President Obama,
Your climate "legacy" can be partially secured when you deny Shell's final permit to drill in the Alaskan Arctic. Scientists have warned us that we all have to keep fossil fuels like Arctic oil in the ground if we hope to avoid runaway climate change. We also must avoid releasing volumes of methane equivalent to a major oil spill from rising to the surface each year as warmer waters heat the frozen ocean bed. Volume for volume, methane is at least 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Shell must not be allowed to heat any northern oceans (Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic) through any so-called "development" work on sea bed exploration and extraction.
Here's what it is to me: I am a father, grandfather, retired teacher & social worker, believer in the power of the Holy Spirit. I love grasses, trees, ocean, sandy terrain, flowers, the sweetness of ripe fruit, the amazing beauty of wild animals, wild mountains and all of Creation, even illnesses that challenge us to lean into the wind and persevere. And I hate illnesses such as our addictions to fossil fuels which are killing us daily. It is up to me to care enough to fight for changing our way of living here so our lives on this beautiful planet preserve bounty for future generations, for the "common good". So mark me in this fight for distributive justice which, whenever violated, always results in violence. Society as a whole, including me and every "state" in particular, is obliged to defend and promote the common good, not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a “dignified sustenance” for all people, but meaning their “general temporal welfare and prosperity”. Mark me in this fight for a planet on which I believe all of our successors can live with temporal welfare and prosperity, a planet required to be cool enough that the limit of adaptability to climate change due to heat stress (a limit that is enforced on all mammals by temperature and humidity) is not breached.
The way things are right now, likely temperature increase is estimated to be 5°C by 2100, anything from 3°C to 7°C may be possible.
Crops have limited tolerance for high temperatures, and as the climate warms, these limits are likely to be exceeded increasingly often. This is one reason why a temperature increase of 4°C or more could pose very large risks to global food security. Do not let Shell drill for the matériel that will force more warming in the already overheated Arctic waters.
People and other common life forms have limited tolerance for combinations of high temperature and humidity. Although people do die of heat stress in the current climate, their upper limits of tolerance are rarely if ever exceeded by climatic conditions alone. Somewhere between 5°C and 7°C of temperature increase, it starts to become likely that hot places will experience conditions that are fatal even for people lying down in the shade.
LONDON, 11 January, 2015 – Researchers studying methane trapped in frozen layers below the Pacific Ocean seafloor predict that more and more of the potent greenhouse gas could bubble towards the surface as the deep water begins to warm. “We calculate that methane equivalent in volume to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill [in 2010] is released every year off the Washington coast,” said Evan Solomon, assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography in the US.
On 23 July 2015 James Hansen's team of 17 scientists published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) saying:
" ... We conclude that multi-meter sea level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."
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source: "
Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2◦C global warming is highly dangerous".)
Action Item ~~ You can help keep these disasters from happening by making your own one simple decision: Reject Shell's Final Arctic Drilling Permit.