

### Fifty Years of Global Warming

### G. J. Lau

Copyright 2011 by G. J. Lau

Smashwords Edition

The Windroot Press

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ISBN:

Homepage: http://www.windroot.com

Blog: http://www.windroot.blogspot.com/

Other Books by This Author:

The Magpie's Secret at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36482

SitRep Negative: A Year in Vietnam at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49814

A Misunderstood God as http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/61829

## Introduction

I used to write a blog on climate change called _Planet Restart_ , the idea being we needed to push the "restart" button to begin a new way of thinking about how we should be living on the planet. I did it for my children and grandchildren because I knew in my bones that the climate was changing, and I wanted them to understand how this would affect every decision they would make.

I started out with a sense of foreboding and hope, but not a lot of knowledge. I ended up at the crossroads of doom and gloom, knowing a whole lot more than I wanted to.

Simply put, _if_ the science is correct, then it is already too late... too late to prevent a rise in average global temperatures that will bring with it serious consequences... too late to avoid the displacement of millions of people due to rising tides and shifting rainfall patterns and increasingly erratic growing seasons... too late to avoid the economic and social upheavals that will inevitably ensue.

These 65 essays (plus a glossary) reflect my personal journey to understand the three modern-day horsemen of the apocalypse who stalk mankind: climate change, peak oil, and population growth. What I found was not reassuring. But don't take my word for any of this. Learn about the issues and make up your own mind.

If you come to the same conclusions I did, then you really need to start thinking about how to prepare your children and grandchildren for a world that will be very different from the one they see around them today... a world as challenging as anything that mankind has ever faced.

## Why Climate Change Is A Tough Sell in America

October 2009 – With apologies to David Letterman, I offer up my top 10 reasons why climate change is a tough sell in America.

**Climate change is not breaking news.** We Americans have grown addicted to stories that sweep over us like a giant wave. Climate change creeps in with the tide.

**Climate change is not easy to understand**. Weather is what you see out the window today. Climate change is computer models trying to guess what you will see out the window 30 years from now.

**Climate change is not easy to explain.** Weather is Al Roker. Climate change is Al Gore.

**There is no single plan to rally supporters around.** Pretty much everyone agrees that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced. But which ones, by how much and how soon, through what methods... these are all topics of intense debate.

**The pain is here and now; the gain is off in the distant future**. Doing something about climate change will cost billions of dollars right now. The ultimate benefit will be a more livable planet 30, 50, 100 years from now. That's asking for a lot to be taken on faith.

**The human brain is not wired to think in terms of centuries.** We pretty much live in the moment. Somewhere between the here-and-now and 100 years from now, we just stop listening.

**Future shock rocks.** We are being bounced from one crisis to the next like a ping-pong ball in a room full of mouse-traps. Sooner or later, we just reach the point where we just want to pull back into our shells and stop listening.

**Resistance is not always futile.** Controlling greenhouse gas emissions will cost big business some big bucks. If they can avoid or mitigate that future expense by financing extensive (dis)information campaigns, why not do it? Spending millions today beats spending billions tomorrow. It's not like the average politician is looking for a reason to believe.

**The political process is exhausted.** The battle over health care reform has given the political process a severe case of battle fatigue. It remains to be seen how much fight is left in both parties as they try to confront an issue as complicated and contentious as energy reform.

**Nation states suck at solving global problems.** The world is a bunch of teenagers who have been sent to their rooms. Each room is a nation-state with a big sign on the door that says, "You are not the boss of me." Collective action does not come naturally or easily at this stage in our geopolitical development.

## Why Is It Getting Warmer?

October 2009 – Before we begin, let's clarify a couple of points. First, weather is day-to-day changes. Climate tracks those changes over very long periods of time. Second, global warming is the result of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is the result of global warming. The two are not the same.

Over the long run, changing climates can become either drier or wetter, colder or hotter, depending on where you are. Day-to-day weather is subject to even more variables, so just because you have a cooler winter doesn't mean a damn thing in terms of the validity of climate change.

There are four basic agents of change that contribute to climate changes that lead either to **warming or cooling**. Each impacts the other, so the long-term trend line may be clear, even as the points on the line zig-zag back and forth.

**Greenhouse Gases (GHG):** These are the leading sources of global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2) accounts for about half of them. Methane (the infamous cow farts), freon, and other assorted gases make up the rest. Two things to remember. Tiny amounts of CO2 and methane can have a huge impact on trapping ultraviolet light inside the atmosphere, which _is_ the greenhouse effect. Second, they last a long time—thousands of years—once they are in the atmosphere.

**Sulfur Emissions From Burning Coal:** The good news is that this can and does offset the warming affect of GHG. The bad news is that sulfurs are relatively short-lived, maybe a few years at best. The irony is that countries are working hard to reduce sulfur emissions, which is good for reducing acid rain but which could end up accelerating the pace of global warming (assuming that it is real, of course).

**Volcanoes:** In a way, this is just more of the same—in this case sulfur—which is injected into the atmosphere during an eruption. The cooling effect can be quite massive, but as has already been noted, relatively short-lived. And of course there is the fact that there is no way to know when a volcano will erupt.

**Variations in the Intensity of the Sun:** When sun spots are plentiful, the sun puts out more heat, which amps up the ultraviolet rays, which in turn amps up the ozone layer. When sun spots diminish, the net effect is a cooling of the atmosphere, which offsets other warming factors.

My feeling is that it doesn't matter why the earth is getting warmer. And it is no help to say that this has happened many times in the planet's history. All of that is true. The difference maker is us, all 6.7 billion of us, nearly 1 in 10 of whom live in low-lying areas of the planet directly threatened by rising sea levels and extreme weather. Never before have we as a race faced so potentially grave and universal a crisis where so many of us will be competing for resources and a safe haven. That is why it matters.

Source: _The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate_ , by David Archer

## Three Reasons To Believe

October 2009 – Climate change is very complex, and the science is still unfolding, leaving plenty of room for debate. But I have settled on the following three reasons to believe that there's something happening here. Taken together, they have led me to an inescapable conclusion: man-made emissions are forcing climate change.

**One: The Greenhouse Effect**. The insulating effect of atmospheric greenhouse gases (e.g., water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) is well-documented bedrock science going back to 1859, when John Tyndall conducted his pioneering experiments. The sun's energy arrives as visible light and leaves as infrared energy. Tyndall proved conclusively that greenhouse gases absorb infrared energy, blocking it from passing through the atmosphere to outer space. This in turn controls the temperature of the atmosphere.

**Two: The Industrial Revolution.** In 1829, British coal production was 15 million tons. In 2006, world coal production was 6.2 billion tons. At the turn of the 20th century there were about 8,000 cars in use in the United States. At the turn of the 21st Century there were about 200 million cars in use on the United States, 450 million or so world-wide. Common sense tells us that burning all that coal and driving all those cars over the last couple of centuries has created a lot of CO2 that made its way into the atmosphere.

**Three: Chaos Theory.** Small changes introduced into a system can lead to very big changes, the so-called butterfly effect. Again, chaos theory is bedrock science, demonstrated in thousands of experiments involving many different processes.

So, let's put it all together. If you start out with an atmosphere that contains a certain level of **greenhouse gases** that results in a certain average temperature and then the **industrial revolution** injects a massive amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, **chaos theory** tells us that _something_ has to change. Logic says that at least one component of that change will be warmer temperatures in the atmosphere because that is what greenhouse gases do.

Is it really as easy as 1, 2, 3? I think so. Just bear in mind that climate is the sum of many different processes, of which greenhouses gases are just one, so the net effect may be quite different depending on where you live. But have no doubt that there will be effects. We are already seeing early indicators that I believe will have hardened into long-term trends by the time my grandchildren are in their 30's.

## Judgment Day

A scrap of dialogue from Terminator II:

John Connor: We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

The Terminator: It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.

John Connor: Yeah. Major drag, huh?

April 2009 – Think about the premise of the Terminator series. Somewhere in the future, a system that doesn't even exist in the present day goes haywire and puts the globe on a course for nuclear destruction and a subsequent war with machines suddenly more suited to a radiation-drenched world and determined to rid the world of humans.

A cybernetic robot called a Terminator comes back in time, first to prevent history from being changed, and then to try and change history. Naturally, folks in the past have trouble believing this future foretold. Once they do begin to believe it, their first course of action is to try and prevent it. When that doesn't work, it is off to Mexico to ride out the coming storm.

When you think about it, that is kind of what is happening now when it comes to climate change. We are confronting a threat that won't come to pass for several decades, one that even today is barely felt in our day-to-day lives.

A lot of folks have trouble believing that it will come to pass, partly out of skepticism and partly out of the innate difficulty humans have in maintaining a sense of immediacy about the future. A lot of other people have seen the light and believe the danger is real. Many are making an earnest effort to ward off the looming crisis through a variety of individual and collective efforts.

Some are already thinking about what to do on the off chance that things don't work out. Welcome to Planet Restart!

One more thing. Judgment Day in the movie refers to an apocalyptic event, nuclear war. What we need right now is the other kind of judgment, the judicious evaluation of and response to a situation that is unfolding and evolving on a daily basis.

## Are We Doomed?

September 2010 – In a previous essay I offered my reasons for believing that climate change is real. This essay sums up my reasons for believing that our grandchildren are doomed to experience a massive degradation of the quality of life on planet earth.

This is not a scientific blog so things here are generally not attributed, but 15 seconds on Google will produce a plethora of articles in support of these positions. (Of course the same 15 seconds will produce an equal number of articles opposing these positions, which is why it always comes down to individual judgment and gut feeling.)

**Climate Change Is Real.** You have to begin with the idea that climate change is real. It is the result of natural cycles and human activity, consisting of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. The overwhelming consensus of climate change scientists supports this notion.

**It's Worse Than They Thought.** More and more you read that climate change is happening faster than expected. This means that we have less time to deal with it and that the measures needed to keep greenhouse gases within the best guesstimate of a "safe" level are increasingly more drastic, to the point of being unachievable even if we were so inclined to do something.

**It Isn't Just Climate Change.** Over and over you read that such-and-such species is under pressure as a result of a combination of factors all related to human activity, be it global warming, deprivation of habitat, predation. Humans themselves are threatened by a variety of pressures, including over-population, food shortages, and water shortages. Climate change is just another tipping point along the way to an irreversible decline in the conditions that support life on this planet.

**Nobody Wants To Hear It.** People are resistant to the idea that they may have to give up what little they have today in order to avert a disaster that will unfold a couple of decades or centuries from now. We know that oil will run out. We know that the climate is changing. We know there are pockets of over-population that are vulnerable. We know all this, and yet we have done nothing about it during a time that many scientists and thinkers see as the last best chance to avert total disaster.

**Bottom Line.** All the bad things that scientists and social observers say are coming are already here. The longer we delay action, the harder it will be to do something about it. The harder it is to do something, the more likely it is that we will do nothing about it. So are we doomed? You tell me.

## Peak Oil

August 2009 – I came in late to the climate change game, but the more I learn about the interlinking of issues, the more interesting and ominous things look. Population is a case in point. Another is peak oil.

The concept behind the term "peak oil" is pretty simple. Oil is a finite resource and some day our collective tanks will begin running low. Eventually, we will run out of it.

Peak oil specifically refers to that moment when we are no longer able to increase crude oil production world-wide. This occurs at the midpoint of supply, when as much oil has been removed as remains in the ground. From that point on, we are chasing the tail of the bell curve. A lot of scientists think that has already happened in the United States, beginning in 1970.

Now the logic of that position would seem to be unassailable. That doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of room to argue. Some contend that it will never happen. Some say we can push it off by exploring harder to get forms of fossil fuels such as Canada's tar sand deposits. Others argue that it is just a scheme to get people to stop using fossil fuels as part of an overarching plot by leftists to foist their global warming agenda upon an unsuspecting American public.

Peak oil and climate change are indeed two issues that are closely linked. Why? Well, most scientists believe that the current rise in earth's average temperature is due less to cyclical changes and more to human-caused (anthropogenic) emissions of greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels (oil and coal). The longer we use fossil fuels, the more its impact on global warming.

This leaves us with two choices. We could take every ounce of fossil fuel out of the ground at the inevitable cost of a rise in global temperatures that will have lethal consequences for millions of people. Or, we could start winding down our reliance on fossil fuels and develop markets for alternative fuels and other societal needs that depend directly or indirectly on fossil fuels at a tremendous cost both in taxes and in increased individual energy costs.

Kinda sucks, don't it?

_Editor's Note: Here is a recent quote from_ an essay written by David Murphy _and posted in_ The Oil Drum _:_ "In a society like ours, where economic growth is touted as the solution to almost every societal problem (see more or less any op-ed on how to fund the U.S. deficit), peak oil presents a paradox: the growth of the economy requires an increasing oil supply, but increasing the oil supply, due mainly to a peak in conventional crude oil production, will require high prices which tend to undermine that growth. The billion dollar question is: at what price of oil does the economy stop growing?"

## Petroleum: Good to the Last Drop?

May 2010 – Somewhere in my readings I remember an essay in which the author—I apologize because I haven't a clue where I read this—made the point that petroleum is used for many things besides the gasoline that fuels our cars. So when we begin running short on cheap oil, we may find ourselves having to make some difficult choices.

Which is more important: a gallon of gas, or a bottle of aspirin, or the antihistamines to treat those sniffles? Fertilizer and pesticides used to grow cheap food? How about the dishwashing soap we use to clean our dinner plates? Or the additives that extend the shelf-life of canned foods? Sneakers and CD's, without which no kid would be complete? Dyes? Garbage bags? Golf balls? Plastic, anyone?

We face some rough choices as the oil in the ground becomes more and more expensive to find, extract and refine. Who decides whether the next barrel of oil will make gasoline or medicine or plastics or Britney Spears' CD's? Will we be content to let the market place decide that, or will we eventually have to appoint a Petroleum Czar to make these choices for us.

You may laugh, but the scenario above is an inevitability that is as certain as anything else you can think of. The only question is when it will happen, and that may depend on how serious climate change really turns out to be. We all know that any solution to climate change involves major reductions in the use of fossil fuels. The more serious the consequences of climate change, the more drastic the measures that will need to be taken.

Which suggests that the solution to one problem may be a partial solution for the other. To the extent that we find ways to reduce the need for petroleum to drive our cars or fly our airplanes or heat our homes, there will be more available for the other equally critical uses of petroleum.

And maybe by the time the last drop of oil has been found and refined we will have come up with alternatives means of manufacturing the thousands of products that rely to some degree on petroleum distillates in their manufacturing process.

## Population Matters

August 2009 – We may never rival the biomass of beetles, but mankind is still growing at a pretty good rate. The world population doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion during the last 40 years. By the year 2040, the world population is projected to grow to 9 billion, a gain of 50 percent.

To put that in some historical perspective, we didn't cross the 1 billion mark until 1850 or so. In 1 AD, total population is estimated to have been somewhere around 300 million people, which is about the size of Chicago or Los Angeles.

It is not just how many of us there are but _where_ we live that is so significant in terms of climate change. Nearly 1 out of every 10 persons on the globe lives in a low-lying area. That's about 600 million people. According to the report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 23 percent of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast and less than 100 meters above sea level.

A recent study released by the  National Institute of Aging adds another twist to the climate change picture: a rapidly aging global population.

"In 2006, almost 500 million people worldwide were 65 and older. By 2030, that total is projected to increase to 1 billion—1 in every 8 of the earth's inhabitants. Significantly, the most rapid increases in the 65-and-older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a jump of 140 percent by 2030."

The report also noted that the fastest growing portion of many national populations is people aged 85 and older. (For the first time in history, and probably for the rest of human history, people age 65 and over will outnumber children under age 5.) And within 10-15 years, chronic non-communicable diseases (heart disease, cancer, and diabetes) will cause more deaths than infectious and parasitic diseases. All of this will take place within the context of declining overall populations in many countries.

## It's Seven Billion People, Stupid

December 2009 – The release of thousands of e-mails written over many years by climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia University provoked a fierce wave of reactions from climate change deniers. Now the dust is starting to settle, and lo and behold, the science of climate change is still standing.

The CRU is but one of four institutions that have reached the same conclusion: the earth's average temperature has risen over the last 150 years in a way that suggests there is more than natural variation at work. The new X factor is an industrial society that has grown and grown in response to the needs of 7 billion people.

The emissions from industrial activity coupled with emissions from millions of planes, trains and automobiles, coupled with methane emissions from intensified animal and agricultural production, have kicked off a chain of environmental responses that are accelerating and heading towards some unknown and unguessable point of no return.

But never forget, we, the 7 billion people, are the problem. The ways in which we feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves need a profound adjustment. This will take time and an incomprehensible amount of money, neither of which happen to be in abundance at the moment.

There will be no sweeping solutions to the problem of climate change coming out of Copenhagen this week. The most we can hope for is a reaffirmation of our common understanding of what needs to be done coupled with some serious if modest steps towards fashioning a truly global response that places the needs of the many over the needs of the few.

## The Persistence of Denial

August 2009 – How many of us buckle our seat belts before we drive our cars? I'm willing to bet that pretty much all of us do. Using seat belts has become part of our culture; its efficacy is no longer questioned. So you would think, anyway.

Google the phrase "seat belt legislation history" and the first site listed is a Wikipedia article that slyly questions the idea that seat belts save lives. Instead, the author asserts that "Claims of the number of lives saved, based on the extrapolation of trends pre-law, could not therefore be reliably associated solely with seat belt compulsion because so many other factors were also involved."

Other sites warn of the deleterious effects that seat belts laws have had on those outside cars such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. One site insists that such laws are unconstitutional. Another site links seat belts to the surge in aggressive driving that all of us have experienced at one time or another.

So here we are over 40 years after the passage of what most folks think was an eminently common-sense piece of legislation, only to find that doubters and deniers still persist. In spite of those few remaining doubters, we routinely buckle up for safety because we can judge for ourselves the need for them every time we put our kids in the car or read about someone surviving a horrible crash.

It is easy to see the wisdom in using seat belts. It is much harder to see the wisdom in worrying about global warming. There is nothing tangible to see or feel or do to persuade our common senses that the danger is real. What is tangible is a very vocal chorus of dissent that is fueled by a very potent mixture of self-interest on the part of affected industries, science's natural tendency to question everything, and a growing populist sentiment that distrusts government and other quasi-official institutions. They have become very good at making mountains of doubt out of molehills of inconsistencies.

In the end, each of us must make our own decision about buckling down to fighting global warming, just as we have about buckling up for safety. We wouldn't think about taking the kids out for a ride in the car without first buckling their seat belts because seat belts are part of our checklist for safe driving. Thinking about global warming should be part of our checklist for living a better life and leaving a better planet for our kids to inherit.

## A Climate of Crisis

May 2010 – A main argument used by global warming deniers is that scare tactics are used to promote policies that would deal with effects of climate change driven by global warming due to human activities. And there is no denying a certain grain of truth in that argument.

Too often, the merest hint of a threat that could in any way be linked to climate change is trumpeted as a major new argument in favor of doing something now. The impetus behind this is the frustrating inability of most folks to generate a dense of urgency about a problem which is admittedly years or decades away.

But what if the alarmists are not only correct but are understating the crisis? To show you what I mean, let's start with a May 19, 2010, Huffington Post article by Matthew Stein entitled "The Perfect Storm: Six Trends Verging on Collapse."

The six trends he lists are: (1) Climate Change; (2) Peak Oil; (3) Collapse of the World's Oceans; (4) Deforestation; (5) The Global Food Crisis; and (6) Overpopulation. That is a pretty daunting set of problems, any one of which means massive disruptions to people and economies.

But the list deals only with environmental crises. To get the full picture of just how bad it really is you have to merge those issues with the set of geopolitical trends that are also converging on disaster. The collapse of the housing bubble and the current debt crisis afflicting Europe are two striking symptoms of a broader set of issues, a massive accumulation of past debt that increasingly constrains future policy choices, and a crisis of faith in the economic future, the belief that things will be better tomorrow.

Put it together and it adds up to a pluperfect storm. We have a massive environmental crisis gathering force while at the same time the two main tools we use to deal with problems—money and a belief that we can make things better—are in short supply.

So not only could it get worse, it could get a lot worse. The world you see around you today will not be there for your children or their children. Anyone who tells you differently is simply not facing reality. The question, as always, remains, "What are you going do about it?"

## One Hundred Acres in Idaho

February 2010 – Just about every situation you find yourself has been encountered and dealt with either by law or by custom. As individuals and as a society, we have a _process_ for investigating and concluding and acting on our _issues_.

But every so often we come across problems so big or so unusual that law and custom are unable to come up with a clear answer. The _process_ breaks down. Climate change is _that_ kind of problem.

Why? Because climate change requires us to think big, to think long-term, and to sacrifice now for a better future. Yeah, right. Maybe there was once a greater generation that would be willing to do that, but I wouldn't be counting on that any time soon.

Efforts to reach an international agreement have resulted in failure. Efforts by individual nations to deal with the problem either don't exist or are woefully inadequate. Subnational governments are waking up to the fact that this shit has rolled downhill to them, but they are too often broke or broken.

Remember, climate change is just one of a cluster-bomb of problems dropping out of the sky, getting closer to impact with each passing day. Take a look around. What do you see? Rising sovereign debt. Endemic unemployment and under-employment. A lack of faith in institutions.

At every governmental level, the stresses and strains of all these problems severely limits their ability to deal with anything, much less a problem that requires a massive restructuring of our economic engine at a cost no one can truly guess, all in the hopes of avoiding some bigger problem 20 or 30 years from now? Come on. Did you really think that would happen?

So what's left? Some believe that man the tool-maker will come up with a new tool to fix the broken machinery of our atmosphere. Others say party on 'til dawn and let the next crew figure it out. Others say it is up to each individual to do the right thing and let the power of collective action tip the scales away from the tipping point.

Between you and me, puppy, I would seriously be looking into buying 100 acres in Idaho and stocking up on... well, everything.

## A Learning Year

April 2010 – My wife and I spend a week in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, each year. For me, this is a time to relax and reflect. Last year I came up with the idea of a web site for parents and grandparents who might be interested in climate change but who may feel as overwhelmed by the science as I did. Turns out I picked a hell of a time to get interested in climate change.

The year was dominated by the collapse of the talks at Copenhagen and the rise of the deniers of climate change. Of late there has been a bit more of an effort by those who believe in the reality of climate change to make their case more forcefully. The debate has generated a lot of heat and more than a fair amount of light.

If I was to nutshell what I have learned over the last year it would still be pretty much what wrote a year ago:

Climate change is real and that it is happening faster than everyone thought it would.

Climate change is more than just statistics and trends. Climate change is about places and people, politics and power. It is about the problems we face today: legal and illegal migrations, water shortages, disease outbreaks and pandemics, severe weather, oil shortages, overpopulation.

All of us should support efforts to slow the pace of global warming. We also believe in having a Plan B in case our best efforts come up short.

I guess in one way you could say, "Well, this fellow hasn't learned much of anything new." What's new for me is the increasing sense that fixing the problem—mitigation—is day by day becoming less of an option. The Copenhagen experience shows us that contrary to common sense, global solutions are not necessarily the best way to fix global problems.

Instead, local and individual actions, choices, and decisions are far more likely to yield palpable results in the short and long run that some ambitious agenda that results mostly in lip service. Government functions best when change comes from the bottom up, not the top down.

As for my grandchildren, I'm afraid the message for them must be one of learning to live with a changing climate. That means figuring out where to live and what to do for a living in a world that will be subjected to the ever-increasing stresses and strains of a changing climate. It also means learning for themselves what it all means and how to make the best individual choices and decisions to take the most effective actions for themselves and their families, as well as their communities.

## The Acid Test

August 2009 – Consider the humble Antarctic krill. In terms of biomass, Antarctic krill are probably the most successful animal species on the planet. To give you an idea of just how successful, one estimate I came across said that the Antarctic krill has anywhere from 2 to 5 times the biomass of humans.

While you are pondering all that, ask yourself this: What do the Antarctic krill eat? Well, it turns out they eat mostly phytoplankton. There are about 5,000 species of marine phytoplankton, and they work pretty much like land plants, using the process of photosynthesis to take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. In fact, they produce about half of the total oxygen produced by all plant life.

Hmmm. These little guys eat tons of carbon dioxide and after their meal they politely burp out half of all the oxygen available at any given time. Gee, that sounds kind of important. You would think that the care and feeding of phytoplankton would be up near the top of mankind's to-do list. Well, think again.

A key side-effect of all this extra carbon dioxide we keep pumping into the atmosphere is that the ocean is growing more acidic. It turns out that only about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere. The rest is absorbed by land plants and the ocean.

All that carbon dioxide is making the ocean more acidic; by about 30% during the last 200 years since the heavy duty burning of fossil fuels began. Why is that important?

Ocean acidification is bad news for anything with a shell made of calcium carbonate, because the shells dissolve in acidic conditions. We're talking coral reefs, where about 25 percent of all ocean species spend at least part of their life cycle. We're talking phytoplankton, several species of which have shells. Taken together, plankton support a vast food chain that begins with krill and moves up to larger fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring and cod, all the way to whales.

By the way, in case you were wondering what the phytoplankton eat, well, like I said, they use photosynthesis, but they also depend on minerals that come from deeper colder parts of the ocean. The plankton depend on upwellings that bring the colder nutrient rich waters up to where the plankton are. Well, wouldn't you know it, global warming screws that up, too.

So failing the acid test does matter. We need those phytoplankton to keep on sequestering carbon dioxide and producing oxygen and supporting the food chain that millions of people depend on for their livelihood and their food.

There is also a moral dimension, nicely captured in this quote from the anthropologist Loren Eiseley: "If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure."

## Sitting by the Sea

July 2009 – We are all searching for something or someone to believe in. Sitting by the ocean, I found something to believe in. Out of that experience came the idea for Planet Restart.

Sitting by the ocean gives you a sense of the immensity of nature and also its fragility. You can look out beyond the waves to the earth's curve while the morning tide deposits the flotsam and jetsam of civilization at your feet. A nor'easter can move mountains of sand in a single night. A rising sea can slowly overtake islands and coasts over the course of decades.

Sitting by the ocean leaves you mesmerized by the waves lapping against the shore in the same rhythm that soothed us in the womb. Their sound was the first thing heard on earth and will probably be the last thing heard before the sun novas out.

Sitting by the ocean connects you to the deep past. Stay for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a lifetime and the rhythm of the tides will never vary. Only the gods have longer memories, and the sea has outlasted more than a few of those.

Sitting by the ocean forces you to accept the indifference of nature to the fate of the living things it nurtures. What happens to clams or men is of no concern to the sea. It gives us life; it is up to us what we make of it.

Sitting by the ocean makes you think of generations to come as you listen to the squeals of delight from children as they try to outrun the waves that nip at their heels. You know right then and there that you would do whatever you could to protect them from the dangers that you as a parent know are out there.

Sitting by the ocean teaches you to see and feel the changing world around you. The beach is calm even as storms are forming far out at sea, beyond the horizon line. But nature plays fair, sending mackerel skies ahead of the storm to let us know that a sea change is coming. Such signs are all around us. You just have to know where to look.

## Fifty Years of Global Warming

November 2009 – I was born and raised near Boston. In 1963 I came to Washington D.C. to attend Georgetown University and really have never left this area except for a couple of years in the Army, where I got my first taste of global warming in the tropics of Vietnam.

My memories of weather are pretty firm for the last 50 years. Some of that is apples and oranges because obviously the seasons are different in New England than in the mid-Atlantic. Still, I can say without hesitation that over that 50 year period the weather has changed.

Fifty years may not be long enough to be defined as climate, but the changes that I have observed are real. Compared to the 1950's, winters are milder, spring and fall comes earlier and the incidence of really violent weather is higher.

This feeling that over the last 50 years of my life the weather was noticeably different is what got me interested in climate change. Global warming didn't seem to be such a strange concept, because I had lived long enough to see it in my lifetime. What I didn't really understand was how serious a problem it was.

I was like most folks who grew up in a winter climate. What's so bad about a little global warming? Well, quite a bit, actually. The more I read the more I realized that this was something my children needed to know about because it was their children who would be living with whatever scenario unfolded over the next 30 to 50 years.

Now the only question left in my mind is "Is it too late?" I'm not waiting around for someone else to give me the answer.

##

## We Need A Whole Earth Solution

February 2010 – The battle over climate change is not just about climate. It is about the impact of human activities on the planet, a leading example of which is climate, to be sure. But climate is hardly the only area feeling the weight of human activity.

We humans are polluting the air. We are despoiling the land and the oceans with our trash. We are taking over habitat and squeezing out other life forms that can't adapt as quickly as we can. We do this because we have found a way to support many more times the number of people than could normally be supported within a given geographical area.

We eat food raised in Mexico on plates made in Vietnam. We wear clothes made in Sri Lanka and, if we are lucky, shoes made in Italy. We build apartments with cement made in China. We pipe in water from hundreds of miles away.

That's if you are living in a rich country, even without much money. If you are living in a poor country without much money, then you are living on what you can find in the local garbage dump. Your houses are salvaged pieces of cardboard and scrap metal. You cook on a single pot over an open fire. The street is your bathroom. Your food is what others leave behind or give you.

Rich man, poor man. Either way, we are overwhelming the carrying-capacity of Earth. Mankind has one thing going for it: an almost limitless capacity to fix whatever problems we encounter (or create). But the solutions that mankind develops will matter only if they do not place us at the center.

To the extent that we work to make our species a better neighbor, to the extent that we stop crowding out other species, to the extent that we preserve and extend life rather than trample over it on the way to our next big thing then, yes, we will be the answer. If not, then we will all go down together, make no mistake about that.

## The Power of Small

February 2010 – Wherever you look there is gridlock in the political decision process. My generation simply could not find the will or the way to do the hard things needed to fix what just about everyone agrees needs to be fixed, be it health care, the deficit, the economy, the climate.

And now we find ourselves rapidly approaching a point of no return on some pretty big problems: sovereign default in Greece and Japan; the erosion of Social Security and Medicare; the never-ending accumulation of debt; and yes, anthropogenic global warming.

Our children are convinced that they will never have it as good as we did, and they have every reason to believe that. Still, I got into this hoping to find some piece of knowledge, some piece of advice that I could pass onto my grandchildren about climate change. And over the last few months a few themes seem to resonate more than others. So here goes.

First and foremost do your homework. Make up your own mind about these issues. There is plenty of information out there, maybe too much. Dig deep. Come up with your own ideas about what to do.

Then get passionate about it. You are in a fight for your future. No one else can or will do it for you, but there are plenty of folks who have a vested interest in keeping things just the way they are. If that is good for you, great. But if you want change, it won't just happen. We certainly have over-learned that lesson.

Most importantly, quit waiting around for the government to bring you the answer. Top down ain't working any more. The only hope is to grow your own solutions in your own backyard, whether it is a home garden, a more fuel-efficient car, a better way to collect the garbage.

All of these little things matter. You matter. You can make a difference in your individual choices, in the things you talk your neighbors and co-workers into trying, in the things you demand from your local and state governments.

Commit to the power of small acts. That would be the one single thing I would like to pass on to anyone who might be listening.

##

## Can We Fix Climate Change Without First Changing Ourselves?

August 2009 – You hear more and more talk about geoengineering these days. No doubt about it, there are some fascinating ideas being thrown out, ranging from the fanciful, orbiting mirrors to reflect away sunlight, to the more practical, pumping aerosols into the atmosphere.

The problems with all of these suggestions are: (1) they are untried; (2) they will take time to deploy, time we may not have; and (3) they represent yet another variable in an already confused climate picture. Hello, law of unintended consequences.

The real problem it seems to me is that it is a way of tacitly admitting that it doesn't look like the worlds' governments are going to get it done in Copenhagen. Lurking behind that pessimism is an even gloomier assessment that it may already be too late to avoid significant changes due to global warming.

So I guess the theory is that desperate times call for desperate measures. But even if geoengineering was a smashing success, would that really get us anywhere in the long, long term?

The implied goal of geoengineering is to set up a situation where we can go on doing what we have been doing, a "business as usual" solution. In other words, we won't have to stop doing the things that we know are harmful to the planet and to our own long-term interests. Instead, we can mitigate the consequences and just keep on keeping on.

Maybe what we need to accept is that this is why we are in this mess in the first place. Instead of using our brains to change our ways, we insist on seeing ourselves as man the toolmaker who can always find some sort of tool to fix whatever problem is at hand.

Maybe it is time to reengineer our ways of thinking about things with the goal of finding a way to downsize our footprint on the planet before Mother Nature does it for us.

## Carbon Dioxide Double Talk

July 2009 – Let me state right up front that I am not a scientist. I am an ordinary guy who got interested in climate change because I worry about what kind of world I will be leaving to my grandchildren. What I know I have learned from a growing list of books and from a wide range of internet sources.

One of the more interesting things I didn't know before I got into this is how far back the science goes on the greenhouse effect. I guess I just figured that the whole concept was something that arose in fairly recent times, but the core discovery was made in 1859 by a scientist named John Tyndall.

Something of a polymath, Tyndall got interested in the work of a fellow scientist named Joseph Fourier, who discovered that the amount of heat energy coming into Earth from the Sun did not gibe with the actual temperature of the Earth. Earth was hotter than it should have been, and he couldn't figure out why.

Tyndall solved the problem in a series of classic experiments that proved conclusively that water vapor and trace amounts of other substances, including carbon dioxide and methane, were preventing the energy from the sun's light (infrared light) from leaving the earth's atmosphere. It was kind of like the Hotel California: Sunlight could enter, but some of it could never leave.

Mind you, this is 1859 we are talking about. The effect of carbon dioxide on infrared light is settled science that has been known for 150 years. And we also know that carbon dioxide levels have risen steadily since the Industrial Revolution. Hmm, there might be a dot or two ripe for the connecting, don't you think?

Why, then, do we keep hearing CO2 is not a pollutant? Maybe it's because such statements serve the purpose of politicians who are looking for a reason not to vote on legislation to slow down global warming... legislation that is expensive, that causes pain to big money supporters, and that solves a problem that is still decades in the future.

This is unappealing to legislators anywhere in the world. They prefer issues that provide immediate benefits to their constituents, preferably right before the next election. And God forbid that a problem might entail such unpleasantness as increased expenditures that might raise taxes. If it is absolutely unavoidable, then they will structure the legislation to front-load the goodies and put all the pain at the back-end in the out-years, the further out the better.

Global warming deniers give politicians cover to do what they really like to do: nothing. And why not? Hey, it's not like global warming is going to bite them in the ass while they are in office. Of course, their grandchildren may not be too happy about it, but that's their problem.

## Caught Between the Boomers and the Bust

May 2010 – The birth of a child is a moment when the generations can gather together and celebrate their hopes for the future. Unfortunately, my grandchildren may look back at the bust they inherited from my generation of boomers and wonder how it could have gone from so good to so bad in just a generation.

My grandchildren will live in a world dominated by three realities. First, nonrenewable energy sources are just that, non-renewable. When you use oil, or coal, or nuclear energy they are gone, and we ain't making any more, at least not any time soon. And long before they are gone, the economic pain will be felt.

Second, China, India, and other developing countries are using ever-increasing amounts of fossil fuels to attain the kind of life style they see the developed world enjoying. And why shouldn't they? It's what we did.

Third, even taking this expansion into account, they still use only a fraction of the amount of the fossil fuels for energy that the United States does. And there is zero evidence of any real political will to alter those facts on the ground.

So, we know we are using a nonrenewable source at ever increasing rates, thus putting our entire economic system on a collision course with the tail of the supply and demand curve. That in itself is a serious problem but hardly the only one my grandchildren face.

The profligate burning of fossil fuels has led to a definite and undeniable increase in average global temperatures over the last 100 years. Scientists feel that a rise of 2 degrees Celsius is now unavoidable. This will cause profound changes in our climate, in ways that we may be unable to predict exactly, but that doesn't mean we can't see it coming.

The burden for doing something about this falls on our children. They have to stand up and demand that something be done about these problems. I'm not asking anyone to do this just because I say so or a few hundred scientists say so. As always, my first recommendation is to do the reading and draw your own conclusions. If, like me, you come to see climate change and the end of the fossil fuel era as the most important problems facing us today then you will also see that time is not on your side.

I wish my generation could have been wiser, more prudent, and less wasteful. We weren't, so now we are leaving a mess behind. My children will have to make the most difficult choices imaginable. But even in this mess there is still the potential for a better world.

The industrial revolution was created by a sustained burst of inventive creativity. The industrial solution will also require a sustained period of green inventive creativity. That's a lot of opportunity knocking at the door. The question is who will answer.

## Who Do You Trust?

March 2010 – Visitors to this site will quickly find that I believe that emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere as a result of human activities are warming the earth. This is turn is driving climate changes that could drastically affect the world our grandchildren will inherit from us. I came to this conclusion following two different routes.

First I did (and am continuing to do) a lot of reading. Some books, but mostly what I find on the internet: blogs, newspapers, and academic and semi-scientific sites. My reading covers both sides of the issue, although I have to admit that I read more articles that confirm my now preexisting beliefs in climate change.

The scientific stuff is hard for me to follow. Still I dutifully go through the material in search of what little I can find that is aimed more at the layman than the scientist.

I also troll through a lot of governmental and nongovernmental organization sites. It seems as though organizations all over the world are writing and thinking about climate change. Lots of groups and governments are taking active measures that go beyond merely thinking about it.

What made all this material resonate is my own life experience. Looking back over 50 years there is no doubt in my mind that the winters are milder, the summers hotter, the weather more extreme. These are all hallmarks of climate change driven by a warming atmosphere.

Putting the two tracks together lead me to conclude that climate change is a real and ongoing phenomenon and that human activity is driving the changes we have experienced in my lifetime, at least. The theologians would call this a marriage of faith and reason. I call it an epiphany.

Others may follow the exact trail I took and find they are conflicted. The voices of doubt and denial are growing in numbers and volume. In the end it comes to down to who you trust as a source. Will you believe some blogger like me (you probably shouldn't), or an organization (what's their agenda?), or a government (can you ever trust _them_ )?

Who do you trust? Each of us must come to his or her own conclusions. Those of us who believe we need to do something now are asking for an awful lot, especially at a time when there are so many other more immediate problems clamoring for attention. That hard road is countered by the call to stick with business as usual, to keep on doing what we have been doing.

Again, who do you trust? Hey, it's not like the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. Or does it? You decide.

## Denial: Doing What Comes Naturally

January 2010 – Of course it wouldn't be a cold snap without some fool joking about how could it be global warming if it is this cold? The arguments against the reality of climate change are only slightly more sophisticated than this. They usually boil down to two basic lines of resistance: It ain't happening, and even if it is, we didn't do it.

It isn't happening because scientists are innocently or willfully misreading the data, as proved conclusively by Climategate. (Their words, not mine.) But even if climate change is happening, we didn't do it. The cause is natural cycles not human activity. In other words, don't blame us, blame Mother Nature.

They seem to be arguing that the addition of tens of billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last 200 years—enough to push the concentration of atmospheric CO2 up to 384 parts per million (ppm) from 280 ppm—doesn't really matter. The atmosphere does what comes naturally without taking note of all that extra carbon.

Really? Let's put that to the test of common sense. One analogy would be smoking. Is there a difference to your health if you smoke one cigarette a day or one pack of cigarettes a day? Common sense tells you that if smoking one cigarette is a tiny bit bad for your health, then smoking an entire pack is just that much more harmful.

I like this analogy better. Eating food is a natural thing. Combine the right amount of food with the right amount of exercise and your body stays healthy. Eat too much or exercise too little and your body's equilibrium is altered. You start gaining weight, which in turn has deleterious effects on your overall health in the long run.

Thus, you can eat a cookie every now and then, and that is not a bad thing. In fact, cookies make a pretty good snack. Start chomping down a box of cookies a day and you are heading for trouble. And let's not even consider the social consequences of hogging all the cookies for yourself.

In essence, we have been feeding our atmosphere more and more cookies starting about 200 years ago. The rate of growth of carbon dioxide emissions between 2000 and 2006 is twice the rate of growth of the 1990's. That's a lot of anything. And what makes it worse is that we have done so in some measure not because we _need_ more but because we _want_ more.

Now you can sit there all day and tell me that none of this matters, that all that CO2 isn't affecting things, but I ain't buying that for one second. We need to put our atmosphere on a CO2 diet, and we need to start now. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad New Year's resolution.

## Just Another Brick in the Wall

January 2010 – A lot of Americans who were on the fence about climate change are now leaning strongly towards the notion that the whole thing is the result of data cooked up by scientists more interested in the next grant than in objective scientific proofs.

The release of e-mails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit that seemed to support this point of view was not helpful. Nor was the admission of a lead scientist that a major conclusion about melting glaciers was based on less than stellar sources. Add to that the spectacular ineptness of the Copenhagen meeting, and it's downright ugly.

And yet through it all, there are those of us who remain firmly convinced that climate change is a very real problem that is already adversely affecting the lives of millions of people. In this view of things, man-made carbon emissions added to the atmosphere in massive amounts over the last 200 years or so have caused the average global temperature to rise, leading in turn to uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable climate change.

Emphasis on the word _average_. That means that some places have seen higher temperatures while others have seen lower temperatures and the rest are unchanged, but taken on average, the temperature has risen.

The same type of thinking applies to climate change. Global warming causes the climate to change, but that change is not the same in every place. It could be hotter, cooler, wetter, drier or pretty much the same. It all depends on where you live.

And none of this negates the fact that weather—what we experience day-to-day, month-to-month, season-to-season—is still very unpredictable. If you can look back over 50 years of weather like I can, then you are perhaps more easily able to conclude that the climate—which is weather over the long haul—has definitely changed.

This much I pretty well figured out early on. What took me time to understand is that climate change is just one way in which human activity is affecting life on the planet. The enormous growth in our population has had some serious side effects other than on climate.

We are occupying larger and larger swathes of habitat. We are destroying larger and large swathes of habitat in order to sustain ourselves. We are consuming resources faster than they can be replenished. All of these activities were putting a huge amount of pressure on the plant and animal species we share the earth with.

The message is pretty clear here. If the entire planet could put this to a vote, there isn't much doubt as to who would get kicked off the island. Trouble is, there is no place to go, so we either need to live more within our ecological means or Mother Nature may do it for us... the hard way. It's our choice.

## Five Easy New Year's Resolutions

December 2009 – After a fractious and disappointing year in the struggle against human-forced climate change, perhaps a round of easy-to-do New Year's resolutions will shake off the pessimism and renew our energies for what most certainly will be the fight of our lifetimes.

**Grow**. Perhaps the single easiest thing to do that will really make a difference is to plant something and then watch it grow. Pot a geranium or raise a small vegetable patch or plant a tree or some shrubs. Doing any these will not only enrich the planet but they will enhance your quality of life.

**Conserve and Recycle**. Growing up in New England I was taught to use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Today, we live in a throw-away society. You think you know what that means, but you really don't. Go out and get a book called _What We Leave Behind_ , by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. Read the first 150 pages. You will never look at a plastic spoon the same way.

**Learn**. The debate on global warming and climate change reached a fever pitch this year, culminating in Climategate. Spurred by the controversy over data, I decided to take a fresh look at the subject. I came away convinced more than ever that climate change was the most serious problem my generation would bequeath to our grandchildren. I urge folks to take some time to do their own reading and make their own judgment.

**Observe**. Climate change is happening where you live. It affects the plants and animals you see every day. One thing for sure, they don't care about blogs and e-mails. They react to the world as it is and are the truest indicator of long-term climate changes. Again, think for yourself, make your own observations, form your own opinions.

**Teach**. If, like me, you decide that climate change is a clear and present danger, talk to your kids about it. When my grandchildren are my children's age, they may well be living in a world very different from the one you see around us today. Don't scare them. Just educate them. You might start with this piece of advice from Malcolm X: "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."

##

## Later Rather Than Sooner

April 2010 – When my parents were born, their parents were wondering how bad things would get before they got better. When I was born, my parents wanted my life to be better then theirs. When my children were born, I wanted their lives to be as good as mine. For my grandchildren, I'm wondering how bad things will get before they get better.

The past couple of years we have seen our economic assumptions of a steady-state universe of growth shattered by the big bang of the real estate and financial markets collapsing. Well, my grandparents and parents dealt with the Great Depression, and World Wars I and II, and a few major regional wars, plus a Cold War.

What they didn't have to deal with—and what my grandchildren _will_ have to deal with—is climate change, an outcome of the industrial growth fueled in large measure by World Wars I and II. War has always been good for business.

But the massive introduction of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has severely impacted air quality and it has altered the global climate balance. Warming temperatures have caused a changing climate, with effects we can only guess at right now.

As the next couple of decades unfold, what appears to be a widely separated series of disconnected dots will gradually fill in with more information and a clearer picture will emerge. When my grandchildren are of an age to have their own children, they will see that big picture much more clearly than we can now.

That won't stop them from asking us why we couldn't see now what will be so obvious to them in the future. To some degree that is an unfair question. But in one respect it is a very fair question. We knew that sooner or later we needed to wean ourselves of fossil fuels in general, coal in particular. The question will be why we chose later rather than sooner.

## Ending Our Oil Dependency

June 2010 – The other day I was listening to some politician urging the increased drilling for oil within the United States, even in environmentally sensitive areas. The reason? We need to end our dependency on foreign oil. But let's change this sentence by deleting one word: foreign.

Now it reads like this: We need to reduce our dependency on oil. I don't know about you, but that seems to be a much more sensible short, medium, and long-term goal than merely reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

The unavoidable fact is that the supply of readily obtainable oil is declining even as the demand for such oil continues to increase. The National Academy of Sciences has this to say:

"How long can we maintain our petroleum dependency? The EIA cites known conventional oil reserves at more than 1.3 trillion barrels worldwide, and the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there may be another 600 billion barrels undiscovered.

At present, total world consumption is approximately 85 million barrels per day, more than 19 million of which is used by the United States. The nation's dependency on oil and the rapidly rising demand for oil in other countries, such as China and India, are heightening concern that we will reach a point where the oil supply can no longer be increased to meet projected demand."

To the extent that our demand for oil comes into conflict with the demands of other developing economies such as China or India, this does indeed put our economy at the mercy of marketing decisions made by such countries as Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. So some politicians cry "Drill, baby drill" and urge us to exploit every known resource within our border. That's their answer.

But in the end, the only answer that works today and tomorrow is to reduce the need for oil for energy as quickly as we can by going to other energy sources, renewable or otherwise. One way to get there is by making those other sources competitive, either through market subsidies or by making fossil fuels more expensive through a carbon tax.

These are not easy choices, but the choices don't look any better if we wait. Oil is a finite resource used in hundreds of different ways, some equally as critical to society as energy. Unless we reduce the use of oil for energy, we face a future where shortages of those other equally important products from oil create an even deeper crisis than the obvious energy crisis.

Everything points to reducing our dependence on oil, especially for energy. Everyone agrees on that fundamental point. So why aren't we doing more right now?

## G8 to Humanity: You Are On Your Own

July 2009 – The relative inaction on climate change by the G8 during its meeting in Italy may have one beneficial effect. Few of us should have any remaining illusions that help is on the way or that what little is being done will be anything other than too little, too late.

The spotlight now shifts to the U.S. Senate, which begins consideration of H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey. They are the last chance for any meaningful action in global warming in this session, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Politicians rely on two strategies for dealing with difficult problems. First, cut whatever deals are necessary to get something passed, anything passed, so they can go back to the voters and declare a great victory, so they can win their next election, which is all they really care about. Second, spread the pain as thinly and as far into the future as possible, hopefully to a time when they are either out of office or dead. A politician never met an out-year he didn't love.

That may work for things like the budget or Medicare, where future governments can indefinitely defer final payment on yesterday's bills by jiggering the books or printing more money. Climate change is different. We all know about messing with Mother Nature. If global warming is as real as the scientists say it is, then the cost of inaction will be paid in full by every person on the planet.

So, if you are a parent with a 5 year old child, in 30 years your child will be 35 years old and looking forward to the prospect of raising his or her children in whatever world we left them. And if you go on past actions, that world is not going to be any day at the beach, and there really won't be a whole lot that any government will be able to do to stop it.

Like I said, it is every man, woman, and child for themselves. Take my advice and don't worry about saving the planet. The planet will do just fine over the next couple of billion years, with or without people. For right now, you would be a whole lot better off if you focused on saving yourself, your kids, and their kids.

## Fixing The Climate

March 2010 – Most problems are attacked along two separate tracks. We try either to cure the symptoms or the disease. Climate change is no different. Two recent articles highlight the dangers and the differences in each approach.

The first article discusses seeding the oceans with iron. Some scientists see this as a way to encourage phytoplankton blooms, which would be a good thing since phytoplankton are one of the biggest carbon sinks around.

The bad news is that there could be a lethal side effect, a rise in something called domoic acid. The plankton use domoic acid to fuel growth, but it is also highly toxic to many marine mammals and humans. So we could get lots more living phytoplankton and dead everything else.

The second article talks about a plan to reduce a major source of man-made carbon emissions, black soot from the billions of cooking stoves used daily throughout the Third World. Soot from these stoves is many hundred-fold times worse than CO2 because it is black, which absorbs more heat.

The good news is that soot is very short-lived in the atmosphere, so if you find a way to eliminate it, you will see immediate results. CO2, on the other hand, hangs around for centuries.

So which is better, attacking the symptom or curing the disease? Geoengineering attacks the symptoms but in many cases invites unintended consequences. Changing the ways in which humans produce and consume energy is directly aimed at curing the disease, man-made emissions that are fueling global warming, which in turn is forcing climate change.

Geoengineering offers hope that we can ameliorate the impact of our behaviors to the point where we don't have to change them as much... maybe. Substantially reducing the emissions to the levels that scientists say is necessary is quite frankly unlikely to happen, certainly in the current political climate.

Unless and until the American public regains a sense of urgency about climate change, we will likely just dither along until it is too late for either the silver bullet or the bitter pill.

## Growing Our Civilization

December 2009 – I got into global warming and climate change partly because I was looking for something to believe in and write about besides politics. I thought that in the calm, tranquil waters of science, I would find refuge from the stormy seas of today's tendentious and contentious politics.

Hah! What was I thinking? Politics is how we the _polis_ manage change. And change is what the debate unfolding in Copenhagen is all about. Not the changing climate. Not global warming. Rather, it is about the changes that those two forces will necessitate.

This is really all about how we grow our civilization. We hear businessmen talk about growing their business. Well, we grow our civilizations, too. The need for that growth is driven by another kind of growth, population.

We _homo sapiens_ are nearly seven billion strong. Providing the basic necessities for that many people required a shift from a localized agrarian society to an increasingly global industrial society operating on a scale that was unimaginable a mere 100 years ago.

The fuel to drive that vast industrial engine was pulled from the earth in the form of coal and oil. What took millions of years to create was consumed in a few decades. In the process we pumped millions of tons of industrial waste emissions into the atmosphere.

More to the point, we have consumed a finite resource to the point where we are using it up faster than it can be extracted, or at the very least, extracted as easily and cheaply. We are using a finite resource to drive our economic engine of endless growth.

Sooner or later, we will run out. Then what?

We have two options. Keep doing what we are doing and put off dealing with this problem. Or we can address the problem now with a two-part strategy of finding alternatives to fossil fuels and finding ways to use less energy to grow our civilization.

This is a problem that will be solved through the political process. The forces of conservatism will be resistant to the radical changes being discussed here. It is in their nature to do so. All we can hope is that the moderate majority comes to see the reality of the need for changing the way we grow our civilization before the forces unleashed by climate change run out the clock on us.

With any luck we may get as good at this as the ants. Ants have as much biomass as we humans do and yet there presence is barely felt. Over time they have learned to live in balance with their available resources. With any luck we might figure this out. With even more luck we may last long enough to do so.

## Growing Our Way Out of a Warming Climate

April 2010 – Geoengineering as a solution to climate change begins with an acceptance of the idea that: (a) climate change due to human-based activities is happening; and (b) we won't be able to reduce our outputs of greenhouses gases rapidly enough to avert major problems associated with climate change.

So, what's a poor planet to do? In a new book written by Eli Kintisch called "Hack the Planet" several potential plans are explored. They range from increasing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere to cool things down, to covering polar and glacial ice with panels to slow melting, to creating artificial trees to sequester carbon.

But what's wrong with just planting more real trees? One idea is to put the emphasis on planting nut trees. You get a two-fer with this idea because in addition to being excellent sources of nutrition, nut trees are also very good at soaking up carbon dioxide.

Another interesting idea involves salt-tolerant plants called halophytes. These plants are able to grow in seawater and in salt-affected soil, which accounts for about six percent of the world's land surface. A self-described engineer, philosopher, author, and venture capitalist named Tom Rand has a video out in which he suggests planting halophytes in the salt marshes of Saudi Arabia. This could become a source of bio-engineered fuel that could substantially reduce our dependence on oil imported from... you guessed it, Saudi Arabia.

I'm no rocket scientist but these two projects seem a lot more doable than some grand scheme to whip up microbubbles on the ocean's surface or to put giant umbrellas in space. Mother Nature has placed plenty of tools at our disposal that could alleviate the problem right here and right now. Why not get going on these two simple but doubly effective schemes right now. We don't need any new technology, just some old-fashioned elbow grease. Anyone got a better idea?

## How To Be Oxygen Neutral In One Easy Step

August 2009 – When I walk around my yard, which believe me isn't that big, I count eight trees. In terms of being oxygen neutral—liberating as much oxygen as I consume—that puts me way ahead of the game.

Two trees produce about as much oxygen as a family of four needs to live on. Two trees. That's it. Plant one tree for every two people in your household and for the next 20 or 30 years your kids will be able to say they are oxygen neutral. If you want to kick it up a notch, plant something that grows fast.

Plant one tree every year and you give the gift of oxygen to two strangers. How hard is that? Don't have a yard? Well, you still have choices. There are a bunch of groups devoted to planting trees. No matter where you are, you can find someone to make a small donation to in return for new trees in the ground.

The benefits don't end there. As the trees release oxygen from water they are also capturing carbon dioxide which they need for their sugar fix. One tree absorbs as much carbon as a car driven 26,000 miles.

And while you out driving around, check out the highway medians you see every day. Are workmen out there mowing on a regular basis? A lot of jurisdictions aren't doing that any more, both to save energy and to encourage native species which pay us back with the air we breathe.

Of course there is that whole cycle of nature thing, so all that carbon dioxide is cut loose as dying vegetative matter decomposes. So it would be good if you made your tree planting exercise an annual event.

There is a lot more to be gained from planting trees, but it ought to feel good just knowing that you have done something to be oxygen neutral or to make a stranger oxygen neutral.

## In Defense of Climate Change

February 2010 – Our core belief here at Planet Restart is that climate change is about more than climate, more than just statistics or trends. It is about the problems we face today: legal and illegal migrations, water shortages, disease outbreaks and pandemics, severe weather, oil shortages, overpopulation.

It is about people, all 7 billion of us. It is about our heavy footprint on the globe and our efforts to cope with changes that threaten their very way of life.

It is about places, whether on the land, or in the air, or sea. Glaciers are melting away. Arable land is turning into desert. Rain forests are being removed to make pastures and farms. The oceans are rising.

It is about politics as an instrument of reform or as a tool to preserve the status quo, business as usual.

It is about power, both the kind that stems from the barrel of a gun and the kind that you plug into. It is about preserving wealth either through draining every last bit of fossil fuel or emphasizing innovation and creativity to come up with new sustainable forms of energy.

You can see why the military understands the strategic implications of uncontained climate change. This is nothing new, yet every time a new report comes out about the military looking at the problem of climate change you hear the same sort of arguments from those who benefit by maintaining the status quo.

To me, the military is just being prudent. Let's make it easy and imagine a world where the idea that climate change caused by human activity hasn't entered the public debate. Now, imagine you are a military planner who knows nothing about weather or climate, who just looks at people and places as they are right now. What do you see?

You would see a world where certain populations are facing enormous strains because of shifting patterns of monsoons, diminished water supplies, irregular crop returns, rising incidences of disease, a steadily diminishing supply of vital energy sources.

In short, the classic ingredients for local and regional tensions that unresolved lead to conflicts and wars. That's why the military planners are turning their attention to this problem. And this is nothing new. Papers on this subject go back over many years. The issue of transnational water alone is enough to raise red flags in war rooms all across the globe.

So it is a good thing our military retains that old-fashioned virtue of prudence, a virtue once closely associated with conservatism, but which has been largely thrown under the bus in favor of a foolish ideological consistency.

## Is Global Warming A Bad Thing?

November 2009 – Is global warming bad for us? That question always makes more sense at the beginning of winter when a little global warming doesn't seem to be such a bad thing. God knows I wonder the same thing when the wind chill dips into the teens.

It is a good question that deserves a more complete answer than any that I can give, but in simple terms this is how I understand things. Global warming—whether caused by human activity or sun cycles or cow poop—leads to climate change. The changes in the climate can be quite different depending on where you live.

Truth be told, for some folks the changes may be good, or at least not too bad. Let's face it, if you live in North Dakota or upper Minnesota, a little global warming could be a damn good thing.

For others though, the changes can be quite detrimental. Climate change brings with it increasingly violent weather, shifts in crop zones, species migrations, increased disease. If you live in an area affected by these kinds of changes, then global warming is not so good.

The reason that climate change is not so much on everyone's radar is that the detrimental effects that are happening right now are being felt mostly in faraway places relative to Europe and the U.S., and among poorer people who can't blog about their daily lives.

If the adverse effects were being felt in New York, you can bet the whole political climate would be quite different. Of course, by the time that happens, it will be way too late to take any kind of effective action.

## Living with Climate Change

October 2009 – So what will it be like to live in a world that is undergoing dramatic climate change? Isn't that what we would like to be able to tell our children? Well, you don't really have to look all that far to start finding some answers.

Here is a typical assortment of headlines from today's news on climate change, courtesy of Bing:

Experts say climate change demands a sea change in planning... Indian PM says floods a 'national calamity'... Thai villager beats back waves, but faces new climate threat... NASA Ice Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning... Pollution killing world's coral reefs... Climate change causing havoc to coffee and tea farmers.

These stories highlight the changes big and small that are already happening all over the globe: extreme weather, food shortages, disease outbreaks, death, dislocations. None of this is new. The point of climate change is that it affects the severity and frequency of events such as these. Nothing new is going to happen; just much more of the same.

The real question is how well we will be prepared to deal with all this, both as individuals and as members of a global society. Dealing with the political, cultural, and economic aftershocks of climate change will require massive amounts of money to deal with immediate problems and to fund long-term solutions. The political systems are already struggling to find consensus. How much harder will it be to find that consensus in world filled with panicked people and governments?

I don't have the answers, but at least I think I am asking the right questions.

## Local Governments: A Climate of Crisis

July 2010 – This is a blog about climate change. Those who believe that climate change is real foresee a world of increasingly extreme weather, rising sea levels, shifting patterns of rainfall, changes in agricultural planting zones, shifting populations of animals and people... the list goes on and on.

For most of us here the United States, most of the impact of these changes will be dealt with by state and local governments. I know when we got 5 feet of snow last winter, our city and state budgets for snow removal were hit hard.

The financial collapse of 2007 and 2008 put many state and local governments into a very deep financial hole. Tax revenues fell while entitlement payments went up. Less tax dollars plus greater expenditures equals massive deficits. Unlike the federal government, which can borrow money to cover its deficits, state and local governments are required to have balanced budgets, which means cutting costs to meet falling revenues.

The bottom line is that state and local governments are barely able to keep up with routine requirements. If you look at natural disasters like tornados or earthquakes or hurricanes, you see two things. They are enormously expensive and take years even decades to recover from. What happens when something like climate change comes along?

Who will design and build levees along the East and West coasts to protect our major cities from rising sea levels? Who will upgrade the power grid and the cooling systems to deal with longer and more intense heat waves? Who will renegotiate the water rights agreements among states increasingly squeezed by declining annual rainfall levels? Who will cope with new waves of climate refugees?

All these things are coming at us with the inevitability of the next high tide. Will we do what it takes today to get ready? Not a chance. The cupboards are bare in most states, and what little there is must be used for things that are coming at administrators right now. Local, state, and federal elected officials are not going to worry about what might happen 20, 30 or 50 years from now, when the next election is just months away.

And so we continue with business as usual, going from day to day, missed opportunity to missed opportunity, our negligence and denial allowing today's ounce of prevention to become tomorrow's pound of cure.

## Ants Versus Man

February 2010 – This Father's Day, I was given a copy of Mark Moffett's new book _Adventures Among Ants_. It is true that I do tend to go on about ants and bees, but they offer us an important lesson about where they are and where mankind needs to be.

Ants comprise as much biomass as people and yet for the most part you would never know they are around. We see them, but don't really take note of them unless we see a string of them marching along our kitchen counter. They thrive in the dark places, the "interstices of things." And yet ant colonies can cover hundreds of miles and comprise millions, even billions, of ants. Ants, just doing what they do, make the soil richer.

Compare that to the ecological impact of humans. We routinely live beyond the means of our local environment. We destroy habitat rather than coexisting with it. We deplete resources rather than replenishing them.

If it came down to it and you were Mother Earth and you had to choose between the ants and the humans, who would you pick?

## Of Ants and Men

Proverb 6:6-8

6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!

7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,

8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

August 2009 – An ant brain has about 250,000 cells compared to a human brain, which has about 10 million cells. However, an ant colony of 40,000 ants would collectively have as many brain cells as a human brain.

Although it is impossible to know precisely, the studies of ant biomass that are referenced on the internet suggest that ants have a total biomass at least equal to that of humans. Best guess is that overall, ants comprise about 15 percent of the terrestrial animal biomass. In tropical regions such as the Amazon, that percentage could run as high as 30 percent.

What don't ants and mankind have in common? Well, obviously the human brain is much more developed.

_Homo sapiens_ has been around for somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years. And let's face it, in that relatively short period of time we have made a mess of things. It wasn't always that way. We used to have a relatively small global footprint. But then we figured out how to use fossil fuels as a source of energy to make our goods and to transport them to where they were needed.

Once we freed ourselves from the limitation of living on whatever was at hand, our population exploded. When the age of the machines fully geared up, we started pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing average global temperatures to steadily rise. In short, we are eating ourselves out of our planetary house and home and taking the violets and frogs with us.

So how is it that ants can have a biomass equal to ours without causing anywhere near the kind of problems we humans have? What do they have that we don't? How is it that ants have survived 100 million years in relative obscurity while we humans have put our mark on every corner of the globe?

Here's hoping we will last long enough to find out.

## Paper or Plastic?

April 2010 – So my wife and I are back in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for our annual week's vacation here. We stopped at the Wal-Mart to pick up some supplies and immediately ran into some breaking news. Effective September 2009, North Carolina banned plastic bags in large retail stores on the Outer Banks. Okay, so it isn't exactly breaking news, but it was still news to us.

The bill has a lot of whereas's and whereif's but basically it applies to large retailers (more than 5,000 square feet or operating a chain of 5 or more stores). Retailers covered by the law are prohibited from providing plastic bags and instead may only provide either a durable, reusable (cloth or plastic) bag or a paper bag made of 100% recycled content.

North Carolina has joined several other cities and counties within the United States as well as many countries around the world is attempting to do lower the use of plastic bags. Best estimates are that 500 billion bags are used world-wide each year, with the U.S. accounting for about 100 billion.

Of course there are those who will tell you that paper bags are no day at the beach either. They don't degrade all that well in landfills and of course are made from trees. And most plastic bags are recyclable. Still, there is a real difference between seeing a paper bag along the side of the road as opposed to a plastic bag. That paper bag will eventually just dissolve into the landscape, whereas the plastic bag will break up into hundreds of smaller pieces which in turn will can last for a thousand years. Plus you could eat that paper bag and it wouldn't kill you. And unlike plastic, you can fight your way out of a paper bag.

The real goal of these measures is to promote the use of reusable bags. Certainly a worthwhile goal, although I have a couple of them in my car but never remember to bring them in with me, so having a choice between paper or plastic (which I don't have anymore in most of the stores I shop in) would be nice.

What really struck me was the pride that the cashiers took in pointing out the new ban on plastic bags and its already visible impact on the beaches and shorelines of the Outer Banks. They felt like they were part of something good happening in their community, just through the simple act of using a paper bag instead of a plastic bag. Now that is something that money can't buy.

## Plant One!

June 2009 – Steers eat grass and fart methane gas, which contributes to global warming. Plants eat carbon dioxide and fart oxygen, which actually is a two-fer on the plus side. Clearly, it would be better to have fewer steers eating grass and farting methane and more plants eating carbon dioxide and farting air.

One of the reasons we have so many steers is that we eat a lot of meat. Now I enjoy a good cheeseburger just like a lot of other folks do. And honestly, I'm no more likely to give up eating meat than I am to give up driving my car. But I am willing to make small changes if it will help. If cutting back on cheeseburgers or driving less helps, then why not at least make the effort?

With that in mind, let's look at one approach that does seem to work: Carbon trading. To oversimplify, the government sets a permissible level of carbon emissions. Factories or power plants that exceed that level buy credits from the ones that don't. In essence, the CO2 producers pay a price and the CO2 reducers are rewarded.

I propose a similar plan to increase our awareness of the need for more oxygen farting plants. Everything needs a name, and this one is called Plant One! Here's how it works.

Every time you eat a hamburger you can earn a credit by planting something. It can be a flower, a tree, a vegetable, an herb, a house plant, anything, just so long as it engages in photosynthesis. So go ahead and enjoy that burger, but then take it further. Plant One

I know this won't solve the problems of the world, but it is something simple that most of us can do or are already doing. It's a way of reminding us that the more plants there are eating carbon dioxide and farting oxygen then the better off we all are. It can't hurt, and it might just help.

## The Big Power of Small Actions

September 2009 – I was riding home from work listening to National Public Radio. I know that sounds pathetically leftist, but they have a lot of really interesting programming without all the commercials, which means a lot when your commute only lasts 10 minutes.

Anyhow, they had this piece on the decline in the mortality rate of children 5 and under. Ann Veneman, the Executive Director of UNICEF, summed it up this way. "Compared to 1990, 10,000 fewer children are dying every day. While progress is being made, it is unacceptable that each year 8.8 million children die before their fifth birthday."

The radio story went on to talk about how much of the funding for the programs working around the world to reduce child mortality had come from small donations, Girl Scout cookie drives, that sort of thing. All those small gifts added up to big changes in the lives of children around the world.

So what does all this have to do with climate change? Well, this. I think that part of the problem the average person has with thinking about climate change is that the problem seems so huge. It is after a global problem, so it is easy to feel that there really isn't anything one person can do to make a difference.

And you know, that might be right. On the other hand, it may be that the problem isn't so much that small changes don't make a difference but that you can't see the difference being made. So if you are going to do something small you need to have a little faith in yourself and in what you are doing. Believe that it matters, and it will.

So what little thing do I do? Well, my thing is turning off lights around the house. God, I can't stand to see lights on in an empty room. The other thing I can't stand is to walk into a room and the television is blaring away and no one is there listening. I once showed my grandson the difference at the electric meter when the television is on and when it is off. Even I was surprised.

And while we are on the topic of watching television, do you really need to have a TV in every room in the house? So many people I know have a TV in the living room, one in the kitchen, and of course, one in the bedroom. I don't know about you, but I can't find that much worth watching any more that would justify having more than one television set.

So what is your small thing that you do to help reduce the energy usage where you are? Come on, I know there is something. Just think if 100 people commented about 100 different small things they do to save energy. Then you could really get a sense of the collective weight of that seemingly small thing you do.

## The Collective Power of Individual Actions

October 2009 – Climate change is such a huge problem that it's easy to feel powerless. Governments operate on a huge scale and don't seem to be making much headway, so what could one person possibly do to make a difference? Well, quite a bit if you are Vorapol Dounglomchan.

Thirty years ago he stood helplessly by and watched the ocean steadily eat away at the mouth of the Tha Chin River along the Gulf of Thailand. (Think New Orleans, and you will get the picture.)

The problem was caused by a combination of upstream dams that disturbed sediment build-up and the destruction of mangrove forests and their root systems that help preserve shallow estuaries. After watching 70 families abandon the area and 3,000 acres just disappear, Vorapol decided to try and do something.

After a decade of mostly failed attempts at constructing barriers he came up with the idea of using bamboo poles driven into the shoreline. That was 6 years ago. Eventually, his fellow villagers stopped making fun of him and pitched in to help.

Then the project caught the attention of Pinsak Suraswad, a marine biologist with Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, who stumbled upon the bamboo barrier while surveying the coastline.

Suraswad ran a few simulations through his computer and suggested a few alterations in the placement of the bamboo poles and what do you know, the damn thing began to work. The poles trapped sediment and prevented silt coming down river from escaping.

Today, several hundred meters of land have been restored and are nurturing mangrove saplings. Vorapol Dounglomchan's idea has been picked up and is being used elsewhere in the Gulf of Thailand.

Will it matter all that much in the long run? Hard to tell. Like most delta areas, including New Orleans, the land is sinking. Then there is the prospect of rising sea levels from global warming.

But for now, the sea is being held back thanks to the determination of one man fighting the tides, literally and figuratively. Somewhere, old King Canute must be looking down and smiling.

## Missed Chances

April 2009 – During the Bush administration, the prevailing official sentiment was to downplay or deny any relationship between human activities and climate change. This was partly because conservatives instinctively resisted any idea promoted by liberals like Al Gore and partly because a lot of very powerful industries with influence on both sides of the aisle favored delaying expensive changes for as long as possible.

Under the Obama administration, that will change... maybe. The Environmental Protection Agency has declared global warming a hazard, clearing the way for new regulations. This in turn will spur those who would rather have Congress write laws. But already the Congress is looking at cap-and-trade plans that lower targets and stretch out timelines to favor the big mid-western utilities.

So yes, change is coming. But will it come quickly enough to take us from the worst case scenarios down to more manageable scenarios? In our view, the realistic answer is "Probably not?"

This is where the Bush administration really hurt us. Some of the proposals being floated today might have been okay 8 years ago. But every day a new study comes out saying that things are getting worse faster than expected all across the board. So if you ask how much we lost during the eight years of inactivity and outright obstructionism of the Bush administration then the answer has to be, "Too much."

Editor's Note: The recapturing of the House of Representatives by the Republicans in 2010 effectively ended any hope of major action on climate change until 2012, if then. Given the political climate, I would venture to say that no meaningful efforts will be taken to address the issue of climate change until it is too late... which, by the way, it already is.

## The Front Lines of Climate Change

July 2009 – The blogosphere is filled with climate change skeptics. One place you won't find them is among military strategic planners. They take climate change and global warming quite seriously as an increasingly important factor in defense policy.

For those folks, the front lines can be found at the North Pole, where melting of the Arctic ice cover is proceeding so rapidly that many expect the long dreamed of Northwest Passage to be open for business within the next 5 years.

Five countries – Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark (acting for Greenland), and Norway – have at least some coastline along the Arctic Ocean. Some countries have been busily laying the groundwork for claiming newly accessible territory. Two years ago, Russia literally planted its flag on the Arctic shelf at a depth of 2.5 miles in order to bolster its claims to mineral rights.

Given its strategic importance, the Arctic will be an important test bed for new global policies and politics dealing with climate change. The United States Navy has established a Task Force on Climate Change. The goal is to come up with plans for "adapting force structure and operations to the coming creation of new Arctic sea lanes and other environmental changes."

Among the many areas that will test relations between the United States and Russia, look for this to be an emerging area of conflict. Russian submarines are used to playing war games under the ice cover. As that cover retreats, you can expect to hear about more and more confrontations between the American and Russian navies as they test each others resolve to establish territorial rights in the last great unclaimed frontier on earth.

A new great game is about to begin.

## Another Wake-Up Call

June 2009 – Sometimes you wonder if you are just a crazy person with a crazy idea. At Planet Restart, the focus is on educating folks to the realities of climate change and what it means for their children and grandchildren. It is good to save the planet, but it is wise to have a Plan B just in case our best efforts are too little, too late.

Certainly there are a whole lot of folks who do not buy into climate change, much less that this is the single most important problem we face. And while there are a whole lot of sites focused on preventing climate change, there are relatively few sites that deal exclusively with the impact on climate change on the lives of ordinary people.

So it was nice to find other groups who see things in much the same way as we do here at Planet Restart. The Human Impact Report recently issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum echoes the main themes being developed here at Planet Restart.

-Climate change is undeniable.

-The human cost is already enormous and is growing more rapidly than predicted.

-Climate change acts as a multiplier of human impacts and risks.

The report lays this out in very direct language that conveys not merely the scope of the impact but the inevitability of the coming changes.

This report clearly shows that climate change is already causing widespread devastation and suffering around the planet today. Furthermore, even if the international community is able to contain climate change, over the next decades human society must prepare for more severe climate change and more dangerous human impacts.

Events like weather-related disasters, desertification and rising sea levels, exacerbated by climate change, affect individuals and communities around the world. They bring hunger, disease, poverty, and lost livelihoods - reducing economic growth and posing a threat to social and, even, political stability.

The Executive Summary lays out the annual toll taken by climate change: 300,000 dead, 325 million people seriously affected, 500 million people at extreme risk, 4 billion people vulnerable, $125 billion in economic losses.

What is hard for many folks—myself included—is to make the connection between disasters in some faraway place like Bangladesh and your life wherever you live. We know that destroying the rain forest is bad, but we also need to understand that "hunger, disease, poverty, and lost livelihoods" made worse by climate change have serious political and social consequences that can easily ripple across the globe to your front doorstep.

## The Last Decade of Doubt About Climate Change

December 2009 – This week the 21st Century enters its teens. By the end of this decade we will know with absolute certainty who was right, those of us who believe that human activity has lead to a global warming trend that in turn will spawn massive climate change or those who say that there is no warming trend or even if there is then human activity is not a big factor in it.

In looking at how my own thinking has changed, the one thing I see more clearly now is that climate change is but one of many forces working to disrupt the balance of life on the planet. All of these forces have one thing in common: There are too many of us.

We are expanding our habitat at the expense of other living things. We are consuming vast amounts of natural resources to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves. We are leaving behind too much waste in the air, on the land, and at sea. All of this is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on geophysical and ecological systems that generally process change over centuries and millennia rather than years and decades.

The great fear is that we will push things past the tipping point of no return, which could come with surprising swiftness. If you have children and grandchildren this is the thing that matters, the thing to be watching out for. Sitting here today, I would say the prudent person would follow at least these three trend indicators:

**Don't Forget About Russia** : We focus on the United States and China, but the key to rapid climate change may be in Russia, where vast peat bogs the size of France and Germany combined are thawing. These bogs are packed with organic material that will decompose and in the process release tremendous amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is to carbon dioxide as a stick of dynamite is to a firecracker. When the methane does hit the fan, the Russian government will go into denial and delay rather than admit that it screwed up.

**Watch the Animals**. A recent report in Nature noted that animals will have to adjust their ranges by several hundred meters per year in order to keep up with global warming. This touches on the one argument I make about climate change that no one can refute: the response of the natural world to changes in habitat. Forget Climategate. Watch the animals and the plants and judge for yourself if they are adapting to climate change.

**Study The Oceans**. The debate centers around emissions from human industrial activity. But the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, is the oceans. First, they are an enormous pot of water that will keep on heating up long after any remedial measures are taken. Second, the seas are rising, partly for melting ice and partly from expansion due to heating. Third, the sea is becoming more acid thanks to all that carbon that it stores, which in turn affects the very foundations of the food chain.

Each of these is a process that is continually monitored and measured. By the end of this decade we will know with absolute certainty the direction these three markers are taking. In the meantime, keep your own eye on things, make your own judgment. Act as if your life depends upon it. It certainly does for your children and grandchildren.

## The Lessons of Winter

February 2010 – I live in the mid-Atlantic region where the winters have been so mild over the last few years that a reasonably hard winter comes as something of a shock. This year's winter here in the mid-Atlantic region has been reminiscent of the winters of the 1950's that I grew up with in New England.

In those days, it was not unusual for snow to be on the ground for weeks on end. Temperatures would get so cold that the manual transmission grease would thicken into an unmovable glob inside the gearbox. If you were forgetful enough to leave it in gear when you parked the car the night before, then you sit there with your foot on the clutch until the engine warmed the grease sufficiently to allow you to put it in neutral.

What I loved best was how quiet it was. Snow seems to absorb sound, allowing us to experience the primeval silence that existed before the machine age, a silence broken only by the sounds of nature, be it the gentle burbling of a stream freshly quickened by melting snow or the harsh screech of a blue jay that warns of dangers unseen.

Winter is a season that has teeth. Winter thins the herd. It kills off the germs and the weeds, and it will kill you too if you get give it half a chance. But that cleansing sets the stage for a new season of growth.

You often hear people jokingly say that global warming is a good thing if it brings with it milder winters. But within each gain there is loss. The sharp elbows of winter keep us on our toes, puts nature right in our faces. If the science of climate change is correct then we will need to be on our toes. We will need to be heedful of the natural world.

Winter may be harsh teacher, but mankind is still at a point where some lessons must be learned the hard way. I fear that climate change is one of them.

## The National Security Implications of Climate Change

August 2009 – One of the reasons we in America have ignored global warming is because it mostly happens to people we don't usually pay much attention to: the poor and the destitute in Asia and Africa. But the world is a volatile place, as the military and intelligence communities well know. Ethnic and religious tensions fuel local and regional wars. Droughts and food shortages demand a humanitarian response.

As hundreds of millions of people begin to move around in response to loss of habitat and livelihoods, we Americans will feel the ripple effects. It's good that our military and intelligence communities are taking this topic seriously. If only that could be said of the politicians who must ultimately make the choices that will either make things better or allow things to continue to drift into uncontrollable change.

We will have a much better idea of how much progress is likely after the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. If the conference results in the usual delaying tactics and putting off of serious decisions, then I would guess that further serious climate change is a certainty. If on the other hand serious agreements to reduce emissions are put in place, then perhaps we will avoid the worst effects.

A prudent government hedges its bets, which explains the renewed emphasis on the military and intelligence aspects of global warming even as the U.S. Congress struggles to come up with a solution during this session. We can assume other governments are doing the same. Can we as individuals afford to do any less?

##

## The One True Thing About Climate Change

December 2009 – The days and weeks leading up to the big conference on climate change in Copenhagen next week have been dominated by the now infamous Climate-gate, the release of thousands of e-mails from East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit. The head of that unit, Phil Jones, has stepped down, which is as it should be.

The e-mails reveal a small group of scientists increasingly caught up in the _sturm und drang_ generated by those who deny the reality of climate change in general and anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in particular.

Like most such media storms, there is more heat than light, but that is in the nature of the beast. Can anyone doubt that the timing of the release of the e-mails, which had been sitting in a server for quite some time, was calculated to have a maximum impact right before the Copenhagen meeting. If that was the intent, then it was hugely successful. Score one for their side.

Now what? Where do we go from here? Well, I suspect it will be more of the same. Some would say this is a sign that we do indeed live in the Age of Stupid. To me, it is more about living in the Age of Certitude.

As you look through blogs that specialize in climate change, the one thing that strikes you is the absolute blinding certitude that people have in their interpretation of the facts and trends in climate science.

Some of these folks are indeed scientists, and I can tell you from personal experience that scientists can be as pig-headed and obstinate in their interpretation of "facts" as the next guy. Most are amateurs like me who may have little or no formal training in climate science or any other science for that matter.

Here at Planet Restart we make no bones about where we begin in this debate. We are believers, pure and simple. But that doesn't mean we think that we know all the answers. Far from it.

Uncertainty is part of life. To sit here and say positively, "Yes this will happen 30 or 50 or 100 years from now" is ridiculous. What we can say is that in our best judgment change is coming, and we need to teach our children to be watchful. They need to pay close attention to the natural world and its inhabitants. How animals, both land and sea, small and large, react to the environment is the only true thing in all of this.

Too bad they don't have a blog.

## The Party's Over

April 2011 – If Earth was an empty sphere, devoid of any life, then climate change wouldn't matter. The periodic bouts of warming and cooling that have occurred over the last few billion years for the most part were played out on an empty stage.

The advent of life changed that in two ways. First, there was now something that we see as having value that was affected by changing climates. The word extinction has meaning only in the context of a life, be it plant or animal. Second, living organisms became a part of the process of climate change by either dampening or accelerating the process.

The current episode of climate change is unique not in the fact that it is happening but in the circumstance that life forms are playing a major in creating and accelerating the process. While some will deny it, the evidence seems overwhelming that human activity relating to the tremendous burst in economic growth over the last 150 years has lead to a rapid and accelerating rise in average global temperatures largely due to burning fossil fuels.

The consequences of all this human economic activity go beyond just global warming. Population levels are climbing at a rate equally as alarming as global average temperatures. Fossil fuel supplies are declining at an equally rapid rate, forcing the exploitation of ever more difficult to get at sources. This in turn leads to aggravated assault on the environment, be it mountaintop removal or oil spills or pollution.

Anyone who thinks we can just keep going on like this—extravagantly exploiting and despoiling the environment to feed our hunger for the better things in life—is deluded. It isn't fair that those of us lucky enough to get to the banquet first have ruined for everyone else. We ate foods imported from all over the world; our kids will have to get by on whatever they can grow in their backyards.

## The Pendulum Swings on Global Warming

August 2010 – At the beginning of this year, you couldn't find a story that had anything good to say about climate change. Public opinion was turned off by the calamitous spectacle of confusion and ineffectiveness on display at the December Conference of Parties meeting in Copenhagen. Those who denied climate change were on the rise, their ascendancy seemingly cemented in place by the now infamous Climate-gate.

Now a different sort of calamity occupies the front pages. Floods in Pakistan. Wild fires in Russia. Mud slides in China. Floods in Iowa. The weather seems to have run amok, and more and more you hear people wondering if maybe those guys who kept talking about how global warming would lead to more extreme weather might not have had a point after all.

This comes amid of increasingly dire warnings from the scientific community that global warming is real, that it is changing our planet's climate, and that it is happening faster than expected. So who do you believe? Who do you trust?

My answer remains the same. Trust the animals. Trust the plants. Trust your gut. Animals don't need a poll to tell them their habitat has changed and it is time to move on. Fish don't need NOAA to tell them the water is warmer and the feeding range has shifted north. Plants don't need CNN to tell them the grass is now greener on the other side of the mountain.

Above all, we don't need much of a scientific background to understand that all the billions of tons of automobile exhaust and industrial emissions we have been spewing into the air can't be natural or good for us. We don't need to be rocket scientists to understand that fossil fuels of any kind are ultimately finite resources which will need to be replaced something.

Adapt or die is the rule of nature. We humans have faced this alternative many times before, but never when there were so many of us, never when we were so intricately bound together in a massive house-of-cards global community that was built on the shifting sands of fossil fuel.

You can listen to the voices that say "Don't worry, it isn't happening." Or you can accept the reality that nature keeps pushing at you each day. Things are changing. It is time once more to adapt. Failure is not an option.

## The Price We Have to Pay

May 2010 – Our climate is changing rapidly in response to the high levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have been rapidly introduced into the atmosphere due to human activities related to producing and consuming energy from various fossil fuels. _The impact of climate change includes rising sea levels, more extreme weather, unpredictable rainfall patterns leading to droughts in some regions and too much rain in others._

Fossil fuels are a finite energy source. The easy pickings are gone, which means that extracting fossil fuels from the earth will become increasingly more difficult and expensive. _Severe economic disruptions due to declining availability of fossil fuels will be felt long before the sources are depleted._

By the year 2040, total world population is projected to grow to 9 billion. These people will need to be fed, clothed, and sheltered. They will want cars and televisions and cell phones. _The demand for goods and services in developing nations like China and India and Brazil will require enormous increases in industry and infrastructure, all of which currently rely on fossil fuels as their energy source, the same fossil fuels that are becoming harder and harder to extract._

Bottom Line: We are dramatically altering the climate with fossil fuel emissions at the same time that more and more of us will be demanding more energy capacity from fossil fuels that will be ever more difficult to extract.

So what's the answer? Well, the first thing that all of us can do is make what fossil fuels we have left last longer by using less of them. Turn off those lights and the television when you aren't in the room. Live closer to where you work so you don't have to drive as much. Plant a tree, plant a flower, plant a vegetable, plant anything legal that has leaves.

The other big thing we need to do is to convert our energy industry to non-fossil fuel sources. This won't happen unless the price of fossil fuel energy is made high enough to make other forms of energy more competitive. I have come to believe that a tax on carbon is the simplest most effective way to reach that goal.

But wait a minute. Does anyone see that happening any time soon? Does anyone see enough alternative energy sources coming on line quickly enough to keep the overall increase in average global temperatures below the level that most scientists feel would lead to moderate or severe impacts? I don't.

What does that mean, worst case scenario? Major regional disruptions, including wars over diminished resources. Major loss of life due to starvation and disease. The end of a lifestyle built on cheap fossil fuels.

Don't want that to happen? Then accept the fact that we have to do whatever it takes to end our fossil fuel addiction. Pay the price now so your grandchildren's children can have some hope of a decent life.

## The Ultimate in Going Green

September 2009 – I've just finished touring a part of the world's oldest and largest factory. It is an immense structure that runs 24/7, and yet, there is not a smokestack in sight. This factory uses no electricity, runs completely on solar power, and requires no workforce. This factory invented the idea of recycling. You could say it is the ultimate green operation.

It is not in America's Rust Belt or in one of China's burgeoning industrial zones. This factory stretches for over 2,000 miles, beginning in the great northern pine forests of Maine and ending in the scrub pines of northern Florida. It is the great woodlands of America's East Coast.

The analogy of woodlands to industry is important, I think, because it reminds us that trees are more than just scenery. A tree is a working factory that processes water and minerals and releases oxygen and takes up carbon dioxide, a process that helps to maintain the only known atmosphere in the galaxy capable of sustaining life. As such, trees are worthy of as much protection as any other vital industry would receive.

We have this, thanks to the foresight of such great conservationists as Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. They understood the importance of the natural world and worked hard to pass laws protecting our great natural treasures and resources, in effect saving us from ourselves.

We Americans haven't been perfect in this regard, but we did get the message on the environment pretty early on and have worked as hard as any other nation to promote clean air and water and to preserve what we could of our woodlands. This remains an important example we can provide to the developing world, as an example of where our deeds have for once matched our words.

Could we have done more? Sure. Will we need to do more? Absolutely, but at least we have a solid foundation on which to base even greater efforts at saving and expanding our woodlands. We just need to think of it as expanding our industrial base.

## The Uncertainty Principle

February 2010 – A battle rages for the hearts and minds of people and policy-makers over the issue of climate change. This tug of war is inevitable when the stakes are high. For the fossil fuel industry, the stakes are the jobs and profits that come from extracting and converting fossil fuels into essential products that heat our homes, fuel our cars, and create the plastics we are utterly dependent upon.

On the other side are those who urge an immediate and total effort to wean our civilization off of its dependence on fossil fuels in order to avoid what they see as a looming catastrophe of runaway climate change that will affect every life form on the planet in some way.

Right now, the doubters and deniers have the momentum. That will change over time, partly because it always does and partly because there are some facts over which there can be no doubt:

We have pumped massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last 200 years.

Fossil fuels are a finite resource that will become prohibitively expensive to extract long before they run out.

A global population climbing towards the 9 billion mark will consume more and more of everything.

How much more certain do we need to be that the present course of satisfying short-term needs leads inevitably to a long-term disaster unless something is done to change how we sustain our selves? Here are some ideas—what the folks at the  National Academy of Sciences call "Potential No-Regrets Strategies:"

**Energy policies**. Options to slow climate change, such as moving away from coal-burning toward other fuels, can also have benefits in reducing health or environmental effects of emissions.

**Ecological policies**. In land-use and coastal planning, managers may be helped by information on the effects of nonlinear climate changes on ecosystems. Scientists and government organizations at various levels could collaborate to develop and implement regulations and policies that reduce environmental degradation of water, air, and biota.

**Forecasting of weather and weather-related events**. The frequency and intensity of hurricanes and other storms could increase as a result of an abrupt climate change, having large societal impacts. Efforts to improve forecasting and alert capabilities can reduce the loss of life by facilitating evacuations.

## Three Crises Our Children Will Inherit

August 2009 – I used to think that climate change was _the_ problem facing my children and grandchildren. Now that I have done some further thinking and reading, I can see that climate change is just part of a three-fold nightmare that will unfold over the next 20 to 30 years.

**Climate Change** : The earth is getting warmer and the scientific consensus is that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for the current up tick in average global temperatures as compared to the pre-Industrial Revolution period. A warming earth brings rising sea levels, excessive rainfall in some areas and droughts in others, increased disease, shifts in agricultural zones.

**Peak Oil** : The world is consuming petroleum faster than we can pump it out of the ground. That means we can either shift to other types of fossil fuels (coal or oil sands) and just keep on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or we move away from petroleum to other alternative energy sources. That won't be cheap, but then neither will the continued use of petroleum as supplies get scarcer and demand climbs higher.

**Population** : We will soon reach the 9 billion mark, and we are getting older along the way. By 2030 there will be 1 billion people aged 65 or over. Hundred of millions of us live near the ocean's edge, areas very directly threatened by rising sea levels. Millions more will be on the move due to water shortages or shifts in agricultural zones. In those areas of the world where ethic or tribal or religious tensions already run high, things will just get that much worse.

That is one hell of a record of wretched excess that we are leaving to our children. And in spite of all scientific reasoning and plain old common sense, there are still those who resist doing what little is still possible to moderate the impact of these problems, who insist that none of this is happening, who claim that it is all some leftist conspiracy to do... what?

It remains my firm belief that the apostles of denial will earn the well-deserved scorn of future generations. What they will think about those of us who tried but so far haven't gotten nearly enough done... well, that story is still being written.

## Three Questions From The Future

April 2010 – The Watergate scandal immortalized two questions: What did you know, and when did you know it? A couple of decades from now my grandchildren will have their own questions that need answers. What did we know about climate change? When did we know it? What did we do about it? Good questions that deserve honest answers.

What did we know? Well, we knew for sure that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas. When we did know that? Oh, since 1859, when John Tyndall made the connection. By 1896, thanks to the work of Svante Arrhenius and Arvid Högbom, we knew that factories burning coal were adding what could potentially be a significant amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

What else did we know, and when did we know it? By 1931 a physicist named E.O. Hulbert had confirmed that doubling or halving CO2 would bring something like a 4° Celsius rise or fall of surface temperature. His work was ignored until the 1950's when, thanks to the Cold War and computers, scientists were able to better understand the relationship between carbon dioxide and infrared radiation and again came up with a 3° - 4° Celsius rise in temperature.

During this same period, it was also confirmed that the ocean could not absorb very much carbon dioxide. In 1965, scientists suspected enough to suggest that, "By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2... may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate." Hmmm. A smoking gun if ever there was one.

By the late 1970's, methane was understood to be far more potent than carbon dioxide. By 1981, scientists were predicting that the turn of the century (the year 2000) CO2 levels would be such that "a climate change significantly larger than any which has occurred in the past century could be unavoidable."

I could go on, but you get the picture. What did we know? Plenty. When did we know it? For sure, at least 30 years ago. And what did we do about it? Not nearly enough.

_(The inspiration and facts supporting this essay came from_ Spencer Weart's The History of Global Warming _.)_

## Transparent Aluminum

August 2009 – This is slightly off topic for Planet Restart, but sometimes you come across a story that really captures your imagination. Scientists recently created a whole new state of matter that has never been seen before. Now that isn't something that happens every day.

The discovery came when researchers at Oxford University's Department of Physics bombarded aluminum with an incredibly intense burst of light energy from a special type of laser. The pulse stripped away an electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure. This made the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.

Now if you asked me to explain that in plain English I would have to say I haven't got a clue what that really means, but I can only infer from the news accounts that it is something quite extraordinary. Transparent aluminum has hitherto been confined to the realm of science fiction (the term was coined in a Star Trek movie), but for 40 femtoseconds* it was part of our world.

Professor Justin Wark of Oxford put it this way: "What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before.... What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminum into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser. For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter."

What does this mean for climate change? Nothing, really. But it does serve as a reminder that there are new discoveries waiting to be made, discoveries that can change everything.

Mankind faces a crisis the like of which has never been experienced in recorded history. Maybe there are other game changers like transparent aluminum waiting to be found that will help us deal with this crisis. Maybe not.

Either way, it is good to know that there are still whole realms of science still to be imagined, never mind explored. As someone who grew up watching Star Trek, it is nice to believe in the possibilities, if only for a few femtoseconds.

* A femtosecond is a millionth of a nanosecond, which in turn is a billionth of a second.

## Climate Change and Population Shifts

July 2009 – One of the things I have learned about climate change is that it is about a whole lot more than climate. It is about people and places, politics and power.

If you think about it, climate change wouldn't matter nearly as much if population levels were at pre-Christian era levels when the whole world's population was less than that of a major American city like Chicago or Los Angeles.

During the last 2,000 years, the globe has gotten a lot smaller and a whole lot more crowded. Current estimates put the world's population at about 6.7 billion people. By the year 2040, the world population is projected to grow to 9 billion, a gain of nearly 50 percent.

When the topic of climate change and population comes up, most of the discussion focuses on the fact that nearly 1 out of every 10 persons on the globe lives in a low-lying area. That's about 600 million people who will have to cope with rising sea levels, increasingly violent storms, and shifting patterns of rainfalls.

A  recent study released by the National Institute of Aging adds another twist to the climate change picture: A rapidly aging global population.

"In 2006, almost 500 million people worldwide were 65 and older. By 2030, that total is projected to increase to 1 billion—1 in every 8 of the earth's inhabitants. Significantly, the most rapid increases in the 65-and-older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a jump of 140 percent by 2030."

The report also noted that the fastest growing portion of many national populations is people aged 85 and older. (For the first time in history, and probably for the rest of human history, people age 65 and over will outnumber children under age 5.) And within 10-15 years chronic non-communicable diseases (heart disease, cancer, and diabetes) will cause more deaths than infectious and parasitic diseases. All of this will take place within the context of declining overall populations in many countries.

Why does it matter? Governments will have to deal with climate change while at the same time they will be coping with major societal shifts due to an aging population. Anyone who has worked with older people can tell you that just about everything you want to do gets more complicated and takes more time and costs more money. It really gets hard when you are talking about people in their 80's.

A lot of attention is paid to numbers such as 450ppm and 2 degrees Celsius. We need to add another number when we think about climate change: 1 billion persons aged 65 or over by the year 2030. That's a lot of very vulnerable people who will be faced with major challenges that come from shifts in climate and resources and populations.

## Unmistakable Evidence

April 2009 – Just days after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to throw in the towel on cap and trade legislation, NOAA comes out with a report stating that "the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable." Gee, you think that might have changed a few hearts and minds if the news had come out last week?

Probably not, but we will never know. What we do know, according to 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 states, is that the past decade was the warmest on record, and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years. We know that the ten leading indicators of global warming are all moving in exactly the direction that would be expected if the earth was getting warmer.

The bad news doesn't end there. A new report in the journal Nature asserts that phytoplankton—the little engine that drives much of the ocean's food chain and which pumps a whole lot of oxygen into the atmosphere—underwent a 40 percent drop between 1950 and 2008. This news is so alarming that some scientists just couldn't bear to believe it.

Peter Franks, a phytoplankton ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said that if this is true, "there's a lot of bad stuff going on." Another scientist, Marlon Lewis, said, "The toughest hurdle I had was coming to grips with the results. We sent Daniel back I can't tell you how many times to redo the calculations or look at it in different ways."

Meanwhile, some conservative commentators continue to insist that global warming is nothing to get shook up about. Their prescription for change is to "wait, get richer, and then try to muddle through" Future generations will see this as the ultimate "Let them eat cake" moment in the battle over climate change

## Thinking the Unthinkable

April 2009 – In 1960, a then relatively unknown futurist named Herman Kahn wrote a book called "On Thermonuclear War." In his book he explored in detail the ramifications of a nuclear war, down to giving old people food contaminated by radiation because, what the hell, they were going to die soon enough from old age anyway.

When the book first appeared, he was widely vilified as monster for "thinking about the unthinkable." Looking back, we realize now that a lot of people had simply been hiding their heads in the sand and were unhappy at what they were forced to see once someone made them look.

Some might look at what we are doing here at Planet Restart and say that we are also thinking about the unthinkable. Well, so what? To say that we need to begin preparing our children for the harsh realities of a world they may have to live in is... what? Irresponsible? Defeatist? Delusional?

Maybe so, but here at Planet Restart we are placing our bet on two long-term trends. First, environmental change is real and is happening faster than expected. Second, the political leaders of the world will come to their senses a day late and a dollar short, just like always. Sounds like a pretty safe bet to me.

We Americans are optimists by nature, but I have talked with a lot of parents who upon being presented with the basic premises of Planet Restart can do little but agree, however reluctantly. So go ahead and stick your head in the sand if that is what makes you more comfortable. For the rest of you, dive in and help us build the tools to help our children navigate vast distances through time to a future we can only imagine.

## What Do I Say To My Grandchildren?

August 2009 – The premise behind Planet Restart is that our grandchildren will live a world that is very different from the world we see around us today. So what can we do to help them get ready for that world?

The questions they will have won't be any different. What am I going to do to earn a living? Where will I end up living? Will I get married and have kids?

What _will_ change are the answers. What works today cannot be guaranteed to work in 20 or 30 years. Climate change is about more than climate. It is cultural change and social change and political change: changing job markets and changing life styles.

The difference here is that we aren't just talking about a neighborhood going downhill or a the local mill shutting down, something you can fix by moving to a different neighborhood or a new town. The uniqueness of the climate change crisis is in its global reach. This is unlike anything we have ever faced.

So what advice should I be giving to my kids? Honestly, I'm not sure I'm smart enough to know. For now, I would tell anyone who listens to make climate change an integral part of their thinking and their decision process. Not 20 or 30 years from now, but starting today. And it might not be a bad idea to find other people who feel the same way and see what they are up to.

## What If I'm Right and They Are Wrong?

November 2009 – I firmly believe that global warming as a result of excess greenhouse gas emissions caused by from human activities is happening right now. I further believe that this global warming is triggering a series of events cumulatively referred to as climate change. Some of these changes may be not so bad, others not so good.

Obviously, not everyone agrees with me. There are people out there who say that human-based global warming is not real, that the science is sketchy, the supporting arguments too weak to support the massive changes proposed to deal with it.

What if I am right and they are wrong? What if climate change is real? What happens if we undertake solutions to deal with human-based global warming due to excess greenhouse gas emissions? Let's see.

Well, if I'm right, we would promote cleaner air policies. We would begin to shift away from reliance on fossil fuels to other forms of energy, preserving fossil fuel for more essential uses for as long as possible. We would push even harder for more fuel efficient cars. We would stop chopping down trees in the Amazon to raise cattle to feed us our hamburgers.

What if the deniers are wrong? Climate change continues, perhaps accelerates. The atmosphere grows warmer. Sea levels rise. Species boundaries shift. Certain diseases that love warm weather flourish and expand. Weather extremes become the new norm.

You tell me, which represents the safer bet, the smarter bet? Going on as we are and hoping that things work out or making changes that we know we should be doing anyway. You figure it out.

## What We Know

June 2010 – We know that the earth is getting warmer. That much is increasingly more evident with each passing year. The trend over the last 150 years or so is undeniable.

We know that global warming is leading to climate change, which may be manifested in any number of ways depending on where you are. The general trend will be towards more extreme weather events, including unusually cold weather as well as unusually hot weather. I live near Washington D.C., which is coming out of one of the worst winters in history and moving into one of the hottest June's in history.

We know what caused the earth's temperature to rise: an increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to burning fossil fuels to power our cars, our electric grid, and our factories. Coal is the number one culprit here and it is bound to get worse as developing economies like China and India consume ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels in their entirely reasonable pursuit of becoming developed nations.

We know that fossil fuels like coal and petroleum are finite resources. The more we dig up the harder it will become to dig up more. The harder it gets to find and extract fossil fuels, the more expensive they will get. And as the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico shows, the riskier it can get. Whether you are talking about mountaintops in West Virginia, oil sands in Canada, or deep sea drilling wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the potential impact on the local environment can be devastating.

We know that fossil fuels like coal and petroleum are dirty. The cause air pollution and a whole host of related health problems. A year ago the EPA declared fossil fuels to be a threat to human health and the environment. An attempt in the Senate to block EPA from enforcing that rule was recently defeated in the U.S. Senate, but the future of energy legislation remains uncertain at best.

We know that we need to begin to wean ourselves off of coal and oil. They are dangerous to humans. They are dangerous to the planet. We know how to do it. Alternative energy sources and technologies are as abundant as the sun or the wind or the seas.

What we _don't_ know is how to convince ourselves that this sacrifice must be made for the sake of our children and grandchildren. What we _don't_ know is how to abandon the easy path of just doing what we have always done in exchange for the expensive and difficult work of rebuilding our society in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance at enjoying the same planet we have known.

## Why Didn't They Do Something?

January 2010 – Could be there is a reason why every major civilization has perished. Change came and they either never saw it coming or they failed to react to it in a timely or effective manner.

Most times the immediate cause was military conquest. But that conquest was often preceded by a period of arrogance and inattentiveness. Leaders failed to notice the day-by-day incremental disintegration around the edges that left their civilization vulnerable to conquest. The Roman Empire comes to mind.

Sometimes they were the victims of a major paradigm shift, a displacement of time and culture that swallowed them up whole. The Incas and Aztecs were conquered by a civilization that was so far ahead of them they might as well have been travelers from outer space. How else to explain how a small army could so easily overwhelm an entire civilization?

In our time, we have seen two major empires disappear: the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Empire. The first was a crumbling-around-the-edges-to-big-to-keep-itself-together type collapse. The second was caught in the slow motion paradigm shift that began with the French and American revolutions. People everywhere just want to be free, that sort of thing.

So that explains why we can go to Peru and explore vine covered pyramids and discover entire cities lost in the jungle, or we can travel to Rome to visit the coliseum, or maybe go to Egypt and visit the pyramids.

In their day, each of the empires ruled a wide swath of territory and introduced tremendous advances in religion and science. Today, they are all gone. Disappeared, leaving behind only a few buildings and statues as evidence of their existence.

Now our civilization finds itself facing a similar fate. We are witnessing the slow motion overtaking of everything we see around us today by the grinding inevitability of climate change and peak oil. Future historians will look back and ask, "How could they not see this coming? Why didn't they do something?"

My answer would be, "We tried to tell them it was coming, but the leaders wouldn't listen. They just kept on doing what they do to stay in power. When they finally did see the light, it was too late."

What's your answer?

About The Author

G.J. Lau lives in a small city just far enough away from Washington DC to be somewhere else. After a long career in government, he has settled into the world of working retirement that awaits most people these days.

## **A Beginner's Glossary of Climate Change Terms**

**This listing is by no means complete or comprehensive, but I have tried to include most of the terms that crop up in articles on climate change. Any errors that may have crept in during the simplification process are entirely my own.**

**Acidification –** As the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the water becomes more acid. This reduces the supply of calcium carbonate, which corals and other marine life need to build their structures.

**Aeroso** l: Airborne solid or liquid particles in the atmosphere. Aerosols scatter and absorb radiation and help make clouds. Their effect on global warming is still being explored.

**Anthropogenic –** Anything that is the result of human activity, specifically in this context, the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

**Carbon Dioxide (CO2):** CO2 is a normal part of the ambient air. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by approximately 30 percent since the industrial revolution.

**Climate:** Climate is weather looked at over a long period of time, usually a minimum of 30 years.

**Climate Change** : Any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.

**Climate model:** A numerical representation of the climate system that is used to study climate characteristics.

**Climate (change) scenario:** A climate scenario consists of projections of possible climate futures, containing developments of driving forces, greenhouse gas emissions, temperature change and sea level rise and their key relationships. A climate change scenario is the difference between a climate scenario and the current climate.

**Emissions:** The release of a substance (usually a gas when referring to the subject of climate change) into the atmosphere.

**Forcing Mechanism:** Any process that alters the relative balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation from Earth. Such mechanisms include changes in light output from the sun, volcanic eruptions, and enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect by emissions of greenhouse gases.

**Global Warming** : The progressive gradual rise of the Earth's average surface temperature as compared to pre-industrial times.

**Global Warming Potential (GWP):** A system of multipliers devised to enable warming effects of different gases to be compared using CO2 as a base. Effects of emissions of a mass unit of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are estimated as multiples. For example, over the next 100 years, a gram of methane (CH4) in the atmosphere is currently estimated as having 23 times the warming effect as a gram of carbon dioxide; methane's 100-year GWP is thus 23. Estimates of GWP vary depending on the time-scale considered (e.g., 20-, 50-, or 100-year GWP) because the effects of some GHGs are more persistent than others.

**Greenhouse Effect** : The insulating effect of atmospheric greenhouse gases (e.g., water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) that keeps the Earth's temperature warmer than it would be otherwise. If the atmospheric concentrations of these greenhouse gases rise, the average temperature of the lower atmosphere will gradually increase.

**Greenhouse Gas (GHG)** : Any gas that absorbs infrared radiation in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), ozone (O3 ), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).

**Infrared Radiation** : Radiation emitted by the Earth's surface, the atmosphere and the clouds.

**Methane (CH4)** : Atmospheric CH4 is produced by natural processes, but there are also substantial emissions from human activities such as landfills, livestock and livestock wastes, natural gas and petroleum systems, coalmines, rice fields, and wastewater treatment. CH4 has a relatively short atmospheric lifetime of approximately 10 years, but its 100-year GWP (see above) is currently estimated to be approximately 23 times that of CO2.

**Multiplier** : The result of Force A acting on and intensifying the consequences of Event B. Example: Climate change acts as a national security threat multiplier.

**Sulfate Aerosols** : Particulate matter that consists of compounds of sulfur formed by the interaction of sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide with other compounds in the atmosphere. Sulfate aerosols are injected into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels and the eruption of volcanoes like Mt. Pinatubo. Recent theory suggests that sulfate aerosols may lower the Earth's temperature by reflecting away solar radiation (negative radiative forcing).

**Positive Feedback** : The outcome of a process that increases the response of a system to an external influence. For example, increased atmospheric water vapor in response to global warming would be a positive feedback on warming because water vapor is a GHG.

**Weather** : Atmospheric condition at any given time or place. It is measured in terms of such things as wind, temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, cloudiness, and precipitation. In most places, weather can change from hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season.

Sources:

Environmental Protection Agency

The PEW Center

California Climate Change Portal

