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Published byDiamond Dunsford Modified over 9 years ago
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SPONSORED BY 350.ORG, AND PRESENTED HERE BY RICK NOLTHENIUS - ASTRONOMY PROGRAM CHAIR, CABRILLO COLLEGE JOE JORDAN - INSTRUCTOR FOR CEM 163 "RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS" HERE'S SOME KEY POINTS TO SET THE STAGE... Disruption. Climate. Change.
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A Question for You… If Humans stopped ALL CO2 emissions. Every car, airplane, factory, powerplant on Earth, tomorrow. What would global temperatures do? A. They’d slowly decline back to pre-industrial levels. B. They’d rapidly decline back down for a while, then slowly approach pre-industrial levels C. They’d stay constant, for centuries or longer
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Temperatures Would Not Got Back Down. Even if We, Through Huge Efforts, Keep CO2 Merely Constant, Temperatures Would Continue to Rise (slowly albeit) for Centuries
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The Reason is Straight-forward – 93% of our Greenhouse Heating is Deposited into the Ocean. Our Air Can’t Cool When it’s in Contact with Such a Large Heat Reservoir.
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It looks VERY Unlikely We Can Hold Temperatures to +2C. But If We Could… Can we live with that? What Would Such a World Be Like?
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Seas Will Rise Roughly 30m (100 ft) above Today’s, with No Stable Coastlines for Centuries or Millenia
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This Year, New Satellite Data Tell us the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is Now Irreversibly in Collapse, Commiting us to 10+ feet of Sea Level Rise Alone
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Arctic Ocean Ice Melting Much Faster than Early IPCC Projections
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Small Measures Won’t Save Us. We’ve About Exhausted Our Credit Card with Mother Earth
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Not just the total Emitted CO2, but the RATE of CO2 Emission – Is Rising Dramatically As “Aspirational” Countries Want Our Lifestyle Too
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The “Business as Usual” Scenario (which includes the incremental moves towards renewables). (from Congressional Budget Office)
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Vital Truths to Consider: Counting on noble individual voluntary actions is hopelessly inadequate. One person’s sacrifice makes NO DIFFERENCE, while it makes a LARGE difference to the life/comfort of that individual. This guarantees that… ….There are and will remain - far, FAR too few such people, or potential converts to make any difference, This is ESPECIALLY true in the “2 nd World” of aspirationals like China and elsewhere in Asia, and they have angrily said so to our negotiators!
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The ONLY Path, is for ALL of the Peoples of the World to Embark on Shared Sacrifice Together, for the Sake of the Future. That will require legally enforced policy to DRASTICALLY cut CO2 emissions It requires a Manhattan Project-level commitment to finding and instituting atmospheric CO2 removal, beyond simply ending CO2 emissions That will required MASSIVE Political will Across All Industrialized Countries.
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Great! We Just Write Our Congressman! … if only! We are in fact NOT a Democracy, we’re an Oligarchy We voters do not determine the laws passed. A 2014 Study by Princeton researchers analyzing the legislative machinery behind 1,779 legislative bills and their passage, finds: "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."2014 Study by Princeton researchers
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Our Own Congressman Sam Farr… Has said to us who work in climate policy grassroots efforts – “People in Washington DC don’t CARE about climate”. The message is pretty clear. We need to “Up our Game” to be heard. That brings us to our film…. We’ll take questions and discussion right afterwards.
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