The Radio Ecoshock Show

What If the Permafrost Thaws?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:21:27 PDT

http://bit.ly/L0DzFo There is more carbon frozen in far North than in all living things & the atmosphere. It has begun to thaw. Interview with Prof. Antoni Lewkowitcz and Academy of Science speech by Dr. Charles Koven. Radio Ecoshock 120530 1 hour.

Gas pipelines in Siberia are rising out of the ground, while in Alaska oil pipelines sag.

Houses and factories built on permafrost are tipping. Evergreens are slanting in so-called "drunken forests". Under the whole north, land is becoming unstable as the climate warms.

I'm Alex Smith. We're going to find many answers to a simple question: What if the permafrost thaws?

I attended a conference session on that very subject, with expert scientists, at this year's meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. We'll hear the latest.

But it was rough going. After the session, which was technical and carefully hedged with scientific doubts, I ran into the soil expert for the European Union, Luca Montanarella. I told him, in spite of all I'd heard, I still didn't know whether we should be worried or not.

"You'd like to worry, wouldn't you?" Luca replied, "But we have many more things to worry about now, further south."

Of course Luca is Italian. There were riots in the streets of Italy. The government had fallen, and the banking system might soon follow.

In the course of preparing this program on permafrost, I ran into as many opinions as experts. The permafrost may thaw over hundreds of years. The carbon stored there will come out slowly, one said. Another suggested when that thaw comes, it will already be too late for our civilization, ruined by a changed climate further south.

Other scenarios predict 50 to 80% of permafrost will thaw during this century. Maybe the released greenhouse gases will only equal ten or twenty years of our current emissions, one of our guests says. Only!

Another brand new scientific paper suggests permafrost melt may have caused the great mass extinction 55 million years ago.

We've never seen it. The frost was supposed to be permanent, and has been during human time on Earth. Now the signs of big changes are all around in the Arctic. What is coming? We can only model the future, with very imperfect tools, and guess the rest.

Before we dive into expert level testimony about the latest science, let's start with a more user-friendly Radio Ecoshock interview.

See my detailed notes below on my interview with Antoni Lewkowicz from the University of Ottawa. He's one of the world's recognized experts on permafrost, and yet quite good at explaining these issues to the public.

See my detailed notes from the Lewkowicz interview below. Our theme music this week is from Laurie Anderson's latest album.

The big question for this program, and for the world, is "What if the Permafrost thaws?"

I was unable to find a figure for the amount of the world soil and rock that is frozen. The BBC clip we ran earlier claimed 60% of Russia is permanently frozen ground. There is some permafrost in the Andes of Chile, but most is obviously in Russia, Canada, and Alaska. The United States Permafrost Association estimates about 25% of Earth's surface is frozen, and permafrost may account for up to 40% of all soils on the planet.

As you hear from Dr. Lewkowicz, interest in these frozen northern soils and rocks dropped - until scientists began to calculate a carbon budget for the world. The Wikipedia entry, which is still under construction, says this:

"The most recent work investigating the permafrost carbon pool size estimates that 1400–1700 Gt of carbon is stored in permafrost soils worldwide. This large carbon pool represents more carbon than currently exists in all living things and twice as much carbon as exists in the atmosphere."

Maybe so, but as we'll learn from our next expert, not all of that will reach the atmosphere. And we don't know how long it could take to get there.

CHARLES KOVEN: WHAT DO CLIMATE MODELS PREDICT?

Dr. Charles Koven is a permafrost and soils expert in the climate sciences department of the Berkeley National Lab in California. Along with the renowned Canadian northern soils expert Charles Tarnocai, Dr. Koven was asked to present at the February meeting of the National Academy for the advancement of Science session called "What If The Permafrost Thaws?"

I recorded that session in Vancouver. You can order the whole recording as an mp3 from aven.com as item number AS219.

I'm going to play you some select audio from the Charles Koven talk. It isn't easy, for you and me. First of all, Koven was speaking to experts, not the public. Second, to be frank, neither Koven nor Tarnocai are good public speakers. I think it's too much to ask of our best scientists that they also be master speakers. They spend years in a forbidding field, literally in the cold, and more years working through tedious data in the lab. Their many scientific papers are their voices.

So I've selected the best, and edited out some of the repetitions and pauses, for better radio listening.

Before we begin, you'll also need to understand a few phrases and tools used when trying to answer these difficult problems of permafrost. Dr. Lewkowitcz gave us a leg up. We found out there is no sharp dividing line on a map where permafrost ends, but fingers and islands jutting out from a completely frozen polar area. There is now a free book "The Soil Atlas of the Circumpolar Region" available from the European Union.

There are three different major types of soil, and that matters, since each releases more or less carbon when exposed to decay. As a group these are called Cryosols, in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources, or sometimes Gelisols in official soil lingo.

Complicating it all: the permafrost can be shallow, or very, very deep. You might think that once ancient plant material is buried many feet or meters below the ground, below the reach of living roots, it would stay there. But as anybody in cold winters knows, the soil is always heaving. In the Arctic, with summer surface melt and extreme winter cold, soil layers are tossed about in a process called "cryoturbation". You'll hear about that in the Charles Koven talk.

In the program, I play you a quick clip from Steven Chu, currently the Secretary of Energy for the United States, in the Obama administration. Dr. Chu explains that once the permafrost reaches a certain pace of thawing, it will continue to feed more warming and melting, no matter what humans do. Obviously he takes thawing permafrost seriously, as should we all.

Finally, since we won't know the climate impacts of permafrost melt until it's much too late, the best we can do is make models from huge masses of scientifically collected data. Talk of complex climate models can turn off a lot of radios, I know. I'm only including a short bit on that, from Dr. Koven, because I think you need to get a feel for what we know and don't know. And how good the guesses are so far.

There are at least a dozen serious teams of climate modellers, some running football field sized buildings stuffed full of super computers. Everything from weather records, ocean temperatures, chemical formulae, ice formations, soil types, and even areas of permafrost are fed into these computers, trying to forecast what happens if we burn all the oil, coal and gas, or just some of it.

The results, as you know from the periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are divided into possible scenarios, with varying levels of confidence. Dr. Koven quickly references the latest models used for the upcoming IPCC assessment - called CEMa, short for Climate Envelop Matching. He also talks about the RCP Level 5 scenario, which is a "moderate" projection of 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere by the year 2100. And the RPC 8.5 scenario, which would take us beyond 4 degrees of warming by 2100 - the pedal to the metal scenario of human greenhouse gas emissions.

Hang in there through that modeling talk, and you will be rewarded by some courageous assessments of what really happens if the northern lands thaw. Plus a surprising and controversial suggestion that Arctic methane may not be the boogeyman some suggest.

Good luck to us all. Here are selections from Charles Koven speaking at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science meeting, on February 19th, 2012.

NOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH ANTONI LEWKOWICZ

When we think of planet Earth, we don't picture a frozen planet. But a huge area underground is always icy. We call it the permafrost. You won't find it in your backyard, unless you live in the far north.

Geologists and other scientists have only begun the task of cataloging this underground world. Now, as Earth warms, we all need to know. Because if all the carbon locked up in the north is released, our climate, and our civilization will change beyond recognition.

Professor Antoni Lewkowicz is a central figure unraveling this mystery. From the Department of Geography at Canada's University of Ottawa, Lewkowicz studies, leads doctoral researchers, and advises international groups on permafrost. He's a co-author on a new paper on the impacts of climate change on permafrost in Canada.

Why care about the permafrost? 3 reasons

1. it's a good thermometer. Unlike measuring air temperatures, which is tricky, measuring deeper in the ground is more solidly known. We know the melting is real, permafrost doesn't lie, proves global warming is happening.

2. Large emissions of carbon could result from melting, but we don't yet know how much. It will affect people all over the world. We know there are massive stocks of carbon locked up there - but how long will it take to be released?

3. It costs money. Governments, corporations, and individuals have to spend money to protect infrastructure or deal with changes in the ground, from "drunken forests" to sagging pipelines, to tipping buildings and sinking roads.

For example within 100 miles of the border between the Canadian Yukon and Alaska, the Alaska Highway is full of dips and rises from melting permafrost. That highway is a huge investment by both countries and continuing costs will be high. It already costs tens of millions to maintain the Alaska Highway.

Coastal erosion, as frozen ground gives way, is also a huge problem. Most of the Northern settlements are on the coast. The First Nations aboriginal people were dependent on fishing and hunting sea mammals - now their settlements are either tipping over, or in some cases, falling into the sea with coastal erosion.

Longer ice-free season can lead to bigger waves and more storms. Erosion can be tens of meters per year in some cases.

The depth of permafrost is quite variable. At the far northern tip of Canada at Ellesmere Island the permafrost is several hundred meters thick, probably five to seven hundred meters thick. Its temperature is about minus fifteen.

As you go south, it gets thinner. In the far north, the permafrost is continuous, under everything. Further south, some places have permafrost, others not. It becomes dispersed and localized.

Again, in some areas the organic material, which could be released as either carbon dioxide or methane, has been accumulating for thousands of years. In other areas it may be just hundreds of years. It’s like a jig-saw puzzle with many different pieces.

Parts of Alaska were not glaciated in the last great ice age, and continued growing plant life. Those accumulated much more organic material. This was gradually incorporated in the frozen ground, to be stored without decay.

Lewkowicz is a lead author of a new paper published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. The title is "Climate and Ground Temperature Relations, Sites Across the Continuous and Discontinuous Zones in Northern Canada, with co-authors Jennifer Troop and Sharon Smith, from the Geological Survey of Canada. As part of the International Polar Year, which ended in 2009, they developed a new series of bore hole temperature readings.

As you would suspect, the climate does determine ground temperatures. While some of the far North is still very cold under the surface, a little further South is just below zero, on its way to melting. These scientists were able to form a continent-wide reading of the permafrost.

I raised the fascinating videos showing up on You tube of thousands of new small lakes appearing in Siberia as the permafrost thaws there.

Although there is very strong warming in Canada, particularly in the Mackenzie Valley, Professor Lewkowitcz doesn't think Canada is experiencing the rather sudden appearance of so many lakes as in Siberia. In the Western Canadian Arctic average annual temperatures have risen by as much as a degree Celsius in a decade.

Some Canadian peat lands are decaying relatively rapidly and you can see that through satellite photos.

In one area of discontinuous permafrost areas in the Southern Yukon and Northern British Columbia, half the sites measured have thawed since 1964.

But if we go to the extreme North, like Alter Bay, the ground may be a degree warmer, but it has only moved from about 14 degrees below zero C. to perhaps 13 degrees. It is relatively warmer, but now where close to thawing yet.

Scientists prefer to use the word "thaw" rather than "melt". Lewkowicz gives the example of a frozen turkey. If you thaw a turkey, you still have it to eat. If you melt something, it's gone. Permafrost isn't just ice. It can be only frozen rock for example. That may thaw without melting. Technically, "permafrost" is defined by sub-zero temperature for two or more years, no matter what is frozen under the surface. Professor Lewkowicz just attended a post Polar Year conference in Montreal. The hot topic was: how much carbon will be released as the permafrost melts? There is a lot of new research into this question, partly because we don't yet have firm answers. We don't know.

We do know that where the organic material decays without water, it will release carbon dioxide. If the decay happens in water, methane is released instead. So there are many further calculations about how much comes out of lakes, bogs, and swamps - versus how much material will thaw and rot in simple exposed ground.

The second big question is: how fast will it happen?

Again this is complex, and one factor is water. If ponds form, as they do in Siberia, that water efficiently transfers the heat from the Sun and warmer air down into the ground. More greenhouse gases will be released there. This can become a positive feedback effect, where smaller ponds warm to form larger ponds, and so more warming.

Regarding the coming greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, Lewkowicz says "We don't have the answer yet, but we know it's a really, really serious question."

There is a potential for a positive feedback effect, where thawing permafrost releases warming gases which melts more permafrost, increasing that cycle at a faster rate.

Like the melting Arctic Sea Ice, "it's difficult to imagine how we can revert to a previous condition" [of permafrost]. "It's quite difficult to thaw ground, but it's actually quite difficult to freeze ground... once we thaw it, I don't know how we are going to freeze it again."

I think this is a key point about thawing permafrost. There isn't any realistic geo-engineering scheme to reverse it. The area of permafrost is so huge, and the amount of energy require to freeze it so gigantic, this process is beyond human control, once we initiate the warming and thawing process. It is an irreversible change to the planet.

Lewkowicz says there will still be permafrost left in all our lifetimes. The question is how much, and what will the impacts of the thawing be?

Listen again to this show, or pass it around as a free mp3, from our program archives at ecoshock.org.

Should we worry about the permafrost thaw? Maybe not today or tomorrow. The big thaw is happening slowly. It will define the history of the planet. As the Russian expert Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk University says: the process is already underway. We can delay it, with smarter energy choices, and greenhouse gas control, but unless a miracle happens, over the next century or three, planet Earth will thaw.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. I appreciate your patience and your brain power. Thank you for caring about your world.

As Darkness Flourishes

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:26:47 PDT

http://bit.ly/LaQVgW Josh Tickell, Director of "The Big Fix" reveals the continuing BP Gulf oil spill cover-up. S. Dutta on mega coal plant construction binge in India. "GM Food Song" by Superweed. Conclusion of tar sands speech by independent scientist Dr. David Schindler.

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LISTEN TO MP3 HERE

From the high desert, from the dry falls of ages past, this is Alex Smith. We have a full menu of audio for you this week.

You'll start out with a main course of awful truth about the continuing BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Director Josh Tickell joins us for a look at his dark reality pic "The Big Fix".

Then we go to the coal disaster you never hear about. The government of India has teamed up with one of its biggest corporations to build some of the largest coal plants on the Planet. S. Dutta reports from Delhi about the Tata Mundra mega plant. Their lives and your climate in one big story.

I'll play you a fine activist song about GM foods and wrap up with more from my recording of Dr. David Schindler's breakout speech against the Canadian Tar sands.

Bon appetite.

THE FIG FIX ON THE BP GULF OIL SPILL

Sales of oil and gas leases are the second largest source of revenue to the United States government. About forty percent of that happens in the Gulf of Mexico.

As we learn in this interview with Josh Tickell, only the Internal Revenue Service brings in more (from taxes, with a much bigger overhead). Is it any wonder the fossil fuel industry has so much control over the government?

There is hardly any oversight. That is why BP was allowed to drill in deep waters on the edge of a ridge in the Gulf of Mexico, even after companies like Exxon had abandoned drilling efforts there. The area was known to host pools of explosive gas as well as the oil.

Tickell goes over a long list of illness suffered by cleanup workers and many residents of the Gulf states. Skin rashes, asthma, and many other chronic conditions popped up after BP poured millions of gallons of the toxic oil dispersant Corexit into the Gulf. Exactly how many million gallons is still in dispute.

The Corexit was carried toward the shorelines, where waves and winds whip it up into water droplets which hit Gulf residents, to this day.

Tickell says despite the multi-million dollar advertising campaign saying the beaches are all clean, there are still workers cleaning beaches, and popular beaches have closures now and then. Tickell, who grew up in Louisiana, in a Cajun family, dug into "cleaned up" beaches and found lots of oil deeper in the sand. It isn't just a metaphorical "cover up", he tells us, but the oil is really just covered up for now.

We go into the Obama deception, the multibillions of shareholder profits paid out by BP even during and after the spill, why the military was co-opted by BP and more.

Josh Tickell first came to prominence after driving his grease-powered "veggie van" across America. That became the film "fuel". Now with wife Rachel, "The Big Fix" is winning acclaim at film festivals around the world. It got a standing ovation at Cannes. Our Radio Ecoshock correspondent in Washington D.C., Gerri Williams, saw it at a film festival there. She said the audience was wowed, and recommended this interview with Josh Tickell.

Since many standard theaters are afraid of blowback from the powerful oil industry, it may not play near you. Fortunately, the DVD will be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Netflix and ITunes in June. Or you can get it directly from the film web site, after the June release, at thebigfixmovie.com

COAL IN INDIA

You know Americans are blowing tops of Appalachian Mountains for dirty coal power. Warren Buffet's endless coal trains flow from the America West.

In early May, activists from Vancouver, including two prominent academics, Dr. Bill Rees of the ecological footprint, and energy expert Mark Jaccard, were arrested stopping a coal train there.

Everybody knows China built a coal plant a week. So why don't we hear about the mega mega coal plants springing up in India? Now you will.

Mr. S. Dutta joins us for an in-depth report from India about the growing coal binge there.

The coal mining industry is mainly nationalized, run by the government of India. Politicians have promised to electrify the country, and coal is their main fuel, even as India is hit hard by climate-driven drought, floods, and heat waves.

The center of attention now is the giant 4 gig watt Tata Mundra plant in Northwest India (Gujarat State). It is right on the coast, in one of the most ecologically sensitive and productive areas. Further inland is the great desert, so most people live and work on the coast.

The poorest people, small farmers and fisher people, will be most directly hurt by construction and operation of the many coal plants planned at Tata Mundra.

I ask Mr. Dutta to compare the many anti-coal plants there, and the Occupy movement in the West. Although many people have been arrested at both, there are major differences. The coal-powered electricity will benefit the middle and upper classes, so they are supporting it. The many poor people are those protesting. They do not speak Hindi, the language of their government, and are not consulted or compensated. These poor people need the help of non-profits like the one Mr. Dutta works for.

We go into the larger energy picture of India with lots of facts and figures which may surprise you. Along with the many coal plants either under construction or planned, goes a lot of corruption of land sales. The power will go to fuel shopping malls, which the poor people can never dream to visit. It's a deep interview, with many angles you should hear.

Before we go to our exclusive recording of Dr. David Schindler on the Tar Sands, you'll want to hear this smart new song about a dangerous idea: genetic modification of your food. From You tube, here is the band Superweed.

[Superweed] THE REST OF THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT THE TAR SANDS - DAVID SCHINDLER

A few weeks ago I played you part of a daring speech by one of Canada's most prominent and honored scientists, Dr. David Schindler. He spoke out about the many dangers of the Canadian Tar Sands, in a speech to a packed audience at the Wosk Centre in Vancouver. Here is David Schindler wrapping up, about the deformed fish, the fake restoration promoted on TV, and the lasting cost to us all.

For example, The First Nations people of Northern Alberta, who depend on fish to live, complained they were finding some too deformed to eat, or even feed to their dogs. Schindler set up a collection point, and in just the first year found fish with tumors, fish with two tails, fish with one big eye and so on. He concludes these are the product of embryos poisoned by tar sands waste.

Still on the subject of fish, we hear another scandal. When a mine pit is finished, the big corporations are allowed to fill them in with tailings, and then add 10 meters (about 32 feet) of water. They call this restored "fish habitat" - even though nothing can live in them. Starting 17 years ago, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans have approved over 25 of such "fish lakes". The first one from 17 years ago shows no signs of life, much less fish, but the Federal government doesn't care, Schindler says.

The Caribou stocks of the Tar Sands area have been wiped out. Under the law, they should have been treated as endangered species, but the Minister in charge says Canada has lots of caribou - we'll just stuff in some new ones later, when the lands are restored.

Schindler says very little has been restored, and even those projects are an ecological failure. Supposed forests are sparsely treed. The companies try to restore peat bogs - but the tailings are too salty, at least ten times too salty, to host the peat bogs. Instead of 300 species, the "restored" lands are lucky to host a few dozen.

Meanwhile paid "green" spokespeople like Patrick Moore appear on TV and You tube showing off the restored lands. Schindler says real biologist laugh when Moore points out a pleasant yellow plant as an example of new growth. The plant is exotic, shouldn't be there, and is known to accumulate cyanide.

The whole "restoration" game is a Ponzi scheme. The oil companies have saved about 10% of the cost to restore the easiest lands, those built up with removed top soil (not the toxic tailings). Schindler says Canadians under forty years of age will be stuck with the cleanup bill in years to come.

I doubt restoration will ever happen. As the oil runs out, or becomes too expensive for an industrial economy, these ravages lands will be abandoned, with their toxic lakes and pits, a scar the size of a small European country, left on the planet, as signs of a past oil age.

My thanks to Simon Fraser University for permission to record this speech. Dr. David Schindler is an award winning Canadian scientists, of international renown. That he would speak out at this point shows how bad the Canadian Tar Sands situation has become.

The big fix on the Gulf oil spill, the push for coal in India, Tar Sands propaganda - the fossil fuel industry is flourishing - while the species and climate thrash toward catastrophe.

Now you know, but knowing is only half the battle. Action is up to you.

I would say knowing is less than half the battle - but the with all the propaganda paid for by the fossil fuel industry, and the bought-out mainstream media, it is a bit of work to find out what is really going on. That is why I do Radio Ecoshock. To help you know.

Visit our new web site at ecoshock.org.

From Wi-Fi somewhere in America, I'm Alex Smith, thank you for listening and caring about your world.

Why Are Forests Dying?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:48:37 PDT

http://bit.ly/J1iHNJ Forests around the world are dying from insects, fungus, drought, heat. Drivers are climate change & ozone pollution. New Jersey activist Gail Zawacki on ozone damage to trees, crops & our lungs. University of Illinois scientist Lisa Ainsworth on FACE CO2 impacts study.

A startling documentary from the public broadcaster ABC Australia explores dying forests. It is happening around the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and all down the West Coast of North America. Call it bugs, call it fungus, call it drought and record heat. Call it climate change and plain old pollution.

Whether it's satellite photos, or walking through the dying woods, it's heart-breaking. Why are forests dying around the world?

I'm Alex Smith. I've covered climate change in so many Radio Ecoshock programs. Later in this program we'll talk to a key scientist, Lisa Ainsworth, about misplaced expectations that rising carbon dioxide levels will green the planet and feed billions more people.

But first we are going to ground with a citizen activist from New Jersey. Her trees, and all our trees, are weakened and dying from a much simpler cause: plain old pollution. The air looks cleaner, but all that industrial exhaust is still deadly to plants - and our lungs.

The trees are talking to us, but we just aren't listening.

Gail Zawacki is speaking out on the pollution that is killing trees, shrubs and crops - despite all the government back patting on supposedly cleaner air.

First we have to remember there is good and bad ozone. The saying is "Good in the sky, bad nearby." The ozone in the upper stratosphere protects all living things from harmful ultraviolet light from the sun. That was the worry of the ozone hole.

Lower down near the ground, we have what is called "tropospheric" ozone. That is part of the smog, but ozone itself is invisible. It's a type of oxygen, but it has three oxygen atoms instead of two.

As Gail tells us, there are no factories spewing ozone - that is what makes it so difficult to control. Tropospheric ozone is created in an air-borne reaction with other chemicals called "precursors". The main precursor is nitrogen - and we are the nitrogen civilization. We release it from burning fossil fuels, but laying billions of tons of nitrogen on farm fields as fertilizers, and many other sources.

Another precursor is a group of "volatile organic compounds" also known as VOC's. Our industrial society creates plenty of VOC's, especially from the chemical and refinery industries. Some consumer and household products, including paints, also release VOCs.

It turns out trees can release VOC's as well. That is how Ronald Regan was infamously able to claim that trees cause pollution. However, natural forests existed for millions of years without producing harmful smog or dangerous ozone levels. We do that.

Ozone is a "reactive" substance. It oxidizes everything from plant leaves to granite monuments, all of which begin to deteriorate.

Please listen to the Gail Zawacki interview to learn how ozone impacts trees, shrubs and crops. (It also harms our lungs, especially anybody with breathing problems. That's another whole story.)

The leaves begin to shut down. You can find black stippling, or sometimes they "bronze" - turning color well before the fall. Then the plant cannot perform the photosynthesis it needs. As a result, trees and shrubs are weakened, and less able to prevent diseases (like a fungus) or insect pests from doing damage.

We may see the immediate cause of tree deaths as caused by a fungus or boring beetle, but the tree is weakened by ozone damage. Zawacki, and the Australian documentary, compare the dying tree situation to HIV. The AIDS damaged immune system may die due to pneumonia, but the real driver was HIV.

Agricultural agencies, and forest departments, know all about ozone damage. They have pictures on their web sites. But other government agencies hardly ever talk about it. We have been told air pollution in the West is all cleaned up, but really the ozone plague goes on and on.

Gail has wrapped up all her research on the ozone threat in a really great document titled "Pillage, Plunder & Pollute, LLC (A Global Glut of Invisible Trace Gases is Destroying Life on Earth)" It has lots of illustrations and links. You can download it as a free .pdf - or buy the print version from Amazon. It was a real education for me, and part of the reason we asked her to come on Radio Ecoshock.

Gail writes: "This is really well known to the USDA, and by the international scientific community. In fact the USDA in cooperation with many academics at universities has been engaged in research for years, trying to develop ozone "resistant" or "tolerant" crops.... Ozone is also of concern for farmers, not only because it reduces the yield but also quality of protein, minerals etc. - so it also means ruminants like cows and pigs are getting less nutrition for the amount eaten."

In the Journal Nature, I found a paper saying tropospheric ozone has increased 35% over the last century.

The 2003 paper by Wendy Loya and others says increased ozone levels hurts both forests and crops, even when carbon dioxide is increased, as we expect in the coming decades. They conclude "Our results suggest that, in a world with elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, global-scale reductions in plant productivity due to elevated ozone levels will also lower soil carbon formation rates significantly."

You can also keep learning from Gail by visiting her blog "Wit's End".

At the close of our interview, I ask about her continued support of the Occupy movement. Gail tells us the mainstream media totally failed to report the May 1st Occupy march in New York City. It was at least tens of thousands of people, filling major avenues as far as you could see. Newspapers and TV played it down, saying the protest "fizzled". Hardly what those attending experienced.

When I asked Gail about solutions to the ozone problem - we had a pause. We would need to cut down on nitrogen use, and nitrogen-producing crops like soy and peas. Chemical factories would need different processes, and the whole fossil fuel burning society would have to find clean alternatives. It's a huge job. I suppose awareness of the problem is a good start.

Here is another of Gail's sites on dying trees.

I also recommend this article from her blog, with a critique of the Australian TV documentary.

In this Radio Ecoshock program you hear a couple of clips from the ABC Australia television program Catalyst which aired on April 26th 2012. Find the the video and a transcript here.

Our theme music this week is Canadian folk artist Bruce Cockburn, "If A Tree Falls" performed live in Montreal in 2005. We also heard brief clips of "I Talk To The Trees" by Thomas L. Thomas in 1950, and updated by Masha Qrella from her album "Speak Low" Berlin 2007

WHAT WILL INCREASED CARBON DIOXIDE MEAN TO PLANTS?

Whether you accept climate change science or not, nobody disputes the fact that carbon dioxide levels are growing in the atmosphere, as we burn fossil fuels. That changes the way plants grow.

Various experts, including some climate modelers, count on increased plant growth as carbon dioxide rates go up in the atmosphere. Others have promised that is how we will feed a more heavily populated planet. Is it true?

Our guest is Lisa Ainsworth, Assistant Professor of Plant Biology and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Crop Sciences, at the University of Illinois. She is co-author of one of the most cited papers on the effects of increased carbon dioxide on plant growth.

She is working with the FACE method of spraying increased carbon dioxide up around the trees, which are more or less in a wild setting. This is better than the former greenhouse methods, because the open air setting allows for real variables such as rain, sunlight, and wind. The official meaning of FACE is "Free Air Concentration Enrichment"

Early climate models depended on greenhouse measurements of extra plant growth with added carbon dioxide. They projected up to 30% increase in plant growth on earth by 2100 with CO2 at 550 parts per million. With the ever-increasing fossil fuel use, scientists now project we will reach 550 ppm CO2 by 2050 instead.

However, the FACE testing shows extra growth due to increased CO2 is less outside, than in greenhouse settings. The increase might be 15%, and it varies according to the crop. The difference is important, because early climate models assumed extra plant growth would soak up a lot more carbon than will really happen.

It turns out plants have worked out several different ways of handling carbon dioxide intake, as evolution continued. For example, most trees have not yet reached their saturation point. If the CO2 increases, they can use more of it. Dr. Ainsworth describes how this works, for what are called "C4" type plants. They will benefit from more CO2, and so will such crops as rice and wheat.

Contrast that with plants like corn and sorghum. These developed a type of super-concentrator for CO2, before it goes into photosynthesis. They are already getting as much CO2 as they can handle. Adding more to the atmosphere will NOT increase their growth. The same applies to the grasslands of the Savannas - one of the largest biomass types on the planet.

One of the limitations of the FACE method is it has only been studied in Western-type countries like the US, Japan, and New Zealand. There have not been open-setting tests in the tropics, where most of the biomass of the planet is. That leaves a huge hole in our knowledge, and a big question mark about how tropical forests and savanna lands will respond to more CO2. We'd better find out quickly, because it takes at least a decade of testing, and 2050 is not that far away.

Not only do we want to know if the extra CO2 will help us feed the expected new billions of people arriving on the planet. We also want to know how it will affect all the natural plants, from forests to grasslands. Plus, there is a feed-back effect that could help us, or not, if plants can soak up more of that carbon dioxide. Add in the predicted droughts and desertification around the sub-tropics, and the forest die-offs we covered earlier, and we see that extra plant growth may not reduce our carbon dioxide laden atmosphere. They may even add to it, becoming a carbon source rather than a carbon sink.

There is so much we do not know, but we have discovered a closer look at the coming reality through FACE, and through scientists like Lisa Ainsworth.

HERE ARE A BUNCH OF HELPFUL LINKS TO FOLLOW UP ON C02 AND PLANTS

the FACE experiments (Ainsworth et al)

Also, recommended by Ainsworth in interview: SoyFACE (Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment) at University of Illinois

and at the Oakridge Nat'l Lab (database of results)

Find out more about rising CO2 levels and plants in this Nature article. Here is a worrying article: Australia's trees may not survive excess carbon dioxide

And see this Sydney Morning Herald video of the FACE experiments in Australia.

A SIDE NOTE ON PLANTS RESPONDING TO WARMING

As reported by the BBC, Spring is coming earlier than ever, and plants are blooming sooner, according to new research just published in the journal Nature. British scientific bodies and nature lovers have kept such records going back to 1875. Spring is now at least 5 days earlier, with some plants flowering eight times faster than climate models predicted.

The insects are keeping pace, breeding earlier and more often.

In the Australian documentary "Dying Trees", there is a shot of a forest in Spain that suddenly died. The whole thing. Even though I've seen millions of dying trees with my own eyes, right here in British Columbia, I was shocked. That one photo, and all it means, hurt me deep inside.

I'm Alex Smith, your reporter. As I limp off to lick my green wounds, the forests call out to us. Will anybody hear?

Don't forget our new web site, at ecoshock.org

Is It Too Late for Environmentalism?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:03:21 PDT

http://bit.ly/K0hULK

Peak oil, the energy crisis and the "climate hurricane" with expert Robert Rapier. Then green law professor Michael M'Gonigle explains "Exit Environmentalism" - leaving the old campaigns, and maybe society, behind. Radio Ecoshock 120509 1 hour.

Give up hope and exit out of environmentalism? In the UK, deep greener Paul Kingsnorth says he's leaving the climate movement, which is lost anyway. Who else is on the way out the door?

This week we'll hear a challenging interview with one of the co-founders of Greenpeace International. Michael M'Gonigle has been battling since the late 1960's. He teaches environmental law at the University of Victoria in Canada. Two hosts from the podcast "The Extra Environmentalist" interview Michael for Radio Ecoshock - about his new strategy which he calls "Exit Environmentalism". Just in case, we'll top that off with a shot at techno-optimism.

But first, I'll talk with chemical engineer and biofuels specialist Robert Rapier

We go at the fundamentals of the energy crisis - peak oil, Asian demand, speculation and all that. Rapier compares greenhouse gas emissions from Asia to an unstoppable hurricane. I don't agree with everything all our guests say, but Robert takes me closer to "exit environmentalism" with his clear cold logic about the real world we live in.

Brain stimulation from Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

Download just the Robert Rapier interview (CD quality 22 min)

Download just the Michael M'Gonigle interview (26 min CD Quality).

ROBERT RAPIER: IS THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE JUST "ACADEMIC"? WILL AMERICA BECOME AN ENERGY GIANT ONCE AGAIN?

How realistic are biofuels as a replacement for oil? Are we headed for energy independence - or an energy crash?

Robert Rapier would know. He's got 20 years’ experience as a chemical engineer, working with all kinds of fuels. Currently Robert is Chief Technology Officer at Merica International, a renewables and forestry company based in Hawaii. Rapier is also Managing Editor of "Consumer Energy Report", and a regular guest on mainstream media. His latest book is "Power Plays, Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil".

I called up Robert after reading his article "Why the Debate Over Global Warming Is Academic". It's a new perspective, and I grilled him on it. Here is part of Robert's reply in the Radio Ecoshock interview:

"What is likely to happen is our emissions will probably continue to decline somewhat from here. But Asia-Pacific's emissions are going to continue to grow unabated.

It's not only Asia-Pacific. Africa, the Middle East, South America - all these developing regions are rapidly increasing their fossil fuel consumption. I say it [climate change] becomes "academic" because while we debate and debate how we're going to get our emissions down, the emissions just continue to climb.

The reason I liken it to a hurricane - you know we can talk about whether climate change is going to be really bad and disastrous and so forth, just like when we watched hurricane Katrina come in. The night before it came in, I told my wife, I said 'I'm afraid this is going to destroy New Orleans.' But one thing we didn't talk about is 'Well, how do you stop the hurricane?'

And that's what I see in Asia-Pacific right now. The reason I say it's "academic", I don't see a viable way to stop them from increasing their fossil fuel consumption because they are already at such a low level per capita. So I've likened it to a rich person trying to tell a poor person to live within their means. The poor person is just trying to scratch out a living and increase their standard of living, while the rich person has already done that. We've already increased out emissions from a very low level, and we've gotten to a very high level. We just don't have nearly as many people as they do.

The technology does not exist. No country has developed to a high level of development without fossil fuels. So to imagine that it can be done, we are imagining something that has never been done before."

I offer two points of minor disagreement. First, the people of China and other countries are suffering terribly from air pollution. They may begin to demand clean energy just to preserve their health and their lives. Second, there is a limited amount of oil, and even coal, left. Eventually the pressures generally known as "peak oil" may limit the amount of fossil fuels, and make them uneconomical to use.

I could have offered more reasons, such as an utter economic collapse - which always cuts emissions, or severe and continuing damage from a destabilized climate, which either convinces people and governments to change, or again destroys the infrastructure required for supporting the food system and or industrial society.

Finally, there is always the dreamer's hope that humans will come to understand they are wrecking the future and make a choice to do otherwise.

Robert Rapier offers us some tough realities though. The average American uses 22 barrels of oil a year. To give up one or two barrels may not be that difficult, with some not too painful lifestyle choices. The average Chinese person uses two barrels a year, Rapier tells us. That second barrel may be used for things like the tractor, the irrigation pump, or heating a home. Nobody is going to want to give that up, almost no matter what the cost is. Low fuel consumers are going to be willing to pay much higher prices per liter or gallon, and keep burning it, because they need it so badly.

Frankly, it's very discouraging news in the context of fighting climate change. Rapier is not alone in feeling that battle is lost. I begin the program with a quote from Paul Kingsnorth, the UK deep green thinker behind The Dark Mountain Project.

"And also coming to the conclusion, and it was a very difficult conclusion to admit to myself, but I think lots of people are starting to admit it to themselves now - coming to the conclusion that a lot of the problems that we are facing can't be solved, in the sense that we would like to solve them.

For example, we're not going to stop the climate changing. We're not going to stop the mass extinction event that we're in at the moment. Hopefully we can prevent it from getting any worse than it has to get but we're in it, and it's happening and it's too late to do a lot of things about it."

Is that realism or pessimism? The quote comes from an Orion magazine podcast that I hope to play for you later this season on Radio Ecoshock.

As I have a grandchild that I love, I cannot give up. We are in it. It is happening. But we must do all we can to prevent the worst from happening, and I believe we can.

Continuing with Robert Rapier, I draw on his expertise in biofuels. Can biofuels replace fossil fuels? Absolutely not, he says. The maximum we can expect is ten to twenty percent replacement. Rapier isn't shy about discussing the negative trade-offs with some biofuels, like corn ethanol. He suggests the "holy grail" of biofuels is algae production. That doesn't use up land space, and may be biologically sound. However, so far algae production is not economical on any meaningful scale. More research and development needs to be done.

We also discuss the difference between methanol and ethanol. Methanol is derived from natural gas, so it is not a substitute for fossil fuels. It was tested fairly widely in California a couple of decades ago, and found to be a good fuel. The industrial production methods for methanol are well known. But methanol had less political support. Ethanol has the widespread support of the farm lobby, so politicians like it.

Both ethanol (which is derived from plant material) and ethanol are more corrosive than the gasoline we use now.

At one point, U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing European fuels containing ethanol. The subsidized fuel was blended in the U.S. and then exported to Europe. That ended when the subsidies for ethanol expired at the end of last year.

I ask Robert Rapier about the media hype that America will re-emerge as a world energy giant, due to the "trillions of barrels" of reserves in places like oil shale. Rapier says the U.S. will always be an oil importer, as long as it is able. The so called "reserves" are really rocks containing the beginnings of oil, left unfinished by geological processes. It takes a lot of energy just to finish the process.

Rapier compares these "reserves" in the oil shales of the West, in places like Utah and Wyoming, to the gold in the sea. Yes, there are trillions of dollars’ worth of gold flakes in the oceans. No, we don't have any economical way to retrieve that. Ditto the inflated dreams of billions of barrels of potential oil locked up in the stones of the West.

I highly recommend the Robert Rapier interview. Here is his regular column at Consumer Energy Report.

EXIT ENVIRONMENTALISM, WITH PROFESSOR MICHAEL M'GONIGLE

I first heard Michael M'Gonigle's talk on "Exit Environmentalism" in a badly recorded You tube video speech at the University of Victoria. It seemed too important to waste. Seth Moser-Katz and Justin Ritchie volunteered to do this interview for Radio Ecoshock, as part of their longer podcast called "The Extraenvironmentalist". Just Google that, or go to extraenvironmentalist.com.

University of Victoria You tube "Exit Environmentalism" Part 1 61 minute delivered October 27, 2011.

Part 2 Critique and answers 63 min

Be sure to check The Extraenvironmentalist web site for an extended version of this interview with Professor M'Gonigle.

In the interview done for Radio Ecoshock, M'Gonigle questions several aspects of the green model of expectations. For example, we protest and lobby for legislation to be enforced by governments. But that regulation seldom happens - because the legislators depend on the polluters for campaign donations, but even deeper, because governments themselves are the biggest spenders on the growth model that needs to be kept in check. It's pretty profound when a University teacher of green law says the legal system can't work to save us from environmental catastrophe.

I've known Michael M'Gonigle's work for some years. He was one of the founders of Greenpeace International, and then Chair of the Board of Greenpeace Canada. We interviewed Michael about his push to green universities around the world, as models for our next generation of leaders. But M'Gonigle might be the first to say, despite his lifetime of work, we have failed. Mass extinction is already developing, and the climate is already spinning up, possibly out of any control. He works his way through our fallacies, trying to reach new answers. Check out this powerful interview.

In this Radio Ecoshock show we had time for just a quick sample from another podcast from The Extraenvironmentalist. Seth and Ritchie interview Dr. Michael Huesemann author of the book "Techno-Fix". That is Episode number 37.

The Techno-fix podcast runs 1 hour 54 minutes, and I've sliced out a couple of sample running less than 10 minutes. It's definitely just a scratch of the surface, a teaser to encourage you to hear the whole thing.

Still wondering what to think? Is it realistic and cool to hope? Even if the ship is sinking, I must keep on bailing. We'll have more dialogs on the way forward in coming Radio Ecoshock shows, plus news about the three crises: climate change, the energy crisis, and the fragile economy. Keep tuned to Radio Ecoshock at our new web site, at ecoshock.org.

I'm Alex Smith, thank you for listening.

IT'S WRONG TO WRECK THE WORLD

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:12:43 PDT

http://bit.ly/JT8ing

From Oregon State University, Kathleen Dean Moore delivers an artful talk about our attack on Nature, and hope of reviving love instead. Recorded in Vancouver. With readings from her work & original songs by Libby Roderick and Tempting Eve.

I record a lot of speeches, and listen to many more. This talk by Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore of Oregon State University is one of the best speeches of 2012.

The title was "It's Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and the Moral Obligation to the Future". The presentation was organized by Simon Fraser University, in their Continuing Studies in Science and Environment program.

Kathleen spends every summer on a remote island off the coast of Alaska. She's in touch with Nature there, and at home in Oregon. In this artful, moving speech, we get some readings from her work - examples of why her books are so popular.

Find out more about Kathleen Dean Moore at her blog at riverwalking.com

Her latest book, a collection of 1500 short essays about our obligation to the future, is called "Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril." The writers are among the most famous people in the world, all speaking for the rights of the next generation(s).

"Morality" sounds boring. This speech surprised and moved me. It will do the same for you.

NEW MUSIC

The program also premieres a new original song by Libby Roderick: "The Lifeboats Are Burning", and a song inspired by a Radio Ecoshock Show - "We Are" by the new band Tempting Eve in Sydney Australia.

The Beginning of The End

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:01:14 PDT

http://bit.ly/IEik8w

Economic collapse will come before peak oil or climate disruption, says investment guru Chris Martenson, author of "Crash Course". Matthew Stein, author of "When Technology Fails" explains how a solar flare could cripple society and set off 400 Chernobyls - and how we could fix it. Alex rants against 2012 mythology. Radio Ecoshock 120425 1 hour.

Sorry, it's a long blog this week. Blame it on our guests - they had too many good things to say!

If you want to quickly download the interview separately, here they are, in CD quality (larger file) and Lo-Fi (faster download, lower quality)

CHRIS MARTENSON INTERVIEW (22 min)

http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/economy/ES_Martenson.mp3

http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/economy/ES_Martenson_LoFi.mp3

MATTHEW STEIN INTERVIEW (27 min)

http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/nuclear/ES_Stein.mp3

http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/nuclear/ES_Stein_LoFi.mp3

CHRIS MARTENSON - THE FINANCE GURU WHO KNOWS ABOUT CLIMATE, PEAK OIL, AND THE TOPPLING ECONOMY

Most of us have a gut worry about the state of governments, big banks, and big finance. Like we'll wake up one morning with nothing.

Our guest Chris Martenson trained as a scientist, but retrained in business. He made good money in the investment world with a big American corporation. Then the Martenson family life changed dramatically. We'll ask him why, and then pick his brain about things we all wish we knew.

In a talk at Oxford University in 2010, the very wealthy investor Jim Rogers told students to forget about financial careers, and go study agriculture or mining. In a way, Martenson made a similar transition. He tells us about his journey from the business world to a rural life.

Investments weren’t going his way, and when Chris investigated money and high finance, he didn’t like what he saw. He and his family moved out of the rich enclave of Bridgeport Connecticut to a more rural location. Now they are involved in self-sufficiency and community building.

But Chris continues to be one of the more popular financial bloggers on the Net. He also podcasts with another top Net blogger, Mish Shedlock. His “Crash Course” advising people how to prepare for a much more difficult financial and social scene has sold very well.

There is a lot of stress out there about banking, and broke governments. A growing group of blogs, radio hosts, and just plain folks wish it would all just end somehow. Some are cheering for a collapse. Chris says “Be careful what you wish for.” He isn’t hoping for a crash, but thinks the current system cannot go on indefinitely. Most of us, says Martenson, should prepare for a lower standard of living.

WHEN?

The never-ending question is: WHEN will the stuffing hit the fan. I've just read an analysis by Charles Hugh Smith, in his blog "Of Two Minds." The article title says it all: "When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally End?" Charles says various historic cycles show a major collapse around 2021. The problem is, and this is always the case, we can see the financial system is totally unsustainable, but so far the central banks and governments have managed to keep the dance going much longer than any of us thought possible. Nobody can say whether the readjustment will come this month, this year, or even in this decade.

It is even possible we may not see a really big collapse in our lifetime (depending upon your age now). I thought it might all go under in 1981, when New York City and Chrysler went bankrupt. Interest rates went to 22% and folks lost their homes. But it all limped on.

ENERGY AND WEALTH

Scientist Tim Garrett wrote a 2009 paper saying without a complete collapse of industrial civilization, out-of-control climate change was inevitable. He based that on a historic formula about the relationship between energy and wealth. More energy makes more wealth, less energy makes less.

Find a transcript of my 2010 interview with Professor Garrett here. Or listen to this audio interview.

Chris Martenson talks about the relationships between energy availability and wealth. Basically, without energy, we can’t build much of anything else in the way of an industrial society, or even feed the current world population.

I ask Chris for his position on human-induced climate change. Too many finance gurus have either denied climate change, or said it doesn’t matter. Martenson is much more clued into the environment. He sees climate change as a long-term problem, with peak oil biting sooner, and the financial system the most pressing short-term problem.

On his blog at chrismartenson.com, you ran a two part series by Gregor MacDonald called "The Race for BTU's". The second part requires a paid subscription, but check out the first part, there is lots there for you.

Martenson dismisses claims that North America will become an oil giant once again. He’s very knowledgeable about such things as the oil shale in Utah, and the Bakken oil field. The trillions of barrels of oil claimed is much different from the amount we can actually get out without expending more energy than it is worth. Martenson says America will always be an oil importer, as long as it has the money to buy.

One of the stories I've been following is the bottleneck of refineries. Three refineries on the U.S. East Coast have closed, because the oil they were built for is too expensive or going elsewhere else now. We're down to the heavy oil, and we don't have refinery capacity connected up. It’s a sign of the shift that happens during peak oil, and it’s happening now.

MAYBE FOOD NOT OIL WILL CAUSE THE CRASH?

Many people expect a destabilizing blow to come from high gas prices at the pump. I think it may come in the grocery store. There is potential damage to this year's crops from lack of snow cover in the Prairies. A big part of the South and East are experiencing drought conditions, among a host of other problems. I ask Chris if he expects a food crisis in coming times. Martenson recommends having “deep pantries” with enough food to outlast a temporary food shock.

How much pressure is the average North American feeling because of increased consumer demand in Asia? In a resource-defined world, do we have to give up everything they gain? Martenson says “yes” – our standard of living will drop, even as poorer people in Asia gain just a little each.

When trying to model the future, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change develops several possible scenarios. I ask Chris for his plausible scenario where the current macro-financial system melts down fairly quickly. What would be the warning signs, if any, and what would we as ordinary people, the kind who need work for our next paycheck, - what would we experience?

Most of our listeners believe the science of climate change. A lot of us think M. King Hubbert was right about peak oil. But hardly any of us understand the giant dinosaurs bumping around in the secret night of high finance. Derivatives give us the shivers. With the help of people like Chris Martenson, all of us need to get smart about the economy. That is partly what the Occupy movement is about.

We got some good advice, from Chris Martenson, the investment expert who is not afraid to look a bear in the face. You can find a lot more on his web site, chrismartenson.com.

MATTHEW STEIN - THINKING THROUGH DISASTER

We have a fascination for disaster, don't we? It sells in the movies and the news. Fearing the future is part of our evolutionary brain that got us this far.

Mathew Stein doesn't just think about it. He plans, writes, and advises how to survive emergencies and crisis of all kinds. With his MIT training in engineering, Mat's built off-grid homes that would probably survive hurricanes. His books include "When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival", and his giant reference work "When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency".

First we talk about a possible quick planet-wrecking event, and then get a few tips for surviving a long period of troubled times.

Mat Stein, welcome to Radio Ecoshock.

I've listened to several of your interviews, and listeners have written in asking to hear you. We finally get a chance to talk.

A SOLAR FLARE = 400 CHERNOBYLS?

Surfing through Google news just a week ago, I saw brilliant NASA images of a giant solar flare. It was beautiful. But in the Huffington Post you warned there could be a problem if one of those big solar storms hits the Earth. Mat explains this danger better than anyone else, I think.

You can find a Radio Ecoshock feature on the risk of solar storms here. But that was prepared before the Fukushima triple nuclear meltdown in Japan. Now Mat Stein fills in the details about a risk of 400 nuclear melt-downs around the world. It could happen!

If you are new to solar storms – they are the big flares that come from the sun from time to time. Whether we experience damage depends on whether that part of the sun if facing Earth at the time.

Listen to/download the 2010 Radio Ecoshock feature on solar storms here. Or read this transcript.

The worst solar storm we know of happened in 1859. It’s called “the Carrington Event” named after Lord Carrington who happened to see it occur on the sun. Three days later the world’s telegraph lines were hit with an electro-magnetic pulse which set off some fires in stations, and knocked out many lines. Other than that, there weren’t a lot of wires.

In 1921 there was a solar storm so large it lit up the night-time sky from the North Pole all the way south to the Caribbean for 3 nights, and from the South Pole up to Samoa – that’s most of the world, except the Tropics!

As Mat Stein points out, most of the big cities in North America had their own electrical grids – there was no national power grid in 1921. There were some problems – and Mat says that why Penn Station burned.

Fast-forward to today. Since the 1970’s, the United States alone has built over 100,000 miles of high voltage lines. These would act like a big antenna drawing the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) toward the hundreds of big transformers which regulate the national grid.

Many of those transformers would be blow out. “Just get some more” – you might think. But each weights hundreds of tons, and was custom made. Only two factories in the world make them. Freeways have to be closed to move one in. A Congressional panel found it could take two to ten years just to replace the transformers in America. But the Americans would have to compete with Europe, China, and everyone else for the limited production. We don’t even have enough copper in stock to make them. And the rate of production assumed a normal world – not one that closes down with no electricity.

Without that electricity, refineries and filling stations stop running. Trucks laden with food for cities stop running. And cities no longer have food warehouses. The food you eat Monday was in a truck the previous Thursday. Starvation and riots would occur.

But the most serious problem of all is this: as we found out at Fukushima, nuclear reactors require outside power to cool the core, and spent fuel, even after an automatic shutdown. After a big solar storm, 400 nuclear reactors around the world might not have cooling power, after their diesel fuel runs out.

Most American plants have up to 30 days of diesel fuel. So after a month, there could be 400 Chernobyl size nuclear accidents around the world. It’s hard to know how many living things could survive that. The radioactive damage would last for millennia.

The wild thing is a congressionally mandated EMP Commission studied this problem. In their report, they found just $1 billion could help protect the America grid. There is a type of giant vacuum tube technology that can quickly isolate transformers from the electric pulse. Apparently, solid state electronics cannot react fast enough, but the old vacuum tube tech can. That’s the kind of great info we get from Matthew Stein, who is an MIT-trained engineer.

It’s a mark of our cavalier attitude, or tendency toward mass suicide, that this small amount of money has not been invested to protect the electric grids of the world! It’s just half the price of one Stealth bomber – but the Commission’s recommendations have not been implemented. We are totally exposed to the next solar storm.

We are talking with disaster expert Mathew Stein about events that happened in the past, and will happen again. We just can't say when.

We started with a low probability, super-high risk event we call a solar storm, which could cause nuclear reactors around the world to melt-down. Again, here is the link to Matt's article "400 Chernobyls: Solar Flares, EMP, and Nuclear Armageddon".

WHAT ABOUT A FOOD EMERGENCY?

Then we move on to another projected event with no fixed date. I've spoken to several guests who expect just-in-time shipping methods that feed us all, could stop on short notice for a number of reasons. It could be a war, super-storms, a new virus, or a sudden economic break down, like the one that almost happened in 2008.

Let's assume we don't fall into violent anarchy if the industrial system stops for a while. Our better intentions come out, and we want to survive as communities. Before we get to some solutions, I ask Mat: “What are the early challenges we face, when technology fails?”

If anybody is an expert on that question, it is Matthew Stein. His huge book “When Technology Fails” has just been updated. It’s like an encyclopedia of work-arounds you’ll need if the lights go out.

WHY SOME BECOME LEADERS WHILE MANY GO PASSIVE OR INTO SHOCK

In an emergency, some people go into non-responsive shock. We saw it in New Orleans after Katrina, in Asia after big tsunamis, and in towns blown away by hurricanes or tornados. But other folks come alive in an emergency. They go into over-drive to organize for survival. Is it from thinking about these things in advance, or do you think it's social or genetic differences that freeze some folks, while empowering others?

Mat thinks it’s a mix of factors, and impossible to predict who will become a leader if a disaster strikes. He has examples of those survival leaders in his books.

Let's imagine a major Western city is heavily damaged and cut off from outside help for some time. It could be an earthquake that brings down all the freeways and ports. It could be after a nuclear attack, or even a deadly virus.

What will the real survivors do? Do they organize people, or hide in holes with provisions? I suppose that depends on the nature of the threat. Personally, during a plague or super-virus, I wouldn’t head out to self-organize with my community. I’d stay home with my food stash.

But after a quake, we’d all be out there helping the wounded, and trying to build new shelter and water supplies.

THE LONG SLIDE DOWN

As you know James Howard Kunstler has written at least two novels about times after the oil supplies have run out. One was "World Made By Hand". Kunstler isn't talking about a sudden disaster, but a long slide when energy becomes more expensive, harder to find, and then gone, for most of us. He calls it "the Long Emergency". In the interview, I ask Mat how his ideas work into that scenario of a long, slow descent.

We wrap up with a simple question I ask myself, and like you ask yourself. Why do we focus on such negative futures?

Mat replies he’s a kind of realistic optimist. We need to look honestly at the problems to figure out solutions. He thinks we will muddle our way through most challenges, although nothing is guaranteed.

Some serious people, including major scientists, have suggested humanity may not survive, joining the procession of other species into extinction. I can’t believe that, but perhaps we are programmed to always believe in human survival. Anyway, I express my hope at the end of this blog.

Much of our future fate may depend on this question: If our current high-energy globalized life-styles are fragile and unsustainable, can we picture a different way of living?

Our guest Mathew Stein has worked for renewable energy, sustainable growth and alternative healing techniques. Find his web sites at matstein.com, stein-design.com and www.whentechfails.com.

If you really want to know what to do if the lights go out, make sure you have a copy of Mat's latest encyclopedic work called "When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency".

We'll have to have Mat Stein back, to get more tips. He’s a really useful guest for all of us.

MY RANT AGAINST 2012 CRAZINESS

I'm Alex Smith with an important message.

Pull up a chair; you may want to be sitting down.

Despite what you may have heard, the end is not coming in 2012.

A big solar storm is possible. As Mat Stein said, that could possibly end civilization as we know it. But that's a high risk, low probability event. Don't quit your day job waiting for it, unless you want to quit your day job anyway, and have another plan to make a living.

An economic crash is possible, but far from guaranteed. I expect the banks to be open next week, next month, and probably next year. This civilization has a lot of momentum. We humans have the flexibility to keep going.

Even when three reactors melted down on a small island, millions of people went back to their regular jobs and lives.

THE REAL PROBLEM: THIS PLANET-WRECKING SYSTEM MAY NOT CRASH

That is the real problem. A growing number of scientists say without an economic crash, we will continue to wreck the world, in some ways that cannot be repaired, and may not be survivable for mammals. Our biggest problem may not be that the world will end this year, but that it won't.

GOING BACK TO MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITION

Millions of humans are responding to this existential threat with a strange desire to see the collapse of absolutely everything. Money will be worthless, anarchy will be the norm.

There are really odd ideas are popping up all over the Internet. Our new means of mass communication by and for the masses has also exposed an echo chamber for the weirdest fringes.

Look, I could build up a really solid following by telling you this is the last week of Radio Ecoshock. The collapse is coming this week, so stock up on some food and water, because the whole system is going down.

I could probably do that every week for a few years, and still have a loyal following. It's like the bands where the lead singer collapses, the audience is worried, but somehow the star revives, and struggles back by sheer will power to play three more songs. That is old "stage magic".

Even worse, the magic of the Internet is connecting up a style of medieval thinking and emotion I hoped we'd left behind us. No, a strange dark planet is not about to appear and envelope us in evil. The distant Pleiades stars are not driving human affairs. Here is a good video which debunks most of the 2012 claims - but bail halfway when the scientific answers against star alignments, unknown planets etc ends - and gives way to a Christian explanation that old-fashioned Medieval-style "devils" are to blame! (Sigh).

David Icke can pack theatres with his stories of evil reptiles in human form. David Wilcox claims he's channeled alien voices which will be revealed in a television special with President Obama - a 2 hour special no less! - this year.

We don't know why the Mayans ended their calendar in 2012. They didn't say. We do know that Sony Pictures is milking popular superstition to sell lots of box office tickets on that fear. Sony has a long-running Net and You tube campaign to make you afraid this year. Fear sells, and while millions are packing into the 2012 fantasy, the multi-billionaires continue to rake in more of the world's wealth unseen.

As always, plenty of Christians also believe they will be physically lifted off the Earth, as the Anti-Christ goes into a last battle this year. They've believed that for two thousand years.

I'm calling B.S. on all that. The truth is horrifying enough. We have serious changes to make, and these 2012 rumors are just distractions.

It is true our industrial system has taken fragility to the max, to wring out billions more in profits for the few. You should have some fallback food and water around the house, or at least deep pantries as Mat Stein suggested. I also recommend having a little money at home, in case the ATM's stop working, as Chris Marten son said. But neither of these guests promises this is the year of collapse. The end may not be nigh. Sorry, but 2012 is just another year. I expect to be making useful radio programs in 2013.

Let's list out a few real problems:

One: We continue to grow the human population even though we can't feed those already here.

Two: we are wasting the limited resource of fossil fuels, leaving little for coming generations.

Three: we can't burn what we have, because we are wrecking the atmosphere with pollution that threatens all life on Earth

Four: even if we could burn them all, we are hacking down and poisoning the natural life-support system in other ways, from pesticides to plastics filling the oceans. The richness of life on Earth is going extinct.

Five: our economic system is unfair, to the majority of people on the planet now, and to the next generations. When we create trillions or quadrillions in debt we are lying to ourselves, and borrowing from the future. That is unsustainable and will collapse, whether suddenly or slowly. Nobody knows when.

Six: we continue to use nuclear technology, for power and weapons, even after their irreparable danger and terrible consequences are fully known.

Seven: Although we have limited our past history of all-out war, militarism continues. Social and family violence continue.

Which leads to our central problem: in all of the above, we are showing an inability to respond to reality - to do something about these situations, even when solutions exist. Instead, we continue to adopt and spread fantasies which do not address reality. These delusions make it less likely we will survive our self-made challenges, and more likely our children and grandchildren will suffer more.

ROASTING IN BOISE - HANSEN SAYS IT'S NO ACCIDENT

I don't know if you've ever heard of Boise Idaho. It's in the middle of the United States, sort of. I've just looked through their high temperature records from 1973 to 2011. The highest April temperatures are generally around 80 degrees, or about 27 Celsius. The top was in 1987, when Boise hit 88, or 31 C.

Last week it was 32 degrees, or 89.6 degrees in Boise. In April. Then it went higher, into the 90's. That is just one of the tens of thousands of heat records which continue to break across much of North America this year. There was hardly any snow in Eastern North America. See my recent program "Summer in March" with guests Jeff Masters from the Weather Underground and Joe Romm of Climate Progress (now at thingprogress.org).

The TV weathermen just call it strange, or weird weather. They seldom call it global warming. Even scientists have said for years you can't call any one season "climate change".

Now the leading American climate scientist, the man who warned Congress of this coming change in 1988, says the heat events in recent years are due to human activity. NASA's Dr. James Hansen, along with Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy, has published a new paper called "Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice".

It's a game changer. Without going into detail, this paper explains how we can now know, scientifically, these extreme weather events would not have happened without human modification of the climate, by burning fossil fuels. The dice are loaded, and they will continue to come up "hot" many more times than "cold".

That means our climate, and life for all living things timed to the seasons, will get stranger and stranger. We are committed to at least a century of climate disruption, and warming for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

In future shows, I'll be looking at ways we can adapt, while still fighting to contain the damage.

I CAN'T GIVE UP HOPE

I should have given up hope. This is not an option for me, as long as I love my children, and hold my grandchild. You shouldn't give up hope either. We can make a significant difference. We can make a better society. We can live better with nature.

But we can't do it by indulging in a mass psychosis where aliens are causing all our problems. Or by hoping to see the end times. Please, let's keep our minds clear, even as others fall into delusions or despair.

The sun will rise tomorrow, in 2013, and 2100. Despite difficult times, many many people will experience love, happiness, and fulfillment, even as they struggle to make a better world. Join that party, join them, join us.

I'm Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock.

Find out more, at our web site, ecoshock.org

Fire! In A Crowded World

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:34:06 PDT

http://bit.ly/JfocDr Wild fires from climate change cause still more warming. Three experts from American Academy for the Advancment of Science meeting February 19th recorded in Vancouver by Alex Smith. Michael Flannigan, U of Alberta on fire and climate. From UBC medical unit, Dr. Michael Brauer on health impacts and personal protection during smoke events. Tasmania's Fay Johnston' estimation of global annual deaths from landscape fire smoke. Radio Ecoshock 120418 1 hour.

I've been working on the latest science about wildfires and climate change. The plan was to save the broadcast for summer, when the fires start.

Nature isn't waiting. From the first week of April major television networks like CBS reported wildfires all the way from New England, Long Island, down through Virginia, into Georgia - the whole East Coast.

This follows a winter with very little snow. New York got 20 inches less than normal. It's all gone, as places like Boston sizzled into the 90's at the very end of winter. Gardeners started to feel like planting a month early. Farmers feared a continuing drought, with no snow to water the land before seed time.

Forget about normal. Wildfire season started ridiculously early this year in North America, in the first week of April.

TV and news reported thousands of heat records set in the Eastern United States, without ever mentioning "global warming".

It's time for the Radio Ecoshock special, my recordings of a special session on fire and climate. The fire experts gathered at the February conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver 2012.

You'll hear how fires make a hotter climate which feeds more fires, the cycle of positive feedback. An internationally recognized wildfire expert, Dr. Michael Flannigan reports on the latest science and experience in the field. Flannigan also describes a new risk that could tip the climate of the world.

You may have a personal stake in this. Anyone with lungs does. From the University of British Columbia School of Medicine, Dr. Mike Brauer explains new ways of tracking dangerous smoke, which can travel thousands of miles, across international boundaries. I like Brauer's talk, because he also tells us how citizens can protect themselves during a smoke event.

Finally we'll hear from Dr. Fay Johnston from the University of Tasmania. She was part of a team asking the big question: how many people die from fire smoke every year? The answer, and the places most at risk, may surprise you.

DR. MIKE FLANNIGAN

Let's get the big picture, from one of my favorite wildfire experts. Dr. Mike Flannigan is a Professor of the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta, and Senior Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service. His PHD is from Cambridge. He also trained in meteorology. Flannigan is Editor-in-chief of International Journal of Wild land Fire, and part of the U.S. Assessment on Global Change. Mike is a leader in newly formed Western Partnership for Fire Science.

In the program you hear excerpts from my recording of Mike Flannigan's presentation at "Forest fires in Canada: Impacts of Climate Change and Fire Smoke" delivered Sunday morning, February 19th, 2012, in a special workshop at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science general meeting in Vancouver.

Nobody says more in fewer words than Flannigan. When huge fires erupt, in Canada or internationally, Mike often gets called in. He begins by exploring the fire in Northern Alberta, Canada, where a town called Slave Lake had one third of the place burned out, including the municipal buildings the libraries. Video of that fire appoaching the town here. Photos of the aftermath here. And this could happen to any town or city. Hundreds of homes were burned in Kelowna British Columbia in 20003. I don't have to tell anyone in California or Texas about the huge risks from out-of-control wild fires.

Australians know how deadly fires can be.

Slave Lake had to be evacuated. There was no way to fight such fires, and they moved fast with ferocity. Satellite images show the Slave Lake fire was actually the smallest of four infernos raging at the time.

Remember the fire leader in Texas who said "No one alive has seen fires like this". Except we are seeing them more and more, especially after heat events.

Mike Flannigan makes it clear that climate change is a contributing factor to these fierce fires. The underbrush is tinder dry, even in spring-time. The hotter weather creates a longer fire season. Heat also induces more lightening, which ignites the wild fire.

It's a positive feed-back cycle, at least in the near-term. The burning forests release all the carbon previously held in vegetative matter. Tree trunks are mostly carbon. That release of carbon, and the extra black soot, all drive more warming.

A few years after the fire, perhaps 7 years later, new growth will re-absorb some of the carbon back from the atmosphere. The fire zone changes from a carbon source to a carbon sink. But in the meantime, climate change has been further ramped up.

If you ever wanted to know the basics of wild fires, and why we hear more about them, or get hit with smoke from faraway places, Mike Flannigan is the man to learn from.

You can download my Radio Ecoshock interview with Mike Flannigan in May 2011 from the program titled "FLOOD FIRE WIND - Climate Shift" at ecoshock.org. (13 minute interview)

About two weeks after this broadcast, you can download a free mp3 of Mike Flannigan's full speech at the triple AS from our Climate 2012 page. All of today's speakers will be there in full.

HOW DO THESE FIRES COMPARE TO PAST AGES?

Can we say there are more fires now than at any time in human history? What about fires in the past hot ages, in previous greenhouse worlds? I listened to two presentations on the history of fire by Douglas Woolford, from Canada's Wilfred Laurier University, and Richard Routledge, Simon Fraser University.

The science was too complicated for radio broadcast. I came away thinking the field of fire archeology is still very young. Do we know enough to answer those questions, to compare our future to the distant past of fire?

I came away from these American Academy presentations thinking we just don't know enough yet. You can dig further into the research that has been done, by downloading those two speeches (for a fee) from aven.com.

We do know that fire smoke travels huge distances, sometimes smudging out part of a continent. In the soot below, human lungs don't do very well. As we'll hear in our third speaker, hundreds of thousands of humans die every year from inhaling smoke from natural and agricultural fires.

DR. MICHAEL BRAUER

But first, you should hear this Canadian medical expert Dr. Mike Brauer. He explains big advances in predicting the smoke plumes, so people with breathing difficulties can be warned. It's almost like tornado warnings, only more accurate. Pharmacies can know to stock up on inhalers. And Brauer ends with tips you can use to protect yourself, if smoke fills your air.

Mike was introduced by session organizer Charmaine Dean, of Simon Fraser University.

In the radio program, you hear major excerpts from Mike's speech.

In the first part, Mike explains several methods to predict where fire smoke will go. That's important to know if you are a health planner, a hospital worker or doctor, if you have health problems like asthma, - and if you just want to protect the lungs of yourself and your family.

I became even more interested in the second segment, as Brauer explains the public health efforts, and personal things we can do to protect ourselves. If there are going to be more fires, and more smoke, we all need to learn about this.

A smoke plume can travel hundreds of miles over a place like California, or New England (from Canadian fires). Whole parts of Asia have been covered in smoke - like the times Malaysia and Singapore went under a smoke cloud from fires in Indonesia.

We know, from Brauer's study, that in Western-style economies, visits to doctors’ offices and pharmacies will go up. Those places need to stock up on inhalers and other medicines.

People with certain ailments or low lung function need to stay indoors, with the windows closed. Driving around does not help, as Brauer says the smoke is actually worse inside the car.

Brauer struck a chord with me when he recommended simple HEPA air filters for people's homes. I have had one running for the past five years, because we live in a high traffic area. We used to need to dust the place way too often, now much less.

That air filter was running when the wave of radioactivity hit the West Coast about a week after the Fukushima nuclear plants blew up. About a month later I changed out the filters, which were no doubt radioactive. It saved our lungs a bit.

These filters also reduce indoor smoke from fires by about 65% Brauer says. That's better for everybody.

Once again, this is another reason to have at least a few days’ worth of food stocked up too. Nobody needs to go out to the store.

DR. FAY JOHNSTON

Our final presenter in this week's special on fire and climate change is Dr. Fay Johnston, a physician and environmental epidemiologist at the Menzies Research Institute in Tasmania, the Down Under of Australia. Here is a link to one of her smoke assessment projects. And here is a link to a public article "Fire Smoke Important Contributor to Deaths World-Wide".

Her topic for this session of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science is: "The Estimated Global Mortality Burden Attributable to Landscape Fire Smoke".

Let's find out who really pays the ultimate price for advancing fires in a crowded warming world. We only have time for a few excerpts.

First, what is a "landscape fire" and who is studying it?

Dr. Fay Johnston describes the first attempts to quantify the impacts of global wildfires.

As she says: "a world without fire does not exist." It is natural, but not when humans create the fire conditions, and then set those fires. Her team estimated about 90% of "landscape fires" around the world are set purposely by humans. We do it to clear new land for things like soy beans or palm oil.

Africa is a central location for fires. It is part of their agricultural cycle. The old crop is burned off to prepare for the new one. Radio Ecoshock has had other guests explain that method of agriculture is adding to global warming.

As far as deaths go, we find out there has hardly been any study in the developing world, where most of the fires are, and most of the death happen. To measure health impacts, Johnston's group had to use pollution studies generated in major smoggy cities. It turns out those impacts on lungs work pretty well for people smoked out in the jungle as well. Still, just like medical research, we take studies from the First World and apply them to developing countries, hoping it will work. There's no money to do the research in the heavily populated places where it is needed most.

Isn't that always the case, in this unfair world? Whether its medicine or smoke, almost all research is funded and performed in the developed world, where a minority of Earth's population live and die. It may take another generation to see how climate change and fire do their dance in the most populated, and the most plant rich places on the planet.

To be honest, this study finds smoke deaths from landscape fires are far less serious than deaths from smoking tobacco.

Whereas several millions die because of tobacco, this study estimates about 340,000 people a year die from landscape fires. Around 10,000 of those are in South America, where relative population is low. Over a hundred thousand are in the Sahel region of northern Africa. More than a hundred thousand die each and every year from air-borne smoke in Asia but that is still fewer than die from cooking over smoky fires indoors in Asia.

Two weeks after broadcast, you can find the full speeches by Mike Flannigan, Mike Brauer, and Fay Johnston on the Climate 2012 downloads page at ecoshock.org. My thanks to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science for allowing me to record on February 19th, and to Simon Fraser University for organizing this session on forest fires, smoke, and climate change.

Our music in this program was from the 1968 hit "Fire" by Arthur Brown. News clips were from NBC12 Richmond, and CBS evening news.

I'm Alex Smith.

Tune in next week for our next big adventure into the future - on Radio Ecoshock.

The Worst Problems In The World

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:21:19 PDT

http://bit.ly/HqmRdo Could the collapse of the fuel pool at Fukushima Reactor #4 endanger the Northern Hemisphere? Nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen explains. Then a top Canadian scientist exposes a scandalous government cover-up of poisons moving from the Tar Sands to dying aboriginal people. David Schindler speech excerpts. Plus a climate rant by comedian Lee Camp.
-----------------------

The nuclear accident at Fukushima Japan is far from over. Three reactors continue to melt-down and now there is a storm of international worry about nuclear fuel pools tottering in blown up buildings. The whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk right now.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. We are joined again by nuclear industry expert Arnold Gundersen, of Fairewinds Associates.

Arnie Gundersen, a year ago, warned us here on Radio Ecoshock, and to anybody who would listen, that a world-scale catastrophe was lurking in the nuclear fuel storage pools of both reactors Three and Four, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan.

Why is this story finally getting wider attention, a year later?

The Japanese press, which has been following the government line, is starting to break out. On April 2nd, Takao Yamada, Expert Senior Writer for the Mainichi paper, said, quote: "The 7-story building itself has suffered great damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company Areva have warned about this risk."

And check out this translated video from Japanese TV!

We also had the unusual case of Japan’s former ambassador to Switzerland, Mitsuhei Murata, speaking at a public hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012. He told the Swiss if the Reactor 4 fuel pool collapses, the cooling water for all six reactors would be shut down, as well as for the nearby spent fuel pool with another 6,000 fuel rods.

Another Japanese diplomat, Akio Matsumura is also blogging about this.

It is very surprising that Japanese officials are speaking out. Why now? Do they know something we don't?

It seems to me, and many Radio Ecoshock listeners from all over the world have written me about this - that the whole world is sleep-walking through this potential global catastrophe. They want to know: Why isn't there an international emergency action plan, to save us from a nuclear disaster which would make Chernobyl look small in comparison?

The average person thinks the Japanese could just dig an in-ground pool, move the fuel rods into a safer place, and then cover all that with a containment building. Why aren't they doing that?

So we have debris over the fuel rods, a broken crane, broken fuel rod assemblies, and a building so shaky any attempts to fix things might cause the building to fall. Is it possible we have a situation which cannot be solved?

Over at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow says Reactor 2 is an example of a technology which has no solution. Humans can't get near such high radioactivity. Even robot electronics fail in such circumstances. The Japanese require a technology that hasn't been invented yet. Should we even be using nuclear technology, if unsolvable accidents can happen?

It is time to think the unthinkable. Arnie walks us through what could happen if we wake up one day, and the Fukushima Dai-ichi Reactor 4 fuel pool collapses.

Arnie tells us the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the U.S. issued a study on the impacts of a nuclear fuel pool fire.

Here is a good article summary of that 1987 Brookhaven study by Stuart Staniford.

In this article from the New England Centre for Investigative Reporting, we find "A 1997 [actually it was 1987] study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island concluded that a pool fire at a plant like Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut or Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Massachusetts could kill 100 people instantly and another 138,000 people eventually. Some $546 billion in damage would result, the study said, and 2,170 square miles of land could be contaminated."

From the selfish point of view of someone living on the West Coast of North America, and for everyone in the Northern Hemisphere, it seems the key point is whether there is a major explosion, driving radioactive materials into the stratosphere. That's what it takes to spread these poisons right around the world.

Gundersen says it is unlikely there would be an explosion if the #4 Fuel pool collapses. But dangerous "hot" particles would still be sent around the world, because within two days of the collapse, the Zirconium and radioactive metals (like Cesium and Plutonium) would burn at a very high temperature, sending particles high into the air. The result would be an everlasting disaster for Japan. Arnie thinks it could create a no-man's land 50 miles across the country, perhaps destabilizing the government.

The famous anti-nuclear activist and pediatrician Dr. Helen Caldicott just said in a speech: if there is a major nuclear release from Fukushima, she would evacuate her family from Boston, and head back to her native Australia, or anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Would it be safer south of the equator? Likely, as there is much less mixing of air from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. All the countries in the Northern Hemisphere would suffer radioactive fallout if this happens.

We can't evacuate the Northern Hemisphere. The explosion at Reactor 3 showed we have 5 to 7 days before radiation hits the Pacific Coast of North America. Personally, I would definitely leave Vancouver. We get a lot of rain here, so the hot stuff is going to wash into our open water reservoirs. They would be poisoned for hundreds of years. I would try to get east of the Rocky Mountains, to a drier place, with a source of fossil water from deep underground.

What would you do?

In the 1950's, all children were trained in civil defense in case of nuclear attack. It was lame, but it was something. Do you think world governments should be teaching everyone the basics of trying to avoid the worst exposure to radiation, in case Fukushima blows? We would all have to stay indoors, with the windows shut. You should buy a couple of HEPA air cleaners right now, I think. The economy would collapse. Do you have food stored for such an emergency? I hope so.

Surely there must be a better way to reduce our risk of having an accident that would damage the Planet more or less forever in human timescales. What can be done at Fukushima?

Arnie says the nuclear power game is set up so each country handles safety and any accident as an internal affair. But when an accident threatens us all, we need to pressure our own governments to formulate an international response, to help the Japanese acts as fast as they can.

In the interview, Arnie Gundersen, who was an executive at a company which installed nuclear fuel racks in those very same types of reactors, lays out three ways to handle this emergency. None of them are great, but his suggestion to make a smaller fuel canister, and start moving the rods out to an already existing in-ground pool on the site, sounds best to me. It would be slow and painstaking, but would begin to make us all safer every day.

Maybe an earthquake won't strike near Fukushima in the next few years. However, on February 14th, Dapeng Zhao, geophysics professor at Japan’s Tohoku University, published a paper in "Solid Earth", a journal of the European Geosciences Union.

Here is a good article summarizing that paper, in Common Dreams.

Zhao said the giant earthquake in March of 2011 had reactivated a seismic fault close to the Fukushima nuclear plant. Using the latest scientific techniques and measurements, the paper warns another big earthquake could strike even closer to the plant.

Washington's blog concludes "Scientists say that there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hitting Fukushima this year, and a 98% chance within the next 3 years."

In a radio interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott in early February, Gundersen estimated a quake of 7.0 or greater could cause the Reactor 4 fuel pool to collapse.

What have the Japanese done so far to strengthen the building, and could they be doing more?

We have to remind ourselves, we might just get lucky. Maybe the Reactor 3 and 4 buildings will keep standing for few years, while the Japanese invent a solution. We didn't have a major nuclear war so far, maybe we'll squeak through this one. But are our chances good, or not so good, the way things are going?

Robert Alvarez, an expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, has tried again and again to warn us: this isn't just a problem in Japan. The American reactors have built up even more stored fuel rods, some of them over earthquake fault lines, all of them requiring non-stop cooling, and none of the storage pools have containment if there is an accident.

The spent fuel risk in America is even greater in Japan. Why is no one talking about this?

Arnie Gundersen has not heard of government meetings or plans to get faster action to protect the world against yet another giant nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima. We need citizens organizing everywhere, pushing their governments to stop ignoring the threat, or playing along with Japan, to stop being polite about the danger. I'm sure many people in Japan would welcome international pressure to get faster action.

We could compare this reactor accident to the horror of thermo-nuclear war, hanging over our heads. It took a generation of protests, and a fallen empire, to reduce that threat. A nuclear war is still possible, but it's less likely.

But we don't have a long-time frame, 30 years, to stabilize the Reactor 4 fuel storage pond. I'm surprised we got through this year, and I'm not sure about the next one. Can we scrape through again?

Listen to/download the Arnie Gundersen interview (26 minutes) in CD Quality... or Lo-Fi.

THE SCANDAL OF THE TAR SANDS

I'm Alex Smith and I'm angry. There are lots of sick and ugly things in this world, along with tremendous beauty and love. But there are two giant projects which I know offend God, if there is one.

The first is blowing the tops of mountains, and plowing the rubble into Nature's valleys. The second is the largest and most polluting industrial project on Earth: the Canadian Tar Sands.

The big oil companies are spending millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars, to convince you they produce what they call "ethical oil". It's everywhere. News columnists blather on about the wonderful "oil sands" and why we can't live without them. Never mind the full page ads from tar sands companies in the same newspapers.

I can't even go to a movie without seeing Hollywood-quality ads with butterflies and forests all around the new clean green Tar Sands operations.

Here is the other side of the story - a quick clip of a talk by Mike Mercredi, an aboriginal man from Fort Chipewyan, downstream from the Tar Sands.

(In the audio, Mike lists out his relatives that are dead or dying of cancer, which was unknown to them in previous generations, before the Tar Sands came upstream of their drinking water and fishing grounds)

I recorded that in 2008, when we had no experts to back him up. Listen to the whole Radio Ecoshock program "Climate Terrorism: The Tar Sands" 3 speakers recorded December 5th in Vancouver, listed on our 2008 show archive page at ecoshock.org.

As you will hear in this program, they are lying about being able to reclaim land to their former natural state. The oil companies and the governments who collude with them are faking and hiding the health effects.

The whole tar sands operation is a world-scale Ponzi scheme which will bankrupt future generations with the costs of clean-up, - if any remediation is possible. Or they will do what most mining companies do: leave a massive open scar upon the earth, all for the quick quarterly profits of foreign multinationals.

Why says so? According to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and his Environment Minister, anyone who criticizes the Tar Sands is just a foreign-funded radical - unpatriotic environmentalists.

Let's meet one of those radicals. Here is the introduction to Dr. David Schindler, before his speech in Vancouver, on March 28th, 2012. The intro is by John Pierce, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Simon Fraser University.

(audio: Schindler helped discover that phosphorus from detergents and water treatment plants was killing the Great Lakes; he proved acid rain was coming from coal plant pollution; he's recently done a study of Tar Sands pollution. Schindler has an Order of Canada, is a member of the Royal Society, and has many, many honors.)

That's the wild-eyed radical the Prime Minister fears. A life-long scientist who helped clean up the Great Lakes from phosphorus, who proved the source of acid-rain, a world-recognized and heavily awarded expert, David Schindler.

David is no fly-in academic from New York. He lives in Northern Alberta. He's fished in the many streams threatened by the proposed Enbridge northern pipeline. He's measures the water and the air, finding pollution governments denied.

In the program I summarize some of the surprising revelations in this speech, bolstered by selected audio. For example, did you know the tiny amounts of supposedly reclaimed lands can never be returned to their previous state, because the mine tailings are too salty?

I also didn't realize the biggest source of pollution is actually air-borne. We'll learn all that and more in this work-shop from Canada's top Tar Sands expert, a quiet but devastating critic of the world's dirtiest source of oil.

* Tar Sands chemicals flood local rivers, probably explaining higher levels of cancer in aboriginal Canadians downstream. The government won't investigate the many deaths there.

* The former Alberta caribou herds will never return.

* The forests are being stripped in an area projected to be larger than the state of Florida.

* Countless tons of methane are burned and released just to get oil out of the sands. More global warming gases.

* The corrosive raw oil is carried in a network of pipelines, tankers, trucks, and famous spills. It's an industrial spider web reaching down into the United States, indeed all over North America.

* Wherever you live in the world, the Tar Sands are wrecking your atmosphere, as the single largest industrial source of greenhouse gases on the planet.

* The damage can be seen from space, and will last for thousands of years.

Welcome to your secure energy source, your damned "ethical" oil.
-------------------

David begins with the tailing ponds, some of which are just meters away from the Athabasca River. According to Tar Sands Watch, every square meter of oil-bearing bitumen mined creates six square meters of tailing. These are tossed into toxic lakes now covering more than 55 square kilometers, over 13,000 acres and growing rapidly. The tailing dyke of just one company, Syncrude, is the second largest dam in the world. Only the Chinese Three Gorges Dam is larger.

Here is David Schindler...
[SH1_TailingsAthabasca etc. 1:38]

David then makes several key points.

First, development in both the Tar Sands operations, and in the surrounding town and infrastructure has far outstripped any planning process or regulation. It's a wild-west anything-goes oil rush. As that building boom grew, the size of planning and regulatory bodies needed to keep pace. Instead successive governments have cut funding, to the point that hardly anything is monitored, regulated, or planned.

Second: while the many foreign corporations make obscene multi-billions in profits, the Canadian public gets less and less of the revenues. Governments, with political parties heavily funded by oil companies, kept reducing the percentage going to the Canadian public. Later, we'll find the whole cleanup bill is mounting, as reclamation is stalled for decades. Young Canadians will pay those astronomic bills.

[SH2_FastDevleopment_massiveprofits 4:43]

From the recording March 28th, in Vancouver, here is what David Schindler says about "ethical oil".

[SH3_Ethical_Oil 2:58]

OK, now we are going for a long walk through David Schindler's presentation. He talks about cancer in the Native people; how the industry-sponsored river testing found NOTHING, no contaminants from super-polluting smoke stacks. His own team of scientists found a wide range of heavy metals and toxic polycarbonates the industry and government somehow failed to detect.

David Schindler all along gives you the big picture references that nobody else is talking about. For example, there are two giant chemical complexes called "the upgraders" which process the raw bitumen. These are sending out pollution for 50 miles around. It accumulates on the snow, and on the frozen rivers, until the fast Spring melt supercharges all the waters with toxic chemicals. It's the quiet science of the horrific.

[SH4_ScienceTesting 17 min]

That was Dr. David Schindler, an internationally renowned scientist working in Canada, talking about his team research into pollution from the Tar Sands. This was recorded by Alex Smith at the Simon Fraser University Wosk Centre in downtown Vancouver on March 28, 2012.

LISTEN TO/DOWNLOAD THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SEGMENT ON DAVID SCHINDLER (31 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

I hope you got one of the stories Schindler explained. As I understand it, Dr. Schindler and other scientists could not accept the industry-funded government approved study saying that NONE of the dirty pollutants from the tar sands operations could be measured in the Athabasca River or its tributaries. They found the alleged testing set up measuring stations either upstream of the operations, or far down river near the river mouth at Lake Athabasca, where dilution would be greatest. The testing method had a baseline, or used techniques, which eliminated low levels of contaminants.

Three scientists, David Schindler, Jeff Short of NOAA, and Peter Hodson, a toxicologist at Queens University took their own samples. These included sites near the Tar Sands operations.

This independent team used better testing methods. They found low levels of many, many toxic substances, especially near the so-called upgrader plants, where air pollution is strong and obvious. This is a scandal! The First Nations people living downstream from the tar sands complained for years their families were dying of cancer. Industry and the government told the victims there was no pollution in their water.

After the not-so-mysterious cancer deaths of the First Nations people, and after two decades of warnings from scientists, here are the results of the health impacts study done by the Canadian government: nothing!

They don't investigate. They don't care. There are billions of dollars of profits to be made every year. That is what matters.

You aren't going to hear the dirty truth about the tar sands from any authority, and certainly not from the millions spent on propaganda by the multinational oil companies digging out the tar.

We are out of time for this week, but not out of ammunition. In an upcoming Radio Ecoshock show, you'll hear more from famous scientist David Schindler. He'll tell us why the heavily advertised "restoration" of the scoured landscape is fake. Remaking nature is not possible, and it's not going to happen.

The native people like Mike Mercredi know. They live there, eating the polluted fish, breathing the polluted air.

[Mike Mercredi clip 2]

Keep your ears out for more on the Canadian Tar Sands, the world's single largest source of pollution, on Radio Ecoshock.

OUR GLOBAL WARMING COMEDY RANT - FROM LEE CAMP

We also have a short rant by New York Comedian Lee Camp. Here is a comedian who knows that global warming is not all that funny, but it's real. We run a short 2 minute clip from Lee's podcast "A Moment of Clarity" available on You tube.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for getting real about your world.

Relapse and Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:47:23 PDT

http://bit.ly/HsX2ac A fresh update on Japan after the tsunami and nuclear accident with Warren Karlenzig. Is it a chance to build new green cities, or a vision of what we all face as the oil runs out? Then a quick interview with anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, and Marsha Coleman-Adebayo at the Occupy the EPA protest in Washington. We conclude with an invitation by Susanne Moser to "get real" about our difficult future as we destabilize the climate.

BACK FROM POST NUCLEAR JAPAN - WITH WARREN KARLENZIG

Download this 24 minute interview... in CD Quality or faster download in Lo-Fi.

Do you worry about an energy shortage, a nuclear accident, or a severe economic hit? Welcome to Japan, which is dealing with all three, following the deadly Tsunami and nuclear accident in March 2011. PCI Fellow Warren Karlenzig just returned from the damage zone, with this radio report.

We have a new report from Warren Karlenzig, who just toured Japan with a United Nations group. As the founder of Common Current, Warren advises city and national governments on sustainability. He's a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. In 2009, Radio Ecoshock broadcast Warren's speech at a Vancouver panel on building green cities.

We can't get to the impact of the nuclear accident, or Japan's exciting prospects for green energy, without first giving respect to the people who live with the tragic loss of more than 20,000 lives, of whole towns, and a large part of the country. Warren gives us some insight on how are people in Japan are handling unimaginable stress.

Are there immediate lessons we can learn about surviving a large-scale disaster? How much help comes from government, and how much from self-organization by the citizens?

One of the hot button issues in Japan is the national government's plan to redistribute tsunami wreckage, including material contaminated with radioactive waste, all over the country.

With almost all nuclear reactors out of service, how are the Japanese dealing with the lack of energy? Fifty two out of fifty four reactors were out of service when Karlenzig toured Japan, and the 53rd was shutting down the day of our interview.

The Japanese are scrambling to import more LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) - and burning more coal - but there is still a massive energy short-fall.

It turns out their response could be very close to our future as oil becomes too expensive for most uses, if we can get oil at all.

The Japanese generally were either not heating buildings, or just keeping the pipes from bursting, while wearing winter coats inside. For a special meeting, a kerosene heater was brought in. Only the most necessary energy was used.

Karlenzig says the sudden failure of the Japanese energy supplies is comparable to a peak oil shock.

There an opportunity in Japan to rebuild new green cities and towns. Two cities have proposed "smart growth" models. One is pursuing ideas for renewable energy, and zero emissions. Find the details, and photos from the tour of Japan, in Warren's blog article here.

This reminds me of the astounding Japanese recovery after World War Two. Most cities were flattened, and energy was in short supply. Yet Japan rebounded with new factories, new technologies, and more efficient production.

But there are still major roadblocks to recovery in the region hit by both a tsunami and a triple nuclear melt-down. For one thing, young people were already leaving the central East coast region, which was known mainly for tourism, fishing, and agriculture. Young people were going to larger cities, seeking more modern employment, in computing for example.

This disaster has made the youth drain much more serious. With no work, hardly a place to live, and few prospects, many of the young people needed for rebuilding have left.

Warren raises another challenge. Japanese society tends to organize with male administrators. Women, and the elderly, did not attend most planning meetings, and appear not to be consulted about the new vision for a future. Karlenzig says experience shows real planning has to involve everyone, with meetings, questions, and working through the process. That is not happening in Japan, yet.

I was surprised to learn that after one year reconstruction has not yet begun! One reason is shocking: the land has not yet settled enough to rebuild. Many parts of the Eastern coast are still sinking. Land is sinking anywhere from a few inches, to several feet. With continuing aftershocks, in fact with a continuing wave of serious earthquakes ranging over 6.0, still happening, things are not yet settled for rebuilding.

One personal note: Warren Karlenzig was offered home-made meals with organic food. But should he eat things grown in a radioactive area? All the tour members were concerned. One official told Karlenzig the local mushrooms were much more radioactive than Tokyo was admitting. There are also reports that rice, the staple of Japanese food, is also contaminated.

The simple act of eating can feel threatening, after a nuclear accident.

Be sure and listen to this interview with sustainable cities expert Warren Karlenzig. Keep track of Warren at commoncurrent.com.

FROM THE OCCUPY EPA PROTEST

On March 30th, various groups united to march on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They were protesting the lack of regulations and enforcement to protect the environment, and people's health.

One of the co-organizers was a former EPA employee, and whistleblower, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo. You can hear our previous Radio Ecoshock interview with Marsha here.

This time our Washington D.C. correspondent was on the scene for the march. She interviewed Coleman-Adebayo. We only had time to run this short selection.

MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO

Gerri Williams: "I'm speaking with Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, one of the co-organizers of the Occupy EPA march that is going to be taking place. Doctor could you tell me about your motivation for this march, the reason behind it, and what you hope to accomplish."

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo: “I think it's incumbent upon our entire community to really start fighting for an environment that's healthy. And not an environment, and particularly not an EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], that's not controlled by corporations. One of the problems that we have in our community is that the EPA is not taking care of its business.

It's important for African Americans and people of color to become involved with the environmental movement. We are really the first victims of environmental injustice. Our homes are sited closer to environmental facilities than any other homes. Our children are more likely to have lead poisoning or neurotoxic levels of lead in their brains. Our children are more likely to have learning disabilities. Breast cancers in African American women tend to be a bit more stubborn than in Caucasian women. So we are really the first victims of environmental injustice, and it is so important that we become involved.

Recently a report was issued by Deloitte consulting firm that said it takes EPA 15 years - 15 years! - to handle a Title Six complaint.

Now a Title Six complaint, it's a complaint by a community about a facility in their community. Fifteen years is a lifetime in the history of a family. Which means that the agency has turned its back on communities of color that are suffering under the weight of industrialization.

So we have decided to say 'Enough is enough'. We are going to fight for our families and for our communities, and fight for our health. And as far as we are concerned this Administration has really not heard yet the voice of the people on this issue."

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT

An important guest speaker at the Occupy EPA rally was the famous anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott. She never fails to warn us that the two headed nuclear dragon still waits to attack us, much worse than terrorism.

Vast nuclear weapons systems are still on hair-trigger alert in many countries. New nations are still joining the nuclear club.

This weapons complex is married to nuclear power - one supports the other. Here is a short transcript, just part of the seven minute interview with Dr. Caldicott speaking to Gerri Williams of Radio Ecoshock.

ON NUCLEAR POWER IN AMERICA

"I don't think people are accepting it [nuclear power] now after Fukushima. In fact I saw a poll yesterday in the New York Times that said that about 60% of Americans now are cautious and wary and concerned about nuclear power. That's post-Fukushima, which shows that the nuclear industry have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years, saying that they are the answer to global warming - even though they cause global warming in their own right because they are undergirded by huge industrial infrastructure, mining, milling, enriching uranium and building reactors - that produce a huge amount of CO2 and global warming gases.

They advertise in Scientific American, on NPR [National Public Radio] all over the place. Which was really wicked. I rang NPR and said 'Why are you taking these ads from the nuclear energy industry?' And they couldn't really answer me. Money. 'Underwriting' they call it but it's advertising.

But now the Fukushima accident I predict will lead to the end of nuclear power, not just in Japan, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, which have all said 'No'. But China, America... and also when you have a meltdown, and I tell you when you have Americans dying either of acute radiation illness and leukemia - that's it. So it hasn't hit you yet. Do you have to wait until it hits you until you develop some common sense, and do the right thing?"

ON NEW REACTOR TECHNOLOGY

"The new reactors are much, much more dangerous, by orders of magnitude that the present light water reactors. Because they are fueled with Plutonium, where one millionth of a gram is a carcinogen. They are cooled by liquid sodium which explodes when exposed to air. So if you get a hole in a pipe you get a meltdown. And five kilos or ten pounds of is critical mass [the level required for a nuclear explosion]. So if you've got a hundred tons of plutonium in a nuclear reactor, and you lose the coolant, and there's a meltdown, and you get ten pounds of plutonium together, and you get critical mass, and a massive nuclear explosion scattering tons and tons of plutonium to the four winds. It's the most ghastly, hideous machine I could ever imagine. They are the new 'safe' reactors."

There is more. Download this 7 minute interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

GETTING REAL WITH SUSANNE MOSER

Let’s get real about our situation.

As David Orr put it: "This is not the time for illusion or evasion; it is time for transformation".

In our Radio Ecoshock interview we talk about an article, part of an upcoming book. The title is: "GETTING REAL ABOUT IT: MEETING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL DEMANDS OF A WORLD IN DISTRESS".

Our guest is the author, Dr. Susanne C. Moser. She is a researcher and consultant from California, associated with Stanford University. Susanne was previously a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and with the Union of Concerned Scientists. She currently has her own research and consulting company in California.

I learned about Susanne's article from a link provided by Carolyn Baker, at carolynbaker.net.

I've looked forward to our talk, ever since I read her refreshing look at where we really are. I ask you a few impossibly difficult questions, but only because Susanne was brave enough to raise them.

Before we get to her prescriptions for living in a sick civilization, she picks out one particular illness as a case study. We could be talking about mass extinctions, or running out of fresh water - but Moser chose the problem of climate change as her example. That is her area of expertise, where she can make the best case study of the ways we fail to look at reality.

After making a convincing case we are hurtling toward completely unknown lives, in a climate never seen by any human, Moser suggests there are two roads ahead. She calls them two kinds of transitions.

But first, I hit a real stumbling block. Moser writes about "environmental leaders".

I wonder if there are any. I see environmentalists, who are more or less powerless in the current political economy. I see leaders who are mostly bought by big fossil fuel companies, and other corporate interests. An "environmental leader" sounds like a hybrid that doesn't exist yet. Who is she you talking about?

Listen to the interview for her answer. For one thing, she is writing a chapter for the upcoming "Sage Reference Handbook of Environmental Leadership." But Moser goes much deeper, looking at the roles we all can play.

Let's imagine that whole populations realize we are in a biosphere on life-support. They elect leaders to save us from more losses, if not extinction. Moser doesn't pull any punches. She says any new system will have to live through, "enormous losses, human distress, constant crisis, and the seemingly endless need to remain engaged in the task of maintaining, restoring, and rebuilding - despite all setbacks - a viable planet..."

Here is another thorny issue we discuss: once people realize a couple of generations have ruined the known natural world, what the heck are we going to do with all the blame? Do we hang a bunch of geriatric "climate criminals"; do we declare an amnesty, or what?

I think the world of mass media, especially advertising, but also the industrial consumer system, has infantilized the whole population - all of us. We don't know how anything is produced, we just wait for it to come, and we don't count all the costs. So how do we transition a whole species away from being irresponsible children, to become responsible adult Earthlings?

Even though Moser's article "Getting Real About It" is aimed at environmental leaders, it is useful for everybody. I think that's why it's bouncing around the Net so quickly.
Download this 23 minute interview with Susanne Moser in CD quality or Lo-Fi

Under our program ending, you can hear the international artist Ariel Kalma, with "Spirit Dancer". Check out his work, as the father of disco, and electronica. Good stuff.

As always, thank you for listening, for daring to think about the tough problems of our times.

Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock

Summer in March

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:34:49 PDT

http://bit.ly/GRGbPD Summer in March? I ask the experts, Joe Romm of Climate Progress, and Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground. Then we visit with Professor Raymond De Young.

When we get exciting weather, it's hard to beat the Dr. Jeff Masters blog at the Weather Underground. Jeff has taught meteorology, he's been a Hurricane Hunter for NOAA, and still watches storms and all forms of strange weather.

A BUNCHA HOT MARCH LINKS FOR YOU

Here is a link to Jeff's key blog post on "Summer in March".

In the interview, I also reference this article from Andrew Freedman of Climate Central. His piece was titled "Global Warming May Have Fueled March Heat Wave Odds." And this is what Dr. James Hansen of NASA has been saying: we wouldn't see these extreme heat events so often, without the greenhouse gases we've added to the atmosphere.

Also at wunderground.com, your weather historian Christopher C. Burt posted some neat graphics and a thorough listing of the new heat records set. Our listeners from the Mid-West, through New England and all of Eastern Canada can find the new and old records here.

And it wasn't just in North America. The UK Telegraph headline Friday March 23rd: "UK to be as Hot as the Sahara This Weekend." Britain hit 20 degrees C, a balmy 68, the day before, a temperature normally seen in June.

You can find Bill McKibben (350.org) talking with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! about the weird March weather here.

I also like this blog entry at the Washington Post from "the Capital Weather Gang".

For more on impacts on crops, here is another radio piece from IPR.

CBS did a decent piece on the impact of early Spring/summer weather for allergy sufferers.

DOWNLOAD THE JEFF MASTER INTERVIEW (15 min)
Lo-Fi (4 Megabytes)

CD quality (13 MB)

JOE ROMM FROM CLIMATE PROGRESS WEIGHS IN

Summer in March... is it a preview of global warming? Our guest has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. He was a top advisor for energy efficiency and renewables in the Clinton Administration. Joe Romm is author of the book "Hell and High Water". But many of us know him as the world's best climate blogger over at ThinkProgress.org.

Here is Joe's great piece on the March heat wave. He's so good at summing up for busy people, targeting what really matters.

On the agricultural damage caused in Texas by the big heat and drought of 2011, see Joe's other post here.

DOWNLOAD THE JOE ROMM INTERVIEW 17 min (separately)
Lo-Fi

CD Quality

"I'M A CLIMATE SCIENTIST" - THE VIDEO!

Young climate scientists have heard enough from old weathermen and fake experts. A group of real scientists rolled out this quick song on You tube. My thanks to VR in Colorado for this G-rated version.

Here is a link to the clean version of "I'm a Climate Scientist" as a You tube video (OK for FCC broadcast regs). My thanks to VR in Colorado for creating the fun clean version for Radio Ecoshock.

RETHINK AND RELOCALIZE - RAYMOND DE YOUNG

Raymond De Young is an academic who isn't working for a military think-tank, or explaining why we should just keep climbing the consumer ladder. His "Localization Reader" will likely fall into hands that get dirty in gardens, and active in your community.

De Young is Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology and Planning, in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, at the University of Michigan.

DOWNLOAD RAYMOND DE YOUNG as a separate interview (24 minutes)
In faster downloading Lo-Fi

In CD quality

I came upon Raymond's work through the psychologist Carolyn Baker. Carolyn has the "Speaking Truth to Power" web site, and a great alternative headline news service. She passed on an article about how to survive our knowledge of a society under extreme stress - with a technique as simple as a walk in the park. The article is titled "Restoring Mental Vitality in an Endangered World: Reflections on the Benefits of Walking".

This really struck a chord with me. I walk through some trees, or along a stream, every day of the year. I've had a few almost hallucinogenic moments just looking at the delicate patterns in a patch of weeds. Should we worry about all the millions of minds who have departed for electronic screens, living in electrons?

Here is where to find Raymond's blog "The Localization Papers".

Along with Thomas Princen, De Young has selected a bunch of useful papers on relocalization, for a new book, "The Localization Reader, Adapting to the Coming Downshift" coming from MIT Press.

I like the mix of papers. You get classic works from people like M. King Hubbert, Joseph Tainter, Ivan Illich, and Wendell Berry. But they've also captured some of the new relocalization voices like Sharon Astyk and Rob Hopkins.

In our interview, I ask what De Young means by "downshift". It turns out it may be a more positive substitute for "collapse." De Young describes it more like deciding to shift down a gear in a car, as we shift downwards in our unnecessary consumption of resources, indeed of the Earth.

In the end, we get back to the problem of surviving the tidal wave of bad news, hitting us every day. I ask De Young how he copes, and is there more the rest of us can do, to maintain our vitality?

Neither of us are saying we should be "suzy sunshine" all the time. A bit of depression and cynicism is also healthy, given the slightly suicidal path our civilization is taking at the moment.

MY COMMENTS

When it comes to the un-natural heat in March 2012, we all have news images that stick in our minds. For me, it was a farmer in the wheat belt, looking over a bare field that should have been several feet deep with snow. He worried it would be too dry to plant wheat this year.

Canadians and Americans dug out their shorts, or even their bathing suits in March. I hope this will this get people talking more around the dinner table about climate change.

Then we have a horrible paradox to deal with: people like going to the beach much more than they like a March blizzard. At first, millions of us are going to love global warming. Could that defeat action to save a livable world?

Polls seem to show more North Americans believe climate disruption is happening. Yet in Canada, the Prime Minister is busy gutting environmental laws, to speed up construction of Tar Sands pipelines. In the United States, President Obama is bragging about all the pipelines he's approved. Aren't we driving awfully hard to make sure a climate disaster happens?

I feel like a kind of climate quake has just happened in North America and Britain. Sure it's just weather, but millions of people got a taste of the future.

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. I trust your life will never be the same. It's all changing my friend. Set your clocks for a future not advertised on TV.

Our background music was provided by Vastmandana. Don't forget our web site, ecoshock.org. Tune in next week, and please tell your friends about this program. Before it's too late?

Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock

Go Green Media

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:34:44 PDT

http://bit.ly/GJPcvJ How can we be optimistic? Publisher of The Mother Earth News, Bryan Welch. From D.C. Environmental Film Festival, Harry Lynch, Director of "Switch", Alexandra Cousteau, and Robert Cole.

This week on Radio Ecoshock, we go green media. You'll hear an interview with Bryan Welch, publisher of the Mother Earth News and the Utne Reader. Then off to the D.C. Environmental Film Festival, to talk with directors and producers of the energy film "Switch" and previews of the Blue Planet North America Expedition.

Radio Ecoshock correspondent Gerri Williams is joined in our Washington Pacific studio by Alexandra Cousteau, and film-makers Robert Cole and Harry Lynch.

BRYAN WELCH - ALTERNATIVE PUBLISHER AND HOMESTEADER

Let's go to Bryan Welch - why is he so optimistic, in these difficult times?

He's the publisher of some of the only magazines I still read: Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, and Grit. Starting as a journalist, Bryan is now a successful businessman - and still a homesteader in Kansas.

I begin by admitting Radio Ecoshock may be the most depressing program on radio. We have scientists, oil experts, and economists explain our coming doom. Bryan has written a book saying there may be a better way.

It's called "Beautiful and Abundant, Building the World We Want".

Abundant? What about peak oil, climate catastrophe, reduced consumerism? I ask Bryan to explain.

He begins by pointing our humans have gone through periods of extreme creativity. For example, in a 15 year period around the turn of the century we invented bicycles, cars, airplanes, radio, and many other things. In that same time, Einstein developed a theory of light, energy, and the universe itself.

As the need becomes apparent, we may experience a new burst of creativity to help solve our problems, Welch says.

But these technical accomplishments require a "grand vision" of how humans could be sustainable in the long term on this planet. For this Welch suggests 4 criteria for sustainability (and he uses these in the operation of his various business ventures as well.)

FOUR CRITERIA OF SUSTAINABILITY

Number one: does it create beauty? That might not be intuitive as first on your list. But Welch says humans are attracted to beauty, and it motivates them in powerful ways. A new technology, or even a political movement, needs an inherent beauty to be communicated, to be successful.

Number two: does it create abundance? In the oil industry, we expect any worthwhile source to create much more energy than goes into producing it. Investors expect more than just a meager return. Perhaps this expectation of abundance, especially in planet-saving technology, is a requirement. Especially if it must help billions of people. Small thinking need not apply.

Welch also thinks capitalism, properly and honestly applied, is still the best system. Again, abundance is required, because we need an excess, known as "capital" to develop still more innovation.

Number three: is it fair? This is kind of a balance to the requirement of abundance. It's not enough to make a few people rich, and certainly that isn't sustainable if the technology ruins the commons all humans and other life forms need to survive. There are cases in capitalism where everyone seems better off, through the innovation and production, Welch thinks. There is a lot more to this one, which helps guide the way business should operate to be sustainable, and the way communities and whole societies need to think things through.

Number four: is it contagious? What good is the best idea or tech if nobody really wants to spread it around? Especially if our time is limited (it is) - changes need to move fast to succeed, and that means motivating people.

THE LIMITATIONS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

Given the above, Welch thinks greens have not been effective communicators. Enviros don't talk enough about beauty, abundance, fairness, and contagious thinking to reach the mass public. Bryan, who includes himself as a long-term environmentalist, says we have alienated a lot of people, by not using effective communication strategies.

As an aside, Radio Ecoshock has probably turned some people away, with our serious warning of dire challenges, but I feel we all have our role to play. I don't plan serious changes to the program, although I am always looking for solutions I can believe in, or methods our listeners can use to cope with the stress of knowing things are not going well for the planet.

When I question Welch on how abundance is possible, given limited resources and growing billions who want to consume more - he answers we can choose our future, by choosing our population numbers. If we can control population, we can plan for vast areas of wilderness, and there should be abundant resources for a sustainable lifestyle.

HOMESTEADING IN KANSAS

Bryan helps to balance his own consciousness, and experiments with things you might find in The Mother Earth News, on his 50 acre homestead in Kansas. He raises chickens, goats, cattle, and I presume vegetables. Welch thinks a daily engagement with nature on some level helps to keep us more sane.

Homesteading also helps make Welch more optimistic. He sees nature solving problems, and meets others working on the land, that seems to make people happier, and more hopeful of finding solutions.

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT?

Let's face it. Bryan Welch is now a multi-multi millionaire. While he's retained a kind of common-person's state of mind, willy-nilly he is part of the 1 percent. So I ask him: what does he think of the Occupy movement?

"We're really at a watershed moment for business, as well as for humanity in general."

After saying Capitalism is pretty new, only known for a couple of centuries, he sees the need for a new variation which expects benefits for all people and for nature. There is no reason this could not be done, Welch says.

He likes the Occupy movement, and particularly the version he saw in Occupy Fayetteville Arkansas. Occupy people set out to help their communities, finding practical things that need to be done, while calling for a new vision for the system.

Bryan thinks the real opportunity to change corporate practices that are harmful is through consumer demand, and consumer action. Welch says corporations "turn on a dime" as soon as they see a tide of consumer reaction. If we keep buying sustainable products, and move away from corporations that are damaging the planet, that will reshape society, he tells us.

PRINT VERSUS ONLINE?

I ask this major alternative publisher how print magazines, like the Mother Earth News, or the Utne Reader, can survive the onslaught of Net publishing and free information?

Welch isn't at all concerned. In fact, they get more print subscribers from their web sites, than from any other sources. Plus, like all publishers, they are moving more content to the Net. Now thirty percent of all their revenues come from digital content.

Still, Bryan asks, why is there a Wired Magazine? Even the most committed Net people still want some of their information in print form, obviously. As a personal aside, I would want a stack of Mother Earth News magazines, in print, at my homestead, or even in a "city-stead" - because if the power goes out, or gets too expensive, or some super-bug or solar storm takes down the Net (could happen!) - I want my tips on how to get extra cucumbers to be available to my grubby hands.

The main company, Odgen Publications, is also experimenting with more video content.

At the same time, The Mother Earth News hopes to connect more people on a face-to-face level. The Mother Earth News Festivals may expand from 2 per year to more events. The next one is in Pallyup Washington on June 2n and 3rd. Since that is near me, I am toying with the idea of going, and maybe doing some interviews and research on new products there.

Read Bryan's blog here.

You can download a CD quality version of just this 23 minute Bryan Welch interview here, or a faster-downloading Lo-Fi copy here.

FROM GREEN MAGAZINES TO FILM: THE D.C. ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012

From the Washington DC studio of WPFW Pacifica radio, Radio Ecoshock correspondent Gerri Williams takes us to the D. C. Environmental Film Festival.

"SWITCH" TO FUTURE ENERGY

The first film interview is with Harry Lynch, the Director of the new film "Switch".

Download this interview by Gerri Williams here.

The basic story line: Texas scientist and energy Professor Scott Tinker sets off around the world, to find out what can possibly power our planet in the future.

The result is film footage you have probably never seen. They go to Iceland, and look at perfectly clean geothermal energy, tapping natural steam. Of course not everyone has that easy resource.

Tinker looks at big solar and wind installations in various parts of the world. Then he calculates how many of them we would need to power a modern society.

The fearsome part comes as Tinker meets with various experts, who add the energy needs of China and India to the mix. All of a sudden the problem of SCALE comes up. Things that work on a small scale, may be next to impossible for the world as whole, the film suggests.

They look at fossil fuels, including footage at giant offshore oil rigs normally not allowed, and ditto deep in coal mines.

Nuclear power plants, and their economics, are part of the film.

In a twist, Dr. Tinker decides to measure his own energy imprint, as he travels about. It's not just about air miles, but all the products you and I use on a daily basis. He calculates it all, and the numbers are pretty frightening. Now multiply that by a billion, and our energy plans fall apart.

Global warming, and the need to slash emissions, are not left out of the film. Neither are they central to it. Tinker does acknowledge fossil fuels will need to be phased out, for various reasons, and he's looking for the big fix.

Gerri and I want to add one caution about this film "Switch". The film-makers seem to take for granted our continuing massive use of energy. There is no talk of energy descent, or economic collapse. The need to decarbonize is acknowledged, but the film-makers, especially Dr. Tinker, seem comfortable with a 30 year transition period, which includes nuclear and fossil fuels like natural gas.

Fukushima in my opinion showed nuclear power can destroy a big region, if not a whole country. Climate scientists warn we must act now, within the next ten, not thirty years, or risk catastrophic climate change.

You should know that Dr. Scoot Tinker is totally connected to the oil industry. His bio reads, quote:

"Dr. Tinker worked in the oil and gas industry for 17 years in research, exploration, and development, prior to coming to The University of Texas at Austin in 2000." He is a past President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists."

We might find it unlikely a man of his background will suggest we decentralize using totally renewable energy, - very, very quickly. But I won't speak for Dr. Tinker. You need to make your own conclusions from the film.

Teachers who plan to use this film, backed by the industry-friendly American Geosciences Institute, should be ready to encourage students to learn from the breath-taking shots of big power operations, but to question our continued dependence on them.

Director Harry Lynch also describes an innovative use of film on the web site. The plan to offer short (3 to 5 minute) clips that can be assembled in various ways according to your interests. Say you just want to learn about renewables: fine, make your own movie! It's a good concept.

Find out more at the "Switch" web site.

BLUE PLANET NORTH AMERICA EXPEDITION

Our next interview with Gerri Williams is less controversial. Let's get back to the studio, to find more from the D.C. Environment Film Festival 2012.

In her next interview, Gerri has two guests: Alexandra Cousteau, and Robert Cole.

Yes, Alexandra Cousteau is the granddaughter of the famous underwater film maker Jacques Cousteau. Alexandra learned to dive at age 7. She's just finished a tour, and a film, about the magic and the sad state of American Rivers.

For example they interviewed and filmed along the Colorado River, which has been robbed of waters before it can reach the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Other rivers have been heartlessly polluted or built-up - but Alexandra maintains some optimism. Other rivers are much cleaner than they were 30 or 50 years ago. (Perhaps that is a mix of Clean Water legislation, and the deindustrialization of America.)

Also joining Gerri, is Robert Cole. More than twenty five years ago, Cole made a documentary about the river flowing into the nation's capital, the Potomac. It is called "Potomac American Reflections", expressing what the damage to the river says about American society. Now that film is being reshown again.

Robert Cole is less optimistic. He sees progress as lamentably slow, even for a river which flows through Washington D.C.

I like these interviews. There is a good exchange, and lots to learn about more than rivers. Who are we? What do we want and what will we tolerate? Do rivers have rights to exist on their own? How can film and radio help that discussion?

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. My thanks to our D.C. correspondent Gerri Williams. Be sure and join us again next week.

Alex
Radio Ecoshock

Fukushima Disaster - One Year Later

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:03:20 PDT

http://bit.ly/wS7C5M From "Fukushima Nuclear Disaster - One Year After" nuke expert Arnold Gundersen & 2 Japanese activists from Fukushima. Radio Ecoshock 120314

Music bed credit: drums by Vastmandana

On the anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster in Fukushima Japan, I am taking you with me to a heart-breaking conference organized by physicians, to assess the on-going damage.

You will hear the latest from nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen, just back from Japan. He'll tell us about continuing dangers, spreading waste throughout the country, and radiation in North America, from trees to seafood.

More important still, two Japanese activists tell us how citizens in Fukushima Prefecture are coping. How, in the face of organized denial by governments and universities, they are acting to protect their children.

This story goes well beyond the melt-down of three reactors still out of control in Japan. Listen closely, and you hear how governments fail their citizens in emergencies. How they lied after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear accidents. And why you must be prepared to organize your local community when any kind of disaster strikes.

Whether it's a hurricane like Katrina, big floods or tornados, governments cannot, and will not, save us.

This conference was in Vancouver, March 11th 2012. "The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster One Year Later" was organized by Physicians for Global Survival, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Simon Fraser University, and other medical organizations in British Columbia. It was recorded by Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock.

Let's start with the clearest most honest voice, right from the start of the Fukushima disaster, Arnie Gundersen of fairewinds.com

[Gundersen - main speech 31 min]

Gundersen's talk is filled with important information about the situation in Japan - with implications for American reactors.

We could talk about the weakness of the Mark I GE reactors. Their bad design makes them prone to melt-downs. Everyone knows it, including the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, the NRC. Fukushima, with its three operating Mark I type reactors, proved. So why are there more than a dozen similar reactors still running in the United States?

Gundersen explains why this design fails in such dangerous ways.

Then we have the extreme health danger to the people of Japan, especially women and children. Gundersen departs from the official Japanese position that no one has died, and there is a very low health risk. In fact, our speaker predicts a million cancers from Fukushima radiation in Japan in the next 20 years.

Is he an ill-informed fringe speaker? Hardly. Arnie Gundersen worked in the industry, helped write the official government handbook on decommissioning reactors. He's been an official witness in all sorts of inquiries and law cases.

Gundersen explodes the myth that the American Three Mile Island reactor melt-down (and it was a melt-down, though seldom reported as such) - killed anyone. In fact, peer-reviewed studies and reports show a higher cancer death among those people exposed to TMI radiation.

Arnie works from peer-reviewed papers on Chernobyl deaths, and Three Mile Island, comparing that to the radiation dose experienced by the population of Japan. The results look terrible. We'll find out in the coming years.

While in Japan in the last few weeks, Gundersen took a soil sample from five random locations in Tokyo. He brought them back to the States for testing. All five would be classified as "nuclear waste" in America. The residents of Tokyo are walking around on nuclear waste.

The Fukushima one year anniversary conference, organized by Physicians for Global Survival, was attended by doctors, experts, and concerned Japanese people. The questions were penetrating. I play you the complete Question and Answer exchange with Arnie Gundersen.

He explains the forests of Japan were so contaminated with radiation, that when cedar buds open again this spring that will initiate another wave of radioactive Cesium into the environment.

Gundersen calculates that due to the favorable winds during the major releases at Fukushima, about 20 percent of the radioactive plume fell on the Japanese mainland. Another 78 percent dropped into the Pacific Ocean - and two percent of that radiation reached North America, particularly hitting the Cascades region of the West Coast.

A few cedar buds sent to Gundersen from California, right after the winds reached North America, proved positive for the two types of Cesium that could only have come from a fresh nuclear accident (and not from earlier atomic bomb testing.) But Arnie doesn't think there will be any significant re-release of Cesium in North America when cedar buds open there.

However, some seaweed and other sea products were lightly radiated by the accident on the Pacific Coast. But the real concern in North America would be the large migratory fish circulating in the Pacific, like tuna, and especially salmon. The current sea food is safe, because those fish, and those polluted currents, have not reached North America yet. The 2013 fish catch might be suspect.

The authorities in North America have resisted testing Pacific fish for safety, and in some case promised not to test it. Gundersen wonders whether we will find out if a fishing boat sets off alarms set in ports to detect nuclear threats from terrorists. Perhaps public pressure will force the governments to test Pacific fish products in a thorough manner?

In the Q and A, I asked Gundersen about the Japanese government policy to distribute debris contaminated with radioactivity to various parts of the country for disposal, including incineration. Gundersen says this is the very wrong way to go. For one thing, it will make future studies of cancer more difficult, since all of Japan will be irradiated, instead of just the area around Fukushima and the East coast of Japan.

The more serious threat is to spread the danger to the whole country, physically, and by releasing more radioactive particles into the air (they don't burn). Gundersen suggests Japan should ship all contaminate debris to the exclusion zone around Fukushima, and admit the truth, those residents will never be allowed to go back home. At least this would prevent the further spread of radioactive materials.

This entire presentation by Gundersen, both the speech and Q and A, are too loaded with information to summarize it all here. You just have to listen.

As a follow-up, discover a series of helpful videos on Fukushima at the Gundersen's web site, fairewinds.com

This is the Radio Ecoshock special on the one year anniversary of the terrible triple melt down of reactors in Fukushima Japan. I've covered this story since the day it happened. Find our half dozen one hour specials on Fukushima at our web site, ecoshock.org.

Now it's time to hear citizen activists from Fukushima Prefecture. We start with a shocking apology to the world, from Aya Marumori. She is Executive Director of health, at the Japanese non-profit group CRMS. Aya volunteers in shelters in Fukushima, meets with doctors, and helps parents create "Life Notes" to monitor radiation impacts in their kids.

She begins with this admission, not unusual among people in Japan, who know the horror of nuclear radiation, and deeply regret being part of its release into the Pacific, North America, and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere:

"I have known the danger of nuclear power plants, but I have not acted enough to stop it. I like to apologize that this has happened, and radiation has been defusing to the world - till now."

She goes on to tell us about public opinion polls in Japan. In a country and culture of consensus, more than half the people no longer trust the government. That is a stunning change in Japan. Most people in the Fukushima area feel great stress, daily. More than half of women with children would move away if they could, polls show.

Aya Marumori, from the Japanese NGO called CRMS, if very informative about the real situation in the region hit by Fukushima radiation.

Next we hear about citizen efforts to do their own radiation monitoring, helped by donations of equipment from France and Belarus. Wataru Iwata represents the Citizens' Radioactive Measuring Stations, CRMS. He gets help from the French group CRIIRAD, to measure radiation in the air, in food, and in peoples' bodies.

We are told that CRMS had to appeal to specialists outside the Fukushima region - because the government and Fukushima University have a prepared line for all local doctors - which minimizes the risk, and downplays peoples' anxiety.

For the same reason, this local NGO is organizing an international conference for early June, to bring in other opinions from other countries. Local people feel the need to defend their own interests and lives, especially to protect their families.

It is heart-breaking, to find the government refuses to do adequate testing, to protect young lives, to admit the awful truth of radiation.

This recording by Alex Smith comes from the conference “The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster One Year Later" held in Vancouver, Canada on March 11th, 2012.

The conference was Physicians for Global Survival, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and other medical organizations. Find a complete listing of speakers here.

I think this Fukushima story is much more than the death knell for nuclear power on planet Earth. We can't handle a technology that can destroy an entire country, while polluting a whole hemisphere, for thousands of years.

It's also a case of how big governments gather up to protect the status quo, to minimize serious problems. They fail to protect their own citizens. Only you and I, organizing at the local level, can ensure survival when disaster strikes. Don't wait. Organize and act now.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening, and caring about your world.

Private Spies: WikiLeaks Outs Stratfor

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:05:55 PST

http://bit.ly/Avg7gI Julian Assange of Wikileaks reveals private intel company Stratfor spying on NGO's, helping big corporations and banks with government secrets. Ecoshock 120307

Today on Radio Ecoshock you will hear about the brave new world of privatization of intelligence services, global corruption, and abuse of media services for propaganda, big corporations, and private gain. This whole program lets you hear what mainstream media fails to deliver. You will hear critical excerpts from a media press conference in London, February 27th, 2012.

We begin with Julian Assange, the Editor in Chief at WikiLeaks, announcing the first batch from a treasure trove of 5 million emails, hacked from the private intelligence agency Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.)

Stratfor is based in Texas. It hires senior U.S. intelligence agents, and draws up plans for the American Air Force and Marines. Stratfor publishes a newsletter costing thousands of dollars, with 300,000 subscribers, many of them in governments around the world.

SPYING FOR CORPORATIONS - AGAINST NGO's

According to the emails, the company also holds private consultations, and undertakes spying operations, even subversion, of public interest and political groups, on behalf of major corporations.

Stratfor was hired by the Coca Cola Company to investigate PETA, People for the Investigation of Animals, in Canada. The soft drinks company was a major sponsor for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and feared actions against Canada's seal hunt.

As a measure of the compromise of government secrets available to private intelligence companies, Stratfor emails suggest the company would use full access to FBI files on PETA, who have been labeled "terrorists" for the convenience of the massive American pharmaceutical industry.

The company brags about its possession of top secret classified American documents, including information on drone strikes, and materials from Osama Bin Laden's safe house.

We await the investigation and prosecution of Stratfor for these breaches of American law.

THE CHASE TO "GET" JULIAN ASSANGE

Instead, the emails show a close collusion between several government agencies and Stratfor, in a campaign to capture and jail Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

Stratfor’s Vice-President for Counterterrorism and Corporate Security, Fred Burton, is a former Deputy Chief of the Department of State’s counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service. WikiLeaks has found a secret email from early 2011 from Burton, saying a sealed indictment against Julian Assange has already been issued by a secret Grand Jury in the United States. In expletive laced emails, Burton plots with others to bankrupt Assange, to have his Australian citizenship revoked, to have Assange extradited to the U.S. for a lengthy prison term, if not for life.

Julian Assange has been held in Britain for more than a year, waiting on a case for extradition to Sweden, on sex charges which even Stratfor employees, according to the released emails, do not believe.

HOW THE HACKED DOCUMENTS ARE BEING PROCESSED

The hackers group Anonymous hacked into the 5 million emails of Stratfor, where security was ridiculously lax. They delivered the whole batch to WikiLeaks, who organized a team of more than 25 world media outlets to analyze the mountains of information. The press conference featured journalists from the U.S., Britain, Italy, Spain, and Lebanon. Also presenting were the media activist group "The Yes Men" and UK charities representing victims of the 1984 Bhopal pesticide horror - all spied on by Stratfor on behalf of the Dow Chemical company, current owners of the still poisonous Bhopal site in India.

You need to understand how corporations and big governments team up against their own citizens, to preserve the rights and profits of the 1 percent.

Before we hear the other activists and journalists, let's get back to the opening remarks by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks speaking at the WikiLeaks press conference titled "The Global Intelligence Files" in London, February 27th. This is Radio Ecoshock.

Leaks of emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor reveal the company spies on activist groups and non-profits, even charities helping medical treatment for victims of corporate accidents.

THE YES MEN

The Yes Men kicked it off by announcing, on BBC, that Dow Chemical company had finally taken responsibility for helping the victims of the Bhopal disaster, and cleaning up the site.

The world has longed to hear that Dow has done the right thing. Unfortunately, the BBC was taken in yet again by The Yes Men, the media activist group. Stratfor was called in to investigate.

From the WikiLeaks press conference, we hear Mike Bonanno of the media activists "The Yes Men" at theyesmen.org. You are listening to Radio Ecoshock highlights, lightly edited for radio, from the WikiLeaks press conference in London, February 27th. Many corporate and government relationships became clear that day.

IS STRATFOR REALLY JUST A MEDIA ORGANIZATION?

Stratfor claims publicly to be a media group, although you and I never read their publications, unless we can pay thousands of dollars for their newsletter. Inside their own emails however, the top executives make clear their roots as a private spy agency vying for global supremacy.

The difference between a real media outlet, and Stratfor, is explains in a short clip from Stephania, from the Italian news magazine L'espresso.

We find more from Carlos Enrique Bayo of the former Spanish newspaper Publico, now published as web-only.

THREE SPEAKERS FOR BHOPAL VICTIMS (spied on by Stratfor)

Then we listen to three activists helping victims of the 1984 and on-going Bhopal chemical disaster in India, as introduced by Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men.

* Colin Toogood from the UK charity "Bhopal Medical Appeal",

* Bhopal survivor Farah Edwards Khan, (her statement on You tube here)and

* UK-based Indra Sinha, author of the Bhopal-based novel "Animal's People."

NATIONAL SECURITY FOR WHO?

A reporter asks, are these emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor a danger to national security. In his response, WikiLeaks Editor in Chief Julian Assange gives us all a quick lesson on what the words "national security" have come to mean: "security" for the 1 percent who struggle to maintain their dominance over the rest of society.

We get more classic analysis from Julian Assange, the man Attorney General Eric Holder, the Pentagon, and the CEO of Stratfor hope to jail for life, for his revelations of American emails on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE GOLDMAN SACHS CONNECTION

One plot coming out of the emails, was the arrival at Stratfor of Shea Morenz, who was in 2009 (and perhaps after) a Director at Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs. Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched a plan to spin off the intelligence gathered into an investing company to be called "Stratcap".

The leaked emails indicate Morenz injected around two million dollars into Stratfor, and invested at least four million more into the new investment company. "Stratcap" was to be sold as an independent company - to draw investors - but the internal emails indicated Friedman told his staff Stratcap would be an integral part of Stratfor.

So what? It looks like a plan to intentionally mislead potential investors. And Stratfor would use information which is apparently gathered from its clients, including U.S. Government agencies (read the taxpayer) to make investments for profits. "Stratcap" was to be released in 2012, but that is now in doubt after these emails surfaced.

We also see how a Goldman Sachs employee, or former employee, and Wall Street generally, uses insider information for trading, information not available to the public and other investors.

MUCH MORE TO COME

WikiLeaks just released the first batch of 5 million emails hacked from one of the world's largest private intelligence companies, Stratfor. Expect more revelations in the coming months. Check the live blog at firedoglake by Kevin Gosztola, and of course the WikiLeaks pages (notice the articles on the right hand side of this page, especially the article "Stratfor on the Australian Assange".

SPYING ON THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

During the recorded Question and Answers with the press, Julian Assange compares the way Rupert Murdoch's News of the World handled its spy and bribery scandal (at least they answered questions) to Stratfor's outright denial to explain their behavior.

One of the media partners in the WikiLeaks release is Rolling Stone magazine. Their reporter Michael Hastings found emails and other evidence that the Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Occupy Movement. Apparently the DHS wants a report on the impact of Occupy on the financial services sector.

Wait a minute; wasn't the Department of Homeland Security set up to protect all citizens against terrorist attacks? And now it has become yet another domestic spy agency on behalf of the banks and Wall Street?

Watch what you Tweet, because Big Brother, and his dog Stratfor, are spying on you. Michael Hastings reports DHS was following all social media, including Facebook, which no doubts co-operates. Just more fodder for the giant database in the sky of ordinary taxpayers who object to paying off bad debts from banking industry gambling.

THE INCOMPETENCE OF STRATFOR

Like some journalists in this press conference, some critics find Stratfor's analysis to be misinformed or even a "joke".

In an article called "McStrategy" by David P. Goldman - Stratfor CEO George Friedman's strange predictions are revealed. Friedman says Poland, of all places, will be the new powerhouse of Europe, while an alliance of Turkey and Japan will face-off with the United States. It's all in his book, available as a bonus when you sign up for a newsletter subscription!

Max Fisher, writing in The Atlantic, simply says "Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is WikiLeaks for Taking It Seriously". Well, their analysts may be incompetent, but politicians believe it, and the U.S. Marines let Stratfor do their long-range planning.

As Assange said in our recording: "These organizations because of their secrecy, corruption flourishes within them, but the other thing, and in fact it is the one thing that has really saved the world, is that incompetence also flourishes in the dark."

We wrap up the radio program with a short summary of what Stratfor is, by Julian Assange. There are really three income streams, in a multi-layered organization.

WHO GETS "NEWS" AND WHO GETS "INTELLIGENCE"

Assange raised a critical question for all of us who read "the news". As international agencies like Reuters began to lose revenues to free distribution on the Net, and their newspaper clients also suffered loses, many are tempted by, or take over by, a profitable business selling information first, or exclusively, to wealthy corporations and governments.

In fact, Reuters merged with the Thompson data empire, which also sells private reports to governments and major corporations. Did that merger taint Reuters as well, Assange asks?

(It's classic Assange analysis, not published anywhere else, as far as I know. Make sure you listen.)

We come to ask: how much of what is known is published?

Are we, the public, always the last to know, and the least informed?

Why do so many public agencies pay so much money, to get information produced at the taxpayer's expense, and supposedly protected by law?

When will those who corrupt government officials, journalists, and insiders - freely taking classified information to sell to the highest bidder - be investigated and charged?

Will the American Congress investigate Stratfor, and establish rules to govern private intelligence agencies - before they govern us?

I'm Alex Smith. Find "The Global Intelligence Files" and support the freedom of Julian Assange, at the web site wikileaks.org.

Thank you for listening.

Free the Climate Scientists!

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:30:53 PST

http://bit.ly/Ad7hzA Dr. John Mashey investigates right-wing billionaires & corporations who pay alleged "charities", bloggers, & old weathermen to deny climate science. Canadian journalist Margaret Munro on government muzzling scientists, plus update by UCS Francesca Grifo on science freedom in U.S.
----------

The fossil fuel industry have teamed up with very wealthy idealogues to make you doubt global warming is happening, or that we are forcing big changes in the climate.

For years, we guessed and partly knew that a small group of Right-wing think tanks, weathermen, and bloggers, and even a couple of low-grade climate scientists, were being paid off. We just couldn't see through the corporate veil of deception.

Now we know many of the same people hired by the tobacco industry to create doubt that smoking killed millions of people, found a new source of funding, and a new cause. They are attacking climate science, and the scientists. Hidden money fuels a campaign of lies, inuendo, fear mongering and fake science.

In recent news, we finally got hard information on just who is paying for these attacks, and how the money flows out to so-called independent "experts" and bloggers. A well-known scientist, Peter Gleick, penetrated the secret funding sources for climate attack central - an alleged charity called "The Heartland Institute".

We didn't really need the Heartland emails, leaked to desmogblog.com. Another source, Dr. John Mashey, patiently analysed public documents to track it all down. In an exclusive radio interview, John Mashey lays out the conspiracy, and names names.

Here is a link to John Mashey's blog, and here is where to download his 200 page PDF documentation, showing the donors, the front groups, and the propaganda machine of climate denial.

Here are some more good links, and a bit of a transcript, if you want to follow up on the Heartland funding of "scientists" like Dr. Fred Singer (who spoke for the tobacco industry, and now gets $$$ to speak against climate science) and other bloggers and fake experts.

Read this George Monbiot article in the UK Guardian from February 20th. George captures what is happening: plutocrats are taking over our governments and trying to control our minds (not to mention what our kids are taught in school). "We need to know who funds these thinktank lobbyists"

FROM THE RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW interview with Dr. John Mashey.

"Alex Smith: I see from your charts, and it was echoed in the leaked documents, the Heartland Institute received millions from a single anonymous donor. Do we have any clue who that is?

John Mashey: Oh yeah. It's pretty well in the [years of Heartland Institute] blogs. And it is something I almost included [in his 200 page report] but I still had some work to do, to track things down.

The leaked information helped remove certain possibilities. I would suggest that there is a huge amount of evidence that it's, and I don't know how to pronounce it, it's Barre Seid from Chicago area.

There's a whole pattern of him giving to Heartland for years, and then through his foundation, at least back through 1999. But around 2005 he disappears. There's a funny thing in 2005-2006 where a whole lot more money comes in, but then the next year it goes out to a bunch of different other non-profits.

Heartland had never done that before or afterwards. One of them was to a place called Shimer college, and it turns out there was a takeover attempt, sort of run by Seid, with a new Board, or attempting to have a new Board which was mostly people who worked for Seid, or people who were funded by Seid.

And then later, what happens is the money comes to Shimer College through this Donors Trust/Donors Capital combination. That entity also supplied a lot of money to Heartland. It's a big boost, came through Donors.

I can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I would bet, you know there's nobody else that fits, and in particular the other possibilities were all named as named donors in the [leaked] funding document, which says, you know, [they are?] pretty unlikely."

----------------

Check out this Daily Kos expose, with tons of links, on Barre Seid's alleged take-over of a Shimer College in the U.S. (with $17 million dollars, also going through the anonymous "Donors' Trust" that donated lots of money to the Heartland Institute and other climate denial organizations).

A list of some of Seid's past donations here. It's a mix of real charities, and the usual right-wing think tanks and suspects.

CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS MUZZLED

In Canada, the Prime Minister represents "the oil patch" of Alberta. He pushes the Tar Sands. His government issued draconian new rules that make it pretty well impossible for government climate scientists, ocean experts, and more - to speak to the public.

Canadian government scientists are often forbidden to speak to the press, even after publishing studies in major international journals. We'll hear three shocking cases explained by Canada's top science reporter, Margaret Munro. That is from her presentation at the 2012 American Academy for the Advancement of Science Panel "Unmuzzling Government Scientists" in Vancouver February 17th, as recorded by aven.com - the Audio Visual Education Network. You can order almost all of the talks from the AAAS 2012 conference from Aven - and there are some great presentations.

In one case, a Canadian government scientist who published about a flood in Canada's North 13,000 years ago was forbidden to speak about his scientific study. Is it because the ultra-Christians in Harper's government believe the world is only 6,000 years old, in their interpretation of the Bible?

Another scientist, Dr Kristi Miller, head of molecular genetics for the Department for Fisheries and Oceans, found a virus in wild fish. That was inconvenient for the lucrative farmed fish market. Although the international press were promised an interview with Miller - that never happened. Find out more in this BBC article on Canada muzzling it's scientists.

In fact, the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Claire Dansereau, was supposed to speak at this AAAS Panel. It's printed in the conference listings. She didn't show up. The presenters left an empty chair where the government of Canada was supposed to be.

THE BATTLE OF "KEYSTONE NORTH" - THE OTHER ENBRIDGE TAR SANDS PIPELINE

Here is another crazy example.

The environmental regulators, the supposedly neutral government called opponents of the proposed Enbridge northern pipeline unpatriotic foreign-funded radicals. These "radicals" include pretty well every aboriginal nation along the route from the Tar Sands, and a majority of Canadians opposed to the pipeline. To make sure no one talks too much at the environmental impact hearings, the government imposed Orwellian rules.

In Procedural Directive #4, the Panel ruled oral evidence should not include:

* technical or scientific information;

* opinions, views, information or perspectives of others

* detailed information on the presenter’s views on the decisions the Panel should make or detailed opinions about the Project;

* recommendations whether to approve or not approve the Project and the terms or
conditions that should be applied if the Project were to proceed;

* or questions that the presenter wants answered.

In other words, just shut up! Maybe you can talk about the weather. No facts, science, or questions allowed. Presenters, including First Nations People whose salmon streams will be crossed by the Enbridge pipeline, get just 5 minutes to speak.

Presenter and Federal Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen, whose riding is most impacted by the would-be Tar Sands pipeline, was repeatedly interupted and silenced by these rules of procedure.

DO AMERICAN SCIENTISTS HAVE FREEDOM TO SPEAK?

It's not just Canada.

The right of scientists to speak out has improved slightly in the United States, since George Bush gave way to the Obama administration. Francesco Grifo from the Union of Concerned Scientists reveals how information important to your safety was suppressed by industry lobbyists.

This is still happening. Grifo gives examples of toxic substances, dangerous to the health of consumers, that were recommended to be banned by government science studies. When it gets to the top of the Agency, or the White House, the necessary rules are dropped or stalled, by industry lobby groups.

In some departments, new rules are allowing scientists like James Hansen to exercise their First Amendment rights, to speak freely about their own views.

The out-going President of the AAAS, Dr. Nancy Fedoroff, told a press conference in Vancouver:

"Belief systems, especially when tinged with fear, are not easily dispersed with facts."

She said, as a result of a campaign of misinformation through the mainstream media and the Net, in America "fewer people believe in climate change each year."

Federoff told reporters: "I'm scared to death, because that obviously stalls what we need to be doing to adapt to climate change." She continued: "We are sliding back into a dark era."

Hot Earth: Science & Anti-Science

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:27:13 PST

http://bit.ly/w1bCQY Listen to presentations by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, and best-selling author and science writer Cris Mooney at 2012 AAAS.

Just back from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science annual conference 2012, this is Alex Smith. I've recorded two of the best speechs of the weekend gathering of thousands of scientists, held this year in Vancouver, Canada.

Download/listen to James Hansen (29 min) CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Download/listen to Chris Mooney (29 min) CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Dr. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warns it isn't enough to reduce our emissions. We must actually take carbon dioxide back out of the air, to avoid entering a new and dangerous age of greenhouse living.

We are currently at 392 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, and rising rapidly. The target Hansen says is 350 parts per million. That is the level where the Polar ice, which regulates the climate humans have known for the past 10,000 years, will remain on planet Earth.

Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science," says scientists fail to communicate the danger of climate change, because they wrongly believe mere facts will convince the public.

Instead, Mooney outlines studies showing humans use facts to bolster pre-existing beliefs about the world. There are large differences in the basic personalities of those who gravitate toward the Right and Left of politics.

We get a sneak preview from Mooney's upcoming book.

Recorded by Alex Smith Feb 19, 2012 in Vancouver, Canada at the event "Climate Solutions: The Challenges of Getting to 350".

ARCTIC EMERGENCY Global Threat

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:16:17 PST

http://bit.ly/A2aJno Maybe we need a big burst of methane to get real climate action. Recent Russian expeditions to the Eastern Siberian coast find plumes of methane into the atmosphere. Is it worse than our own oil and coal pollution? I ask three top climate scientists: oceanographer Carlos Duarte, ice expert Peter Wadhams, and carbon-meister David Archer.

------------

Are you feeling lucky, Pilgrim? There is a growing wave of unease, even panic. Our fossil fuel civilization may be accelerating straight off the cliff of mass extinction.

Will the rapid rise in Arctic temperatures, and the disappearance of summer sea ice, trigger a runaway climate change, and a mass extinction event?

You would think a possibility so huge would fill television news and newspapers. What are political candidates saying, or business leaders? Everyone must be talking about the chance we could be killed off within a generation or two. No, the silence is deafening.

Right now, this debate is sealed off into a strong debate among scientists, and a small group of journalists and concerned citizens. You'll have to go to blogs like realclimate.org or climateprogress to find the discussion. Or listen to Radio Ecoshock.

What is the problem? New science shows seven of thirteen major feed-back mechanisms - the forces that create climate tipping points, are found in the Arctic. We'll talk to the lead author of that paper, award-winning scientist Carlos Duarte.

One of those frightening developments is the discovery by a joint Russian American research expedition that large plumes of methane are escaping into the atmosphere from the Arctic sea bed along Eastern Siberia. Scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov suggest a burst of 50 Gigatonnes of methane could result from an "abrupt release at any time". This would multiply current methane levels by about 12 times with "consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming".

See this article from The Independent.

As a result, a combination of scientists, journalists and other concerned people has formed the Arctic Methane Emergency Group. They call for an immediate war-scale geoengineering effort to save the last of the Arctic summer sea ice cover, so save our climate. In this program, I interview one of the world's top ice experts, Dr. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge. He warns the Arctic Sea could become virtually ice-free in September as early as 2015, just three years from now.

We may already be seeing the destabilizing results of this loss of the Arctic climate regulator in the mild almost snowless winter in North America, while Arctic cold pushed deep into Europe and even North Africa in the late winter of 2012. If you are wondering what the heck is happening with that wild weather in Eastern Europe, keep reading, and listen to the broadcast. More below and in this news article, again from the UK's Independent.

Dr. David Archer thinks the warnings of catastrophe from Arctic melting methane are either over-blown, or miss the real and known threat. You know, the threat you and I create every day, as we participate in ever-increasing emissions of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. Don't miss our new interview with David Archer, a famous climate expert - and his dark dare about a methane burst.

I'm Alex Smith. The risk is huge. The outcome could determine the lives of my children and grandchildren. I've lost sleep already, and I fail to cover important angles in this program.

This story is so big, it will take many programs, over many months or years, to cover it. As long as I am able, I will keep trying. I hope you will too.

We'll start out with an overview of the Arctic tipping points, with Dr. Carlos Duarte.

SEVEN OUT OF 13 TIPPING POINTS ARE IN THE ARCTIC!

In 2012, the winter weather in America was unusually mild. Winter festivals and outdoor skating were cancelled, while New Yorkers played tennis in the park. At the same time, after a warmer than usual winter, Eastern Europe suddenly plunged into cold that killed dozens of people. Something seems different.

Our guest, Professor Carlos Duarte, may shed some light on this. His new paper, published in the journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, warns about developing tipping points in the Arctic.

Professor Duarte is Director of the Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia, and he is a Research Professor with the Spanish National Research Council. Last year he won the prestigious Prix d'Excellence awarded by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. And he's deeply worried.

I began by asking: how does a Professor in Australia, and the Mediterranean, come to study the Arctic?

Duarte considers himself a global scientist, studying global systems. And that fits with being an oceanographer - the seas are really one big connected water system. Carlos has just returned last year from an around-the world research voyage. He's led 7 expeditions to Antarctica, and finished 9 expeditions to the Arctic.

He and a team of other scientists have just published two papers. "Tipping Points in the Marine Arctic Ecosystem" was published in the journal AMBIO. "Abrupt Climate Change in the Arctic" is in Nature Climate Change.

Duarte considers a tipping point, or "tipping elements in the Earth's system" to be a mechanism that not only changes the climate, but continues to change it through a positive feedback mechanism. In a most alarming development, these scientists determined that 7 out of 13 possible tipping points (known so far) are in the Arctic, and most of them are operating already. That is why, although most of us live in cities far south and distant, we must pay very close attention to what Arctic scientists say is happening there.

What tipping points? In our interview Carlos Duarte talks about these:

(1) the Arctic has warmed 3 times faster than the rest of the planet, rising 3 degrees on average since 1980.

(2) warmer Atlantic currents are penetrating deeper into the Arctic. I do not know if that is because of sea ice retreat, changes in salinity, or changes in wind patterns.

(3) the albedo (reflective power of white ice) has changed drastically in the summer and early fall, due to record sea ice loss. That means more of the Sun's energy is entering and warming the ocean. It doesn't matter that the sea ice refreezes in the winter, since there is really no Sun shining in the Arctic at that time.

(4) fresh water discharge into the Arctic Ocean is up by 30%. That comes not just from melted sea ice, but from more glacier melt in places like Greenland. This freshwater has a huge impact on the ocean, and could change major currents that determine the climate of Europe (although that has not happened yet, we think).

(5) the melting of the Greenland ice cap is itself another major tipping point. Eventually, that will change sea levels all over the world.

(6) methane hydrates are beginning to release methane gas from shallow sea beds in the Arctic, not just in Eastern Siberia but also off the coast of Norway. More methane means more heating means more methane releases. You see how that works.

(7) the die back of the boreal forest means less carbon is absorbed into that sink, and more carbon released.

(8) peat, that matted compressed vegetation frozen over long ages, is drying out, and burning, along with the Boreal forests, to release more carbon, to cause more heating, to cause more fires...

Professor Duarte brings up the case of the 2010 fires in Russia as an example. That involved both the burning of forests, and peat, in a record heat wave that released a lot more carbon.

I asked his opinion about worries methane hydrates will release a kind of greenhouse bomb in the coming years. His team evaluated the various risks of sudden climate change, and concluded a chronic release of methane is more likely than a sudden burst. We'll hear more about that later in our interview with Dr. David Archer.

We also talked about the impact of these rapid changes on the people who live in the Arctic, the Inuit. Their winter transport routes over the ice are no longer safe. They have to go further to hunt. Some buildings and infrastructure are tipping over or sinking as the permafrost melts. And their cultural knowledge is damaged or lost.

When I asked about plant changes, Duarte the oceanographer told me about the incursion of algae and sea grasses into the Arctic where they were never found before. This will impact large ecosystems. Increased algae growth, Duarte says, could change that part of the ocean from a heat sink into a heat source.

We agreed there is an urgent need for more monitoring of changes in the Arctic.

Note that Canada took back it's only Arctic science research ship and leased it out to the oil companies for more exploration! Don't expect Canada to help, or even care about these major changes, partly driven by Canadian Tar Sands expansion.

As a web source to follow up, Carlos Duarte recommended the charts and real-time data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

[DUARTE INTERVIEW]

This is Radio Ecoshock. We are kicking off a serious look into the biggest problems humanity has ever faced. Will we lose the climate we depend on? If so, how much time remains to save ourselves? The big developments may not be happening in cities with news media, but in the hostile far reaches of the Arctic tundra, and the Polar Sea.

In 2007, the summer sea ice melted back so far, scientists were shocked and worried as never before. Next we talk with a life-long expert on sea ice, Dr. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge.

IS ARCTIC SEA ICE RETREAT DELIVERING PUNISHING COLD TO EUROPE?

The Independent newspaper in Britain is one of several suggesting the cold and snow that crippled parts of Eastern Europe could result from the loss of sea ice.

And what a winter storm it was! Fifteen feet of snow in Romania. Hundreds dead in the Ukraine and across Eastern Europe. Snow even on the Black Sea, in Turkey, in Southern Italy and North Africa. All at the same time North American news media reported on a mild almost snowless winter - “the winter that never was".

Our radio guest is one of the leading scientists in the Arctic, and especially in Arctic Ice research. In the UK, Peter Wadhams is Professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge. He is President, IAPSO the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean, Commission on Sea Ice, and a member of too many Arctic study projects to mention.

While cautioning that a single weather event can never conclusively be attributed to climate change, Professor Wadhams said colder winters in Europe had been predicted by
climatologists, as the summer sea ice retreats. For example, this year there is less sea ice coverage in the Barents sea, just north of Europe, than normal. The open water releases the relatively warmer air. That rises, creating a high pressure zone. The Arctic High can drive Arctic winds further south, taking cold, and all the extra precipitation from a warming atmosphere, with it. If cold enough, the extreme precipitation event arrives as snow. Lots of it.

The Potsdam Institute in Germany was just one of several institutions who predicted colder winters for Europe as the world warmed in general. And there are others. As the Independent newspaper says: "Studies by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have confirmed a link between the loss of Arctic sea ice and the development of high-pressure zones in the polar region, which influence wind patterns at lower latitudes further south."

There have been some thought-provoking articles on this, like this article from Joe Romm's authoritative blog "Climate Progress" (now at thinkprogress.org).

It is counter-intuitive, but the mechanics of how that works are well known. But we still have a lot of research to do, and perhaps still more surprises to come, as one of the Earth's climate regulators - the Arctic ice system - is broken down by global warming.

In any event, Wadhams says, we can expect more extreme events as the world's climate is destabilized by our greenhouse gas emissions.

The other surprise is: the ice isn't just melting back horizontally in summer. It is retreating VERTICALLY as well. Tests by submarines and satellites, going back decades, show the Arctic ice simply isn't as thick as it used to be. Few of us see that in charts, but scientists do.

Wadhams tells us Arctic ice is only half as thick as it was 30 years ago!

When we combine this general thinning with the retreat in area - Wadhams predicts the Arctic will become more or less ice free by 2015 - just three years from now. That is stunning and dangerous news! Keep in mind, this comes from one of the most experienced Arctic ice scientists in the world, head of the Polar research unit at Cambridge University. Hardly a prediction from a fringe figure.

I can't emphasize this enough: one of the regulators of the world's climate, the Arctic summer sea ice, may be gone in 3 years. We don't know what the full impact will be.

Wadhams thinks that due to the thinning of ice, year-round, it is unlikely we can recover or rebuilt the Arctic ice without serious geoengineering.

He's hesitant to say that. Wadhams points out our industrial adventures and interventions into Nature are what caused this problem in the first place. Still with the sea ice - AND signs of methane coming from the sea bed - we may now have no other choice than to try and cool the planet, while we find an alternative way to run our civilization.

The shallow sea beds, which are found not just in Eastern Siberia, but also off Norway's Arctic coast, and in both Canada and Alaska - have warmed up by as much as 5 degrees at the bottom. That is enough to melt the permafrost cap, that was keeping down methane ice structures below. While we need more research to know the extent, the Russian American expedition appears to show large methane plumes are already rising out of the sea and into the atmosphere.

If a lot comes out at once, Wadhams says, the Earth would experience a rather sudden temperature rise, with all sorts of weather instability, no doubt.

Wadhams tells us:

"The situation is so bad, and so little is being done... I mean the obvious way to counter global warming is to release less carbon dioxide and reduce our fossil fuel usage, but nobody in practice is prepared to that. We won't do it until we are forced to by the oil running out.

So, if we're not going to take the steps that we need to take to save ourselves, by reducing our carbon dioxide production - then one has to consider maybe a techno-fix might be the thing to try.

These ideas about geoengineering to try to reduce the radiative forcing that is warming us, by things like changing the colors of clouds by brightening them up, - they sound a bit science-fiction like, but it could be that those are the things we'll have to try in order to stop global warming from getting out of hand."

Wadhams also warns policy makers should not be depending upon the advice or reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. Their latest report is from 2007, using data from 2006 or earlier. We have learned so much, and seen so much change since then, that the IPCC report is too far out of date. And due to the system of consolidating older published reports, the IPCC will always be behind both the cutting edge of science and current events. With so much at stake, government will have to go for the
latest science to make decisions.

Wadhams gives the example of what he calls "the methane catastrophe" as an example of new developments that government simply aren't reacting to.

I agree. The public hardly knows about this developing threat.

[WADHAMS INTERVIEW]

Dr. Peter Wadhams adds to the calls for immediate action to save the remains of Arctic Ice. He supports a demand for immediate action raised by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group.

I spoke with that group's founder John Nissen, a Cambridge educated scientist who chose a career in computer software instead. Now retired, Nissen tried to alert authorities, like America's John Holdren, to new warnings coming from Arctic specialists, like the Russian team of Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov. They found large plumes of methane gas, the same powerful greenhouse gas which some scientists believe caused past mass extinction events.

Nissen, and his Emergency Group members are concerned a sudden burst of methane, up to 50 gigatonnes, could trigger a runaway greenhouse event, something humans could not stop, and perhaps could not survive. I will not have time in this program to do justice to this argument. Find links to a key article by film-maker Gary Houser, a member of the group, below.

We'll also have more on the Arctic methane threat in coming Radio Ecoshock programs.

DON'T LET ARCTIC METHANE DISTRACT US FROM THE REAL KNOWN THREAT: US

But one of the most respected scientists in the field, Dr. David Archer of the University of Chicago, says it is not time to panic yet. The real threat, the real fright, Archer says, is not in far-away Siberia, but right here at home, parked in your garage, and build into everything you buy. It's the carbon stupid.

Archer is less worried about methane hydrates, also called "clathrates" causing a runaway greenhouse effect.

"I don't see the potential for a runaway greenhouse effect involving methane.

But I do see the possibility that methane in ocean hydrates and carbon that's frozen into permafrost soils, could eventually release carbon to the atmosphere that would add to the cumulative effect from all the CO2 that we've been releasing.

So the methane wouldn't have much effect on climate in the next decades, but hundreds of years from now the carbon from methane and from permafrost soils could sort of be like 'matching funds'. We put in so much carbon from fossil fuels, and then the Earth throws in an amount that matches what we do, or something like that."

David Archer is an acknowledged expert on long-term carbon, and on methane. He is currently doing research on the amounts of methane locked up in ocean clathrates. So why isn't he as concerned as some other scientists about the discovery of methane rising out of the East Siberian sea beds?

That is a powerful question, and I refer you to David Archer's articles, like this, and this, in the respected science blog realclimate.org.

And maybe this analysis by Joe Romm.

I'll just say that for methane to enter the ice crystal form requires some serious pressure. It happens in deep oceans, which can't have warmed too much, or deep in the sea bed (hundreds of meters down) - and probably that hasn't melted much yet either.

In fact, Archer says, we don’t' know enough about this yet to be sure that the methane found off the Siberian coast is new (as opposed to part of a thousands year long warming trend) - or that it has been triggered by human-induced climate change.

In any event, Archer, like Carlos Duarte, thinks methane will be a smaller long term problem - chronic rather than catastrophic. In the interview, we discuss the difference, and what it would take to create a catastrophic methane release.

[Archer interview]

As I said, not everyone agrees with David Archer. This is a hot debate among scientists, right now. Some journalists and citizen activist are leaping into the discussion as well. See this closely reasoned rebuttal to David Archer's article, by Gary Houser.

Houser has interviewed the Russian scientists, and many others, for an upcoming documentary film he is making. I'm hoping PBS or the BBC will pick that film up when it's completed. We'll see. Does anyone care about a threat big enough to burn out the world's crops, and kill billions of people? Maybe that isn't "popular".

Everyone agrees, the big changes in the Arctic, from sea ice melt, through melting Greenland, drying Tundra peat and fires - not to mention thawing permafrost - its one big dangerous mess in the Arctic. But so far, it's still smaller than the big dangerous mess of a civilization intent on transferring all the stored fossil sunlight back into our atmosphere, with oil, gas,
coal, deforestation, and agriculture.

Naturally you want me to give you a conclusion. But both sides have convinced me! I can panic with nothing real to worry about. Or I can not worry about my growing sense of panic. Pretty lame choices.

The Russian scientists, including Natalia Shakhova told the world press that an earthquake could release up to 50 gigatonnes of methane in a single burst, from all the bubbles accumulated under the Siberian sea bed. That could create heat waves for a decade or more, around the world, and devastation to the world's crops. Imagine the social and political consequences.

The origins of the 50 gigatonne methane calculation can be found in this scientific paper.

"Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?"

[N. Shakhova (1,2), I. Semiletov (1,2), A. Salyuk (2), D. Kosmach (2)
(1) International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA
(2) V.I. Il’ichov Pacific Oceanological Institute, Far-eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia]

Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 10, EGU2008-A-01526, 2008

Oh, and before I forget, David Archer is also offering a free university-style climate course online! Yep, you can sign up for "Open Climate Science 101", learn the science, and if you complete successfully, get a certificate from Archer. It's a great opportunity to educate yourself in the world's most important topic.

He's also got some helpful online video lectures, but for some reason I couldn't get them to work in my browser when I visited. Maybe you can.

As I stewed about this, David Archer came back with another bit of audio he'd recorded in his office. It's an awful bet. Here is Archer's point about worst-case scenarios and being right or wrong.

Archer:

"The most catastrophic proposal that I've heard comes from Shakhova who says that there are 50 gigatonnes of methane gas as bubbles underneath the sediments on the Arctic Siberian shelf, which could all come out all at once.

I don't know if I believe that the slow warming that is happening there could trigger all that to come out all at once. You would need some sort of a trigger, like, I don't know, some sort of huge earthquake or something. But if it did come out all at once, there's an interactive model that I published on my web page, that you can play with, and see what happens.

If you put in 50 gigatonnes of methane, all coming out in a year, you can compare the climate forcing, the radiative forcing energy imbalance, cause by that methane - you can compare that against the radiative forcing caused by fossil fuel CO2. And what you'd find is that the forcing from the methane after a big burp like that would be much bigger than the forcing is today from fossil fuel CO2.

But it would go away in a couple of decades. And by the end of the century, the forcing from fossil fuel CO2 will be higher even than the methane spike was, even at it's worst.

So, it almost seems to me like it would be a change for humanity to sort of try it before we buy it for keeps with CO2. It might not even be such a bad thing at that."

So there you have it. Maybe a good burst of methane, and a climate shock, is what we need to bring humanity to our senses, to make us finally get out of denial and act.

It's a horrible thought, but nothing else has worked so far.

You can post your thoughts in comments to this blog, or write me at this address: radio /at/ ecoshock.org

Visit our web site ecoshock.org, and subscribe to our podcast, if you want to hear the next installments on this mega-story of the planet's future.

Next week, I'm off to the annual conference of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, to record as much as I can for you.

Thank you for listening - and caring about your world.

Fracking - The Rest of the Story

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:54:27 PST

http://bit.ly/yVj7Jt Gasland director Josh Fox arrested at U.S. Congress Hearing on Fracking Feb 1, 2012. Speakers Rep Harris (R-MD), Rep Miller (D-NC), Kathleen Sgamma (Industry), John Fenton (well poisoned, Pavillion Wyoming), Theo Colborne (on air pollution health impacts of fracking, for Great Lakes United NGO). Then interview with EPA whistle-blower Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, inspiration for the No Fear Act. Radio Ecoshock 120208 1 hour.

In this program, you'll hear the voices of Congress, and the voices Congress doesn't want you to hear.

First Josh Fox, the Oscar nominated director of the documentary "Gasland" is arrested at the Energy and Environment Subcommittee - on EPA Hydraulic Fracturing Research. Acting Chair Andy Harris had Fox arrested for trying to film this Hearing, despite pleas from minority head Brad Miller, for freedom of the press.

Then listen Congressman Harris denounce Obama and the EPA for lack of "transparency". Why doesn't he want to be on camera? Harris attacks the EPA, and promotes the glories of the oil and gas industry, especially fracking.

But first, we hear the voices Congress didn't. Fred Fenton, rancher from Pavillion Wyoming, speaks of the suffering and neglect of those living in gas industry polluted zones. His is just one of several suffering as groundwater was poisoned by fracking chemicals. Listen to 4 speakers in the press conference call organized by WORC, the Western Organization of Resource Councils. (25 min).

Here is the Q and A (16 min)

US Representative Andy Harris, Republican from Maryland denounced the EPA study - that showed hydraulic fracking for gas poisoned ground water in Pavillion, Wyoming. The wells are owned by the Calgary-based Canadian energy company Encana.

Here is a link to that draft study, and this to the press release that went with it.

Congressman Brad Miller, Democrat from North Carolina shows up as the only person to speak for fracking victims and the EPA.

Also in this program: Theo Colborne of TEDX, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, tells you about the choking, toxic air-born chemicals from fracking.

At this Energy and Environment Subcommittee - EPA Hydraulic Fracturing Research, held February 1st, 2012 in Washington, the EPA witness was Regional Administrator James B. Martin. His defense of the science and his agency was weak.

As we'll hear in our concluding interview with whistle-blower Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is already weakened from within by persistent racism, sexism, and cover-ups for corporate America.

This program is stuffed with audio. Find still more bonus audio and source material linked below.

THE HOUSE HEARING ON FRACKING

As Committee Sub-Chairman Andy Harris begins, and calls repeatedly for "transparency", keep in mind his action before the web cameras were turned on. Harris had Josh Fox, the famous Director of the Oscar-nominated fracking film "Gas Land" arrested.

In our program, you hear the opening remarks of Rep Harris, a powerful spokesman for the oil and gas industry, promoter of fracking, and acidic critic of the Environmental Protection Agency, or any need for the Federal Government to interfere with industry. Even when sick citizens call for action, when the State fails to protect them.

Then a rebuttal by Democratic Congressman Brad Miller. Miller, from North Carolina, seems to be the only one in the room who cares about fracking victims, and supports the EPA. Maybe that is because Miller is not seeking re-election in North Carolina - so he doesn't need the oil and gas industry kick-back money (I'm sorry, "campaign donations") that most Congressmen and Senators crave.

The witnesses were heavily stacked in favor of the fossil industry. Wyoming sent Tom Doll, from the Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission. The State makes big money from fracking. Tom Doll claimed the EPA caused the pollution they found just by drilling two test wells. Even the man-made chemicals must have come from this testing, Doll seems to suggest.

Next up, Ms. Kathleen Sgamma, was a PR person from the Western Energy Alliance. She told the Hearing "mistakes happen" - but the fracking industry is still fabulous. I found her hacking at science and the EPA hard to listen to.

Note Ms. Sgamma's claim the "Ground Water Protection Council" finds fracking is a low pollution risk. Of course they do. This so-called "Protection Council" admits right on their web site they were established to sell the public on the safety of deep well injection technology. That is how the fracking industry disposes of millions of gallons of toxic liquids.

That is where we end in this Radio Ecoshock broadcast. But the hearing went on for another hour, without really saying a lot - unless you enjoy unwinding industry double-speak.

The fill list of "witnesses" (such as they were) includes:

Mr. James B. Martin, Regional Administrator, Region 8, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mr. Tom Doll, State Oil & Gas Supervisor, Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
Ms. Kathleen Sgamma, Vice President, Government & Public Affairs, Western Energy Alliance
Dr. Bernard Goldstein, Professor and Dean Emeritus, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh

The official Chair is supposed to be Republican Ralph M Hall. At around age 89, Hall is the oldest serving member of Congress. He did ask a couple of questions, but nobody was too sure who he was addressing.

The real head of the Committee is Andy Harris. He runs the show - including running any media out of town, before the official cameras come on.

I'm offering you the bare recording from the Republican led House Committee titled "Fractured Science – Examining EPA’s Approach to Ground Water Research: The Pavillion Analysis." The recording is 1 hour 40 minutes, taken from a House web cam, recorded by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock.

This is the big file CD Quality version (90 megabytes).

Or try the faster downloading Lo-Fi version (23 MB).

You can also watch the hearing in video on this page - but notice THEY CENSORED OUT all mentions of the media being kicked out!! The "official version" caught in the act, when compared to my live recording.

BUSH SAID FRACKING DOESN'T NEED TO BE REGULATED

In 2004, a law was passed prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It was a Bush era give-away to the industry, which has left Americans blinded to the impacts of fracking on water supplies, and the very toxic chemicals used by the industry.

In a strange co-incidence, which company became the largest supplier of technology and toxic chemicals to the fracking industry? Remember Vice-President Dick Cheney, former CEO of... that's right, Haliburton! This
mega-corporation made more billions, in part because the fracking industry dodged the Safe Drinking Water Act, or really, any regulatory oversight at all.

THE LITTLE TOLD STORY: FRACKING CONTAMINATION OF THE AIR

What about the impacts of all the volatile chemicals going into the air? The EPA does not monitor that either.

There haven't been any real studies of air pollution health impacts of fracking for either workers or people who live near fracking. Many of them are sick.

Before you say "they shouldn't have let the companies in" - remember, especially in the West, most homeowners and ranchers don't hold the underground rights. In the case of Pavillion Wyoming, those rights were held either by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, or by native tribes. Fracking can pop up anywhere, and put 24 hour-a-day wells, generators, trucks, and pumps within 400 feet of your bedroom window. It's all perfectly legal, even if it kills you.

Gas fracking is booming all over the world, in the UK, in Canada, in New Zealand, Australia and more.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, and here is, as the famous broadcaster Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story" - on air pollution from fracking.

THEO COLBORNE

Our speaker in the program is Theo Colborne, founder of TEDX, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange at endocrinedisruption.org. Theo was speaking in a press teleconference for the non-profit citizens' group Great Lakes United, on January 10th, 2012.

You can download a recording of the whole teleconference from the "Energy" section at our web site, ecoshock.org. Or find it linked below.

I recommend it. You will hear so many people sick, and worried sick, about fracking.

The Great Lakes United conference call (1 hour 24 minutes) in CD Quality (big file! 77 MB)

Or try the smaller Lo-Fi version (19 MB)

The recording of Theo Colborne in this week's Radio Ecoshock show is specifically about the health impacts of AIR POLLUTION from fracking, not the usual water pollution concerns. For a video of Theo talking about the water impacts, see this Democracy Now video.

WHISTLE-BLOWING THE EPA - DR. MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO

At the start of this program we delved into the House Hearing on an EPA study. I was distressed to see the weak presentation by the EPA Regional Administrator. Maybe the EPA Regional Administrator was told to lie low, since the Republicans and their Tea Party friends are threatening to kill off the whole EPA if they can.

It turns out the EPA itself, even as it is hobbled by industry and the White House, is also weakened by a long regime of disturbing behavior.

It's an honor to talk with Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, who has been through it all.

Marsha is the author of "No Fear: A Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA."

Essentially, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo went to work for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with the naive hope to protect the environment - and people.

With her expertise in African affairs, and a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she was quickly promoted to a key role. Marsha was appointed as a White House liaison in talks between the Vice President, Al Gore, and then Vice President of South Africa, Tabo Mbeki (who later became President after Nelson Mandela.)

As an African American woman working at the EPA, Coleman-Adebayo encountered disgusting racism and sexism. Then she found conditions in the slums of South Africa to be intolerable. But what probably pushed her over the edge was a realization that her role was to represent the interests of U.S. multi-national corporations, not the environment.

That came to a head as Coleman-Adebayo was approached for help for miners digging and processing the metal called "Vanadium". This is a strategic metal, because it makes other metals less brittle, when then are heated. For example, whether a car engine or a jet engine, metals become brittle with reheating, unless they also contain vanadium. America needs it.

There is big money in mining vanadium in South Africa, especially when you don't have to provide any safety equipment to protect workers from the toxic vanadium dust. Or pay for any decent housing. Or cover their health care costs when they become sick, disabled, or dead.

Coleman-Adebayo raise this issue, showing how little it would cost to at least provide breathing masks for works. She was told to shut up about it. A big U.S. corporation owned the mines. She couldn't shut up.

Finally, Marsha sued the U.S. Government, for racial and sex discrimination, and bullying in the workplace. Almost everybody loses against the government. Coleman-Adebayo won.

Her court win was so unusual, she managed to gather support from both Republicans and Democrats to pass an act to protect whistleblowers. It is called the No Fear Act. Marsha calls it the first civil rights legislation of the 21st century. Listen to her moving story, and her description of the requirements of this new Act.

It's still never really over. After winning her court case, Coleman-Adebayo went back to work for the EPA. They fired her. She says it's because she sued. Marsha is back in court, this time for wrongful dismissal.

Download this 19 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo in CD Quality (17 MB)

Or this Lo-Fi version (4 MB)

Visit her web site here.

Subscribe to our free weekly podcast, by clicking the podcast symbol at ecoshock.org

Next week we'll talk about the emergency in the Arctic, with some of the world's best climate scientists.

I'm Alex Smith, thank you for listening.

Forever Planting (for Peak Oil & Climate Change)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:26:53 PST

http://bit.ly/xFN24v Speech by Wes Jackson of the Land Institute to ASPO 2011 (the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas USA) in Washington D.C. Recorded by Gerri Williams for Ecoshock. Plus, carbon-cycle Australian scientist Dr. Michael Raupach of CSIRO on carbon to soil solutions, including biochar. Radio Ecoshock 120201 1 hour

PLANTING A LONG-TERM SOLUTION

We depend utterly on fossil fuels, especially to grow our food. From natural gas comes the millions of tons of fertilizers. Oil provides herbicides and pesticides. All is planted and harvested with oil power, driven, shipped or flown to your table.

For now. Until fossil fuels become too expensive, too rare, too polluting to use. We only have a short time to find other ways.

Wes Jackson offers some answers, for our food supply during peak oil and climate change. Raised on a Kansas farm, Jackson is a biologist, a geneticist, and botanist. In 1976 he left university life to found "The Land Institute", which he still heads. He's going to explain "natural systems agriculture", in a powerful speech given to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil USA. Recorded in Washington D.C. November 4, 2011 by Gerri Williams for Radio Ecoshock.

Then we'll hear a different assessment of the potential for sequestering carbon in the soil, and biochar, from carbon cycle expert Dr. Michael Raupach of the Australian national science agency, CSIRO.

This Radio Ecoshock program is part of our "Big Picture" solutions series.

Oil to Occupy: The Restless West Coast

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:23:38 PST

http://bit.ly/waNOYN "Oil Free Coast" 3 speakers against Tar Sands pipelines and tankers in Canada, including First Nations. Then on-scene audio from Occupy Wall St West in San Francisco Jan 20th. Awaiting arrest, and crowd microphones against corporate takeover.

Two weeks ago on Radio Ecoshock we heard from Australia and the distant past. Last week a top British scientist warned us of super-dangerous climate change.

Now we head for the restless West Coast of North America.

In Canada, trillion-dollar corporations and countries are desperately searching for a way to ship dirty Tar Sands crude, after the Obama administration said "No" to the Keystone XL pipeline. They want to build a new pipeline across the Rocky Mountains, across countless rivers and wilderness, across native lands.

And two Texas billionaires are plotting to turn the once green city of Vancouver into a major oil shipping port.

They want to make more billions polluting the atmosphere and changing the climate forever.

You will hear three speakers in a packed public meeting promise neither plot will succeed.

Then we'll take to the streets of San Francisco, with as-it-happens audio during the Occupy Wall Street West protests. Our Bay Area correspondent Karen Nyhus interviews environmentalist Ananda Tan as he waits with locked arms to be arrested. Then the risky radio the mainstream won't dare: you are there as the crowd microphone chants the words of Ted Nace, on the Court House steps, demanding justice. That's in our second half hour.

From tanker mania to Wall Street greed, I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.

OIL FREE COAST

On Sunday January 22nd I recorded "Oil Free Coast, Tankers and Pipelines" at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver, Canada. The event began with the voice of an amazing ten-year-old singer and song-writer, little Ta' Kaiya Blaney, the First Nations wonder. I'll play you a minute of her anti-tanker song "Shallow Water" - then we'll go to our speakers Art Sterritt, Rex Weyler and Nathan Cullen.

Listen to the whole song. Here are links to the You tube video of "Shallow Waters" and the Ta' Kaiya Blaney web site.

More details on the song and recording from You tube:

"10 year old Ta'Kaiya Blaney is Sliammon First Nation from B.C., Canada. Along with singing, songwriting, and acting, she is concerned about the environment, especially the preservation of marine and coastal wildlife. Shallow Waters was a semi-finalist in the 2010 David Suzuki Songwriting Contest, Playlist for the Planet. The song was recorded in studio by Audio Producer Joe Cruz. Footage from Vancouver, BC was filmed by Colter Ripley. Footage of the traditional ocean-going canoe from the Squamish Nation (Burrard Inlet, North Vancouver, BC) ; Ta'Kaiya in traditional cedar bark regalia (Tofino, BC); the Oil Refinery in Burrard Inlet; and the Vancouver Aquarium was filmed by Tina House. Additional footage contributed from Canada Greenpeace and Living Oceans Society. Lyrics on Drychum channel."

Ta' Kaiya belted it out live at the Roundhouse, surprising us with such a strong adult voice from a small young singer. She will wow delegates at the Rio 2012 Conference. Also look for her song "Earth Revolution".

THE NORTH TAR SANDS PIPELINE

Let's start with the northern pipeline, proposed by the Enbridge Corporation, crossing thousands of miles of mountains and wilderness, reaching from the climate-killing Tar Sands to the delicate fjords of Canada's West Coast. Our host is Linda Kemp, a sustainable living expert from Langara College.

[Art Sterritt presentation]

That was Coastal First Nations leader Art Sterritt, recorded January 22nd, in Vancouver, Canada by Alex Smith. The event "Oil Free Coast, Tankers and Pipelines" was at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver. It was presented by Coastal First Nations, and by Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen.

Sterritt gave a very moving speech, saying British Columbia was an organism where all its "arteries" are rivers that flow West from the Rockies to the sea. Everything about the First Nations life and rights is at stake, should one of these pipelines leak into the headwaters of the two most productive salmon runs in the world: the Fraser River run, and the Skeena River run.

The whole richness of coastal life, plus the food supply for First Nations people, would be wrecked by a single big tanker accident. Sterritt says the 10 major coastal First Nations have united, along with environmentalists, municipal governments and unions to oppose the construction of the Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, on the North-Central coast of British Columbia.

That represents a huge sacrifice by some of the poorest people in Canada. Many First Nations people still live below the poverty line, with unclean water, and improper housing. The billions of dollars in bribes likely on offer by Enbridge, and the pro-oil Canadian government, still haven’t brought the aboriginal people to accept the dangers of oil.

Sterritt says he and his people went to Louisiana to talk to fisher people there, after the BP oil spill. They learned from what happened when another Enbridge pipeline broke in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They investigated ship wrecks in Australia.

But really, Sterritt and the Git-Gat people didn't have to leave home to know what oil damage is about. A British Columbia ferry called "The Queen of the North" hit an island just across from their home, Hartley Bay. Oil leaked out for more than a month, wrecking local clam beaches and more. That was despite having the most modern navigation equipment. The wreck was more or less on the same route super-tankers are expected to travel, in some of the stormiest waters on Earth.

This is Radio Ecoshock, the "restless West Coast" edition. You are listening to three speakers at a packed public rally to stop pipelines and tankers from wrecking the pristine wilderness of British Columbia, and the beautiful city of Vancouver.

STOPPING VANCOUVER FROM BECOMING A TAR SANDS SUPER PORT

[Rex Weyler]

Rex Weyler is a co-founder and historian of Greenpeace. He is now working with the group Tanker Free BC to stop the threat of mega tankers to the west coast, the fragile Georgia Strait, and the port of Vancouver. Find out more at tankerfreebc.org.

Rex and other friends started noticing more and more tankers were coming into the part of Vancouver harbor known as Burrard Inlet. They were heading to B.C.'s only oil refinery, deep down this narrow passageway.

Then the more right-wing B.C. government decided to sell off publicly owned assets to private investors. They sold the gas distribution company, "B.C. Gas". Two Texas
billionaires, named Kinder and Morgan, bought the pipeline rights. Kinder was a lawyer and lead council for Enron, the company that went bankrupt, among a wave of criminal charges for fraud.

These two foreign billionaires decided, without any public consultation, and in many cases without even notifying local governments, to start shipping Tar Sands crude from Alberta to Vancouver through their pipelines. They have been increasing capacity, and hope to reach from 500,000 to 700,000 barrels a day. That would mean one super-tanker a day going out of Vancouver harbor.

It would only take one accident to wreck "the green city" with its famous Stanley Park, its beaches, and multi-million dollar ocean-front real estate.

The Sierra Club has set up an app for cell phones which will notify anyone every time a tanker leaves the Burrard refinery docks. Tankerfreebc is gearing up to stop Vancouver from becoming the Tar Sands outlet to China. Nobody living here wants Vancouver to become a major oil port, especially now that we are being hit with climate change.

CANADIAN PM STEPHEN HARPER CALLS ENVIRONMENTALISTS PUPPETS OF THE AMERICANS

Now the politics of promoting Tar Sands oil - and the voices for sanity. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper just claimed all Canadians who oppose the Tar Sands are just puppets for big American foundations. He questions the national loyalty of any critics, and threatens the environmental review required by law.

Harper calls all concerned citizens of British Columbia as "radical environmentalists" (and maybe "an enemy of the state").

Check out this video of the "Ethical Oil" tar sands lobby calling environmentalists mere agents for American foundations. They don't mention the two Texan billionaires pushing oil tankers through Vancouver, and the $20 billion dollars investment by China into the Tar sands. Who are the foreign influencers the Prime Minister hears?

Here is another story, where the Environment Minister, who is supposed to represent all Canadians, not just oil companies, says "radical groups" are trying to sabotage the Canadian economy. His remarks are extraordinary and never before heard from any government Minister. How much can we trust the Enbridge Pipeline environmental review process now - now that the Minister has called it a waste of time!

According to CBC News... these "radical environmentalists" ..."threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda," stack the hearings with people to delay or kill "good projects," attract "jet-setting" celebrities and use funding from "foreign special interest groups."

Our next speaker is from the leading opposition New Democratic Party, or the NDP. Nathan Cullen is a Member of the National Parliament, and a candidate for the leadership of the NDP, currently Canada's largest opposition party. He lives in Smithers British Columbia, in the North, right where the pipeline will impact all of his constituents. And his constituents are very vocal - they don't want this pipeline!

[Cullen speech]

Cullen's description of the route these giant tankers must take to get out of Kitimat, which is at the head of a very long fjord. It includes "two 90 degree hair-pin turns". And during the lifetime of the pipeline and port, about 50,000 tanker trips would have to be made flawlessly, with no drunken captains, no show-of captains, no mechanical failure, no great storm (that
"nobody could have foreseen that").

When they make it out of the storied "inside passage" (where a multi-billion dollar cruise ship industry is threatened by a spill) - then these tankers head into Dixon Straight. That is where some of the strongest winds and highest waves in the world have been recorded.

What could go wrong?

Stay tuned for our on-the-streets radical radio from the San Francisco Wall Street West protest, January 20th.

Welcome back to the Radio Ecoshock restless West Coast edition. Now we're going to break the rules of radio. When people take to the streets in protest, your mainstream media gives you a glimpse, with maybe a chant in the background, while a reporter in a suit or dress tells you what it means.

Not here. We're going to start with an interview of environmentalist Ananda Tan as he sits, with his arms locked with other protesters, waiting for arrest outside the Bank of America in San Francisco. Risking her own person and equipment, is Radio Ecoshock Bay Area correspondent Karen Nyhus.

Amid the chaos of waiting for arrest, with folks dropping in, Karen keeps Ananda talking, about the risk these "too big to fail" corporations pose to us all. He is a member of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, of Rising Tide (which is going to open an office in Vancouver), and of the group "Mobilization for Climate Justice".

Here is a print report on the protests, from "The Progressive".

Now I'm going to make it hard and fun for you.

We'll take to the streets of San Francisco with Karen Nyhus to hear green American author Ted Nace. Except in the soggy crowd of a rainy day, you can't hear him. There is no microphone on the Court House steps. Just a crowd microphone. I think it works, involving the people, not as passive listeners, but as participants in the speech. Let me know what you think.

Just before we hear Ted, the first speaker is Abraham Entin from Move To Amend.

Hear it as it happened.

That was a distant Ted Nace, author and environmentalist, passed on by the crowds at the San Francisco Occupy Wall Street West protest January 20th. It was a skunky rainy day. So Ted Nace began this parable, about the people with wet feet, and the corporations who can never know that experience.

My thanks to Radio Ecoshock Bay area correspondent Karen Nyhus for braving the elements and the police to get those on-the-street recordings from the Occupy Wall Street Protests.

If you violate copyright, you go to jail. If you violate people's home ownership, their pension plans, and their economy - no problem. Take a hundred million on your way out the door, and head out for the next scam. Until the people demand so loudly, so often, with such determination, that justice will be done.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. Thank you for joining us.

Kevin Anderson: The Brutal Logic of Climate Change

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:08:22 PST

http://bit.ly/wulkTw "The future is impossible" says Dr. Kevin Anderson, former Director of UK's top climate research institute, the Tyndall Centre. Speech in London lays out our awful tilt toward an unlivable climate. Followed by discussion with Washington's Dr. William Calvin.

Welcome. I'm Alex. Are you ready for the bad news about climate change? Really?

I'm going to play you a speech too awful to run during the holidays. People with clinical depression and very young children may want to avoid this program.

It's also going to be a challenge for our many North American listeners, because our speaker is Kevin Anderson. From his recent post as Director of the Tyndall Centre, the UK's top academic institute researching climate change, Anderson speaks quickly, says a lot, and holds nothing back.

This lecture is part of the London School of Economics Department of International Development Friday Lecture Series. The title is "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world" Anderson calls it "the brutal logic of climate change."

This talk set up a blaze of urgency, and a stiff warning to people and governments: we are failing to address the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity. Something unimaginable is happening.

Following this edited-for-radio speech, I'll chat again with Professor William Calvin from the University of Washington. He sees the bleakness, but offers a grain of hope.

I'm going to throw you into the deep end with this one. I suggest you download the program from our web site at ecoshock.org, or find links in the blog at ecoshock.info. Things are not what they seem.

This speech courtesy of the London School of Economics Lecture Series was recorded October 21st, 2011.

The subtitle for this talk is "Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope".

Dave Roberts of Grist wrote two articles about the implications of this talk, which he called "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change". Try this one, and this one.

Find a .pdf of Kevin Anderson's pivotal paper on our near hopeless situation of unfolding climate change here.

A recording of the original speech, running 1 hour 28 minutes with a Q and A is here.

And you can find the slides for that here.

To get a written summary, I can't do better than the Dave Roberts Grist articles linked above. Dave even throws in some helpful graphs.

My own conclusions from this speech could be:

1. The 2 degree target (keeping below 2 degrees of global mean temperature rise to prevent dangerous climate change) is quite arbitrary, and likely too high. As Dr. James Hansen of NASA points out, we should be at 350 parts per million CO2 to keep the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets which moderate our climate. In previous history, levels higher than that triggered melting of the ice sheets, and eventually a much hotter greenhouse world. We are currently at 390 ppm and rising fast.

2. That 2 degree target is no guarantee of a "safe" climate, but just a 50% chance of staying within merely "dangerous" climate change, and "extremely dangerous climate change".

3. As we are almost 1 degree above pre-industrial times already, with at least 1 degree hidden by aerosol pollution (including sulfates from world coal plants) - it may already be too late to stay at 2 degrees.

4. The RATE of increase of our emissions is steadily going up, meaning the dangerous impacts of climate change keep getting closer and closer to us in time. Not 2050, but sooner. Yet government reports keep assuming 1 or 2% increase in emissions, when we are generally increasing at 3% over the past few years, and hit almost 6% in 2010. That is a 6 % increase over the increasingly high emissions during all the past years.

5. Kevin Anderson is particularly critical of all the government assessments which low-ball the emissions and the impacts. He says some climate scientists try to tell politicians, but those warnings are polished up as they rise through the ranks. Top ministers don't want to hear we may have to accept grave austerity, and a halt to growth, since they are promising growth as a way out of economic recession. But more growth means higher emissions. Period.

6. There are also a crew of scientists who make the situation sound more rosy or hopeful, when they will admit later, over a pint of beer, that they don't believe it themselves. They know we are headed into deep trouble.

MY CONCLUSION: WE ARE IN MORE TROUBLE THAN THE PUBLIC HAS BEEN TOLD

All this is dissected as Professor Anderson, now at Manchester University, goes through the brutal logic, the physics of how climate change and atmospheric pollution really work. No mater what your politics are, or what politicians promise, if we keep emitting more carbon, our civilization if not our species is at risk.

I've said this repeatedly on Radio Ecoshock. My scientist guests have said it. In this chilling program you hear one of the top climate experts in Britain telling it like it is.

I know our cities are entirely dependent on fossil fuel burning. Most of Canada would have to be abandoned, or the population decimated just to heat the people, using the forests as wood heat. I know we are using cars to get around, and again, in a Northern winter, there aren't a lot of options yet, if you live outside the narrow web of mass transit (like New York subways).

It seems we are committed, just by being alive, to polluting the sky. Yet I play with my grandson, and inwardly fear for his future. In fact, if Kevin Anderson is correct, I and my children will also suffer. We won't have to wait a generation or two.

How can we face this contradiction?

Yet we know, when World War Two came to the United States, a simple act of government, at the federal level, ended all car production, and switched over to tanks and ship-building overnight. Make that wind machines and solar panels and you get the possibility. All it would take is (a) the recognition we are going over a cliff (with no return) and (b) the will among us all to make the change.

A LITTLE HOPE FROM PROFESSOR WILLIAM CALVIN

I also talk that over with Professor William (Bill) Calvin from the University of Washington. He's specialized in the development of the human brain, and lately, how our journey through the ice ages and climate change helped us develop.

We know the human brain was big enough for things like agriculture and advanced tools at least 100,000 years ago. Yet, for some reason, human intellect didn't seem to take off until 50,000 years ago. Bill Calvin compares it to a software upgrade to available hardware.

I express my fear we will see million dying on High Definition television, before the climate and food impacts hit us in the developed countries (although diseases can spread in a day in these times of air travel). Calvin agrees, but then we realize: our own time is another burst of human creativity. We have experienced a kind of
software upgrade in our own times.

What if that mental evolution is not finished? What if we can make the moral leap it would take to protect the future, and all future generations?

There is some hope. And Calvin also feels more optimistic because we could use ocean algae to capture more carbon out of the atmosphere. We might be able to reverse this process.

James Lovelock also talked about the scheme to put in whole fields of pipes into the ocean. The surface algae are missing essential elements like phosphates, which are found in deeper water below them. If we pump that up, cause an algae bloom (which sucks carbon dioxide out of the air) - and then pump the dying alge back down to the deep, we might sequester some carbon.

It would take a giant project, covering about 1% of the Earth's oceans, to remove enough carbon, but perhaps a war-like project could do it. We haven't even bothered to build one such experimental station so far.

Is it possible? Is the future possible? Radio Ecoshock asks you that question.

Our web site is ecoshock.org. Thank you for listening.

Alex Smith

CLIMATE MAY FORCE HUMAN EVOLUTION

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:58:28 PST

http://bit.ly/wTeVfl What caused 5 previous mass extinctions of species? Scientists say we are in the 6th one now. Australian scientist Andrew Glikson reads the past, suggests the troubled future.

Dr. Andrew Glikson of Australian National University studied the rocks and the timelines. He's also an expert on asteroid hits.

Glikson was the Principal Research Scientist, for the Australian geological Survey Organization. Now he works with the Australian National University, and the Planetary Science Institute.

You get a deep 44 minute interview with a world-class climate scientist and geologist - on what the past says about our future under climate change.

Dr. William Calvin of the University of Washington is author of over a dozen books, including "Global Fever, How to Treat Climate Change" and "A Brain for All Seasons, Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change". We have a short chat, about how the ice ages shaped our brains, and recent signs of climate shift.

Followed by Calvin's introduction in a speech at the University of Victoria, by Dr. Colin Campbell of the Sierra Club. Insightful on the way climate shapes our species, and all species.

Oil Shock - The No Growth World

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:03:02 PST

http://bit.ly/zVEXwh Radio Ecoshock 120104 Oil Shock the Post-Growth World with Jeff Rubin, Charles Maxwell from ASPO 2011 and interview with Italy's Ugo Bardi on climate change vs. peak oil.

The price of oil hits you at the pump, in your food bill, and everything you buy. What if you can't afford it?

For years, I've covered Peak Oil as the story of a limited resource. Meanwhile, the oil industry, glutted with billions in profits, keeps drilling deeper offshore, finds more dirty oil in the Tar Sands. They have a mountain of goo in the "heavy oil" of Venezuela - the industry just needs to build more refineries capable of handling it. And we can always make more oil by liquefying coal!

All these options drop from using about one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels, like the pressurized oil wells we grew up, to using one barrel of equivalent energy to get three (like the Tar Sands.) That means many, many times more emissions for every mile or kilometer we drive, house we heat, or factory we run. Oil costs soar and it's a recipe for climate disaster.

Meanwhile, big oil companies, aided and abetted by polluting countries like Canada and Russia, are already plotting to drill in the extreme conditions under the Arctic ice. One leak there, stays for centuries. Nobody can clean it up, and the oil-eating bacteria are few in the cold environment. We can't let that happen. Oil companies must not take advantage of the ice they helped melt.

What about Peak Oil?

Economist Jeff Rubin says we've hit a new kind of peak oil: the peak price our civilization can pay and still grow. We've passed that point now, Rubin says. If China and India grow,

Western countries must shrink. And "shrinking" isn't pretty. Expect unemployment, disappointed dreams, and governments drowning in debt they cannot repay.

Who is Rubin? He was the Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, a global-scale bank trading operation. As a forward thinker on energy issues Jeff Rubin gets a lot of press and TV appearances. His 2009 book "Why Your World Is About To Get a Whole Lot Smaller" (8 minute You tube here) shook up the financial world. He predicts an end to globalization, and a return to regional production, due to ever-rising oil prices.

In this week's Radio Ecoshock show you hear Jeff Rubin's presentation at ASPO 2011. That was the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas USA, in Washington D.C. at the beginning of November 2011.

Then you'll get the main clips from a talk by Charles T. Maxwell. He is the senior Energy Analyst for Weeden Co. Charley's been a top ranked energy authority for years. Charlie outlines who has more oil (very few countries, like Norway and Columbia) and who is running out fast (like Mexico and maybe Saudi Arabia).

Rubin and Maxwell were recorded by Radio Ecoshock Washington correspondent Gerri Williams, and presented courtesy of ASP USA. As far as I know, Radio Ecoshock is the only place to find these recordings online.

But neither of these gurus include the challenge and damage of climate change in their forecasts. They don't mention it. Why not? To wrap up that angle, we'll finish off the show with a Radio Ecoshock interview with Ugo Bardi. He's a cross-breed, as founder of ASPO Italy, and an editor at the Oildrum.com blog - but also part of the Italian climatologist scene. I'll ask

Ugo why these two camps, don't talk much to each other.

JEFF RUBIN

Wiki on Jeff Rubin here.

Jeff Rubin is a Canadian with a Masters in Economics from McGill University. But he sounds like a Texan, with almost a drawl. Maybe he spent so much time with Texan oil men?

Jeff was chief economist from 1992 to 2009 for CIBC World Markets, a huge Canadian global trading and investment company, part of the equally huge Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). By correctly predicting many trends, Rubin made a lot of people a lot of money. In 2009, Rubin decided to resign from CIBC to pursue his career of writing and public speaking.

In particular, Rubin warned of the increasing price of oil, and it's impact on business and society at large. For this, he was adopted as a popular speaker at Peak Oil events like the annual ASPO USA gathering. His 2009 book "Why Your World Is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller" sold a lot of copies, and brought him international TV coverage. Rubin was already a weekly financial columnist for Canada's national newspaper.

In this stimulating talk recorded November 4th, Jeff Rubin offers his own definition of peak oil. Instead of basing it on the geological limits of oil on Earth, Rubin says the peak is the price a global economy can afford to pay, before it slows down, or crashes. Rubin doesn't say the price of oil will always increase. He says it will go up until it becomes unaffordable.

The economy goes into a recession (or worse), oil falls, then things pick up a little. We keep hitting the ceiling of "too high", doing damage to our economic system all along the way (like creating unsolvable debt levels).

Every major recession, Rubin says, has the "fingerprints of oil all over it."

As national debts pile up, every politician says they will "grow" their way out of it. Creating growth is the only way to pay off all that debt, which only grows with interest. But with oil limitations, whether geological limits, limits caused by lack of needed refineries, or limits imposed by price - the days of growth for everybody are over, Rubin says.

We have hit a plateau of "no growth".

That means if one country grows, another must shrink. For example, the China's economy is growing rapidly. But the economies of Greece, Italy and others are shrinking. Perhaps with real accounting, and taking out the currency factor, America's economy is shrinking also. If more consumers use more oil on one side of the world, people have to consume less and use less oil somewhere else. Nothing in our political system, nor our classic capitalist economics, is ready for a no-growth world. That means a rocky road ahead.

National debt might as well be denominated in barrels of oil, Rubin says. We depend upon it so much. The higher the price of oil, the higher the amount of our true debt.

And this is no "oil shock" like the oil embaro of the 1970's. Right now, there is no limit to producton other than people's ability to pay, and the industry's ability to go get it. But it's too expensive to support more growth, and only going to get more expensive. The end of growth is not a temporary thing. It's the new reality that nobody is ready for.

Unlike our next guest speaker, Charles Maxwell, Rubin says a no-growth economy is going to make a lot of people unhappy. There will be high unemployment. Many dreams will be shattered. There could be civil unrest, possibly for decades.

And as he describes in his book, triple digit oil prices will kill off globalization. It becomes just too expensive to ship things all over the world. Some industries will return to the United States and Canada, for example, despite the low cost of labor overseas, Rubin says. Some environmentalists will cheer the end of globalization, and the oil age, but Rubin says the process isn't going to be pretty.

It's an interesting take, and I think he's right. Check out Jeff Rubin's complete talk in this week's Radio Ecoshock show. (Click the title above to download)

Find Jeff Rubin's blog here.

CHARLES MAXWELL

We move on to one of the heavy-weights of the energy investment business, Charles Maxwell, the senior Energy Analyst for Weeden Co. Charlie is a legend in peak oil circles. Due to time limitations, I've selected two key parts of his presentation. Following talk of when Peak Oil might strike, Maxwell explains where our future oil might come from. Then I'll deliver his conclusion of "austerity and joy".

Unlike Jeff Rubin, Charlie Maxwell thinks we might adjust to a reasonable life consuming much less oil. He suggests we envision life in the 1950's, with that level of consumption.

Plus, people might enjoy things like gardening, even though they are forced into it just to have enough affordable food.

Happiness is not necessarily linked to consumption Maxwell says. In fact, he cites a study from Denmark, where people were healthiest during the last years of World War Two. They had little access to alcohol, tobacco, sugary foods, and over-eating. That "deprivation" led to better health, which is a fundamental for happiness.

First Maxwell treats us to an overview of who is producing more oil, and who will produce less. His goal, as an energy investment analyst, is to figure out what the maximum level of oil production is. Maxwell thinks we can go from our current ceiling of about 88 million barrels per day to about 95 mbpd. But that's it. No more.

His analysis of barriers to Russian expansion are interesting. The limits there are less geologic than social, and their approach to business, Maxwell says. On the other hand, if Columbia has really ended their civil war, that South American country may be able to increase production, like its neighbor Venezuela.

Mexico on the other hand, is in deep trouble, as oil production crashes at the main field at Cantarell. Maxwell treats us to an insight into the role of the asteroid which hit the Earth about 65 million years ago (causing a mass extinction) - and how that made a great oil field for Mexico (for a while).

It's rare we get a kind of private sitting with an oil insider like Charles Maxwell.

DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE 1 HOUR PRESENTATION WITH RUBIN AND MAXWELL

Here is the one hour talk by both men, including the Q and A, recorded by Gerri Williams, and presented by ASPO USA on November 4th, 2011 in Washington. You can choose from the CD Quality version (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB).

UGO BARDI

You'll notice neither Rubin or Maxwell mentioned climate change at all. They speak as though extreme weather damages and rising seas are not also major impacts on our economic prospects. As though the world will never limit fossil fuel production because we are wrecking the climate for all foresable time. Jeff Rubin, I know, does acknowledge climate change.

But it is absent here.

I've been following Peak Oil for years, interviewing people like Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler. Both of them have added climate change as a serious threat in recent years.

Of course I speak with climate scientists. But it's very seldom I find anyone to talk about both. Why is this?

Plus, we often wonder, which comes first, and which is worst: climate change or Peak Oil?

To help sort this out, we go to Italy, to talk with Ugo Bardi. He is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Firenze, - that is Florence.

Ugo is a rare bridge in two worlds. He is the Founder of ASPO Italy, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Ugo is a contributor and member of the editorial board of the Oil Drum blog, and has published two books in Italian on oil depletion.

But Bardi is also a member of an association of Italian climatologists.

His latest book in English is "The Limits to Growth Revisited" published in 2011 by Springer.

In March 2009, Bardi wrote an important article in the Oil Drum blog called "Fire or Ice? The role of peak fossil fuels in climate change scenarios".

I highly recommend this article. Bardi goes through the very few scientific papers and articles which consider both Peak Oil and climate change together, up to 2009.

I'm going to quote just the first three paragraphs from that key article from the oildrum.com

"Until recently, most simulations of future climate have been run without taking into account "peaking" of the major fossil fuels. Concepts such as 'peak oil' are not discussed, and not even mentioned, in the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, with peak oil coming, or already arrived, the subject is starting to appear in scientific journals, blogs, and conferences. In a previous post , I reported about the 'Mission Earth' seminar held in Zurich in 2009 where climatologists and depletion experts gathered to exchange views. Here, I present a short review of the status of the field. There is a very small number of papers published in scientific journals on this subject and I think this summary includes them all. I also tried to include a number of less formal studies published on the web or presented at conferences.

Some early papers raised the question of the discrepancy of the standard IPCC scenarions and the peak oil projections. The first one was probably Jean Laherrere with a paper published in 2001. Later on Anders Sivertsson , Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell wrote in 2003 in 'The New Scientist' a paper titled 'Not enough oil for climate change'. They criticized the IPCC scenarios for being overoptimistic in terms of oil and gas reserves. These early papers didn't attempt to calculate the future concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Perhaps the earliest attempt to quantify the effects of CO2 on climate while taking depletion into account was the work by Pushker Kharecha and Jim Hansen who produced a paper titled 'Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate'. This study was published in 2008 but became available on line as a working paper in April 2007. In the first version of the paper, Kharecha and Hansen start from the premise that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere should not be allowed to exceed 450 ppm; later on they arrived to the conclusion that the dangerous limit is more likely to be around 350 ppm. So, they examine several scenarios that involve policy measures to force the reduction of emissions. They find that, if no such measures are taken, CO2 concentrations might rise to near 600 ppm by the end of the century, mainly as the result of coal combustion. Oil and gas would peak before 2030 in most of the scenarios considered and would give only a minor contribution to the total of the emissions."

Ugo Bardi began his Oil Drum article with an important point: climatologists, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, assume we will fill the sky infinitely with carbon, as though the supplies will not run out. However, as we learned from Jeff Rubin's talk, and all the development of alternative ways to get oil, plus gas fracking - there seems to be more than enough carbon to wreck the atmosphere before supplies run out.

And the implications of climate damage are so severe, in our interview Ugo Bardi concludes climate change is the most pressing challenge of this century. Humans have lived for most centuries without fossil fuels he points out. We could do so again, perhaps with a much smaller population. But humans might not survive a radical shift in the climate very well.

It's a thoughtful interview from a thoughtful man and scholar. You may also want to check out his "Limits to Growth Revisited" book, the first update to that 1970's report written for The Club of Rome.

Find Ugo Bardi's blog "Cassandra's Legacy" here.

THANKS TO A LISTENER

I would like to thank Radio Ecoshock listener Barath Raghavan for suggesting this topic, and sending his helpful links. Find Barath's article on "Climate Change Vs. Peak Oil" here.

If you have suggestions for guests or topics, you can always write me, Alex Smith, at this address:

radio //at// ecoshock.org

FUKUSHIMA: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:04:07 PST

http://bit.ly/tEreAe Japan announces a fake "cold shutdown" & a new study says 14,000 Americans died of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident.

COLD SHUTDOWN AT FUKUSHIMA - THE BIG LIE

In his infamous 1925 book "Mein Kamptf" Adolf Hitler coined the term "the big lie". This lie, he said, should be so "colossal" that no once could believe anyone quote "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

This is Alex Smith. I am sorry to report the government of Japan, the Prime Minister of Japan, has resorted to the big lie, trying to cover up the on-going nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Number 1 nuclear power plant.

On December 16th, Prime Minister Noda announced all reactors at Fukushima had reached the safe and stable state of "cold shutdown". The accident is over, he said, and carry no further signficant danger to the public of Japan or the world.

We'll talk to nuclear industry expert Arnie Gundersen about this lie, and the truth of Fukushima.

I'll also interview Janette Sherman, co-author of a peer reviewed paper suggesting 14,000 Americans died due to the wave of radiation that swept over North America in March and April of 2011, after four massive explosions at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site. That is an idea so shocking, we want to deny it immediately. Radio Ecoshock will investigate. Scroll down for that big story, which you won't see in any mainstream media.

You'll also hear a short clip from Japanese activist Kazuhiko Kobayashi, translated from his tour in Germany in October.

Kobayashi reveals the secret power structure of Japan, an explanation of how a government with a the sad history of nuclear bombing, could lie now about this horrible nuclear accident, costing still more lives in Japan.

The same infernal hidden Troika of power keeps nuclear power going in North America and Europe.

So much to hear, to absorb, to know deeply.

Here is the big lie, as carried on NHK English language TV from Japan.

"Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda says the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have been successfully brought to a state of cold shutdown.

The state is a target in the second phase of a timetable established by the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company to bring the plant under control.

At a meeting of the government nuclear disaster task force on Friday, Noda declared that the reactors are now stable and that the second phase is complete.

He said radiation levels at the periphery of the plant site will remain low if another accident occurs."

In this Radio Ecoshock program I interview Arnie Gundersen, a long-time nuclear industry executive, who left the field after blowing the whistle on unsafe reactors. We talk about what "cold shutdown" means, and whether that applies to Fukushima.

MORE EXPLOSIONS AT FUKUSHIMA?

I also ask Arnie whether there is still a possibility of another explosion at Fukushima Daiichi. Gundersen explains the operator, TEPCO, must constantly pump nitrogen into the reactors, because there is a bubble of hydrogen at the top. The nitrogen is to keep out oxygen, which could lead to another massive explosion, and
more serious radiation. If that system fails, another reactor, or three reactors, could blow up again.

Gundersen has done calculations on the remaining mass of fuel, now called "corium" because it is a mixture of metals, mostly around 100 tons of hot uranium, but also all the metals used in the fuel rod containers and other inner parts of the reactor, which melted down together.

A serious question: could one of these three reactors experience a "China Syndrome"? That is where molten fuel melts through the last of the containment concrete, burning down to the water table below, and then suffers a massive radioactive steam explosion. Arnie calculates that a China Syndrome is unlikely now at Fukushima. There just isn't enough heat piled in the right way to burn all the way out, so long as water is circulated around it. Listen to the interview for his full explanation, and watch this video.

[Radio Ecoshock Arnie Gundersen interview - 22 minutes, audio only]

You have been listening to Arnie Gundersen, the nuclear industry executive who has become an expert witness and public voice on nuclear power safety. Find his videos at Fairewinds.com. Be sure and support their important work.

FUKUSHIMA: LIES UPON LIES

As you have heard, to use the term "cold shutdown" for the triple melt-down at Fukushima Daiichi required a series of sub-lies. According to a report of the Japanese announcement by Tim Hornyak at CNET, TEPCO said "cold shutdown," meant, quoting Hornyak, "the reactors can be safely kept cool and that radiation exposure is limited to 1 millisievert per year at the site's boundary."

One millisievert per year at the Fukushima site boundary! The radiation leaking out into the sky and the sea is many, many times that right now, and every day. You have just heard Arnie Gundersen describing the on-going radiation leaks into the air, around Fukushima, and blown by the wind over Japan, and over the Pacific.

RADIATION LEAKS TO THE SEA "ZERO" JAPANESE AGENCY CLAIMS

During a real state of "cold shutdown" there should be no radioactive leaks into the sea either. Japan needs another big lie to make that possible. As our favorite Fukushima blogger at ex-skf.blogspot.com writes:

[the Japanese newspaper] "Tokyo Shinbun reports that NISA has decided to basically "nullify" the leaks of contaminated water from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in the past, and declare that there will be no leak in the future either, even if there is actually a leak or deliberate discharge. Why? Because NISA says so.

From Tokyo Shinbun [(via Asyura, so that the link doesn't disappear;][December 16, 2011] 12/16/2011):
[quote]
'NISA considers the amount of contaminated water into the ocean to be zero

There have been several leaks of water contaminated with radioactive materials from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Tokyo Shinbun has found out through own investigation that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety

Agency under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has treated the amount of the leaks as "zero" from a legal [or regulatory] point of view, because it was a "state of emergency". The Agency has said it will treat the future leaks and deliberate discharges into the ocean the same way. The national government is scheduled to declare a "cold shutdown state" on December 16, but we are suspicious of the government's position that seems to ignore the suppression of the radioactive materials released from the plant, which is one of the important conditions [of the cold shutdown "state"].

Just the leak found April 2nd, 2011, from Reactor Number 2 at Fukushima released, quoting Tokyo Shinbun again"

"4,700 terabecquerels (according to TEPCO's estimate), already more than 20,000 times as much as the maximum amount allowed.

Both domestic and foreign research institutions have disputed TEPCO's estimate as 'too low'.

On December 4, the water that contained 26 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium was found leaking into the ocean from the apparatus that evaporates and condenses the treated water.

Furthermore, the storage tanks that are set up inside the compound are expected to become full in the first half of the next year. The water in these storage tanks also contains radioactive strontium. TEPCO is contemplating the discharge of the water into the ocean after further decontaminating it, but facing the protest from the fisheries associations the company has said it will postpone the discharge for now."

End quote from Tokyo Shinbun newspaper, as translated by the blogger ex-skf.

According to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun "462 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium have leaked to the Pacific Ocean since the March."

So Fukushima is still leaking tons of highly radioactive water into the Pacific, even in December 2011, and plans more intentional dumping into the ocean, but declares their emissions to be "zero" due to the technicality of declaring it "a state of emergency".

It is hard to imagine a bigger lie.

The government has no gauges to measure the escaped and melted nuclear fuel, dripping somewhere below the reactor. They don't know where it is, and cannot approach it with anything to find out.

WHY THE BIG LIE?

Lies piled upon lies. Why? The goverment announced a time-table shortly after the accident. Within 9 months they would reach a state of cold-shutdown. It is nine months, so it must be so.

Even the timid Japanese press isn't buying this latest announcement. For example the Asahi Shinbun newspaper ran a series of articles with titles like "Few believe assertion that Fukushima crisis is over" (December 17th). That article reveals some of the real reasons for saying Fukushima is over: the economy.

Quote: "A total of 44 nations and regions have restricted the imports of Japanese agricultural products and in the extreme case of Kuwait, all food products from every prefecture in Japan has been banned for import.

The negative publicity has also led to a sharp drop in the number of foreign tourists to Japan. In November, there were about 552,000 visitors, a decrease of 13.1 percent compared with November 2010."

Local mayors, in cities and towns still evacuated, expressed severe doubts about the government's announcement of "cold shutdown". Even Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato said ""The accident has not been brought under control..."

The German press Deutche Welle roasted the "cold shutdown" announcement, saying the reactors are "far from cold".

U.S. AND IAEA SUPPORT THE "COLD SHUTDOWN" ANNOUNCEMENT

But the nuclear power structure in Japan has important allies. US Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides was in Japan for the announcement. Nides said the U.S. is happy to hear about the "cold shut down" and congratulated Japan. Nides is part of an American business delegation seeking new contracts for decontamination.

Of course, America doesn't like to officially discuss the weaknesses of the U.S. design for the Mark I General Electric reactors which blew up at Fukushima. Or the military personel exposed, and still exposed in Japanese bases, to radiation from this on-going disaster.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC, also blessed the cold shutdown announcement.

Likewise, Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency congratulated Japan on reaching cold shutdown. The IEA's Director General Amano was previously a Japanese bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

THE TRIANGLE OF JAPANESE POWER

And that brings us to this snapshot of Japanese power from a business consultant turned nuclear critic named Kazuhiko Kobayashi. Kobayashi is fluent in German, and just went on a speaking tour for the anti-nuclear activist group The Association of Citizens' Environmental Protection, the OTP.

He also wrote an empassioned letter for the Foundation Ethics & Economics, as they awarded the International ethecon Black Planet Award 2011. That Black Planet award went to Tsunehisa Katsumata, Masataka Shimizu, Toshio Nishizawa, and other responsible executives and the major shareholders of the energy Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO.

His talk was titled ""German nuclear phase-out has given the world hope!" Find links to the video and audio below.

A German friend of Radio Ecoshock writes:

"In a recent speech at protests against the Gronau uranium enrichment facility, Japanese Germanist Kazuhiko Kobayashi spoke about his country traditionally being run by a sort of unofficial troika of influential state officials, prominent politicians and corporate managers. [There is] an organised fluctuation between the three groups to ensure connections, whose particular interests have hampered the disaster relief efforts time and again."

Keep in mind, Germany is attempting to lead the world out of nuclear power, with some back-sliding by politicians. Their struggle should be known by all the world, but that is another story.

Right now, we will hear Kazuhiko speaking to German activists, translated into English by our friend of Radio Ecoshock.

Kazuhiko Kobayashi:

"In our country, a case of high-ranking government officials is playing an enormous role.

Once it's members went through certain universities, and passed the [unknown word], they are on a free ride to certain positions and departments. And once they are there, their power is so enormous that they can do virtually everything without any inspection. So our government officials can take it all.

Once they retire, they are being put in executive posts in big corporations. They enjoy their time as Directors.

And during those five to ten years they act as agents of plutocrats' corporate interests to the same government Ministries where they had been working before.

Now their successors are in their old positions and listen exactly what their former bosses are saying, because they know if they do what they are being told by the corporations, once they retire they will get the same fantastic posts. In their last decade they can make just as much money as in their entire career.

Nevertheless this pays off for the corporations, because it allows them to control the government and gives them a free ride. So this relationship is mutual.

Of course the career politicians join in as well, since they are being bribed by the corporations, as in many other countries. But in our country, the influence of the government of these officials is enormous.

Over a hundred years, since the end of the Samurai era, these three groups have been establishing this Troika. Time and again, together they represent political and economic power, for which they are ready to sacrifice everything. And to which the life of we the people does not matter.

This is the sad truth, and it became quite obvious in Fukushima."

That was Kazuhiko Kobayashi, translated from the German speech.

Find the audio of the full 42 minute Kobayashi speech (38.8 MB) in Gronau (10/20/2011) (in German) here.

A You tube video of his presentation, again in German, is here.

RADIO ECOSHOCK PART TWO

WERE 14,000 AMERICANS KILLED BY FALLOUT FROM FUKUSHIMA?

I want to investigate the stunning new study claiming 14,000 Americans have already died from radiation floating over from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

Two long-time American anti-nuclear activists, with decades of experience in the field, uncovered unsettling information even in the sparse announcements published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC.

Joseph J. Mangano, is the Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project at radiation.org, co-founded by Dr. Ernest Sternglass. Mangano has published scholarly articles and books like "Low Level Radiation and Immune System Disorders: An Atomic Era Legacy", and "Radioactive Baby Teeth: The Cancer Link."

On December 19th, Joseph Mangano, with co-author Janette Sherman, issued a press release about their newest medical article titled "14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout".

This caused a storm of criticism and alarm.

I heard about Janette Sherman a couple of years ago, as a seasoned doctor and medical researcher. She was part of a study of thousands of baby teeth. The teeth showed higher levels of radioactive Strontium-90 in children within 40 miles of any nuclear power plant. Sherman, as we will hear, was also the English editor of a large collection of papers on the impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear power accident in the Ukraine.

Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman published their peer-reviewed study in the December 2011th edition of the International Journal of Health Services.

Let's talk with Janette Sherman.

[Sherman interview]

Our guest has been toxicologist and internist Janette Sherman. She is adjunct professor, at Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of "Chernobyl - Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Download or read that huge report, consisting of translations from articles and reports from the Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe, here.

Janette is also the author of the book "Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life's Delicate Balance - Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer." Find out more here.

CAN THIS REALLY BE TRUE?

Did an extra 14,000 Americans die from Fukushima?

The sub-title of the December 19th Press release reads "Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count."

This takes us into one of the most controversial areas of nuclear affairs. What is the safe level of radiation?

Study after study shows there is no safe level of radiation. More details below.

FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT MEASURED ACROSS THE U.S. (and Canada)

Reading further from the RPHP press release:

"Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S. The highest detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were as follows (normal is about 2 picocuries I-131 per liter of water): Boise, ID (390); Kansas City (200); Salt Lake City (190); Jacksonville, FL (150); Olympia, WA (125); and Boston, MA (92)."

So there is no doubt elevated levels of radioation was measured by the American goverment all across the country, but especially on the West Coast.

Radio Ecoshock ran an interview in the Spring of 2011 with a Canadian scientist, Dr. Krzyztof Starosta at Simon Fraser University, who also measured elevated levels of radioactivity on Canada's West Coast. Hear that interview in this Radio Ecoshock program "Fear and Loathing in Fukushima" (1 hour 14 MB)

The RPHP press release says, quote:

"The CDC issues weekly reports on numbers of deaths for 122 U.S. cities with a population over 100,000, or about 25-30 percent of the U.S. In the 14 weeks after Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. (March 20 to June 25), deaths reported to the CDC rose 4.46 percent from the same period in 2010, compared to just 2.34 percent in the 14 weeks prior. Estimated excess deaths during this period for the entire U.S. is about 14,000."

The government reports an unusual rise in deaths, without any explanation. We know radiation hit North America, and can be harmful, especially to infants in the uterus, and up to one year of age. Janette Sherman says adults with compromised immune systems, perhaps after cancer treatment for example, are also vulnerable to more radiation as generated by Fukushima.

You can find the full journal article as a free .pdf file here.

The Radiation and Public Health Project also posted a 42 minute audio press conference with journalists. I note that no major news sources attended. Not Associated Press or Reuters. One journalist asked if there could be multiple causes beyond Fukushima for these excess deaths, and Joseph Mangano agreed there could be other causes as well. He called for more research.

THREE CASES WHERE LOW LEVE RADIATION RISKS WERE DENIED AND THEN ADMITTED

Mangano answered another doubt, with this explanation of three cases where low-level radiation impacts were denied, but then finally admitted by the government or the courts.

[Transcript by Alex Smith from Press Tele-Conference for journalists December 19th, 2011]

"This is Joseph Mangano... Any statement, such as the one you just mentioned, i.e. the levels of radiation exposure are too low to cause harm, are in conflict with the agreement of expert scientists.

I'll refer you to a report, a blue ribbon panel called BEIR 7, Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. They have produced seven reports over the years. And in their most recent one, 2005, they agreed that based on hundreds and hundreds of scientific articles, that even at low doses, there is risk to humans.

And I'll follow that by giving three examples of historically, where there were assumptions that low doses were not harmful to people only to have that belief overturned.

Number one is the practice of giving pregnant women abdominal x-rays. Which doctors did not to harm people, but simply for diagnostic purposes, to see, you know, how big the baby was and where the position was.

The first article that this raised childhood cancer risk to the fetus took place in the late 1950's. It was met by a huge wave of opposition by obstetricians, by radiologists, by the nuclear industry. More articles came out about that. And finally, in the late 1970's this practice was discontinued.

The second example was the fallout from atomic bomb tests in Nevada in the 1950's and 60's. For years years government officials declared no harm, until 1997, when the National Cancer Institute put out a report
estimating that up to 212,000 Americans developed thyroid cancer alone from the Iodine in bomb fallout.

The third one is the case of workers in nuclear weapons plants, which again for years the government measured their doses and declared that they were below 'safe and permissible limits'. In the year 2000 the
Energy Department put out a report stating that, it was based on dozens of articles, the workers were in fact susceptible to a variety of cancers. And now there is a program to compensate former workers with cancer.

In summary, there is a basic dynamic here which starts with an assumption of low doses being harmless - only to find out that after study, in fact the opposite is true.

So I think we must maintain an open mind here when studying Fukushima."

Find a .pdf of the BEIR 7 report here.

The Wiki article on ionizing radiation says this:

"The linear dose-response model suggests that any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk. The linear no-threshold model (LNT) hypothesis is accepted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the EPA and its validity has been reaffirmed by a National Academy of Sciences Committee (see the BEIR VII report, summarized in [8]). Under this model, about 1% of a population would develop cancer in their lifetime as a result of ionizing radiation from background levels of natural and man-made sources."

That does support what Mangano and Sherman are saying.

"MAY" HAVE KILLED 14,000 AMERICANS....

And here is a key statement by Joseph Mangano in that press tele-conference, namely that 14,000 MAY have been killed due to Fukushima, but the researchers cannot prove that actually happened.

[Transcript]

"Correction, we haven't said that Fukushima DID in fact cause these excess cancers, but MAY have caused. I want to make that quite clear. It's really a call, a clarion call, for more extensive research."

MY OPINION ON THIS STUDY

Given that doubt, I find the headline for the study press release misleading. We don't know Fukushima fallout caused 14,000 American deaths.

But the thrust of the study seems valid. A big impact of fallout over a large population is possible. It happened during atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and again after Chernobyl. The American government has made no effort to find out why more people died after Fukushima.

If they have an alternative cause, let's hear it.

We also see how very weak government death reporting is. Thousands could die of radiation poisoning, or other causes, and we might never know it.

It seems biologically reasonable to me that many people in fragile states, whether infants or adults with medical problems, died following the blast of Fukushima radiation hitting North America, and Europe for that matter. When critics keep citing weak external radiation, you know they are dodging the real risk of ingesting
long-lived radioactive particles through food and water.

I would also expect more cancers to develop in the population during the coming decades, due to exposure to radioactive particles from the Fukushima nuclear accident. That is just common medical knowledge, as we learned from the Chernobyl accident as well.

Because increased radioactivity stays with us for generations, even hundreds of years, and because it can alter genes for all subsequent generations, I feel nuclear power is far too dangerous for human use.

DID YOU SEE THIS ALL-STAR CONCERT FOR SAFE NUCLEAR-FREE ENERGY LAST SUMMER?

Fukushima teaches us to seek cleaner energy options.

Here is another message for Americans, and everyone still living in the shadows of nuclear disaster.

The setting was a concert at the Shoreline amphitheatre in Mountain View CA, on August 7, 2011. On stage Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Jason Mraz, The Doobie Brothers, Tom Morello, John Hall and many more.

Watch clips from this classic concert for clean non-nuclear energy on You tube here (42 minutes with all-star cast).

Listen for Eileen Miyoko Smith on stage. She is a Japanese activist who fought against using deadly plutonium as a fuel called MOX at the Fukushima reactors. Now she worries California reactors on quake fault lines, like Diablo Canyon and San Onofre could go the same way. They should be shut down.

And you also hear one of the original Americans fighting dangerous nuclear power, Harvey Wasserman. He started in New England in the early 19070's. Wasserman's latest book is "SOLARTOPIA: Our Green-Powered Earth, AD 2030", introduced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and with the song "Solartopia" by Pete Seeger. Watch and listen to that Pete Seeger "Solartopia" song on You tube here.

Long-time folkie turned rocker Bonnie Rait was one of the MC's at the Musicians for Safe Energy concert.

I'm your host, Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock.

Thank you for listening, and for caring about your world.

GREEN MUSIC FESTIVAL

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:11:48 PST

http://bit.ly/rOp3k3 Welcome to our annual best of green music show. You'll hear the songs of activism, despair, and love of Mother Earth.

So much "blah blah blah" in the media. All those words fill our brain, and miss our hearts.

That is where the musicians step in, to move us along. I'm Alex Smith.

This year we've added three songs for broken economy. You'll hear two new songs for the Occupy Movement.

PLAYLIST WITH LINKS TO THE ARTISTS

We kick off with "Change Change" by the Canadian group Thistle, starring Debra Lee Halinda.

"Change Change" Thistle 2:43

More Thistle music on CD Baby.

Next up, some Frackin Good music from Australia, "My Water's On Fire Tonight" with David Holmes and Dean Bekker, from the album "Wholelottafracking Going On"

"My Water's On Fire Tonight" David Holmes & Dean Bekker 2:32

For those tired of the city, here is the Canadian hit group Mother Mother with "Dirty Town."

"Dirty Town" Mother Mother 2:28

Web site.

You are listening to the Radio Ecoshock green music special - eco activist songs from around the world.

From Germany, here is Michael Montecrossa with his Fukushima song, "Talkin End Game"

"Fukushima Song Talkin End Game" Michael Montecrossa 3:51

You tube video.

Michael's web site.

American singer-songwriter Neko Case is best known in the Canadian group "The New Pornographers" Here Neko solos with "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth"

"Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" Neko Case 2:10

Let's dive back down under. We'll start with Australia's Combat Wombat from a benefit album to stop the destructive Lake Cowal gold mine proposed by Barrick. This song is called

"Alternative Energy" Combat Wombat (from the album "Water More Precious Than Gold").

The album isn't online any longer, but you can hear more tracks from it in this April 27th 2006 "Podcasting Nimbin" show.

From New Zealand, with a Polynesia flavor, here is the group Te Vaka, with the song "Our Ocean" written for Greenpeace New Zealand.

"Our Ocean" Te Vaka

Their web site is cool.

You are tuned to the Radio Ecoshock Green Music festival.

This is the Seattle Band, Million Dollar Nile with their song "Don't Kilowatt".

"Don't Kilowatt" Million Dollar Nile 4:10

Before we get to our set of new Occupy songs, let's remember what this Earth is all about.

We start with "Hallowed Be Thy Ground" by Casey Neill

You tube video of that song here (audio not as good as studio version).

That is followed by "Earth" by Imogen Heap, ....

Here is a You tube video about Imogen's film "Love the Earth"

And here is her web site.

Then: "Where We Going to Go" by Ellis Music Productions.

Watch it on You tube here. Written and sung by David Todds, who allows reproduction for non-profit use.

SONGS FOR A BROKEN ECONOMY

It's time to Occupy ourselves with the economic banking rip-off. In music of course, with Radio Ecoshock.

Whether you are talking consumer excess, the banking crash, or the fast-track to wrecking the environment, you can't beat this song:

"Run Away Train" by Texas singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkyson.

There are lots of You tube live versions of this song, but none beat the studio version in this program. Visit Eliza's web site for the latest.

"Runaway Train" Eliza Gilkyson 4:11

I was also struck by the Texas bravery of Gilkyson's 2008 song "Man of God" deep in George Bush country. (Not included in this show).

One of the suprise hits of the Occupy movement comes from Hawaii. Singer Makana was the official music for the APEC Summit leaders dinner. He sang "We Are the Many" - over and over for the surprised dignitaries of the 1 percent.

Makana "We Are The Many" 5:23

You tube video here.

His web site.

I first heard this David Rovics "Occupy Wall Street" song from an Iphone at the protests in New York City. David went into the studio, to make this one for the world.

"Occupy Wall Street (We're Going to Stay Right Here)" David Rovics 6:07

Official "Occupy Walls Street" song video here.

More about David Rovics at his web site.

In the hour-long non-stop version (and podcast) we hear one more quick one from David Rovics...

"When The Oil Runs Dry" David Rovics 2:03

We'll wrap up this Radio Ecoshock music special with our number one downloaded green tune. It's "Power from Above" by New England folkie Dan Berggren.

"Power From Above" Dan Berggren 2:49

Download the whole song here.

To book Dan for a performance, or just find out more, go here.

Sorry I didn't have time for this great song, "Good Planets Are Hard to Find" by American folk singer Steve Forbert.

You can always send your green music suggestions to: radio //at// ecoshock.org

I'm Alex smith. Thanks for listening. And have a good holiday.

CLIMATE DOWN IN DURBAN

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Smith) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:42:02 PST

http://bit.ly/tFbPAQ United Nations agreement fails to protect climate. Indian analyst prefers failure to empty climate agreement at COP17 Durban Dec 2011. James Hansen at AGU San Francisco Dec 6. Durban wrap up with Janet Redman of IPS. Australian Prof. Michael Raupach on burst of new carbon & changing world. Radio Ecoshock 111214 1 hour.

Diplomats from all over the world are returning home after a hard-won agreement in Durban, South Africa.

They agreed to do nothing to save our climate from disaster.

Our governments will talk until 2015, and then maybe do something serious about greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. By then, as Radio Ecoshock listeners know, we will be committed to at least 3 and a half degrees Centigrade hotter world in 2100, than our ancestors knew in 1750. It will only get hotter after that.

In this Radio Ecoshock special, we hear four reports.

From India, journalist, author and political analyst Praful Bidwai tells Stephen Leahy of IPS a failure in Durban would be better than what we got. We go outside the spin of Western media.

Then to San Francisco, to hear NASA's Dr. James Hansen at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. He describes our unique and dangerous path.

Back to South Africa, where Janet Redman has survived the gruelling Durban conference sessions, to give us the wrap up. What did and didn't happen, along with the American role.

We finish up with an interview with Dr. Michael Raupach from Australia's National Science Agency. He's part of the Global Carbon Project which just published the bad news about our "monstrous" increase in emissions.

New science, predictions of doom, and a world in paralysis - it's another Radio Ecoshock show.

THE VIEW AT THE DURBAN CLIMATE CONFERENCE - FROM INDIA

At the Durban COP-17 Climate conference, India was blamed for not going along with the game. We're going to hear from Praful Bidwai, the author of "The Politics of Climate Change and The Global Crisis" and a well-known Indian commentator. Praful was interviewed by Stephen Leahy of the Independent Press Service on Friday December 9th. The meeting was not over, but everything in the interview stands.

Praful agrees the Indian economy is growing fast - but all the profits are going to the upper 10 or 15 percent of the population. While 500 million people still don't have electricity, India can hardly be counted as a "developed" country.

Bidwai also talks about the bullying, and outright bribery of countries at these climate conferences. Small Island states, who may disappear with rising seas, are told to agree to offers from large polluters, or risk getting nothing at all. Other countries are threatened by the risk of withholding loans or investments.

The European Union wanted a legally binding treaty. They offered to extend the Kyoto Protocol, and meet their commitments within that. Russia and the United States didn't want to extend the Protocol. Canada came to the conference threatening to withdraw first, because Canada has no intention of meeting those emission reductions. Production from the Tar Sands comes first, and Canada is already at least 25% over what it promised in Kyoto.

The United States never ratified Kyoto, despite it's promotion by Al Gore.

India objected to being legally bound to reduce emissions, even before it produced electricity for its citizens. Why should they do without, while the West continues to reap the benefits, and waste even more?

In the end, as we hear from Janet Redman, the Durban conference agreed on something called an extention of Kyoto, but without any legally binding reductions until at least 2020.

Every other commitment was likewise hollowed out, becoming many steps backwards, says Praful Bidwai. Payments into the $100 billion a year climate adaptation fund are uncertain, and not coming any time soon. The whole idea of the West taking responsibility for climate change (due to long-term emissions) - or reducing quickly to allow developing countries their share of the atmosphere - all that is out the window. Bidwai says this is worse than Copenhagen, it should have been voted down. Failure would have been preferable.

Don't miss this insightful interview by Stephen Leahy, of the Independent Press Service (IPS).

Stephen Leahy immediately sent this interview to Radio Ecoshock. Stephen is one of the few all-out environmental journalists left anywhere. He needs your support to keep covering the world. I'm asking you to make a donation of any amount, at stephenleahy.net

Our Radio Ecoshock coverage of the Durban climate conference continues with a long-distance call to Africa. We talk with Janet Redman. She knows the ropes of international negotiations, the activist scene, and politics back home in Washington.

BUT FIRST, JAMES HANSEN AT THE AGU

Dr. James Hansen, from the Goddard Space Center at NASA, is possibly America's top climate scientist. He was certainly the first to warn Congress, back in 1988, that global warming threatened the world.

Hansen's papers are widely cited as ground-breaking research. His latest book "Storms of My Grandchildren" is popular.

As the Durban climate conference was meeting, on the other side of the world, in San Francisco, the American Geophysical Union was holding its annual conference. Some of the most important climate science of the year is presented and reported.

We only have time to give you a brief excerpt from an hour long press briefing on December 6th, 2011. It was a panel discussion between three of the leading lights. I'm going to focus on a few clips from NASA's Dr. James Hansen, plus a bit from Eelco Rohling, Professor of Ocean and Climate Change, Southampton University, U.K.

Watch the full 1 hour press briefing, which also includes Ken Caldeira, here.

Note all the other AGU 2011 videos that show up on the You tube page. And visit the AGU site.

The presentation is called "Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes".

Find a related NASA press release here.

It begins:

"In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato, also of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar 'interglacial' epochs – periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers. In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said.

'The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,' Hansen said. 'It would be a prescription for disaster.'"

Find Briefing Materials

Related feature article by Hansen and Sato

JANET REDMAN OF INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES REPORTS FROM DURBAN

Reporting from South Africa, our guest is Janet Redman. She is Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network, at the Institute for Policy Studies, in Washington D.C. Janet attended the 17th Conference of the Parties, known as COP-17. That United Nations climate conference wrapped up a day and a half late, in the wee hours of December 11th, 2011.

I'm not able to summarize everything in this detailed interview.

Janet expresses her disappointment with a "hollowed out" agreement. Nothing is binding, all is voluntary and unmonitored. Essentially, from now until 2020, it is a free-for-all where every country can emit as much as it wants.

The result for the climate will be a disaster. On our current course, with emissions rising by 3 to 6% every year, there is no way to avoid at least 3.5 degrees C global mean temperature rise by 2100, and it could go to 5 or 6 degrees. That will ruin the Earth for humans and most species.

Janet explains the role of the United States, and how American actions in Durban are tailored to the electoral cycle. America is not taking on its responsibility for being the biggest single cause of climate change. A combination of bullying and evasion replace that.

We talk about Canada, and the unusual role of China. China is now the world's largest emitter, although still far down the list of per capita consumption.

China is also a leader in renewable energy, partly due to government policies supporting it. But American labor unions, and the U.S. government, are taking legal action against China - because it supports renewable energy!

China is also the de facto head of the G-77 countries, and is expected to speak for the developing world, against the major Western powers and Japan, if needed.

At one point, China offered to take on binding reduction agreements, if the U.S would do the same. But the U.S. refused. Redman says other countries are very aware that President Obama is not the climate or environmental leader voters expected. She doesn't think he will even mention climate in his campaign next year. Janet thinks Americans will have to take personal action, and organize on other levels, since the federal government is either bought out or politically paralyzed, or both.

There is a lot more in this interview. If you want to know what really happened in Durban, give it a listen.

Find out more about the Institute for Policy Studies here.

My thanks to Daphne Wysham of Earthbeat Radio for helping arrange this interview.

AN ESTEEMED AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE SCIENTIST ON CARBON EMISSIONS

Now on to Australia, to get the latest on climate science and our ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is Australia's national science agency. Our guest Dr. Michael Raupach is a Research Scientist with CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research Division.

Dr Raupach's achievements include:
CSIRO Fellow, 2010
Fellow, American Geophysical Union, 2010
Fellow, Australian Academy of Science, 2009

Back in 2006, Dr Raupach warned the amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans was on the rise. We've just seen that confirmed with another huge increase in 2010. For all the conferences, studies and reports, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, we're just going backwards.

Michael also participated in research showing the "sinks" that help trap our carbon emissions are weakening. When we look at carbon respositories, like the soil, forests, and especially the ocean, science suggests these are taking up 20% less carbon than in 1970.

Find out more here. (with audio podcast 6 min)

That's a huge concern, since at least half of the greenhouse gases produced by humans have been hidden away in these sinks. If they take up less, we get more staying in the atmosphere, and if we want to survive, we have to burn much less than we thought.

We hear about the recently released report showing humans have managed to raise greenhouse gas emissions an astonishing 5.9 percent in 2010. All during the 2000's, greenhouse gas emissions were increasing around 3% every year, except 2009. In 2009, the economic downturn meant a lower increase.

But by 2010, and again this year we think, despite economic concerns, greenhouse gas emissions are roaring out of our tail-pipes, power plants, gas wells, and agriculture, to name a few.

All this is tracked by the ...

GLOBAL CARBON PROJECT

Quoting from Wikipedia: "The Global Carbon Project (GCP) was established in 2001. The organisation seeks to quantify global carbon emissions and their causes.

The main object of the group has been to fully understand the carbon cycle. The project has brought together emissions experts and economists to tackle the problem of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The Global Carbon Project works collaboratively with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the World Climate Programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and Diversitas, under the Earth System Science Partnership.

In late 2006 researchers from the project claimed that carbon dioxide emissions had dramatically increased to a rate of 3.2% annually from 2000. At the time, the chair of the group Dr Mike Raupach stated that 'This is a very worrying sign. It indicates that recent efforts to reduce emissions have had virtually no impact on emissions growth and that effective caps are urgently needed,'...

Their projections have indicated that we can expect greenhouse gas emissions to occur according to the IPCC's worst-case scenario, as CO2 emissions reach 500ppm in the 21 st century."

Find the main Global Carbon Project web site here.

Actually, Dr. Raupach told me about the 2010 increase in our interview, but asked me to wait for the paper publication this past week, before broadcasting our chat.

It was a rare opportunity to talk with one of Australia's preeminent climate scientists, especially when it comes to the carbon cycle. In a future show, I'll ask Dr. Raupach about using changes in agriculture to lower carbon, by putting it into the soil.

This week we learned about that carbon cycle, and our emissions.

I asked Michael Raupach about the priorities for climate research in Australia. Then I learned more about North America and Europe as well.

It seems "the sub-tropical ridge" of high pressure is dropping southward toward the Poles. The same ridge in northern latitutes is moving northward toward the Pole. The result is a massive change in weather patterns.

For Australia, and for the southern United States, this change means less rainfall, drought, and fires. Australia has seen plenty of all three, just like Texas and Oklahoma in 2011. Parts of the country are drying out, and may not recover.

Raupach says it is easy to predict a long term warming trend due to increasing carbon in the atmosphere. There will be more brush fires in the countryside, and more heat deaths in the cities, he says.

Here is the difficult subject that needs much more search, Raupach tells me: the impact of greenhouse gases on precipitation. Just as James Hansen told us at the AGU in San Francisco, our models are not yet good at predicting changes in rainfall. We can't say for sure which extreme rainfall events are aided by climate change.

Knowing the impact on rainfall, and therefore on agriculture, is critical for Australia and the world.

ENJOY LIFE WHILE YOU CAN

There you go. A full serving of science, doom and the human circus.

We don't have time to cover the simultaneous economic collapse. In his latest radio show and podcast, Max Keiser explains why Britain opted out of the European Union economic recovery plan - to keep the City of London as a world base for bankster piracy.

Download "The Truth About Markets" #1228 December 10, 2011 here. (1 hour)

Your new word for the week is "re-hypothication". Look it up, and find the link to a key article in the blog Zero Hedge which explains how money is magically expanded until it bursts.

This article is a bit hard going at the start, I found, but keep slogging along and you begin to get the drift of the game going on in London, and incidentally how Canadian banks are playing there...

A MODEST PROPOSAL

The politicians at Durban showed they are not willing to act to save the climate. Maybe a fast deep economic crash is our only hope of maintaining a livable climate for ourselves and our grandchildren.

With that happy thought, I thank you for listening. Download Radio Ecoshock programs free from our web site, ecoshock.org. You can find my blog and videos there as well.

I'm Alex Smith, saying "Remember, these are the good old days."

Enjoy your holidays.