{"id":7685,"date":"2014-07-20T17:45:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T17:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/?p=7685"},"modified":"2014-07-20T17:46:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T17:46:50","slug":"thin-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/?p=7685","title":{"rendered":"THIN ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thin Ice<\/strong><\/h2>\n

by Will Thomas<\/p>\n

\"401141main_thin_ice_946-710\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now hear this. Our ancient space colony is the only home we have. It\u2019s floundering on the shoals of denial, greed and immutable feedback processes. There are no lifeboats. If exploitive corporate interests, their political lackeys and mesmerized \u201cconsumers\u201d keep focusing on the frivolous while trashing this singular blue oasis like there\u2019s no tomorrow\u2026 there won\u2019t be.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cOdd as it sounds, the overriding sensation I got looking at the Earth was, my God that little thing is so fragile out there.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0-Mike Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut<\/p>\n

Earth has been to the brink before. We know that five Great Extinctions brought all life-before-humans repeatedly to the edge of eternal sayonara. Ice core records show that at least three of those global wipeouts were caused by runaway Greenhouse events triggered by global vulcanism, undersea landslips and resulting mega-methane releases that trapped sunlight and spiked temperatures more than 10F in just 10 years, melting glaciers and raising prehistoric sea levels some 50-feet. [see Shipwreck sidebar]<\/p>\n

Today, with most humans still living near a seacoast, a three-foot sea level rise would be catastrophic. A 10 degree temperature rise will drown coastlines worldwide and make countries like the UK steamily uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years. Or much longer. [Science Mar 15\/03; NOAA; Climate Dynamics, 14, 73-81 1988]<\/p>\n

Welcome to the\u00a0Sixth Great Extinction<\/a>. It\u2019s happening much faster than its predecessors. And we\u2019re doing it to ourselves as our collective emissions are releasing\u00a0more than 150-times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all those ancient extinction-triggering volcanoes.<\/i>\u00a0[Science Mar 15\/03; NOAA; Climate Dynamics, 14, 73-81 1988]<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, most North Americans appear too frightened, too clueless, too addicted to brain-frying wireless gadgets and wasteful energy habits to drop their anxious denial and move to avert the worst of the many converging catastrophes we are condemning our grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Such insanity is understandable to a point. Caught up in conditioning that begins at birth and is daily reinforced by unconscionable media censorship, bogus alarms over distant phantoms, and exhortations to consume, those most complicit in this planetary shipwreck are offered few options by corporations whose remorseless bottom-line computations are condemning the offspring of so many species to a living hell of acid seas, embedded weather extremes, brain-wiping microwaves and solar-irradiated skies.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake. Nearly\u00a032 gigatons of heat-trapping CO2<\/a>\u00a0pumped into Earth\u2019s closed, recirculating atmosphere every year,<\/i>\u00a0plus the oceanic and Arctic heat amplifications now kicking in, ensure dramatic climate shifts that will haunt as yet unborn generations.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a\u00a0drastically stepped up geoengineering program that is shoving climate change into climate chaos.<\/i>\u00a0The replacement of\u00a011-foot thick Arctic sea ice\u00a0<\/a>with expanding slush, rain showers \u201cflashing\u201d into snow at temperatures well above freezing, deepening droughts in regions that should be seeing increased rain, failed monsoons, a dying world ocean, a fractured jetstream and rapidly rising levels of methane and ultraviolet radiation are impervious to denial. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The forces we\u2019ve inadvertently or deliberately set in motion require not belief but immediate acknowledgement. With so much at stake, so much going doing down, and so many of us culpable, there are no more excuses. The point is not winning debates over ever-changing numbers. It\u2019s about getting the lessons we\u2019ve allowed and arranged for ourselves before it\u2019s too late for most life on this lonely oasis.<\/p>\n

This fast-looming scenario applies to the innocent offspring of all creatures, great and small. [Storms Of My Grandchildren\u00a0<\/i>by James Hansen]<\/p>\n

But hey. Why should we worry when corporate mass-media mesmerizers encourage our fixation on quick fixes that invariably make even the biggest problems much, much worse?<\/p>\n

Sunlight-trapping carbon and nitrogen oxide emissions melting ice sheets, displacing the jetstream,\u00a0 drowning polar bears, freaking out the weather? Just follow the late Dr. Edward Teller\u2019s urging and spray ice-nucleating and sunlight-reflecting chemicals behind high-flying jet tankers. It\u2019s called atmospheric geoengineering. And it tops a long list of species-limiting hubris.<\/p>\n

\"arcticicemelting\"<\/a><\/p>\n

SLUSHIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember June 2013? American geoengineers were jubilant. Their atmospheric aerosol assault was working! Temporarily aided by a grotesquely distorted northern climate, their all-out aerial efforts to thicken cloud cover and lower temperatures over the Arctic Oceans saw rapidly diminishing ice cover\u00a0 rebound 40,000 square kilometres in just two days!<\/p>\n

Arctic experts were baffled by this inexplicable turnaround in a region warming three-times faster than the lower 48. The most knowledgable party-poopers pointed out that this over-hyped ice sheet \u201crecovery\u201d was in reality a vast expanse of slush so thin the next anomalous Arctic cyclone would dash it all to\u2026<\/p>\n

\"lake-mead-1938-2013\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And too bad about California. The entire state and much of the American West has been turned into a Climate Sacrifice Zone as the weather-forming jetstream \u2013 already displaced by extreme Arctic warming \u2013 is further fragmented by massive aerosol spraying that began in earnest when Dr. Teller joined\u00a0 international scientists in declaring a planetary climate emergency back in 1998.<\/p>\n

Back in the USA, summertime temperatures in March\u2026 rain \u201cflashing\u201d into snow at 40F\u2026 weather systems moving east to west against the normal flow are the signatures of the geoengineers.<\/p>\n

They and the governments they serve are running scared. Even as the American public is kept distracted by televised inanities and a missile-rattling White House, the most pressing national security threat is a chaotic climate on the verge of a runaway meltdown.<\/p>\n

RUMBLINGS IN THE ATTIC<\/strong><\/p>\n

The epicentre of rapid climate shift is Alaska, Siberia and the high Arctic. The Inuit of the Far North have a dozens of names to describe snow. But not one for the mosquitoes and robins arriving in their backyards. For \u201cmethane\u201d they use English.<\/p>\n

\"siberian-wildfires-july-31\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even as an unprecedented\u00a0Asian coastal heat dome sent temperatures and humidity to lethal levels<\/a>, killing thousands of people in China,\u00a0Siberia topped 90 degrees in an Arctic heatwave that sparked vast tundra fires. In yet another compounding feedback effect, the resulting soot fallout turned even bigger tracts of cold reflective snow into a blackened sunlight-concentrating furnace.<\/a><\/p>\n

As\u00a0Greenland\u2019s massive ice sheet flirts with 80 degree temperatures<\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0vast expanses of rapidly thawing permafrost (heating more than 3\u00bd degrees over the past five years), and more than 2 million square kilometres of methane clathrates on the Arctic Ocean seafloor are currently leaking significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. In July 2013,\u00a0atmospheric methane jumped to the highest concentrations in 400,000 years.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Iceberg<\/a><\/p>\n

Say what you want about climate change \u2013 and many uninformed people do \u2013 methane is a cultural and conversational show-stopper. Over the first decade of its release into the atmosphere, CH4 is at least\u00a0100-times<\/i>\u00a0more potent than CO2. Over the next century, methane will continue to trap 20-times more heat than carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n

Our self-inflicted demise is not just about numbers. It\u2019s about getting the lessons we\u2019ve arranged for ourselves. It\u2019s about drowning polar bears and a Siberian lake near the Northeast Science Station Chersky, where so much methane is being released the water looks like it\u2019s boiling.<\/p>\n

NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON\u2019T<\/strong><\/p>\n

In July 2013, Arctic Ocean ice cover nearly vanished after \u2013\u00a0oops!<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 artificially-enhanced cloud cover gave way to clear sunny skies and yet another Arctic cyclone scattered the geoengineers\u2019 slush like a melting snowcone tossed into a blender.<\/p>\n

Climate simulations run by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show\u00a0\u201cthe rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during periods of rapid sea ice loss.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

So much for quick fixes.<\/p>\n

JETSET<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ignoring the deniers, temperatures are relentlessly rising as records continue to be fall.\u00a0With more than 3,840 temperature records shattered in the USA alone<\/a>during single week in July, 2012 was by far the hottest year on record, featuring \u201can off-the-charts rate of increase,\u201d according to the U.S. National Climate Assessment. In March that year, winter turned to summer overnight, with temperatures spiking into the 80\u2032s leading to the worst drought in 50 years \u2013\u00a0\u201ca prime example of the effect of the warming Arctic interfering with the jet streams,\u201d<\/a>writes Robert Hunziker. Given the rapidity of the Arctic meltdown, he adds, top-level scientists \u201cfear the onset of unstoppable global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. scientist Jennifer Francis, Ken Caldeira and others have shown that the retreat of Arctic sea ice is drastically raising Arctic temperatures as sunlight-reflecting ice gives way to dark, sunlight-absorbing\u00a0<\/i>waters. As Earth Science graduate Jacob Sewall explains,\u00a0\u201cThe sea ice acts like a lid over the ocean surface during the winter, blocking the transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere\u2026 Where the sea ice is reduced, heat transfer from the ocean warms the atmosphere.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The resulting ascending columns of warm air are forming stationary high pressure zones that stall weather patterns, diminish cloud cover and invite further solar heating. Our orbiting scanners show\u00a0 these northern high pressure regions fragmenting the high-high-speed, altitude river of air called the jet stream, shoving it northwards 270 miles over the past 22 years and\u00a0weakening the polar temperature gradient enough to produce distant \u201cembedded\u201d weather extremes.<\/a><\/p>\n

Continued loss of Arctic sea ice is dramatically changing global weather and precipitation patterns<\/a>,\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0including more frequent intense droughts over the USA as wet winter storm systems are deflected north over Canada. Ditto droughts over other mid-latitudes regions where most of the world\u2019s food is grown. Disappearing snowpack and unseasonal recurving hurricanes like Sandy will also result from this shift in the jet stream, Francis forecasts.<\/p>\n

In just one example, a NASA Goddard computer model shows the end of the Kansas wheat harvest as that state becomes\u00a04 degrees warmer in winter without Arctic ice\u00a0<\/a>creating the cold air masses the jet stream used to slide south into the United States. (Sea ice loss is not considered in the latest and already obsolete IPCC climate assessment,<\/a>\u00a0which also ignores methane releases.)<\/p>\n

The official 1,000 page 2013 U.S. Climate Assessment warns that food shortages are likely in a USA already feeling the effects of climate change. With the entire planet \u201con the verge of runaway climate change,\u201d it\u2019s not surprising that a group of eminent scientists calling themselves the\u00a0Arctic Methane Emergency Group is urging a massive geoengineering effort to slow the Arctic meltdown.<\/a><\/p>\n

Even in an era of deep ocean oil drilling, worldwide fracking and the never-ending Fukushima nightmare, this is a spectacularly Bad Idea.<\/p>\n

DESTROYING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE IN ORDER TO \u201cSAVE\u201d IT<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/a>Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>warns Simone Tilmes at the National Climate and Atmospheric Research Center in Boulder, Colorado. The prestigiousGeophysical Research Letters<\/i>\u00a0cautions that constant injections of sunlight scatterers (by high-flying aircraft) could have \u201cmajor adverse effects, including drought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDrought\u201d as in bye-bye Phoenix, LA and other thirsty desert cities. \u201cDrought\u201d as in the unsolicited end of Asian and African monsoons. Professor Alan Robock insists that tampering with Earth\u2019s interlocking atmospheric processes could create famines and droughts, threatening the lives of nearly one in every three persons onboard this space colony.\u00a0\u201cImagine if we triggered a drought and famine while trying to cool the planet,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Robock remonstrates.<\/p>\n

Having worked on the Global Dimming dilemma with its discoverer, Professor Robock speaks with authority when he declares that atmospheric geoengineering\u00a0\u201ccould create disasters,<\/a>\u00a0damaging the ozone layer and potentially altering the stratosphere by eliminating weather patterns such as the annual Asian monsoon rain season, which two-billion people rely upon to water their crops and feed the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ozone\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Did someone say \u201cozone\u201d?<\/p>\n

OUR SHIELDS ARE DOWN, SCOTTY!<\/strong><\/p>\n

If US tanker planes (and possibly commercial aircraft) continue injecting sunlight-reflecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere,the ozone layer could be \u201cdestroyed\u201d warns atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira. He should know. Caldeira did the original \u201csun shield\u201d computer modelling for the late Dr. Edward Teller in the late 1990s, hoping to prove the Father of the H-Bomb wrong.<\/p>\n

Despite the 1987 international ban on ozone destroying CFCs, continuing deterioration of the ozone layer by jet engine exhausts, weekly space launches and above all, megatons of geoengineering chemicals is resulting in\u00a0sharply increasing amounts of solar radiation<\/a>\u00a0threatening all life on Earth.<\/p>\n

UK Cancer researchers report that\u00a0skin cancers have more than doubled since the early 80\u2032s, while worldwide some three million people are being blinded every year from UV-induced cataracts annually.<\/a>\u00a0High and rising UV levels may also suppress\u00a0immunity,<\/a>\u00a0raising the risk from infectious diseases and limiting vaccine effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Extremely high UV concentrations recently measured in northern California also explain sun-scorched forests and widespread stunting of crops.\u00a0Even whales are getting severely sunburnt, and fish are developing skin cancers from increasing solar radiation.<\/a><\/p>\n

Just as Caldeira cautioned, the aluminum oxide, barium salts and other geoengineering chemicals currently in heavy use are providing a surface on which long-lived chlorine emissions circulating in the frigid stratosphere can initiate chemical reactions that destroy Earth\u2019s protective ozone.<\/p>\n

This ozone destruction is most pronounced over polar regions. While not yet acknowledging ongoing Solar Radiation Management efforts over the past 15 years, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado warns that\u00a0constant injections of geoengineering aerosols over decades will destroy up to three-quarters of the ozone layer above the Arctic<\/a>. The current massive ozone hole over the Antarctic is not closing at all.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n

ACID TRIP<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ongoing geoengineering attempts to permit perpetual petroleum pollution and profits by scattering 1% of incoming sunlight is encouraging government reluctance to curb greenhouse emissions. As\u00a0<\/b>British coal industry flack Richard Courtney blogs, \u201cAGW [Anthropomorphic Global Warming] is not a problem and cannot become one.\u00a0 However, I do think the possibility of the geo-engineering should be supported\u2026\u00a0The politicians need a viable reason if they are to back-off from this commitment to the constraints [of Greenhouse Gasses] without losing face. The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now.\u201d<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Courtney\u2019s coal-fired denial of daily headlines also fails to explain the\u00a0increased acidification of the ocean that covers most of this planet.<\/a>The resulting rapidly multiplying and expanding oceanic \u201cdead zones\u201d could remain devoid of food- and oxygen-producing sea life\u00a0\u201cfor thousands of years.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Onboard a spinning blue space colony surrounded by the cold irradiated vacuum of deep space, ensuring natural oxygen production and the scrubbing of excess CO2 by forests and tiny phytoplankton ought to top every government priority. Even as Earth\u2019s remaining forests and mangroves continue to be felled and paved over, a thermal barrier is forming on the surface of the warming ocean, preventing mixing with cooler, nutrient-rich layers below. Plankton already hard hit by increasing levels of solar radiation are starving.The phytoplankton population has fallen about 40% since 1950.<\/a>And it continues to nosedive as ocean temperatures rise and ocean acidification intensifies.<\/p>\n

\"Iss007e10807\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c??I\u2019ve been trying to think of a biological change that\u2019s bigger than this and I can\u2019t think of one,\u201d worries marine biologist Boris Worm of Canada\u2019s Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.\u00a0\u201cPhytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2 and ultimately support all of our fisheries.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very disturbing to think about the potential implications of a century-long decline of the base of the food chain,\u201d echoes lead study author Daniel Boyce, a marine ecologist. With ocean acidification now occurring\u00a010-times faster than it did during the last nearly all-inclusive extinction event 55 million years ago<\/a>, we are facing a crescendo of extinctions as Earth\u2019s intricately interdependent lives come apart. As go Earth\u2019s interlocking ecologies, so go we.<\/p>\n

Increasingly frantic efforts by a handful of unelected and unannounced geoengineers make it imperative for the rest of us to get our ship together. A major study examining\u00a0\u201cSensitivity of Ocean Acidification to Geoengineered Climate Stabilization\u201d<\/a>\u00a0concludes that deep and rapid cuts in CO2 by more than 50% are \u201cthe most effective strategy\u201d to avoid global disaster.<\/p>\n

PANIC NOW AND AVOID THE RUSH<\/strong><\/p>\n

So why are blaring daily headlines focused on Syria and a President\u2019s latest hit list? In June 2009, dozens of Academies of Science from around the globe issued\u00a0a joint statement\u00a0<\/a>warning that the destruction of the oceanic food-chain from ocean acidification \u201cis irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered their dire warning by breathlessly announcing that the melting Arctic sea ice\u00a0\u201cwill result in more<\/a>shipping, fishing and tourism, and the possibility to develop newly accessible oil and gas reserves.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hillary-Clinton_1894435c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This astonishingly ignorant White House official with enough skeletons in her closet to host a horror show neglected to add that soon there won\u2019t be any fish. And Arctic tourists will court cataracts and melanomas. But just think of all that profitable gas and oil waiting to be drilled, spilled, shipped, burned and pumped into the atmos-fear!<\/p>\n

In 1212,\u00a0a record 31 billion tons of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere from burning fossil fools.<\/a>\u00a0Once released, carbon stays in the atmosphere and continues to have a warming effect for at least 100 years.<\/p>\n

MIXUP<\/strong><\/p>\n

By now it\u2019s impossible to separate the effects of human-induced global warming from more deliberate atmospheric machinations. Was the unexpected June 2013 cloud cover over the Arctic Ocean the result of a warming atmosphere and melting ocean icecap displacing the jetstream? Desperate \u201clay downs\u201d of cloud-forming and ice nucleating chemicals by high-flying jet tankers? Or both?<\/p>\n

\"r231219_4606826\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The answer can\u2019t be known because there is no longer any divide between unintended and deliberate climate modification. Chaos Theory teaches that as turbulent critical thresholds are crossed and self-reinforcing cascading effects are unleashed,\u00a0geoengineering is creating a dangerous new synergy with global warming that is unpredictably amplifying the increasingly drastic oscillations of warming alone.<\/i><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

If the current Sixth Great\u00a0Species Interruptus<\/i>\u00a0isn\u2019t dire enough, deliberate daily atmospheric tampering without worldwide consensus and debate is accelerating jet stream displacement, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, White House and Sussex Drive stupidity and species extinctions.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re all in this together, from bees to boreal forests, that last mentioned item means us.<\/p>\n

SIPHON SAYS<\/strong><\/p>\n

What goes up is coming down. As social justice advocate and longtime \u201cchemtrail\u201d commentator Eamonn O\u2019Brien recently commented to me, \u201cAerosol particles heat the air above their sunlight reflecting artificial layer 50 to 100 meters thick and cool the shaded air below. This cold air sinks as warm air naturally rises from the surface of the Earth. The resulting siphoning effect \u2013 or up-and-down convection currents \u2013 are spun clockwise north of the equator by the rotation of the Earth known as the Coriolis effect. If done in front of a storm front (usually advancing from West to East over North America), the spinning convection currents can result in tornados.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean,\u201d Eamonn added, \u201cthe additional moisture from evaporating seawater results in a 1-5 kilometre-wide aerosol layer. The syphon-dropping shaded cold air from the upper atmosphere displaces the jetstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

TWEAKERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a country addicted to profiteering from the perpetual slaughter of distant strangers, it is immediately essential to regain control of a runaway military-corporate-entertainment complex. As Joseph Nevins points out,\u00a0\u201cThe U.S. military is the world\u2019s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth\u2019s climate.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>[Scorched Earth by William Thomas]<\/p>\n

And Nevins wasn\u2019t even talking about more than 60 years of geoengineering efforts \u2013 from\u00a0Operation Popeye\u00a0<\/a>seeding torrential rains over the Ho Chi-Minh Trail to\u00a0Project Stormfury\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0ongoing hurricane-control efforts today by U.S. Military Inc. Lesser players include more than 150 weather modification programs taking place in 37 countries. In\u00a0China, vast state resources have been committed to some 560,000 weather manipulations since 2002.<\/a><\/p>\n

CATCH-22<\/strong><\/p>\n

But even Beijing\u2019s localized attempts at weather control pale beside persistent continent-spanning attempts at geoengineering the climate. Have 15 years of sun-dimming aerosol spraying masked the true extent of \u201catmospheric forcing\u201d from our heat-trapping emissions? As the dramatic\u00a0one-degree surge in air temperatures following the three-day grounding of contrail-forming airliners after 9\/11<\/a>\u00a0demonstrated, the answer is unquestionably, yes.<\/p>\n

Are the faceless sky painters of those lingering and spreading chemical plumes painting us into an inextricable corner? What happens if their geoengineering efforts are suddenly halted?<\/p>\n

\"stop\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleaning up\u00a0any<\/i>\u00a0sun-shielding air pollution is bound to send temperatures higher, warns Dr. Peter Cox at the Hadley Centre Met Office in England. \u201cCO2 will be going up and particles will be dropping off and that means we\u2019ll get an accelerated warming,\u201d he told the BBC. \u201cWe\u2019ll get a double whammy, we\u2019ll get, we\u2019ll get reducing cooling and increased heating at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temperatures could rise\u00a0twice as fast<\/i>\u00a0as underestimating computer models are constantly failing to predict.<\/p>\n

Instead of demanding immediate cessation of Canada\u2019s outrageous tar sands emissions,\u00a0University of Calgary\u2019s David Keith urges the introduction of geoengineering experiments on a global scale \u201csooner rather than later.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0Does this mean we should step up those geoengineering efforts instead of curtailing our carbon emissions?<\/p>\n

Absolutely not, declares Dr. Cox. \u201cIf you fiddle with the balance of the planet, the radiative balance of the planet, you affect all sorts of circulation patterns like monsoons, which would have horrible effects on people. So\u00a0it would be extremely difficult, in fact impossible, to cancel out the greenhouse effect just by carrying on pumping out particles, even if it wasn\u2019t for the fact that particles are damaging for human health.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

WHAT CAN WE DO?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not over until the last polar bear sings. And right now, those exhausted big bears are drowning \u2013 along with their Inuit counterparts \u2013 for lack of stopover ice flows.<\/p>\n

Step one in our addiction recovery is to admit that our ship is cracking up. Only then will we take the actions necessary to keep Earth afloat in the inhospitable vastness of space, where no similar\u00a0\u201cGoldilocks\u201d planets\u00a0<\/a>have been discovered within 21 lightyears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe levels of denial are so complicated,\u201d Naomi Klein observes. \u201cWe are all in denial. All of us. People are holding back a tremendous amount of anxiety. You don\u2019t let yourself care about something that you have no idea how to fix. Because it\u2019s just too terrifying. And it would derail your whole life.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why there has to be a narrative, a plan, for how we integrate so much of what we\u2019re already doing into a common project. Because so long as people feel like nothing that they know now applies, then they will work really hard to keep this information at bay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forget airy talk of \u201cadaptation\u201d to what\u2019s coming, advises author and climate change activist Bill McKibben. \u201cNow what we are coming to realize is that the most important adaptation we can do is to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. If we don\u2019t, we are going to produce temperature rises so high that there is no adapting to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s half-right. But what\u2019s glaringly lacking is the equally urgent message by the founder of 350 Org to \u201cStop Geoengineering Now!\u201d (Why not join 350 Org<\/a>and enlighten its founder now?)<\/p>\n

Until Bill McKibben, embarrassingly ill-informed scientists like David Suzuki, and organizations like Greenpeace, Hands Off Mother Earth, the IPCC and other carbon curtailment activists publicly acknowledge\u00a0what\u2019s happening in the skies over their heads<\/i>, they will continue their forlorn charge under a broken banner of half-truths while facing the back of the horse\u2026<\/p>\n

Given the duration and extent of the ongoing U.S. atmospheric aerosol program,\u00a0it is impossible to begin to understand \u201cclimate change\u201d without taking into account at least 15 years of active \u201cSolar Radiation Management\u201d by U.S. Air Force \u201cWeather Force Specialists\u201d and successive White House administrations.\u00a0<\/i>Until the \u201cbig names\u201d in the climate change debate address ongoing geoengineering, any attempts to discuss \u201cglobal warming\u201d,\u00a0 \u201cArctic sea ice extent,\u201d \u201cCalifornia heat waves\u201d or \u201cclimate change\u201d\u00a0without including the extreme variables introduced by daily geoengineering tanker flights<\/i>\u00a0are grossly misleading and dangerously invalid.<\/p>\n

(Anyone requiring hard evidence \u2013 including acknowledgement of tankers spraying reflective particles by a senior FAA official \u2013 should see my book,Chemtrails Confirmed<\/i>,\u00a0available for download by donation here.<\/a>\u00a0I am an award-winning journalist of 45 years experience who broke this story for Environment News Service in late 1988.)<\/p>\n

Ditto Chris Hedges, who also ignores geoengineering to focus solely on the fossil fools. \u201cThe problem, at this point, is not going to be dealt with by small steps. It is going to be dealt with by getting off fossil fuel in the next 10 or 20 years or not at all,\u201d Hedges writes. \u201cOur only salvation is the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

This award-winning, war-weary journalist urges that \u201cwe build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to win quickly if we\u2019re going to win,\u201d McKibben emphasizes after being arrested with Hedges while protesting the Keystone tar sands pipeline. \u201cWe\u2019ve already passed the point where we\u2019re going to stop global warming. It has already warmed a degree and there is another degree in the pipeline from carbon already emitted. The heat gets held in the ocean for a while, but it\u2019s already there. We\u2019ve already guaranteed ourselves a miserable century. The question is whether it\u2019s going to be an impossible one.\u201d [Truthdig May 31\/11]<\/p>\n

The even bigger question is whether the geoengineers will be stopped in time.<\/p>\n

In the daily choices we make in what we buy, barter, recycle, discard or forego \u2013 in the allegiances we forge with your community and grass roots groups willing to put their bodies on the line to protect future generations of all interlinked species by stopping corporate depredations and the geoengineers\u00a0 \u2013 the only person who can answer that question\u2026\u00a0is you<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thin Ice by Will Thomas   Now hear this. Our ancient space colony is the only home we have. It\u2019s floundering on the shoals of denial, greed and immutable feedback processes. There are no lifeboats. If exploitive corporate interests, their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}