The Al Gore Crowd sees climate change as real, humans are the cause, but it's not that urgent. Minor tweaks to the marketplace can fix this. Group 3 says markets cannot fix the problem. Positive feedback will rapidly transform our planet, the consequences will be severe. In the 1960s, the men and women who ended fascism on two continents during World War 2 reached middle age. They looked around to find people being beaten in the streets, severe environmental degradation, and kids coming home from foreign wars and bodybags. In response, they elected a congress that passed a huge amount of progressive legislation. Many of these new laws reduced the rate at which rich people could get richer. To counter these setbacks, on August 23rd, 1971, Louis Powell wrote a memo in which he urged businessmen to pool a lot of money and change the attitudes and beliefs of Americans. Every year since then, billions have flowed to think tanks to create pro-corporate mythology and to purchase media to spread these ideas. As part of this effort, big energy has invested less than a penny per dollar of profit to move folks from Group 3 to the Al Gore Crowd to the deniers. As a result, every effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions has been stalemated, and roughly half of all Americans believe global warming is a fraud. Is climate change real? How can we know? From antibiotics to skyscrapers, planes to DVDs, computers to plastics, sciences delivered all the technological wonders we take for granted today. So what does science tell us? In 1978, we launched the satellite. Part of its mission was to measure Arctic ice. This is 35 years of daily ice sheet volume measurements in thousands of cubic kilometers. How do you measure ice volume from orbit? Ice is less dense than water. When floating, part of it sits above water. The satellite sends out a pulse and measures the time until the reflection returns, because it knows its altitude precisely. It can determine the height of the ice and thus thickness. To make trends easy to see, only yearly maximum average and minimum volume are shown here. During the minimum curve, we find an ice free Arctic for a few days as early as September 2016. We also have 35 years of Arctic ice area data. We can divide volume by area to obtain average thickness. The red line is 3 feet. Thickness is declining four times faster than area. Area will remain high until thickness drops to zero, and the entire ice sheet suddenly disappears. Looking at volume trends, Arctic ice will be gone for a few September days, no later than 2020. During the maximum trend curve, the Arctic will be ice free permanently in 2032. However, with additional positive feedback taking hold, the Arctic could be ice free as early as 2025. Positive feedback is a situation where the output of the system also acts as an input, such that a change in the output causes the output to change further and faster in the direction it was going. More than 30 positive feedback mechanisms documented in the scientific literature are starting to speed up climate change. This is commercial shipping today in the Arctic. Where are we in relation to the tipping point? August 1958, the USS Nautilus finds average ice thickness to be 3.08 meters 10.1 feet. When the queenfish retraced this journey in 1970, it found thickness had declined to 2.39 meters 7.8 feet, or 1958 and 1970 above or below average thickness years. This is the satellite data for the month of August with its trend curve. Some deviation from trend is 0.274 meters. We can add and subtract this from the submarine data to obtain a likely range for the satellite data. The upper edge of this gray area slopes downward. This means during the 1960s, when carbon dioxide was only 320 parts per million, the Arctic ice sheet was quietly but relentlessly melting away. For the past few million years, we have bounced between ice ages and interglacial periods. Think it or not, we are already on our way to a hotter temperature state. How does one obtain temperature from thousands or millions of years ago to produce this history? Note the Delta Oxygen 18 reference at the right-hand edge. Oxygen has three stable isotopes. Oxygen 16 has eight protons and eight neutrons for an atomic weight of 16. Oxygen 18 has ten neutrons giving an atomic weight of 18. Having heavier, an Oxygen 18 water molecule is less likely to evaporate than an Oxygen 16 molecule. However, the ratio of Oxygen 18 to Oxygen 16 evaporated increases with temperature. When oceans are warmer, more Oxygen 18 water evaporates. Ice cores and other land sediments have a higher Oxygen 18 concentration. When more Oxygen 18 evaporates, calcium carbonate shells from marine creatures falling to the ocean for contain less Oxygen 18. When temperature is lower, less Oxygen 18 evaporates. Land-based sediments contain less Oxygen 18 while marine sediments contain more. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 was 280 parts per million. Since 1800, excess CO2 in the air has doubled every 32 years. The zigzag is keeling CO2 measurements at Mount Aloe. Today CO2 is at 400 parts per million, a 120 part per million excess over 280 and three times the 1960s 40 ppm surplus. If business as usual continues, we will hit 520 ppm by 2046 and 760 ppm by 2078. Climate change activists say we must bring CO2 back down to 350 parts per million by 2050 at the latest. If 320 parts per million was enough to melt the Arctic, how will getting back to 350 parts per million do anything, especially if the Arctic ice sheet no longer reflects sunlight during summer months? We are past the tipping point. Why are so few Americans aware of this? Why do so few care? The answer is the success of the Powell Letter-Induced Disinformation Campaign. When the Arctic ice sheet is gone, climate change will shift from gradual to rapid. The Fifth IPCC report places the heating imbalance at 2.29 watts per square meter, multiplying this times the area of the earth gives a total heating imbalance of 1.17 pw. The earth receives 174 pw of power from the sun. Currently it radiates only 173 pw back into space. This roughly one pw difference is heating our planet. When the Arctic transforms from reflecting sunlight to an open water solar collector, another pw heating imbalance will be added. What are the consequences? Greenland's ice will raise sea level 23 feet. A pw of heat dumped into the Arctic is enough to melt this ice in 25 years. In the last ice age sea level dropped 400 feet. In a hotter state, where Antarctica also melts and with thermal expansion, sea level will rise 300 feet. The areas in blue show dry land during an ice age. Areas in red are under water in a hotter state. As the last ice age ended, it took roughly 8,000 years for the ice to melt to its present level. The remaining ice will melt in under a thousand years. The climate system that carries rainwater over the continents is driven by the 80 degree Fahrenheit difference between the equator and the North Pole. When the Arctic is ice-free year round, this difference drops to 45 degrees. The strength of the winds will decline, producing less rainwater and a permanent mega drought. Estimates of human population by the end of this century place our numbers well below 1 billion. The Pauho letter campaign for corporate dominance has concentrated power in America. This shows the wealth required to be person 400 on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans divided by median household income. Over 32 years, the purchasing power of median household income has stagnated while rich people have seen their purchasing power triple. In the 1980s or 90s, we could have climbed back up the cliff. Because rich people did not yet have enough money, paradise will transform to desert. The book covers far more material and in far greater detail. I need your assistance to deliver it into the marketplace of ideas. Thank you. This video has been helpful. Please click thumbs up, subscribe and share the link with friends.