RADIO ECOSHOCK

SUMMARY: From 15th Annual International Permaculture Convergence in London, September 9th, 2015: "Cool Talk" by Albert Bates from The Farm in Tennessee. Albert interviews Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins. Australian permaculturalist Rosemary Morrow tells us Western permies are the minority, compared to East Asia, India, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. WELCOME If you don't know what permaculture is when we start, you will by the end of this intensive radio feature. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen right now on Soundcloud! ALBERT BATES Albert Bates is the author of books like "The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change" and "The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times". He is the host of "The Great Change" blog at peaksurfer.blogspot.ca. But that just touches the surface. Formerly an environmental lawyer, Bates is one of the long-time residents of the Tennessee intentional community "The Farm". That's where so many great alternative ideas and low-tech solutions are created. We last had Albert on Radio Ecoshock for an interview on January 29th, 2014. Find the blog for that show here. Or you can download or listen to that previous interview here. Albert Bates This time around, Albert contacted me with some great suggestions for a couple of programs on his passion, permaculture. There is a huge long video of a day-long series of talks on You tube (links at the bottom of this post), from the 15th Annual International Permaculture Convergence held in London on September 19th. Actually there were official presentations, by most of the leading names in permaculture, but also workshops, and meet-ups of all kinds. I'll be playing you a couple of the best talks. Even better, Albert arranged to interview some hard-to-find permaculture folks, specifically for Radio Ecoshock. You'll hear him talk with Transition Town co-founder Rob Hopkins this week, and with more internationally known permaculture leaders next week. Here is Albert Bates' own presentation in London (19 minutes). He calls it "cool talk" and he explains why "cool" works better than something like "carbon sequestration". It's all in our tribal memes. Anyway, you'll hear about "cool food" and other cool products - including biochar paint that can actually clean the air in your room, and cows that don't need antibiotics. Here's the big, big news in my opinion. You know that almost everything we do creates carbon emissions, as we burn fossil fuels. Bates says there is a different way to burn... almost anything - and not create greenhouse gases. In fact, the "pyrolysis" method of burning (can be done in a cheap camp stove even) - grabs and stores carbon instead of releasing it. The "bio char" remainders can be used in many products, fed to cows, or just dumped in the ground - where it will hold on to the carbon for up to 1,000 years. That means we could create a society where almost everything we do LOWERS the carbon in the atmosphere. The test workshops for that society are the "eco-villages" which Albert and other permaculturalists are building in many countries. Bates has a big carbon negative settlement in the works, in an undisclosed location, working with a national government. It's possible we could lower carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, or even lower. There is a way. That's big. Huge. So listen to this 19 minute talk from Albert, in CD Quality or Lo-Fi. ALBERT INTERVIEWS TRANSITION TOWNS CO-FOUNDER ROB HOPKINS Next Albert interviews Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins for Radio Ecoshock. Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of the original Transition Town in Totnes, England, and central to the spread of these low-carbon, more self-reliant communities world-wide. I think there are transition towns in up to 100 countries now. Albert is also a realist. Things look dark right now. There is a possibility of petro-collapse, as oil and gas dwindle and become

Will China lead the world into a new "ecological civilization", while America falls behind into the remnants of the old carbon age? Hidden by mainstream media, major changes are developing on the global stage. Our guest Laurence Brahm gives us a tour. Meanwhile, business as usual is setting us up for the awful shocks of climate disruption. Our second guest Gernot Wagner says our economies are heading into a series of hits, something he calls "climate shock". In fact, scientific studies say there is at least a ten percent chance we won't survive at all. We are gambling with an ecosphere, our descendants and a geological age. Let's hope the ecological civilization comes in time, and let's pay attention to those who try to lead us there. I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! LAURENCE BRAHM - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD A successful international trade lawyer helping multinational companies enter China, quits to find himself and the mythical Shangri-La. That journey becomes a book. Along the way our guest finds a passion for restoring ancient buildings of Asia. He founded an influential organization called "The Himalayan Consensus" - which was influential among other things in helping the new secular Constitution of Nepal. These are among the many sides to Laurence Brahm. He's been listed as a senior advisor to China's Ministry of Environmental Protection. I checked. It's true. When I talked with Laurence in the Spring of 2015 about his new book "Fusion Economics" he said China would come out with a bold new vision to move away from carbon-powered civilization, perhaps surpassing the United States. That plan has been released. Laurence Brahm We talk about the developing bi-polar world of international finance and what that could mean for all of us. We look at real roads to climate sanity, and Laurence's appointment as Foreign Policy Advisor to Jill Stein's 2016 Presidential campaign for the American Green Party. Laurence is a mix of visions to survive amid realism. He says for example that scientists tell him this civilization has only a fifty-fifty change of making it to the year 2100. As a realist, he see the need for governments and private business to cooperate on plans to decarbonize. REPLACING WALL STREET AND THE DOLLAR I won't go into great detail here about the newly emerging block of China, India and Russia. Following the Asian crash in the late 1990's, and again after the Lehman collapse of 2008, major countries outside America trust Wall Street and the old Bretton Woods banking system less and less. Developing countries in South America and Africa also see that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank do not really operate in their best interests. In the last few years we've seen the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the "New Silk Road" initiative and the South-South Cooperative Fund emerge. As a former trade and business lawyer, Laurence is in a perfect position to explain what is going on - the news that never makes it into major American media. We also note the contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership does not include China, and is likely an effort to isolate China. As I wrote in my blog on Laurence last spring: "Laurence has his own You tube channel. He talks about "compassionate capital" and "conscientious consumption". Brahm recommends we set up our own alternative financial systems (like local currencies, or bitcoin). On BBC in December, Brahm said 80% of the wealth of America comes from betting on stocks, currencies and other financial games, and not from producing goods and services. That is not sustainable." You can download that Radio Ecoshock interview based on Brahm's book "Fusion Economics" here in CD Quality or Lo-Fi CHINA MOVING ON CLIMATE CHANGE Brahm says that one issue that can unite the world is climate change. It's a global problem demanding global solut

With that short clip from "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, the time has come for many things: for peace, for climate action, for economic sanity, the list is long. Radio Ecoshock 151007. This week on Radio Ecoshock we thunder into another place humans don't like to go. The nasty truth is we are killing off "the only known living companions we have in the universe", as our first guest says. The venerable biologist and head of the Stanford Center for Biodiversity Paul Ehrlich joins us. He's followed by Will Tuttle, author of "The World Peace Diet". Will says you can't care about climate change and still eat meat, because about half of all global emissions are driven by the industrial slaughter of our fellow species. That hidden holocaust of animals is also eating into our minds, twisting itself back out as illness and violence. Too much information? Don't worry, be happy with this week's "Climate Variety Hour... In just ten minutes." Get inspired with Bernie Sanders, climate humor from UK's Guardian newspaper, and bits from climate songs by people who can actually sing. I'm Alex Smith. Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! DR. PAUL EHRLICH - ANNIHILATION OF WILD ANIMALS AND BIRDS I always consider it an honor to have a chance to chat with Paul Ehrlich. There's a lot of wisdom stuffed in this interview - so I've transcribed some of the best quotes for this week's Radio Ecoshock blog. By the way, here is an excellent graphic showing the relationship in animal biomass between wild animals, humans, and our domesticated animals comparing 10,000 years ago to present day. KEY NOTES AND QUOTES FROM THIS PAUL EHRLICH INTERVIEW Among stories of Middle East refugees and stock market jitters, we find brief notices that species are disappearing rapidly all over the world. In a scientific journal and a new book, famed scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich warn that humans are driving the sixth great mass extinction here on Earth. Just released in September, their new book is titled "The Annihilation of Nature - Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals". As an author and co-author of more than 40 books, Paul R. Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies and the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich Paul, welcome back to Radio Ecoshock (this is our third interview for the program). ALEX: Your book title uses the word "annihilation". Is that just sensational, or do you mean it? Ehrlich really means it. We are losing "the only known living companions we have in the entire universe." "Scientists are very scared about this, particularly because people don't really understand the threat." ALEX: How do we know these extinctions are being driven by humans, rather than being part of a natural cycle so often found in Earth's long history? For the scientific paper behind the book, the Erhlichs and their co-author studied past extinction events, and then compared "very conservative" estimates of the number of species that went extinct over the past few hundred years. That was cross-checked with the best estimates of extinctions that have occurred BETWEEN mass extinction events, to determine the "natural" loss of species as evolution continues. The extinctions caused by humans are far higher than that number. "Looking at both ends of the story, it turns out the extinction rate today is already 10 to 100 or more times the background rate. Which shows we are starting into a vast new extinction, and it's clearly being caused by human beings." ALEX: Paul Ehrlich, how does this book relate to the scientific study on extinction you, Anne and Gerardo Ceballos published in June of this year, in the journal "Science Advances". The book explains more for lay people, and also appeals to our emotions, because so many people are "now isolated in cities and don't know much about what goes on

SUMMARY: The world rolls on, hotter than ever. This week on Radio Ecoshock: Neela Banerjee from InsideClimate News investigates the world's biggest oil company, Exxon/Mobil. Starting in the 1970's, Exxon knew their product would damage the climate, but chose to fund denial. In "The End of Plenty", National Geographic author Joel Bourne says the future of food and population isn't going to happen. Plus Terence McKenna on why most people are idiots; Paul Ehrlich on disappearing animals; & song "Love-A-Lution". Radio Ecoshock 150930. I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for joining in. Let's get started. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! EXXON KNEW - AND STILL FUNDED CLIMATE DENIAL The world's largest oil company knew climate change would result from their products as early as 1977. That's just part of startling revelations coming out of an investigation by InsideClimate News. To get the whole scoop, we've reached their senior investigative journalist, Neela Banerjee. Neela Banerjee While researching the early days of climate science, journalists with InsideClimateNews found puzzling things. There were scientific papers on climate change in the late 1970's and early 1980's, published by Exxon scientists. Exxon experts even testified to Congress about the risks of climate change in those early days. The world's largest oil company rigged up a supertanker with measuring instruments to study the amount of carbon going into the oceans. The company forsaw carbon controls, and wanted to be taken seriously as a party to those discussions. Documents found in company archives, including those held at the University of Texas, showed this wasn't a low level exploit by some adventurous company scientists. Top levels of management were advised about the serious risk of climate change, routinely. According to InsideClimate News: "As early as 1978, Exxon’s scientists predicted that burning fossil fuels could lead to climate change that would 'destroy agricultural output' for entire countries. Exxon scientists issued urgent and dire warnings to top Exxon executives that climate change could be “catastrophic” and 'irreversible,' and that prevention would 'require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.'" Exxon doesn't deny any of this happened. How could they? There are films, letters, published papers, Congressional testimony. But Neela Banerjee says the company doesn't want to talk about it now. Most of the Exxon climate research ended around 1982, likely due to widespread cost-cutting at the company during a down-turn. However their climate modeling unit kept on going. In 1989, Exxon joined the infamous "Global Climate Coalition". That may sound like an activist group, but really it was a gathering of carbon polluters, with the intent to prevent any controls on carbon pollution. Then in the 1990's, and at least until around 2007, Exxon, and later Exxon/Mobil, poured millions of dollars into any "Institute" or scientists that would help confuse the public about the reality of global warming. Like the tobacco lobby (whose products also killed millions) Exxon worked hard to create doubt. Exxon executives like Rex Tillerson were close to being climate deniers. In so doing, as the world's biggest oil company, with offices in almost every country, the company helped stall climate action, and made our whole situation a lot worse. Exxon still hasn't come clean. According to a press release from InsideClimate News: "As recently as Exxon’s 2015 shareholder meeting, CEO Rex Tillerson questioned if climate change was linked to the extreme weather that Exxon’s own scientists predicted three decades ago. Exxon has directed roughly $30 million in funding to groups that dispute the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. Despite a 2007 promise to stop funding climate change deniers, the company has given more than $2 million to members of Congress who continue to deny tha

Summary: Oil company BP says recoverable oil runs out in 50 years. American scientist James H. Brown publishes study saying this means a crash of economy and population is "very, very likely". Then Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver on our prospects, and why he ran for the Green Party. Radio Ecoshock 150923. Warning: If you are already feeling depressed, this may not be the program for you. Maybe you should take a walk outside instead. Really. That would be OK. For those still listening/reading, according to one of the world's biggest oil companies, their primary product may not be around for much longer than 50 years. In this program, a senior scientist follows that logic to find a catastrophic crash of our economy - and world population is "very, very likely". We'll follow up with a chat with one of Canada's top climate scientists. He says we don't need more science, we need action to save ourselves. So he ran for the Green Party and got elected. Speaking of politics, Catholic legislators in the U.S. Congress saying they will boycott the Pope's speech there because of his views on global warming, let's go to our favorite source, the father of all that's right, former President Ronald Reagan: "Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense. Let's be sure that those who come after, will say of us in our time, we did everything that could be done." Australia's great climate denier and coal-lover Prime Minister Tony Abbott just got the boot from his old party. His replacement is at least on record acknowledging that climate change is real and dangerous. One more to go: Canada's Tar Sands Prime Minister Stephen Harper is up for election in October, with polls showing him running dead last in public opinion. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! Of course, the political theater may all be far too late. Pop a few anti-depressants for our next guest, as Radio Ecoshock rolls on into the dystopic future. SCIENCE OF CATASTROPHE: DR. JAMES H. BROWN In about 50 years, oil and gas will run out . But our bubble of economic growth and increasing population will crash before that. It has to. That's according to our next guest James H. Brown, a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. He's also the head of the Brown Lab. This interview is not our usual fare. First of all, the crash will come less from climate change, although that is not minimized, but from the simple fast that economically retrievable oil and gas will run out. Eventually, Brown says, that means this planet will no longer be able to support billions of people. A great dying is likely, if not inevitable. This all comes not from an out-there blogger, but from a highly reputable scientist. His paper on the subject was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) - one of the top American scientific journals. It's peer-reviewed and inspected, and was published August 4th, 2015. The title is: "Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind". I begin by asking Brown to describe what is meant by "the Earth-Space battery". Essentially, as I understand it, this is a system where solar energy is stored in two main forms on Earth: (1) the total mass of living matter, on land and sea (plants, animals, insects, the lot) and (2) the energy stored in longer-term forms like fossil fuels, and peat. Brown makes the case that both forms of energy on Earth are being rapidly depleted. As they are exhausted (by us, and by systems stimulated by humans) - Earth moves toward the general state of (outer) space, becoming less hospitable for living things. In the abstract for that paper we find this scary little sentence: "With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of

SUMMARY: This week on Radio Ecoshock 3 interviews with scientists on the cutting edge of climate change. From the UK, Chris Boulton hunts for signs of abrupt ecological shifts. From Norway, Hans Weihe explores the changing Arctic. But first, we look into whether air pollution is shading the world from serious heating, with Bjorn Stevens of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! IS IT SAFE TO CLEAN UP AIR POLLUTION? DR. BJORN STEVENS We know that industrial pollution in the atmosphere actually hides some of the global warming expected from our emissions. But how much? Respected scientists like James Hansen have suggested that a degree Celsius - or more - is "in the pipeline" due to the pollution, called "aerosols" in science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a wide range of possible impacts of aerosols, but they recently dropped their lowest estimates. The whole subject is one of the most difficult in science, because it involves swirls of widely varying materials in the atmosphere, unevenly distributed around the globe. The aerosols also interact with one of the last frontiers of science, the activity of clouds. Our guest Professor Bjorn Stevens is a director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology where he leads the Atmosphere in the Earth System Department. He is also a professor at the University of Hamburg. Dr. Stevens was previously at the University of California in Los Angeles. Although born in Germany, he is an American, educated in the United States. Bjorn Stevens is one of the world authorities on clouds and climate change. He's the lead author of a new paper on the limits of aerosol impacts on global warming - and that paper has already stirred up controversy, including among climate sceptics. The public knows little about this scientific discussion, except when it's called "global dimming". I've run a feature about it by the BBC. I was also impressed by studies of what was first called the "Asian Brown Cloud", but later the "Atmospheric Brown Cloud". Below you will find a link to my 2006 program on the subject, featuring the work of V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute. For example, simple studies of how long it takes a pan of water to evaporate showed sunlight reaching the surface of China has dropped by at least 10% over the last couple of decades. Consider the implications for agriculture. Another huge big brown cloud forms over Northern India for part of every year, blocking out sunlight. The cause is mostly soot from inefficient indoor cooking fires! In that blog I wrote: "Ramanathan told science writer Regina Nuzzo, 'By sheer, dumb luck, we are adding particles that are trapping sunlight and cooling the planet.' He compares it to a mask - and if that pollution is removed, the climate may suddenly rise to the real levels of warming gases in the atmosphere. Ramanathan said: 'Many of us, including myself, are concerned we could see a huge acceleration of global warming if we unmask the beast.'" GLOBAL DIMMING RESOURCES: Find a text summaryof the BBC "Global Dimming" documentary here. Watch the documentary here. The Radio Ecoshock special on global dimming (20 minutes, 18 MB) is available as a free .mp3 here. A transcript of Radio Ecoshock special on global dimming, (broadcast Sept 8, 2006) is here. BUT IS GLOBAL DIMMING AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM NOW? But now in 2015 we ask: is global dimming an appropriate label for the totality of human pollution that may be shading the Earth from the real carbon blanket we've put up there? If I understood him correctly, Bjorn Stevens says "no" because global dimming was really about local or regional conditions of pollution (say over India or China) rather than a global effect. In fact, Stevens began to argue with other scientists who claimed a large amount of warming was being masked. That argument became his new paper "Rethinking the Lower

SUMMARY: This week on Radio Ecoshock 3 interviews with scientists on the cutting edge of climate change. From the UK, Chris Boulton hunts for signs of abrupt ecological shifts. From Norway, Hans Weihe explores the changing Arctic. But first, we look into whether  …

In this week's Radio Ecoshock, we cover global climate news, from the Syrian refugees to signs of an abrupt climate shift, with scientist Paul Beckwith. Plus I've got a few tidbits of news they just won't tell you, and my new song aimed to promote activism for the Paris climate talks in late November this year. I'm Alex Smith, let's go. Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Or listen right now on Soundcloud! (image courtesy of Milint Earth Day) CLIMATE NEWS ROUNDUP WITH PAUL BECKWITH Over the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, climate change put in an extreme appearance all over the world. It looks like 2015 will be the hottest year ever, another record-setting year in a string of hot years. Sooner or later, our civilization will begin to crack under the strain. Our next guest suggests a climate shift could be sooner than most people expect. It's time for our climate roundup with climate scientist, and regular Radio Ecoshock guest, Paul Beckwith, from the University of Ottawa. Climate change is behind one of the biggest stories of our times, the outpouring of refugees from the Middle East. Let me just read one paragraph from a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 2nd, 2015. The title is: "Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought". The lead author was Colin Kelly. They say: "There is evidence that the 2007-2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers." They found a severe 3 year drought was 2 to 3 times more likely due to human-induced climate change, and then write: "We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict." Are the millions on the move out of the Middle East also climate refugees? Beckwith says "yes" climate was a stimulation toward revolution (part of "the Arab Spring") and then civil war (which drove out millions of refugees). I think we have to keep in mind Syria was already home to at least million Palestinian refugees, and then took at least a million more refugees from war-torn Iraq. Add in the Syrian farm families displaced by heat and drought, and you have swarms of unemployed people, mostly very young, demanding change. It's a complicated situation, to say the least, but climate change played a role. And let's face it, who wouldn't want to get out of the Middle East right now? They've just gone through a summer heat wave beyond human endurance. Then there's the sand storm that covered the entire region, visible from space. Cooler Europe, living in peace, with a functioning economy looks like a dream worth risking everything to reach. THE BIG BLOB OF COLD WATER NEAR GREENLAND - AND HUGE RISING SEAS Paul and I go on to discuss the new scientific estimates of much higher melt rates coming off Greenland. Where the IPCC used to suggest there would be one to three meters of sea level rise by 2100, now scientists like James Hansen (and NASA) are saying three meters of sea level rise is assured, and it may come much sooner. Last year Paul Beckwith released a You tube video saying seven meters (23 feet!) of sea level rise was possible by 2070. I thought he was being too extreme. But now with Hansen's paper and other science coming out, it looks like Beckwith may be right about the upper limits that are possible. Last month he revisited that whole question in this You tube video. Be sure to listen to Paul's description of the very important new paper by Dr. James Hansen, former Director of the Goddard Space Institute for NASA. Paul Beckwith did a series of 9 You tube videos to describe this paper in depth. Among many shocking conclusions is the possibility of extreme storm surges that could flood cities. Start with Part I of that series on You tube here. Hansen's paper was made public well before the usual

SUMMARY: Climate change and the Western wildfires: scientists and a firefighter talk latest. Plus NASA's Benjamin Cook on the decades-long drought coming to the American Southwest and Central Plains. Radio Ecoshock 150902 Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen right now on Soundcloud! ALEX IN WILD FIRE HELL Welcome back to the new Fall season of Radio Ecoshock 2015. I'm Alex Smith and I'm in a funk. It's been toxic to go outside for 4 days. Here in the West we are smoked in. Making a quick run outside, we got bits of falling ash in our eyes, from the big fires in Washington state. We gave up and went back. Without my walks in nature, in all weather, I'm in a skunky mood, and the body gets stiff. At least I still have a house. A few dozen families in the Rock Creek community are not so lucky. The nearby city of Grand Forks just got an evacuation alert. It's not an evacuation order to get out. It's a warning to get your photos, documents, pet supplies, a grab bag of clothing, keys, money - and have it ready to go. The so-called "Stick-Pin" fire is just 4.5 kilometers, or about 2 miles, from the Canadian Border and rural Rural Grand Forks. You know, I try to do a global show with information that works for people in Scandinavia, Singapore, Australia or California. Climate change is like that. But this program is unashamedly about the American West. Yes that does matter to everyone. California is probably the world's fifth largest economy, and it provides food not just for America and Canada, but the world. I won't try and tell my listeners in England that this hellish mix of drought and fire is coming to you any time soon. In fact, it looks like another coolish, wet miserable winter coming for the British Isles and Northern Europe. Certainly listeners in Australia, South America and Indonesia should be paying attention to fire knowledge. The carbon and ash spiralling up into the sky in North America is just part of a world pattern of deforestation due to climate change. Trees are mostly carbon, and they are releasing their storehouse. It's an open question how many of them will grow back. Their ash will be sucked up into the Arctic, where the already gray ice will get darker still, soaking up the sun, hastening melting of the glaciers. For me now climate change is real and personal. We housed five fire refugees, and our tiny community fed hundreds of them before any government help arrived. My favorite grove of trees, Ponderosa pines growing on a small island flanked by a verdant pool, burned to the ground a couple of weeks ago. A lot is gone, and it's not over. The nearby city of Grand Forks just got an evacuation alert. It's not an evacuation order to get out. It's a warning to get your photos, documents, pet supplies, a grab bag of clothing, keys, money - and have it ready to go. The so-called "Stick-Pin" fire is just 4.5 kilometers, or about 2 miles, from the Canadian Border and rural Rural Grand Forks. Residents of Washington State are fleeing the largest fire that state has ever seen. Later in this program we'll hear a NASA scientists tell us about the coming 30 year megadroughts. But first I want to share the latest report on the strong link between climate change and the fires burning up the West Coast, from California through Canada all the way into Alaska. I'm going to play you a teleconference held August 26th, arranged by the group Climate Nexus. We'll hear two scientists and a veteran fire fighter. Maybe I'm biased because we are surrounded by megafires right now, but I found this teleconference riveting and full of insight for all of us. THE CLIMATE NEXUS CLIMATE AND WILDFIRE TELECONFERENCE Thanks for joining us as we kick off this new fall season of Radio Ecoshock. Let's roll, with Climate Nexus host Paige Knappenberger, scientists Mark Cochrane and Park Williams, plus Retired Fire Captain Lou Paulson, recorded August 26th, 2015. Here is more on our guests: A

SUMMARY: Climate change and the Western wildfires: scientists and a firefighter talk latest. Plus NASA’s Benjamin Cook on the decades-long drought coming to the American Southwest and Central Plains. Radio Ecoshock 150902 Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality  …

Summary: Unknown tipping points, with Dr. Alan Hastings. Dr. David Orr, author of "Down to the Wire: confronting climate collapse." Plus Twelve Batty Things About James Lovelock. And why TV weathercasters never mention climate change. Radio Ecoshock 150826 (replay from 100409) A new season of Radio Ecoshock, reporting from the front lines of climate change, begins next week - September 2nd. Stay tuned! Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Or listen on Soundcloud right now! In the Spring of 2010, the East Coast of the United States was nearly drowned in an extreme precipitation event. Ditto parts of Australia, and Rio in Brazil. This is the other half of "global warming" - global wetting. Scientists have been warning about it for years - now it's happening. In the summer of 2015, the media attention is on the drought in the West, and the super fires. But this show reminds us, the pendulum will swing the other way for millions of people. Extreme weather will bring record floods somewhere in the world again this year. WHY WEATHER CASTERS DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE Right afterwards in 2010, Eastern Canada went way above any temperature records, hitting summer beach weather, the eighties - 25 degrees C - in the first week of April. Rhode Island hit the 90's. Still, hardly a single Network weather person mentioned "climate change". That's because a George Mason study shows that 67% of "weathercasters" believe that global warming is a natural event, and 27% think it's just a scam that isn't happening at all. About half of those authoritative (but good looking!) faces on TV, telling us about the weather, have a degree in Meteorology. The other half just have the pretty or handsome face. Practically none have any scientific training in climate - but they talk like experts anyway. It's very damaging. Our first guest says humans are very close to climate collapse. David W. Orr is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, at Oberlin College, in Ohio. He's been a pioneer in greening higher education. He advises many leaders and foundations. His latest book is "Down to the Wire: confronting climate collapse." TWELVE BATTY THINGS ABOUT JAMES LOVELOCK Gaia theorist James Lovelock has just given another disturbing interview to the BBC in London. Lovelock claims it's too late, we shouldn't waste our money on things like wind energy, but spend it all on adapting to the inevitable climate shift. Another worry proposed by Lovelock, is that climate change may not develop as a steady rise in either temperature or sea levels. It might happen as sudden jumps and reversals. He says previous climate records show a long-term heating can include intervals - perhaps decades or more - of cooling as well. Given all the global cooling nonsense from last winter's snowfall in the U.S., can any climate action plans can survive unsteady weather? But Lovelock is making increasingly bizarre statements as well. Like this one: China is planning on moving it's population to Africa. Really? In this show I look into "Twelve Batty Things About James Lovelock". TIPPING POINTS MAY ARRIVE UNANNOUNCED I raised Lovelock's worries about irregular progression of climate change, partly because of another paper almost unknown to the general public. A theoretical ecologist at University of California Davis, Alan Hastings, says climate tipping points may not be predictable at all. According to his work, there may be no signals or warnings, before a radical shift. For example, temperatures could go up rather suddenly, and stay there. Professor Alan Hastings Hastings' paper didn't get much press, but it's quite important. As far as I can tell, Radio Ecoshock has the only original interview on the new paper from this distinguished scientist. I've added a few minutes from Dr. James Hansen on radio in Australia. Music credits: "Slow Me Down" by Emmy Rossum, Album: "Inside Out" 2:34; "White Flag" by Dido, Album: "White Flag

SUMMARY: From the University of Oregon, Kathleen Dean Moore delivers an artful talk about our attack on Nature, and hope of reviving love instead. Recorded in Vancouver. With readings from her work & original songs by Libby Roderick ("The Lifeboats Are Burning" and Tempting Eve ("We Are"). Radio Ecoshock 150819 (replay from 120502) 1 hour Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB. Or listen on Soundcloud right now. I record a lot of speeches, and listen to many more. This talk by Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore of Oregon State University is one of the best speeches of 2012. The title was "It's Wrong to Wreck the World: Climate Change and the Moral Obligation to the Future". The presentation was organized by Simon Fraser University, in their Continuing Studies in Science and Environment program. Kathleen spends every summer on a remote island off the coast of Alaska. She's in touch with Nature there, and at home in Oregon. In this artful, moving speech, we get some readings from her work - examples of why her books are so popular. Find out more about Kathleen Dean Moore at her blog at riverwalking.com Her latest book, a collection of 1500 short essays about our obligation to the future, is called "Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril." The writers are among the most famous people in the world, all speaking for the rights of the next generation(s). "Morality" sounds boring. This speech surprised and moved me. It will do the same for you. NEW MUSIC The program also premieres a new original song by Libby Roderick: "The Lifeboats Are Burning", and a song inspired by a Radio Ecoshock Show - "We Are" by the new band Tempting Eve in Sydney Australia.

SUMMARY: From the University of Oregon, Kathleen Dean Moore delivers an artful talk about our attack on Nature, and hope of reviving love instead. Recorded in Vancouver. With readings from her work & original songs by Libby Roderick (“The Lifeboats Are Burning” and  …

Emerging threats analyst and author Robert Marston Fanney on new frontiers of climate change. Dr. Alex Rogers of Oxford: State of the Oceans 2013. Radio Ecoshock 131016 1 hour. Illustration by Marek Okon for Luthiel's Song by Robert Marston Fanney. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! WE ARE IN TROUBLE Yes, we are in trouble. Last week, in this interview with Nicole Foss, we peered into the impending crash of the economy. It may dance on for a while using funny money from the Federal Reserve and other central banks. But fall it will. A mere Depression would be good news, if the climate could stay the same for humans and all creatures. But even during hard times, we'll keep on dragging more and more dirty fossil fuels out of the ground. It's a burning party, maybe a funeral pyre. Coming up we'll talk it all through with emerging threats analyst and author Robert Marston Fanney. You'll also hear an interview with a top marine biologist from the UK. Alex Rogers is the co-lead author of the new State of the Oceans 2013 report. Alex reminds us that global warming is more a story of the oceans than our experiences of floods, fires, and storms on land. Most of our excess carbon is going into the sea, changing its chemistry, temperature, and the basis of the food chain. The ocean is where it's happening, and the ocean is a news nowhere land where reporters don't go, and humans don't care. Going through the emerging science, I'm also alarmed to discover big changes in Antarctica can reshape our world. Climate change is like the many-headed Hydra. We think we know it, but we don't. The Earth is re-arranging in all the places humans don't look: at sea, at the poles, deep in the melting permafrost, and in the farthest forests and mountain tops. In our opening show this Fall of 2013, climate scientist Paul Beckwith suggested warming could come very suddenly, even in a decade or two. A new paper by Morgan Schaller and James Wright of Rutgers finds, as Joe Romm writes, "When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Earth May Have Warmed 9°F In 13 Years". It's a shocking example of what could happen. The helpful Rutgers press piece on this study is here. Business and political leaders have already announced they expect, or will tolerate a doubling of CO2 levels from the pre-industrial level of 270 parts per million to over 600 parts per million. We are already on our way, touching 400 parts per million this year, and adding more carbon faster every year, as the fossil fuel party expands around the world. Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, Brazil, and every country who can is promising to develop more fossil fuel resources. We are investing billions, possibly trillions, into more mega-coal mines, more fracked gas and Liquid Natural Gas plants, bigger tar sands and shale oil projects. Humans seem intent on fossil suicide. Next week we'll talk with Morgan Schaller to find out what can happen in a mere 13 years on this fragile planet. 2047: WHEN OUR HOTTEST YEARS BECOME OUR COLDEST YEARS Look at it another way. Another paper released this week says that by 2047 the coldest years will be hotter than the warmest years of the last two decades. We've already set new temperature records, and those will be the old years we look back on. This paper was published in the Journal "Nature", by a team of post-grads at the University of Hawaii, led by Dr. Camilo Mora. In an article by Justin Gillis of the New York Times, Dr. Mora says: quote “Go back in your life to think about the hottest, most traumatic event you have experienced.” “What we’re saying is that very soon, that event is going to become the norm.” Do it. Remember the heat wave you prayed would end. The day the sun seemed to be the enemy. You waited impatiently for the cooler darkness. That's the new day in 2047. Just 34 years from now. How old will you be then? How about your kids or grand-kids? Other scientists sug

In the summer of 2015, it's another blistering week in North America, and around the world, as weather records fall. It's 105 degrees, or 40 degrees Celsius outside my studio in British Columbia Canada. The ocean-side city of Portland Oregon experienced back to back days over 100 degrees. A heat wave blasted the East Coast of the United States and Canada. Europe is cooler this week, after a blazing heat wave followed by freakish storms. This same day, a city of 100,000 people in Iran experienced a combination of heat and humidity equal to 163 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Celsius. This El Nino year could be the record-shattering jump in global heating we've been warning is on the way. Welcome to your hotter world. This week on Radio Ecoshock we turn the tables. Alex Smith is the guest on Post Carbon Radio, as broadcast on KWMR West Marin Community Radio outside San Francisco California. We go for the big picture on shocking climate change, and the eternal question: can we do anything about it? Let's go to Post Carbon Radio hosts Karen Nyhus and Bing Gong. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Or listen on Soundcloud right now! Post Carbon Radio has grown into a really important climate radio source you should bookmark and add to your list. Or you can subscribe on Itunes. For example, here is their description of the previous week's show: "We interview Victor Menotti, Executive Director of the International Forum on Globalization, and Claire Greensfelder, Co-founder of Women’s Global Call for Climate Justice and Senior Advisor on Climate and Energy for Women in Europe for a Common Future and Women's Environment and Development Organization. Both guests are veteran observers of the UN climate negotiations, and were in Bonn, Germany in June for the UNFCCC climate negotiations leading up to COP 21 in Paris this December. What happened in Bonn? What can we expect in Paris COP 21? Is the 2 degree target enough to stop catastrophic climate change, and is it even achievable?" The Post Carbon Radio show is found here on Podomatic: http://postcarbon.podomatic.com/ Speaking of good alternative radio, don't forget "TUC Radio" with host Maria Gilardin, also in Northern California. "TUC" stands for Time of Useful Consciousness. Her latest show is a speech by one of the world's top climate scientists Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. The talk comes from the conference "Our Common Future" held in July 2015. This program also contains some of Schellnhuber's remarks at the Vatican. You can find a complete listing of TUC Radio shows, with free mp3 downloads here on radio4all.net. Maria's TUC Radio site is here. ALEX ON CLIMATE CHANGE Co-host Karen Nyhus begins with this: "In my observation, the American press has dropped off its coverage of climate science in the last 5 years. The British press, by contrast, including the UK Guardian, have not, but they have also taken heat since you started broadcasting for putting out what others call “climate porn.” There’s a lot of debate about how to communicate climate science, if your goal is to inspire people to action, which presumably any non-denier wants. You’ve covered a lot about communication, despair, and climate change psychology. You did a show recently called “How to Avoid Thinking About Climate Change. Can we start your thoughts on the responsible balance in journalism between telling hard truths and couching it in terms which can either motivate or discourage people? What have you learned in the past decade?" Alex: One thing I’ve learned is that mass media news realized we pay most attention to threats, and so the saying “if it bleeds it leads”. It’s true that programs I do with solutions get fewer listeners and downloads than very threatening news. Some have suggested our brains are really like hard drives that collect threatening information, so we can survive better the next time it happens. Here are my notes on what I said: Norwegian eco-psychologist Per Espen