Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

This is my invitation to help build a movement to stop the climate crisis

By

Dear World,

This is an invitation to help build a movement–to take one day and use it to stop the climate crisis.

On October 24, we will stand together as one planet and call for a fair global climate treaty. United by a common call to action, we’ll make it clear: the world needs an international plan that meets the latest science and gets us back to safety.

This movement has just begun, and it needs your help.

Here’s the plan: we’re asking you, and people in every country on earth, to organize an action in their community on October 24. There are no limits here–imagine bike rides, rallies, concerts, hikes, festivals, tree-plantings, protests, and more. Imagine your action linking up with thousands of others around the globe. Imagine the world waking up.

If we can pull it off, we’ll send a powerful message on October 24: the world needs the climate solutions that science and justice demand.

It’s often said that the only thing preventing us from tackling the climate crisis quickly and equitably is a lack of political will. Well, the only thing that can create that political will is a unified global movement–and no one is going to build that movement for us. It’s up to regular people all over the world.  That’s you.

So register an event in your community for October 24, and then enlist the help of your friends. Get together with your co-workers or your local environmental group or human rights campaign, your church or synagogue or mosque or temple; enlist bike riders and local farmers and young people. All over the planet we’ll start to organize ourselves.

With your help, there will be an event at every iconic place on the planet on October 24-from America’s Great Lakes to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef–and also in all the places that matter to you in your daily lives: a beach or park or village green or town hall.

If there was ever a time for you to get involved, it’s right now. There are two reasons this year is so crucial.

The first reason is that the science of climate change is getting darker by the day. The Arctic is melting away with astonishing speed, decades ahead of schedule. Everything on the planet seems to be melting or burning, rising or parched.

And we now have a number to express our peril: 350.  

NASA’s James Hansen and a team of other scientists recently published a series of papers showing that we need to cut the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from its current 387 parts per million to 350 or less if we wish to “maintain a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.”

No one knew that number a year ago-but now it’s clear that 350 might well be the most important number for the future of the planet, a north star to guide our efforts as we remake the world. If we can swiftly get the planet on track to get to 350, we can still avert the worst effects of climate change.

The second reason 2009 is so important is that the political opportunity to influence our governments has never been greater. The world’s leaders will meet in Copenhagen this December to craft a new global treaty on cutting carbon emissions.

If that meeting were held now, it would produce a treaty would be woefully inadequate. In fact, it would lock us into a future where we’d never get back to 350 parts per million-where the rise of the sea would accelerate, where rainfall patterns would start to shift and deserts to grow. A future where first the poorest people, and then all of us, and then all the people that come after us, would find the only planet we have damaged and degraded.    

October 24 comes six weeks before those crucial UN meetings in Copenhagen.  If we all do our job, every nation will know the question they’ll be asked when they put forth a plan: will this get the planet back on the path to 350?  

This will only work with the help of a global movement-and it’s starting to bubble up everywhere. Farmers in Cameroon, students in China, even World Cup skiers have already helped spread the word about 350. Churches have rung their bells 350 times; Buddhist monks have formed a huge 350 with their bodies against the backdrop of Himalayas. 350 translates across every boundary of language and culture.  It’s clear and direct, cutting through the static and it lays down a firm scientific line.

On October 24, we’ll all stand behind 350–a universal symbol of climate safety and of the world we need to create.  And at the end of the day, we’ll all upload photos from our events to the 350.org website and send these pictures around the world.  This cascade of images will drive climate change into the public debate–and hold our leaders accountable to a unified global citizenry.  

We need your help-the world is a big place and our team is small.  Our crew at 350.org will do everything we can to support you, providing templates for banners and press releases, resources to spread the word, and tools to help you build a strong local climate action group.  And our core team is always just a phone call or e-mail away if you need some support.

This is like a final exam for human beings. Can we muster the courage, the commitment, and the creativity to set this earth on a steady course before it’s too late? October 24 will be the joyful, powerful day when we prove it’s possible.

Please join us and register your local event today.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben – Author and Activist- USA

Vandana Shiva – Physicist, Activist, Author – India

David Suzuki – Scientist, Author, Activist – Canada

Bianca Jagger – Chair of the World Future Council – UK

Tim Flannery – Scientist, Author, Explorer -Australia

Bittu Sahgal –  Editor of Sanctuary magazine – India

Andrew Simmons – Environmental Advocate, St. Vincent & The Grenadines

Christine Loh – Environmental Advocate and Legislator – Hong Kong

P.S.-We need you to do something else, right away, that’s pretty easy. Please forward this message to anyone you know who is even remotely appropriate.  You can use our “tell-a-friend” tool import your e-mail addresses and send along this e-postcard to your friends and family:



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Comments

  1. Would 10 years of no warming do the trick?

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    p>Would Oceans cooling do the trick?

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    p>Would the absence of the AGW predicted tropospheric hot spot help?

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    p>Would it help if satellite measurements seemed to prove a negative feedback rather than a positive feedback as predicted?

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    p>My favorite quote, from the comments:

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    if the earth’s climate was inherently unstable and increasing CO2 causes increasing temperature which in turn causes further increasing temperature then, given that the paleoclimate record suggests that temperature drives CO2 increase wouldn’t the climate have spiralled out of control millennia ago?

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    p>I know, I know – every time evidence comes out that goes against the settled science then you have to either change the models, change the measurements, or both.  (Reminds me a bit of an election recount, where the results always seem to get better for the big government camp.  Ever notice?)

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    p>Also, you can deflect attention by tarring any dissenters as “deniers” or better yet “in the pay of big oil”.  

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    p>Sprinkle in some lies about vanishing polar bears and some other hype about the increasingly catastrophic effects [of the no warming for the last decade?!?] and you’ve got a rapt audience.  Well, used to anyway.  Right?

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    p>Would it help if the arctic expedition team (which is seeking to prove how little ice remains in the arctic) froze to death?

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    p>In any case, it seems that the country is finally starting to get wise to Gore and Hansen’s obsessive fantasy.

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    p>My favorite quote (for fun) from the comments:

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    The cooling trend and the truth of it should be established in the public mind about the same time that General Motors produces their first cars with no heaters or defrosters, in line with government directives.

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    p>Sorry, but “the science” is not settled.

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    p>I’m sure you are all well intentioned, but unfortunately what you are are trying to do will wreck the US and global economy and establish unprecedented government control over almost all productive output.  Lets all hope you fail, badly.

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    • Would 10 years of no warming do the trick?

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      p>Now, if you want to interpret the above graph as not warming, be my guest.  You’d be relying on a single data point to do so, and even still on a time frame of 10 years when clearly there’s a longer time frame which shows warming.

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      p>But whatever.

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      Would Oceans cooling do the trick?

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      p>Did you even read the article?  It specifically points out that other systems may be interacting (El Nino).  It also specifically points out that they aren’t measuring the temperature of the whole set of oceans, specifically deeper parts which the heat may be transferring to.  The article throws out three or four other scenarios… the data does nothing to disprove climate change because it’s incomplete and acknowledged as so.  Clearly, more work is left to do.

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      p>

      My favorite quote, from the comments:

      if the earth’s climate was inherently unstable and increasing CO2 causes increasing temperature which in turn causes further increasing temperature then, given that the paleoclimate record suggests that temperature drives CO2 increase wouldn’t the climate have spiralled out of control millennia ago?

      <

      p>Your favorite quote is just plain daft.  Nobody is claiming a runaway process indefinitely.  All exponential curves modeling real life are really S curves.  Do you think it’s possible that there’s a feedback loop making things worse for a while, but then a different phase kicks in and reverses things over the time span of 10,000s of years or more?  And that, in the mean time, we humans make it really lousy for we humans, and suffer immensely?  Arguing that there can’t be a limited runaway process because dinosaurs existed then and humans exist now ignores the observation that most dinosaurs are now extinct.

      • In all the alarmist models I’ve ever seen, I’ve never yet witnessed anything that looks like an S curve.  Could you find one, please?

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        p>As for “cherry picking” the last 10 years – sorry to say but those are the years that the world has been paying close attention, the years since Gore’s big speech on the hottest day of the hottest year (due, ahem, to El Nino thank you very much).  Now, clearly one can cherry pick a starting point for maximum drama, which you have apparently done by starting in 1880.  How bout we look at the last 1000 years?  Oh, shoot that includes the medieval warm period and makes our graph look distinctly unalarming.  

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        p>Its interesting that you accuse me of “dishonest” cherry picking a convenient time frame when your alarming graph does just that.

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        p>Not that is all that hard to find, but here is the first site that came back on google for some perspective:

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        p>http://www.geocraft.com/WVFoss…

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        p>Here’s another one presented by AGW advocates, a rare glimpse of a longer timeline:

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        p>http://www.longrangeweather.co…

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        p>As for your oceans cooling objection, you’ve missed the main one which is that the author later revised the data and conclusions by finding a variety of measurement errors, the correction of which made it fit the projected curve.  Convenient, wouldn’t you say?  

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        p>I’m telling you man, this AGW panic is a crock.  Not because none of it is true, but rather because they are using a combination of selected facts, adding some “if”s, some more ifs, changing some might’s into some will’s, and relying on computer modeling that ignores cloud cover and relies upon a positive feedback that we’ve never seen.  The whole thing is full of holes.  Where’s the skepticism?

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        p>

    • OK, how’s this?

      Figure 2: Reconstructions of (Northern Hemisphere average or global average) surface temperature variations from six research teams (in different color shades) along with the instrumental record of global average surface temperature (in black). Each curve illustrates a somewhat different history of temperature changes, with a range of uncertainties that tend to increase backward in time (as indicated by the shading). Reference: NRC, 2006. (Figure reprinted with permission from Surface Temperature Reconstructions© (2006) by the National Academy of Sciences, Courtesy of the National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.)

      From:
      http://www.epa.gov/climatechan…

  3. From the comments in “bad news for the caitlin expedition”:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/200…

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    Catlin has covered 23.5% of the distance and has 42 days more walking to do (being generous: 778/17 pace over the last couple of days – not the 118 days on 778/6 average to date).

    “Ann is also feeling the effects of 2 weeks relentless trekking, and today is feeling physically utterly exhausted”

    And Martin has frostbite and Pen maybe has hypothermia.

    http://www.catlinarcticsurvey….

    Good news they have some carbon-fuelled supplies coming in

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    p>So maybe their body temp sensors are not correct, but if you look at this:

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    p>http://www.catlinarcticsurvey….

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    p>You can see Pen Hadow’s core temp fluctuating between 33 and 35 degrees C, currently 33.75.  Seems to be approaching stage 3 hypothermia.  I hope the team at home is doing something about this.  I get a chill thinking that we might be about to watch this well intentioned person die, and for what?  Its hard to stop watching the core temp, which is now mercifully back up to 34.9.

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    p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…

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    p>

  4. I believe it was the late Senator Moynihan who once said, “People are entitled to their own opinion, but they’re not entitled to their own facts.”

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    p>So yes, I will call you a “denier”.  I don’t know what if any direct relationship you have with the oil industry, but very often with the supposedly dissenting studies, you really can just follow the money.

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    p>This is all measurable.  The average global temperature is rising or it isn’t; there is a hole in the ozone layer or there isn’t.  There’s no depends-on-how-you-look-at-it to any of this.  The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that we are warming and humans are largely to blame.  Comprehensive information accessible to laypeople can be found via the EPA.  This site is not dogmatic and is certainly willing to point out what is not certain.  I don’t know if it will matter though; you strike me as someone who won’t trust anything from the government.

    • the global temperature was not rising, and the ozone hole had almost disappeared. “This is all measurable.  The average global temperature is rising or it isn’t; there is a hole in the ozone layer or there isn’t.  There’s no depends-on-how-you-look-at-it to any of this.”  Now who is refusing to look at the facts?

      • Another global warming event is in progress right now — a large ice shelf is about to calve off of Antarctica:

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        The enormous Wilkins ice shelf is now barely attached to land. The latest reports show that a thin sliver of ice attaching it to the Antarctic’s Charcot Island is rapidly collapsing and threatening to break.

        The Wilkins shelf is about half the size of Scotland, or the same size as the US state of Connecticut. It is the largest slab of ice so far to disintegrate and retreat in the Antarctic. Pictures from the European Space Agency show that fresh rifts have appeared in Wilkins’ ‘ice bridge’ to Charcot Island and that a large chunk of ice has broken away, though the shelf still remains attached to other pieces of land. ESA estimated that the loss of the ice bridge could see the northern half of Wilkins break free, representing up to 1,400 square miles of ice floating off on the ocean in a gigantic ice berg.

      • <

        p>Average global temperature

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        p>Largest ozone hole ever recorded, September 2006

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        p>Care to have a look at the facts?

        • I have doubts about both side’s honesty because of the conflicting “facts.”  My impression is that there is more charlatanism on the alarmists’ side than on the other.  

          • Frankly, edgar, your objections seem a lot more ideological than scientific, so I have trouble believing scientific arguments are going to dislodge you from your current position.

      • Here’s why the ozone hole “almost disappeared”:
        http://jwocky.gsfc.nasa.gov/ne…

        In 2008, stripes of bad data began to appear in the OMI products, apparently caused by a small physical obstruction in the instrument field-of-view. Our guess is some of the reflective mylar that wraps the instrument to provide thermal protection has torn and is intruding into the field-of-view. On January 24, 2009, the obstruction suddenly increased and now partially blocks an increased fraction of the field-of-view, leading to the stripe of bad data that is seen in current OMI images

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