Peter Wadhams presents an up to date information in a slide show about Arctic Sea Ice and greenhouse gas emissions concluding that direct CO2 capture from the atmosphere must be carried out on a massive scale and that other “solutions” even in combination will be insufficient to avert complete climate change catastrophe.
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Wadhams is like that brave Roman soldier whose remains were found in the ruins of Pompeii, who apparently stood his ground and did not abandon his post and his duty, even as a searing hot cloud of pyroclastic ash raced down the slopes of Mt Vesuvius to consume the ancient Roman town and burn every one its inhabitants alive. Like one of the 300 Spartans, to the very end he will fight the good fight and refuse to surrender, even in the face of impossible odds. To the very end, he will exhort us to deploy impossibly gigantic geo-engineering contraptions, that we may cheat our one and only true fate.
For the whole world to reach enough of a scientific, philosophical, political and ideological consensus to embark on such daunting and Promethean feats, this by itself requires another century or two of experience, suffering and maturity, leaving aside the total reorganization of society into survival mode. We simply don’t have that kind of time. To put it figuratively, we are being asked to fight a boxing match in way above our weight class. We are too small, and too late to the game, and the problem is now too big.
Do not go gentle into that good night
– a poem by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), and apparently Peter Wadhams’s guiding philosophy
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.