Global Warming/Climate Change
Bill McKibben: Why Climate Change Is the Most Urgent Challenge We Face
Bill McKibben is a writer and environmentalist as well as a co-founder of 350.org. In this interview Bill clearly describes the situation we are currently in, as well as providing a solution to the already damaged reality of our warmer planet. At a time when we are bombarded with conflicting articles, posts, interviews, research and videos on climate change, Bill provides a cohesive and powerful explanation that is worth your 28 minutes of full attention.
We have people that are losing evrything, even a way to take care of their family. We have no jobs, people losing their homes. We have politicians from BOTH parties who no more represent their people than the man on the moon. We have monsatan with their GMOs trying to make us all slaves. We have bankers and corp. running our Western nations and sucking them dry. We have the un and others using “sustainability” to push regulations to take away our right to even use new ponds or swales, as we cannot retain rainwater. We have the world population, of those least able to provide for more, still going straight up. BUT this failed idea of man made global warming is the MOST urgent ?!?!?!
Hi Victoria
All of the things you mentioned are true and terrible. The difference is they are all fixable if only we have a (collective) mind to do it. What is not fixable, at least not in the lifespans of our and the next unknown number of generations, is the catastrophic results of climate change feedback loops causing the very underpinnings of gaia’s functionality to come unglued.
Last year’s fires in Russia and floods in Pakistan and the current drought in China, etc., are all examples of how climate change can take the problems you mention above, and make them so much worse that it’s not comparible.
From your comment (“both parties”) I assume you’re in the U.S. Take all your current problems, and add widespread agricultural collapse, flooding, fires, the spread of new diseases, etc., and, well, you should get the point. Picture yourself and all the inhabitants of your town/city having to migrate from where you are now to another part of the country – a part of the country that is not able to accommodate or feed you.
You may have to move from your bank-snatched home into a car. You may have lost your job. You may be flat broke. But take all that and add in that neither you nor your neighbours or your neighbours neighbours would be able to buy any food even if you had the money.
I would say that the unravelling of the earth’s climatic systems is seriously significant.
The good news is that the solutions to the problems you list and the problem of climatic meltdown are all the same.
Way to get down to the roots, Craig! “The good news is that the solutions to the problems you list and the problem of climatic meltdown are all the same”. There are a lot of problems out there, but really what else is new? Wasn’t it Mollison who said, “though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple”? I find myself shying away from drowning in the problems as the more I think on these issues, the more I realize no matter what happens I’m gonna keep applying permaculture design to my life and the life of my community!
The faster we create collective minds, the quicker we will be able to get out of this mess.
The more people to practice Permaculture, the better we will be in surviving any potential crisis moments. We could stop it all over night. It is just going to take the right minds, hearts and communities to come together, leave their past attachments behind, kill their ego and hopefully we will do the greatest shift man has ever made.
Think.
I have to admit up front that I only follow what “Moonbat” McKibben does or says for a laugh and entertainment. This video is a prime example of his scientific illiteracy and confusion, he can’t make up his mind if mankind is going to burn up, drown, starve to death or be eaten by bark beetles! “Moonbat” McKibben represents an entire class of Americans, the irretrievably stupid ones or, to be kind, the ones whose ignorance began early and never improved.
“Moonbat” McKibben’s remarkable disregard for factual accuracy is on par with Rachael Carson’s deplorable ramblings in “Silent Spring” published in September of 1962. “Moonbat’s” writing mirrors Ms. Carson’s in that she also pitted society against industry and capitalism. Just like “Moonbat” Ms. Carson presented nature and Earth as totally pristine and benign of causing anything bad. Anything wrong in nature Ms. Carson lay at the hand of mankind as the cause. Does anything sound familiar here? Ignoring history and making it seem as if current natural disasters are unusual is the “Moonbat’s” signature Modus operandi.
Someone needs to explain to “Moonbat” McKibben that he missed his ride to “The Garden of Eden” on the Hale Bopp comet with the Heaven’s Gate people in March of 1997. In the mean time I wish people would quit hiding his tricycle or quit taking his ice cream cones away from him.
The “Moonbat’s” idea of “civil disobedience” is scaary! However I certainly encourage him to keep exposing his ignorance by doing so.
Jerry,
can you maybe substantiate your assessment of “scientific illiteracy”? (And also explain why you consider using insults as appropriate?)
Thomas: Yes, maybe I can substantiate my assessment of “scientific illiteracy”, since it seems like you believe I’m obligated to.
for example: In “Moonbat McKibben’s” video he lays blame of the Russian heat-sparked wildfires in August of 2010 on man caused global warming/climate change/climate disruption or what ever they call it at the moment. The “Moonbat” makes this statement without showing empirical data. Even the dysfunctional NOAA has said the drought and fires were caused by a “blocking high”. (Incidentally I have known what causes “blocking highs and cut-off lows” since my first meteorology course in 1960). Now, if I may, let me give you my assessment of the Russian heat-sparked wildfires. Russia’s wildfire problems are not unprecedented. The country experiences an average of about 30,000 wildfires each year. Most of these occur in the country’s vast uninhabited taiga regions, where they burn out before reaching any villages. However 2010’s fires were unique because they occurred much farther south and west than usual, as a result of a blocked high, affecting some of Russia’s largest cities and bringing the Russian governments, emergency services under serious public scrutiny, out of place and out of tune with the exceptional heat wave. Another critical point not explained by the “Moonbat” is the fact that in 2007 the Russian government had turned forest management over to underfunded local authorities and private lease holders, few of which were prepared for any sort of coordinated, large-scale operation. In other words the forest ranger workforce had been eradicated leaving firefighting on local towns and cities which were unprepared and un-equipped to carry the battle into the countryside where most of the fires started.
Unfortunately, many peat marshes near Russia’s major cities, including around Moscow, had indeed been drained over a period of time from the 1920’s through the 1960’s. As a result, wildfires in that area took on a whole new scale of trouble. The peat fires were so difficult to extinguish that Russian authorities installed a 30-mile emergency pipeline east of Moscow to tap the half-mile-wide Oka River to flood the worst of the peat-field fires. It would be quite time consuming to give all of the nitty-gritty details of the weather set up and with out a 500 mb chart. Hope this enlightened your knowledge of the Russian wild-fires.
Now then, the “Moonbat’s” statement about the earth being stable and serine until man came along in 1850 and started burning fossil fuels that has driven the Earth’s atmosphere into pandemonium. First and foremost, the notion of a static, unchanging climate is very foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public. Climate is always changing, that is what it does best.
If you don’t look through the prism of the sun and ocean “teleconnection” you will be unable to understand anomalies and extremes that occur on earth. example: ENSO, PDO, AMO, AO, etc.
In conclusion: Accepting mediocrity and ignorance of science is not in my make up. Anyone that calls the most important trace gas on earth, CO2, a pollutant is delusional. CO2 is a reactant in the most important chemical reaction on earth, photosynthesis, which turns light energy into chemical energy, sugar. Our food source! Insulting a delusional loony-bin makes my day.
Jerry L. Smith
I wish someone would call me moonbat. But seriously, McKibben’s thoughts are anything but simplistic, and labeling them as scientifically unsound without bothering to make a single factual statement is in itself at best simplistic. There seems to be a mindset where remaining ignorant is a necessary foundation supporting the belief that all is well in the world. I think we can all agree that sifting through the data and articulating the underlying relationships, complex as they are, is no easy task, and that there are few on the world stage who are able to do this well. McKibben is trying to accomplish this worthy goal.
Although I decry his lack of manners, I’m inclined to agree with Jerry. As soon as anything goes wrong anywhere, the cry goes up to blame Co2. Jerry’s absolutely right to point out that there were more factors contributing to the Russian fires than Mr McKibben acknowledges. Mr McKibben makes another error in blaming Co2 for the Pakistan floods. He ignores the decades of illegal deforestation of the Indus river catchment which dumped megatonnes of silt into the river channel, seriously inhibiting its ability to carry away flood waters. Add to this, the massively increased runoff from the devastated catchment, and you have a disaster. Permaculture teaches us to understand the complexity of systems, so I am perplexed that so many permies are willing to settle for simplistic explanations without more critical, skeptical, examination of the issues.
Jerry,
now, as “Climate is always changing, that is what it does best”, as you say, maybe you can comment on typical natural rates of change of atmospheric CO2 concentrations? In Earth’s history, from 500 to
1 million years ago, say, how much do atmospheric CO2 concentrations roughly change over a century? What have been the largest rates of change in Earth’s geological history?
The draining of marshland is a huge problem here too. Several small rivers which before were full of throat are now dead because of the dry out during summer times, because the marshes functioned as a sponge that regulated the water flow.
How many of you have collected evidence and done the calculations to know the earth is heating up? It is sensible to be sceptical of all doomsday theories. Global warming is like the boogeyman of climate change. The climate is obviously being altered in so many drastic ways, such as land clearing and reduced biodiversity, as well as chemical and radioactive pollution. Sure, maybe earth is heating up but its still a theoretical doomsday theory on which everyone debates and few do the calculations and even fewer collect data.
Nick,
simply put, the problem is that we are altering the trace gas composition of the atmosphere about 100 times faster than what ever happened during the geological history of the planet. The biggest impact we have on the climate come from CO2, aerosols, and methane. The effect of “radioactive pollution” on the climate is actually well below anything that could be measured.
Yes i know this and the people who got the dAta are rich jerks with submarines. Have people without sub marines gotten data and evidence? I trust no one with a sub. Anyway common sense should tell people burning and mining fossil fuels is a bad thing apocalypse or not.
Wow, it looks like I have stirred up a little food fight here. Nothing better than a good old fashioned food fight to get your blood moving. Love it! Alex could have at least said I have a bad attitude instead of bad manners, but that is fine, it was his nickel. I do certainly have a bad attitude toward the demonization of carbon dioxide CO2. If I have offended anyone up to this point it was certainly on purpose. Now maybe I can pedal a little “carbon sense” and offset a little “irrational fear of carbon”. Some people have “carbophobia”, I have this phobia of not getting caught “clean, green and naked in the snow”.
As I grow older it often seems as if I’m living in a surreal world or in a time warp in which people, scientist or politicians are unaware that a rational life existed before their birth or before they got out of the 5th grade. Yet, having majored in agronomy, with a minor in aviation education, and now as a retired airline captain, I did not enter into the 21st century without a fair amount of understanding of the earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. The man above blessed me with being able to acquire nearly 40,000 flying hours aloft without putting a scratch on an airplane from J3 Cubs to jumbo jets. I have made this preface so that I can make this point. Had I as a young eager first office suggested to an old grizzled Captain that had survived WWII that the thunderstorms we might encounter that day were made stronger and more violent because of CO2; my teeth, hair, eyeballs, and hat would still be in orbit! Further more I would have never darkened the door of another airliner cockpit. To let you figure out how old I am I will tell you when I first started flying airplanes that required “coal oil”, jet A-1 fuel, was 7 cents a gallon.
When an individual is studying plant science, as in botany, agronomy, horticulture, or plant physiology it is required of them to learn the complex chemical reactions involved in the photosynthesis process. However, it is possible to describe the photosynthesis reaction in common terms; for example, photosynthesis cannot take place unless the following requirements are met: water H2O from plants root system must be available, carbon dioxide CO2 must be available in the atmosphere (air); sunlight or grow lamps must be present and finally chlorophyll or green pigments must be present. When water and CO2 are introduced inside of a plant leaf chloroplast organelle (in presence of light) enzymes initiate a reaction that transforms light energy into chemical energy. This indicates that CO2 is not a fertilizer or common plant food, but that it is a reactant. 95 to 97 percent of a plants bulk (dry matter) comes from CO2.
Currently for every million molecules of air there are about 390 molecules of CO2. At just 150 parts per million plants die. Most life probably evolved at levels of 1,000 ppm or more. The dinosaurs flourished in air with 1,800 ppm of CO2, 400 million years ago, life flourished with 4,500 ppm CO2. US submariners live comfortably in air with 8,000 ppm and normal human lungs exhale air with 40,000 ppm.
My favorite form of carbon pollution is cherry pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream only after I have had that carbon polluted steak……..
Jerry L. Smith
Dear Mr. Mackintosh,
Your statement is based on showing the natural phenomenon you mention being proved to have occured due to man-made climate change. The only proof we have is the scientist involved hid, lied and manipulated information. We have proof of people making millions in profit by twisting and pushing global warming. I am afraid I have seen no proof that man has caused any of it. I do think man has overused, abused and dirtied the planet. If however man cannot be shown to be important enough to have caused this, then why would anyone think any changes man makes could prevent said change? I think the sun and earth’s natural long-term rhythms have far more chance to influence the world. Man is an arrogant little thing to think he is that important. Man cannot control a thunderstorm, why should he think he can control all of the climate. If man cannot cause it, he cannot prevent it.I love food forests. I think they are healthy and helpful. Perhaps self-sufficiency would be a better way of spreading permaculture than a claim less and less people believe. Just my two cents. Thank you
Nick,
well, perhaps people without the background and money to engineer a car should then also not drive one?
Jerry,
this is an interesting point: “If I have offended anyone up to this point it was certainly on purpose.”
You evidently came to this forum not with the intent to contribute anything of value that would shed some light on an important issue, but with the intent to offend people – as you say yourself.
If I were the Editor, I would certainly consider this as a good reason to ban you from this forum.
Victoria,
You claim that “The only proof we have is the scientist involved hid, lied and manipulated information.”
So, what scientist did lie about what and what does that prove?
Actually, there is not only just one atmospheric scientist, and actually, we do have global radiation measurements which very clearly show that the radiation balance has changed in the frequency bands associated with CO2. These measurements have been cross-verified in a number of ways – we have balloon experiments that send radiosondes up in the atmosphere, we also have satellite IR measurements. They match fairly well and give a quite consistent picture.
But quite apart from these issues, coming up with a crude estimate of the amount of carbon we have been putting into the atmosphere during the last 200 years or so is quite an easy exercise. And so is estimating the temperature shifts that are associated with variations in the sun’s output. These calculations quite clearly show that the latter has a comparatively small effect on global average temperatures, while the (on geologic time scales) dramatic rise in atmospheric CO2 which we already have seen really is caused by human activity.
So much actually is very certain.
Banning someone for their style of discourse is nonsense. Etiquette issues aside, I think Mr. Smith raises some valid points and explains himself well. The past history of CO2 levels is trapped in glacial ice. A really good book on this subject is Thin Ice by Mark Bowen. Bowen core samples tropical glaciers and correlates the withering of certain robust civilizations to climate changes occurring long before the industrial revolution. He also shows how the industrial age has dramatically pushed CO2 levels up.
The Earth’s CO2 levels change slowly allowing organisms to adapt or transform. Humans are creating changes that are rapid so saying it is just part of the natural cycle is a little off I think. Large meteor impacts change the climate rapidly too. Walter Alvarez found a thin iridium rich layer covering most of the Earth’s surface, corresponding to a huge meteor impact, and the KT boundary.
Where are the vast cedar forests that spanned the southern coast of the Mediterranean recorded by Ibn Battuta in the 14th century? Humans did this damage. Replacing forest with desert changes the climate. Calling it global warming is wrong. Better to call it global climate instability, only some of which is due to CO2. Putting all the focus on CO2 allows CO2 credit markets, one of the biggest scams ever.
Mr. Smith points out a reasonable scenario for the Russian wildfires. His story is one of wholesale disregard for the consequences of ecological destruction leading to local climate instability. Did what was done on the ground cause the blocking high? Does it really matter?
Donald,
on “banning someone for their style of discourse is nonsense” – I disagree.
There are some things that just do not belong here. I would say that SPAM (i.e. off-topic commercials) belong in that category as much as personal insults, and everybody will have a personal concept of where the boundary between the acceptable and the non-acceptable lies. But evidently, the level of insults is still below what the editor (Craig) considers as problematic. That’s his decision. I would have decided otherwise.
By and large, I agree with your remarks about CO2, in particular that anthropogenic changes occur way more rapidly than what we have seen in geological history, and yes, this is a reason for concern.
I think where you are very wrong is with the idea of “Putting all the focus on CO2 allows CO2 credit markets, one of the biggest scams ever.”
CO2 actually is the dominant “technical” problem, whereas the dominant “social” problem is with people having adopted the concept of a personal crusade against CO2 science in order to prevent emissions trading markets.
Fighting sound science means to first of all seriously piss off the scientists, and also bring oneself into a very difficult position once the shit really hits the fan – what would you say to the angry mob if it became clear that you contributed to preventing action when it still could have made a difference?!?
It is really very very important to keep separate the science on the one hand and the political plans some try to justify based on the science. Considering the latter, I do not think anyone in his right mind would consider it a good idea to let the very same economists who through their past mis-management created a hell lot of our massive problems now come up with schemes to get us back on track. They grounded the boat – the objective must be to get the hell rid of those decision makers who through gross mis-management brought us into this dangerous situation. Otherwise, we will not stand any chance to make any substantial progress.
Thomas: Now that my hands have been slapped, may I asked you a question? I’m guessing that you must be involved with Permaculture since this on their website. I have been trying to find out if the Permaculture people advocate the use of the worlds finest humate that is produced in South East Australia?
I was also wondering if you might be able to tell me what pathway CO2 uses to heat ocean water to oh lets say to 160 – 200 meters of depth within the tropics of the Western Pacific?
Respectfully:
Jerry L. Smith
Victoria – you make a lot of statements that don’t hold up to scrutiny, and yet which I’ve seen regurgitated continually on this site and on the internet at large. I’ve seen and addressed such statements multiple times on different comments threads on this site. If you’re to repeat such statements, please provide references/proof for them. Would it be right for me to make a statement like “the earth actually orbits the moon, not the other way around” without some kind of evidence for this?
Your statements about man are not in step with reality:
This is a very outdated view. Over the centuries most people felt that the world and nature was so big, and we so small, we could have minimal impact on it. Yet we did. Much of it was localised, but even these localised impacts bring worldwide consequences.
You said we can’t control a thunderstorm. Well, that’s not true:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2002/lynmouth_flood.shtml
I highly recommend/urge you to read this post, on the biology of global warming, and the PDF report it features. It describes how long before we were mining coal/oil and sending fossilised CO2 into the atmosphere, we were ‘preparing the ground’ by removing biomass (forests) on a massive scale as our population started on the hockey stick exponential curve in the middle ages. We sent all that embodied CO2 into the atmosphere, and in doing so (and this is significant) removed their carbon absorbing services which ensured it stayed in the atmosphere (and in the oceans, which are acidifying as a result of their trying to hard to take over the role we weren’t letting our land mass do any more).
All this was done before any kind of engine was built. Since the industrial revolution, we’ve only moved this ahead apace. Most of the world’s primary forests are now gone. Wetlands have been drained, and our soils have been turned and churned and fed soluble nitrogen, which hastens the breakdown of CO2 rich humus, also sending it into the atmosphere.
It took until the around the year 1800 for us to reach the first one billion people. By then we’d already made amazing ‘progress’ in biomass destruction. In the 200 years since, we’ve multiplied that population almost 7-fold, and hooked almost every one of them up to some kind of CO2 producing machine and biomass destroying mechanism. How you can think all this unnatural intervention on our part cannot impact world climate is beyond me.
Like most of ‘you guys’, you keep referring to money being made out of CO2. This is your greatest standing ‘argument’ against climate science, yet it’s not a scientific argument at all. I see lots of people making money out of cancer too. There are clear causes of cancer – pollution, environmental/food/water contamination, stress, etc. We know this, yet the people making the most money out of ‘dealing with cancer’ are those who are incentivised not to prevent it. But, because some people are getting richer as more people get cancer, does that mean we should shout “people are making money out of cancer, so it’s clear that man is not the cause of it”? No, we should get to the root causes, and do something about them. We need to remain objective.
Do a search on ‘carbon trading’ on this site, and you’ll see I do not promote the predatory economic approach (the same thinking that got us into this mess in the first place) on dealing with climate change at all. You’ll also see I strongly urge people to look at root causes.
Just because you don’t appreciate current economic and political approaches to our climate problems, please don’t go to the other extreme of denying we have a problem at all. Both extremes only make matters worse.
We need to restore the biomass we’ve stripped the earth almost bare of. We need to restore wetlands. In short, we need to recolonise earth. We need to stop burning up fossilised fuels like there’s no tomorrow. And we need to stop ignoring problems just because we don’t like the way some people are trying to caplitalise on it.