I’m in Denver this week, where I’ve been snowed in and unable to leave the house for two days, after one of the worst blizzards on recent record in Colorado. Of course, we didn’t lose power, so we didn’t lose heat, light, or the [blessed] internet, and therefore the worst consequences were a little bit of cabin fever and a sort back from shoveling.

With plenty of time to read my news feeds, I’ve just learned of a new climate change indicator emerging in the bear family. Not arctic polar bears this time; rather, brown bears in the mountainous region of northern Spain, who have come out mid-winter to let us know that things aren’t the way they used to be. Whereas freezing temperatures used to keep them holed up all winter long storing energy and body mass, the weather’s now mild enough that food is available well into the winter, and hibernation is no longer a…bear necessity.

The [NECC web site] has an interesting list of resources, including the [2006 Report Card on climate change Action].

Third Annual Assessment of the Region progress Towards Meeting the Goals of the New England Governors Eastern Canadian Premiers climate change Action Plan of 2001

I was discussing the Climate commons project with a friend last night, and at one point she expressed frustration she was having with a group of people close to her. These were well educated people who knew a lot about the problem of global warming and were probably very sympathetic to concerns over it. But even given that, they did little-to-nothing to take real action in their daily lives, even very small, almost trivial steps. My friend found this even more troubling given that these people would have the ready and enthusiastic support of institutions they are involved with if they attempted such action.

One of the beautiful aspects of being an Alaska Native is that we have incredibly wise elders. We call certain people “elders” because of their life wisdom that is informed by their life experiences, the traditions they carry that are passed down for countless generations, and stories which may go back perhaps thousands of years. An older person is not necessarily an elder in this context. There are acknowledged elders who are young by most peoples’ standards.

The November issue of The American Prospect has a wonderful article by Joshua Kurlantzick:

Some oil companies boast about their commitment to fighting global warming. But as the arctic heats up, these same companies are racing to drill in newly melted waters. The rush to exploit the melting ice cap is on.

Kurlantzick lays out a contradiction between what the oil companies are saying on the one hand, and placing themselves in line for on the other.

mongabay.com
December 7, 2006

If past climate change is any indication, Earth could be in store for some significant global warming according to research published in the December 8, 2006, issue of the journal Science. The work suggests that climate change skeptics may be fighting a losing cause.

The study, led by Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale, looked at an episode of rapid climate change that occurred some 55 million years ago. Known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), the period was marked by a rapid rise in greenhouse gases that heated Earth by roughly 9° F (5° C), in less than 10,000 years. The climate warming caused widespread changes including mass extinction in the world’s oceans due to acidification and shifts of plant communities due to changes in rainfall. The era helped set the stage for the “Age of Mammals,” which included the first appearance of modern primates.

Published on 4 Dec 2006 by Energy Bulletin.
Archived on 4 Dec 2006.
by Dmitry Orlovv

Robert Steele posted this to his [Open Source Inteligence] site where he wrote:

2006-12-05 Scary Comparisons of Soviet and US Collapses

The 29-page slide with briefing notes at the link dated today, is quite sensible and quite scary. It is sufficiently credible to have earned a complete reprinting in the [Energy Bulletin].

In our view, we have two years to make a public intelligence case for electing a transpartisan team able to address the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers in a responsible manner. If we fail to do so, we anticipate severe destruction in major urban areas, and a balkanization of rural areas. St.

Full text of speech given in Trafalgar Square on November 4th.

(Due to the event over-running, this speech was cut a little on the day.)

When I pull up the steel pole containing the core ice sample of what I did in 2006, the unifying element to the work is the idea that only social change halts climate change.

In the summer I did a couple of benefit gigs for this week-long Camp for Climate Action. In September the Camp for Climate Action tried to shut down Drax power station, Britain’s single largest carbon spewer. The benefit gigs were performed in autonomous social centres in the north of England.

I spoke in London’s Trafalgar Square at a Stop Climate Chaos rally ( I’ll post the text soon). There were a lot of young kids there come to see the pop bands that were on, and I’m sure most of ‘em were just thinking: ‘Why is that nasty, unshaven man so angry? Shouldn’t he be happy that we’ve saved the planet already by our judicious consumer choices? In the same way that we ended corporate rule of the Global South with Live 8?’

It’s worth tracking discussions on Weds. Dec 6th, when Senator James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Environment and Public Works committee, holds a hearing examining media coverage of global warming.

Sen. Inhofe has claimed that catastrophic human-caused warming is a “hoax,” while many climate experts see human-caused warming as the keystone environmental issue of the century. Inhofe had criticized my new book on global and arctic warming, The north pole Was Here, in a senate floor speech on climate alarmism, while crediting me with questioning some of the overheated coverage this year.

What I’ve been saying is that, amid all the talk of real-time catastrophe or hoax, people should not forget there’s a huge amount of consensus on on the basics: more CO2= warmer world= less ice= higher seas & shifting climate patterns.

There are two interesting posts on the environment over at [Greater Democracy]. As one of the organizers of the Greater Democracy blog, I hope these are but the first of many exchanges on environmental issues from a wide range of perspectives.

The first is [Islam: Environmental Protection] by Professor Dr. Farooq Hassan, President Pakistan Ecology Council.

The second is [Islam, Aikido, and Environmental Sustainability] by M. D. McDonald.

I hope you will take the time to read both essays and comment on them, either here or over on Greater Democracy.

I’ve been working on an interdisciplinary collaborative hybrid art/research project for the last year and a half. Its called Arctic Listening Post and includes a series of works that explore our cultural imaginary of the Arctic, particularly focusing on climate change. This networked conversation, Climate Commons, began as I spent a year in a research blog project, Deepnorth, a virtual expedition to the North Pole, in which I gathered from the internet each day an image, a fact, or a story, and slowly accrued a kind of narrative mapping of the representations of the North Pole, from science, history, sports feats, mass media, art, fiction, and politics.

And does it matter if our food chain consumes 20% of our fossil fuel budget?

I am currently “digesting” Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Joe D’Aleo’s “Alternative view of climate change” slide deck from his presentation at the 7th Southern New England weather Conference on October 28th, 2006, and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Talk about a lot of moving parts in many dimensions - with many apparent contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties.

I have just started to blog on this over on Greater Democracy at [permalink]. Download D’Aleo’s slide decks [here].

D’Aleo presents a range of interesting data that does not appear to fit “conveniently” with the dominant global warming theories. He reports, for example, that Mt. Kilamanjoro is actually getting colder as the snows recede. So why are they receding? D’Aleo suggests it is because there is less snow fall to replace the snow that naturally evaporates. And why less snow? Because of variations in sun energy output and cyclical changes in sea conditions.

Climate Commons, developed by Jane D. Marsching with Matthew Shanley, is an online conversation about climate change, sustainability, and the Arctic. The conversation runs from November 27, 2006 to February 28, 2007. Please join the conversation here by reading the posts and conversation threads or logging in as a new user to respond.

Climate Commons is part of a larger project by Marsching, Arctic Listening Post, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in the 2006 Foster Prize exhibition in which Marsching is a finalist. At the ICA Climate Commons can be viewed on laptops in the Climate commons Lounge, created with Justin C. Knapp and Christopher Wawrinofsky, provides a modular social space for conversation and inquiry. The Lounge’s furniture was created by Marsching with Justin C. Knapp and Christopher Wawrinofsky with upcycled materials from the construction of the new ICA.