Link TV
CCTV America explores Brazil, South America's largest nation and home to the world's largest tropical rainforest.
CCTV America explores Brazil, South America's largest nation and home to the world's largest tropical rainforest.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
People's Climate March, 0921 NYC
Slideshow of the People's Climate March on September 21, 2014, in NYC. Climate Change 911 attended the event, and organized two solidarity events in Southern California, in Los Angeles and Huntington Beach. For the NYC march, we contributed to several hubs/groups, including People of Color, Women, Immigrants, and Vegans at PCM. For more pics and articles on the march, visit http://www.cc911.net/index.php/campaigns/people-s-climate-march
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2014
40 years baked in....
40 years baked in.... by moses seenarine
When I was a child in the 1960s, I
cared deeply for the environment and wildlife, and I remembered at
the time blaming adults for not doing more to stop the ongoing
devastation of forests and animals. Few adults seemed to care, and
less even tried to do something about a crisis I saw as real.
I am fifty years now, and have observed more ruined habitats and loss of biodiversity than I ever imagined
possible as a child. Moreover, during the last three decades, I was
witness to a new and rapidly increasing danger – severe weather and
abrupt climate change.
Back in the 1960s, I did not know that
the carbon, methane and other greenhouse gases (GHG) being emitted
then, waited around forty years to take effect, and would cause
climate change in the 21st century. In that peace-loving
decade, under 10,000 Teragrams of carbon dioxide was being released
annually, but by 2010, that amount had more than tripled.
At the start of this century, I began
to notice increasingly devastating storms and higher temperatures,
caused by GHGs emitted in the 1960s. How would the over 30,000
Teragrams of carbon dioxide released annually now, affect the world
40 years hence? How more severe will weather and storms get, and how
much higher will temperatures be, with 40 years of GHG emissions
baked in?
I have an eight year old child who
cares a lot about the environment, animals and global warming, and
who probably blames adults for not caring about the world he will
inherit, like I did growing up. Forty years from now, I will probably
be dead, but the children of today will exist in a world in crisis.
caused by climate change. What is my responsibility to them and
future generations?
By 2052, the average temperature will
go from the current 0.8°C increase relative to pre-industrial times, to plus
2.0°C or more. For a given geographic area, the coldest year in the
future will be warmer than the hottest year in the past. There will
be more drought in drought-prone areas, more rain in rainy areas,
more extreme weather (strong winds, torrential rains, intense heat
spells), more melting of glaciers and the Arctic sea ice, somewhat
higher sea levels, and a more acidic ocean. Ecosystems will move
poleward and uphill.
There will be massive biological and
social consequences, especially in the tropics where I grew up.
Plants and animals in the tropics are accustomed to a narrow
temperature range, and organisms that do not have the genetic capacity to
adapt to rapid climatic changes will be forced to move, or will be
driven to extinction.
During the last four decades, I was
part of a world that created the emissions that my child now has to
deal with. Each year, as I continue adding to my total GHG footprint,
I am affecting future lives. Recognizing all this, I am trying to
make a difference by eating plant-based foods, conserving energy and
driving less. I started an organization, Climate Change 911
(CC911.net) to raise awareness and encourage others to change. I am
getting on-board the People's Climate Train to attend the People's
Climate March in NYC to help bend the course of history. I am finally
doing what I wanted adults to do when I was a child, and what my
child would want me to do for the 40 years of emissions I helped to
bake in.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Global Ocean Temperature Anomalies, June 2014
"Global ocean temperatures have reportedly never been this warm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."
Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly 08 25 2014
Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly 08 25 2014.
The first large emission of methane came from the Beaufort Sea just North of Alaska. The Sea Surface temperature anomaly on the left in the Laptev Sea is concerning. Large amounts of methane hydrates are right below the brown area. The temperature anomaly continues to intensify. As you can see, the red in the Bering Strait is extending toward the East Siberian Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. Large amounts of methane hydrates are found here as well. These areas are likely to become household words. - Harold H Hensel
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Friday, August 22, 2014
Words and Pictures on Climate Change
Words and Pictures on Climate Change
Michael Tobis
The reasons that stories told with pictures and text are called “comic books” in English, and the reasons that the medium is not taken seriously in the English-speaking world, are related but need not concern us here.
One, The Carton Introduction to Climate Change by “stand-up economist” cheerfully written by Yoram Bauman and winsomely illustrated by Grady Klein, starts out with the good news.
This book, endorsed by a motley crew of climate celebrities (Jim Hansen, Bill Nordhaus, Annie Leonard, Jane Lubchenko, Mark Reynolds) does proceed to take on the daunting issues of climate change, giving a competent birds’ eye view of the situation for those who have just arrived on the planet. (Don’t mock them. This is an important audience; I would say a crucial one.)
With an amusing drawing attached to almost every sentence, the book starts with a paleoclimate perspective, covers the greenhouse effect, the energy problem, impacts, the deep future, the uncertainty issue and the “insurance” (risk management) perspective, and mitigation strategies, with a broad brush but memorably. Despite the cheerful tone, it avoids being polyannish:
Indeed, the book cover claims that it won the “Jury Prize at the 2012 Lyon Graphic Novel Festival”, even though it isn’t a novel at all, not by any definition. But try imagining a “Jury Prize” at ComiCon.
“Two stories are going to dominate the 21st century. Story #1 is about economic growth, especially in poor countries in Asia and Africa. Capitalism and free-market economics are going to create a lot of new wealth and give many more people the opportunity to pursue their seams. As families get wealthier they tend to have fewer children so the work population is likely to peak at about 10 billion people and then slowly decline. As a result, story #1 points in a direction that is nothing short of miraculous.But what about story #2?”
This book, endorsed by a motley crew of climate celebrities (Jim Hansen, Bill Nordhaus, Annie Leonard, Jane Lubchenko, Mark Reynolds) does proceed to take on the daunting issues of climate change, giving a competent birds’ eye view of the situation for those who have just arrived on the planet. (Don’t mock them. This is an important audience; I would say a crucial one.)
With an amusing drawing attached to almost every sentence, the book starts with a paleoclimate perspective, covers the greenhouse effect, the energy problem, impacts, the deep future, the uncertainty issue and the “insurance” (risk management) perspective, and mitigation strategies, with a broad brush but memorably. Despite the cheerful tone, it avoids being polyannish:
Make no mistake, our task is daunting. [...] The amount of warming caused by humans is related to population and to activity levels. That’s why business as usual could result in a tripling of annual CO2 emissions this century. And remember that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long, long time …and that the problem is compounded by deforestation… …and feedbacks… …and that any solutions will have to overcome the tragedy of the commons. But daunting doesn’t mean impossible.Philippe Squarzoni’s Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science is obviously (but mostly well) translated from the French. This gives Squarzoni a leg up, as the French (despite their reputation for arrogance) have long taken what we call “comic books” seriously as an art form. And Squarzoni, while he does attempt a very broad overview of the science, makes no effort to be comic. Given what is at stake, surely that is arguably appropriate.
Indeed, the book cover claims that it won the “Jury Prize at the 2012 Lyon Graphic Novel Festival”, even though it isn’t a novel at all, not by any definition. But try imagining a “Jury Prize” at ComiCon.
So we end up with a perspective that is serious, melancholy, and distinctly European.
It starts with a rumination on cinema, only eventually getting (on its seventh page) to
This guy works alone, but he works hard. Every page, almost every frame (except for the odd completely blacked out one) is carefully thought out, precisely rendered, and in some way beautiful. Most of it is high contrast pen drawing, but some brush images and some photographs appear here and there. And as a fairly serious “comic book” reader I will assert that among these are some of the finest and most evocative drawings I have seen in a storytelling context.
The book has another innovation – lengthy interviews with scientists and professionals. For the most part these seemed legitimate. (I was a bit jarred by the “peak uranium” talk by one interviewee, which I believe is nonsense, but on the whole they knew what they were talking about, and they were uniformly meticulously drawn, talking heads varying only slightly from frame to frame, with the most daunting stuff in their word balloons.
I found Stephane Hallegatte the most terrifying of them.
For instance, on pages 246 – 247, in a series of ten frames showing him talking and gesturing, he tells us
Many of Squarzoni’s experts are happy to assert frank anti-capitalism. They are French after all, and the sort of radicalism that would be career suicide in America is expected of French academics. But in the end, with a whole bunch of personal ruminations and spectacular drawings, Squarzoni ends up telling in greater detail the same story that Bauman does, and coming to a slightly more honest, vastly more disturbing version of the same conclusion: it’s daunting.
In conclusion – if you know an open-minded person who hasn’t thought much about this stuff, especially a young person, you would be doing them a favor to give them the Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Klein and Bauman. Meanwhile, as someone seriously interested in the topic, and/or as someone interested in the words-and-pictures medium as a way of communicating, I highly recommend Squarzoni’s Climate Changed. Even though it is daunting.
It starts with a rumination on cinema, only eventually getting (on its seventh page) to
Yes. There are many ways to start a book. For this one I should start, well, at the beginning. With a memory. Actually, for this book, it’s not the beginning that’s the most difficult. The hardest thing is… how to end it.There follow several pages of childhood memories of growing up in a beautiful ancient mountain town in the southeast of France, evocatively rendered. And this leads up to the author/artist, revisiting his birthplace, explaining to his wife why his next book (the one the reader is holding) will be about climate change. An odd topic for an artist.
This guy works alone, but he works hard. Every page, almost every frame (except for the odd completely blacked out one) is carefully thought out, precisely rendered, and in some way beautiful. Most of it is high contrast pen drawing, but some brush images and some photographs appear here and there. And as a fairly serious “comic book” reader I will assert that among these are some of the finest and most evocative drawings I have seen in a storytelling context.
The book has another innovation – lengthy interviews with scientists and professionals. For the most part these seemed legitimate. (I was a bit jarred by the “peak uranium” talk by one interviewee, which I believe is nonsense, but on the whole they knew what they were talking about, and they were uniformly meticulously drawn, talking heads varying only slightly from frame to frame, with the most daunting stuff in their word balloons.
I found Stephane Hallegatte the most terrifying of them.
For instance, on pages 246 – 247, in a series of ten frames showing him talking and gesturing, he tells us
There’s also rural exodus. Over the last fifteen years, large numbers of the farming populations of poorer countries have migrated to the cities because agriculture is no longer economically viable. But if, due to global warming we see more and more people who cannot make a living from farming pile up in the cities looking for jobs that, for the most part, do not exist… this situation is going to get very complicated.
Rural exodus leads to urban infrastructure that cannot stain the growth, so that’s no running water, no sanitation… so: illnesses, flooding as soon as there is a slight bit of rain, etc.
If rural exodus happens too fast, it’s certain that the cities will explode. Then we’ve fallen into a system that no longer functions in either the cities or the country.
[...]
There are [...] scenarios where the impacts of climate change force people to move from one country to another. Then the problems take a big jump. We’re talking about a different thing altogether. If 20 million people leave Bangladesh and head for India, what do we do? These are the sorts of things we aren’t really thinking about today, because they would be very difficult to manage.
Many of Squarzoni’s experts are happy to assert frank anti-capitalism. They are French after all, and the sort of radicalism that would be career suicide in America is expected of French academics. But in the end, with a whole bunch of personal ruminations and spectacular drawings, Squarzoni ends up telling in greater detail the same story that Bauman does, and coming to a slightly more honest, vastly more disturbing version of the same conclusion: it’s daunting.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I believe three things.
One: There’s a doorway we need to pass through. Technically it’s still possible to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and to take the necessary measures to manage the upheavals that are already inevitable.
Two: The doorway is not very wide. It closes a little more each day. And we have only a little time to pass through it.
Three: I don’t think we will pick that door.
In conclusion – if you know an open-minded person who hasn’t thought much about this stuff, especially a young person, you would be doing them a favor to give them the Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Klein and Bauman. Meanwhile, as someone seriously interested in the topic, and/or as someone interested in the words-and-pictures medium as a way of communicating, I highly recommend Squarzoni’s Climate Changed. Even though it is daunting.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Carbon
Published on Aug 20, 2014
CARBON is the first film in the Green World Rising Series. http://www.greenworldrising.org “Carbon” is narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, presented by Thom Hartmann and directed by Leila Conners. Executive Producers are George DiCaprio, Earl Katz and Roee Sharon Peled. Carbon is produced by Mathew Schmid and was written by Thom Hartmann, Sam Sacks, Leila Conners and Mathew Schmid. Music is composed and performed by Jean-Pascal Beintus and intro drone by Francesco Lupica. Carbon is produced by Tree Media with the support of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
Risky Business
A recent, non-partisan climate report — “Risky Business” (published by former hedge fund manager and climate activist Tom Steyer, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) — states:
"… human-induced climate change leads to rising temperatures.
If we continue along our current path, with no significant efforts to curb climate change, the U.S. will likely see significantly more days above 95°F each year. By the middle of this century, the average American will likely see 26 to 50 days over 95°F each year—from double to more than triple the average number of 95°F days we’ve seen over the past 30 to 40 years. Climate change impacts only accelerate with time, so that by the end of this century we will likely see 45 to 96 days per year over 95°F. That’s between one and a half and three months of the year at what are now considered record hot temperatures. To put this in context, by the end of the century, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho could well have more days above 95°F each year than there are currently in Texas."
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