Our Oceans are Under Attack

As a couple of small notes:

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion may be a substantial carbon sink due to the effect of bringing nutrient laden water to the surface - or may not be, but it is worth finding out - a renewable energy source that was strongly carbon negative would be a nice start.

Restoration of Pacific giant kelp forests would and be a substantial carbon sink. Their original range was decimated when the marine mammals that eat sea urchins (which attack kelp achorages) were hunted to near extinction, so kelp restoration requires restoring these mammals to their original range. This wouldn't be very expensive and it's something we otter do anyway.

 

Nice pun.

 

How Global Warming Works in 1.2 Minutes


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxVSBVMPCDM

 

Years of Living Dangerously | Wikipedia

Years of Living Dangerously Premiere Full Episode

Clips from many episodes of Years of Living Dangerously

 

I, a scientist with a PhD in microbiology and immunology, was a climate change denier. Wait, let me add, I was an effective climate change denier: I would throw on a cloak of anecdotal evidence, biased one-sided skepticism and declare myself a skeptic. Good scientists are skeptics, right? I sallied forth and denied every piece of evidence that was presented to me for a relatively long time.

It feels strange when I look back -- I inadvertently fell into almost every pitfall of pseudoscience, shutting my eyes and repeating a series of mantras, such as "I don't believe it!" "Why does it even matter?" and "I don't care!"

Thankfully, those days are over, but the memories linger. Although the evolution of my thought -- from ignorance, to denial, to skepticism and finally to acceptance -- was a continuum. In retrospect, I can distinguish certain phases that are worth listing and discussing. I hope my experience encourages others to loosen up some strongly held beliefs and listen to the din of evidence.

Here are the prominent phases of my climate change denial


http://www.alternet.org/environment/i-used-be-climate-change-denier

 

I imagine a reformed AGW sceptic is as unbearable as a reformed smoker !

 

Professor Steven Sherwood, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science:


“We face a problem that could be addressed with relatively minor shared sacrifices, but instead there is a mass effort to ignore, defer, deny, and lie. Knowing that it will fall mostly on our own children, and their kids. On the part of people – of a generation – who are farther from hardship than almost any in history.

Global warming doesn’t bother me as much as what it is revealing about humans. Maybe I need to just grow up and get over it!

But that won’t help my kids any.”



Dr Alex Sen Gupta, University of New South Wales:

“I feel frustrated. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. We know what’s going on, we know why it’s happening, we know how serious things are going to get and still after so many years, we are still doing practically nothing to stop it.”

 

Professor David Griggs, Monash University:


“I feel confused that many people seem unable to see what seems so obvious to me, that we need to act urgently on climate change.

I feel frustrated that those with the power to affect the transformation we need seem oblivious to the need to act.

I feel occasionally optimistic when I see progress in renewables or companies embracing sustainable practice.

I more often feel depressed when I think how much we need to do and how little time we have to tackle climate change.

I feel guilty about not achieving more to solve the problem and helplessness to know what more to do.

I feel a great sense of loss for the species that have become extinct on our watch and the many more we are set to lose.

I feel privileged to have worked with so many intelligent, hard working, ethical and thoroughly nice people who have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place.

But most of all I feel so very sorry for my children’s and my (hypothetical) grandchildren’s generation, for all the beautiful things in the world that they will miss.”



Professor Corey Bradshaw, University of Adelaide:

“My overwhelming emotion is anger; anger that is fuelled not so much by ignorance, but by greed and profiteering at the expense of future generations.”

 

David Attenborough: Leaders are in denial about climate change



Sir David Attenborough is calling on global leaders to step-up their actions to curb climate change, saying that they are in denial about the dangers it poses despite the overwhelming evidence about its risks.

The TV naturalist said those who wield power need to use it: “Wherever you look there are huge risks. The awful thing is that people in authority and power deny that, when the evidence is overwhelming and they deny it because it’s easier to deny it – much easier to deny it’s a problem and say ‘we don’t care’,” Sir David said.

In terms of climate change, “we won’t do enough and no one can do enough, because it’s a very major, serious problem facing humanity; but at the same time it would be silly to minimise the size of the problem,” he told Sky News.

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...e-in-denial-about-climate-change-9953302.html

 

Not, I believe, but they are "infidels" to the new religion.

 

Introduction for January 2, 2015 Moyers & Company broadcast: The very agencies created to protect our environment have been hijacked by the polluting industries they were meant to regulate. It may just turn out that the judicial system, our children and their children will save us from ourselves.

The new legal framework for this crusade against global warming is called atmospheric trust litigation. It takes the fate of the Earth into the courts, arguing that the planet’s atmosphere – its air, water, land, plants and animals — are the responsibility of government, held in its trust to insure the survival of all generations to come. It’s the strategy being used by Bill Moyers’ recent guest, Kelsey Juliana, a co-plaintiff in a major lawsuit spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust, that could force the state of Oregon to take a more aggressive stance against the carbon emissions.

It’s the brainchild of Mary Christina Wood, a legal scholar who wrote the book, Nature’s Trust, tracing this public trust doctrine all the way back to ancient Rome.

Wood tells Bill: “If this nation relies on a stable climate system, and the very habitability of this nation and all of the liberties of young people and their survival interests are at stake, the courts need to force the agencies and the legislatures to simply do their job.”

Watch the interview (full transcript below):
http://www.alternet.org/environment...t-save-our-climate-using-ancient-legal-theory

 

Associate Professor Kevin Walsh, University of Melbourne:


“I wish that climate change were not real.

This seems like a strange thing for a climate scientist to say, but it’s true.
If climate change were not real, we would not have to be concerned about it. We wouldn’t have to worry about the future of our water resources, already strained by over population. We wouldn’t have to worry about sea level rise increasing the flooding of our coastal cities and of low–lying, densely–populated areas of poor countries. Above all, we wouldn’t have to worry about climate change being yet another source of conflict in an already tense world.

Life would be so much simpler if climate change didn’t exist. But as scientists, we don’t have the luxury of pretending.”


Dr Jennie Mallela, Australian National University:


“In the last year I’ve become a mum and I’ve found myself looking at my son and wondering how I will justify the loss of so much beauty and diversity to him. My generation has the power to stop and even reverse this environmental demise, yet it is the next generation, my sons generation, who will bear the brunt of our choices and face the environmental and social consequences.”


Professor Pramod Aggarwal, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security:


“India, my home country, is home to nearly 20 percent of the world’s population, including 40 percent of the world’s poor. A key reason for this widespread poverty is that most parts of the country are very prone to climatic extremes, which regularly impact agricultural production and farmers’ livelihood. It is painful to see such a large number of our people, especially children, going hungry to bed for several days.

What is ironic that although these poor people are not contributing to climate change, they are the ones most affected by it.”

 

http://www.alternet.org/food/not-going-vegetarian-cutting-down-meat-theres-name

There are at least four reasons people are trying to cut down on meat: their health, the environment and the treatment of animals and workers. Not everyone gets a pang in their heart when they see how today's factory farms treat "animal units," but no one today actually thinks meat is good for you. The best that cancer and heart groups will say about meat is it is not too harmful if you seriously limit portions. Yet, to produce a less-than-healthful food product, an industry is tolerated that contributes to global warming, water pollution and fish kills, appalling and often underreported worker abuse and animal abuse and even harm to the economy. It is no secret the U.S. government enables low meat prices to help the meat sector while telling us to abstain from meat and dumping meat on the poor. During the recession of 2009, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture rolled out a "Meat the Need" plan to dump what it called the "oversupply" of meat on SNAP recipients. Nice. The government also helps private ranchers with our tax dollars by killing birds, foxes, coyotes and other wildlife that "threaten" the cattle industry. Now, a new community group is hoping to unite all the people who for economic, ethical, health and environmental reasons want to cut down on meat under the umbrella term "reducetarian." Reducetarianism is "an identity, community, and movement. It is composed of individuals who are committed to eating less meat--red meat, poultry, seafood, and the flesh of any other animal," says the website

 

The USA federal government has it's powers and responsibilities spelled out for it. Illegal for it to do anything else, but of course it does do things it's not empowered to do. We are trying to get the fed back under control. Not encourage it in new adventures in power grabbing.
It is NOT the USA fed governments authority or responsibility to save the planet or stop climate change or any of this messing around with natural cycles..

 

You miss the main point. Big government doesn't work. Not ever. Regardless if it's capitalist, socialist, communist, monarchy, or theocracy. Big government has ALWAYS failed. Empires have ALWAYS declined and collapsed.