Climate Change Now
The Television Show
The climate crisis is just so much hooey
until you see it. That's what I do. I bring climate change to
the public. The science has never been so certain, and so
frightening, yet the public is not concerned. It's the vested
interest, the vast complexities of the science, religion and young
Earth, it's politics and the weather - it's just plain unbelievable
because it has never happened before in the history of mankind. But
the history of mankind is but a blip on the climate screen.
It is a blip that is bigger than
anything that has happened since the giant asteroid hit the
Yucatan Peninsula and the dinosaurs went extinct. It is
happening 20,000 times faster than normal.
More climate science discoveries, 10,000
times more, happened in 2009 than happened 20 years ago. We have
begun to cross climate thresholds in the Arctic, in our Oceans
and our high altitude forests of the world. Permafrost, Arctic
sea ice, ocean primary productivity, coral reefs, high altitude
forests, the Antarctic ice sheet, the Greenland ice sheet,
Russian undersea frozen methane, all have likely crossed climate
thresholds. All are in great jeopardy. All pose tremendous risks
to mankind's society.
This show will take the viewer to where
climate change is happening now and show them that not only is
it real, but the scientists say that it is happening faster and
impacts are more extreme than expected and future impacts are
significantly worse than previously understood.
My Background
I have
been a civil engineer and environmental specialist for 27 years. I have done a
fair amount of environmental research, so I understand the academic
papers on climate change that I have been reading for nearly a
decade now. Click here for my vitae, My resume, list of
accomplishments, and other information can be found under the MESA
tab at Mesa Engineering, Melton Engineering and Homebuilders,
personal info is under the tab Life is Good.
Climate Crisis
What I hear and read in the popular media is not the same thing
as what the academics are saying. The sense of urgency is loud and
clear in academia, but is relatively absent in the media, and
especially absent among our leaders. The immense societal change
that will occur on our warming planet - within our lifetimes - are
dire without the stabilization of global warming gasses in our
atmosphere.
Our climate is changing and once changed, it won't be back...
The supercomputer model predictions are scary enough, but the models
are conservative.
Climate is changing faster and more aggressively
than predicted. It appears as if what the scientists once thought
would happen in 100 years could now be happening in decades and in
some case as little as years at the most.
Obviously Conservative Supercomputer
Models
It is now quite obvious that the supercomputer models are
conservative, that the consensus position of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is likewise, significantly conservative. The
reason for this lack of foresight is knowledge. Without absolutely
clear evidence that a given thing is true, the scientific procedure
says that this thing cannot be acknowledged as true. If a scientist
is wrong, he will lose credibility. If a funding source's scientist
is wrong, that funding source will lose credibility. Credibility is
the bread on the scientists table that feeds his children.
Credibility is the fundamental core of an institute of higher
learning. If credibility is questionable, a scientist soon finds
himself out of work, and his funding institute suffers similarly.
The risk of being wrong in science is directly comparable to the
risk of being wrong about "o-ring" calculation errors with the space
shuttle Challenger. Once a rocket ship explodes, it is not coming
back. Once our oceans rise, the flood waters will not recede.
Foremost Climate Modeler in the World
Says
The director of the U.S. climate modeling program, Dr. James Hansen,
arguably the foremost climate modeling expert in the world, said in
September 2006 that the earth is approximately as warm as it has
been in the last 100,000 years, and it is within one degree C of
being as warm as it has been in the last 1.35 million years. (1)
So where's the hullabaloo? The band (and this is my band - Climate
Change) doesn't have clue. This info about being 1 degree C from
being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years, as startling, and
aggressive as it sounds, just has not made the media. The last thing
that most folks heard was that it would be at least a hundred years
before things got to be that bad! This is exactly the kind of thing
that
Climate Change Now attempts to correct.
We Have Likely Crossed A Climate
Threshold
In the last 3 to 5 years it appears as if we have crossed a climate
threshold. The pace of change is rapidly accelerating. Scientific
knowledge has been advancing at least as fast as climate change
itself, but the enormous amount of new knowledge is staggering, and even
though we still have a lot to learn, the science is clear - it's the
communications that are unclear.
Climate change to our society today is as alien as the dark side of
the moon. Climate change is not intuitive. We haven't done this before.
We don't already know the answers. It's hard enough these days to
believe what you can see. We can't see the future. We can
barely see the past, and our climate today has proceeded beyond it's
limits from the past making the scientists job that much more
difficult.
We Can Make a Difference
All is not lost - the sooner we act, the
less we will have to adapt, it's very simple. Scientists are having
a tough time communicating the facts of climate change to the
public, so let's try letting an "applied scientist" do it for a
while (that's what Webster's Dictionary calls an engineer.) Maybe an
applied scientist can shed a little light on the topic.
We know more now than we did in the past - and what we
know now tells us that we need to act fast to avoid the worst
impacts of climate change.
Like I said before:
I don't have funding yet,, so send money. I'm still working hard at my
engineering business, and that's what pays the bills until I get
funded. In the meantime I will be trying to put together three pilot
shows in the best efforts of Les Shroud and the Discovery Channel's
Survivor Man, Adam and Jamie at Myth busters, Mike Rowe at Dirty
Jobs, James Burke and his series Connections, and a personal hero,
Ken Burns. I have been to Greenland and Alaska and spent a week
on a deserted Island. Climate change is happening across the globe -
I will bring it to you first hand.
Let me be your climate guide. What this planet needs is a good
TV show about climate change - one where the science is easy to
understand and that has a lively pace and good Austin music:
Adventure's with Climate Change or The Climate Change Reality Show -
An Island With No Tribal Council or as I have titled my
promotional video
Climate Change Now.
Thanks - please tell your friends,
References:
(1) Hansen, et. al., Global Temperature Change, The Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science, September 2006.
ate change that I have been reading for nearly a
decade now. Click here for my vitae, My resume, list of
accomplishments, and other information can be found under the MESA
tab at Mesa Engineering, Melton Engineering and Homebuilders,
personal info is under the tab Life is Good.
Climate Crisis
What I hear and read in the popular media is not the same thing
as what the academics are saying. The sense of urgency is loud and
clear in academia, but is relatively absent in the media, and
especially absent among our leaders. The immense societal change
that will occur on our warming planet - within our lifetimes - are
dire without the stabilization of global warming gasses in our
atmosphere.
Our climate is changing and once changed, it won't be back...
The supercomputer model predictions are scary enough, but the models
are conservative.
Climate is changing faster and more aggressively
than predicted. It appears as if what the scientists once thought
would happen in 100 years could now be happening in decades and in
some case as little as years at the most.
Obviously Conservative Supercomputer
Models
It is now quite obvious that the supercomputer models are
conservative, that the consensus position of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is likewise, significantly conservative. The
reason for this lack of foresight is knowledge. Without absolutely
clear evidence that a given thing is true, the scientific procedure
says that this thing cannot be acknowledged as true. If a scientist
is wrong, he will lose credibility. If a funding source's scientist
is wrong, that funding source will lose credibility. Credibility is
the bread on the scientists table that feeds his children.
Credibility is the fundamental core of an institute of higher
learning. If credibility is questionable, a scientist soon finds
himself out of work, and his funding institute suffers similarly.
The risk of being wrong in science is directly comparable to the
risk of being wrong about "o-ring" calculation errors with the space
shuttle Challenger. Once a rocket ship explodes, it is not coming
back. Once our oceans rise, the flood waters will not recede.
Foremost Climate Modeler in the World
Says
The director of the U.S. climate modeling program, Dr. James Hansen,
arguably the foremost climate modeling expert in the world, said in
September 2006 that the earth is approximately as warm as it has
been in the last 100,000 years, and it is within one degree C of
being as warm as it has been in the last 1.35 million years. (1)
So where's the hullabaloo? The band (and this is my band - Climate
Change) doesn't have clue. This info about being 1 degree C from
being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years, as startling, and
aggressive as it sounds, just has not made the media. The last thing
that most folks heard was that it would be at least a hundred years
before things got to be that bad! This is exactly the kind of thing
that
Climate Change Now attempts to correct.
We Have Likely Crossed A Climate
Threshold
In the last 3 to 5 years it appears as if we have crossed a climate
threshold. The pace of change is rapidly accelerating. Scientific
knowledge has been advancing at least as fast as climate change
itself, but the enormous amount of new knowledge is staggering, and even
though we still have a lot to learn, the science is clear - it's the
communications that are unclear.
Climate change to our society today is as alien as the dark side of
the moon. Climate change is not intuitive. We haven't done this before.
We don't already know the answers. It's hard enough these days to
believe what you can see. We can't see the future. We can
barely see the past, and our climate today has proceeded beyond it's
limits from the past making the scientists job that much more
difficult.
We Can Make a Difference
All is not lost - the sooner we act, the
less we will have to adapt, it's very simple. Scientists are having
a tough time communicating the facts of climate change to the
public, so let's try letting an "applied scientist" do it for a
while (that's what Webster's Dictionary calls an engineer.) Maybe an
applied scientist can shed a little light on the topic.
We know more now than we did in the past - and what we
know now tells us that we need to act fast to avoid the worst
impacts of climate change.
Like I said before:
I don't have funding yet,, so send money. I'm still working hard at my
engineering business, and that's what pays the bills until I get
funded. In the meantime I will be trying to put together three pilot
shows in the best efforts of Les Shroud and the Discovery Channel's
Survivor Man, Adam and Jamie at Myth busters, Mike Rowe at Dirty
Jobs, James Burke and his series Connections, and a personal hero,
Ken Burns. I have been to Greenland and Alaska and spent a week
on a deserted Island. Climate change is happening across the globe -
I will bring it to you first hand.
Let me be your climate guide. What this planet needs is a good
TV show about climate change - one where the science is easy to
understand and that has a lively pace and good Austin music:
Adventure's with Climate Change or The Climate Change Reality Show -
An Island With No Tribal Council or as I have titled my
promotional video
Climate Change Now.
Thanks - please tell your friends,
References:
(1) Hansen, et. al., Global Temperature Change, The Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science, September 2006.