Coalition of the Willing

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a ‘post Copenhagen’ world.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.

The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global public in the fight against global warming. This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analysis of swarm activity and social revolution, ‘Coalition of the Willing’ makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people.

July 31, 2010
George Lakoff
Author, The Political Mind, Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!

Posted: July 15, 2010 09:08 AM
Huffington Post

Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods, destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds, and ground animals, spreads deserts, causes deadly waves, and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.

Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes, and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). It is simple, it works, and it pays you!

The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison, and destroy, and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels. Read the complete Post.

Studies predict major extinctions and collapse of Greenland ice sheet with temperatures rising well above UN targets

by Juliette Jowit and Christine Ottery
Published on Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

The world is heading for an average temperature rise of nearly 4C (7F), according to analysis of national pledges from around the globe. Such a rise would bring a high risk of major extinctions, threats to food supplies and the near-total collapse of the huge Greenland ice sheet.

More than 100 heads of state agreed in Copenhagen last December to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C-2C (2.7-3.6F) above the long-term average before the industrial revolution, which kickstarted a massive global increase in the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet and triggering climate change.

But six months on, a major international effort to monitor the emissions reductions targets of more than 60 countries, including all the major economies, the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, calculates that the world is on course for a rise of nearly double the stated goal by 2100.

Another study by Climate Analytics, at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, suggests there is “virtually no chance” world governments will keep the temperature rise to below 2C, and the rise is likely to be 3.5C (6.3F) by the end of the century.

In both analyses the current commitments suggest a much better outcome than the estimated business-as-usual temperature rise of 4.8C (8.6F), but are well above the 2C maximum the UN hoped would be agreed at the next major meeting this December in Cancún, Mexico - and even further from the 1.5C target many developing nations argue is needed to stop the worst impacts of climate change in their countries. Read the complete Post.

By Andrew Glikson

07 February, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” (Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute, advisor to the German government).

The release of more than 320 billion tons of carbon (GtC) from buried early biospheres, adding more than one half of the original carbon inventory of the atmosphere (~590 GtC) to the atmosphere-ocean system, has triggered a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere at a rate of 2 ppm CO2/year, a pace unprecedented in the geological record with the exception of the effects of CO2 released from craters excavated by large asteroid impacts.

Recent paleoclimate studies, using multiple proxies (soil carbonate δ13C, boron/calcium, stomata leaf pores), indicate that the current CO2 level of 388 ppm and CO2-equivalent level of 460 ppm (which includes the methane factor), commits warming above pre-industrial levels to 3 to 4 degrees C in the tropics and 10 degrees C in polar regions [1], leading to an ice-free Earth.

Such conditions existed in the early Pliocene (5.2 Ma) and mid-Pliocene (2.8 Ma) Pliocene, about the time Australopithecine bipeds were emerging from tropical forests [2]. Pliocene climates changed gradually and pre-historic humans responded through migration. There is nowhere the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go, not even the barren planets into the study of which space agencies have been pouring more funding than governments allocated for environmental mitigation to date [3].

It appears difficult to explain to the public and politicians that, at 460 ppm CO2-equivalent, the climate is tracking close to the upper stability limit of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at approximately 500 ppm [4]. Once transcended, mitigation measures would hardly be able to re-form the cryosphere, which serves as the Earth’s thermostat, from which cold ocean and wind current emanate – keeping lower latitudes cool. Once the ice melts the atmosphere-ocean system shifts to greenhouse Earth conditions such as existed about 15 Ma (mid-Miocene), before 40 Ma (Eocene), and much of the Cretaceous (141 – 65 Ma), when only small burrowing mammals could live on land.

Read the complete Post.

AGW is real and probably accelerating, partricularly considering that we are now in a solar minimum (of sunspot activity). See the latest GISS analysis attached.
Climate Change GISS temp0310pg1_18
Climate Change GISS temp0310pgs19_34

As for the Antarctic, the counterintuitive contradiction is actually explicable! According to ace climate analyst Dr Joellen Russell of the Univeristy of Arizona, general warming has caused a significant poleward migration of climate belts. This shifting of historic trade winds, etc., is partially behind the drougths in China, Australia, Argentina, etc., and is responsible for accelerated melting of the floating and land-bound ice sheets in coastal Anarctica.

Meanwhile, contrary to popular belief, the Antarctic ozone hole has not recovered–in fact, the largest hole ever was in 2008. Now, stratospheric ozone is a GHG and usually warms the upper atmosphere significantly. In the absence of ozone, there is a extremly cold column of air over the central Antarctic that extends to the surface. This is responsible for record cold and snow/ice accumulation there. In other words, both the melting periphery and the frigid core of the continent are real and the result of anthropogenic climate change (although by different mechanisms).

William E. Rees, PhD, FRSC
Professor
UBC School of Community and Regional Planning
604 822-2937

Deniers are dancing on the graves of their reputations, to say nothing of reality itself. But Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on March 21, 2010

And if the ground’s not cold/Everything is gonna burn/We’ll all take turns/I’ll get mine too. — Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven.”

Bad news. Thanks to perfectly timed, premeditated reality assassinations like so-called ClimateGate, nearly half of Americans may now believe that the various threats of climate change are exaggerated. That’s the highest quotient ever since polling on the issue commenced. But there is good news: They’re on the wrong side of history and science, and Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

Welcome to our existential nightmare. From rising seas and runaway droughts and storms to the outer limits of dystopian catastrophes like the fart apocalypse — I’ll explain later — our planet has no shortage of ways to bitch-slap us back into our dangerous reality, whether we want it to or not.

Of course, we could stave off some of the more egregious probabilities of extinction, if we acted now to limit global warming’s inexorable rise to 2 degrees. But that means a determined destruction of the status quo, and that’s always messy for those who like things just the way they are, thank you very much. But they’ll still get theirs. How? Let us count the ways. Read the complete Post.

March 11, 6:30-9pm
Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co
1255 Lynn Valley Road, No. Vancouver

Writer-producer-activist Jon Cooksey will mix humor, credit crisis metaphors and hard-hitting facts to show how climate change is only one symptom of an even messier problem: overshoot. “Overshoot means too many people using up too little planet. So in the end, we either need fewer people, more planets, or we’re going to have use less stuff. Or all three. I dib Mars.” As Antoine de Saint Exupery said, “if you want to get people to build a boat, make them yearn for the sea”; with humor and hope, Jon shows not only the water rising, but also the fun to be had sailing the seas of social change.

FORMAT:
6:30 Mingling and appetizers
7:00 presentation & Dialogue
8:50 Socializing and connecting

To register, please invite a friend and send names and emails to: registration@coolnorthshore.ca
Please bring $5 to cover admission and appetizers.

For more information: http://www.coolnorthshore.ca/action/cool-drinks-jon-cooksey

Cool Drinks is a monthly social and learning gathering to connect and inspire individuals interested in climate change in our community. On the third Thursday of each month, we invite a ‘provocateur’ to share knowledge and perspective on a climate change-related topic. Supported small group dialogue and informal networking allow participants to push the ideas further, and get the information and support they need to act.

MORE DETAILS:

BC - Award-winning writer and producer Jon Cooksey will speak about the impact that humans are having on the planet – including global warming, energy issues, and other light topics.

Cooksey is currently at work on a feature-length eco-comedy called How to Boil a Frog (HTBAF), which chronicles his personal, four-year adventure as a filmmaker, activist and, above all, a father driven, as he puts it, “to make sure my daughter’s going to have a future beyond living on a raft with the last polar bear.”

HTBAF mixes humor, credit crisis metaphors and hard-hitting facts to show how climate change is just one symptom of an even messier problem: overshoot. “Overshoot means too many people using up too little planet,” says Cooksey, “so in the end, we either need fewer people, more planets, or we’re going to have use less stuff. Or all three. I dib Mars.”

Cooksey plans to explore not only the facts about the mess we’re in, but the psychological effect it’s having on us. “We talk to people about these subjects like they’re rational – like they’re calculators – but who among us isn’t already being driven around the bend by daily life?” Cooksey asks. “Pay my bills, raise my kids, deal with my relationship – or find me one – then talk to me about changing my lightbulbs to keep the world from bursting into flame. People feel the disconnect.”

HTBAF seeks to paint a better future than the one we have now, and as Cooksey puts it, “a lot better than the one we’re going to have if we keep doing what we’re doing.” But he doesn’t feel more facts will do the job. “Antoine de Saint Exupery said, if you want to get people to build a boat, make them yearn for the sea. There’s a fantastic ocean out there, full of friends and fun and meaning and great music. I’d rather be sailing on it than drown in it. How about you?”

Sunday, March 7, 2pm
The Unitarian Church of Vancouver
949 West 49th Ave, at Oak St., near 49th Ave Station on Canada Line

Suggested donation: $5-10 (no one will be turned away for lack of funds)

Featuring two speakers on the fight for climate justice after Copenhagen:
-Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s representative at the United Nations, lead spokesperson on climate change at the Copenhagen Summit
-Federico Fuentes, a participant in the revolutionary process in Venezuela and writer for Venezuelanalysis.com, Green Left Weekly and BoliviaRising.Blogspot.com.

The recent international summit on climate change hosted by the United Nations on Copenhagen ended in disappointment and recrimination. Greenpeace called it a “crime scene, with the guilty parties fleeing to the airport.” While Obama, Harper and other leaders of the rich countries stood accused, two heads of state in particular made connections with the tens of thousands of climate justice activists in the streets. Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, spoke for the world’s majority when they condemned global inequality and capitalism as the root causes of the climate crisis. Read the complete Post.

Posted Jan 29, 2010 by Tom Whipple

Last weekend, one of the more out of the ordinary meetings in recent memory took place out in Berkeley where some 30 people gathered to begin planning for the world’s transition from the industrial age to whatever is to come.

They were a diverse group, coming from all over North America and representing an array of disciplines. Most had grey hair and among them held many advanced degrees and had written stacks of books and papers.

There was, however, a common thread that held them together. Not a person in the room needed to be convinced that the world is entering upon a great paradigm shift that will sweep away much of industrial civilization, thoughts of economic growth, and the lifestyles that have grown up in the age of ubiquitous fossil fuels.

To the agreement of those present, speakers quickly outlined the problem. In a nutshell, the world is dangerously close to “peak everything” - oil, coal, natural gas, water, minerals, soil, phosphorous, fish, and perhaps the most important of all, the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon without triggering off life-destroying phenomena. Problem two is the financial collapse from efforts by too many governments to spend their way out of recession. The final phenomenon that will force changes, is that there is no sign that mankind is about to make the efforts required to stop spewing carbon into the already saturated atmosphere. Without at least some moderation, it is likely that the atmosphere eventually will have its revenge by raising global temperatures so much that there will be no higher forms of life left. Read the complete Post.

By Eli Kintisch
ScienceNOW Daily News
13 January 2010

The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Science has obtained exclusive data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator. The find adds to multiple lines of evidence showing that the 2000s were the warmest decade in the modern instrumental record.Southern Hemisphere temperatures can serve as a trailing indicator of global warming, says NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, given that that part of the globe is mostly water, which warms more slowly and with less variability than land. Ruedy says 2009 temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were 0.49°C warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980, with an error of +/- 0.05°C. Read the complete Post.