The Thirteenth Tipping Point
Twelve global disasters and one powerful antidote.
SOCIAL FACILITATION, REWARDING PRUDENCE
A VARIETY OF FACTORS enable tiny coral animals to coordinate spawning with pinpoint precision. Many synchronize to inescapable environmental factors—maximum water temperature, for instance, fine-tuned to moon phase and tides. Spawners also stimulate the spawning of their fellows by the presence of their eggs in the water. Thus, among some species, local spawning triggers a cascade of spawning down current, night after night, as the gamete cloud passes overhead.
Many animals coordinate their activities through what is known as social facilitation. The howling of wolves, the twittering choruses of African wild dogs, the cawing of crows when settling to roost, all serve to synchronize the group, and perhaps to spur individuals to their best performance. In human psychology, social facilitation is defined as the tendency for individuals to perform better at simple or well-known tasks when they know they are being observed.
Interestingly, research out of the Max Planck Institute in Germany found that people are more likely to take action to protect the climate when they are seen to be doing so. Manfred Milinski and his cohorts used a variation on game theory, a tool born from mathematics and economics, now used across many disciplines to analyze optimal behavior strategies when the outcome is uncertain and is dependent on the choices of others.
In Milinski's version of the game, players were asked to contribute money—in some rounds anonymously, in other rounds publicly—to a common pool used to pay for a magazine advertisement warning the public of the dangers of global warming and listing simple means to limit individual carbon dioxide emissions. Some rounds enabled players to reward or not reward fellow players whose "reputations" as donors from previous rounds were revealed. Some groups received scientific information on the causes and consequences of climate change; others did not.
The results showed that almost no one was willing to donate money anonymously. Those who did had received the scientific education. Overall the largest donors were those both tutored in the science and able to donate publicly. In the reputation rounds, players generally only rewarded fellow players who were known to be donors. Clearly, we are inclined to behave as better citizens when we are educated and when our actions are visible. Perhaps if we're vigorously informed of the neighborhood dangers of global warming, we'll make sustainable and sensible lifestyle choices. Abetted by knowledge, social facilitation might begin to reward prudence.
SOCIAL LOAFING, THE MEDIA, THE OZONE HOLE
EVEN WELL-INTENTIONED CITIZENS feel helpless in the face of looming global calamities and respond by circling the wagons and focusing on family-size problems. The end result is that most of us practice denial, which appears in the culture at large as indifference, and which collectively enables us to embrace the dark sister of social facilitation: social loafing.
Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to slack when work is shared and individual performance is not assessed. There may be no better example of social loafing than in the U.S. Congress, where members cloak their lethargy regarding global climate change behind the stultifying inactivity of their fellows. And why not? After all, who's watching?
Not the media. For example, on the day the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the first half of 2006 was the hottest on record in the United States, the news vaporized in the explosions of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. Though the media would never ignore another round of Middle East bloodletting by rationalizing that we've heard all that before, this is exactly what it does with environmental news.
Part of the reason is that the organizations responsible for bringing us the news fail to assess that new science stories are not the same global warming story rehashed from last week/month/year but worrisome new data. Combined, the growing body of scientific knowledge gains heft and power. But the public rarely hears it, reinforcing our denial and indifference.
A 2005 workshop at the Tyndall Centre assessed the performance of the media and found that its sensationalist approach simplified complex issues, while its "balanced" coverage ignored the consensual scientific view, awarding a few skeptics equal billing. The workshop also noted a seminal study from Philadelphia's Drexel University, which found the U.S. media subservient to (at least) or controlled by (at worst) the fossil fuel industry.
A classic example of the bad marriage between a compromised media and a slacking public fuels another of Schellnhuber's tipping points. We've known since 1985, when scientists first reported a "hole" above Antarctica, that chlorofluorocarbons deplete ozone in the stratosphere. Two years later the world mobilized to sign the first Montreal Protocol phasing out ozone-destroying chemicals.
All seemed well enough. Kofi Annan called the Montreal Protocol one of the undoubted success stories of international cooperation. Yet along with the hole over the Antarctic, and the newer ozone dimple over the Arctic, a general thinning is under way everywhere else on earth at the rate of about 3 percent per decade. Schellnhuber calls the ozone hole the mother of all tipping points since it tips even as we declare victory.
In June 2006 researchers from NASA, NOAA, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research announced findings that the hole will take 20 more years than previously predicted—that is, until 2018—to begin significant healing. This is partly the result of a paradoxical effect of global warming: It actually makes the stratosphere cooler, and a cooler stratosphere slows ozone repair. Yet the critical new findings, the snowballing data, go largely unreported.
Similarly, we hear about the connection between ozone depletion, skin cancers, and cataracts but very little about the fact that increased ultraviolet radiation will also impair or destroy phytoplankton. Without these tiny marine plants turning inorganic sunlight into organic life, none of us would or will be here.
Although they live underwater, phytoplankton mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide more powerfully than any other known agent. They are critical counterweights to another tipping point: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which circulates 34 billion gallons of water around Antarctica every second, carrying nutrients from the depths to the surface.
A 2006 Princeton study identified this current of the Southern Ocean as the key global player in the balance between the nutrient and carbon cycles of our planet. Put simply, the more nutrients in Antarctic waters, the less carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere, because the nutrients fuel the phytoplankton that absorb CO2. Moreover, when these phytoplankton die, they sink, taking their CO2 load with them to the cold bottom of the ocean and sequestering it there. But global warming is predicted to slow the nutrient upwelling, affecting phytoplankton populations in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, too.
Just as the oceans affect the atmosphere, so the land affects the oceans. In another of Schellnhuber's tipping points, global warming is expected to shrink the Sahara by increasing rainfall along its southern border. A greener Sahara will emit less airborne desert dust to seed the Atlantic and feed its phytoplankton, to suppress hurricane formation, and to fertilize the CO2-eating trees of Amazonia. Hardly a neighborhood on earth will look the same if Africa tips.
THE GAME THEORY OF COCKROACH DEMOCRACY
Recent research out of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium shows that cockroaches live in a democracy composed of individuals with equal standing that consult to reach consensus on decisions affecting the whole group. These decisions are made nonhierarchically and in the absence of perfect knowledge. Somehow these simple creatures balance the inevitable conflicts between cooperation and competition in ways that benefit all.
Some dolphins manage this social dilemma ingeniously, too. At 5.5 feet long and 150 pounds, Tahitian spinner dolphins are among the world's smallest cetaceans, inhabiting the tropical waters of the globe, often in close proximity to coral reefs. They live in flexible, ever-changing groups composing what the late Ken Norris of the University of California-Santa Cruz called "a society of remarkably cooperative friends."
This day in French Polynesia, a group of about 25 spinner dolphins is sleeping behind the barrier reef protecting Moorea's lagoon from the open sea. Like all dolphins, they remain conscious during sleep, resting only the hearing parts of their brains while relying on their sight to identify predators. In this state, they move as stealthily as ghosts, surfacing quietly, breathing low. But by the late afternoon the school begins to awaken and the dolphins pick up speed, with individuals bursting through the surface to perform the dramatic aerial leaps and spins for which the species is named.
Then almost as quickly as they awoke, the dolphins slow down again. The spinners have entered the phase of their day Norris and colleagues dubbed "zigzag swimming," with the group oscillating between sleep and wakefulness, as some individuals wish to awaken and others wish to lounge abed in the lagoon a while longer.
Underwater, the split in intentions is even more obvious. When the group is persuaded to sleep, the dolphins fall silent. When the group is urged to awaken, the sea explodes with the whistles, clicks, quacks, moos, baahs, barks, and squawks of their varied calls. In short order, these sounds are accompanied by an artillery barrage of dull booms and hissing bubble trains: the percussion of belly flops and back flops at the surface.
Like howling wolves and cawing crows the spinners are consolidating their intentions, using zigzag swimming to cast and recast their votes until consensus is reached. As the afternoon progresses, their phonations grow louder, eventually merging into the congested cross talk that Norris et al. jokingly called the Yugoslavian News Broadcast. This is the buoyant clamor of true democracy. Since there is no leader or hierarchy in this or any other aspect of spinner life, every dolphin is awarded the same voting power. However many individuals reside here today is the same number that must now agree on when to leave and where to go.
It's no easy decision. At stake are their lives. By leaving the lagoon the spinners face real danger. To catch fish they must venture offshore and dive alone or in mother-calf pairs to depths of 1,000 feet or more in the nighttime sea. They will be hunting alongside many larger predators, including sharks hunting them.
Throughout the night the school maintains auditory contact as members share information (location of a food source) and resources (the food), even when that sharing might diminish their own wellbeing (less food left for them). This trade-off enables individuals to survive conditions they could not survive alone.
Curiously, cockroaches and spinner dolphins have learned to share in ways both prudent and wise—despite the predictions of game theory, which in its simplest guise posits that cheaters will beat altruists every time. Clearly, nature knows otherwise.
A recent study hints at the evolution of altruism. A team of Swiss and American mathematicians and population biologists ran a variant of game theory known as a public goods game, in which players contribute money to a common pot that an experimenter doubles, divides evenly, and returns to the players. In ordinary play, if all players contribute all their money, everyone wins big. If one player cheats, everyone wins small. If an altruist and a cheater go head-to-head, the cheater wins consistently. This paradox is known as the Tragedy of the Commons.
But in the new computer variant, population dynamics were introduced into the game. Players were divided into small groups that played among themselves. Each player eventually "reproduced" in proportion to the payoff received from play—thereby passing her cooperator or cheater strategy to her offspring. Mutations and dispersions were introduced, creating a shifting population of individuals divided into groups of changing sizes and allegiances.
After 100,000 generations, the results were surprising. Rather than succumbing to the cheaters, the cooperators overwhelmed them.
This is because cooperators flourish in smaller groups where their high investments begin to pay off, says Thomas Flatt, one of the study's authors. They reproduce at higher rates, gain a toehold in a group, eventually come to dominate it, then launch their offspring to spread their altruism to other groups.
Cockroaches have been on earth about 300 million years and dolphins about 50 million years—what amounts to millions of rounds of play. During those eons they have evolved what ethologists call "obligate cooperation": an evolutionarily stable strategy that reflects the individual's inescapable dependence on the group.
Somewhere along the way, these two very different life-forms found the tipping point and slipped from selfishness toward altruism, transforming what we perceive as the Tragedy of the Commons into something more like a triumph.
SEQUESTERED KNOWLEDGE AND SNOW MIRRORS
KNOWLEDGE CAN BE VIEWED as a commons. At the moment, science knows far more than it "tells" to the larger world, in effect hoarding its resource. Not all scientists agree with this strategy, leading the community to play out its own version of zigzag swimming.
At a recent meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology, members argued over whether they should simply publish their findings in their scientific journals or advocate solutions—by forcing their results, conclusions, and suggestions in front of lethargic policymakers and the press. Some vigorously oppose the proactive approach as one that sullies research. Others believe the time has come for the man behind the curtain to step forth. A survey in the wake of the conference found that 70 percent of the 300 members favored increased advocacy. At the moment, however, the behavior of most researchers is still largely non-advocatory, depriving the lay world of the right to zigzag on its own through global warming issues.
Sequestering scientific knowledge is the equivalent of piling lead weights on the scales of the tipping points we hear little or nothing about. Take another tipping point: the Tibetan Plateau, a million square miles of steppe, mountains, and lakes. This roof of the world is home to fewer people per square mile than any land besides Greenland and Antarctica. Rising an average of 15,000 feet above sea level, its snowy heights act like an enormous mirror reflecting the sun's warming rays back to space. But global warming is forecast to melt these snows and uncover dark soils ideal for absorbing sunlight and warming the earth in a positive feedback loop.
The Tibetan Plateau acts like a powerful chimney between earth and the sky, connecting tipping points in both places. It cools the stratosphere by drawing water vapor and chemicals upward via thunderstorms. A cooler stratosphere rearranges the jet stream, resulting in warmer winters in North America and Europe, and exacerbating the Greenland and ozone-hole tipping points.
The source of Tibet's thunderstorms is the Asian monsoon, which drives oceanic moisture up the flanks of the Himalayas. Geoscientists expect a warming climate to either weaken or strengthen the monsoon, perhaps one after the other. Either effect is potentially catastrophic for the more than half the world's population adapted to and reliant on the monsoon as it currently exists. For this reason, the monsoon is another of Schellnhuber's tipping points.
The health of the monsoon is critically connected to the ocean, notably the faraway North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Working with fossilized plankton and ancient iceberg debris, scientists from India and America have concluded that periods of a cooler and less salty North Atlantic corresponded to—or else produced—weaker monsoons. This suggests a warming climate might strengthen the monsoon, perhaps ruinously, then weaken it below present levels if and when the THC shuts down.
Other studies hint that the connective tissue between the monsoon and the North Atlantic is none other than the Tibetan Plateau. Normally, spring warms the air above Tibet and powers the pressure gradient driving the monsoon. But a cooler North Atlantic might cool the plateau lying downwind, stalling the monsoon's ignition.
No matter how badly it manifests for us, nature evolves toward efficiency, balancing the spinning plates at the point of minimum effort, rearranging them with ruthless dexterity.
I would consider myself a "naysayer" however I don't fit the description you give the group. I think it's very racist and biggoted to suggest that those who believe science over hype are less credible just because they don't buy into the religion of liberalism.
Currently, in every 100,000 air molecules in our atmosphere, you will find 38 carbon molecules. At the rate that we create green house gasses, the number will be 39/100,000 in 5 years.
We need to protect the environment. We should put our efforts into problems that we can actually fix. We're in between ice ages right now. We are experiencing a natural warming cycle.
I think the "Global Warming Debate" is swipe at our mad rush forward in technology and it will only get faster and faster. The ludites, the nannies, and the conformists are oozing out in every sector possible. They don't want to enjoin the future.
The problem with their approach is there is no feasable way to stop global warming other than killing off 5.8 billion people and going back to the cave.
If we halt our appetite for new technology and development when the world reaches 10 billion people, and it will, life on Earth will be worse than Hell.
There will be energy wars raging everywhere. You will have access to electricity for 6 hours once a week.
Let's take a serious look at this because this is the REAL CHEESE. The world is projected to need double the amount of power in use today by the year 2050. It will need 4X today's output by 2100 and by 2150 it will require, not desire, require 8X the amount of energy in use today. Without that added output world progress will freeze up and fall apart. There will be chaos and war. The end will come with you or your descendants huddled in a dark shelter with no hope of help arriving.
Putting a little solar power panel on your roof is not going to equal the vast amounts of energy we will require by 2050, 2100, and 2150. We need thousands of new high energy resources, or the end will come. We need Moon-based solar power, huge orbital-solar power stations, nuclear power, coal power, and we need to nail down fusion power once and for all, or you can kiss everything you know and understand today goodbye.
How's that for a scary senario. I think it beats "Global Warming" hands down. We are on a treadmill of our own making and until the population bomb is defused we must provide energy or die in an armagedon type demise.
Bode Bliss
Cleveland, Ohio
Our society is based on greed and consumption, with total disregard to the impact we have on the earth and all nonhuman creatures that inhabit it, let alone humans who do not share this self-serving "philosophy" of utter disregard to the consequences. Yes, we need energy to maintain our lifestyles. But if we do not change the way we live voluntarily, it seems that the earth will see to it, one way or another. How ridiculous and selfish we are to rigidly refuse to accept what science has learned. The truth is, no one fully understands the impact of what is currently happening to our earth. Everything in nature is connected. We are looking to the large, obvious changes as harbingers of global trauma, but the truth is, something as "small" as the extinction of one species of insect could be all it takes to push us over the edge. We have to do more than change the way consume, we have to change the way we think, and we have to do it now--not when we think we "fully understand the nature of the problem."
The critical point this article ignores it that it is not just a matter of cutting back, but radically radically cutting back. The global sustainable GDP is barely an equivalent of 2000 US dollars a year, and nearly no one, no matter how well intentioned, is likely to cut back that far. You will find a few voices who advocate the need to cut back consumption to the global median wage, namely J. Merkel in his book "Radical Simplicity" and FitzGerald in "Sea-steading" but to date I've encountered no one else, including this author, who takes the issue that seriously.
Hence, doomsday.
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Ms. Julia Whitty, your article is one of the most insightful, creative, comprehensive pieces I have read, and I am blessed to be able to learn and be inspired by your terrific research and your eloquent words.
Would it not be fair to say if we dry out one area, the Amazon, that perhaps another area would get wetter?
Perhaps forests would return where savanna is today?
I can't stand Bush and his ilk, but our science should seek to look to explore counter arguments as well.
Scientists dedicate their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and truth. The primary goal of their lives is understanding the universe, and helping others understand and appreciate nature. It is surprising and sad that so many influential scientists are dishonest and corrupt, spreading dangerous falsehoods in order to gain money, fame, or simply for job security.
One example is the complicity of scientists employed by tobacco companies. Their deliberate lies caused many of us to get sick and die for decades until the truth of smoking dangers became accepted. Barnes, DE and LA Bero wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association 279:1566-1570 that "that while most reviews of passive smoking conclude that it is harmful to human health, when the author has an affiliation with the tobacco industry, the review is more likely to reach the opposite conclusion." For details, see .
This is one example of a series of analyses showing that when an author has a financial interest in the outcome of a study, the conclusions are likely to be biased in favor of the financial interest. The debate over lead poisoning is a past example from the chemical industry in which industry scientists produced consistently biased findings.
See also , by Norbert Hirschhorn, MD, Consultant to the World Health Organization.
Recently news reports came out saying that drug studies are dishonest. For example, giving smaller doses of the competitor's drugs, or otherwise bias the studies. Again, scientists spread falsehoods in order to get job security.
We are currently affected internationally by a very serious scientific fraud. Dishonest scientists have convinced world governments, including our government, that global warming is caused by large amounts of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and that we must spend a lot of money to reduce the carbon dioxide in order to prevent excessive warming. This is bad science, as historical records show that when the earth warms, a few centuries later carbon dioxide forms in the atmosphere. Global warming not caused by carbon dioxide, but by the variable solar wind.
The sun emits streams of charged particles, called the solar wind. As this stream approaches the earth, the stream's magnetic field (moving charges create a magnetic field) deflects cosmic rays away from the atmosphere. Cosmic rays that strike air molecules ionize them. These ions act like seeds creating clouds. More solar wind means fewer clouds. Less solar wind means more clouds that reflect sunlight and cool the earth.
The sun is a very dynamic, changing object. The solar wind waxes and wanes every 15 centuries, causing global warming and cooling. Worldwide studies of historical events and of the earth's ancient past verify the existence of these warming and cooling cycles.
The current global warming is due to the increasing solar wind, and will last for another 5 centuries. Talking about reducing carbon dioxide in order to reduce global warming is another example of dishonest scientists hawking their wares. Government leaders must critically examine scientific claims, and always be suspicious and on guard.
Yes, we must reduce pollutants in order to make the air safer to breathe and to make us healthier. Let us not waste our valuable resources and money on false science.
Thank you very much.
Dr. Aranoff said: "Talking about reducing carbon dioxide in order to reduce global warming is another example of dishonest scientists hawking their wares. Government leaders must critically examine scientific claims, and always be suspicious and on guard."
He earlier mentioned the bad science funded entirely by interested corporations. Today the interested corporations (most notorious being Exxon)are funding the science of the climate-change debunkers. My suggestion is that he's dragging a red herring. If I follow the corporate money behind climate research, I'm inclined to believe the "alarmists".
Too many words; too little emphasis on effective action.
In response to Bode Bliss and those who think the same way...They are exact;y backwards in their thinking. What we must do is make and use the energy we have close at hand from the only real ultimate source of energy on this planet--the sun..In contrast to what was posted, if we would put out technology into improving and utilizing solar power on a local basis. Maybe on every roof top or even all paved areas which absorb billions of tons of energy everyday we could produce the energy needed without all of the far-out science to "bring it from the moon" or where ever. It is here right above us. Let's figure out how to use it. Of course we can't continue to use all the energy we want unabated. Time to grow up and learn to conserve what we have
In response to Dr. Aranoff and any other skeptics.I will agree with him that even scientists can be swayed by various incentives to present any given view, but whether one accepts that human use of fossil feuls is contributing to global climate change or not, the resource itself is finite and we are going to run out of it and have to adapt to using something else.We can either do it in an intelligent and controlled fashion or disastrous, catasrophic fashion.Warming or not we need to begin changing our way of life.
Well written article but a little off on a few things i.e. Katrina is nothing compared to what will happen in the near future. 100 years? These scientists need to take their head out of their asses! We are in a "SNOWBALL EFFECT" Things can only get worse at a more alarming rate.
It does not take a scientist to figure out how fast the glaciers are melting.
We can stall the inevitable......
1) Cease extracting oil from the earth.
(by the way) Oil is not from dinosaur bones like we were taught in school!!
It is from vegetation.
2) Enforce a 1 child law limit world wide. These people need to wake the [deleted] up!!
3) Cease all use of plastic!! The hardener in plastic makes the human body produce more Estrogen in both male & female so in turn the human body automatically produces more Testosterone. Which obviously means more babies.
Where is all of this incompetence coming from?
you are brilliant, and you will make a differece in the world today.
You said that "In ordinary play, if all players contribute all their money, everyone wins big. If one player cheats, everyone wins small." This is an exaggeration. A typical game of ten players doesn't go from "big" to "small" if only one person defects.
"Minigames capturing the essence of Public Goods experiments show that even in the absence of rationality assumptions, both punishment and reward will fail to bring about prosocial behaviour. ... But reputation can induce fairness and cooperation in populations adapting through learning or imitation." according to: http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/IR-01-031.pdf
You should note that humans are more intelligent than dolphins in spite of the dolphin brain being larger. Also you might add that dolphins sleep in one-half of their brain at a time.
"The dolphin cortical column is composed of only 5 layers. The reptilian cortex has only three layers." according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_column
Public Policy games show that intelligence is a disadvantage to the group and hence the individusl in certain social situations. Are you recommending that humans become less intelligent?
don
You know what they say....it would take the planet to almost die for anyone with power,money and resources to do something to help the environment. People always want to redeem themselves after someone has died. Why would it take for someone or something to die beforfe it is noticed? It's a sad truth about human nature's way of learning. If we're any smarter, we all need to do something about saving our planet.
i dont profess to know all the answers,only a few of them .im grateful for the webs information , one thing that is painfully obvious is that if the majority of people dont agree there is a problem and quickly its curtain time for all
"My you live in interesting times".
We are challenged by future of whole humanity. We are on crossroads of future of humanity, destruction and greed of war or sharing the spirit of love and hope .Division between those energies is getting greater and greater, this is battle for Earth, between Light and darkness. Who are you serving? Mother is crying,
desperately crying, Mother Earth is presently being raped with rage, bombs, hatred, revenge, greed, and it is ready to explode in big ways of earthquakes, volcano's, floods, intense heat you will not be able to bear it.
Will you be the mice running in your hole, you will not be able to find, or you will suddenly realize your divine nature, help the world, stop destruction and war, forgive and ask for forgiveness, hug the Mother earth with so much love, get the strength now before it is late for all of us.
It is time of great challenge when we need to look at our spiritual nature, see the big picture, learn from our past and mistakes, awaken from within vision of better world to live and create in, create peace on the world, wake up our spiritual, enlightening energies that are dormant sleeping in all of us, realize our true spiritual potentials, so the world can hear us, and respect.
American Nation has huge role to play in next decade. We have much karma to bear. Our hope is major transformation and change on all levels.
We are the energy, planet earth is made of energy, we are part of mother earth, we influence all.
Ask your self which energies are you serving in your life, what you do, what you speak of, what you think?
That same energy will serve you or will destroy you, simply you ask for it.
Wake up now, before it is too late for all of us, we all share collective karma.
we need to think about polar cities for the future, year 2500 or so.
Julia want to interview me?
Danny Bloom in Taiwan
put some nice outfits on these pages.
okay like da
Yes, we now face an amazing challenge if WE are to survive. Certainly, life will continue to evolve without us.
Presently, according to David Suzuki, over 55,000 species go extinct every year. As indicated in so many articles and theories, we have no clue as to which species may serve as the tipping point to topple humankind from its pedestal.
Species are going extinct because of the fragmentization of habitats due to our invasion into habitats and disrupting established ecosystems that represent millions of years of evolution and networking. Since water is the essence and supporter of every ecosystem - our alteration of surface and groundwater is the leading cause for
most extinctions.
To save our world - all of humanity must awaken to a new water consciousness - and weigh every action and purchase of nonliving items - and consider the impact on our world of water. We must begin to invest in a living world in lieu of a dying world. We have to wake up!
William E. Marks www.watervoices.com
College Students Address Global Issues
From: The Clinton Foundation (enews@clintonfoundation.org)
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Sent: Thursday, 20 March 2008 1:26:46 AM
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To: John Berbatis (johnberbatisau@hotmail.com)
Estimating Exponentials
by Bob Powell, 5/29/07
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An article, Australian Researcher warns about Mass Human Extinction from Global Environmental Collapse by John Berbatis made me think, "Gee. Maybe things are worse than even I thought."
He writes: "Judging by the current extremes of global weather conditions and the recent increase in worldwide seismic activity, I believe humanity will face extinction before the end of 2008."
2008 !!! Holy Cow. And here I've been worried about the coming economic collapse at about that time.
Alarmist? Maybe. Maybe not. That's next year. Maybe he's wrong and it's at least 10 or 20 years away. Whew! That would be a relief.
But really. Exponential increases do quickly get out of hand and humans are really, really terrible at recognizing how quickly. How terrible? This graph shows how bad we are at it based on experiments with real human beings.
Estimating Exponential Growth. From The Logic of Failure, Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations by Dietrich Dorner, 1996, that I used in my Systems Thinking and Problem Solving class at Colorado Tech (in the slides for the second class).
Link to Systems Thinking and Problem Solving class.
Beyond this, we're terrible at understanding the dynamics of stocks and flows as described at Global Warming: An Inconvenient-to-Understand Truth and Sterman's paper to which there is a link, also based on experiments with human beings, students from MIT and Harvard.
So that's two reasons why the seriousness of climate change is so easy to obfuscate, which I view as a crime of planetary proportions considering the number of people who will die unless the human race takes immediate action.
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URL: http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/estexp.shtml
In the past ten years there has been an exponential melting of the ice sheets and a noticeable disintegration of the ice shelves, owing to 'global warming'.
The loss of mass from the underlying Tectonics Plates causes them to ascend (iso-static rebound), and this results in an increase in the intensification and frequency of global seismological activity. The seismic data of the past ten years confirm this conjecture. Furthermore, the ice shelves impede the flow of glaciers and ice sheets into to the oceans; and when the 'polar regions' are subjected to unprecedented seismic upheavals, these events will then cause the ice sheets and glaciers to be dislodged en masse into the ocean!
This occurrence will then instantly destabilize the earth's surface weight distribution (isostasy), and so precipitate a 'crust displacement' (Mag. 12). i.e., axis change! The previous subterranean extraction of fossil fuels will greatly exacerbate this impending Apocalypse.
Currently, the excessive amount of carbon and methane gasses in the atmosphere is causing catastrophic weather conditions, globally - and this situation will rapidly deteriorate... 'a climate runaway!'
The global environmental and geo-political situations are now coalescing into a 'critical mass'; so I believe humanity can expect a catastrophe of worldwide proportions within this year!
In 1998, I submitted my dissertation on the above matter to various eminent institutions and individuals, to which I received positive responses from PM's Tony Blair, Helen Clark (NZ) & Lee Kwain Yew (Singapore) as well as the UN's - Dr Mary Robinson, Hon. Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG of the High Court of Australia, Premier P. Beattie (Queensland, Au) and Chief Justices of Canada, Norway, Taiwan, Mexico and Netherlands etc,.
Reality rules this universe! ... not unproductive discussion & debate?
From: disasterdiplomacy@hotmail.com
To: johnberbatisau@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Global environment collapse -how+why(seismic)
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:32:39 +0000
Dear John,
Thank you kindly for your email and for the information. Yes, there is a reasonable amount of credible scientific literature on the topic of linkages between (i) weather and climate and (ii) tectonic events. The linkages are even stronger when we consider disaster events, not just the environmental changes. It is good to hear about your contribution to this body of research and I hope that you find opportunities to continue such endeavours.
I would be cautious about promoting endorsements of science from lawyers, such as the politicians and judges whom you mentioned, because their values and training are not always the most appropriate for judging scientific merit. Some are able to straddle more than one field and make important contributions in several areas, but that does not apply to them all. Mary Robinson left UNHCR in 2002.
Reality rules this universe! ... not unproductive discussion & debate?
As is clear from my work, including on the disaster diplomacy website, I agree with this sentiment.
Ilan
From: "Ackerley, Beth" To: "John Berbatis" Subject: Tsunami SMS Warnings Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 11:50:53 +1000 Mr John Berbatis Email address: johnberbatisau@hotmail.com Dear Mr Berbatis The Premier, Paul Lennon MHA, has asked me to acknowledge and thank you for your email of 29 March 2007 in relation to Tsunami SMS warning. Yours sincerely Beth Ackerley Executive Officer Premier's Office Telephone: 6233 6068 Fax: 6234 1572 Email: Beth.Ackerley@dpac.tas.gov.au From : thepremier Sent : Tuesday, 13 March 2007 2:00:16 PM To : Subject : AA07/06566 - Global warming From : thepremier Sent : Tuesday, 13 March 2007 2:00:16 PM To : johnberbatisau@hotmail.com Subject : AA07/06566 - Global warming Dear Mr Berbatis The Premier has received your recent email concerning global warming. Your views have been noted and Mr Iemma the appreciates reasons which prompted you to write to him on this occasion. You may be sure that your comments will receive close consideration. Yours sincerely Jocelyn Mouawad Assistant Private Secretary From: WA-Government Sent: Tuesday, 10 April 2007 4:13:08 PM To : "john berbatis" Subject : RE: SMS alerts for tsunami warning. | | | Drafts | Inbox Dear Mr Berbatis We refer to your recent email regarding SMS alerts for tsunami warnings. Your suggestion has been noted and forwarded to the Hon John Kobelke, Minister for Police and Emergency Services for consideration. Regards WA Govt >>> "john berbatis" 5/04/07 9:30 am >>> Dear Premier Alan Carpenter, In last month, there has been a heightened level of global seismological activity, especially in the Pacific basin 'ring of fire'; and it appears to be substantially escalating. I have recommended by email - to all State Premiers, PM Howard and the Chief Minister Clare Martin, that they consider the immediate establishing of a SMS alert for a tsunami threat, so as to facilitate the most effective means of the warning the public. Kind regards, John Berbatis 4/21 Cornelian St Scarborough 6019 Perth WA April 5th, 2007 Tel: 0422621382 NB. Premier Peter Beattie sent me a positive response by letter, on March 26th 2007 - pertaining to above matter.
FiFrom : Sent : Wednesday, 25 April 2007 8:14:56 AM To : johnberbatisau@hotmail.com Subject : | | | Drafts | Inbox We have received your e-mail.
Best Regard,
E-mail Team
Cabinet Secretariate Government of Japan
Dear Editor, Syllogisms that I submitted in 1998, which were recognized by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - Dr Mary Robinson and the Hon. Justice Michael D. Kirby AC CMG of the High Court of Australia. Time must exist before matter can be created, and only an animate entity can conceive of space-time. Time must be a stabilized and uniform condition before matter can form, thus Monotheism is a Truth. The Universe consists of space-time; which is functionally active and growing but remains stable. These combined characteristics are indicative of an animate entity only, thus Pantheism is a fact. Consequently, all mortals' behaviour and attitudes become conspicuous by our Creator. Reality is the dream of a Universal sentient being; sensations of all mortals are merely light flashes within elongated fractal crystals, flowing in a white mist which is time itself; ensconced within a beige coloured and velvet textured Pearl, that is, a holographic Universe. If all electrical particles were in different time zones - matter would not form, thus time is a controlled electromagnetic radiation (energy) E = mc2. To be perfect - one must know the past, present and future, there is only one, the one that created Time. John Berbatis Perth, Australia March 26th, 2007 Tel: +61 0422621382 Email: johnberbatisau@hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A natural warming cycle? Are you kidding me?
All the people on this post
All the people on this post who fear global warming, and a miriad of other human caused travails, but won't blame overpopulation and see it as the only cause wil go out and have 4 children, someday.
Have some guts, and help fight overpopulation!
How ridiculous and selfish we are to rigidly refuse ..
How ridiculous and selfish we are to rigidly refuse to accept what science has learned. The truth is, no one fully understands the impact of what is currently happening to our earth. Everything in nature is connected. We are looking to the large, obvious changes as harbingers of global trauma, but the truth is, something as "small" as the extinction of one species of insect could be all it takes to push us over the edge.
There is a reasonable amount of credible scientific literature .
There is a reasonable amount of credible scientific literature on the topic of linkages between (i) weather and climate and (ii) tectonic events. The linkages are even stronger when we consider disaster events, not just the environmental changes.
Change Our Attitude towards the Environment before it's Too Late
Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' talks in detail about how global warming, deforestation and commercial activity by industries and factories are affecting or will affect the planet earth in a drastic way, if proper precautions or changes are not undertaken in our interaction with the environment. Usually, in a fight between the nature and the human species, nature has always prevailed. I hope that we take this fact seriously and change our attitude towards our environment in a positive way before its too late.
Suggestions
I too am closer to a "naysayer" than anything else, but I do think that global climate change is a problem. The problem isn't, in my own opinion, that we don't care about climate change, but that most people in that stereotype are more worried about their own lives not something 50+ years in the future. Another portion is that media and the government give environmental issues less coverage and make them seem like less of a problem.
America's big problem with CO2 production is that we don't have as much incentive as other countries. Here we complain about fuel for our cars costing $2.49 a gallon, in other countries its as high as $10-11 a gallon. Personally, I think they have more incentive to work on alternatives to petroleum based fuels. But here in the states there is very little focus as compared to other countries. Japan has even created a small car which can run on a few thousand PSI of compressed air! Americans like to make things illegal when they don't like them, I'm against that and I think its a terible thing to do. However, I think that we should have smaller cars and have higher tax consequences for those who have larger vehicles (SUVs and large trucks like F650s), even larger consequences for those with cars that are only owned for desire and go far above and beyond serving the purpose of transportation (Hummers, Ferraris, Porche, etc.), and another high tax consequence on having multiple cars owned by one person. There are people in the US that own 5+ cars just because they can. If they can aford that many cars, they can aford a tax on each one. We're already making progress in trying to promote more efficient cars with the cash for clunkers program which ended all too quickly and I've heard of plans to give tax deductions for those who own hybrids or fully electric vehicles.
There isn't much that one individual can do to stop this environmental problem. The government of the US, as well as other countries, need to be involved and promoting it; otherwise, the ignorant will simply ignore it like the government is currently doing.
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