Four more whales died off the British Columbia coast this past week, and the experts seemed to be perplexed as to the cause. This always seems to be the case. They will suggest a variety of potential causes, but rarely is the connection made to the fact that humans have heated up the planet to such an extent, that this excess heat is having a very negative impact on life on earth.
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/four-dead-humpback-whales-found-off-b-c-coast-in-one-week-1.2514429
The last time the planet was this hot was 252 million years ago, and at that time ancient carbon was being released into the atmosphere at the rate of 1-2 billion tons per year. Today, due to industrial civilization and the massive burning of fossil fuels (more ancient carbon), we are releasing 11 billion tons each year. That fact alone should be enough for the marine biologists to at least ponder the idea that all this extra heat generated from the burning of fossil fuels will have a very negative impact on marine life. But if that were to be admitted, then of course industrial civilization would have to be put into question. So instead, the "experts" continue to look for other causes, like perhaps a rare virus that may have caused the whales to die and be washed up on the shore.
Speaking about tons of carbon being released each year into the atmosphere, I came across an article in The Province newspaper, http://www.theprovince.com/technology/environment/Squamish+site+will+debut+device+that+pulls+carbon/11285512/story.html
which talks about a Calgary based firm which is about to open a plant in Squamish that will pull carbon out of the air. So let's see, it expects to pull 500 tons/year out of the atmosphere, and industrial civilization dumps 11 billion tons/year into the atmosphere. That's 0.0000045% of the carbon emitted. The firm "hopes" to build an industrial scale plant in the future that will pull 1 million tons/year out of the atmosphere. That would put the percentage at a whopping 0.0091%.
The company was founded by "climate and engineering expert" David Keith. This is the same David Keith who thinks that we can just spray particles in the air to slow the rate of global warming. More pie in the sky engineering solutions to a predicament that can't be solved. We're way past the point of no return on this topic. But the new company gets the headlines and the tax deductions and the "green washing" continues. Of course the article doesn't mention a word about how much fossil fuel energy went into building the plant in the first place, plus how much additional fossil fuel energy is required annually just to keep it running.
Even if this plant and others like it (which don't exist at this point) could theoretically capture all of the carbon emitted annually, it still wouldn't matter at this late stage in the game, because the methane "monster" has now been released and there's no putting this genie back in the bottle.
The problem with this kind of news article in a mainstream newspaper, is that it gives the impression that "we're serious about climate change and we can tackle the problem". In other words, someone else is out there taking care of things, and you dear reader, can just go about your business as usual. I think it won't be too long before the general population realizes that business as usual just won't be viable any longer.
Happy trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer
A PHOTO OF THE RECENT BLUE MOON TAKEN ON ORCAS ISLAND
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A late update from the Arctic News Blog. Could the sea ice be gone this September??
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
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