I just returned from Blue River Writers Gathering sponsored by the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. The Gathering was at H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest near McKenzie Bridge, Oregon. I was glad to attend workshops by Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford, Jourdan Keith, Kathleen Dean Moore, and spawning spring chinook. A major theme was hope, or lack of hope, or how to work without any hope of carbon / methane reductions to stop near-term immense planetary suffering for all species. I was grateful Nancy Cook of Astoria tried to put together a raft trip for the two of us down the McKenzie River. Maybe that will happen at the next Gathering two years from now. The film Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin by Arwen Curry was memorable.
Afterwards, my wife and I drove into Mt. St. Helens blast zone so we could hike, enjoy fall colors, and write poems. I recalled Tim Fox speaking about Jerry Franklin "who was one of the first scientists to enter the Mt. St. Helens blast zone following the 1980 eruption. He and his colleagues had anticipated a barren wasteland, they predicted, would last for centuries. Instead, he was greeted by a fireweed sprout poking up green through the gray ash. His response was to cry out in delight 'We were wrong!'" Similarly, it would be great for The Guardian to be wrong about a possible "150 million 'climate refugees' by 2050."
At the Gathering, Jerry Martien's insight stayed with me about the movement to spirit taking place in the climate activist community, along with Tim Fox's words about gratitude for even life's hardest challenges, and Tom Titus' essay about landing a huge fall chinook that broke his line, but he caught anyway. It was good to meet artist Ian Boyden, and learn about his work in China. I enjoyed hearing about Mary DeMocker's new book The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution. Two years ago, at the previous Gathering, she asked me to write a poem titled "How We Stopped Corporate Psychopaths from Cooking Planet Earth."
I was encouraged by other insights, writings, readings, nature walks, and activist works of believers and atheist-humanists. Below is a poem I wrote for a student while hiking in St. Helens blast zone.
For a Student Fighting Depression
Each day I don't kill myself
is an adventure like today's September green
in St. Helen's blast zone
or fall chinook fishing
under a flame of maples that heals
instead of burns.
Today at The Guardian Benjamin Franta wrote in an article "Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings," "Looking on the bright side, [Shell] expressed its confidence that 'this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine.' [par break] The documents make for frightening reading. And the effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants’ refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted. Shell’s report, marked 'confidential,' was first disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier this year. Exxon’s study was not intended for external distribution, either; it was leaked in 2015. [par break] Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for their products. In Shell’s study, the firm argued that the 'main burden' of addressing climate change rests not with the energy industry, but with governments and consumers. That argument might have made sense if oil executives, including those from Exxon and Shell, had not later lied about climate change and actively prevented governments from enacting clean-energy policies."
I enjoyed The Yes Men's parody of Shell below, as well as their entire film. Some may think comedy is inappropriate given the serious nature of abrupt climate change. I am reminded of Thomas Merton's words in "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" republished in the last issue of The Analog Sea Review, AN OFFLINE JOURNAL I mentioned below."
"Ocean heat content (OHC) and CO2 concentration measurements since 1950s. The black line represents ocean heating for the upper 2000 meters of ocean, and light red shading represents the 95 percent confidence interval. CO2 concentration observed in Mauna Loa Observatory is displayed by light blue." Thanks to Lijing Cheng of the INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, for use of this graphic and caption.
The above graphic shows rise in "ocean heat content" from 1950s to present follows rise in CO2. Most scientists agree warmer oceans produce stronger hurricanes like Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate ("so destructive," according to Angela Fritz of The Washington Post, "their names have been retired."), and Florence now moving toward North Carolina. To clarify, I wrote on this blog September 21, 2017, "scientists note [ . . .] climate change influences hurricane damage in three ways: 1) sea-level rise means higher storm surges are possible; 2) increased moisture produces higher floods; and 3) storm intensity increases from added heat energy."
Hurricane Florence, according to Emery P. Dalesio at abcnews.go.com, "could hit with punch not seen in more than 60 years." It is widely reported to be about the size of North Carolina when it hits Friday morning with winds expected somewhere between 120mph and 140 mph along with storm surges, heavy rains, and flooding.
Various news media reported a million people received mandatory evacuation orders near coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Bill McKibben twittered today "It's rude to say it at the moment, I guess, but perhaps worth remembering that the North Carolina legislature literally banned using the latest science on sea level rise for coastal planning."
This reminds me of how Florida Governor Rick Scott "nickeled, dimed, slashed and ignored Florida’s environmental protections for almost eight years" then claimed, according to Froma Harrop of The Seattle Times, no responsibility for Florida's extreme red tide this year or "Fertilizer pollution from sugar farms, citrus groves, and ranches [which] feeds the ['freshwater blue-green slime'] algae" even though "When there is conflict over this, Scott habitually sides with the biggest polluters."
Similarly, regarding Florida Governor Rick Scott, the headline of a Washington Post article by Terrence McCoy on March 10, 2015, was "Fla. scientist told to remove words ‘climate change’ from study on climate change." I like what poet William Stafford wrote in 1982 in his poem “Reading the Big Weather,” “'Republicans / Control Congress'—the year spins on unheeding. / [ . . . . ] This earth we are riding keeps trying to tell us / something with its continuous scripture of leaves." UC Berkeley poet John Shoptaw wrote "ecopoetry, whatever else it is, must include ecoprophecy," and Stafford's poem seems to fit.
As I noted in a post March 24, 2018, "the climate effects now are from emissions about 10 to 30 years ago, and we have poured in much more carbon since then. We can expect conditions to get worse until long after this problem is solved." Thoughts, prayers, and nonviolent climate action for people of the Philippines, North Carolina, nearby areas, and everywhere.
In a related matter, click this article from The Spokesman-Review by Eli Francovich noting "'The orcas are going to die if we don’t breach the [Snake River] dams,' said Chiara Rose, a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham. 'They are very dependent on this specific ecosystem [supplying Snake River salmon orcas need.]'” The article also quoted "staunch conservative and former marine" Bill Chetwood who "remembers watching salmon streaming below his boat. He remembers a riparian area that cut through the dry and high desert hills winding all the way to the Columbia River. [par break] Chetwood, 88, is a lifelong resident of the Lewiston area. He is one of the few who can recall the Snake River before four dams slowed the river’s water.[par break] He wants all that back."
Yesterday I attended 350PDX's Climate, Jobs and Justice event at Glenhaven City Park in Portland, Oregon. Highlights included an opening prayer by Celilo Falls-born Ed Edmo, a poem from Marshall Islander Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (video below), presentations by Oregon Just Transition Alliance (OJTA), and others. In addition, check out Portland Clean Energy Fund.
The event, according to riseforclimate.org, was part of the September 8 action "on 7 continents, in 95 countries, with 900+ actions, [where] people worldwide demanded real climate action from their local leaders."
I was glad to meet Lindsey Grayzel, whose film about Ken Ward, THE RELUCTANT RADICAL (trailer below), will be shown Wed., Sept. 12, 7 p.m. in Whitsell Auditorium, Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., in Portland, Oregon. More about the film is here. I wrote about Ken Ward, and his fellow Valve Turners, at San Diego Free Press in an article linked at San Diego 350, and The Spring Creek Project Blog at Oregon State University.
The Atlantic and other publications noted in 2017 the United States is the only country on Earth opposing the Paris Climate Agreement. The Atlantic reported "195 other countries have already signed on." As I wrote below, the Climate Agreement didn't go far enough, and was only a start.
Many colleagues, friends, neighbors, and students don't want to talk about it. These two videos are for them. As I heard a Canadian say to his friend in a bad relationship, "Look around!" People, colleges, businesses, corporations, especially politicians, in the U.S. are caught in a mass hypnosis of denial. Watch the "dangerous conformity" experiment led by Professor Dominic Abrams of the University of Kent, and "Asch Conformity Experiment" to see what I mean:
Thanks to visitors this week from United States, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Unknown Region (?), Germany, Japan, South Korea, Netherlands, Australia, and Canada.
Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone contributing editor and author of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, has an excellent article about specific challenges with Arctic melt you won't hear in many mainstream news sources. Goodell's August 29, 2018 article notes: "The thawing of the Arctic is one of the biggest stories of our time, even if it is playing out at a pace and in a way that virtually guarantees most people will pay little or no attention to it [ . . . . ] To oversimplify this only slightly, you could argue that this summer’s historic wildfires in California were predicted by heat in the Arctic [ . . . ] Last winter, temperatures in the Arctic were 45 degrees Fahrenheit above normal [ . . . . ] In our rapidly changing world, no place is too distant or too far away to matter. Like it or not, we are all in this together."
August 28, 2018, Lukas Ross, an opinion contributor at Thehill.com, reported,"Just two months ago, the DNC voted unanimously to refuse donations from political action committees, or PACs, run by fossil fuel corporations [ . . . .] The August resolution is a half-clever twisting of words that uses fossil fuel workers as props to justify continuing to take corporate cash. It guarantees that money from Democrats who happen to work in the industry will always be welcome, whether the contributions come 'individually or through their unions' or employers' political action committees.'”
Justin Worland on August 14, 2018, at time.com had a similar response: "At the heart of the conflict are the two million plus jobs in the oil, gas and coal industries that could disappear as the world moves to clean energy sources. Many of those positions pay six-figure salaries and offer benefits that exceed comparable positions in other fields [ . . . . ] '[Labor groups'] future self interest lies in getting on board,' says Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency that deals with labor issues. 'There are no jobs on a dead planet.'"
Commondreams.org reported August 23, 2018, "'It’s deeply disappointing to see the DNC resist the growing momentum within the party for bold climate action,' said May Boeve, Executive Director of 350 Action. 'This political u-turn is bizarrely out of touch with the hundreds of candidates and elected officials committing to sever financial ties with Big Oil. It’s past time for Democratic leadership to step up and put their constituents ahead of fossil fuel interests. We need support for policies that move us toward a 100% renewable energy economy and lift up community-led solutions to climate change now.'"
Thanks to blog visitors this week from the United States, Ukraine, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal.
Schellnhuber: "Were not talking about a million people seeking refuge from Syria. We talk about hundreds of millions of people who will have to be displaced on this planet. How will we do it? [ . . . . ] Planet Passport for Climate Refugees? Global Green Card? [ . . . .] Think about what will happen with two meter sea level rise. These [island] nations will be gone. They will be homeless actually. [ . . . ] Now, there are two ways. You could say 'Top down, you will just relocate those people. Give them money to move to California or Switzerland.' That will not happen. [ . . .] Or [ . . .] empower these people. Give them the freedom of mobility. [ . . . .] Why not [create] a climate passport [or Nansen Passport 'to enter at least about 50 countries']? [ . . .] Give them to all those people who can not live anymore in their original [places] which gives them access to all the countries who destroyed their home like the United States. [ . . .] I'm serious about it." I recently saw Ai Weiwei's Human Flow (trailer below), and recalled words of Walt Whitman watching sad faces of slaves auctioned in New Orleans in 1848, "That could be me."
This May 4th, 2018 discussion is clear-thinking, revealing, and wise. Here are some memorable parts:
1) clear-thinking: "In Germany we should focus everything on the phase out of coal";
2) revealing: "It's all about agency, about who could turn this crisis into a solution. [ . . . .] The CEO of Shell once told me 'The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let's get rich quick before the world ends, huh?'";
2) wise: "Of course we need disruptive change in order to still save the climate [ . . . .] What about if we would have an immersive communication technology where you would be beamed into this village [. . . in India where people were dying in a dust storm] immediately and you would see children dying and so on. [ . . .] It's terrible to even think about it but couldn't we turn into something like a collective subject which feels the pain of the Earth everywhere, and the pain of our fellow human beings everywhere, and in every instant?"
For updates, click here. This is simple. As CO2 rises, the heat-trapping blanket over Earth thickens, and traps more heat. I don't think humans have a collective "death wish," so nonviolent political action is needed. 350.org, as the name says, wants this number at 350 ppm, or lower. 350.org is sponsoring a September 8, 2018, global RISE FOR CLIMATE. What have I done? Everything here, and more.
Tonight I watched this excellent 2006 film about ancient and recent Columbia River History, and Christopher Swain's "13 month swim down it's 1243 mile length" to alert the public to the need to remove dams, clean up Hanford Nuclear Site, and preserve the river, and salmon, for future people. This film should be required in all Pacific Northwest high schools.
Here is a quote, "Immediately upon the salmon's return, alcoholism and suicide rates among teenage Umatilla tribal members began to drop. The beating heart of Umatilla culture had returned." Swain, and others, argue for removal of The Dalles Dam to bring back Celilo Falls. I'll repost my poem about Celilo below, and a Timeline video below that. It was interesting to hear the voice of Jim Martin in SOURCE TO SEA which I recognized from my salmon activist days in Newport and Depoe Bay, Oregon, about 30 years ago.
I was enjoying this new journal so much, I recently took it instead of my laptop to the coffee shop. It's the best literary journal I've read in years, maybe ever, and I've read hundreds from 13 countries. I read it from cover to cover.
The excerpt "They Would Always Touch the Earth" by Trebbe Johnson, "Persistience of Memory" by Carl Sagan, interview / work by filmmaker Patrick Shen ( In Pursuit of Silence trailer below), and "From the Editor" note by Jonathan Simons elevated the journal to the top of my morning list. I'm grateful to have a poem in this inaugural issue alongside work by Mary Oliver, Leonard Cohen, Thomas Merton, E. M. Forster, Antonio Machado, and others. South Korean-born German author and philosopher Byung-Chul Han's essay "Vita Contemplativa" will spark thinking in my Honors Climate Change Poetry Seminars. Han wrote, "Thinking, in the emphatic sense, cannot be accelerated at will. That is where it differs from calculating or from the pure use of the understanding. It often moves in roundabout ways [ . . . .] Calculating does not look around either. For it, a detour or a step back do not make sense." As Leonard Cohen said, "Amen."
I like the editors' idea of sending people offline as a healthy balance in our increasingly techno-lives. The journal is carried in bookstores in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and here in the United States so even though it's offline, it gets noticed. You can write to get one at the Austin, TX or Freiburg, Germany addresses below, or find one in these bookstores:
Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore
413 Main Street
Middletown, CT 06457
Kramerbooks & Afterwords
1517 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
Potter’s House
1658 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009
Amherst Books
8 Main Street
Amherst, MA 01002
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA 02446
Grolier Poetry Bookshop
6 Plympton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
Milkweed Books
1011 Washington Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Square Books
160 Courthouse Square
Oxford, MS 38655
RiverRun Bookstore
32 Daniel Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801
Buffalo Street Books
215 N. Cayuga St
Ithaca, NY 14850
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
Burke’s Book Store
936 South Cooper Street
Memphis, TN 38104
BookPeople
603 North Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78703
I left a copy in the office of my amazing healer / chiropractor Dr Nao at Holistic Family Care in Wilsonville, Oregon.
Editor / Publisher Jonathan Simons wrote "You are welcome also to include our Austin mailing address and to invite your readers to send us a letter should they want us to post to them a copy of our current bulletin."
Analog Sea
PO Box 11670
Austin, TX 78711
United States
Analog Sea
Basler Strasse 115
79115 Freiburg
Germany
Part of the abstract notes "We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a 'Hothouse Earth' pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. [ . . . .] Collective human action is required [ . . . ] Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values."
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS)' Website notes the organization "is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Nearly 500 members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research."
This Spiraling Salmon by Jim Demetro is on Salmon Run Bell Tower in Vancouver, WA. I hope future kids don't ask "What's that?"
This morning, passing my wife, I said, "I almost forgot the most important thing!" She puckered up for a kiss, but I stepped by and grabbed my fishing rod. If climate change doesn't get me, maybe that will.
Read Joel Achenbach's August 8, 2018, Washington Post article here. Excerpts include:
"[Pierrehumbert added] It’s just a lunatic idea to think [use of 'sunlight-blocking aerosols']
is a good thing to have in our portfolio of responses to global warming [ . . . . ] If there is a sudden termination, then it’s like being hit by a heat wave without having made the adaptations.”
Other quotes from the article include: "To replenish the supply of sunlight-blocking aerosols, future generations would have to be fully committed to the project without interruption. Otherwise the planet's temperature would spike virtually overnight."
"The technology doesn't even exist yet. Planes that spew sulfur dioxide exist only in PowerPoint presentations."
"It might be done with a large fleet of planes flying at something like 70,000 feet. The fuel in the planes could be modified to burn a high percentage of sulfur, though the planes would probably use special furnaces to burn sulfur and spew it into the air, Pierrehumbert said."
"A better idea, said Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, is to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. [par break] 'We all know the solution to global warming is — stop using the atmosphere as a sewer for our greenhouse gases,' he said."
Thanks to visitors this month from United States, Russia, Germany, Portugal, Ukraine, France, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Romania.
Barrett's open letter in yesterday's Guardian is here. Two quotes regarding climate change are: "My understanding is that to be naive is to show a lack of experience, a lack of judgment and a lack of information. You are the naive one. [par break] You don’t have the experience to imagine a life harmed by your decisions to cater to fossil fuel interest, you don’t have the judgment to consider people you choose not to see and you ignore the information necessary for you to make the right choice."
"In Kelsey’s case, it outlines how she depends on the freshwaters of Oregon for drinking water, for her seafood diet, and for recreation. [par break] Acidification of the ocean, rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and vanishing rains are dramatically changing the environment that sustains her. [ . . . .] Kelsey, who loves to swim, snorkel, raft and canoe, can’t enter the water much because of algal bloom. She can’t camp in summer because of wildfires."
"Nick Venner, 16, from Lakewood, Colorado, is witnessing the destruction of his beloved forests by wildfires and pine beetle infestation caused by the rising temperatures, and the loss of his family’s fruit growing enterprise due to hail, rainstorms and drought."
Update: A July 30, 2018, update on the course is Greg Stohr's Bloomberg article "U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Halt Teenagers’ Climate Lawsuit" noting "The U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt a novel and sweeping lawsuit pressed by children and teenagers seeking to force the federal government to take steps against climate change." and "The case is United States v. U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, 18A65."
"Warning system down: California’s deadliest fires" (audio I posted March 10, 2018 about unsuccessful rescue attempts in "Whac-A-Mole" fire conditions as people are trapped in a swimming pool and on roads). "Last October, more than 170 wildfires ripped across Northern California. It was the deadliest fire incident in the state's history [and cost 44 lives]." (Click LISTEN button under title.)
Rachel Morison, Marvin G Perez, and Nicholas Larkin wrote at Bloomberg on July 25, "A heatwave across swathes of North America, Europe and Asia, coupled with a worsening drought in some areas, is causing spikes in the prices of anything from wheat to electricity. Cotton plants are stunted in parched Texas fields, French rivers are too warm to effectively cool nuclear reactors and the Russian wheat crop is faltering. [par break] The scorching heat is extracting a heavy human cost – contributing to floods in Japan and Laos and wildfires near Athens. Relief from soaring temperatures, which topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle, may not arrive for at least two weeks."
Thanks to blog visitors this week from United States, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Denmark, France, Peru, United Kingdom, and Nigeria.
I enjoyed presenting today at the annual CA Higher Education Sustainability Conference (CHESC) on the UC Santa Barbara campus. The session was "Sustainability Through a Humanities Lens," and also featured Kristin Hogue, Student Engagement Fellow, UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative, and Juan E. Campo, PhD, Professor, Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara. The moderator was David Braun, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo. I showed how my Honors Climate Change Poetry Seminar links students' personal lives with global themes like climate change.
The audience of about 50 professors and others had great questions and participation. Overall, it was a wonderful conference with many professors, education leaders, and business leaders bringing their best gifts to the table of sustainability, health, planning, and resiliency. California State University, Monterey Bay, gave an impressive presentation on their "Living Community Challenge."
Scenic beach walks and bike rides also made this trip memorable. CHESC noted, "This conference attracts close to 1000 attendees from 80 campuses, [and was] jointly organized by Independent / Private Colleges, California Community Colleges, California State Universities, and the University of California." I met wise elders, a trickster, insightful and committed students, and a friendly community. Mia Lopez, former tribal chair of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, said the area was a tribal gathering place for teaching and learning among diverse cultures.
Some say nearby She Who Watches pictograph
is about looking over her children.
Others say it is a death mask about diseases brought by settlers.
Maybe it will take tearing down upriver dams
to get young people to stop killing themselves.
This poem/film is from my forthcoming book Carbonfish Blues (Fomite, 2018), and is about loss of natural world and teen suicide epidemic which, according to a March 19, 2018 USA TODAY article “was up 70 % between 2006 and 2016 [. . .] for white children and teens [and] 77% [. . .] for black children and teens.” I heard one Millennial say recently "Nothing matters." which was an honest feeling, but I wonder how her feeling would change in presence of wild salmon ascending undammed rivers, or at least river sections. I understand need for flood control, but our society must be more in balance with nature. I recall Ed Abbey wrote, “One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
Brooks' claim suggesting "rocks are causing sea levels to [significantly] rise," as titled in the CNN video, is ridiculous to mainstream scientists. Climate deniers, fronting for oil companies, must be desperate in the face of overwhelming evidence to reduce carbon and methane emissions now.
It has been widely reported if Greenland melts, seas will rise "6 meters (20 feet)," and if the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, "60 meters (200 feet)." Greenland melting, in other words, is enough to qualify as a major global disaster for coastal cites, even if Antarctica were stable, which it is not, as I will show below.
Brooks' focus on Antarctic land ice and Antarctic "total ice quantity" are distractions from the Arctic/Greenland melt crisis. However, he was only partially correct about the land ice issue, and completely wrong about recent Antarctic "total ice quantity." This is similar to the reported exchange Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the Committee, had with physicist Dr. Duffy, President of the Woods Hole Research Center and former senior adviser to the US Global Change Research Program:
"The rate of global sea-level rise has accelerated and is now four times faster than it was 100 years ago," Duffy told Smith in response to the charts.
"Is this chart inaccurate, then?" Smith asked.
"It's accurate, but it doesn't represent what's happening globally; it represents what's happening in San Francisco," Duffy said.
In fairness to Rep. Mo Brooks' Antarctic claims, he clarified, according to al.com, "You've got to make sure you're careful in terminology [ . . .] I'm talking ice quantity. He's [Dr. Duffy's] talking about surface area. Two entirely different things. [ Brooks added] total ice quantity, which is what affects sea levels, has been increasing." al.com also reported "[Brooks said] the ice is growing in quantity on the interior of Antarctica."
As I wrote above, the immediate concern is the Arctic/Greenland melt crisis. However, after that, what matters from a climate/sea rise perspective is the total amount of ice melting or being added in Antarctica, not just the interior. "Antarctica," according to Leeds University researcher Dr. Anna Hogg, is "still losing ice mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass from snowfall" (see below).
According to blogs.discovermagazine.com, NASA Goddard’s chief cryospheric scientist Jay Zwally, author of the a 2015 study showing increasing Antarctic ice, has updated his research. According to this May 16, 2017 blogs.discovermagazine.com post by Eric Betz, "Zwally still stands by his 2015 study, but in an interview last week, he said nature has recently changed the equation. His team is crunching numbers from the past two years, looking at ice melting and snowfall rates in Antarctica. And they found something startling. [par break] The melt rates in West Antarctica just increased significantly. His calculations now show that the continent is in overall balance. The findings haven’t been peer reviewed yet, but he plans to present them at a science conference later this year." In the article, Zwally noted, “In our paper we said that might happen in two to three decades, [instead of what happened in two or three years . . . ]. Well, this is an unpublished result, but now we’re very close to the zero line.”
More importantly, an April 9, 2018, bbc.com article by Jonathan Amos, "Big increase in Antarctic snowfall," reported "The BAS researcher [Dr. Liz Thomas] is keen to stress that the increases in snowfall do not contradict the observations of glacial retreat and thinning observed by satellites over the last 25 years. Although the extra snow since 1900 has worked to lower global sea level by about 0.04mm per decade, this is more than being countered by the ice lost to the oceans at Antarctica's margins, where warm water is melting the undersides of glaciers."
The bbc.com article also cites Dr Anna Hogg, from University of Leeds, UK. Hogg, using "radar satellites to measure the shape and mass of the ice sheet" said "Even with these large snowfall events, Antarctica is still losing ice mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass from snowfall, mainly due to the regions of known ice dynamic instability, such as in the Amundsen Sea Embayment which includes Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. [par break] The Antarctic 4.3mm contribution to global sea level since about 1992 is still our best estimate."
Brooks' misunderstandings may be based on an observation predicted by climate change models. Aforementioned Dr. Liz Thomas, cited in the above bbc.com article, said "Theory predicts that, as Antarctica warms, the atmosphere should hold more moisture and that this should lead therefore to more snowfall. And what we're showing in this study is that this has already been happening." However, reading in context shows this increase is negated by the aforementioned "warm water [ . . . ] melting the undersides of glaciers." Therefore, close observation of Antarctica does not equal humans having less to worry about with sea rise, predicted by NASA to be "0.2 meters to 2.0 meters (0.66 to 6.6 feet) [ . . . .] by 2100."
The danger of Brooks' overgeneralizing into error reminds me of a paragraph in David James Duncan's book My Story As Told By Water, where a politician sees cans of Alaska salmon in stores, and doesn't understand the need to protect Idaho's genetically-different wild salmon from extinction.
With science, as with poetry, understanding is based on specifics. For example, the difference between H 2O (water) and just H (hydrogen) is the difference between a scenic alpine lake and fiery Hindenburg disaster.
August 20, 2018, Update from Dahr Jamail: "I’ve spoken to prestigious scientists both on and off the record who
believe that sooner rather than later, global population will be reduced
to around 1 billion humans." (at truthout.org)
A 2014 article in Scientific American reported "Levels of the potent greenhouse gas continue to rise and scientists aren't sure where most of it is coming from, though likely suspects include fracking, increased coal mining in China and a melting Arctic."
Regardless of source, or sources, humanity is moving in the wrong direction, and it's time to reverse course whatever the cost. As I noted below, "the climate effects now are from emissions about 10 to 30 years ago, and we have poured in much more carbon [and methane] since then. We can expect conditions to get worse until long after this problem is solved." Still on the fence about whether climate change is real? Watch this giraffe video on Kubler-Ross' stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) to identify where you are. As this Psychology Today article by David B. Feldman Ph.D., notes, "We may race through them or drag our feet all the way to acceptance. We may even repeat or add stages that Kubler-Ross never dreamed of. In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Even Kubler-Ross said that grief doesn’t proceed in a linear and predictable fashion, writing toward the end of her career that she regretted her stages had been misunderstood."
Thanks to visitors this week from United States, United Arab Emirates, Germany, South Korea, Brazil, Portugal, Canada, India, France, and United Kingdom.
I am sometimes asked how bad climate change will get, and how fast. I don't know specifics. I can show you data, reasons for concern, and one study that claims an Arctic methane threat was greatly overrated.
The Economist reported today "In the past decade methane levels have shot up (see chart), to the extent that the atmosphere contains two-and-a-half times as much of the gas as it did before the Industrial Revolution. Earlier this month America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed another sharp rise in 2017. [ . . . .] Of [an annual] 50bn-tonne total ["of 'carbon dioxide equivalent' of heat trapping gasses], 70% is carbon dioxide itself. Half the remaining 15bn tonnes is methane. [ . . . .] The explanations put forward by scientists range from the troubling to the truly hair-raising."
Concern Overrated threat?
As I reported before, The U. S. Geological Survey and the University of Rochester noted in a recent study the Arctic-methane issue may not be as dire as some scientists imagined. That study claims "most of the methane released by gas hydrates never reaches the atmosphere. Instead, the methane often remains in the undersea sediments, dissolves in the ocean, or is converted to carbon dioxide by microbes in the sediments or water column. [ . . . .] Professor Kessler explains that, 'Even where we do see slightly elevated emissions of methane at the sea-air interface, our research shows that this methane is rarely attributable to gas hydrate degradation.'[ . . . .] The authors’ sober, data-driven analyses and conclusions challenge the popular perception that warming climate will lead to a catastrophic release of methane to the atmosphere as a result of gas hydrate breakdown.”
The study continues, "The review pays particular attention to gas hydrates beneath the Arctic Ocean, where some studies have observed elevated rates of methane transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere. As noted by the authors, the methane being emitted to the atmosphere in the Arctic Ocean has not been directly traced to the breakdown of gas hydrate in response to recent climate change, nor as a consequence of longer-term warming since the end of the last Ice Age."
Natalia Shakhova, ("Expertise: chemical oceanography") Research Associate Professor at International Arctic Research Center at The University of Alaska Fairbanks, seems to disagree. She says in the above video, "As compared to the mid-depth of the world's ocean which is few hundred meters, up to kilometers, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf mid-depth is only 50 meters." She notes this is a problem because the more-shallow waters allow greater amounts of methane to rise into the atmosphere. The other major concern she has is quantity. She says the total amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere is "about 5 gigatonnes. The amount of carbon preserved in form of methane in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is approximately from hundreds to thousands of gigatonnes. And, of course, it's only 1% of that amount is required to double the atmospheric burden of methane."
As a reminder, an October 4, 2016, Siberian Times article quoted Professor Igor Semiletov, of Tomsk Polytechnic University, Shakhova's colleague speaking in the above video. Semiletov said "We have reason to believe that such emissions may change the climate. This is due to the fact that the reserves of methane under the submarine permafrost exceed the methane content in the atmosphere [ . . . ] many thousands of times. If 3-4% from underwater will go into the atmosphere within 10 years, the methane concentration therein (in the atmosphere) will increase by tens to hundreds of times, and this can lead to rapid climate warming. This is due to the fact that the greenhouse effect of one molecule of methane is 20-30 times greater than one molecule of CO2."
The good news is that even though methane has a much stronger effect than CO2, the life of methane in the atmosphere is shorter. Duncan Clark's January 16, 2012 article in The Guardian noted "Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years" while "Methane, by contrast, is mostly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12 years."
In other words, depending on how much Arctic methane is released how fast, it could be a difficult time for humans and other species if Shakhova's and Semiletov's concerns become reality. Creon says in the Greek tragedy Oedipus "Time is the one incorruptible judge."
"Jerry Taylor once worked for a libertarian think-tank, where he was paid to dispute the seriousness of climate change. Now he argues for climate action." Listen here.
Toby, my Jack Russell, kept trying to take down an elk. I had to yell "No. Bad dog! Elk are out of season you fool!" Anyway, here is some fresh salmon for you Bonnie ZoBell.
Here is my fishing/climate change bumper sticker I designed at vistaprint.com in 6 minutes (Click Signs & Posters then Bumper Stickers.). I bought two for about $12 which included postage. Here are my other ideas, or invent one: He > google (God Is Greater Than google); Yoga = Resilience; Love Anyway; I Am More Than My Metal Exoskeleton; The Wise Ape is Not a Mistake, It's Only How We Live.
Below are updates on fishing, climate change, and ecolit.
Fishing
On the way to looking at Idaho land to buy, I caught two steelhead and released a 6 pound bull trout which, like humans, are an endangered species.
The Coachella Review at The University of California, Riverside published my ecoplay The Dome. I'm grateful because this journal has "a relationship with the Palm Springs International Film Festival." Maybe someone will make The Dome into a short film. According to Wikipedia, "It is noted for its Award Ceremonies where such actors as Brad Pitt, Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Hathaway and Leonardo DiCaprio have appeared." However, for the lead role (only two roles, a man and a lizard) I vote for Canadian First Nations actor Graham Greene nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Dances with Wolves (1990). A Native American drama judge voted my play first place at the Tucson Presidio Theatre Company Playwriting Competition in 1994 where the Committee gave it second place and a cash award. An earlier version was selected by The Arizona Commission on the Arts for the Statewide Theatre Conference (May 1993). The play was directed by Nick Glazer and performed by Mark DeMichele.
My Hawk on Wire was selected from over 1,500 books as a Montaigne Medal Finalist sponsored by Eric Hoffer Awards for "the most thought-provoking books." There are many writing scams, but my research showed the Eric Hoffer Awards are legitimate, widely known as "one of the largest international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses."
I will teach Honors Climate Change Poetry Seminar fall term Thursdays at 6:35 p.m., World Lit. I Wednesdays at 6:35 p.m, and Creative Nonfiction Tuesdays at 6:35 p.m. Creative Writing Program students are now able to take courses twice as A and B sections.
On March 21 CBS San Francisco (CBS SF) reported in
"Judge Calls For Tutorial While Hearing Climate Change Lawsuits"
"the [Chevron] representative says the oil industry accepts that humans
are the driving force of global warming but oil companies argue that they can't
be held liable for emissions that are indeed government regulated." The
oil companies' response is laughable because, as Rhode Island Senator Sheldon
Whitehouse noted, after the Supreme Court passed Citizens United in 2010
providing limitless "dark money" in politics "virtually
instantly all republican work on climate change stopped." To give human
and nonhuman species a fighting chance, the Supreme Court must overturn
Citizens United as soon as possible. Scientist, polar explorer, diplomat, and
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen, known for helping hundreds of
thousands of refugees, said to a group at the 1925 League of Nations "The
wonderfully eloquent speech which we have just heard reminds me of the
definition of the difference between the difficult and the impossible. The
difficult is that which can be done at once: the impossible is that which takes
a little longer." If recent climate trends are an indicator, time is short
to massively reduce carbon emissions because, as some scientists note, the
climate effects now are from emissions about 10 to 30 years ago, and we have poured in much more carbon since then. We can expect conditions to get worse
until long after this problem is solved. UPDATE: October 2, 2020, The Guardian writer Mark Hertsgaard,
citing climate scientist Michael Mann, wrote "Using new, more elaborate computer models equipped with an interactive carbon cycle, 'what we now understand is that if you stop emitting carbon right now … the oceans start to take up carbon more rapidly,' [ . . . ]. Such ocean storage of CO2 'mostly' offsets the warming effect of the CO2 that still remains in the atmosphere. Thus, the actual lag between halting CO2 emissions and halting temperature rise is not 25 to 30 years, he explains, but 'more like three to five years.'"
