Refugees and War

admin /24 December, 2009

Refugees and War
 
Dr. John James. www.planetextinction.com

Modern civilization has never experienced weather conditions as persistently disruptive as those we should expect from here on. Nor have we yet faced the appalling consequences of a significant rise in sea-levels.

If the sea rises a modest 400mm 22% of coastal wetlands will be lost, and more when we include the likely human reaction to that change. It would impact on over 400,000 square Km of coast, especially in the deltas of Bangladesh, Vietnam and China, while the Kiribati, Fijian and Maldive islands would lose a large part of their most arable land.

The cost of dealing with such a rise was recently estimated to be £9 billion. Insurers have warned that the cost of just one major flood would be almost twice that, especially in the financial district of Central London. What then if the ice sheets of Greenland melted?

A one meter sea-level rise would affect 6 million people in Egypt, with some 15% of agricultural land lost, 13 million in Bangladesh with 16% of the national rice production lost, and 72 million in China with tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land. 

The Clathrate Smoking Gun

admin /24 December, 2009

The Clathrate Smoking Gun

John James          www.planetextinction.com

Huge quantities of methane are held in ice-like structures in the cold northern bogs and the bottom of the seas. They are called clathrates (or cathrates). They are stable only in the cold or under high pressure. Methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.

The estimated amount of methane stored in these clathrates is gargantuan. They are the largest concentration of methane found on earth.

The compression of methane gas in clathrates is enormous. One cubic meter of clathrates brought to the ocean’s surface releases 164 cubic meters of methane.

PERMAFROST METHANE TIME BOMB

admin /23 December, 2009

A conference without compassion: a guarantee of Mutually assisted suicide

admin /19 December, 2009

A conference without compassion:
a guarantee of Mutually Assured Suicide

Dear Friends, The following was extracted from a report on the Copenhagen Summit by George Monbiot in The Guardian.

Any deal would do, as long as the negotiators could pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the text that emerged would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

The final Accord was the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence when the world’s governments tried to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, and asserted their right to draw lines across the global commons.

This is a scramble for the atmosphere. Most of the rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can, to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn’t have been better designed to produce the wrong results.

FOOTPRINTS

admin /30 November, 2009

Dear Friends

 

Now that Copenhagen is about to start, read James Hansen’s forceful statement. He argues, as we have been doing in FOOTPRINTS since we sent out our first issues two years ago, that nothing less than total restructuring will change our fate.

This means agreeing at Copenhagen to ending all fossil fuel use before 2020. A percentage is not sufficient. You all know the situation on sea-level rise, chaotic weather, seas without fish, drought etc and (most concerning) the release of methane. Add to that population growth and the scramble to corner the world’s food production, and we know that immediate action is needed if we are to stop at 3 degrees or more.

Particularly when we suspect that tipping points can happen suddenly, and not slowly enough to give us warning. The ice caps melted in less than a decade according to one study, and the Gulf Stream collapsed in a few months just 12,800 years ago, sending Europe into an instantaneous deep freeze.

Remember the snap-frozen mammoths with summer food still in their stomachs?

Extinction of life on Earth through Global Waming

admin /27 October, 2009

Extinction of life on Earth
through Global Warming

Courtesty of John James ( www.planet extinction.com)

For the proofs of our situation (all fully referenced) read this file.

Also look at my talk on “Global Warming, National Security and Ethics” to the Independent Scholars of Australia in Canberra, October 2007. It can be viewed here.

Scientists have become increasingly anxious about global warming and our future on this planet. Since late 2005 fear of global warming has made them increasingly concerned. The evidence is now overwhelming – we have glimpsed what the future may portend.

It is urgent because only a slight increase in temperature is needed to trigger tipping points that cannot then be reversed. This will release vast quantities of greenhouse gas that will have a catastrophic effect on life. Temperatures could rise by 5 degrees in a decade, so how much time do we have?