Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Nathan Currier's posts on the Arctic and methane

Nathan Currier

Nathan Currier

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Nathan Currier is senior climate advisor for Public Policy Virginia as well as an award-winning classical composer. Currier has been a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project since 2007 and has presented to about 1,000 people on climate change. His climate talks have taken him to UNICEF headquarters at the United Nations, Columbia University, and New York University, among many others. Currier is also a strong advocate of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, and recently co-authored a chapter of the book Chimeras and Consciousness (MIT Press, 2011) with NASA scientist Paul D. Lowman, concerning Gaia theory. His largest musical work, Gaian Variations, is an evening length oratorio about Gaia theory premiered on Earth Day 2004 at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He has received numerous awards, such as the American Academy of Arts & Letters Academy Award, given for lifetime achievement in composition, as well as the Rome Prize, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, International Barlow Prize and International Sackler Awards. His music is published by Theodore Presser Co., recorded on the labels Chandos, New World Records, and Crystal Records, and has been commissioned by such organizations as the Berlin Philharmonic. His degrees are from Johns Hopkins University and Juilliard, and he has served on the faculties of Juilliard and the University of Virginia. He currently resides in New York City.

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Blog Entries by Nathan Currier

Arctic Crisis: Far From Sight, the Top of the World's Problems

(2) Comments | Posted September 11, 2012 | 6:26 PM
As this year's sea ice extent bottoms out, it's high time that more people recognize we're in a global crisis -- the arctic crisis. I'm sorry if this sounds "alarmist," but the arctic, fundamental to the stability of our weather patterns, climate and agriculture, is rapidly coming apart....
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Methane in the Twilight Zone (Third Episode)

(9) Comments | Posted February 10, 2012 | 11:32 AM
Do you like CSI? I remember the esteemed climate scientist Michael MacCracken once saying that climate researchers need to be like CSI investigators, prying out the truth from obscure clues. But how often has a CSI episode been a whodunit where the outcome could effect everyone? So, kick up your...
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Methane in the Twilight Zone (Second Episode)

(14) Comments | Posted January 17, 2012 | 4:52 PM
The most important paper on climate change in quite a while was published two days ago inScience (Shindell et al, 2012: read about it here). But sorry, folks, we don't have time to discuss it now. We've got to get back down --...
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Methane in the Twilight Zone (First Episode)

(4) Comments | Posted January 11, 2012 | 1:27 PM
Last month saw methane emissions entering the twilight zone for the first time. By an odd quirk of timing, two incongruous things happened virtually at once. At this year's annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, leading experts dealing with a source for potentially significant Arctic...
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Methane and the Fierce Urgency of Now

(9) Comments | Posted November 1, 2011 | 2:28 PM
With its Koch brothers funding and climate denier affiliations, the Berkeley Earth Project finally laid 'Climategate' to rest last week, affirming the climate data of NASA and others. So now we return to the more complex questions of what to do -- with denial coming from a very...
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2 comments:

  1. KillianSeptember 12, 2012 at 1:15 AM

    " In the end, of course, this will just be a sub-plot to the bigger drama, the climate crisis, but by naming this the arctic crisis, I am suggesting that it needs to be treated independently, right away."

    And he goes off the rails right at the very beginning. #$%$!!!!!

    Why is it so difficult for people to grasp that the Earth is ONE system. ONE BLEEPING SYSTEM!

    You start designing solutions "independently" and you've already screwed the pooch.

    Want to knw how simple this is?

    1. Grow gardens (regenerqatively, i.e., sustainably) at home.

    2. Localize your power.

    3. Localize decision-making such that power devolves UPWARD from the neighborhood to the national/geo-regional level.

    4. re-grow ecosystems, particularly forests.

    5. Change ALL farming over to regenerative farming.

    6. Grow food forests.

    7. SIMPLIFY in the OECD.

    Those actions have the potential to reduce CO2 by up to 5 ppm/year, which buys us time to make the shifts above permanent and to transition everything else we do to the NECESSARY, NON-NEGOTIABLE low-consumption, regenerative, steady-state economics model.

    Do any of this in isolation and it will fail miserably.

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  2. Tenney NaumerSeptember 13, 2012 at 7:02 PM

    I agree with you, Killian, in principle, but I think that from the standpoint of trying to get the world to change gears and get into concerted action, someone has to take a first step. So far, no countries have gotten together to take action together in a big, dramatic way (which apparently is needed for the psyche of humans). This could be that first step.

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