5th Estate · Six degrees

Six degrees

You will have heard of “six degrees of separation”. The next six degrees is six degrees of global warming. Read on. It may want to make you do something right now.

It’s taken the world just a few years to wake up to the threat of global warming. But it may be too late. Many of the effects of a warming world are creating positive feedback loops. For example as the surface ice melts in polar regions in the warmer summers, the pools of water absorb the sunlight whereas the ice that existed before reflected it.

Mark Lynas wrote a wonderful book called “High Tide when he visited and reported on some of the hotspots of global warming.

His new book, Six Degrees, was written in an Oxford library where he researched the studies that had been done on the impact on the world of a warming climate to summarise the results in a series of scenarios for each further degree of temperature rise, He has tried to be cautious and reasoned rather than apocalyptic, and retains a faith that we can halt the arming process at around 2 degrees. But the facts may show that we have already got beyond the point of no return. The question may be no longer whether it will happen, but how long it will take to happen.

Read Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. It is a more serious, more factual and more important book than Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” — which is a great book for persuading Americans to accept the argument for global warming, where people have been slower to accept what science is telling us.

This is what is likely to happen with each one degree rise in temperature.

One degree
• Deserts invade the high plains of the US causing severe agricultural loss from Ontario to Texas.
• Mount Kilimanjaro loses all its ice.
• The Gulf Stream switches off, plunging Britain and Europe into icy winter cold.
• Coral reefs are wiped out, with the Great Barrier Reef largely destroyed by 2030.
• Island nations submerge under rising seas.

Two degrees
• Greenland tips into irreversible melt, accelerating sea level rise and threatening coastal cities around the world.
• Polar bears, walruses and other ice-dependant marine animals in the Arctic become extinct.
• Drought, fire and searing heat strike the Mediterranean basin.
• Declining snowfields threaten water supplies in California.
• A third of species worldwide face extinction.

Three degrees
• A permanent El Nino grips the Pacific, causing weather chaos around the world and drought inn the Amazon.
• Agriculture shifts to the far North; Norway’s growing season becomes like Southern England today. But with heat and drought in the tropics and sub-tropics, the world tips into net food deficit (people will starve).
• The whole Amazonian ecosystem collapses in as conflagration of fire and destruction.
• Hurricanes in the tropics are half a category stronger than today (remember Katrina).
• The Indus river runs dry, forcing migration and a possible nuclear conflict over water between India and Pakistan.

Four degrees
• Most of the Nile Delta and a third of Bangladesh threatened by rising seas.
• West Antarctic ice sheet potentially collapses; sea levels rise by 5 metres as a result.
• Southern Europe desertifies, and becomes like the Sahara. Migration North becomes a source of conflict.
• All glaciers disappear in the Alps.
• Permafrost melt in Siberia releases billions of tons of CO2 and methane, spiralling global warming upwards.

Five degrees
• The Earth is hotter than at any time for 55 million years.
• Methane hydrate is released from underneath the oceans, sparking tsunamis in coastal regions and pushing global warming into an unstoppable spiral.
• Much of the world is now uninhabitable.

Six degrees
• Mass extinction. The Permian extinction 251 million years ago was associated with this level of temperature and wiped out 90 of the world’s species.
• Huge fireballs sweep the planet as methane hydrate fireballs ignite.
• Seas turn anoxic (without oxygen) and release poisonous hydrogen sulphide.
• Humanity’s very survival is in question.

with thanks to Mark Lynas

Michael Norton

Mon, 21 May 2007, 2:34 PM

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Six degrees: You will have heard of “six degrees of separation”. The next six degrees is .. http://tinyurl.com/37f234

The recent IPCC Report on Climate Change states that avoiding global cataclysms by 2050 requires a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, no later than 2015.

There are very few steps that can be taken rapidly enough to realistically swiftly reduce the need for coal, oil and other carbon producing fuels in a mere eight years. While all can help, most of the conventional renewable alternatives: solar, wind, fuel-cells, etc., cannot possibly meet this challenge fast enough. Biofuel may prove an exception. Nuclear plants take 10 years to begin operation, thus the idea they can contribute to a solution is an illusion.

Radically new energy conversion systems may be the missing ingredient. Few such systems can be commercialized rapidly. The one exception appears to be the potentially rapid development of breakthrough magnetic energy conversion technologies. These are being developed in several countries and provide a revolutionary way to generate mechanical power and electricity.

Constructed using either rotary or solid-state electronic components, they are expected to produce power indefinitely, without any need for fuel or recharge. This is accomplished by utilizing an abundant, renewable, little known source of energy. Until now, this energy has never been utilized in practical products, although it may have first been tapped by Wesley Gary, a Pennsylvania inventor, in 1874. An 1879 Harper’s article, describing his patented magnetic devices, can be found on the internet. A magnetic generator without moving parts was demonstrated by Hans Coler in Germany in 1926. By 1937, an example large enough to power a house (or recharge submarine batteries) resulted in support by Hitler’s navy. The Allies bombed the laboratory late in World War II. In 1946, British Intelligence published a Report, now available on the web, indicating the achievement was genuine.

Following extensive debate, this previously unutilized source of power may eventually prove to be what scientists label Zero Point Energy, or ZPE. Richard Feynman, a winner of the Nobel Prize, and John Wheeler, a protégé of Einstein’s, calculated there is sufficient ZPE in the volume of a seemingly empty coffee cup to evaporate Earth’s oceans. Physicist Harold Puthoff has stated that employing ZPE to power the entire planet would be like dipping a thimble into the sea. The March 1st, 2004 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology featured an article headlining the fact that Zero Point Energy is no longer science fiction. The Department of Defense has admitted it is supporting ZPE research and development at a major aerospace company. BAE, the British firm, stated they seek to develop ZPE propulsion to power Mach 4 fighter aircraft, as well as extremely high speed passenger planes.

MPI’s current development work opens a door to a multitude of practical products. They will operate with no need for fuel, or any plug connection to the grid. Batteries will become obsolete. Variations of these generators can be made as small as AA cells and large enough to power electric automobiles.

MPI’s Magnetic Power Modules™ can be connected together in order to produce large amounts of power, in a manner analogous to solar panels. Preliminary data suggests a 1 kW (1,000) watt package may be about 5” x 8” x 12” in size. These one kilowatt Modules can be linked to create generators for homes. Distributed Generation of utility grade power can eventually be installed at the point of use, reducing the need for transmission lines.

Electric cars, such as the recently announced GM VOLT, can dispense with the need for batteries, engines of any kind, fuel cells, or the need to plug-in.
All new cars can be redesigned to run on this revolutionary technology. Imagine the huge boost to the automobile industry. Large numbers of well paid jobs will clearly result, restoring depressed communities that build cars.

During WWII, the auto industry shifted to building aircraft, on an around the clock basis, much more rapidly then most would have imagined. Averting a series of catastrophes due to Global Warming calls for a similar all out effort.

Magnetic Power Modules and other magnetic energy conversion devices will be produced in many factories. The technology is being explored in laboratories around the world. It is approaching the pre-manufacturing stage. Mass production may realistically be anticipated during the coming year.

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