From Nature Bats Last - 07/24/2015

Near-term Habitat Loss for Humans

Guy McPherson

Nature Bats Last,

22 July, 2015

Fact: This planet has not harbored humans at 3.3 C or higher above baseline (i.e., the beginning of the industrial revolution). The number may be much lower. The jury is still out.

Fact: Humans are animals that depend on myriad other species for survival. As with all other animals, humans require clean air, potable water, healthy food, and the ability to maintain body temperature to sustain themselves.

Fact: Humans will die without a living planet that continuously supplies the elements listed above.

Fact: So far, all humans born into the physical realm have died. There is no rational basis for expecting any human to avoid this fate.

Fact: The Sixth Mass Extinction is under way.

Fact: All species have gone extinct or will go extinct. There is no rational basis for expecting Homo sapiens to avoid this fate.

Earth is officially at 0.85 C above baseline. The actual, unofficial global-average temperature is at least 0.1 C higher than the official figure. The ongoing El Niño will take Earth well beyond 1 C, the1990 Rubicon from the United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases. As David Spratt points out in this video from October 2014, 0.5 C is was a more reasonable target. But those days are long behind us.

The rate of evolution via natural selection trails the rate of climate change by a factor of 10,000, according to a paper in the August 2013 issue of Ecology Letters. Clever as we are, we will not evade the Sixth Mass Extinction in the absence of myriad non-human organisms to supply the necessities of human life.

“Dramatic emission reductions (35%–80%) in anthropogenic aerosols and their precursors projected by Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 result in ~1 °C of additional warming,” according to an analysis published in the 20 May 2013 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Instead of taking the cherry-picking, conservative approach assumed by academic scientists and the International Panel on Climate Change’s RCP, I’ll use the upper end of the conservative projection: Reducing industrial activity by 35% results in ~1 C global-average temperature rise, and eliminating global industrial activity results in an attendant ~3 C global-average temperature rise.

In other words, the absence of solar dimming associated with reflective particles could cause an abrupt rise in global-average temperature beyond that which has supported the existence of humans in the past (about 4 C, the number at which this headline from 2008 in The Guardian conservatively concludes human extinction). A large majority of the rise in temperature will come much more rapidly than the initial 0.85 C. Assuming the least-conservative end of the very conservative spectrum offered by the journal literature and the International Panel on Climate Change takes Earth well beyond the temperature at which human life has been harbored on this planet. Earth only gets hotter from there.

On the other hand, nobody knows the global-average temperature at which humans will become extinct. We’ve not yet completed this trial. By the time we complete the trial, there will be nobody left to record it. The lesson will come after the exam.

The industrial economies of the world are inextricably linked. If Europe goes down the tubes because the derivatives bubble pops on that continent, then there will be consequences throughout the world. There’s a reason the Federal Reserve System of the United States gives money directly to foreign countries.

The rapid rise in global-average temperature I’ve described in this scenario occurs within days after collapse is complete. Sans methane and its exponential rise in Earth’s atmosphere. Sans 10-year “lag” in maximum heating from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Sans nuclear facilities melting down catastrophically.

I’m not suggesting all humans will die within days after the ongoing collapse of industrial civilization is complete. Rather, that process is likely to require months, or perhaps a few years. But it’s difficult for me to envision Earth with humans in 2030, notwithstanding the IPCC’s fantasy technology.

Contrary to conventional “wisdom,” we cannot sustain this unsustainable set of living arrangements indefinitely. Industrial civilization will end. Those of you believing somebody has the system under control are deluded. Nobody is in charge of the system. Only you are responsible for yourself.

Shortly after civilization reaches its overdue end, habitat for humans will disappear. Between now then, every year will be worse than the one before, except for the few who benefit from oppression abroad, obedience at home, and destruction of the living planet. Obedience at home is exemplified by thoughtless people still on their hamster wheels.

Preppers take heart: Bunkers of beans will see you through a few years if you avoid fires, floods, superstorms, bitter cold, infectious diseases, and numerous other hazards. After that, it’s microbes and bacteria for ten million years or so, assuming humans become the first animals to persist beyond seven generations despite lethal mutations associated with bathing in ionizing radiation.

Everybody take heart: We get to live. It’s quite an amazing deal. Let’s get on with it

Guy and Pauline Schneider were interviewed for Evolve and Ascend on 7 July 2015. 

Danger to US nukes

Feds covering security flaws with Fukushima-like potential, nuclear whistleblowers claim

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, where U.S. suffered its most serious nuclear accident in 1979, is seen across Susquehanna River in Middletown, Pennsylvania. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)



RT,
4 December, 2012




Two nuclear power whistleblowers have publicly accused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of taking steps to cover up dangerous shortcomings at American power plants, including severe flood risks facing nuclear power plants downstream from large dams.


Richard H. Perkins and Larry Criscione both have a government and military experience and recently worked at the NRC, which was created to oversee reactor safety and security. Compromising their jobs for the sake of speaking out, the men have publicized the severity of the flood risks facing a number of nuclear power plants using a number of documents obtained by the Huffington Post.


“When you’re working with sensitive information, you just don’t talk about it, so what I’m doing I find to be both perverse and uncomfortable,” Perkins told the Huffington Post. “But I had to do it."


After realizing that some details regarding the dangerous flood threat were withheld for years at the expense of public security, Perkins and Criscione felt the need to tell someone.


If a nuclear power plant floods past the level the facility is built to withstand, power to the plant from a grid connection or back-up diesel generator could be lost, causing an inability to circulate water to keep the reactor core or the spent fuel pool cool. If the plant cannot be kept cool, a catastrophic disaster similar to the failure at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant could occur.


“If we believe there is a security vulnerability, we need to take measures to address it and not merely withhold it from public discussion,” Criscione said.
When Perkins in 2010 was assigned to review the dam-flood threat at nuclear power plants across the US, the NRC censored his analysis to exclude certain information. When an edited version of the report was completed and shared among NRC employees in June, 2011, large parts of the document were blacked out.


NRC officials claim they sometimes withhold information to promote safety – to keep the information from falling into the hands of terrorists, for example.
“But the redactions by the NRC did not promote safety in any of these ways. The actions have, in fact, allowed a very dangerous scenario to continue unaddressed for years,” Perkins said.


Nuclear power plants are required by US law to be able to withstand all types of weather conditions that could occur in the region they are located. But many of the flood walls built to protect the plants are inadequate. The Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina is protected by a 5-foot wall, but the plant is located near a dam that could result in floodwaters as high as 16.8 feet and cause a meltdown similar to Fukushima.


These flaws, which reports indicate were found at plants across the country by latest 2005, were kept secret while NRC staff prepared an internal communications plan to deal with potential questions that could be asked about the power plants’ vulnerabilities. The Oconee Nuclear Station, owned by Duke Energy, was never shut down or properly assessed, even though it had a high risk of failure.


The NRC refused to acknowledge that there was any sort of risk involved in keeping the plant open, promting Perkins to speak out in September and submit a letter to the NRC’s Officer of the Inspector General, charging that the NRC was involved in a cover-up, the Huffington Post reports.


“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff may be motivated to prevent the disclosure of this safety information to the public because it will embarrass the agency,” he wrote. “The redacted information includes discussion of, and excerpts from, NRS official agency records that show the NRC has been in possession of relevant, notable and derogatory safety information for an extended period but failed to properly act on it. Concurrently, the NRC concealed the information from the public.”


Criscione publicized his concerns partially due to a personal experience he had with a flooded dam.  When the Tom Sauk hydroelectric reservoir broke and released 1 billion gallons of water to destroy part of a forest and a camp site that Criscione frequently visited, he realized the risks involved with many of the nuclear power plants located near dams.


After hearing about Perkins’ report, Criscione decided to follow in his path and sent a letter to NRC Chairwoman Allison MacFarlane, attaching dozens of letters between the NRC and Duke Energy.


But even after the letters were sent, the NRC told the Huffington Post that the Oconee plant was facing no risks and that “Duke has taken appropriate actions to ensure Oconee can safety mitigate flooding events.”


Still, Perkins and Criscione stand by their beliefs that many US power plants are in danger. Criscione suspects there are many other engineers who may also feel compelled to speak out, but are afraid of losing their jobs.


“We don’t work for nuclear operators, after all. We work for the American people,” Perkins said.


“It’s the two of us against the entire federal government,” Criscione added.