Page added on June 20, 2016
My years of research for I’m Right, You’re an Idiot, as well as decades of experience in public relations, have persuaded me that we humans have a fickle relationship with facts. We paint a picture of the world according to facts that appeal to us, and we unconsciously blur the edges or use brushstrokes of denial when faced with disagreeable realities and alarming truths.
Why is this? Columbia University professor Elke Webber says we tend to ignore or deny unpleasant facts because we have a finite pool of worry, a personal well of anxiety that has only so much room in it. When our lives overflow with bad news we turn away.
Psychologist Bob Doppelt adds that denial is an active form of avoidance often driven by fear, shame or pain. In the case of climate change, many of us work hard not to notice the reality, to avoid feelings of embarrassment and distress, because our worldview would crumble if we were to acknowledge the truth about global warming or ocean acidification, and its link to our misplaced need to exploit and control nature.
To overcome this inertia we must face up to the challenge, not ignore it. Naturally, we always need to balance uncomfortable facts with hope and the courage to act, but we deny frightening facts at our peril. As Doppelt put it, “No tension, no change.”
Every scientist and activist I know has at some point been berated by a well-meaning person who accused him or her of being too alarmist, but we need to recognize certain facts in order to change the way we interact with the world if we are to solve these problems.
For example, a new climate change study published in the March 2016 issue of the journal Nature predicts high greenhouse gas emission levels could raise the oceans as much as two meters by the end of this century, and by 13 meters—from Antarctica alone—by 2500. Past estimates did not include the melting of Antarctica, but the study suggests when this continent is taken into account we will see a doubling of previous forecasts.
As television journalist Bill Blakemore once told me, after a producer criticized his climate change reporting for being too gloomy: “Nobody likes to be Chicken Little, but the sky really is falling.”
In my new book I discuss why critical messages aren’t getting through and how to improve our communications, but in this blog I first explain why we need to ring the alarm bells. Here are some warnings from some of the 97 percent of climate scientists whose peer-reviewed papers show human caused global warming is indeed happening and a serious problem.
It is already too late to avoid climate change because temperatures are rising, says University of Hawaii associate professor and ecologist Camilo Mora, but if dangerous greenhouse gas emissions are stabilized soon, the effects could be modified or delayed. For instance, imagine you’re driving at 100 miles per hour and there is a hazard in front of you, he said. Even if you slam on the brakes you will likely hit the hazard, but it’s much better to hit it a 20 miles per hour rather than 100.
Earth is similarly hurtling towards a hazard, a time when many of today’s most populous cities—places like New York, London, Singapore and Cairo—will become unbearably hot. His 2013 study, published in Nature, The Projected Timing of Climate Departure from Recent Variability, predicts the first of these apocalyptic changes will be seen in Indonesia as soon as 2020, and unprecedented temperature shifts will spread to other regions soon after. We can expect a heavy toll on humans and many species as extreme weather accelerates beyond anything we have experienced.
Even Mora was shocked by the results of his study because, rather than using standard deviation, he based his study on the largest extremes he could find in historical records dating back 150 years. Despite this conservative approach, he discovered that climate will move outside those bounds by 2047. This is the year he therefore defines as “climate departure,” the date when the historic maximum temperatures will become the new minimums.
One of the areas Mora is most concerned about is species extinction and although 20,000 species are disappearing every year, neither he nor any other scientist can predict which will vanish next. He offers a vivid analogy: “Imagine you are climbing a ladder to the second floor of a building and you fall. Can you accurately predict, given the height of the fall, whether you’re going to be injured or precisely what your injuries will be?” Whether you hurt both legs, sprain a wrist or break your neck depends on many factors. If you’re lucky, perhaps you will limp away — but you might never walk again. Likewise, scientists cannot predict all the fallout from climate change, but humanity can minimize the impact by using its experience and knowledge.
Mora was also lead author in a 2013 study published in the journal PLOS Biology that looked at the disruptive impact of climate change on the oceans. Eighty percent of the animal protein consumed in the world comes from fish but he calculates by 2100, roughly 98 percent of the oceans will be affected by acidification, warming temperatures, low oxygen or lack of biological productivity. This will threaten up to 870 million of the world’s poorest — those who rely on the ocean for food and jobs.
Mora, who studies how biodiversity is impacted by overexploitation, habitat loss and climate change, advises we are losing six million hectares of forest a year, three million hectares of mangroves, 100 square kilometres of seagrasses, and we have already said goodbye to 90 per cent of the top predators since 1950. He believes people who don’t care about driving species down to extinction display a shockingly selfish view and lack of foresight.
The good news is, our knowledge of climate is improving, as is our capacity to analyze what we learn, thanks to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is gathering data from 39 models in 21 different locations. The bad news is, readings are disturbing. By 2050, the panel predicts the available fresh water per capita in India will be two-thirds what it is today. Some places are already heavily water-stressed, warned past panel chair Rajendra Pachauri, when I interviewed him, prior to the most recent IPCC report being released. He anticipated a global scarcity of food, which is particularly alarming as the panel predicts crop yields will likely decrease by up to two percent each decade, while the world’s population rockets to nine billion by 2050.
Rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers will affect 500 million people in South Asia and about 250 million people in China and the Tibetan Plateau. “This nexus between climate change, water availability and food security is something that needs a lot of study, and quickly, so we can institute water resource management changes,” he warned.
Pachauri said any suggestion that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would lead to massive reductions in economic output is incorrect. “We estimate that if we were to carry out very stringent mitigation beginning today, the maximum loss of GDP would be about three percent of global GDP in 2030,” he said. “That’s not a very heavy price to pay for avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change. And there are many attractive, positive benefits. The sooner we act the cheaper it will be.”
While climate change deniers have attacked the IPCC in the past, it is interesting to note that thousands of leading experts around the globe have sought to contribute to the assessments and comprehensive reports. That high number shows the panel’s strong backing by the scientific community, said Pachauri, who was re-elected by acclamation in 2008 and stepped down in 2015.
The past chairman’s message is just as powerful today as it was when we spoke. Earth’s climate is changing and the data shows how it is happening. We know the results of inaction will be extremely serious, particularly in the most vulnerable regions of the world. “If you want instant change, then you also get instant frustration —but we must believe that in the end, human beings will be rational,” he said.
The panel’s predictions of increasing frequency and intensity of floods, droughts and heat waves were echoed in a report, Turn Down the Heat, commissioned in 2012 by the World Bank. If we fail to act it forecasted a potentially devastating four-degree rise in temperatures by the end of this century. Prepared by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, the report spelled out cataclysmic changes. World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim forecasted the inundation of coastal cities and increasing risks for food production as dry regions become dryer, wet regions wetter. He predicted unprecedented heat waves and water scarcity in many regions, “increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones; and irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.”
Close to a quarter of the world’s coral reefs have already vanished and another third are threatened by pollution, habitat destruction, over fishing, increasing ocean temperatures and acidification. Coral bleaching has devastated parts of the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia and now the problem has spread to Kimberley in the northwest. It is being blamed on climate change and that region’s unusually warm waters during the summer of 2015/16, combined with the largest El Niño ever recorded. Reporting across the Pacific shows the extensive nature of the problem and the dramatic impact of temperature changes on reefs. Experts say the effect on marine life could be catastrophic.
One of the world’s leading marine conservation biologists, Callum Roberts, a British research scholar at the University of York believes, “We’re not just losing pretty marine life, we’re losing a lot of the values that we look to marine environments for.”
He offers a frightening example of the devastation happening around the world when he talks about the Irish Sea, a body of water between Ireland and England. Reports from the 1820s and 1830s described an abundance of huge fish here including cod, conger eels, ling, halibut and giant skates measuring meters across. But problems began when sailing trawlers moved into the area and started dragging nets across the seabed, pulling up seaweeds, sponges, sea fans, corals and more. Fish stocks declined and the seabed habitat was degraded.
By the late 19th century trawlers with steam engines were towing much bigger nets, going deeper, farther offshore and fishing round the clock. The abundance of fish was knocked down even more, while impacts on the seabed broadened as diesel engines intensified trawling and new technologies such as better fish finders were developed.
As fish became less plentiful people turned to harvesting scallops and prawns, using fine mesh nets and heavy dredges to scour the seabed. The result? “The Irish Sea has been stripped of its wildlife,” said Roberts who dived there a couple of years ago and was both slightly cheered and horrified by what he saw. In a bay that was declared off-limits to scallop dredging and prawn trawling for 20 years he saw life starting to return in the form of anemones, sponges, fish and small rays, but an area still open to scallop dredging “looked like a six-lane highway. I only saw five things that were alive and one was dying: two scallops, two sea urchins and a smashed clam perforated by a dredge spike.”
The oceanographer explains this kind of harvesting is bad for all the ecological processes that go on in the sea, including sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and locking it away in sediments, a process greatly reduced by the removal of filter feeders on the seabed. “We are seeing increasing outbreaks of things like jellyfish which are now predator-free since we’ve taken out most of the things that eat them,” he said. “A jellyfish species called Mnemiopsis leidyi was accidentally introduced into the Black Sea in the 1980s and proceeded to eat everything, eventually becoming 95 percent of the biomass there.”
We are witnessing an increase in harmful algae blooms that are toxic to plankton and he predicts a time when people will not want to holiday at the seaside because it will be too dangerous and unpleasant. For example, intensive pig farming in France releases huge amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous into the sea, producing masses of slimy seaweed that wash up along the coast in Brittany. Rotting in vast heaps, it produces lethal hydrogen sulfide gas and has resulted in the deaths of people and animals exposed to the slurry.
Some argue that dredging the seabed is no worse than plowing the land, but there is a fundamental difference: In the oceans we can’t use chemicals to manipulate the environment. We have to rely on the sea’s ability to repair itself.
Roberts worries about the loss of biodiversity in the ocean because when we convert it from the richness and complexity of two centuries ago to the monocultures of prawns and scallops of today, we lose a great deal of the ecosystem’s resilience and stability. Already there is an increasing frequency of disease affecting prawns, crabs and other crustaceans. “It is in the interest of everyone to rebuild ocean life,” Roberts said. “To have abundance, we need diversity and complexity.”
If we continue on this course many of the iconic species people know and love—albatrosses, penguins, leatherback sea turtles that have been around for 100 million years—could become extinct. It’s one thing to inadvertently deplete a species, but another entirely when actions are taken with full knowledge they will push a species to the edge. He fears we’re getting to a stage where corporations are so controlling of the political process that increasingly risky and counterproductive decisions are being made.
“Big fish like bluefin tuna and dolphins will not make it through the transition,” he predicts and we’re already seeing a shift from bigger life to smaller life. Mini-fauna is replacing mega-fauna. “We had huge fish in the Irish Sea 200 years ago, now we have scallops and prawns. Eventually the kingdom of the worms will prevail on the sea floor.”
We need to start communicating better about these issues so people start seeing the world as it really is, so the public is not tricked or misled by PR spin or propaganda.
In the next post I talk to environmentalist, geneticist and zoologist David Suzuki; anthropologist and ethno botanist Wade Davis; and archaeologist and author Ronald Wright who emphasize why we need to change our behavior immediately and why it’s essential to clear the air in the public square.
In my next post I will explain how we find the courage and the tools to fix these problems, and how we can inspire hope not despair.
17 Comments on "The Sky Is Falling"
Northwest Resident on Mon, 20th Jun 2016 8:48 pm
“The Irish Sea has been stripped of its wildlife”
Humans have pretty much stripped all available resources. The Irish Sea is just another example, one in a long list.
Talk about the Sky Falling… How about this Brexit vote? We’re being told point blank by members and reps of TPTB (Soros, Cameron, et al.) that Britain withdrawing from the EU will bring severe economic consequences.
What they aren’t saying, however, is that we’re on the razor’s edge of getting hit with severe economic consequences anyway. They can’t possibly hold the global economy together and they know it. Everybody with a brain knows that we are on the verge of really serious problems.
It is pure coincidence I’m sure that now at this critical point in time, we are being provided a media extravaganza, a true life reality show, with the global economy and our fragile realities that are dependent on it hanging in the balance.
Great alibi for the elites: “It wasn’t me. The bloody Brits did it!”
Apneaman on Mon, 20th Jun 2016 10:27 pm
Some may think this a contradiction, but I’m claiming that once the economic crash happens the biosphere will go even faster. For one, an immediate reduction in pollution will lead to a rapid temperature spike due to the loss of global dimming and any and all environmental laws will be ignored in a bid to survive. If the global dimming spike is high enough we will have no choice but to turn off all pollution control devices (scrubbers, cyclones, precipatators, etc) in heavy industry. The PTB, if still standing, would most likely geo-engineer at that point. No solution, but slow the bleeding.
Global Dimming
http://www.globalissues.org/article/529/global-dimming
The roles of aerosol direct and indirect effects in past and future climate change
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50192/abstract
BBC – Horizon – 2005 – Global Dimming
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22692o_bbc-horizon-2005-global-dimming_shortfilms
denial on Mon, 20th Jun 2016 10:53 pm
Like I have always said we have 5 years that is it and then all hell breaks loose. They”pTB have been doing everything they can to plug the leaks but time is running out…there is no way short of finding some cheap easy available energy tomorrow to change that fact….we are going down…
onlooker on Mon, 20th Jun 2016 11:05 pm
Yeah and as Ap economic crash also means all nuclear reactors go into meltdown mode as monitoring and cooling services go offline that by itself spells Armageddon for environment
Apneaman on Mon, 20th Jun 2016 11:32 pm
onlooker, maybe TPTB have a contingency plan for the nuclear workers that involves many guns pointed at them?
There are all sorts of “agencies” with all sorts of plans and I doubt we have heard of them all.
It’s hard to say given the high levels of incompetence, low moral and bureaucratic bloat.
Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks
NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism
I bet half the commentators on here have been red flagged on one or more spook agency servers somewhere. They have soooo much data they’re tripping on it.
makati1 on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 12:27 am
Ap, actually, I think they are drowning in it. There is no possible way that billions of phone conversations, texts, internet comments and site visits EVERY DAY can possibly be efficiently recorded, catalogued ad readily accessible in a usable format, by a country that cannot build a plane that works after 14 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent (F35).
Davy on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 5:13 am
It is likely we are screwed anyway you look at it eventually. Since we do not have the particulars of how we are going to devolve as a civilization we should instead be asking ourselves how long do we have with quality of life? At what point does quality of life go negative? Processes unfold over time which means we may have time even if the end result is the same. It is a big world and foolish to generalize about it. We know how poorly predicting large scale events is in both directions. Surprises are always part of the equation.
Climate change is unfolding dangerously especially now with arctic warming. It appears the artic will now be a driver of abrupt climate alterations with a new and potent change to the jet stream and ocean currents. This does not bode well for agriculture especially not the industrial kind. Anyone looking at the economy for collapse signatures as I do daily knows we are on the precipice of destructive change. I am not an expert on oil but being a student of PO since 87 I see oil heading rapidly towards a dead state for multiple reasons. Oil is of course our foundational commodity without substitution. Renewables are a distraction from reality. Combining these three issues represents the triad of doom. The Triad of doom is an inescapable trap. The solutions are all catch 22 hence the trap.
What we still have is some time. How much is not a known but we can look at the outer parameters and say 10 years before very dangerous global level collapse scenarios unfold. The economy could go anytime but as long as confidence holds it is likely it can muddle through another 10 years. This does not mean for everyone but at least the system itself that delivers food may remain another 10 years. Oil and the climate appear to have a decadal consequence. We have time as a civilization but we also have time as individuals in locals. If you are in Venezuela or Nigeria you are part of the worst consequences now. So many other areas may not be touched for years at the level of extreme loss of quality of life.
I want to be clear I am not predicting another 10 years just saying we cannot discount this. The possibilities of quality of life decline rapidly as you leave this decadal reference period. The important point is any day could be our last existentially because of collapse. Causes of death have always been present it is just now we have a new death condition with a timeline and it is for everyone.
This apocalyptic unfolding of the destruction of a global civilization is a situation where one must adapt his attitudes and values in the classic stages of death. We have to get out of the denial of death at the individual level but also our kind of immortality feelings we have with our civilization. At the personal level we need to reduce expectations for our longevity significantly. We also need to realize what we will leave to the next generation may not matter because there may not be another generation as we know it. We need to accept the death of modern man and maybe our family line, our beautiful constructions, and places of beauty. We need to realize our civilization will likely be destroyed in a decade or less. No immortality of man as so many see today. No colonies on Mars and no hyper loops of travel.
At this point near the abyss to have quality of life means coming to terms with an early death and focusing on each day like it is your last. We can also search our inner strengths for heroics. In times of great upheaval the best and worst of man is manifested. Real values and strong emotions are possible. Life and death decisions with the corresponding higher value results occur. We can say that we are leaving a time of reduced humanity and entering a time of heightened humanity. We have been habituated to prosperity and in the process have lost touch with many very important human values. We have lost touch with simple pleasures. We are living in the future when we should be living in the now.
I am mentioning these things because we must have meaning of some sort in the face of chaos and death. If you can come to terms with death at its multiple levels you can have a good life and death as opposed to a life and death in despair. Coming to terms with the speeding up of time in the end game means living for the now. Time is going to speed up and values are going to intensify. We are going to be distilled into hard spirits quickly. It will be those on the cutting edge of this evolution that can confront the great devolution of modern man.
Davy on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 5:26 am
“Credit Bubble Bulletin”
http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2016/06/weekly-commentary-reminiscing-about-2012.html
“Yet the inevitable Credit cycle downturn ensures a vicious sequel. The bursting of the Bubble sees so many rewarding boom-time endeavors turn infeasible, unprofitable or unworkable. Hopes are dashed and dreams are crushed. Confidence, flowing over-abundantly throughout the boom, is suddenly in such short supply; faith wanes in policymaking, the markets, finance and in institutions more generally. Meanwhile, the unfolding bust illuminates the inequities and nonsense from the Bubble-period. Powerful forces then shift to tearing at the fabric of cooperation, integration and good faith that were so crucial throughout the boom period. Yesterday’s partner is today’s competitor.”
“The Fed has never admitted that global concerns have been dictating U.S. monetary policy since 2012. It has now become clear, throwing the analysis of policymaking into disarray. The harsh reality is also increasingly apparent: global monetary management is dysfunctional and central bankers have become perplexed – and without a backup plan. Such an uncertain backdrop is pro-currency market instability and pro-de-risking/deleveraging.”
JuanP on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 7:13 am
Ap “Some may think this a contradiction, but I’m claiming that once the economic crash happens the biosphere will go even faster.”. I completely agree. As global dimming is reduced and global temperatures increase methane evaporation will also increase significantly leading to further warming, particularly in the North Pole, IMO. This will augment the albedo effect which will cause more warming, too. We will also start burning wood like crazy to keep warm in cold areas. Wildfires will also increase drastically as a consequence of all these factors and more extreme droughts and tree evapotranspiration. All these things will feed each other creating an ever growing vicious circle of warming, environmental destruction, and Climate Change.
It is already too late to do anything about it.
diemos on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 7:53 am
“Like I have always said we have 5 years that is it and then all hell breaks loose.”
Hmmm … and how long have you been saying that?
Myself, I’ve been hanging around this board for a decade.
Davy on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 9:16 am
Diemos, there are two things going on here with your valid point. One is the “at any time” and or “near term possible”. These reflect partially on why there is this constant 5 year doom window. These situations don’t have to happen but the can and because of that they are always on the 5 year window scale. Then there are the processes that are partially known that are not immediate but they have definite time horizons of possible or probable. Climate change and the dead state of oil fall under these decadal processes. The economy and a destructive conflicts fall under that “at any time” scale. These two scales are merging and compressing as time goes on. Increasingly the dead state of oil and abrupt climate change are affecting the economy. A deteriorating economy knocks on to war possibilities.
This compression and convergence has no positives and at least at the moment only negatives. We have zero, none, and nada optimism situations, scenarios, and processes. Again, let me reiterate, NOT A FUCKING THING, nothing, never, and doom. To not make an effort to peg a time frame to these issues is like not putting a color to a color. By their very nature they have time frames and probabilities.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 11:19 am
Doomer porn echo chamber circle jerk.
@ape- Why would the biosphere wait for an economic contraction before it would collapse?
You fucking retards are pathetically stupid.
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 12:21 pm
Truth, not too sharp with the reading comprehension are we?
“go even faster”
It’s already going. Like with what is happening in the Arctic, you don’t have a fucking clue. For someone like you who has deep sunken costs (Rambo prepper plans) the idea that nothing you do will matter is not allowed. You need to believe you still have some input in how your life will go – you don’t. I’d say you’re the fucking retard, that that know it all anthropocentric worldview/illusion is the default mode for the humans regardless of the reality on the ground.
The best laid plans of know it all humans.
She was young, fit & healthy – now she gone.
Phoenix fire officials say the unidentified 28-year-old started biking with two friends around 6 a.m. Sunday and stopped breathing a few hours later. Firefighters say her condition appeared heat-related.
She was flown to a hospital, where she died. The woman was an avid hiker and personal trainer who had no known medical issues.
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/19/the_latest_hiker_rescued_during_phoenix_heat_wave_dies/
Jerry McManus on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 1:41 pm
Apneaman tells it like it is!
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 1:52 pm
Jeremy Jackson’s Acceptance Speech
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/06/jeremy-jacksons-acceptance-speech.html
From 6 years ago – things have gotten much much worse
Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean – 18 min, TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0VHC1-DO_8
From 3 years ago – things have gotten much much much worse.
Evening Lecture | Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMN3dTvrwY
Apneaman on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 4:21 pm
The Increasingly Dangerous Hothouse — Local Reports Show It Felt Like 170 F (77 C) in India on June 13th, 2016
“A wet bulb measure is a kind of thermometer for latent heat in the atmosphere. It uses a wet bladder to measure the temperature of a membrane at the point at which water evaporates. It’s meant to simulate the lowest temperature the human skin can reach through evaporative cooling as the body sweats. The higher the combined heat and humidity, the higher the wet bulb temperature and the hotter it feels. We’ve all experienced this when stepping outside on a day during which both the temperature and humidity are high. And we intuitively know that it’s the combination of heat and atmospheric moisture that makes hot days feel even more oppressive.
It’s a combo that’s also dangerous to human health. At a certain point, the human body becomes unable to cool itself by sweating. And this level of latent heat at which the human body becomes incapable of transporting heat away from the skin is a wet bulb reading of 35 degrees Celsius.
Wet bulb readings do not need to hit 35 C to risk loss of life and heat injury. Wet bulbs above 25 C are considered dangerous and readings for extended periods near 30 C have resulted in mass injury and loss of life…”
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/06/21/the-increasingly-dangerous-hothouse-local-reports-show-it-felt-like-170-f-77-c-in-bhubaneswar-on-june-13th-2016/
Davy on Tue, 21st Jun 2016 5:25 pm
Wet bulb is my biggest worry here in Missouri. I am already suffering lately with high heat indices. I am considering a root cellar hang out for those days in the future where it is too hot to be outside. I am thinking the grid may be unstable at the same time so a cool place that is cool without AC is my goal.