This is a short, edited version of my interview with Guy McPherson (You can watch the whole interview by scrolling down), who has a list of credentials that makes it almost mandatory that we hear what he has to say about climate change. It’s Time To Wake Up! Lotus Guide
Lotus Guide: One of the things I’d like to hit on today is the difference between being negative and being a realist and seeing the situation as it is. Personally I don’t think I’m being negative if I were on the Titanic and saw that it was sinking and wanted to warn people. The other thing I would like to hit on is the humanity behind what you’re talking about because at the end of the day that might be all we have.
I heard you talking on RT News that even if all of this information was wrong, the projections, everything, it would be a much better world if we started treating each other better. But for now let’s start out with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to say recently.
Guy McPherson: Sure. The IPCC in their fifth assessment scheduled a release of information this year but a lot of that information was leaked in September of 2013. There are a couple of really important conclusions they made in April of this year. In a report from Truth Out, they said, “Climate report leaves hopes hanging on fantasy technology.” And the conclusion of the IPCC was that global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry. That’s a rather significant step for one of the most conservative scientific bodies on the planet to say.
By my count there have been at least five reports that have come out that said geoengineering will more than likely make things worse or will be relatively useless.
LG: Living in Northern California we see almost on a daily basis the fact that we’re being sprayed with chemtrails, which are nothing more than a mix of toxic heavy metals and nanoparticles. What concerns me is the psychological tendency for people to normalize their reality; I already hear people say things like, “Oh yeah, those are just chemtrails,” as if it’s something to be expected. Another concern about geoengineering is if the government is actually being truthful with us, which would be a rare event, then this is a very serious climate problem to be spraying us with tons of heavy metals every day all over the planet. But if it’s a cover-up for something even worse, that has me even more concerned.
GM: Well, when you stop and think about it, we’ve been doing geoengineering since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution by dumping pollutants into the atmosphere. A book that recently came out called Earth Masters by Clive Hamilton points out that we’ve been putting sulfates into the atmosphere for many years and when and if industrialization stops, the planet will heat up an additional 1.1° C, so that would take us to the 1.95° C, which will basically take us to the political target of 2° C, which most people agree would collapse our environment. So my point here is we’re sort of damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
LG: We’re definitely in the midst of the sixth-greatest extinction period on the planet. I’m not sure how many people actually realize that more than 200 species a day are going extinct and this extinction is happening much faster than any of the previous extinctions in history. This process is happening exponentially and the fact that we are such linear thinkers makes it almost impossible for us to wrap our heads around this reality.
GM: Yes, absolutely, and you talked about normalcy bias earlier, which is actually part of our evolution, because how we have survived is based on our ability to look at the immediate past and project that forward in a linear fashion, so this leaves us ill equipped to deal with situations that are evolving exponentially.
LG: So what do you think about the self-reinforcing feedback loops that are happening in our environment today?
GM: Yes, I keep pretty close track of those on my website NatureBatsLast [guymcpherson.com] and by my count we’re up to 36 of those and 33 of them seem to be irreversible. The first of those is what’s called the clathrate gun, or the methane bomb in the Arctic, which is when methane is released from the Arctic Ocean directly into the atmosphere. This is the one that seems to have the most dire consequences.
LG: This is the concern they have over what they’re calling “The Burp.”
GM: Yes, according to the authors in Nature magazine on July 23rd, a 50 Gt [gross ton] release of methane is highly possible at any time. That’s equivalent to more than 1,000 Gt of carbon, and so far in our history we’ve burned less than one-third that amount. This would happen because of the reduced Arctic sea ice and the warming of the Arctic Ocean, which would allow for a sudden discharge of methane or what we’re calling “The Burp.”
The Red shows the concentration of methane expulsion on the planet.
LG: This is a good example of a feedback loop that’s not only reinforcing itself but it’s actually bleeding over and reinforcing other feedback loops.
Guy McPherson goes on to explain how this and other feedback loops are reinforcing each other in such a way that at this point seems irreversible and out of control. This is only 11 minutes of a 30-minute conversation. Later we get into the safest places on the planet to live and why the Northern Hemisphere is becoming unstable. Information such as this makes me realize the importance of obviously being prepared and well informed but also the importance of my own humanity and reaching out to others in such a way that we become and stay conscious of the fact that we are spiritual beings having a momentary existence on this planet and all of the responsibility that that entails. Be sure to visit our YouTube site and watch this and may other interesting interviews at www.youtube.com/lotusguide