After Gutenberg

This blog has warned how special interests are trying to influence public awareness of the need to mitigate carbon emissions. In a recent post, this blog focused on the media version of BAUAAAE, specifically disinformation for profit.

Image via Greenpeace

The reason for heavily investing in a campaign of disinformation: profit.

Climate Progress explains how mainstream media generally ignored “a couple dozen studies” with important findings, which “raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe if we stay on our current emissions path.”

With an uncharacteristically prosaic flourish, before this week’s Top Ten from Climate Progress, “any one of which justifies action” and together “represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable”, there is the last sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe:

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Reading this statement reminded me of my response to an inquiry from Brandeis: “Any hope of meaningful, positive change in the fight against AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming)?”

Well… the Anthropocene should be a relatively short-lived epoch after the cause exterminates itself. Still, it is too soon to tell whether Dr. Zachos is correct and the effects will only last for 100k years.

In our never-ending Irony for Joe search, we remind you that FoxNews commentator Sarah Palin received $100,000 to say that President Barack Obama’s proposed 2011 budget is “immoral” because it increases the national debt, which she called “generational theft.”

Without further ado, Professor Joe’s Top Ten… plus, Sarah P’s notes to self

Number Ten: 27°F in the Arctic could happen in 50 years

Stock up on SPF

Number Nine: a 12°F warming would be dangerous for many

Practice winking

Number Eight: soils are emitting more CO2

Can this improve tracking?

Number Seven: decade-long decline in plant growth

So we know where to find those last remaining polar bears

Number Six: current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record

So don’t give me a hard time about a few polar bears!

Number Five: sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated

Burnt cork for keeping a better eye on our neighbors?

Number Four: oceans acidifying 10 times faster than 55 million years ago

Stock up on canned tuna

Number Three: multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path

Stock up on moisturizer

Number Two: vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting

Stronger air freshener. Can Vlad do something about that smell?

And this week’s Professor Joe’s Number One: 40% decline in the ocean’s phytoplankton

Practice saying phytoplankton (Combine with winking practice?)

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change ASIN: 1596911255