The Law of Unintended Consequences

Apparently we're going to save ourselves by geo engineering the planet. In case you don't know, geo- engineering aims to fix the havoc wrought by greenhouse gas emissions by preventing sunlight from reaching the planet.  

Two Harvard engineers are to spray sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/17/us-geoengineers-spray-sun-balloon

Vandana Shiva and Gwynne Dyer debated the propriety of geo-engineering back in 2010.    Democracy Now posted these videos on Youtube:

Part 1

Part 2

Debated may be a misnomer, don't you think?   As Vandana Shiva points out, geo - engineering is a  fix by the thinking that created climate change.   And, whatever the consequences of preventing sunlight from reaching the earth,  that won't do much to prevent the oceans from acidfying.

The Pacific Ocean is growing more acidic at a much faster rate than anticipated, scientists say, putting everything from corals to mussels in jeopardy.   Researchers say carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forms carbonic acid in the ocean, changing the seawater enough that it can dissolve the shells of coral and shellfish.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/07/16/bc-ocean-acidification.html?cmp=rss

Can you say Easter Island?    We keep doing the same old things while the bad news rolls in - but it's OK to cut down the last tree because ....otherwise we'd have to change.

Please write the Right Honorable Stephen Harper and instruct him to pass meaningful legislation on  greenhouse gas emissions.  (Yes, government need to do this - just how did your individual actions stop acid rain? Or fix the hole in the ozone layer?  They didn't - international agreements/ laws did.)

Individual actions do count  - especially in a community setting.  So start a Transition Town in your community to smooth our  inevitable carbon descent.   And plant some trees while you're at it.

Some Perspective

What would the Russian drought look like  if it had occurred in North America?

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1568

One of the most remarkable weather events of my lifetime is unfolding this summer in Russia, where an unprecedented heat wave has brought another day of 102°F heat to the nation's capital. At 3:30 pm local time today, the mercury hit 39°C (102.2°F) at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. Moscow had never recorded a temperature exceeding 100°F prior to this year, and today marks the second time the city has beaten the 100°F mark. The first time was on July 29, when the Moscow observatory recorded 100.8°C and Baltschug, another official downtown Moscow weather site, hit an astonishing 102.2°F (39.0°C). Prior to this year, the hottest temperature in Moscow's history was 37.2°C (99°F), set in August 1920. The Moscow Observatory has now matched or exceeded this 1920 all-time record five times in the past eleven days, including today. The 2010 average July temperature in Moscow was 7.8°C (14°F) above normal, smashing the previous record for hottest July, set in 1938 (5.3°C above normal.) July 2010 also set the record for most July days in excess of 30°C--twenty-two. The previous record was 13 such days, set in July 1972. The past 24 days in a row have exceeded 30°C in Moscow, and there is no relief in sight--the latest forecast for Moscow calls for high temperatures near 100°F (37.8°C) for the next seven days. It is stunning to me that the country whose famous winters stopped the armies of Napoleon and Hitler is experiencing day after day of heat near 100°F, with no end in sight.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/7/890455/-This-week-in-science

To put this in rough perspective -- and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring -- if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday, even the nightly low in the massive urban heat islands of New York and Chicago would be over 90°! The midwest grain belt and parts of the Pacific Northwest would not see a drop of rain for two months and pushing as high as 110° in places. The desert southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara.

It would mean nation-wide massive power brownouts, unprecedented crop failures, water rationing like you have never seen, record wildfires raging in dozens of states, thousands of deaths [Correction: Dr. Jeff Masters at WeatherUnderground informs me it would probably more like tens of thousands of deaths] and life threatening heat related illness, roads and highways clogged with broken-down, over-heated cars, and emergency services stretched beyond the breaking point across the US and Canada.

So nothing to worry about, right?  Well, it's gonna affect the price of your pasta and toast.

http://www.straight.com/article-337565/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-russian-response-wildfires-gives-early-glimpse-climate-change-impact

At least 20 percent of Russia’s wheat crop has already been destroyed by the drought, the extreme heat—circa 40 º C for several weeks now—and the wildfires. The export ban is needed, explained Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, because “we shouldn’t allow domestic prices in Russia to rise, we need to preserve our cattle and build up supplies for next year”. If anybody starves, it won’t be Russians.

This is the vision of the future that has the soldiers and security experts worried: a world where access to enough food becomes a big political and strategic issue even for developed countries that do not have big surpluses at home. It would be a very ugly world indeed, teeming with climate refugees and failed states and interstate conflicts over water (which is just food at one remove).

What is happening in Russia now, and its impacts elsewhere, give us an early glimpse of what that world will be like. And although nobody can say for certain that the current disaster there is due to climate change, it certainly could be.

Late last year, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change produced a world map showing how different countries will be affected by the rise in average global temperature over the next 50 years. The European countries that the Hadley map predicts will be among the hardest hit—Greece, Spain, and Russia—are precisely the ones have suffered most from extreme heat, runaway forest fires, and wildfires in the past few years.

The main impact of global warming on human beings will be on the food supply, and eating is a non-negotiable activity. Today Russia, tomorrow the world.

Here's a novel thought - why don't we take measures to reduce greenhosue gas emissions now?

ClimateGate and the Great Glacier Melt

Discussing Climategate and the Himalyan glaciers that wll not melt as fast as predicted in the 2007 IPCC reprot, Gwynne Dyer writes:

People who know science and scientists will be disappointed both by the behaviour of Jones and by the glacier incident, but they will not be surprised. This sort of thing happens from time to time, because we are dealing with human beings. But it does not (as the denial brigade insists) discredit the whole enterprise in which they are engaged. The weight of the evidence rests overwhelmingly on the side of those who argue that climate change is real and dangerous. Ninety-seven or ninety-eight percent of scientists active in the relevant fields are convinced of it; all but a couple of the world’s 200 governments have been persuaded of it; public opinion accepts it almost everywhere except in parts of the “Anglosphere”. The United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, Britain and Canada, are the last bastions of denial. From being the least ideological countries 50 years ago, when much of the rest of the planet was drunk on Marxist theories, these countries have become the most ideological today. Disbelief in climate change has been turned into an ideological badge worn by the right, and evidence is no longer relevant.

http://www.straight.com/article-282021/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-climagegate-and-disbelief

Hmmnnn - read the comments attached to the article.  The commenters prove Mr. Dyer's point about the Anglosphere being a bastion of denial.  I am beginning to think that our society is so addicted to oil that we are all in the first stages of addiction: denial that the problem exists. What to do?  Keep pushing to change the zeitgeist ....appeals to reason and the provision of  evidence are not working.