Discuss: Take the Plunge

The students of my Environmental Communication Class at Conserve School in northern Wisconsin are taking a “walk” by sponsoring a Get Up! Get Out! Get Green! walk-a-thon event Oct. 24th. We also have Eric Larsen as a speaker. Eric is trying to become the first person in history to go to both poles and the summit of Mt. Everest in one year to dramatize the effects of climate change. Get Up. Get involved.

The carbon dioxide concentration level is currently about 386 ppm and there is no way that the the methods installed by humans can bring it back down to 350 ppm. Scientists have not said that society can do that. The level may drop back to 350 ppm in a few hundred years time (because primarily much is absorbed in the oceans to the detriment of the marine eco system) if the global rate of fossil fuel emissions were to be cut back very rapidly. There is no possible way that policies adapted by society will stop the concentration level from rising in the foreseeable future. Irreversible climate change is already under way. Politicians have a duty to propose measures that will benefit society and its life support system. The current proposals do not do that. Activists would be serving the public much better is they promoted policies that adapted to the impact of climate change rather than promoting fallacious policies to do the impossible.

Thanks Bill for devoting your life as of late to this international cause. I will be organizing a 350 action on Saturday to join the voices calling for policies to remedy the climate crisis.
Everyone can send out an S.O.S.

Denis: Bill McKibben is one person you can be sure is also talking about scalable solutions, for example here in Orion magazine:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4418/

His above article about biochar is a good eg: we would be able to pull down massive amounts of carbon this way and use it to help humanity grow more food. Bill has also written about producing electricity by capturing waste flue heat from factories in Orion. These are good things for us to be working on alongside the big policy initiatives that this grassroots climate campaign advocates.

Erik, Orion Grassroots Network

You are amazing despite the burning of fossil fuels to organize such an event! I hope that we can organize yearly after this without such travels. Thank yopu for all you do!
http://www.Bioneers.org
http://www.SusutainAK.org

It takes 23ounces of crude oil to make 1 Big Mac. Industrial Agricultre is now 1 cal of food for every 10 calories of fossil fuel. STOP BIG AGRICULTURE. Plant a garden. Google Michael Polan.

There are many proposed activities, like bio char, that can make real contributions. I was not criticizing positive remedial measures like those put forward by Bill. I was only pointing out that the 350 campaign is based on a widespread misunderstanding of what is physically possible. This misunderstanding will inhibit the contributions that sound remedial proposals will make.

While 350 and Mr. McKibben can make noise, the groups involved have no program other than cutting emissions that can not get control of the climate crisis.  Contrary to Mr. Frith statements, going negative carbon and negative heat energy, the unrecognized cause of climate change, can be achieved by making our massive ever-growing messes of organic wastes and sewage solids into a resource.  These messes can be pyrolyzed to get inert charcoal to use as a soil amendment thus remaking a fossil fuel with heat energy incorporated back into it.  The pyrolysis process is getting developed by several cos. but only one seems aware of not burning the charcoal, which would not get removal of carbon or heat from their biosphere overloads.  The charcoal formed, if made by renewable energy, means removing some carbon and heat energy from the biosphere that could in time reduce CO2 levels back to 350 ppm.  Dr. J. Singmaster