This is the Radio Ecoshock Show. I'm you're host and tormentor, Alex Smith.

Yes I know the economy is crashing around the world. Eastern Europe threatens to bring down the Austrian and Italian banking systems. Britain is in the tank, along with Spain, Greece and Ireland. Everybody is hoping the Germans have saved enough to bail out the European Union.

It's as bad or worse in Asia. Japan's exports have plummeted, the results so terrible the Japanese Finance Minister was dead drunk at his press conference. Singapore was stung badly by Wall Street scams. Dubai, the fabled playground of the Middle East rich, is tumbling. South Korea wants to jail bloggers who reveal how bad things are in that country.

Now the latest American scamster, Allan Stanford has ripped off billions from investors all over the world, especially in Latin America. ABC News is reporting the Texas big man, lately based in Antigua, is connected to money laundering for Mexico's most vicious drug gangs. And speaking of off-shore pirates, the giant Swiss bank UBS is paying up 780 million in taxes ripped off from the American government, as the Swiss advised the very rich how to avoid paying their share. Really, it's been a pirate economy all along - and the worst scams were run by the very best companies.

Against the backdrop of kicked out families, closed factories, and worried populations, our climate threatens changes worse than any all-our nuclear exchange. Scientists warn the coming changes are huge, irreversible, and likely fatal to most species we know. Including us.

In this program, I'll pass on some of the horrible climate news, hot off the scientific press. Then we'll ask: is it already too late? Major scientists, in the United States, Australia, and Germany say the world is loaded up for at least 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming - that's over 4 degrees Fahrenheit AVERAGE global change. Temperature increases over land, and especially over the Arctic, will be much higher. The only thing saving us so far is smog, which can dissolve in a matter of weeks.

These warnings come not from fringe scientists, but key advisors to governments in Western countries. I'll tell you who. This is major news: global warming has already taken place. Television and newspapers have not told the public, who are living in an illusion, a fairy tale, about their future. Things are not going back to normal. Not for thousands of years.

As we will hear, one of the co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits their reports greatly underestimated our real situation. We'll cover the latest news, and then work with reports from V. Ramanathan, of the Scripps Institution, and Joaquim Schnellenhuber, a science top advisor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

AND NOW, MORE HORRIBLE CLIMATE NEWS ...

A new study by scientists from Britain and Norway says storms in the Arctic could be much worse as the sea ice melts due to global warming. The oil companies and shippers have been salivating at new resources opening from the Arctic freezer - a situation they both helped cause with their carbon emissions. But now Erik Kolstad, of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Change in Norway, says there will likely be more, and more violent, storms in the Arctic.

According to a Reuters story, February 4th, that's bad news for the Russian Gazprom group, for example, who plan development of the big Shtokman gas field. Ships hoping to use the newly ice-free Arctic route may also be sunk by large storms, further damaging the fragile Northern environment.

=========

Argentina is one the world's largest producers of Soya, wheat and beef. But now that South American country has proclaimed an agricultural emergency due to a terrible drought, the worst since 1971. Officials say at least 800,000 head of cattle have died. In the Entre Rios area about 90 percent of the wheat crop was lost.

It's just one more example of how the expanding tropics push drought into a major food producing region. Global warming will cut world food production.

=========

One of the under-reported side effects of the extreme heat wave to heat Australia in early February: mass power blackouts. Heat in the high 40s Celsius -that's over 110 degrees Fahrenheit - made an electricity substation blow out. The city's train service ground to a halt, people were trapped in elevators, and traffic snarled with signals out. Half a million homes and businesses lost power. Air conditioning? Forget about it...

Don't count on having electricity in the new hot world.

The reason for climate change in Australia is no secret. The 2007 Technical Report "Climate Change in Australia" says "There has been a 20% reduction in the strength of the subtropical jet over Australia and an associated reduction in the likelihood of low pressure systems developing over south-west Western Australia since the early 1970s. This is linked to winter rainfall declines along the southern coastal regions of Australia and a pole ward shift of storm tracks in winter."

End quote.

The rain bearing winds have shifted toward the poles, as warming drives the tropics to expand.

Australia is destroying its own climate, continuing as one of the world's largest coal exporters. Most of Australian coal goes to inefficient Asian power plants, which require up to 3 times more coal to make power, compared to modern Western power stations. Watt for watt, the hastily thrown up coal plants in India and China produce 3 times more carbon dioxide pollution. Of course Australia doesn't count any of that when measuring it's own greenhouse gas impact.

Although elected to do something about climate change, the government of Kevin Rudd continues to invest billions building new and improved railways to get the coal out to shipping ports for export. Nothing learned, nothing done.

The only surprise is a recent study finding that the famous Pacific changes El Nino and La Nina are less important for Australian climate than changes in water temperatures in the Indian ocean. We are still learning what makes the climate tick, even at this late date.

The noted Australian scientist Andrew Glikson wrote this in an open letter to Prime Minister Rudd:

"The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets formed under atmospheric conditions at, or below, 450 parts per million, which continued emissions and feedbacks will reach within a couple of decades, leading to temperature increases above 2 degrees C, advanced ice melt and metres-scale sea level rise.

Large mammals can hardly exist on land on an ice-free Earth, nor can human civilization survive such conditions."

==============

[birds chirping]

[Audubon clip]

While the Audubon Society reports birds are moving North as the climate shifts, scientists say the fish are too - when they can. At the Chicago annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science - the AAAS - papers were presented showing climate change will reduce North Sea cod and herring by 50% within decades. Dr William Cheung, of the University of East Anglia in the UK is a lead author of the paper, published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.

The scientists found fish will shift toward the poles by at least 40 kilometers per decade. I think that's very optimistic. Just like animals and humans, those that can migrate quickly and still find food will do so. Where supportive ecosystems are lacking further north, or the heating comes too quickly, countless ocean species will go extinct. The process has already begun.

[BBC Bosporus clip]

Some far Northern fishing fleets may see a short-term benefit, but developing countries further south, especially in Africa, Asia and South America, will see a big loss of this important food source. Another reason why millions will starve as the climate shifts.

How about this for a headline. From blog.wired.com "Climate Change Could Choke Oceans for 100,000 Years." That is based on modeling done by Gary Shaffer at the University of Copenhagen. The projection is exactly what American scientist Peter D. Ward explained in our Radio Ecoshock interview last September. He's the author of "Under A Green Sky" - a book that believably explains past extinctions and our possible future.

When the twin ice boxes at the poles are removed, ocean circulation stops. Even as the poles are warming, as now, the amount ocean mixing is reduced. This leads to less oxygen, and more dead zones. At the American Academy annual meeting in Chicago, Al Gore showed his slide of current and projected ocean dead zones. It is absolutely frightening.

Gary Shaffer told Wired's Brandon Keim, quote

""Oxygen minimum zones could expand by 10 or 20 times. And the ocean would, in addition to having low oxygen, have a very different ecosystem. It would affect the ability of the ocean to produce fish, shellfish, the types of things that people eat. It's not just oxygen: it's a switch in ecosystem structure."

The paper is called ""Long-term ocean oxygen depletion in response to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels." By Gary Shaffer and others, published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

One of the big heralds of the change: a proliferation of jellyfish that can tolerate lower oxygen regimes. Watch for the increasing number of jellyfish stories in the news around the world, as this climate shift continues.

===========

China has declared an emergency as the worst drought in 50 years dries up rivers and fields. The Times Online for February 5th states, quote

"Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters described the drought as a phenomenon “rarely seen in history” as the Government declared a state of emergency.

President Hu Jintao said that all efforts must be made to save the summer grain harvest."

This comes just as another 20 million Chinese workers return to rural areas due to factory closings in the economic downturn. The winter wheat crop is in danger in half of the wheat-growing areas in the North of the country. Safe drinking water for millions has disappeared.

Expect riots and political instability in China, partly fed by climate shift.

==============

Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Governator, announced the state is, quote

"headed toward one of the worst water crisis in it's history."

An article in New Scientist magazine, dated February 1st, says, surprise, surprise

"Now new research suggests that the three-year drought in the Golden State may be a consequence of the expanding tropics, which are gradually growing as human emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet."

Thomas Richer from the University of Utah is one of the scientists working on this problem. He says while it is difficult to measure and predict rainfall closer to Earth, high up where our troposphere meets the higher stratosphere, the picture is much clearer. That boundary is called the Tropopause. A study done by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado found the tropopause is expanding toward the poles about 70 kilometers per decade, or 350 kilometers in 50 years. That's over 200 miles. Two hundred miles of generally highly populated territory that once grew food abundantly is now becoming dry lands and desert. A wide belt of dying nature that will last at least 1,000 years.

The drying is expected to move North from Southern California into the normally wet areas of Oregon, Washington State and Utah.

New Scientist reports that the snow pack on California's mountains is only 61% or normal. Quote: "The Sierra snow pack alone provides two-thirds of California's water supply, and these mountains have so far only received one-third of the expected annual snowfall, despite December and January normally being the wettest months."

And don't forget, California feeds the nation. For how long, we don't know.

Find that article at newscientist.com

==========

Are you seeing a pattern in all these stunning news stories and scientific papers? As the world warms, huge climatic zones shift, changing and destroying ecosystems, and humans who depend upon ecosystems.

We have talked about the expanding tropics. What will happen there is a hot topic of discussion. Some paleoclimate studies suggest the tropics will continue as an overheated greenbelt, soaked with moisture. The recent find of bones from a giant snake in Columbia suggest as much.

But a paper headed by Dr. Chris Field, co-chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, now says the tropical forests may dry out and burn as climate change continues.

Incidentally, if you thought the Amazon has somehow been protected by the Brazilian government, or eco-groups, think again. The Guardian newspaper says cutting and burning by soy bean farmers, ranchers, and loggers came close to all-time records last year.

But Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institute, admitted at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, the IPCC greatly underestimated the impact of climate change in this coming century.

This is a major admission from one of the key IPCC scientists. Various eco-groups and so called renegade scientists said the Intergovernmental Panel predictions were watered down and based on unrealistic assumptions. We've already seen climate impacts, like the melting Arctic Sea Ice, that the IPCC said would happen 90 years from now.

[IPCC's Field admits underestimate clip]

Field told the Guardian newspaper, February 16th: ""We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal."

Tropical forests are the largest single repository of carbon on land, other than the load hidden in the soil. The forests have stored a lot of carbon, protecting the Earth. If they dry out enough to burn, the carbon release could rapidly tip Earth into a completely different climate.

==============

You have just heard clips from Andre Ethier, the underground sensation from Toronto, Canada. Find "Swallow You Whole" and "Infant King" on ITunes or myspace.com/andreethier.

As I cruise the webosphere, disturbing things stick in my mind. Now and then I have the appropriate nervous breakdown just thinking about them.

Here is one, taken from a speech recorded by the University of California in San Diego. It is V. Ramanathan, Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. He's Chief Scientist or director of so many institutions I can't name them all here. Just this little phrase, taken from a Google Video, stuck in my mind:

[Ramanathan clip 1: "We have committed the planet to a 2 and a half degree warming, 5 degrees Fahrenheit, no matter what we do now."]

Call me naive, but I've been told too many times the Earth's climate has warmed only about point nine degrees Celsius since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. How can Ramanathan, and fellow scientists like Joaquin Schnellenhuber - not to mention James Hansen - claim much bigger heating has already occurred? And could our economic crash help save us?

Faithful listeners will realize I have been building to these questions over several Radio Ecoshock programs. In our January 30th program, I interviewed Dr. Pieter Tans, Chief Scientist at NOAA's Earth Systems Research Lab. He explained how carbon is measured, and how we know for certain the excess is human-made. Tans said we are getting close to measuring greenhouse gases in real time. We can detect big releases, like the Indonesia peat fires of 1997 and 98. And we could tell if carbon emissions drop as factories and whole economies close.

In the February 14th show, I asked Australian scientist Barry Brook about the impact of reducing the smog layer protecting us.

[Brook Clip][He agreed it was possible that a sudden reduction in economic activity could bring on a heat wave, rather than reducing temperatures.]

Since that interview, two new papers have come out on our problem. The first one reports that the layer of atmospheric brown cloud over India come primarily from burning biofuels, namely sooty dung for cooking. [Find source] Presumably nothing short of mass deaths will stop this pollution, which kills hundreds of thousands of Asians each year, and which deflects enough Sun to protect all of us from the true warming gases in the atmosphere.

The second paper finds that there has been no reduction in the flood of new carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, despite deindustrialization in parts of the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. The car factories, for example are closed. Out of work people don't commute. Yet, so far, just the new coal plants coming online around the world, perhaps augmented by new small-scale production in developing countries, is keeping greenhouse gases ever expanding.

That is our situation so far. In my opinion, if the public really really realized our current state, there would be a huge revolution in social life. If we knew, we would park our vehicles conspicuously, up on blocks, in the front yard, as a statement. If our power came from coal, we would rip our the connections at the street, and move to a region with sustainable energy. I'll have a lot more on what we can do in next week's show.

Getting to the audio, I want to run you a short clip from Public Radio International, followed by select excerpts by V. Ramanathan.

[PRI clip]

Find out more at pri.org.

Now we go to V. Ramanathan, in a presentation by the Scripps Institution in April 2008.

[Ramanathan clip 25 minutes]

Those were selected clips from a presentation by V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution. Find it on Google Video or You Tube. Search for Atmospheric Brown Cloud.

A number of scientists, young and old, have agreed with Ramanathan and published their own warnings about the rapid rate of climate change. We heard from Australia's Barry Brook, and Andrew Glikson. James Hansen you know is still bravely campaigning to stop any new coal-fired production in the world. Look up his latest letters to world leaders on the Net. Chilling stuff.

A Radio Ecoshock listener, Karen from California, adds that Germany's top science advisor, Hans Joaquim Schnellenhuber has written articles like "Global Warming, Stop Worrying, Start Panicking" in the prestigious PNAS journal. Schnellenhuber has presented this evidence of accelerated warming to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But as James Hansen notes, Germany keeps it's brown coal miners working, and recently opened another giant coal-burning power complex. They know, and yet they just keep polluting the sky. We all do.

The big picture: we are caught in a carbon trap and risk losing it all. The atmosphere has already shifted much further, but the impacts are held back, by fantastic luck, by smog. Nobody could write a science fiction story like this. But it's real.

Next week I'll tell you have I've managed to adapt, both physically and mentally to this frightening knowledge about our climate future. We'll talk surviving, being glad about it, even as humans head into their greatest challenge ever.

I'm Alex Smith. Do check out our web site at ecoshock dot org

This coming change - it is shocking, isn't it?

[The show ends with a 2 minute clip from James Lovelock in October 2007, explaining how tenuous "global dimming" really is. Followed up by a final dose of music from Andre Ethier, pleading to us, not to give up.]