus of steadily worse revelations about the prospect of very dangerous climate change developing now and in the decades to come.

WORLD CARBON AND HEAT SURGES IN 2012

As you heard in our recent programs, the possibility of staying below the alleged safety point of two degrees temperature rise has more or less passed away. Reports from the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, accountants PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and many more, show the world is headed to at least a 4 degree warming by 2100, if not sooner.

The year 2012 has been the hottest in the instrumental records. Hotter than the previous tied records of 1998 and 2005. According to Joe Romm at thinkprogress.org, the "very warm November and early December assures record-breaking 2012."

Weather-meister Jeff Masters from the Weather Underground writes "The year-to-date period of January – November has been by far the warmest such period on record for the contiguous U.S.–a remarkable 1.0°F above the previous record."

Not coincidentally, and despite all the expensive international climate talks, world greenhouse gas emissions are not dropping but rising steeply, year on year. The Global Carbon Project, which measures such things, finds global emissions in 2012 set a new all-time record. In 2012 we pumped out an eye-popping 58% more greenhouse gases than in 1990.

I play you a short clip from Corrine Le Quere. She is a Professor of Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of East Anglia in the UK, and the Director of the prestigious British climate modeling agency, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Corrine Le Quere

That video from the Tyndall Center is here.

TRANSCRIPT OF CORRINE LE QUERE FROM VIDEO:

"The latest study from the Global Carbon Project shows that the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are set to increase again in two thousand and twelve to a record high of 35.7 billion tons of CO2.

And it means that the global emissions now are 58% above the levels they were in year 1990, the reference year for international Kyoto Protocol.

Contributors to global carbon emissions in 2011 were China with 28%, the United States with 16%, the European Union with 11%, and India with 7%.

The 2012 rise in carbon emissions, that further opens the gap between the real world emissions and the goals that are required to keep the global change under two degrees, which is the international agreement.

If the carbon emissions continue the way they are, they are leading to climate change of 4 degrees and above.

[WHAT WOULD A FOUR DEGREE WORLD LOOK LIKE?]

We the scientific community are often asked what a four degree world would look like. Because after all we have seasons and day and night, so the four degrees really sometimes doesn't seem like very much. But actually, I think that we globally might be able to say with some confidence what one, two and perhaps three degrees looks like. But when you start looking at changes of four, five and six degrees it's really out of bounds of anything that we've experienced in the recent past.

And so these are really, really big changes in the way that the Earth operates. We are talking about warming changes that are really enormous in the climate system and it's difficult to say what this is going to look like, what kind of vegetation transitions we will have, what kind of changes in the soil where we grow our food.

Ice and melt - what does that do for instance for our weather patterns and for the changes in extreme events?

To be honest, such high climate change levels are really so much outside the bounds of experience that it is very difficult to say what such a world would look like. And impossible to guarantee that it would be safe for a population of seven billion and more.

I am worried about the continued increase in global carbon emissions and the consequences for our climate change and society."

HEATING WILL MAKE PARTS OF AUSTRALIA UNLIVABLE

Warming will impact the whole world. Graham Readfearn, a correspondent for ABC Broadcasting in Australia tried to look at what that country would look like in a four degree hotter world. His article came out December 10, 2012. I found it at climatchangepsychology.blogspot.ca, one of the blogs I check regularly. The article by Readfearn is on this page (scroll down a bit) here.

Here is one quote from that article:

"In 2008, work by CSIRO found that if there was no action to cut global emissions, the number of days each year over 35 °C experienced in Australia's capital cities would jump dramatically.

For example, Darwin gets about 9 days a year over 35 °C but by 2070 this was projected to rise to 221 -- more than half the year would be above 35 °C. Melbourne would go from 9 to 21 days above 35 °C, and Sydney from 3 to 9."

There are similar projections for America. Most cities in America would be sweltering through unbelievable heat waves as the new normal for summer.

ABC Australia's Readfearn continues:

"Professor Jean Palutikof, director of the government-funded National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, believes an Australia 4 °C warmer than today will be a very different place.

'It would just be too unpleasant to be out of doors,' she says. 'People would be living far more enclosed lives. It would be a heavily energy-dependent existence as you have to cool all of those spaces that you put people into.

'You would have to be running your air-conditioners as a matter of course. The huge challenge would be to lay our hands on the energy we would need to maintain our comfort levels.'"

Never mind the disappearing coral reefs, all ice and snow gone, forests burning and burning, and mass extinctions of animals, plants, and insects.

METHANE? WHAT METHANE?

We've just talked about 2012 setting a new record for greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Carbon Project measures only emissions from fossil fuels, not from things like deforestation or agricultural emissions. And this projection does not include, as the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change does not include, the methane emissions coming from the Arctic that we will discuss in this program.

A new report released in late November by the United Nations Environment Program says the IPCC MUST report on melting permafrost and methane, including a special report if needed. Yet I've spoken by email with some IPCC reviews who assure me the Arctic methane emergency is NOT included in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel reports coming out in 2013 and 2014. Again, the IPCC is far beyond not just the science, but actual climate change known to be happening already.

"ARCTIC METHANE: WHY THE SEA ICE MATTERS" FILM

Let's hear what the Arctic Methane Emergency Group has to say in their new film "Arctic Methane - Why the Sea Ice Matters” This compilation of experts includes Dr. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, NASA scientist James Hansen, Natalia Shakhova from the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and David Wasdell, founder of the Apollo-Gaia Project. The short film was put together by Nick Breeze and Bru Pearce of the new climate communication group Envisionation.

We start with Peter Wadhams, who has been measuring and exploring the Arctic ice for decades. He is president of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean Commission on Sea Ice, and head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University in England.

Find links to all this in at the Emergency Group web site at www.ameg.me

FEATURE INTERVIEW: PAUL BECKWITH

Paul H. Beckwith

Our feature is with Paul Beckwith, a man trained in both engineering and physics, but now devoting himself to the challenge of climate change and climate science. I reached him at the University of Ottawa.

We talk about too many things to list here. In just one instance, I finally understood how changes in the Arctic could create the strange weather patterns we've been seeing all over the Northern Hemisphere. Expect to see a lot more. Don't miss the interview.

After our interview, I checked out the methane maps which show red hot spots hovering over the Arctic, where the gas is leaking out at faster rates. I wondered if that could cause regional warming. Paul responded to my email question saying, quote:

"Yes, methane can accumulate in the atmosphere over the Arctic and affect regional weather there, causing localized warming. A strong polar vortex, with mostly zonal jet streams (moving west to east, very little meridional (north to south) waviness) acts to confine atmospheric gases to that region. More meridional or wavy jet streams with more north-south waviness will not confine the methane as well. Over time, the concentrations would equilibrate throughout the atmosphere; faster with meridional jets and slower with zonal jets.

Since the global warming potential of methane is as high as 170 on short timescales of a year of so then it would contribute to warming there. How much? Well CO2 measurements in the Arctic have reached 400 ppm. Methane flask measurements (Barrow and Svalbard) reached 2200 ppb (=2.2 ppm). Since 2.2 x 170 = 374 ppm CO2e. So the methane there is providing the same radiative forcing as the CO2 there. No way this can be neglected by the IPCC; that would be incredibly misleading and dangerous. It is even at today’s levels the same as the CO2 forcing in the region.

Another way to look at the confinement is directly via the coriolis force (which results in the jets, so same thing really). The coriolis force deflects moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere (to the left in the southern hemisphere); it is zero at the equator (reason why no hurricanes form right near equator). It is maximum right at the pole on the axis of rotation. This confines air to the Arctic.

Consider the massive cyclone in the Arctic from August 2nd or so to August 10th or so (see my blogs on Arctic news Sam Carana site for details). It was centered near the pole. Every time it started to move southward it was strongly deflected to the right and ended up doing loops around the polar region. Since it was basically confined to the Arctic basin due to this coriolis force it continued to gain/maintain strength for about 10 days since it was fed by warm 20 degree C air from over Siberia.

Many fires were burning in northern Siberia at the time so I suspect that a lot of ash/soot from the fires many have been ported into the pole region also. Who knows, it may have contributed to the drop in albedo on sea ice and over Greenland? What I am getting at is that a packet of air in the Arctic will start moving southward and be deflected to the right and end up curving around and heading back into the region; thus the strong confinement.

For the same reason, a packet of air near the pole will be somewhat constrained to the region and not diffuse to the global atmosphere too quickly."

We also got into a discussion about the benefits and risks of putting sulphur aerosols into the high atmosphere over the Arctic, as a last ditch geoengineering attempt to save the last of the ice sheets. The point would be to try to stabilize weather in the Northern Hemisphere, possibly averting global food shortages, and maybe staving off a runaway climate event from ever-increasing methane releases in the Arctic.

To quote Paul's email:

"Adding sulfur has the purpose of buying us time before the abrupt shift to a much warmer state occurs. It can be done quickly. I suggested a while back that adapting the KC-135 flying fuel tank (for midair refueling of fighter aircraft) to contain liquid mixtures with sulfur and adding nozzles to the umbilicals could quickly and easily deliver the sulfur to the stratosphere.

This method is a short term band-aid that would buy some time to slash greenhouse gas emissions as fast as humanly possible. This slashing is vital since it is the only way to slow and eventually reverse the rapid ocean acidification problem. The sulfur would be in the stratosphere (above normal weather) so would stay there for years, the vortex would somewhat confine it in the Arctic region; we would have to carefully monitor the time between recharges.

Huge amounts of sulfur are injected into the lower atmosphere from smokestacks around the planet. Coal contains sulfur (the worse the coal, the more sulfur there is) and we are pumping ever increasing amounts out. Rain washes it down into the environment, scrubber technology on the smokestacks helps to reduce the problem. What we would put into the Arctic region is negligible compared to what comes out of smokestacks."

Here is Paul Beckwith's blog at the Sierra Club of Canada.

Should we do it? Is it time to save the last of the Arctic ice cap? You have to decide.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. Be sure and visit our web site at ecoshock.org to download all our past programs. Please make a donation if you can, to keep the site full of free downloads for all. Please tell others about this show blog at ecoshock.info.

Thank you for donating your attentive mind to our broadcast this week.

Victory Gardens Past and Future (with LaManda Joy)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:50:33 PST

Food prices are rising due to climate, peak oil & poor economy. Best time to start your city on Victory Gardens. Speech by LaManda Joy to Great Lakes Bioneers tells how. With intro on food prices in Canada, UK, Australia, USA, clips from WWII garden propaganda. Radio Ecoshock 121212 1 hour in CD Quality (56 MB) or faster downloading Lo-Fi (14 MB)

If you eat food, maybe you've noticed groceries costs more and more. Well stock up now, food inflation is just ramping up.

It's not just the extra 200 million mouths to feed on the planet next year. Climate change is already re-arranging your food bill.

In North America, and around the world, one big driver is the record drought in the prime crop production areas of the United States this year. Many meat producers gave up, selling off their herds, temporarily keeping meat prices lower. The current cattle herd is the smallest since 1973. Once that sell-off goes through the supply chain, the high cost of corn and other grains will accelerate meat prices from 5 to 10% higher, according to one Canadian report.

Here is Peter Mansbridge of host of "The National" on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on December 6, 2012.

"If you are buying extra groceries for the holidays, some experts suggest you also might think about stocking up for the coming year."

Next comes CBC Consumer Affairs reporter Aaron Saltzman [with a report from Canada's premier agricultural university in Guelph, Ontario]:

"According to the University of Guelph's annual food forecast, just about every basic staple will cost more next year. Dairy up as much as 3%; bread up as much as 4%; eggs up as much as 5%; but likely the biggest hike... 'We would expect meat, particularly beef and pork to go up more significantly. We are saying probably as much as 4 and a half to 6%.' The price of pork in particular expected to jump by as much as 10%.

According to the report the main driver behind most of these price increases is climate. The drought across North America this past year was one of the worst in recorded history. Among the hardest hit areas, the Great Plains states in the U.S. - America's bread basket. That drove up grain prices and in turn, the cost of feed and livestock." ...

...For those unwilling to go vegetarian, 'Fill the freezer now, because it's going to get tougher going forward.'

And, he says, if you are wondering how accurate the University's predictions are, last year the forecast was bang on."

FOOD PRICES WAY UP SINCE 2002

Host Peter Mansbridge: "So some predictions there about food prices in the future. What about the prices we've already seen? Here are some numbers to consider. According to statistics Canada, the cost of meat has risen more than 30% in the past decade. Egg prices have risen by 50%. Bakery products are up by nearly 60%. By comparison, fresh vegetables cost about 1% less than 10 years ago."

Don't be thrown off by comforting reports from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. Their early December report says basic food prices fell by 1.5% in November. That was partly caused by a massive drop in the price of sugar.

But as the World Bank reports, food prices are currently "stable" but still very high. In fact, expensive food hovering near the record 2008 levels is the new normal. Unlike the UN, the World Bank food price index finds food prices are 7 percent higher than in 2011. Grains are 12 percent higher already from the previous year.

In the United Kingdom, the November Shop Price Index shows food prices up 4.6% from a year ago. Fresh fruits and vegetables are particularly high, causing what the Guardian newspaper calls "a nutrition recession" in Britain.

A series of reports in the Australian press say food prices there will hit a new record high in 2013. The cost of rice, wheat, pulses, edible oils, sugar and vegetables, are all rising in India.

Bloomberg business finds American meat prices are set to go much higher. Quote from Bloomberg: "The drought in the Midwest and Great Plains drove corn yields to a 17-year low and may last at least through February. U.S. consumers will pay 3 percent to 4 percent more for food next year, a half-percentage point above this year’s expected increase, according to the USDA."

It's not just the drought. A weird bout of summer-like weather in March of 2012 caused many fruit trees to bloom early. The return of cold weather killed off the flowers, leading to a drop of the apple crop by as much as 80% in some regions. The world charity Oxfam has a special report on the impact of extreme weather events on the world food supply.

WHERE IS THE GOOD NEWS?

Wait a minute! Didn't I promise you some good news this week?

Sure, if more people can't afford red meat, their health will improve dramatically. Healthy vegetables are still the most affordable option in most places.

But it gets much better than that. We can quickly and cheaply convert most of our major cities into major food production centers. In this program, you will hear how it happened before. And how local urban food production is making a rapid come-back. The kicker is lots of folks are going for more than just the joy of healthy self-grown food. They come for the new sense of community as well.

Most of us can't afford to just kick-off and head to the country. We need some income, at least to make the transition. So like Havana Cuba, after the Soviet empire died and stopped sending oil, we'll have to feed ourselves where we are.

We are going to the City of Chicago, where the American Victory Garden movement was launched during World War Two. And where it is coming back strong. From the Great Lakes Bioneers conference, we have an excellent recording of LaManda Joy, founder of the Peterson Garden Project. She'll tell us about the Victory Garden movement, where MILLIONS of novice growers produced mountains of food for the War effort. How a whole nation can transform into local food production in just one year.

That's not just something that happened in the past. LaManda will tell us how Chicago is organizing once again, to bring back urban food production. Whether you are concerned about economic collapse, climate change, peak oil, or just healthy food - this speech is a message of hope for all of us.

This recording was made by Kelly Pierce of the Chicago Independent Media Center for Radio Ecoshock. Here is LaManda Joy, speaking November 4th, 2012 to the Great Lakes Bioneers.

NOTES FROM THE LAMANDA JOY TALK

Download/listen to just the LaManda Joy talk (as broadcast on Radio Ecoshock, 53 minutes) in CD Quality (48 MB) or Lo-Fi (12 MB)

During World War Two, 200 million people gardened, and 40% of produce consumed in America was homegrown.

TEACHING A CITY TO GROW FOOD

How do you teach an entire city to grow food?

The Mayor of Boston helped plow up the Boston Commons.

Movie stars became part of the program. Veronica Lake changed her hair from swept over one eye to keeping hair back and out of the way - better for women munitions workers and gardening. The campaign was called "Hair wins the war".

Cartoon characters and superheroes were used to further gardening message.

Popular culture was drafted into the gardening movement - beer drinkers showed having a drink after sweaty gardening. Fashionable gardening clothes were sold from department stores.

Children were brought into the movement by their parents and their schools. Chicago held well-attended harvest festivals and garden parades.

Corporations got involved. Sears started 24,000 Victory Gardens in the Los Angeles area. International Harvester provided the plows in Chicago.

To keep that food year round, there was a mass program of canning. Five billion pints of produce were canned by volunteers every summer during the war. "Pressure cookers and canning supplies were in such high demand that their production was overseen by the government."

"Gardens began sprouting behind sign posts, on railway embankments, in school yards and church yards and in window boxes." Vacant lots and parks were also used - any spare space.

The Office of Civilian Defense was put in charge, with Fiorello La Guardia. His "assistant" was the President's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt - the last person to plant a food garden on the White House grounds until Michelle Obama. Could the Department of Homeland Security start thinking about real food security, and help found local gardens instead?

90% of the participants had never gardened before. This required a massive public training effort through: community groups, film nights on how to plant, educational brochures, talks by experts, newspaper articles. They mounted Kiosks near gardens and in public places to post notices and articles, a kind of social media of the day.

The City of Chicago was broken up into 7 regions, then down to block captains. Each official garden received a decal. There were many more gardens in private yards, and people who didn't want to register of keep the paperwork. 75,000 of these decals were posted in the first year in Chicago, 1942.

In 1942, Chicago had 12,000 community gardens on over 500 plots, covering 290 acres. That doesn't include private or non-registered gardens. By 1942 it was 53,000 gardens on 1500 plots. 14,000 children were gardening.

The first Victory Gardens were in Chicago, and it became a national model. The largest garden there was 32 acres, with 800 families participating.

Chicago passed an ordinance against damaging or stealing from Victory gardens. The fines were $50 to $200, which would be $650 to $2,600 in today's currency.

You can find some of the Victory Garden propaganda on You tube. She also recommends the book "The Twenty Five Dollar Victory Garden" which has an interactive format using the Net. Find You tubes on the $25 Garden here, or follow Joe's blog here. The best way to learn to garden is still from a family member, neighbor or friend. In 2009, Joy tells us, the Internet surpassed books as the second most sought out way to get gardening information.

It's interesting to note that the food shortage and poverty during the Depression of the 1930's was so severe that 35% of the men drafted for World War Two could not be accepted due to malnutrition. LaManda wonders if the numbers might be any different today, perhaps because of obesity and poor diets?

How did Chicago do it? "We had government support. There were overarching organizational structures. There was a donation of space and equipment. There was mass education, promotion, corporate and individual commitment, and recognition."

VICTORY GARDENS IN CHICAGO TODAY

Inspired by all this, LaManda Joy and her community set out on a campaign of "one percent". The aimed to achieve just 1% of the accomplishments of the World War Two Victory garden movement in Chicago. She found donated space, and got municipal support. Her first organizing meeting was attended by over 50 people. Since then, the "Peterson Garden Project" has grown into a network of Chicago community gardens. Last year in Chicago there were 2600 community gardeners on 690 plots.

The Peterson Garden uses the square foot method. Because there was an old building foundation at the site, there was no topsoil. The gardeners hauled in tons of mulch and soil building materials. It's all organic gardening, and the produce tastes fabulous. Most people remark how different and good the food tastes, versus agribusiness products.

LaManda also praises the Seed Savers Exchange. The Peterson gardeners use a lot of heritage seeds to get the best veggies and fruit.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has helped a bit. Michelle Obama planted a food garden at the White House, and then partnered with Wal-Mart in announcing the addition of fresh fruits and vegetables to their line.

The head of the USDA ordered the 30,000 USDA agricultural stations world-wide to either plant a food garden or participate in one.

LaManda Joy finds that many people show up to garden because they are also seeking a way to build community and relationships. With fewer attending Church, and many spending time home alone with electronic entertainment, getting outdoors to garden works well for them. Five percent of the new Victory Garden produce goes to support the homeless and other charities.

Wasn't that a great speech? So much to learn, about how it was, and how it could be now. LaManda Joy is the founder of the Peterson Garden Project in Chicago USA. Find out more at petersongarden.org. Find LaManda's blog here.

You can also watch a LaManda Joy speech at the Library of Congress, recorded May 13, 2011 "Chicago Victory Gardens: Yesterday and Tomorrow" here. It's one hour long. The high quality recording from the Great Lakes Bioneers Chicago conference November 4th, 2012 was made for Radio Ecoshock by Kelly Pierce of the Chicago Independent Media Center. Thanks Kelly, you've set an example for how we all can share important audio.

I'm Alex Smith. I'll be back next week with more food for action. Dig in at our web site, ecoshock.org. And find links to this week's program in the Radio Ecoshock show blog at ecoshock.info. Contribute to our fundraising drive if you can.

Thank you for growing your brain this week.

MUSIC FROM EWALDY ESTIL

In our one hour version, we go out with a song by Ewaldy Estil from Haiti. He's a coordinator there for Heifer International, the charity that provides a cow to alleviate hunger. The song is called "911 Trees". Ewaldy says he was inspired by "Plan B" from Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute.

More videos of Ewaldy Estil here.