America’s most influential enviro McKibben: Use America’s defense budget to fight climate war
Via The HARRY READ ME File: Described by the Boston Globe as “America’s most important environmentalist”, 350.org founder Bill McKibben says America’s defense budget must “be put to work defending us against the most dangerous adversaries we face” — climate change.
BILL MCKIBBEN: “It should be possible to build large quantities of solar panels and turbine blades, and it should be possible to put lots of people at work on good jobs doing that, okay? And it should be a huge priority, and if you think we don’t have the money then you’re not paying attention. We have things like the defense budget that need to be put to work defending us against the most dangerous adversaries we face. The conceit of that New Republic piece was that we are in fact already at war though we do not really recognize it. But, by all the measures that we normally count as warfare, that’s what’s going on. We’re losing territory day by day. People are being killed day by day in great numbers. There will probably be added to that death toll tonight someplace along the coast of Florida. We’re at war, we’re just not fighting back, and the time has come to do that, and it will take as the history of WWII shows, government leadership to make that happen. It will take a concentrated national effort and a concentrated international effort to make that happen. It won’t happen on its own, it requires leadership.”
Bill McKibbin: The Hottest Fight in the Hottest Year
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio
October 6, 2016…
McKibben: It’s The Climate World War. Hitler, Nazi’s, panic!
…Back From The Dead: Giant Coral Reef That ‘Died’ In 2003 Teeming With Life Again
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=3222abc21a&e=d7022ad873
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In 2003, researchers declared Coral Castles dead. Then in 2015, a team of marine biologists was stunned and overjoyed to find the giant coral reef once again teeming with life. But the rebound came with a big question: Could the enormous and presumably still fragile coral survive what would be the hottest year on record? This month, the Massachusetts-based research team finished a new exploration of the reefs in the secluded Phoenix Islands, a tiny Pacific archipelago, and were thrilled by what they saw. When they splashed out of an inflatable dinghy to examine Coral Castles closely, they were greeted with a vista of bright greens and purples — unmistakable signs of life. –Karen Weintraub, The New York Times, 15 August 2016
In 1998, a heatwave, which raised ocean temperatures, had caused corals worldwide to go a deathly white – a process called bleaching – and die. The single bleaching event of 1998 killed nearly 16% of the world’s corals. When Dr Peter Mumby had visited Tivaru on the Rangiroa lagoon six months later, he’d found a vast majority of the region’s prolific Porites coral, normally the hardiest of coral species, had followed suit. Based on the known growing rates for the species, Mumby predicted it would take the Porites nearly 100 years to recover, not 15. “Our projections were completely wrong,” he says. “Sometimes it is really nice to be proven wrong as a scientist, and this was a perfect example of that.” –Jane Palmer, BBC, 6 September 2014 |
Bill McKibben on ‘climate crime’: Exxon murdered coral reefs by ‘firing the (global warming) gun’ – ‘We’re not going to let them get away with murder’
Climate Activist Bill McKibben – UK Guardian – August 17, 2016
The reefs can’t be made whole again: if they recover at all it will be slowly, and in the face of ongoing warming that seems unlikely. But at the very least, the nations that sustained this damage should be compensated. Exxon and its brethren made record profits in the last decades of denial and deceit; that money should rightfully go to pay for the damage it caused, and to build the energy systems that can power our lives without destruction.
We need to remember that there’s nothing natural about this horror. It was caused, as so many crimes are, by greed. And that greed is ongoing – Exxon continues to search for more hydrocarbons, and to reject even modest changes to its policies.
That’s why we’re wrapping crime scene tape this week around those bleached coral heads, those dead staghorns. That’s why we’re taking crime scene photos with underwater cameras. That’s why we’re protesting on the reefs. We’re not going to let them get away with murder.
Full McKibben article here:
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Scientific Reality Check on Mckibben’s claims:
‘Coral Reefs Expand As the Oceans Warm’: Peer-reviewed paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds warming oceans expand the range of tropical corals northward’ – ‘Corals are adapting to climate change and expanding, not contracting’
Natural climate change drove coral reefs to ‘total ecosystem collapse’ when CO2 was ‘safe’ – ‘According to a paper published in Science, natural climate change 4,000 years ago drove coral reefs to ‘total ecosystem collapse lasting 2,500 years’ for ‘40% of their total history’ over past 6,000 years. The authors believe ‘an intensified ENSO regime’ was responsible, but then erroneously assume AGW will lead to a similar reef collapse, despite extensive peer-reviewed literature showing that changes in greenhouse gases have not and will not affect ENSO intensity’
Claim: CO2 Pollution Could Erase Coral Reefs — Reality Check: ‘Corals evolved during the Cambrian Era, when CO2 levels were 8 to 20 times higher than today’ – ‘The great coral reefs of the Permian era formed when CO2 was as high as 3,000 ppm CO2. …
Bill McKibben: We Need to Literally Declare War on Climate Change – ‘We’re under attack from climate change’
…In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”
In the Pacific this spring, the enemy staged a daring breakout across thousands of miles of ocean, waging a full-scaleassault on the region’s coral reefs. In a matter of months, long stretches of formations like the Great Barrier Reef—dating back past the start of human civilization and visible from space—were reduced to white bone-yards.
Day after day, week after week, saboteurs behind our lines are unleashing a series of brilliant and overwhelming attacks. In the past few months alone, our foes have used a firestorm to force the total evacuation of a city of 90,000 in Canada, drought to ravage crops to the point where southern Africans are literally eating their seed corn, and floods to threaten the priceless repository of art in the Louvre. The enemy is even deploying biological weapons to spread psychological terror: The Zika virus, loaded like a bomb into a growing army of mosquitoes, has shrunk the heads of newborn babies across an entire continent; panicked health ministers in seven countries are now urging women not to get pregnant. And as in all conflicts, millions of refugees are fleeing the horrors of war, their numbers swelling daily as they’re forced to abandon their homes to escape famine and desolation and disease.
World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing.
Skeptics’ promote 550.org to counter CO2 fears!
http://daysgt.blogspot.mx/2015/07/550org.html
We are launching an alternate organization to 350.org because we believe that just wishing for something to happen (in other words for the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to go back to 350 ppm) is absurd in the light that we break a new CO2 emissions record every year.
So, it makes no sense to invest time, effort and money in pursuing an impossible objective.
Let’s state here in what we firmly believe: nobody alive today will ever see again 350 ppm.
So, if not 350, where are we headed?
We are “easily” headed for 550 ppm, thus the name of our non-profit.
Before we proceed further, let us state why we believe our non-profit will be more attractive than 350.org:
We will not, ever, under any circumstances ask for donations. Hell, we won’t even accept them even if somebody volunteers some money.We won’t be dogmatic. We won’t believe blindly in models, organizations (e.g. IPCC) or the Pope. We will strive to actually listen to reality.If 550 ppm is going to have consequences, we’ll focus on minimizing the negative impacts and taking advantage of the positive ones.We won’t promote any “feel good” actions that are actually irrelevant. So, you can stay at home: no need to pack yourself in diesel buses and march against something. We are against carbon taxes (at the end of the day, C taxes are just taxes so thanks, but no thanks).We support the discontinuation of subsidies for all energy sources, starting with renewables. We believe nuclear energy is safe, dense, reliable, scaleable and affordable.We do not believe that reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is THE priority of humanity (actually, it is not).
Now, although we don’t accept donations, we do accept $100 USD bets.
If the CO2 concentration does (miraculously) drop to 350, each member of 550.org will contribute $100 USD to: www.feedthechildren.org
If you bet against 550 and we do reach 550 ppm, then you should donate $100 USD to Feed the Children.
Deal?
Our objective is to educate the world not only respecting climate science, but more importantly, on engineering reality. The world cannot afford to go the way of the Energiewende. We want to be the voice of reason in the climate / energy discourse.…
ExxonMobil put on mock trial for ‘climate crimes’ by Bill McKibben & Naomi Klein – But ‘trial’ ‘unable to reach a conclusive finding of guilt or innocence’
Closing arguments
In his closing arguments, McKibben said: “You have heard eminent scientists explain that because of the delay in [climate] action, because of Exxon’s failure to present the truth, we’re going to see increases in the level of the sea, and you’ve heard from people who will be driven from their homes.”
“It’s hard to imagine a set of corporate practices that could’ve done more damage and more damage needlessly. For that, we ask for a judgment against Exxon, and for the future of this planet.”
Klein added: “We have heard stories of people’s lives lost directly because of melting ice. We have heard stories of ancient cultures threatened because of climate change.”
“There is no price that can be put on the Marshall Islands, on Arctic cultures, on the lives of our loved ones.”
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And the verdict is…
“Given that as a court we lack the ability to compel testimony from Exxon, we are unable to reach a conclusive finding of guilt or innocence. The majesty of the law demands that a defendant be able to offer exculpatory evidence. However, we can ask other courts in other jurisdictions that have the power to summon this company before the law do so and with haste,” said Leak.
Back in the real courtroom in the U.S., the New York attorney general subpoenaed the company’s records from the 1970s, which revealed the company had been conducting its own scientific research into global warming, and that senior executives simply ignored the findings.…
Climate activists sour on UN climate deal: ‘It won’t save the planet…it saves the chance of saving the planet’ – ‘Bullsh*t’ – ‘Fraud…Fake’ – ‘Magical Thinking’
Warmist Bill McKibben on Paris deal: ‘It won’t save the planet…it saves the chance of saving the planet’ – “This agreement won’t save the planet, not even close,” Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, a climate advocacy group, told The Huffington Post in an email. “But it’s possible that it saves the chance of saving the planet — if movements push even harder from here on out.”
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Warmist George Monbiot: ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the Paris deal is bullshit’
Monbiot: ‘The talks in Paris are the best there have ever been. And that is a terrible indictment.’
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Former NASA lead ‘global warming’ scientist James Hansen on UN summit: ‘It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit’ – Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanor changes. “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
Dem Senator Bernie Sanders slams Paris ‘deal’ “The planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that.” The Hill reports: “The planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that,” he said Saturday in a statement released shortly before delegates in Paris are due to vote on the agreement, the first to require climate efforts of nearly every country.
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Warmists protest Paris nothing-burger “It’s going to burn our planet.’ Hundreds Protest “Unacceptable” Draft Climate AccordFrom Democracy Now!:
Warmist Bill McKibben on Paris deal: ‘It won’t save the planet…it saves the chance of saving the planet’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-paris_566c2048e4b0e292150e169b…
In Paris: McKibben & Naomi Klein ‘Prosecuting’ on behalf of Exxon’s ‘victims’: ‘The People Vs. ExxonMobil A Public Trial for the Greatest Climate Crime of the Century’
http://350.org/people-vs-exxon/
THE PEOPLE VS. EXXONMOBIL:
Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben
Witnesses:
Pacific Climate Warriors Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner; Joydeep Gupta of Third Pole Network; journalist Antonia Juhasz; Cindy Baxter of ExxonSecrets; Climate Scientist Jason Box; Ken Henshaw of Social Action Nigeria; Texas environmental justice advocate Bryan Parras ; and more.
This Saturday, renowned authors and climate activists Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein are hosting a public trial of ExxonMobil at the COP21 People’s Climate Summit in Montreuil. They’ll interview a series of star witness from around the world about Exxon’s lies and the climate impacts they, and other fossil fuel companies like Total, are responsible for.
A series of new revelations revealed that ExxonMobil scientists knew about climate change decades ago, but chose to bury the information and mislead the public and their shareholders about the dangers of the problem. Instead of warning the world about the climate crisis, Exxon spent millions to protect their profits at the expense of people everywhere.
Now, the pressure on Exxon is growing to pay for their crimes, with the #ExxonKnew campaign growing stronger everyday. In the United States, presidential candidates are calling for a formal investigation, the New York State Attorney General has launched a subpoena, and Secretary of State John Kerry has said Exxon could lose “billions” in a class action lawsuit.
Come hear the case against Exxon and join the movement to challenge the most dangerous company on the planet.
“The rapidly evolving Exxon scandal may represent the next great phase of the climate movement. Many of its victims are represented here in Paris, so it’s the perfect opportunity to collect testimony to the damage that 25 years of Exxon’s deception has wrought,” — Bill McKibben
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