Environment and Climate Change

Actions ( 1)

Melting Ice ( 5)

Sea Level ( 1)

The ocean ( 2)

Dr. Aaron Thierry: The Brutal Logic of Climate Change (ONE of TWO)

By MariaJune 27, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog Items

Dr. Aaron Thierry says that “recent events in the US illustrate just how widespread and influential climate denial has become; … with potentially catastrophic implications for all of us.” Aaron Thierry asks what we can do to better promote scientific understanding of this crucial issue. And this talk is his contribution.
The title card of Thierry’s presentation is a quote by Martin Luther King Jr.: “There is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action”.
Aaron Thierry received his PhD in Ecology from the University of Sheffield and researched the impacts of global warming on the carbon cycle in Arctic ecosystems. He teaches at Sheffield’s Department [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Jim White How to respond to climate change deniers and Consequences of sea level rise

By MariaMarch 8, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog ItemsClimate Change

TWO programs
When the Weather and Climate Summit was established in 1985 the goal was to bring together weather-casters and meteorologists from the U.S. and Canada with scientists and researchers. Their annual summit of 2017 was held in Breckenridge, Colorado, from January 8 to 12. One of the many topics at the summit was to prepare for the incoming Trump administration that was to include outspoken climate change deniers.
Dr. Jim White teaches at the University of Colorado. He specializes in Global change, paleoclimate dynamics, and the human impact on climate.
In a very entertaining and easy to understand way he addressed the five topics climate change deniers most often bring up:
2. How can we insignificant humans change the climate?
3. How can something [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

What climate change data can tell us about the emergence and spread of diseases

By MariaFebruary 1, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog Items

Dr. Howard Frumkin
One self-contained 29 minute program
On January 24, 2017, Marketplace, the American Public Media radio program, reported that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) abruptly canceled a long scheduled three day Climate Change Summit that was set to take place in February in Atlanta.
On the same day Breitbart News – formerly run by the senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon, wrote: The CDC cancellation of their climate change event “is unquestionably a result of the Trump Effect: the CDC is one of many US federal agencies which have been forced rapidly to adjust their priorities…. the CDC’s job is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease… What does climate change have to do with this? Nothing. … The evidence that [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Naomi Klein: Change the System, not the Climate

By MariaJanuary 25, 2017Environment and Climate Change

Naomi Klein is best known for her book: This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate. She wrote: … it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism… [and] we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
An important document towards building a better future is the Leap Manifesto. https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ It calls for a restructuring of the Canadian economy and an end to the use of fossil fuels. The Leap Manifesto was initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two-day meeting in Toronto. Among those who wrote it were representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, faith-based and labor movements. And Naomi Klein gives a summary of the manifesto in this [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Ice Core Climate Records of the World Prof. Lonnie Thompson

By MariaJanuary 11, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog ItemsClimate Change, Glaciers

ONE self contained 29 min. program
Lonnie Thompson is University Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in the School of Earth Sciences and the Byrd Polar Research Center. He is the leading paleo-scientist who drilled and preserved ice cores from high mountain glaciers while others focussed on Greenland and Antarctica.
In 1952 the Danish geophysicist Willi Dansgaard made a discovery that opened up a completely new field of research. He found that the amount of heavy oxygen isotopes in rain correlates with the temperature at the location where the precipitation was formed. But more important in preparation for debates with climate change deniers is the record of CO2 that is also preserved in the ice cores. The correlation of temperature rise and [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Lonnie Thompson: Melting of the High Mountain Glaciers of the World

By MariaJanuary 4, 2017Melting Ice, Newest Catalog Items

Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future
ONE self contained 29 min. program
This is a re-broadcast and partial update of one of the most appreciated and also rare programs by TUC. This program will be followed by two updates with Dr. Thompson.
Thompson issues a warning that the mountain glaciers he knows and loves are melting ever more dramatically within the last twenty years. He is the leading expert on glaciers with 30 years of on location research.
Thompson saw one of the first ice cores that was recovered from a glacier when he was in graduate school. He was fascinated by the amount of data on earth history, past climate and world changing events that can be read from these ice cores [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Press Conference from the Norwegian Young Sea ICE Expedition – N-ICE2015

By MariaDecember 28, 2016Melting Ice

ONE self contained 29 min. program
In the winter of 2015, an ice-bound Norwegian research vessel drifted with the shrinking Arctic ice for half a year while an international team of 70 scientists worked to better understand the effects of rising temperatures and changing sea ice.
It was the first wintertime Arctic Sea ice experiment to study the thinning ice pack. Data from submarines since 1958 and from satellites since 1972 had already shown that the frozen area in the Arctic is diminishing, the ice is getting thinner, multi year solid old ice is disappearing and the Arctic ocean is warming. However nobody had stayed with the ice for 6 months.
Since 1928 the Norwegian Polar Institute has done scientific research, mapping and [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

How does the melting Arctic affect the rest of the world?

By MariaDecember 21, 2016Melting IceArctic, Climate Change

NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2016
ONE self contained 29 min. program
The Arctic is now warming twice as fast as the global average. That’s the finding in the 11th Arctic Report Card released on December 13, 2016, at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. NOAA’s Arctic Research Program Director, Jeremy Mathis, said about the year 2016: “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year.”
The Arctic Report Card, by a team of 61 scientists from 11 nations, lists the many ways in which the warming Arctic affects sea level rise, ocean and air circulation as well as weather in the [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Faster Than Forecast: The story ice tells about climate change – Professor Jason Box

By MariaDecember 14, 2016Melting Ice

ONE self contained 29 min. program
At years’ end 2016 denial of climate change is being promoted at the highest level of the incoming Trump administration in the US. This in spite of the fact that even the coldest parts of planet earth are now warming at an unprecedented rate.
Professor Jason Box is one of the world’s experts on the Greenland ice sheet. He is professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. He moved to Denmark to be closer to the one field of study that he is dedicated to with a kind of passion and sense of responsibility that is unusual for a tenured Professor. While working at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Captain Paul Watson: When the Oceans Die We Die

By MariaNovember 23, 2016The ocean

ONE self contained 29 min. program
When Captain Paul Watson – co-founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society returned from exile in France, TUC radio broadcast an interview with him that surpassed in downloads all programs of 2016 except for one. So here is an update on occasion of the beginning of the Japanese whale hunt in the Southern Ocean.
Sea Shepherd is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Their 1977 founding mission is to end the destruction of habitat and the slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans. Their decades long practice of aggressive non-violence has led to charges of piracy. However Sea Shepherd’s legal team defends the organization’s right to enforce international conservation laws in neutral waters.
Courts in many [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 19.9MB)

Julia Whitty – For Love and Protection of the Deep Ocean

By MariaOctober 12, 2016The ocean

I met Julia Whitty in August 2010 after her investigation of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. This is an updated program of a memorable evening triggered by the August 2016 release of the movie: Deepwater Horizon that makes no mention of the ecological consequences.
In a small Northern California town where she lives she was giving a reading from her book: Deep Blue Home, An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. That book had been described as: “breathtakingly learned and lyrical, written with humor, reverence and curiosity.”
Julia Whitty is a diver, former nature documentary filmmaker, author and environmental correspondent for Mother Jones. She explained why the deep ocean is the foundation of life for the upper layer of the sunlit sea. Many [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

Sea Shepherd Ocean Protectors – Captain Paul Watson

By MariaOctober 4, 2016Environment and Climate Change

This is ONE self contained program
Paul Watson was cofounder of Greenpeace and led the campaigns against the slaughter of baby seals in the late seventies. When Patrick Moore became president of Greenpeace Canada he halted direct action and forced Watson out. Today Patrick Moore is a spokesperson for Monsanto and the nuclear industry.
Paul Watson never stopped his involvement in direct action. After his ouster from Greenpeace he founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. (SSCS) It’s an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Their mission is to end the destruction of habitat and the slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans.
Paul Watson is both praised and criticized for Sea Shepherd’s practice of aggressive non-violence. He says that some laws and conventions [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Arctic Amplification, Climate Change, and Global Warming – New Challenges from the Top of the World

By MariaSeptember 21, 2016Melting IceArctic, Climate Change

Professor Peter Wadhams
With increasing urgency Wadhams is calling attention to the disappearing sea ice of the Arctic. In his most recent book, A Farewell to Ice, he writes: “Our planet has changed color. Today, from space, the top of the world in the northern summer looks blue instead of white. We have created an ocean where there was once an ice sheet.”
In a lecture in Milan, Italy, in May 2015, Peter Wadhams explained how the melting of the Arctic affects the rest of the world. He listed seven major areas, among them sea level rise, emission of methane, and extreme weather events that we already experience.
Peter Wadhams is the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist. He has made more than [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Sustainable Development and Deep Decarbonization

By MariaSeptember 7, 2016Environment and Climate Change

How the world lost a quarter century in the quest to get to zero carbon emissions, protect biodiversity, alleviate poverty and bring about sustainability for all.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author and syndicated columnist. His monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries.
He is the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize. That’s the global prize for environmental leadership. The New York Times called him “probably the most important economist in the world.”
Sachs was appointed University Professor at Columbia University in 2016, and also serves as Professor of Sustainable Development, and of Health Policy and Management at Columbia. Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Richard Heinberg – Peak Everything

By MariaJuly 11, 2016Environment and Climate Change

Richard Heinberg has influenced the work of those who are searching for a way out of today’s interlocking crisis of climate, finance and resource depletion. I visited him in Sept. 2010 at a crucial moment. He had just written the new preface for his 2007 book Peak Everything, Waking Up to the Century of Declines. Analyzing the events of the past three years Heinberg writes in his update that the question of when we will reach the peak of the resources that we made ourselves dependent on has finally been answered – and the time is NOW. The economic crisis, he says, is not a dip from which we will recover. Humanity has achieved an unsustainable pinnacle of population size [ . . . ]