Climate Disaster

The wind-belt can generate small amounts of electricity using an effect known as aeroelastic flutter. The belt is very simple, just a thin taut tape that vibrates in the wind, causing magnetic coils holding the tape on the ends to oscillate, generating electricity. The very low cost and wide availability of materials makes it especially viable in the third-world. It could also be used on the sides of buildings or in air ducts as an alternative to installing more costly rooftop turbines or solar panels.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1052/

Another promising technology is the large magnetic wind turbine (maglev), which if built, can generate one gigawatt of power, powering 750,000 homes. Friction is reduced in the turbine by using large magnets…
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/colossal_magnet.php

This summer, global warming is accelerating faster than scientists in the IPCC have predicted. This is usually the case, since IPCC scientists take a very cautious approach to their findings on climate change. They don’t really account for the force-feedback loops, such as extra methane released in the atmosphere from the Siberian tundra, or the added heat in the ocean after more and more of the reflective ice in the arctic melts.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=23291
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/05/4348/
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2609305.ece

If you had to pick any time in human history in which to live, wouldn’t the end be the best? If you could watch only one football game, wouldn’t you pick the Superbowl? Well I haven’t watched the Superbowl for the last 5 years, but I’ve been closely following how the world may be coming to an end and it’s fascinating.
When I first started this website I predicted that within 50 years at least 1 billion people will have died directly from climate change, and billions of others will have died indirectly. The oceans turn acidic, billions of people starve because farm land becomes desert from rapid evaporation from the increased heat, billions of people living in coastal cities either drown or become environmental refugees from underwater cities, economies collapse, wars break out over limited water and other resources, and that’s why this website is called climate disaster.

Well I was wrong… 50 years is way too much time given how fast we are accelerating towards certain death. My new estimate is under 40 years, that around 2045, billions will be dead.

Some of the articles I’ve read lately, have led me to believe I was being too conservative with my estimate. For example George Monbiot’s recent article:

“Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at NASA, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic(1).

The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59cm this century(2). Hansen’s paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn’t fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 2-3 degrees above today’s level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimeters but by 25 meters. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature(3).”

“Rather than taking thousands of years to melt, as the IPCC predicts, Hansen and his team find it ‘implausible’ that the expected warming before 2100 ‘would permit a West Antarctic ice sheet of present size to survive even for a century.’ As well as drowning most of the world’s centers of population, a sudden disintegration could lead to much higher rises in global temperature, because less ice means less heat reflected back into space. The new paper suggests that the temperature could therefore be twice as sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than the IPCC assumes. ‘Civilization developed,’ Hansen writes, ‘during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end.’(4) - http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/03/2269/

This is what scientists say is going to happen if we continue business as usual. The surprising thing is that we aren’t continuing business as usual. Instead, we are charging forward, building even more coal plants, third-world countries are following our lead and now building as many coal plants as us, and CO2 emissions are FAR EXCEEDING levels in the 1990s. Not only that but there are signs that the world is starting to experience feedback loops, causing even more emissions and more melting.
More ice is melting, and temperatures are increasing more than anyone predicted in the last couple years. I think this trend will continue, where every year or so we hear about “shocking changes” that scientists can’t explain. The dates might change, but the results are still the same. The human race is doomed, unless we have something like 100% renewable clean energy by 2020, meaning we start making it a reality right now… which is definitely possible, but insanely unlikely in the current political environment. Politicians are going to block renewable energy projects like they have been. Eventually the earth’s atmosphere may change, causing environmental refugees, wars over resources, and massive starvation. The future is very uncertain.

2006 was the warmest year for U.S. citizens:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0110-03.htm

1998 is still the warmest year on record across the globe, but 2006 came pretty close. For the U.S. 2006 was unprecedented. The lower 48 states of the U.S. had a mean temperature 2.2 degrees higher than the mean temperature of the 20th century. Even Colorodo, the state which global warming deniers point to as having a “harsh winter” this year, has been 1.7 degrees warmer than normal… although everyone knows ‘yeah they received a ton of snow.’

In other news, ice sheets are still collapsing and the world is undergoing dramatic changes as a prelude to the future Climate Disaster:
http://www.physorg.com/news86585378.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1201-01.htm

If you haven’t noticed, I like using the term ‘Climate Disaster’ in my posts. It sounds a lot more dire than Al Gore’s “Climate Crisis”. I’m way more cynical than Al Gore will ever be, so I like the term.

Speaking of cynicism, maybe that’s why I haven’t updated this website for a while. I feel like I said what I wanted on this blog, and even though there is new research and new politician double-speak concerning climate change, it’s mostly ‘business as usual.’

Climate change is a relatively slow process. It’s not like every week I have ground-breaking news. Things will mostly stay the same…
UNTIL the Climate Disaster! (Yeah, I had to say it again)

George Monbiot has an article on what we need to do to stop runaway climate change. Basically by 2030 we need to cut carbon emissions by 90%. Not only that, but the cuts have to come in the first ten years, meaning now, if we want to prevent force-feedback loops and accelerating changes. To meet that goal, drastic changes have to occur.

Article:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1935560,00.html

Leading British scientists have described Exxon/Mobil’s statements on climate change as “inaccurate and misleading.” The criticism comes from the Royal Society, Britain’s most well-known scienitific academy. In a letter, scientists have requested Exxon/Mobil to stop it’s misinformation campaign and funding dozens of think-tanks and organizations that misrepresent the facts of climate change.

The letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, adds: “I would be grateful if you could let me know which organisations in the UK and other European countries have been receiving funding so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public.”

…

[Bob Ward of the Royal Society] said: “It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For people to be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can’t have people trying to undermine it.”

Link:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0920-04.htm

Most people who recognize climate change as a problem, don’t necessary think the problem is immediate. That’s not the case around the world. In Bangladesh, people are already feeling the immediate consequences of climate change. It’s already affecting millions…

The impact is being felt now. The mangrove swamps are dying because the sea level is rising and the salt water is poisoning them. People are being displaced because of rising sea levels, caused in part by the dramatic melting of the Arctic icecaps, caused in turn by climate change.

…

In Bangladesh the future has arrived; we have environmental refugees, because our country is unusually vulnerable to climate change. Some 70 per cent of the country consists of flood plains, and most is less than 6m above sea level. If there is a 1 per cent increase in average global temperatures, we will lose about 10 per cent of our land. That is a huge problem for Bangladesh.

Being a huge delta with the Ganges and the Brahmaputra flowing into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh has always had to live with widespread floods. Our people have developed coping strategies to deal with them. Normally, we can do so. But with climate change the temporary flooding we see during the wet season is becoming permanent. - Sabihuddin Ahmed, High Commissioner for Bangladesh

Full Article by Bangladesh Commissioner:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1603631.ece

It seems that new data has caused scientists to speed up their predictions about climate change. Scientists say that the tipping point is just 10 years away:

http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=1743054

After the tipping point is reached we could expect major storms that completely wipe out low-lying areas. New York, Miami and New Orleans would permanently be under water. Ocean ‘dead zones’, massive drought in some areas and non-stop rain in other areas will change the landscape of America and other nations. Over a couple decades, forests will be turned into dry wastelands waiting for fire to wipe them out, and deserts will be turned into wet deserts, too fast a change for new species of plants to migrate. Huge amounts of farm-land will be lost and there will most likely be major food shortages across the world. If we’re not already dead from the coming wars fighting over natural resources, we’ll have an even tougher future ahead with the next round of climate change.

The arctic will further melt, and massive amounts of methane gas will be released from arctic and siberian permafrost. Then the atmosphere will change like it never has before. It’s very plausible something like 250 million years ago could happen… when methane filled the air and 95% of species on earth died off. Which undergound bunker are you planning to live in when the air becomes unbreathable? Well, if you’re not extremely rich or a powerful government figure then you won’t have a bunker…

Climate Disaster! We’re all already dead! DEAD! Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The 8-11 degree warmer water off the coast of Oregon this summer is most likely due to Climate Change. The warm water has disrupted the Pacific Ocean’s normal current cycle and has caused a massive ‘dead zone’ off the pacific coast.

http://www.newportnewstimes.com/articles/2005/08/05/news/news04.txt

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/08/oregon_dead_zon.html

There is a great movie out this summer that I think is more revealing than “An Inconvenient Truth.” The truth may be inconvenient, but it’s pretty obvious if you are logical and look around at how the world is changing. On the other hand, it may not be obvious that auto-manufacturers are purposefully holding back technology that has high consumer demand, makes for faster, quieter cars and could potentially save the environment.

It seems strange to say someone is purposefully not releasing a profitable product. Especially when the product could make billions upon billions of dollars. Unfortunately, that is the case in Who Killed the Electric Car.

Who actually killed it? Well it’s the “Usual Suspects”.

The industry that keeps environmentalists up at night, the butcher of the environment. A peerless, psycho, butcher who lights flames at night, nonchalantly dumps thousands of litres of black death on the environment and has been known to buy out, sue, and even kill to maintain its dominance over the entire world.

Who is Keyser Soze? … Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. - From the 1995 movie ‘The Usual Suspects’

These companies will do anything to stop new technology that threatens their global domination. Last quarter, Exxon/Mobil topped $100 billion in sales.

Let’s say tomorrow a new electric car under $20,000 was available on the market that was faster, quieter, overall a better quality car than anything else out there. It cost $.80 per 50 miles travelled when you plug it in overnight. If you travelled less than 25 miles each day you would spend under $20 for transportation costs for the entire month. Now imagine every one of these companies who receive over a billion dollars in sales each week, all of sudden didn’t get their billion dollars this week. How much do you think they would pay this week to get their billion dollars?
Auto-manufacturers such as GM may have officially “killed” the car, but oil company influence has always been behind the scenes. The oil companies also bought up some patents for NiMH batteries, and were willing to spend money on ads in the NYT disparaging electric cars when they were at their height of popularity in 2001. People such as celebrities were willing to pay any amount to keep their electric car “test product” but GM and others refused to let it happen. They refused the money and they refuse to use a more efficient product that doesn’t need as much maintenance and lasts longer, because why would they make cars that lasts decades, when they could make cars that need constant service (oil changes) and are only reliable for a few years, making them more money? Combustion engines make more money.  And if not for the invisible hand of the market, the invisible hand of Keyser Soze would challenge them if they ever tried to make real progress. See ‘Who Killed the Electric Car‘ and you might just see Keyser Soze yourself.