Education environment music vocalists: genius Tuva
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The Musical Impact of Climate Change, pt. 2
“Throat Singing” from the Siberian nation of Tuva is one of the most remarkable phenomena in all world music; individual voices are trained to produce multi-note melody-and-drone combinations, creating an orchestral effect.
Kongar-ol Ondar visits David Letterman
Tuva has been inhabited since the 12th century, starting with the expansion of the Mongolian empire, but because of changes in weather and climate (increasing drought, growing and fire seasons), the severity of fires and areas burnt have increased since 1990. At the same time, protecting the area against future fires is becoming more difficult. This might be because large portions of the forest are being converted to a steppe-type ecosystem after fires have occurred, which further inhibits post-fire forest regeneration. Such a conversion is precisely what models predict will be an initial indicator of climate-induced ecosystem change. In addition, annual fire carbon emissions have been estimated for the Balgazyn forest of Tuva with regard to ground fuel loading and fire severity. This is important because the dryer the fuels, the more severe the fires and the greater the greenhouse-gas emissions. And, forests are not always able to regenerate on severely burnt or repeatedly burnt regions.
environment: corporate responsibility Durban Conference economics Rajendra Pachauri sustainability
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 4: Just Wait For The Balance-Transfer Offers!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution runs an AP article on Rajendra Pachauri’s words about how expensive climate change is certain to be:
DURBAN, South Africa — The U.N.’s top climate scientist cautioned climate negotiators Wednesday that global warming is leading to human dangers and soaring financial costs, but containing carbon emissions will have a host of benefits.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarized a litany of potential disasters at a U.N. climate conference in the South African city of Durban. Although he gave no explicit deadlines, the implication was that time is running out for greenhouse gas emissions to level off and begin to decline.
If we won’t change our ways to save the planet’s biosphere, maybe we’ll do it to save money. Sent November 30:
Time is running out for the spurious fiscal arguments that have been deployed over and over again to justify inaction on climate change. As extreme weather becomes the norm, there will be huge impacts in every area of the economy. Public health, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation — all will be profoundly affected in ways neither public or private sectors have anticipated.
Such climate-related expenses are direct consequences of our century-long binge of fossil-fuel consumption. But now, the hidden costs of our energy economy are becoming obvious; oil and coal are suddenly very expensive once these factors have been included.
Financial responsibility now requires two things. First, paying off our debt to the environment; we’ve exceeded our credit limit and are now incurring significant penalties. And second, we must build an energy economy that ensures that all citizens of Earth live within their ecological means. Sustainability and fiscal responsibility must be synonymous.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 3: You Kids Think Money Grows On Trees?
The Christian Science Monitor has done quite a bit of pretty solid analysis:
As this year’s round of global climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa, negotiators once again try to tackle an elusive goal: Trimming nations’ greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the target of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before the end of the century.
This target is expected to reduce the potentially devastating effects of climate change, but, so far, it appears a long way off.
Last year, negotiators in Cancún, Mexico, agreed to the goal of limiting warming of the Earth’s average surface temperature to 3.6 degrees F above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Their agreement notes, however, that a ceiling of 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) might be warranted.
A world 2 degrees warmer is not an ideal scenario. Even if nations are successful, the planet can still expect increasing heat spells, drought, flood damage and certain other severe weather events, along with elevated rates of extinctions and shifts in species’ ranges, including those of disease-spreading insects, and many other potentially problematic changes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report. Their severity grows along with increasing projected temperature rise, according to the report.
A scold. That’s me. Sent November 29:
With mountains of conclusive evidence attesting to both the reality and the danger of runaway climate change, the failure of the world’s industrialized nations to address the issue in any meaningful way cannot be ascribed to ignorance. Rather, the developed world’s unwillingness to take responsibility for the looming threat of catastrophe is essentially a failure of imagination — a failure to think beyond the shared assumptions of an energy economy based on fossil-fuels, a failure to evaluate human progress by measures other than quarterly profit reports, and a failure of empathy with the people whose lives will be devastated.
We’ve taken out an enormous advance on our Bank of Earth credit card. Like irresponsible youngsters on a spending spree, we conveniently forget that when the bill arrives, all humanity will have to pay it. Genuine fiscal responsibility requires aggressive and immediate action on climate change, rather than penny-wise, pound-foolish intransigence.
Warren Senders
Education environment music: cultural survival
by Warren
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The Sonic Casualties of Climate Change, Pt. 1
Africa is an entire musical universe; I could (and no doubt will) show you stuff for hours. But some of the most beautiful and emotionally affecting singing I know of comes from the B’aka Pygmies of Cameroon, who yodel polyrhythmic songs of love and respect for the forest that gives them life:
DAKAR (AlertNet) – An increase in sea level and a drop in the quantity of rainfall linked to climate change could destroy Cameroon’s biodiversity, disrupt businesses and uproot hundreds of thousands of people in the west-central African nation, Cameroon Tribune newspaper reported on Thursday.
environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 2: He’s Dead, Jim.
Forbes Magazine runs an article called “Climate Treaty Would Actually Be Good For Business.” Yup. But business would be bad for a climate treaty, apparently.
Businesses pay an additional price for these disturbances. In June the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that even normal weather variation harms the U.S. economy, to the tune of $485 billion annually in 2008 dollars, or as much as 3.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Every so often, I feel compelled to send a missive off to the belly of the beast. The bloated corpse of global capitalism is still capable of doing damage as it runs amok in full headless-chicken mode. Sent November 28:
For decades, the “can-do” attitude of American entrepreneurship was an inspiration to the world. Combining polymathic creativity with a healthy disrespect for established modes of operation, the nation’s inventors transformed first this country, then the planet. It seemed our collective heritage was one that transformed every obstacle into an opportunity for greater achievement; the greater the difficulty, the more likely we were to respond with paradigm-shattering innovation.
Contemporary American business leaders, by contrast, often ignore the troublesome realities of global climate change and the difficult choices which face the world’s people, treating physical laws as subordinate to market forces, and ethics as irrelevant. Their lack of confidence in our country’s R&D and manufacturing is profoundly troubling; their protests that a transformed energy system might be bad for business show contempt for the scientific and moral facts confronting our species. And they forget: an “evolutionary bottleneck” is bad for business, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies denialists Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 1: Maybe We Could Get A Carbon Patch?
This sounds depressingly familiar. NYT:
WASHINGTON — With intensifying climate disasters and global economic turmoil as the backdrop, delegates from 194 nations gather in Durban, South Africa, this week to try to advance, if only incrementally, the world’s response to dangerous climate change.
To those who have followed the negotiations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change over their nearly 20-year history, the conflicts and controversies to be taken up in Durban are monotonously familiar — the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, the need to develop and deploy clean energy technology rapidly.
I used the cancer analogy yesterday, and I’m using it again today. Sent November 27:
The United States, one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, is acting like a five-pack-a-day man trying to wish away a negative biopsy. Scientists the world over, with increasing urgency, are saying that genuine action on climate change must be taken soon to avoid a metastasizing catastrophe — and America’s politicians are equivocating, because…well, because they’re scared.
Like someone who’s just come out of the oncologist’s office, they’re scared of change, scared of an uncertain and dangerous future, and scared of what it’s all likely to cost. And just as a heavy smoker unequivocally “needs” a cigarette to stay calm while he contemplates his diagnosis, the industrialized carbon-burning nations “need” another hit of carbon energy before they give it up.
We know it’s bad for us, that it’s very expensive, that it has drastic long-term health consequences. And we swear to quit, soon. Maybe next year. We promise!
Warren Senders