Social crises of the 1970s were met with the
confident expectation human beings acting could
meet planetary challenges and create a better world.
Jackie Captain of Madison and Fitchburg, Wisc
is pictured in Wisconsin Rapids, advocating
for solar power, circa 1978.
Dr. James Hansen at Columbia is pursuing an effort to both educate and save human beings, many of whom appear to resent the effort.
Hansen has a new piece at the Climate Science Awareness site warning that an emergency crash planetary-wide project implementing massive carbon-capture infrastructure would result in "unbearable debt for young people," and presumably crush economies.
"(N)ew news on carbon capture costs provides no support for the notion that we can solve the climate problem without fossil fuel phase-out," concludes Hansen.
As Donald Trump works to inflict the Republicans' kill-us budget, there is, it is widely believed, a covert professional, bureaucratic and market-stabilizing resistance.
Many rational-minded folk recognize the threats that Trump, evangelicals, nationalists and other nihilists pose to the non-suicidal. So an ad hoc project has been launched.
The aims and objectives include surviving Trump, preserving liberal democracy, nourishing stable international markets, extending the duration of the biosphere and related concerns for the milestone when this lunatic is forced to resign, or January 2021 comes.
Rightwingers and other commentators are correct in identifying a deep state coup, or more accurately the speak-freely-to-press-and-defy-this-lunatic project.
The deep state is generally recognized as the professional intelligence, military, analytic and academic resources serving as a professional class in and around government through administrations.
The coup is a good thing; consider as one writer poses the concern, "Can our trusty life-supporting biosphere hang in there?" (Hunziker, CounterPunch). [The most important journalist of the last 50 years, Glenn Greenwald, objects to the deep state coup, citing democracy concerns. For Greenwald's analysis, see The Intercept and Democracy Now.]
America’s first operational deep space satellite hovers some one
million miles from Earth. Positioned between the sun and Earth,
it is able to
maintain a constant view of the sun and sun-lit side of
Earth. This
location is called Lagrange point 1, (L1).
- (Illustration is not to scale) Credit: NOAA.
To take one illustration of how reality and one depiction of reality can degrade death cultists, consider the Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR satellite mission.
If you are not aware of this spectacular achievement, this may be because the Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR's advocates realize the potential danger the images of a five-year, live, (images taken every two hours), perspective that DSCOVR's EPIC, (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera), camera poses to the death cultists. DSCOVR advocates may fear retaliation.
The EPIC camera, (NOAA runs EPIC), is aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite in stationary, (hovering), orbit between the earth and sun,
932,000 miles sunward from Earth. DSCOVR was launched from Earth February 2015 and has been sending images since June 2015. The DSCOVR mission's duration is five years.
EPIC cameras on DSCOVR offer NOAA personnel a constant view, (in images taken every two hours, and in real-time data), of the fully illuminated Earth, (and Sun), and the DSCOVR website offers us the highlights.
If NOAA decides to offer world populations NOAA's live, real-time viewing of Earth, (has not yet on a live, real-time basis like say the GOES geostationary satellite server), populations may increasingly see Earth as the planet Earth—a life-supporting place, many regions of which are available for human visitation. Images are reported by NOAA to be taken every two hours, maybe that's good enough for reinforcing the human need discouraging planetary catastrophe that death cultists wish to inflict.
DSCOVR's capabilities are presented by NOAA emphasizing military-infrastructure-national security concerns: "The Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, will maintain the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of NOAA's space weather alerts and forecasts. Without timely and accurate warnings, space weather events like the geomagnetic storms caused by changes in solar wind have the potential to disrupt nearly every major public infrastructure system, including power grids, telecommunications, aviation and GPS."
One year after returning it's first image, NASA's EPIC camera, aboard NOAA's DSCOVR satellite, shows us an entire year from one million miles away.
This video was created using NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope, aboard NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. EPIC takes a new picture every two hours, revealing how the planet would look to human eyes, capturing the ever-changing motion of clouds and weather systems and the fixed features of Earth such as deserts, forests and the distinct blues of different seas. The camera has now recorded a full year of life on Earth from its orbit, seen here.
A million miles away, NOAA's DSCOVR, the Nation's first operational satellite in deep space, orbits a unique location called Lagrange point 1, or L1. This orbit is a gravity neutral point in space, allowing DSCOVR to essentially hover between the sun and Earth at all times, maintaining a constant view of the sun and sun-lit side of Earth. From here, the satellite can provide advanced solar measurements and early warnings of potentially dangerous space weather events, acting as a solar storm buoy in deep space.
Thanks to NASA's EPIC imager, DSCOVR's orbit also gives Earth scientists a unique vantage point for studies of the atmosphere and climate by continuously viewing the sunlit side of the planet. EPIC provides global spectral images of of Earth and insight into Earth's energy balance. EPIC's observations provide a unique angular perspective, and are used in science applications to measure ozone amounts, aerosol amounts, cloud height and phase, vegetation properties, hotspot land properties and UV radiation estimates at Earth's surface.
Various social crises of the 1970s were met with the
confident expectation human beings acting could
meet planetary challenges and create a better world.
Jackie Captain of Madison and Fitchburg, Wisc
is pictured in Wisconsin Rapids, circa 1978
Massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and coordinated geo-engineering needed on Earth; high-profile scientist writes off planetary target warming
The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it 'very unlikely' that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist.
This year has already seen scorching heat around the world, with the average global temperature peaking at 1.38C above levels experienced in the 19th century, perilously close to the 1.5C limit agreed in the landmark Paris climate accord. July was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880, with each month since October 2015 setting a new high mark for heat.
But Nasa said that records of temperature that go back far further, taken via analysis of ice cores and sediments, suggest that the warming of recent decades is out of step with any period over the past millennium. ...
'In the last 30 years we’ve really moved into exceptional territory,' Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said. 'It’s unprecedented in 1,000 years. There’s no period that has the trend seen in the 20th century in terms of the inclination (of temperatures).'
'Maintaining temperatures below the 1.5C guardrail requires significant and very rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions or co-ordinated geo-engineering. That is very unlikely. We are not even yet making emissions cuts commensurate with keeping warming below 2C.' ...
Lingering carbon dioxide already emitted from power generation, transport and agriculture is already likely to raise sea levels by around three feet by the end of the century, and potentially by 70 feet in the centuries to come. Increasing temperatures will shrink the polar ice caps, make large areas of the Middle East and North Africa unbearable to live in and accelerate what’s known as Earth’s 'sixth mass extinction' of animal species. ...
[Nasa's] Schmidt is the highest-profile scientist to effectively write-off the 1.5C target, which was adopted at December’s UN summit after heavy lobbying from island nations that risk being inundated by rising seas if temperatures exceed this level. Recent research found that just five more years of carbon dioxide emissions at current levels will virtually wipe out any chance of restraining temperatures to a 1.5C increase and avoid runaway climate change.
I'll ask Dr. Hansen a second question, 'is it even inferential at this point that catastrophic climate change is unavoidable?'
"U.S. President Barack Obama is taking his family to two national parks this weekend on a working vacation where he will spend some time with his teenaged daughters while making the case for more spending on conservation and curbing climate change," reports Roberta Rampton in Rueters.
... "The president will help celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service, and he is also expected to talk about his plan to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions. He sees this as part of the legacy of his time in office."
This is positive.
Yet, does the lack of public urgency meet the scope of the threat, the predictable consequences associated with carbon emissions?
