Is the environment going through exponential change?: Fiver's Third Blog

I'm a long-term follower of a distinctly ordinary news source called Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet by Steve Newman (http://www.earthweek.com). Although not comprehensive or infallible he seems to spend a lot of time finding out what's going on and saves me from searching and researching important news on the environment. I once spotted an error and he was very open to my feedback. I respect that.

I recently noticed that most of his lead items seemed to confirm the predicted exponential growth of a number of trends I've been following. On May 27, the following headline was typical: Arctic Sprouting Trees Farther North Faster Than Expected. On June 3rd he reported on a greenhouse gas surge noted by the International Energy Agency (EIA) surpassing previous records by a whopping 1.6 gigatons. Lord Stern (The Stern Report) forwarded the conclusion that "the prospects of keeping greenhouse gasses from warming global temperatures less than 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit are now becoming very bleak".

On June 10th, in an item labeled "Hot Summers Ahead" Newman reported on research concluding that "many tropical regions in Africa, Asia, and South America could see the "permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" in the next two decades".

And last week's report on Ocean Extinctions said, "A new report cautions that the world's oceans are undergoing changes that threaten to wipe out marine species at a far faster rate than earlier feared".

These are added to a host of other "far faster", "more extensive than", "further (or greater, more rapidly, etc.) than previously estimated". These, and other similar events seem to be early indicators of exponential climate change. Every UN IPCC reports in recent years have disclaimers that indicate rates of sea level rise may be greater than the figures in the report indicate.

The prestigious National Snow and Ice Data Center, another one of my favorite sources, participated in an important webinar yesterday regarding an important "peer-reviewed report. With contributions from 368 scientists in 48 countries, it updated many global climate indicators and examined notable weather and climate events from last year. 2010 was one of the two warmest years on record and saw a number of weather and climate extremes.

I haven't seen the rushes because it just happened but the last time I noticed one of these gatherings the scientists were all freaked out because the data on changes in the cryosphere (those are the icy places of the world) were accelerating so much that they thought they'd soon be out of a job because "their stock in trade was vanishing".

When I went to college there were no courses or majors in "sustainability". In fact, I don’t think the word was invented until 1987. It wasn't a discipline. Now any school that noticed we're not just in the 21st Century, but in the Third Millennium, has a major in sustainability.

In another few years, if the the current pace of accelerating change keeps up, cryosphere research will become history. If so, the "history" of the cryosphere will begin to be studied and documented by "Gaian" anthropologists at Penn and UCLA. That discipline may vanish before humanity realizes it's value. That extinction will rival the loss of species during this current period.

In the geological history of the Earth, there have been five periods of great natural extinction that have happened because of geological changes and huge disasters. But now, thanks to humanity's influences, the rate of species' extinction has exponentially increased to 1,000 times that of ancient period. Earth is coming into the sixth extinction period, according to Beijing Daily's report. On average, one species would disappear per hour.

According "Nature," more than 1 million species will disappear from this planet 50 years from now, and one species will be extinct per hour on average because of human activities. Of course, I won't have to worry about this because between the environment, the end of cheap oil, and the economy, I'll be long gone before it gets that bad. It is likely, according to the Department of Defense's Joint Operating Environment Report for 2010, that I'll have more company where I'm going than anyone left behind.

I admit it's possible that anyone who has the required billion or so dollars to create, supply, and defend a survival compound for a couple of decades will still be here. And they'll be the ones to repopulate whatever is left over. Thanks to landscape amnesia, their grandchildren will never notice what they lost. And that will set the stage for another go at destroying the best of the most beautiful planet we will ever know.



Fiver: A small rabbit; his Lapine name is Hrairoo, which means "Little-thousand". His visions of the destruction of the Sandleford warren lead him to leave, along with his brother Hazel and several other rabbits. His visions are almost always centered on Hazel, saving him from the snared warren and dying from a gunshot wound. He also gives Hazel a vision that inspires Hazel to set up the release of the Nuthanger Farm dog to save the Watership Down warren from General Woundwort. In the TV Series, Fiver's visions come in rhymes, and he often feels responsible for foreseeing terrible things, blaming himself for their outcome.