Thursday, October 03, 2013

Water In The Anthropocene

Water in the Anthropocene from WelcomeAnthropocene on Vimeo.



Water In The Anthropocene

Humans are now changing the face of Earth and water with detrimental consequences to our survival. As was also reported through many observations we are amplifying the global water cycle through the continued burning of fossil fuels and other actions emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This makes more heat and moisture in the atmosphere thus making more water vapor. Through this amplification we are already experiencing more intense floods and storms as well as more frequent prolonged droughts due to increased evaporation of soil moisture.

All of this culminates in making wet places wetter, dry places drier drastically impacting food security. This connects to global agriculture which already uses 70% of our available fresh water. With climate change, mining, fracking, coastal erosion, subsidence, salt water intrusion and rapacious dam building and coastal construction which in majority of cases is detrimental not only to climate but ecosystems in those areas we are ensuring that the Anthropocene era may well be our last on this Earth.

The only hope to change this is to not only work to adapt to the changes we can adapt to without further harming ecosystems but to look within ourselves to understand that we must begin to atone to nature and scale back our greed and excess. We need to also take an approach to adaptation that includes education, family planning and working to lift the poor in the developing world out of poverty in a way where they can sow their own seeds and have control over their own water sources.

Privatization of food and water by corporations will be the death knell for those in these areas needing to have food sovereignty and water access in order to survive.

The key to surviving this Anthropocene era is not only going to be based on economic precepts. It must also include humanity.



We cannot dam ourselves out of this human crisis.

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Unprecedented Ocean Acidification-Sixth Mass Extinction May Have Begun

The oceans are more acidic now than they’ve been at any time in the last 300 million years, conditions that marine scientists warn could lead to a mass extinction of key species.

Scientists from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) published their State of the Oceans report Thursday, a biennial study that surveys how oceans are responding to human impacts. The researchers found the current level of acifification is “unprecedented” and that the overall health of the ocean is declining at a much faster rate than previously thought.

“We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure,” the report states. “The next mass extinction may have already begun.”

Acidification causes major harm to marine ecosystems, especially coral, which has a hard time building up its calcium carbonate skeleton in acidic water. Coral reefs serve as nurseries to many young fish, so they’re essential both to ecosystem health and the survival of the fishing industry. If temperatures rise by 2 degrees C, the study found, coral may stop growing altogether, and may start to dissolve at 3 degrees C. Similarily, acidic ocean waters can hamper shellfish larvae’s ability to grow shells. Acidification is already hurting the shellfish industry — in the U.S., northwestern and East Coast shellfish industries have struggled to adapt to increasingly acidic waters. And pteropods, tiny sea snails that are a keystone species in the Arctic and are an essential food source for many birds, fish and whales, are also threatened by acidity — they too require strong calcium carbonate shells to survive.

It’s not just acidification that’s threatening the oceans, either — the report found the oceans are facing a “deadly trio” of stressors, with warming waters and decreasing oxygen also majorly affecting marine ecosystem health. Warming waters coupled with ocean acidification are posing increasingly severe threats to Antarctic krill, which play a vital role in the Antarctic marine food chain, and are also helping lead to huge outbreaks of jellyfish. And as water temperatures rise, coral is increasingly vulnerable to bleaching.

End of excerpt

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Aquifers being overpumped globally leading to water shortages threatening agriculture and economy:

Why Kansas Is Running Out Of Water

The Ogallala aquifer in the US is a prime example. And as it is fossil water, once it's gone, it's gone.



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Tuesday, October 01, 2013

New IPCC Report More Sure Of What We Were Already Sure About



IPCC AR5

See Slideshow Of Dramatic New Data For Yourself

The link above leads you to the recently released IPCC AR5 report. In it is the prognosis for our planet in the coming years... and it isn't good. The carbon budget which I wrote about previously is being expended rapaciously and without concern for the future. However, this is not only the fault of politicians and corporate profiteers. It is our fault collectively. I have pondered and agonized over why we are not seeing real progress towards the clean, healthy truly conscious society we could have. After reading much of this report I can come to only one conclusion: WE are the ones who need to push that change forward. Without us becoming more involved in this process I predict our survival is not assured past this century.

We will continue to see extreme events becoming more extreme and frequent. More heatwaves, more droughts, more sea level rise, more glacier melt. That brings more hunger, displacement, disease and conflict. Our entire social structure, health and security rests on us taking up the mantle and becoming part of the human race and not merely spectators. As someone who has been writing about this and also warning about future events if the present is not taken seriously I am saddened to see it coming true.

And yet, even with 95% scientific confidence and consensus that humans are pushing this we still have those who will deny this is a crisis that needs to be dealt with, or that humans are exacerbating it. I would hate to be someone related to one of them if they had symptoms of a disease that 95% of the doctors they went to see told them they needed treatment for or else they would die, because they would then take the advice of the one doctor without a degree on his wall telling them they are fine and nothing needs to be done. That is why this report also reveals one other glaring fact: It is time to go beyond giving credence to these people who will continue to drag humanity down all to suit their own biases and psychoses.

Bottomline: Unless we stop burning fossil fuels, stop geoengineering this climate to cover up our irresponsible treatment of this planet, stop polluting our waterways and air, stop decimating our soil, stop wasting our water and start understanding our place in this world and seeing the REALITY of this, we are DONE.

Two billion plus people globally effected by water scarcity alone. This has implications for health, security, education and most importantly, hunger. Sea level rise giving way to millions of climate refugees. Salt water intrusion as well as drought and heavier rain events decimating crops which decimates whole economies and which is already bringing diseases in places not seeing them previously. Glacial melt exacerbating methane releases that threaten all life on Earth.

The dominoes have already been set in motion in this the Anthropocene era. How much warming we see beyond the 2 degree celsius temperature tipping point we are already racing to is up to us. I could sit here copying and pasting all of the comments in the report, however, you can read them for yourselves. What I wish to say is that for once we have to see not only the science of this but the morality of it. We are missing that component and getting bogged down in the political back and forth. It is time to see the big picture and to understand that what we are now doing added to what we have already done will bring catastrophe for those to come.

The fate of human civilization rests on what we do now. It isn't about your politics, or your race, or your sexual preference, or your sex or your income. The storm we have and are unleashing by continuing to allow apathy, selfishness and greed to take precedence over moral courage is bigger than anything we have ever faced before. I as one person out here in a sea of inhumanity that is rising along with the tide can only continue to hope and pray we find our way before this totally overtakes us.

Is this the world you want?





The climate crisis is about who we are... What we care about... What we love... and FIGHTING FOR IT!

Please reference NASA Video



... Also reference other entries here on climate change, water and agriculture and pledge to become part of the solution...

Otherwise, begin practicing the apology speech you will give to your grandchildren and those to come when they ask you why you sat this out when our very survival was on the line.



Pay close attention to this video from 5:39 seconds on. That is what this and the IPCC AR5 report are really all about.

Action Needed Now Before Global Warming Becomes Unstoppable



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