Our Oceans are Under Attack

Global warming and drought are turning the Golden State brown

Another study finds that drought will hit California hard as the planet keeps warming

That might sound like bad news, and certainly the trends are moving rapidly in the wrong direction. The good news, however, is that this is only one possible future. If society works to limit global warming to under 2 °C, which is still possible (1), then we can likely avoid committing to a brown California. California still has a chance to remain the Golden State.

In fact, California has become a leader in tackling global warming, with a carbon pricing system as part of the strictest climate-related regulations in the United States. With such a large economy and agricultural sector, drought impacts on California will be felt far beyond the state’s borders, and California can’t slow global warming on its own. Fortunately there’s some evidence that we may be turning the corner towards solving the problem. However, more action is needed to prevent the Golden State from turning brown.

 

NASA Scientists Have Frightening Answers About Future Megadrought in Reddit AMA

http://www.weather.com/climate-weather/drought/news/megadrought-scientists-reddit-ama-0

Several NASA scientists hosted a virtual interview Thursday on Reddit, and some of their comments on the possibility of a megadrought might leave you slightly concerned.

The AMA – an abbreviation for "Ask Me Anything" – was hosted by four scientists who work for NASA. Their areas of expertise range from climate science to hydrology, but they all have an important role in communicating a crucial message: the chance of a megadrought is growing in the United States, and we should be prepared to deal with

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...fuel-path-immoral-financially-imprudent-exxon

The fossil fuel path is immoral and financially imprudent

What was right once, is now wrong. If John D Rockefeller were alive today, he’d be as visionary about green energy as once he was about black crude

I am proud of the legacy of John D Rockefeller, who built the greatest fossil fuel enterprise in history. In his day, fossil fuel was a liberating force – it literally changed the face of the earth, freeing many people from toil. The family business is now philanthropy; at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which I chair, we use the money made from Standard Oil to advance social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/67572692/james-cameron-snaps-up-organic-empire
Movie director James Cameron has further distanced himself from dairy farming, adding an organic-vegetable venture to his increasingly plant-based Wairarapa businesses.

It is understood Cameron, who spends time each year at his secluded Wairarapa home with his family while working on the sequels to his blockbuster film Avatar, has bought Te Manaia Organics, a successful vegetable-growing business based south of Masterton.

Much of that land was formerly used for intensive dairy farming, but it is understood Cameron's plant-based diet and strong beliefs about protecting the environment have led to all the dairy production being shut down and being replaced with crops.

"We're relentlessly devastating the Earth's ecosystems, and we need to wake up," the director has said.

Since 2012, Cameron has bought at least 13 parcels of land worth tens of millions of dollars and totalling more than 1500 hectares, gaining consent from the Overseas Investment Office.

 

Jeremy Clarkson joins Guardian drive for fossil fuel divestment

http://www.theguardian.com/media/20...ins-guardian-drive-for-fossil-fuel-divestment

The 54-year-old said that the “fracas” last month, in which he punched a producer on the patio of a North Yorkshire hotel, had prompted him to “re-evaluate his priorities” and reflect deeply on his life, behaviour and carbon footprint.
If you’d told me a month ago that I would be joining the tree-huggers in their hand-knitted kerb-crawlers I’d probably have punched you.

“But then I thought: ‘Where does physical aggro get you – apart from a few penalty points on your P45?’ I stopped off for a pint – and there was a bloody Guardian with all this stuff about climate change.”

“It’s not quite there yet. But me and [Richard] Hammond had a few jars last night and we’re working on a campaign that basically says you’ve got to shove gigatonnes of the black stuff back where the sun don’t shine.”

 

We Are Losing The Oceans
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41424.htm

April 01, 2015 "ICH" - I am an admirer of Dahr Jamail’s reporting. In this article, Oceans In Crisis, Jamail tells us that we are losing the oceans.http://truth-out.org/news/item/2993...man-will-cross-the-pacific-to-raise-awareness He reports on the human destruction of the oceans. It is a real destruction with far-reaching consequences.
That fact is indisputable.

From my perspective the human destruction of the oceans is yet more evidence of the ruinous nature of private capitalism. In capitalism there is no thought for the future of the planet and humanity, only for short-term profits and bonuses. Consequently, social costs are ignored.

While the powerful capitalists use the environment for themselves as a cost-free dumping ground, the accumulating costs threaten everyone’s life. It appears that nothing can be done, because the oceans are “common property.” No one owns them, so no one can protect them and their contents.

What we are faced with is the most destructive force in history: the short-sightedness of humans. Humans are willing to destroy the environment that sustains them, the law that sustains them, the truth that sustains them. Indeed, humans will destroy everything that sustains life if they can raise their incomes for another quarter or another year.

I have a friend who regales me with stories that humans are aliens on planet earth, exiled here by an intergalactic government that unwittingly disposed of its criminal wastes on a planet teeming with life. The inhumans, not humans, have been busy at work ever since their arrival exterminating one another, other species, and the life of the planet itself.

 

Scientists say polar bears won’t thrive on land food | Washington Post

 

Overpopulation, overconsumption – in pictures

http://www.theguardian.com/global-d.../over-population-over-consumption-in-pictures

How do you raise awareness about population explosion? One group thought that the simplest way would be to show people

 

The 5 psychological barriers to climate action

What we think about when we try not to think about global warming, and what to do about it.

By Per Espen Stoknes

http://boingboing.net/2015/04/03/the-5-psychological-barriers-t.html

It's all too easy to distance and doubt ourselves away from climate facts. Particularly since they are sometimes presented in abstract, doom-laden, fear-mongering, guilt-inducing, and polarizing ways. We seem to have a rich repertoire of ways to avoid changing the behaviors that belong to our sense of self. We’re clever at guarding ourselves against messages that we don’t really want to hear.

Excerpted from Per Espen Stokne's What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action, available from Amazon.


Scan any given day’s media and Internet coverage of climate, and you’ll see all those modes of distancing and self-defense on display. For more than three decades a host of messages from well-meaning scientists, advocates, and others have tried to not only bring the facts about climate change home but also break through the wall that separates what we know from what we do and how we live.

 

http://www.alternet.org/media/more-...ews-govt-tell-them-truth-about-climate-change

More Americans Trust Fox News Than the Govt to Tell Them the Truth About Climate Change

Americans are extremely confused about where reliable information on global warming comes from.

When it comes to getting accurate, reliable information on global climate change, more Americans trust Fox News than the president. That’s a problem, the Huffington Postpoints out, while President Obama tends to contradict himself by insisting that we need to fight climate change and then signing off on fracking and offshore drilling, Fox News is an anti-science mess that seems to take particular glee in spreading misinformation andstraight-up lies about the realities, and dangers, of global warming.
Most strange, from these results, is that the largest proportion of respondents — 45 percent — say they trust non-government scientists and educators, while only 13 percent trust the U.S. government. In other words, nothing we learn from government agencies like NASA, on whose satellites we rely for information on sea level rise, ice melt and air pollution, and NOAA, which funds “high-priority climate science, assessments, decision support research, outreach, education and capacity-building activities” to help us understand, mitigate and prepare for the impacts of climate change, can be trusted

The conclusion we can take from all this, I guess, is that Americans are pretty darn confused about where reliable information comes from.

 

Long-Awaited ‘Jump’ In Global Warming Now Appears ‘Imminent’
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/02/3640842/global-warming-jump-imminent/

NASA temperature data dispel the myth of a recent slow-down in long-term warming trend. But there was a big jump in temps during the mid-1990s. Many scientists believe another jump is “imminent.’

We may be witnessing the start of the long-awaited jump in global temperatures. There is “a vast and growing body of research,” as Climate Central explained in February. “Humanity is about to experience a historically unprecedented spike in temperatures.”

A March study, “Near-term acceleration in the rate of temperature change,” makes clear that an actual acceleration in the rate of global warming is imminent — with Arctic warming rising a stunning 1°F per decade by the 2020s.

Scientists note that some 90 percent of global heating goes into the oceans — and ocean warming has accelerated in recent years. Leading climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained here in 2013 that “a global temperature increase occurs in the latter stages of an El Niño event, as heat comes out of the ocean and warms the atmosphere.”

The authors warned that, by 2020, human-caused warming will move the Earth’s climate system into a regime of rapid multi-decadal rates of warming. It projected that within the next few years, “there is an increased likelihood of accelerated global warming associated with release of heat from the sub-surface ocean and a reversal of the phase of decadal variability in the Pacific Ocean.”

That would be Trenberth’s imminent jump. And it may be starting now.

 

Climate Change Makes Droughts in Australia Worse | Climate Central

 

Federal Report: Vegan Diet Best For Planet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/05/report-vegan-diet_n_7008156.html?ref=topbar

A federal panel that helps set federal dietary guidelines is recommending Americans eat less meat because it’s better for the environment, sparking outrage from industry groups representing the nation’s purveyors of beef, pork and poultry

 

I took theses pictures when accompanied by my dog manufacturing the Myark folding trailer barge which was across the road from the ponds, the pictures I took with the reflexions of the factory and mountain are a black tar toxic wast, the factory across the river would come in late at night time when no one could see and then pump from large tanker trucks the toxic waste into the ponds that is meant to evaporate, but they dig deep holes and pumped the waste direct in the water table that seeped into the river beside it.
I would take dog up stream to swim in river where it is crystal clear but opposite the ponds and my workshop the river black and smelling, my dog died from cancer 6 month after this picture and blame this on the factory toxins in water.


Environmental issues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarawera_River

See also: Water pollution in New Zealand and Paper pollution § Water pollution
The Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill, now owned by Norske Skog, has been discharging waste into the river since 1955.[1] Local residents have erected signposts labelling the river as the "Black Drain" since the 1990s.[2]
The dark colour is due to the presence of pollution from farms, sewage and stormwater but it is predominantly from pulp and paper mill effluent. As of 1997, pulp and paper mills were discharging over 160 million litres of industrial waste into the river per day.[3] By 2006, the oxygen levels in the river had reached a level where fish could survive, however the water colour was still dark.[4] Since 1998 the colour and light penetration (euphotic depth) have improved in the lower section of the river due to less pollution from the Tasman Mill.[2]
In 2009, the mill gained permission to continue polluting the river for the next 25 years.[5] In 2010, local iwi took a case to the High Court to shorten the 25 year water discharge permits issued under the Resource Management Act but the appeal was rejected.[1]

 

There's been a lot of talk lately about the drought in California, especially since this past week, when Gov. Jerry Brown introduced mandatory water cuts for the first time in the state's history. So what exactly makes this drought so bad? And what are people doing about it? Here are a few important points to keep in mind:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/everything-you-wanted-know-about-california-drought

Q: Drought is the norm in California. How bad is this one?

Q: What exactly is groundwater, and why are people in California freaking out about it?

Q: What are the state's biggest water users?

Q: What about fracking?

Q: California is on the coast. Can't we desalinize the ocean?

Q: Well, this is depressing. What are viable solutions?