Must-See Global Warming Video: What We Knew In 1982 (Really, it's must see - K)

[kristopher]

Must-See Global Warming Video: What We Knew In 1982
by Peter Sinclair, via Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Mike MacCracken was the first high level climate scientist that Al Gore introduced me to in Nashville, some 5 years ago. Although I knew something about the issue, and had some background reading and writing about energy and environment – Mike very quickly made me realize how much I had wrong, and how much I had to learn. He has been a reliable and generous advisor and mentor ever since. I owe him a lot for his patience in answering questions and pointing me to people and resources I needed to be aware of.

A few months ago, I became aware of a video of Mike’s presentation on Climate Change at Sandia Labs in August 1982. The contrast between what scientists already knew even 30 years ago, and the pathetically slow response to this gathering storm, prompted me to want to find out what Mike was thinking now, with three decades of perspective.

I interviewed Mike at the Universty of Michigan in February, where we both attended a climate conference a the Erb School for Global Sustainable Enterprise.\ (he was invited. I kind of crashed the party and was allowed to hang out.)

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/26/452236/global-warming-video-what-we-knew-in-1982/

[phantom power]

1. "you can't take away my hope"

Maybe.

[kristopher]

2. +6/10watt/m^2 insolation imbalance

Equals thermal impact of 400,000 Hiroshima sized nuclear explosions every day.


I'd not heard that one before.

[phantom power]

5. all the square meters really add up...

also, Little Boy's yield was under 20 kilotons. Not really in the same class as a modern nuke.

[kristopher]

6. It is an outstanding rhetorical device.

Bumper-sticker slogans for bumper-sticker minds...

[progressoid]

3. Yeah.

It's hard to stay optimistic given what we know and how little is being done about it.

[GliderGuider]

4. We have to find new and different things to hope for.

The calm, unruffled, inexorable upward path our civilization has appeared to be on for the last 200 years - the Story of Ascent - is being revealed as a fairy tale. As we close that book we have to find our hope in the real world that has always existed behind that fantasy facade: the hope of re-connection with our communities and with nature (or at least what nature we still have left). This has been where human hope has been rooted for the last 100,000 years. If we owe one thing to our children as reparation for the damage that has been done (in their name!) it is to find and open the door to that hope.

Over the weekend I was at a conference where I heard Charles Eisenstein describe the story of humanity as one of a maturing species. We are finishing our adolescent growth spurt, and, just as happens to an individual at the end of adolescence our physical growth is ceasing. We are entering a period analogous to an initiation ordeal into adulthood. As we submit to the trial, we have to ask ourselves what it means to be an adult species, and what part each of us might play in our collective entry into adulthood.

Now it's time to act our age. How old are we? As beings composed of atoms that has existed longer than our own sun, we might consider ourselves to be the age of the universe itself. How would a 13.7 billion year old being behave once they have put away the fantasies of childhood and accepted reality?

Can we meet that challenge and step into our adulthood, each of us carrying a small piece of the species along with us?

Let's try, together.

[RobertEarl]

7. Wow

This place is bouncing off the walls!

Glider's post is so far out there it's almost into space.

Opposite of that is the conversation I had yest. with someone who basically told me that I was irrational because I wanted to save folks from irreparable harm due to our society's childlike actions of playing with the nuclear matchbox.

So, from one wall of using acquired knowledge to act responsibly in accordance with ecological limits, to the other childlike wall of "Lets see what happens when we fuku with the ecology."

One facet of maturity is facing the reality of this world. It is easier to act as a child without regard of the consequences, but the reality of maturity is to own up to our consequences.

We are 13.7 billion years old. It is time to do the right things.

[GliderGuider]

8. When I was a boy I wanted to be an astronaut.

As a spaced-out adult I'm at least part-way there
The conference I was at last weekend was in Berkeley, so maybe there's still left-over acid in the water supply...

On a more serious note, it's a remarkable experience to spend three days in the company of 250 other people who Get It. I highly recommend the experience. It taught me how many different ways there are to get it, and how differently each of us respond to that awareness. Also, discussing these things in person is whole different kettle of tofu from doing it on the interweb.

The conference touched on many of the themes we explore on DU: trans-national corporate hegemony, corporate ownership of politics, climate change, peak oil, food security/GMOs, renewable energy, the global economic crisis, re-localization, taking a systems approach to the unfolding crisis, etc.

There seemed to be three main ways people are responding to their awareness of the predicament.

One was at the institutional level, through direct engagement with the corporate/political world whether through policy or confrontation.

The second ws at the community level, by working in small groups to strengthen the personal ties that create community.

The third seemed to be deeply personal, to the point of being an overtly spiritual response. Usually this was not religious (except for a smattering of Unitarians), but there was a strong aroma of Buddhism wafting through the crowd. This probably happens because a holistic ecological awareness is directly analogous to, and supported by, the various non-dualist spiritual teachings like Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta.

The three "levels" of response tended to overlap, with community action being the common denominator. I didn't get much sense that those with a primarily spiritual response were terribly interested in institutional confrontation, and the reverse was also true. Overall there was an enormous amount of accommodation and respect for other viewpoints. Though the guy who proposed nuclear energy as a fix for climate change didn't get a terribly sympathetic reception...

[RobertEarl]

9. Interesting

A meet like that may do me some good.

I have been in all three camps at different times and sometimes all three at once. But how can you be in three places at once when you are not anywhere at all?

At times i feel myself as if being in a dream. Simple actions but they are as if I am outside of that action, looking in. Brief moments. Weird.

Have been trying to get folks to stand up for their rights with direct action in politics. Its tough. They are scared and have little optimism.

Community stuff comes easy to me, but the response to the idea that we are all in this together and we all need to lean on each other, while getting an initial positive response, is rarely ever followed up with any others observable action.

Spiritually, it is all one sided and hard to discuss. But there does seem to be a deep foreboding of the future within that ethereal realm. But i do believe that is what forces me to do the outside work with others.

Something i read awhile back was the idea that such travelers as i must expect to feel alone. So be it.

On DU i feel more not alone than anywhere. I sure am glad to have found this place and to read words such as yours.

Howdy!