I have yet to meet a climate scientist who does not believe that global warming is a worse problem than they thought a few years ago. The seriousness of this change is not appreciated by politicians and the public.

Uber-hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham has a must-read opinion piece in the journal Nature.

Grantham is cofounder and Chief Investment Strategist of GMO (with some $100 billion in assets) — a self-described “die hard contrarian.” He is also one of the few leading financial figures who gets both global warming and growing food insecurity, two cornerstones of Climate Progress analysis. See Grantham’s piece “Welcome to Dystopia,” which explains in detail that “We are five years into a severe global food crisis that is very unlikely to go away. It will threaten poor countries with increased malnutrition and starvation and even collapse.”

Grantham’s key message to the readership of one of the world’s leading science journals is that humanity is headed pell-mell towards disaster, and scientists must speak out more:

President Barack Obama missed the chance of a lifetime to get a climate bill passed, and his great environmental and energy scientists John Holdren and Steven Chu went missing in action. Scientists are understandably protective of the dignity of science and are horrified by publicity and overstatement. These fears, unfortunately, are not shared by their opponents, which makes for a rather painful one-sided battle. Overstatement may generally be dangerous in science (it certainly is for careers) but for climate change, uniquely, understatement is even riskier and therefore, arguably, unethical.

It is crucial that scientists take more career risks and sound a more realistic, more desperate, note on the global-warming problem. Younger scientists are obsessed by thoughts of tenure, so it is probably up to older, senior and retired scientists to do the heavy lifting. Be arrested if necessary. This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.

Hear! Hear!

And some have heard — and are leading (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization”).

Here’s Grantham summarizing the dangerous path humanity is now on:

Read more

From the Climate Reality Project:

A musical creation about the reality of global climate change from the live broadcast of 24 Hours of Reality — The Dirty Weather Report.  The Symphony of Science is a musical project of John D Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

Gotta love auto-tune!

Ken Burns’ 2-part documentary “Dust Bowl” premieres tonight on PBS. Sadly, Burns fails to make the link between then and now. Climate Progress has done so in regards climate change many times (see “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming“). But the piece below makes clear there’s much more to the link — JR.

by Don Carr, via Environmental Working Group

Ken Burns, America’s premiere documentarian, has tackled topics from jazz to the Civil War. His new film chronicles the Dust Bowl, the massive ecological disaster that plagued a large swath of U. S. farmland during the 1930’s.

Misguided farming practices at the heart of the disaster

The opening episode of the 4-hour epic that premieres on PBS on November 18 goes right to the cause of the problem.  In a short time, farmers converted an area twice the size of New Jersey and centering in the Oklahoma Panhandle from native grassland to wheat fields.  They did so because of a concerted policy in the 1920’s to industrialize agriculture and to “turn farming into a factory.” But the wind-swept prairie that dominated the region was unsuited for growing much, aside from drought- resistant grasses. Once farmers turned over the firm soil, they set the stage for a monumental disaster.

“Suitcase” farmers from back East –precursors to today’s Wall Street investors and absentee landlords – added to the problem by irresponsibly abandoning 4 million acres to “blow with each new wind” when the drought hit.

Burns’ film makes clear what really caused the disaster.

“A sea of grass once the domain of Indians and buffalo disappeared beneath the plow,” says Peter Coyote, the actor who narrates the documentary.

“We were just too selfish and we were trying to make money. It didn’t work out,” says an Oklahoma survivor of the disaster.

“A classic tale of humans pushing hard against nature and nature pushing back,” says New York Times columnist Timothy Egan, who authored the book, “The Dust Bowl.”

Hugh Bennett, founder and head of the Soil Conservation Service, was tasked by President Roosevelt to find a solution. He characterized the basic cause of the problem as “an attempt to impose upon the region, a system of agriculture to which the plains are not adapted.”

Because of this human-caused disaster, American agriculture went into a downward spiral as land prices cratered, cattle herds were culled at government expense, farmers committed suicide rather than face foreclosures, and children succumbed to deadly pneumonia caused by inhaling wind-blown dust or got lost and died when “dusters” hit.

Conservation worked

Read more

by Tor “Solar Fred” Valenza, via Renewable Energy World

Memo to: President Barack Obama

Re: The Promised Solar Panels on the White House. Please advise.

Dear Mr President:

Now that the election is over, I’d like to follow up on a significant announcement Energy Secretary Chu made in October 2010. He announced that the Department of Energy would put solar hot water and solar PV systems on the roof of The White House by the end of spring 2011, and that your administration would be leading by example.

If you don’t recall Sec. Chu making that promise, or think it was a gotcha moment, or that it was somehow taken out of context, view the announcement yourself:

I think you’ll agree that this is a clear statement of intention, and it even has a due date that’s long since past. Now, I’m sure you have permitting hassles in Washington DC, but please. This type of installation has been done on 248,000 of homes and businesses across America. And solar is so reliable that it’s the default power source for all of our military and telecommunication satellites that we all use and love. So, let’s agree that it’s not the technology or reliability that’s holding up solar going on the White House roof…again.

It’s the politics. I understand. Solyndra, yada, yada, yada.

But Mr President, the public understands that Solyndra’s press attention is more about presidential politics than it is about the viability of solar. In fact, despite all of the Solyndra mud slinging unfairly hitting our solar industry of 119,000 employed workers, a September 2012 poll of likely voters shows that 92% of Americans (94% of Democrats, 89% of independents, and 75% of Republicans) still support developing more solar. The same survey showed that 91% of Democrats, 78% of independents and 63% of Republicans want the government to support solar with tax credits and other financial incentives.

And here’s the other thing you may be forgetting: To follow through with putting solar on the White House, you don’t have to cajole Congress to do anything. Like instituting the Dream Act deferred action plan and publicly stating your support for gay marriage, placing solar technology on the White House requires no permission or political persuasion of any branch of government. It’s something you can do on your own because it’s the right thing to do.

Read more