“Suppose that your mom is sick. None of her brothers, sisters or children have taken her complaints seriously. Everybody has carried on with their own busy lives, thinking that mom was imagining things, and assuming that she was fine.
And then she took a turn for the worse. Everybody close suddenly realized that she was very frail and ill, depleted of her energy and resources. She was no longer the ageless, sacred source of life that nurtures all living beings.
Now, suppose that she is everyone’s mother. She is Mother Earth.
And her illness is abrupt climate change…” Paul Beckwith
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Something that I put together March 12th in reply to interview questions with Will Fox at FutureTimeline.net. Please forward, etc. Use as you want..
‘1) Hi Paul. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. First of all, could you tell us a bit about your background, how long you’ve been involved in climate science, and what areas of climatology you specialise in?
‘Hello Will. Thank you. It is my pleasure to have this interview with you.
‘I am an Engineer with a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Engineering Physics (often called Engineering Science) from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I finished at the top of my class and received many …’ [Click here, to go to the fully elaborated text, continues.]
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Consequences Of Catastrophic Climate Change // Published on Mar 14, 2016
Never before in human history have we faced such a global-reaching upheaval like that underway today from early stages of abrupt climate system change. Will humanity continue its haphazard and disconcerted feeble attempts to address the gut-wrenching disruption and pretend that everything will work out fine as we spiral into civilization collapse? Or will we finally do what is required and treat the system turmoil as a global emergency far larger than we have ever faced before, and throw all our resources into surviving it?
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Three-Legged BarStool For Surviving Climate Change // Published on Mar 14, 2016
Society desperately needs a multi-pronged approach to survive ongoing abrupt climate system change:
Leg 1: zeroing fossil fuel emissions
Leg 2: halting extreme Arctic temperature rise
Leg 3: removing CO2 from atmosphere/ocean
Without 3 legs society topples, like the barstool. A harsh reality…
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Methane Warming At Least 34x Higher than CO2 // Published on Mar 14, 2016
My Methane Pet Peeve. Almost all reports (blogs, articles, newspapers, mainstream or not) incorrectly state that methane is 25x, or 24x or 22x stronger for warming than carbon dioxide. WRONG. Did I say WRONG. Over 100 years, the correct number from IPCC AR5 (2013) is 34x. It is 86x over 20 years, and up to 200x over a year or two. Methane lifetime is about 11 years in the atmosphere, but varies with latitude. The risk of large methane burps, especially in the Arctic is HUGE and growing.
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Why WE MUST a) cool the Arctic, b) lower CO2 levels // Published on Mar 14, 2016
We have run OUT of time on climate change. All heck is breaking badly. We must zero fossil fuel emissions, but this is not enough to restore climate stability. I discuss why and how we will cool the Arctic, and why and how we will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or oceans. There is no other option. If you are against this then DO NOT understand how severe abrupt climate change is, and what it will cost us. Basically, everything…
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Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist 
Hi Teacher Beckwith,
Just watched your latest videos, thanks very much for your work.
I’ve been following your work and others for a few years now since I discovered Guy McPherson’s site and Sam Carana’s Arctic News. Although I have only basic university level science knowledge I find I am able to follow many of the scientific articles and discussions.
Anyway, the idea I saw in Popular Science ( I think ) years ago was for utilizing very large high elevation balloons with solar panel type fabric on them and then having some type of electro-chemical grids or precipitators held aloft.
These could possibly be made to convert CO2 and maybe CH4 into some other less harmful compounds. This is where I’m not quite sure if the idea would work. Maybe generating extra OH would help with the CH4 somewhat but I’m clueless as to whether there could be a useful process designed for the CO2 with this arrangement.
Originally this was proposed as a way to break down the fluorocarbons which are the catalysts for attacking the ozone layer, or just for converting ozone itself perhaps. One advantage offered would seem to be that it could be done throughout the air column at different elevations wherever it was most effective. Certainly this was a good theoretical feature for this approach when considering the ozone layer.
Just wondering, would you see this idea as having potential? I realize the scale would need to be the size of the US military budget or so.
Thanks a lot for the work you are doing for all of us, Paul.
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Well, imagine the zoom of enterprise technically possible if the world decides to aim at actually correcting its accounting base relative to thermodynamics of heat transfer w eye to Biosphere OK.
What’s happened is the monetary world of power with all the trappings at liberty of monetary note worked without constraint overall toward self enlargement by design of tender from consequence..
The thing, the entire thing of the world order acted as if a fire at thermodynamics of heat transfer.
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Congratulations on your site – very interesting and rewarding. One point of clarification concerning methane.
For climate warming effects the time that a methane particle spends in the atmosphere is less relevant than the actual concentration. If concentrations above 1800 and rising are being maintained then enough methane is being released to overcome the rapid decomposition. So what number should the concentration be multiplied by to give the CO2e number – it sounds like 150 to 200? The lower numbers are relevant for reporting the impacts of a leak, i.e a methane release is 25 times worse than the equivalent amount of a CO2 release. Please confirm.
p.s. – The Marshall plan was mostly to rebuild Germany and Western Europe more than Japan.
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Seeing how fast the Arctic is heating, and, how slow global society is acting in a realistic way to reduce emissions implies to restore the sea-ice as the thermal need, something physical is now required, things are heating up too fast.
So, this was inspired by the artificial glaciers designed by an Indian engineer, Chewang Norphel, to provide water for crops at the right time of year, and, by Moray & the long-term landscape alterations done for production by Andean people it represents.
Then recently it became the idea of damming Bering Straits to prevent Pacific Ocean water from exchanging heat & salinity with Arctic Ocean water, confining the freshwater runoff volume to the basin.
The runoff then becomes a cooling of the North Atlantic and for heat to get to the Beaufort or Chukchi Sea would become a slow, far more diluted process.
This can be modeled a thought, and of course it was a recurring situation each ice-age so we know what happens to sea-life in sediments thus those concerns have a basis to evaluate.
My intention was to physically encourage sea-ice to growth in the eastern end, encouraging earlier formation and helping to stay longer in spite of warmer air.
With the clock ticking, and after some thoughts on basics for this, please consider the idea to deal with restoring the sea-ice with on a geophysical basis, “landscape modification” to allow sea-ice to grow in that key area.
cheers, tom
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Seeing how fast the Arctic is heating, and, how slow global society is acting in a realistic way to reduce emissions implies to restore the sea-ice as the thermal need, something physical is now required, things are heating up too fast.
So, this was inspired by the artificial glaciers designed by an Indian engineer, Chewang Norphel, to provide water for crops at the right time of year, and, by Moray & the long-term landscape alterations done for production by Andean people it represents.
Then recently it became the idea of damming Bering Straits to prevent Pacific Ocean water from exchanging heat & salinity with Arctic Ocean water, confining the freshwater runoff volume to the basin.
The runoff then becomes a cooling of the North Atlantic and for heat to get to the Beaufort or Chukchi Sea would become a slow, far more diluted process.
This can be modeled a thought, and of course it was a recurring situation each ice-age so we know what happens to sea-life in sediments thus those concerns have a basis to evaluate.
My intention was to physically encourage sea-ice to growth in the eastern end, encouraging earlier formation and helping to stay longer in spite of warmer air.
With the clock ticking, and after some thoughts on basics for this, please consider the idea to deal with restoring the sea-ice with on a geophysical basis, “landscape modification” to allow sea-ice to grow in that key area.
cheers, tom
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What are the real political roots of the mess? WHO runs this world? Remember the warning of Dwight D. Eisenhower about the military-industrial complex:
” The military–industrial complex (MIC) is an informal alliance between a nation’s military and the defense industry which supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure. In 2011, the United States spent more on its military than the next 13 nations combined.
In a U.S. context, the trope is sometimes extended to military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC), adding the U.S. Congress to form a three-sided relationship termed an iron triangle. These relationships include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry; or more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, the Congress and executive branch…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex
It’s not just the USA, it’s the GLOBAL military-industrial complex. Military (incl. secret services), oil business/multinational corporations and the “defense” industry- that’s the real global POWER. These guys are no tree huggers for sure. Just study the history of the oil busines and you know, what I am talking about. These guys won’t change their directive for sure:
POWER, running on fossil fuels.
The global industrial-military complex runs on oil mostly. There is no way, to run the global military machinery without fossil fuels. No tanks, no tactical aircraft, no aircraft carriers, no military at all without fossil fuels, without oil and massive CO2 emissions. You just can’t have both, dirty power and a healthy planet/climate. Dead simple.
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