In a recent LA Times article "Civilization's last
chance," the prolific environmentalist Bill
McKibben (2008a) wrote [bracketed by lines
MMMMMMM. . . . ."]:
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
It's not just the economy: We've gone through
swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means
we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff
that built our sprawling society. It's that when
we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the
price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and
helps ignite food riots on three continents. It's
that everything is so tied together. It's that,
all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types
who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about
the "limits to growth" suddenly seem ... how best
to put it, RIGHT (emphasis in the original).
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.
There's a number -- a new number -- that makes
this point most powerfully. It may now be the
most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts
per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist,
James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science
magazine with several coauthors. The abstract
attached to it argued -- and I have never read
stronger language in a scientific paper -- that
"IF HUMANITY WISHES TO PRESERVE A PLANET SIMILAR
TO THAT ON WHICH CIVILIZATION DEVELOPED AND TO
WHICH LIFE ON EARTH IS ADAPTED, PALEOCLIMATE
EVIDENCE AND ONGOING CLIMATE CHANGE SUGGEST THAT
CO2 WILL NEED TO BE REDUCED FROM ITS CURRENT 385
PPM TO AT MOST 350 PPM." [My CAPS.]
Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points --
massive sea level rise and huge changes in
rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass
if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the
first of them, judging by last summer's insane
melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
For more on Bill McKibben from the LA Times see
"A force to be reckoned with" [Reynolds (2008)]
who wrote [my insert at ". . . .[ insert]. . .
.":
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Bill McKibben's writing -- part art, part essay,
part journalism with more than a smidgen of
harangue -- has framed the thinking on
environmental issues for more than a generation.
Two new books out this spring, "The Bill McKibben
Reader: Pieces From an Active Life" (Henry Holt:
446 pp., $18 paper). . . .[McKibben (2008b)]. . .
. .and "American Earth: Environmental Writing
Since Thoreau" (Library of America: 1,050 pp.,
$40) ). . . .[McKibben (2008c)]. . . . ., will
impress on the reader how calmly, if not always
quietly, he has illuminated paths to the future,
thinking alongside us about what might be
possible, even as information hurtles toward us,
technology blinds us and being human seems to
mean something entirely different than what any
of us would consciously want.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
BTW, I note that Bill McKibben is not commonly
mentioned on either PHYSOC or Phys-L:
a. A search for "McKibben" (without the quotes)
at the PHYSOC search engine
<http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?S1=physoc&X=->
turned up only one post "NY Review of Books
article," in which Ernie Behringer (2004) calls
attention to McKibben's (2004) New York Times
review of books (that might interest PHYSOC
subscribers) titled "Crossing the Red Line."
b. A search for "Bill McKibbon" (with the quotes)
at the Phys-L Archive search engine
<https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/archives>
turned up only one post "Smoke and Mirrors at
the United Nations," in which Jim Green (2001)
asks if anyone has comments on an article of the
same title by senior Cato fellow Patrick Michaels
at <http://www.cato.org/dailys/02-26-01.html>.
Michaels attacks the forecast of a possible
global warming of 10ºF this century by the United
Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) and writes "The original forecast
of IPCC was baseless. Even Bill McKibben, author
of the gloom-saying 'End of Nature' . . .
.[McKibben (2006)]. . . . called it 'science
fiction.' Those who bothered to look (which
apparently didn't include many news editors)
would have found that this calculation was only
one of 245 made by the IPCC for climate change in
this century."
REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Behringer, E. 2004. "NY Review of Books article,"
PHYSOC post of 10 Jun 2004 22:24:51-0500; online
at <http://tinyurl.com/3mtjrx>. To access the
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