“I know of no realistic person who thinks carbon dioxide emissions are going to do anything but grow. Most European countries are not meeting their emissions goals, and of the ones that have, it’s because their economies are collapsing. In the United States, this notion that we’re going to reduce our emissions by 80 percent is pure fantasy.” –Pete Geddes, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, 2 April 2008

“I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot.” –Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008

“The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state.” –Dr James Lovelock, August 2008

Dear Friends of the BraveNewClimate community,

I want to at least try to gain your quick help. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but yesterday the “AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population” submitted an idea for how we think the Obama Administration could change America. It’s called “Ideas for Change in America.”

I’ve submitted an idea and wanted to see if you could vote for it. The title is: Accepting human limits and Earth’s limitations. You can read and vote for the idea by clicking on the following link:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/accepting_human_limits_and_earths_limitations

The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.

Thanks.

Sincerely yours,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176

Hansen’s view, for instance, when he talks about 300-350ppm CO2 is that there will be a concomitant reduction in other +ve forcing agents (methane, nitrous oxide, black carbon) to go along with the CO2 drop. Otherwise, the -ve forcing tropospheric aerosols ruin the party because they also get lost as we shut down coal-fired power and automobiles, and 350ppm CO2 remains about 400ppm CO2e, as you suspect. This is the critical part of the equation that most people overlook – I need to blog further on this in Part II of the committed warming series.

I find it irresistible not to at least take a moment to wonder aloud about what Galileo is doing tonight. My hope would be that the great man is resting in peace and that his head is not spinning in his grave. How, now, can Galileo possibly find peace when so many top-rank scientists refuse to speak out clearly, loudly and often regarding whatsoever they believe to be true about the distinctly human-induced, global predicament presented to the family of humanity in our time by certain unbridled “overgrowth” activities of the human species from which global challenges visibly issue now and loom ominously on the far horizon?

Where are the thousands of scientists who have a responsibility to stand up with those who developed virtual mountains of good scientific research regarding overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species that are now overspreading and threatening to engulf the Earth.

Perhaps there is something in the great and everlasting work of many silent scientists that will give Galileo a moment of peace in our time.

What would the world we inhabit look like if scientists like Galileo adopted a code of silence, speaking only about scientific evidence which was politically convenient, economically expedient, religiously condoned and socially correct?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001