I am a professional engineer and environmental researcher. My research into stormwater quality treatment led me to climate research papers back in the early 1990s. What I saw in those research findings was that the media did not have a decent grasp of climate science. What was being reported to us was counterintuitively, less extreme than what researchers were reporting. The alarmist media was not being alarmist enough.
For a decade the gap between public knowledge and what is really going on in climate science just kept growing and growing. Shortly after the turn of the century I realized that I had the knowledge and the skills to do something about this conundrum. So I dedicated myself to communicating climate science, in plain language, to the general public.
In today's world of hyper-obstructionism, this gap--this great disconnection--between climate science and the public has grown to profound proportions. This is why the reporting that I do is so important and why I continue on with this initiative with the hopes that I can begin to sell some books and messaging items (T-Shirts!) so that I can continue. My saving are gone and engineering work that I do, while it pays the bills, does not leave much time for reporting on the latest, almost completely unknown discoveries in climate science.
Everything I do is free and can be found on the pages of this site or on my original site with the exception of my book and the T-shirts of course. It can all be used free for personal or educational needs, but please ask and give appropriate credit. The original draft discussions in my book are in the archives of this blog. Just beware of bad grammar, spelling, organization and completeness. The book is much more refined and further investigation has been done in many cases.
The band's music is free to listen to, but I need a cut if it will be used commercially. Someday soon we will have polished studio tracks available on ITunes. But until then, please share and help spread the word.
Everything is copyrighted and free to use for educational or personal use but again, if money is to be made, I need a cut. This is how I fund this effort. Otherwise, just let me know what you would like to do and then give me (and or the band if appropriate) plenty of credit. Please help support this effort. Without you, this all stops and I go back to working a real job with little or no climate science outreach tasks involved.
Discussions in the first book in the series comes directly from the scientists’ academic findings in peer reviewed journals and include things like icequakes 1,000 times more powerful than anything before coming from Greenland’s Ice Sheet; much of the U.S. seeing perpetual Dust Bowl conditions beginning in 2030; our global carbon dioxide emissions being 14,000 times greater today than at any time in the last 610,000 years; and recent discoveries about our atmosphere that tell us transportation is responsible for two and a half times more warming than coal. Other discussions include: Earth experiencing 321 consecutive months (and counting) where the temperature was above the 20th century average; plankton production in our oceans decreasing 40 percent since 1950; current global CO2 emissions increasing along the lines of the worst-case computer model scenario; the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsing 121,000 years ago and sea level jumping 10 to 20 feet in 25 to 100 years or less--when Earth was one degree warmer than today; Greenland losing six times more ice today than in 1996; Arctic sea ice melting 70 years ahead of schedule, Antarctica losing ice 100 years ahead of schedule; and two massive droughts in the Amazon, a 100-year drought in 2005 and one four times more extreme in 2010, that killed over two billion trees. These droughts are now responsible for the Amazon emitting greenhouse gases (not absorbing like forests are supposed to do), at a rate that is 75 percent that of total annual U.S. emissions.
The greatest thing about the books in this series are the color images. This is what outreach is about in my opinion, and it was how I was trained to deliver outreach. Many of the images are mine, taken in the field in some of the most remote places on the planet. The science, graphs and stuff are all translated into English, so the reader really needs little specialized knowledge to understand.
A link to Amazon, a sample chapter, Forward, Table of Contents and List of Illustrations are available here on the book's website. Book two in the series will be out soon.
Most reporters don't know the difference between the science and the propaganda. Those that can tell rely on dated conservative consensus reports for their knowledge. There is safety in the conservation of one's credibility with this reporting philosophy, but what good does the safety of a journalist's reputation do for mankind? I report it like it is, like it is written in the academic papers, not the massive consensus reports that must compromise heavily to get all to agree. I also spend a fair amount of time critiquing popular reporting about climate science discoveries. Misinformation coming from the media, the fossil fuels industrial complex or Conservative Politicians is exceedingly harmful. Even the press release writers at academic institutions get it wrong sometime, and I always back up my critiques with references from peer reviewed work or institutional reports and proceedings.
Climate science is more complicated than rocket science after all and until one understands, it may as well be in ancient Aztec hieroglyphs. I understand the science. Or maybe I should say I understand the important bits and how they fit together.
I have written over fifty articles and had over three dozen published on investigative Internet journals and other various resources that only a good Googler can find. They get picked up across the world, some in languages that I can not even recognize much less understand. The articles are often expansions of the original Climate Discovery reporting found in this blog and are often combinations of multiple discussions. All are full of color images from my expeditions and from those peer reviewed journal articles. I translate the graphs and charts into English. The articles run from 1,500 to 7,000 words, mostly towards the high end of this scale.
Not your normal documentaries. No talking heads here but lots of the band's music
and gorgeous scenery. Follow me on my expeditions to find climate changes happening now.
The Ice and the Sea (45 minutes): Greenland is melting far faster than any time that we have records for. Reports to the contrary are simply propaganda. Join me as I camp next to the dirty ice sheet where the dust from melt after millennia of deposition from areas as far away as Siberia creates a very un ice sheet like scene. Then hop in the old homemade wooden boat with me and head down to the uninhabited Matagorda Island on the Texas coast, or join me for 50 miles down the four wheel drive only beach on Padre Island National Seashore in my modified Suburban. See the melt and see the diminishing beach from some of my old photos from decades back. This is quite a trip.
What Have We Done (45 minutes): They told us there would be greater insect infestations on a warmer planet. Who would have thought this to be a 52 million acre pine beetle attack? Come with me on a 5,000 mile road trip across the Rockies including nineteen days, eleven Continental Divide crossings and ten different camps. Five of the campgrounds I stayed in were clearcut to prevent dead trees from falling on campers. Gosh, the dead trees--complete mountain ranges covered with dad trees. Entire regions are covered with dead trees. The pandemic is still increasing. only cold can kill the pine beetle and cold like is needed disappeared nearly 20 years ago. Forest professionals are now telling us that there is no reason why the beetle will not ultimately attack pines clear across the continent.
Have you heard of the new music genre called climate change? I have played with the same band for a decade now. We played covers on Friday nights, never anything original. Then, in 2007 on the Greenland Ice Sheet, I learned I was an engineer singer/songwriter. What a life changing experience that was. The ice sheet is like the sky it is so big. It is bigger than the ocean because it is in three dimensions. The ice sheet is over 11,000 feet high in the middle of Greenland.
When I came home from Greenland, this being Austin and all, the folks that interviewed me on public radio and television all wanted me to sing some of my songs. Unfortunately, I couldn't sing. You see, I was not the lead singer in the band (he had just quit), I was simply the rhythm player. So I basically learned how to sing on the radio. After each interview I would ask, "How was I? Be frank, tell me straight." My responses were all invariably "your message is fabulous."
We have over three dozen developed songs. When I first began writing I felt sure there were no more than eight or ten songs about climate change that could ever be written. Now, it appears the that the number is endless. I've even worked the word anthropogenic into a couple of songs.
So if you like your blues, folk and classic style rock to deliver a message, give us a listen--we do it in grand Austin style. And keep an eye on our website to see when our first professionally produced album hits.
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