Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

The resistance to report critical impacts comes at a time when there is no longer any uncertainty that global warming is happening, and as new studies get more dire findings. ocean studies are validating concerns about global warming, and signal the possibility of as much as a 10 degree leap in temperatures.

"There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth Institute. "This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for."

Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Energy Department co-authored the study.

You can just hear the muttering in the White House: "Those darn NASA scientists are going rogue." It is time to shut them down."

The much more alarming report however is that human source GW gases may have started a natural trigger that is destroying the ozone layer.

Research by Cambridge University shows that it is not increased pollution but a side effect of climate change that is making ozone depletion worse. At high altitudes, 50% of the protective layer had been destroyed. Guardian 4/27/05

According to the findings, even though global warming gases have leveled off, atmospheric changes from those gases have triggered cloud formations in the 14 and 26 km range which is where the ozone layer is. These ice clouds are creating a chemical reaction that accelerates destruction of the ozone layer.

As sunlight returned to northern latitudes, the rate of ozone depletion increased and rapid destruction of ozone occurred throughout February and March. In the altitude range where the ozone layer usually reaches its maximum concentration, more than half of the ozone was lost. In the lower atmosphere losses were not so great.

"Overall, about 30% of the ozone layer was destroyed," said Dr Markus Rex, from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany, another member of the team. He said the cold conditions which created polar stratospheric clouds were four times more extensive in 2005 than in the 1960s and 70s.

Less ozone means more ultra-violet radiation coming through and this poses problems in areas ranging from incidence of skin cancer in humans, to effects or plant life, to phytoplankton in the ocean. Of course, changes in plant life (including phytoplankton are going to be felt up the food chain. Therefore it is not surprising to see the Independent reporting that Climate change poses threat to food supply, scientists say.

Worldwide production of essential crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soya beans is likely to be hit much harder by global warming than previously predicted, an international conference ( Food Crops in a Changing Climate) in London has heard.

The focus of the conference was on tropical areas, and studies ground level ozone loss impacts on crop yield. What they found was that depletion of the ground layer ozone will disrupt photosynthesis which will result in a 20% reduction in crop yield.

Now, if ozone depletion seems to be happening more rapidly in the northern hemisphere, what is happening to ground level ozone in the same area? A likely deduction would be that there is similar ground level ozone depletion in the northern hemisphere and that would combine with the ozone loss below the stratosphere. In that northern hemisphere is the vast agricultural areas of North America, Europe, and Northern Asia. Might one expect at least a 20% crop reduction? I would think so.

The ground level ozone information is critical, because global warming enthusiasts (we like it warmer and CO2 increases will increase crop yields) are claiming that global warming may "save" us.

Meanwhile, the Arctic is warming at ten times the rate of the rest of the planet and that has dramatic climate impacts. The Arctic is also a toxic accumulator. This combination is dramatically impacting all life in the Arctic - including the people who live there. The Inuit are suffering the double loss of natural food sources, and increasing toxic concentration (such as mercury) in the natural foods they are eating. Further, their diets are increasingly be supplemented by non-native food sources. Marla Cone has an excellent article on this situation in the January/February 2005 issue of Mother Jones called Dozens of Words for Snow, None for Pollution. She makes the following statement:

Traditionally, this marine diet has made the people of the Arctic Circle among the world's healthiest. Beluga whale, for example, has 10 times the iron of beef, twice the protein, and five times the vitamin A. Omega-3 fatty acids in the seafood protect the indigenous people from heart disease. A 70-year-old Inuit in Greenland has coronary arteries as elastic as those of a 20-year-old Dane eating Western foods, says Dr. Gert Mulvad of the Primary Health Care Clinic in Nuuk, Greenland's capital. Some Arctic clinics do not even keep heart medications like nitroglycerin in stock. Although heart disease has appeared with the introduction of Western foods, it remains "more or less unknown," Mulvad says.

Yet the ocean diet that gives these people life and defines their culture also threatens them. Despite living amid pristine ice and glacier-carved bedrock, people like Mamarut, Tukummeq, and Gedion are more vulnerable to pollution than anyone else on earth. Mercury concentrations in Qaanaaq mothers are the highest ever recorded, 12 times greater than the level that poses neurological risks to fetuses, according to U.S. government standards. A separate study has linked PCBs with slight effects on the intelligence of children in Qaanaaq. Although most of the village's people never leave their hunting grounds, the world travels to them, riding upon wintry winds.

One has to wonder if the Inuit could file an environmental racism case in the international or national courts of the most polluting nations.

The problems are not concentrated solely among the Inuit. Increasing toxicity is being found the world over, and cautions about eating seafood are increasing. Cone notes that in the United States "one of every six babies -- about 698,000 a year -- is born to a mother carrying more mercury in her body than is considered safe under federal guidelines."

The chemical revolution and the industrial revolution based on fossil fuels are combining in a Pandora's box of destruction. President Bush may not want to talk about either issue, but that doesn't make the issues go away. He may decry U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but nuclear power plants, and millions of dollars spent on how to burn coal cleanly are not going to solve them, any more than private accounts will resolve the social security "shortfall."

The implications of our messes, and our refusal to address them are getting clearer and more broadspread with each passing day. We are desperately in need of solutions and plans to address the problem and mitigate the damages, not double talk and proposals that at best divert funds and energy from the crisis at hand.