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A 1979 Climate Warning

- A while ago, I wrote a piece about the World Scientists Warning to Humanity 1992.   Now, DotEarth has come up with a similar warning dating back to 1979 which I’ve copied and linked to, below.

- And for those of you who can date your music impressions way back to the 1960’s, how about “Spirit - Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus - Nature’s Way“.   Even back then, I could hear what they were saying:  “It’s nature’s way of telling you; dying trees.”

- It’s not like the writing about the environment hasn’t been on the wall for those who were looking.

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The Cassandra Files: A 1979 Climate Warning

Few things are sadder than looking back and contemplating “what might have been.” It’s certainly not the kind of thing most people want to do at a birthday party.

But that was what happened on Oct. 24 when the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., marked the 80th birthday of its founder, the biologist and ecologist George Woodwell, with a symposium on “Ecology and the Public Good.”

One participant, James Gustave Speth, passed out copies of a report he received in July 1979, when he was chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Its title was “The Carbon Dioxide Problem: Implications for Policy in the Management of Energy and Other Resources.” Its lead author was Dr. Woodwell, then the director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory. His coauthors were Gordon J. MacDonald, Roger Revelle and Charles D. Keeling. All were eminent; Dr. Keeling was the first to chart increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a rise known today as the Keeling curve. (Click here to download a PDF of the report.)

The report starts off with a blunt warning: “Man is setting in motion a series of events that seem certain to cause a significant warming of world climates over the next decades unless mitigating steps are taken immediately.” It adds, “ Enlightened policies in the management of fossil fuels and forests can delay or avoid these changes, but the time for implementing the policies is fast passing.”

In a forward he wrote for the reprinted report, Mr. Speth, now the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, tells how the group of scientists prepared it for the White House, and how the Carter administration asked the National Academy of Sciences for guidance on its grim conclusions. While factors like the possible climate buffering influence of the oceans are imperfectly understood, the academy panel said, “if carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”

More…

- Thanks to Dot Earth

- This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, a friend of mine suggests the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

Hot, Flat and Crowded - Thomas Friedman



Have just finished reading Thomas Friedman's new book Hot, Flat and Crowded and i must say, I am in two minds about it.

Friedman says the only way to fight global warming, or as he correctly calls it, the "global climatic disruption" is through innovation and moving to what he calls "Code Green" with Government policies, regulations, research funding and tax incentives to build an economy powered by renewable energy with the kind of innovation that would see the development of a smart energy grid that would use power more efficiently, which turns the home into a Smart Black Box (SBB) which controls and ensures the seamless operations of your lighting, home alarm system, telephones, computers, Internet connections and all your other devices, while telling you how much energy they use, where your heating, airconditioning units. dishwasher, dryer, refrigerator and car battery can be instructed to run at lower power during the day when you are out, where your electric car can charge and store energy at night, where your car or rolling energy storage unit (RESU) is now a plug in hybrid electric vehicle, where fossil fuels are replaced with renewable sources of energy.

"Green becomes the smartest, most efficient, lowest cost way - when all the true costs are included - to do things. That is the huge transition we are just beginning to see. Green is going from boutique to better, from a choice to a necessity, from a fad to a strategy to win, from an insoluble problem to a great opportunity."

It's an excellent point. But what gets me about this book is Friedman's Americo-centricity. Green, he says, is the "new red white and blue because it is a strategy that can help to ease global warming, biodiversity loss, energy poverty, petrodictatorship and energy supply shortages - and make America stronger at the same time. We solve our own problems by helping the world solve its problems. We help the world solve its problems by solving our own problems...Precisely because America's capitalist system and research universities are, in combination, still the most powerful innovation engine ever created, the world cannot address the big problems of the Energy-Climate era - quickly and at scale - without America, its president, its government, its industry, its markets and its people either leading the revolution or aspiring to do so."

In other words, America does it and the world just follows. But somehow, it is hard to imagine places like China, the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, simply falling into line. The reality, however, is that America is now in deep trouble, its days as a superpower seem to be numbered.

Furthermore, Friedman seems to ignore one crucial point: by December 2009, countries around the world will have to sign a new treaty in Copenhagen. And if they fail to do that, we will be in serious trouble.

But then, Friedman in his naivete says global climate treaties are tough because it's hard getting everyone to comply. Under his model, America just becomes green and the rest of the world will follow. "I am convinced that if America becomes the example of a country that takes the lead in developing clean power, energy efficiency, and conservation systems, and grows more productive, healthy, respected, prosperous, competitive, innovative and secure as a result, many more countries and many more people around the world will emulate us voluntarily than will ever go green through the compulsion of some global treaty. A truly green America will be more valuable than fifty Kyoto Protocols. Emulation is always more effective than compulsion."

This is a global problem and needs a global solution. In any case, since the book was published it would appear that Americans now have a few other concerns. See full article.

Related Entries:

I think Sarbanes-Oxley is a terrible law - Milton Friedman on SOX. - 06 January 2006

Flat Panel TV prices falling flat on their face. - 02 August 2006

Milton Friedman verstorben - 17 November 2006

Milton Friedman and the simplicity of macroeconomics - 15 September 2007

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