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Our Pan Geo Global Capital Appreciation Portfolio unlevered total rate of return is 71.1% from inception on November 15, 2000 to July 18, 2010 (average annual rate of return is 5.7%). Over this time, it has outperformed its global hybrid benchmark by 77.9%.

Our Pan Geo 100% American Strength Growth Portfolio unlevered total rate of return is 103.1% from inception on July 15, 2002 to July 18, 2010 (average annual rate of return is 9.2%). Over this time, it has outperformed its hybrid benchmark by 62.1%.

This Investigations page is the first of six web pages here that constitute the 90th edition of our expose of ecological survivability. The inaugural edition was published at this website on December 9, 2007. For important information concerning our Global Light Yellow Works facility, scroll down below the advertisements to the section entitled Toll Scroll™ form Green Earth Memoranda & Solution ("GEMS"). Look for the subsection dated May 30, 2010.

If you seek investment advice or further information about Pan Geo Investment Inc. and its services, please click on the links below to view other pages of this website or click on Welcome, OrderAdvice or InvestorDataBlock pages. Check the marquee banners above and refer to the Performance  Page for information about the success of our investment advisory services to date and to view the first part of our 183 country Pan Geo Investment Global Table©. This table also contains direct links to stock market exchanges of these countries, so web surfing investors and interested parties can easily visit them by clicking on the links provided. The 100 countries not currently in our Pan Geo Global Index are shown in the Table portion on our Also Eligible  Page.

This Pan Geo Investment Investigation supports our independent portfolio investment advisory services. We have always been a future-oriented advisory. We consider clean, green investing to be a consequence of our forward thinking and advice in general. We come across all kinds of entities that are striving to contain and reduce environmental impacts. Ecological risks and impacts may be the limiting factor, ultimately determining what issuer "i" can and cannot do. Today, savvy businessmen are often tapping into advanced research and development for something new or more sustainable than heretofore what's been offered by many competing firms. So conducting ecological risk analysis on an ongoing basis helps us immeasurably in our green growth investing efforts here at Pan Geo Investment. Being able to cut the mustard in the green movement these days requires tremendous discipline, scientific knowledge, research and development plus technology application and transfer moxie like never before. Moreover, the ecological footprint of our operations is a tiny fraction that of the lion's share of competitors.

In our view of the world, we have always believed at this advisory that talk of more coal or heavy oil is "gray nonsense". We do not knowingly invest, or give advice to invest, in any company that operates in a smoky gray way, making money off pursuit of smoky gray activities as we define it. At this advisory, we do not accept that entities have any right to egregiously and unilaterally pollute like savages returning from our caveman past. To do so inevitably is to infringe on the rights, life-space, health and welfare of others, and very possibly to immiserate or sicken them irretrievably. Noone wants their place mussed up. So we try to uncover, expose and sweep away the secrecy, attitudes, complexes and rhetoric of egregious polluters. Historically, in many parts of the world, their actions enabled them to profit or extract other benefits in the course of taking ecological risks that some time thereafter results in many innocent people becoming the victims of that enterprise. Often such risks have remained opague to the public and have not been properly represented or disclosed in their filings of related documents with regulators.

Consequently, this investigation also directs us away from security issuers that still have operations with unacceptable environmental externalities, ecological risks and impacts. These entities may depend on government, lobbying, specialty public relations, revisionist advertising or other patronage or device intended to soften their questionable or unsavoury image, challenges and risks. Even if they survive in the marketplace, inefficient and outdated companies that are environmentally unfriendly may one day face significant fines, liabilities and lawsuits for their anti-social behaviors. Society does not have to pay to keep old stalwart polluters in the game.

Regrettably from our point of view, many authoritative economists, financiers and political people have been advocating increased conventional loans and reduced "risk taking". Already in the new millennium, we have seen how many staid banks have gotten it sorely-wrong so were either closed, bailed-out with public money or sold-off to private interests at a deep-discount. In USA, it appears to us that vast quantities of risk capital and investment funds were channelled into mortgages, mortgage-backed securities and real estate development. In Canada we noticed how, for an extended period of time not long ago, virtually every new issue brought to market by Canada's banks was a tax-savings vehicle of some sort for the Alberta oilsands. Over and above that ridiculous situation which thankfully has been stopped, we still have a variety of fossil fuel subsidies in place and huge amounts of public monies devoted to paying for reducing the pollution from producing, transporting and burning heavy, carbon-intensive fossil fuels. Had all of these wasted monies in North America been put into clean, green energy and services instead, we would not be as deep in the pickle juice as we now are in USA and Canada.

Our Investigation demonstrates in gory detail how Canada and USA are far back in the green race of the new millennium. They are most certainly not alone, however. We wish we did not have anybody to slot into the bottom tiers of our Eco-Table on Investigations3 and Investigations4 web pages. Unfortunately, there are plenty of laggards including many countries that are in-deep producing and consuming the dirty fossil fuels emanating from what has become an eco-disaster-prone industry. The outlook in that regard can only worsen to the extent  we continue to rely on coal, heavy oil and, to a lesser degree, conventional oil and gas.

While bankers sniff and snivel at their tired balance sheets on the brink of implosion as they continue business-as-usual, most of them continue to ignore or downplay the Earth on the brink of another ecological breakdown. The ecological survivability of every country needs to be enhanced every waking day, not degraded every waking day. That imperative has to start very soon now, this is the premise that every country must accept and abide by. In our view, our Investigation makes this conclusion abundantly clear so please listen, learn, read on because we want you on our side.

Accordingly, we believe central banks around the world should be charged with an unequivocal public interest duty to identify the flow of gray money and sanction that flow. Or have a way to freeze, reverse or retract some mandated portion of it then to re-send it out to proven, genuine green money management entities. We have to have green money mandates not just green energy mandates. Or the astonishing changes that have to occur globally are not going to happen anywhere near fast enough to ensure our collective ecological survivability. Innumerable very highly-knowledgeable people have been publicizing warnings along these lines for years now.

We need mandates worldwide for clean, green, renewable sources of energy. This realization is widely-accepted already. What you hear far less if anything about is a parallel requirement to mandate capital flow to bonafide clean, green funds and advisors. Cheap money has to be diverted from conventional banks and bank advisors in the comfortable, easy business-as-usual game of supplying more and more and yet-more funds to gray companies and projects and their gray-collar workers. We are having to face both abrupt changes and slower transitional changes that affect broad swathes of the global economy. Gray, status quo bankers and their advisors are not up to this challenge. If they were up to the challenge, we would not be behind the 8-ball as we are now.

We try very hard not to be cynical because we do not want attitudinal factors getting in the way of all manner of potential solutions to our ecological survivability crisis. But we are going to sneak in the observation that modern bankers are generally way too slow and reactive with their investment portfolios. They tend to back projects and companies in the same way a momentum investor tries to make money on the stock market: By putting more and more and yet-more funds into the same thing until something finally goes ka-boom! To use racetrack parlance, they run with "blinkers-on".  

The collective natural wealth of this Earth is what ensures survivability of living things and we are all equally responsible for stewardship of the Earth. Times are changing quickly now and ecological risks are becoming more clearly defined scientifically and legally with every passing day. The need for sustainable growth and ecological survivability is real and has become imperative for virtually every jurisdiction on Earth. There is wide recognition now that the hour is very late for preserving and enhancing the ecological vigour of many ecosystems. There is nothing relative or differentiated about the responsibility for running down an ecosystem. Neanderthalian projects that ravage the environment and contribute inordinately to alteration of the climate and abnormal or extreme weather conditions, cannot be pursued any longer anywhere.

This is what we mean by ecological survivability, and it should not deteriorate further in any jurisdiction. The Earth is boxed-in from being overburdened by us.  We need to enhance ecological survivability going forward. There is no option, we are now pretty-much on a one-way street. We need to be alert to, and aware of, those responsible for continuance of some developing ecological befouling. We must beware of disasters-in-the-making and able to deal with those whose knee-jerk tendency is to prolong and defend market share of tired old ways. Their aim is too-often an opague attempt to try to flummox the public by trotting-out distorted rationale, evidence and argument based on secrecy, spin, rhetoric, protocol, procedure or technique that would fail hopelessly and pathetically in the face of scientific scrutiny. Everyone knows we need jobs, everyone knows we need energy, everyone knows we need security. You can hardly use those lines to try to differentiate, or to justify more inefficient, polluting activities. The public interest is best served based on knowledge not beliefs per se. What do you know, how is it you know and when did you know it? Whether it's judges or scientists, society relies on data, evidence and knowledge to succeed. That knowledge base is clearly demanding we put all our efforts and resources into activities that incrementally improve ecological survivability. Else, its better to do nothing. That is, if you're an economic actor not in position to be part of the solution, at least do not angle anymore to be part of the problem.

If we are going to solve our ultra-serious dilemma of climate change and ecological breakdown, we are going to have to recognize the ecologically-hideous nature of industrialization historically and excessive population as root causes of degradation and the extraordinary demands we have placed on our environment today.

Our current expose of what we call Dusty, Sandy Brown Afflicted Countries™ is shown at the bottom of Investigations1 web page along with our Eco-Flags©™ and explanations of ecological risks and various pollution problems. We also show our Sky Blue, Forest Green Eco-Touring Countries™ there. Murky, Hazy Crimson Red Sunset Countries™ and Smoky Gray Day, Carbon Black Night Countries™ comprise the lower part of Pan Geo Investment Eco-Flags Table©™. They are shown on  Investigations2, Investigations3 and Investigations4 web pages respectively. Link to Investigations0 web page for the continuation of this page including one of our solutions. 

How does it look so far? Ever been to a ball game where you are losing 97 to 25? We don't like it either because we are in a must-win predicament. However, we still anticipate this once-dreadful situation will continue to improve steadily as time goes by. We know there is great urgency associated with solving and resolving climate change, pollution and population-pressure mega-problems. Happily, there is considerable manpower and resources planned and at-work making contributions to solutions to this very vexing state of affairs. There appears to be more and more action "in our bullpen" every waking day which is great news because we need plenty of support in relief. It's vital to maintain focus and a winning attitude because our side, the side for humanity and sustainability, cannot fathom losing this one.

In our opinion, as we outline in grimy detail on these very webpages, our fate will be determined by the physical and biochemical aspects of our existence, the ecological survivability of people, habitat and nations collectively. Our climate, the health, biodiversity and balance that once characterizing our ecosystems, is critically important and must be protected, restored, replenished. Let's not burn too many things or dump too much waste into waterways, lest we monkey too much with the carbon cycle, chemical oxygen demand or photosynthesis.

We believe the controlling variables, the situation that should concern us all the utmost, is captured by the 2029, 2039 and 2049 "headlights" shown to the left in our Eco-Flags Table. Our comprehensive concept we call ecological survivability forms the basis of our assessments and rank ordering. The current headlight values shown for a jurisdiction reflect, in our judgment, the overall health and wellness of ecosystems, including all lifeforms there, anticipated for the timeframe indicated. Pieces of paper are not going to help us or our children if we do not maintain the delicate balance of our natural world. The Ecology Bank of Earth cannot go down-and-down or organisms including homo sapiens will be going down with it. The time has come today to stop and seek to recast, replace or restrict all remaining scorched-earth, polluting activities before the consequences of that mayhem escalates any further than it already has. Some oldtimers say, well, we're out here in the boonies so noone really knows what we're doing out here anyway. But as we know now, almost when it's too late, there is nowhere to hide from Mother Nature. Our Earth is alive, you know, it's teeming with life even though you cannot see much of it with the naked eye.

Citizens of every country have the wisdom and awareness, the capacity to change. What concerns us the most is that even with that there is embedded a huge margin for error and miscalculation. To illustrate, consider that highly-educated people by the droves today continue to puff away on tobacco products despite prominent and often stark messages written on every pack and in advertisements concerning the crazy health and wellness risks people are taking with there own life by doing so. Yet they do it anyways. This kind of fatalist, lackadaisical mindset worries us a great deal because it provides inertia when, by contrast, tremendous collective effort and willpower is required worldwide to enhance the ecological survivability of Earth. Widespread cooperation on these matters is essential or we are probably doomed.

Eco-Flag©™ "tail-lights" are shown on the right-hand-side of our four Eco-Tables. Tail-lights include: "1900s" column lights that reflect the historical situation of the 19th and 20th centuries; "2010" column colored-boxes that encapsulate the current situation ecologically plus aspirations and intentions; and "2019" column values that may depend on the nature of the binding laws that govern legal actions in a country. Often, despite their importance to our very existence, environmental and energy laws are slow to be updated. Therefore, in the absence of particular information, intentions and data we look for, we sometimes insert the 2019 lights color by default based on current legal measures to deal with pollution, clean energy and global warming.

As a first approximation, the existing ecological state of a country or countries may be assumed to have arisen due to historical laws, rules and regulations so that is reflected in our Eco-Table. Unfortunately for all of us, there often exists a lag between when a rigorous legal framework is introduced and when ecological survivability is enhanced in that country. It's the latter that saves our bacon not the former, that's the point that should not be overlooked. It's also evident that there are very few commercial interests and not enough consumers that are willing to act decisively on their own accord to take vigorous environmentally-friendly actions unless and until their government revamps the laws, rules and regulations. Therefore, eco-conscious legislation or regulation is generally considered to be a precondition for improving our natural world en masse.

Relevant testing and data collection concerning our environment may be insufficient, untimely or kept confidential thus slowing a response or public pressure to act to rectify a particular situation. Enforcement, including compliance monitoring, reporting and verification, is often inadequate, questionable or unaccountable ultimately introducing yet-another cause for delay in reclamation, rejuvenation and restoration of our environment. Progress here is too-often painfully slow meaning we have to step-up our game here too by more than a notch or two. This is the play-offs now and our level of play has to rise accordingly. Or we run the risk of being eliminated.

There is a 24-color scheme in our Global and Eco-Flags Tables at this website. The particular color reflects the relative health, harmony and sustainability of ecosystems. The range of colors includes in order: dark blue, blue, dark green, green, light green, green-gold, yellow, cream, peanut butter brown, tan, brown, ox-blood brown, light orange, cadmium or flat red, light pink, pink, crimson, indigo purple, mauve, gray, charcoal gray, lead black and black. So what quadrant is your country in now - green, brown, red or gray? Keep visiting us here for answers. On a best efforts basis, the color of status lights in these tables change with time as we become aware of relevant events, information and legal changes affecting a particular jurisdiction.

Toll Scroll™ form Green Earth Memoranda & Solution ("GEMS")

On this web page and on Investigations0, Investigations1, Investigations2, Investigations3 and Investigations4 pages, Pan Geo Investment Inc. presents the latest iteration of our investigation and Eco Table with Eco Flags and Memoranda. It was first published December 9, 2007.

May 26, 2010 -  Pan Geo Investment Inc. is now offering our Green Earth Memoranda and Solution ("GEMS")™ in the format of a Toll Scroll™. This format of Memoranda covers what is presented in our essays and Eco-Tables on the six Investigations web pages of this website. You do not have to register to gain access. On an honour system, if you utilize this GEMS investigation service by scrolling further down the page beyond this Toll Scroll paragraph to utilize the content there in whole or in part (excluding any web page navigation aids, advertisements and footnotes to the web page which may be viewed without charge), the following schedule of fees applies: To read this current PanGeoInvestment.com ("our") Investigations.htm page content beyond the introductory paragraphs above and this Toll Scroll section, cost is US $9.94; to use our Investigations0 page content beyond the initial paragraphs (displayed with a larger font size), cost is US $9.95; to utilize our Investigations1 page content beyond the lead-in paragraphs (having a larger font size), cost is US $9.96; to read our Investigations2 page content beyond the beginning paragraphs (with a larger font size), cost is US $9.97; to use our Investigations3 page content beyond the Toll Scroll paragraph, cost is US $9.98; to utilize our Investigations4 page content beyond the introductory paragraphs (having a larger font size), cost is US $9.99. For GEMS on all six Investigations web pages, cost is US $49.94. Please remit payment using the PayPal™ Buy Now button below where credit cards may be used, or send payment directly to us at the following address: Pan Geo Investment Inc., 688, Unit 4 - 350 S.E. Marine Drive, Vancouver, B.C. V5X 2S5 Canada. We very much appreciate your business, thank you.

GEMS on our Investigations.htm web page - US $9.94

GEMS on all six Investigations web pages - US $49.94

May 30, 2010 -  Pan Geo Investment Inc. is now offering our global Light Yellow Works™ facility. This is our viral marketing scheme for selling the current content on our six Investigations web pages. Here's how it works: third parties can act as sales agents for us to close a sale. Selling particulars are described in the subsection above dated May 26, 2010. A global Light Yellow Worker sales agent causes a new, first-time buyer to visit this website and purchase from our Investigations page offerings. That new customer of ours pays us in the usual way. However, at the time of that sale or within three months thereafter, this buyer notifies us who their Light Yellow Worker sales agent was for that sale. We check our system to see what number of sale this was for that Light Yellow Worker. We rebate a payment of "$R" back to this Light Yellow Worker. We will use a specific example to illustrate how the amount of $R is determined. Suppose this new customer of ours purchased our Investigations3 page content beyond the Toll Scroll paragraph, so the cost was US $9.98. We charged this new customer $C = US $9.98. This new customer identified a particular Light Yellow Worker as their selling party. We look up that person and see it was their 12th sale made for us. So N = 12 here and we rebate to that person an amount $R = $(C - ( (C/2) + (C/N) ) ) whenever N = 2 or more, or (9.98 - 4.99 - 0.83) if N = 12 which equals US $4.16. The N = 1 first sale for all future Light Yellow Workers is for themselves at the cost, $C. Their N = 2 sale has $0 rebate calculated. On the third sale by the agent, the payment would be (9.98 - 4.99 - 3.33), or US $1.66. You can see the Light Yellow Worker sales agent slice of the pie escalates rather quickly. In fact, unbelievable as it may seem, their gross revenue from a particular sale can conceivably exceed ours allowing for the fact that Pan Geo Investment Inc. sets aside US $1.00 of our revenue from each and every sale we ever make and put it into our in-house Yellow-Lit Mud Hut Fund™ as described near the bottom of Also Eligible web page. The only stipulations we have for this global Light Yellow Works™ employment is that it be legal for the Light Yellow Worker in the jurisdiction they are operating in and that selling activity is conducted in a professional manner. The Light Yellow Worker must also have been a customer of ours already for the Investigations web pages they are selling to others as a Light Yellow Worker. We ask that our agents try to wear light yellow clothes when conducting Light Yellow Works if they can, and point out to the prospective customer that Light Yellow Workers around the world dress in light yellow when spreading the word about this Investigations web page offering. We of course need to know the identity of all our Light Yellow Workers, how they can be contacted and their address for us to send them their payments. In the end, we decide who our agents are and we are under no obligation to continue any existing agency relationship with a particular party. We hope and trust our global Light Yellow Works™ facility will help create employment opportunities around the world in many countries. Nothing would make us happier than knowing some poor family living near the Sahel belt somehow found a way to sell local officials on our Investigations web pages and is now receiving significant micropayments of powerful US dollars from us. This global Light Yellow Works™ facility also shows in another way how it is possible that someone simply gaining access to computers and the Internet may conceivably turn their life around and rise from being destitute. As Investment Advisor, not as a charity, not as a foundation, we humbly blaze a trail with our global Light Yellow Works™ facility. This is like the Kentucky Derby folks, and we again set the torrid pace that competitors of ours wilt from, they really have a hard time coping with us. More so now than ever before because "us" now also includes Pan Geo Investment Inc.'s global network of cool Light Yellow Workers.  

Our Investigation of Green Investing and Sustainable Growth

Let's start with the consumer since their demands account for two-thirds of aggregate demand. We have to admit we are spooked by looking at the mapsheets of conurbations. Roads, highways and freeways headed everywhere but kind-of ending up nowhere, like a Mobius strip or loop. On the pollution reduction front, we need breakthroughs here fast. In the "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" category, we recommend not going on that next iffy power drive down the expressway. Or the aimless fuel combustion spree after that. Try to hold-off until we solve some fundamental transportation problems. Of course, we now need greatly-expanded mass transit, high-speed rail, low-carbon fuels, bicycles, horses and camels. More generally, we ask people to curtail lighting matches and fires to burn all kinds of things aerobically, in open air. Widespread forest, bush and field fires have been devastating in many jurisdictions around the world and have presented a health hazard to anyone inhaling the smoke, soot and particulates.

Can we decree use of motion-sensitive lighting in our buildings and homes so lights power down or off when noone is around? Why is every office on every floor of every buiding of evry city and town lit up-all-night long when no work is being done?

Regarding industrial and commercial activities, no entity should perpetuate some dracula-of-pollution project. There now exists eco-friendly, viable alternatives to most of these monsters. In some cases, we have to pay more for higher quality products and services including essential services such as cleaner power. So be it. That's basic economics. That's how society progresses, to pay a premium for better whatever. Why try to rally citizens to cry about having to pay more for clean power that doesn't pollute the air and water and make us sick? Stodgey, old-line politics, media, utilities, energy companies and financial institutions are too-often too-sneaky and slow to change when confronted with a better way forward. They really want to continue to bankroll their steady state of income. But they will never admit that's what drives them to "defend share" and "outperform" by expending such great efforts getting in the way of change in an attempt to slow or stop it. Quite the contrary, we need advancements now, more and faster change, more research and development to tap into our blessed ability to learn, our vast reservoir of knowledge and our human experience. It's easy to tap into a draught beer or spin a rolodex and try to maintain your part of the status quo. It's many orders of magnitude more challenging to tap into science and mathematics texts or spin a hard drive seeking innovation for the benefit of our future health and welfare on this Earth.

Investors need to be especially wary about old industry archetypes that can no longer compete meritoriously but who have significant resources and well-established relationships and contacts. These entities may attempt to persist commercially using various tactics and strategies some of which are not that wholesome or forthright, and may in fact be misleading or deceptive. Here comes the twister - they are known to try to paint themselves as beacons of economic stability or as the heroic action figures whose viability as a going concern is being counted-on for national security reasons. We don't swallow that one whole. 

Rather, we believe the vast majority of scientists among many others think its precisely the opposite way around: Climate change and degradation of the natural environment including deforestation, desertification, acidification of the oceans, loss of ecosystems, species and biodiversity and ongoing, heavy-polluting activities are, by virtue of their existential and socioeconomic implications plus the great-unknowns associated with these phenomena, quickly becoming the paramount security issues of the new millennium for virtually every country. Dealing with volatility in marketplaces is difficult enough for many people, now we have the rising global overprint from ecological volatility and survivability to mix in.

We want to be clear that our doctrine of ecological survivability says nothing about growth per se. We hope every politician, lobbyist, industrial association spokesperson and whoever else visits us does not misconstrue what we are saying. Green growth with clean technology, renewable energy, green chemistry, new this and that is to replace the old, much more polluting products, services and processes. Old gray bank advisors will be replaced with new, green age advisors and blue-helmeted actors. Change, progess, advancement of humankind and the simultaneous defeat of some of what came before in the marketplace that has not worked out too well for people generally but has of course enriched a relatively few who rode this or that old gray mare stock.

The interests of our Earth and those who are suffering through some tragedy take precedence over everything else. The real crisis is with our Earth today, with the incidence and impact from ecological breakdown, degradation and disaster. Not with the debt or stock markets, a purely human construct to allocate wealth and value developments. In the latter case, we are the legislators, regulators, adjudicators and enforcers. A solution can always be found to any market or economic situation. By way of stark contrast, we possess none of those roles with respect to the Earth. The possibility of there not being a solution is very real. And an ominous realization. Our natural universe is the policeman and the creation, and we will never have dominion over it. We best not try to oppose or aggravate that relationship with our ongoing species loss, unchecked climate change and pollution brinkmanship. We should all embrace the rhythm and harmony of nature, not seek to dominate, control or push it to its limits.

We see no reason why, for example, consumption cannot continue to increase on a mass scale. But it has to be sustainable consumption, that based on the new and the retirement of the old. In principle, consumption can escalate in every country on Earth, driving can be further and faster across every road on Earth. But only if the pollution impact has been curtailed, if everything is recycled, reused, reconstituted. This depends on the physical capacity of the Earth as a whole to replenish itself from concentrations of various pollutants without disturbing physical side effects accumulating such as temperature increase, changes in acidity of the ocean, altered weather patterns and climate change, glaciers melting, loss of species, invasive and fleeing species, spread of disease, contamination of air and water. Until and unless the Earth and its ecosystems can assimilate the consequences of our activities, we cannot allow polluting growth to materialize or we are all up the creek environmentally. So, to all the ole' status quo investors, commercial interests and hillbillies, we sing "...you keep same'ing when you ought to be a-changing, yeah, what's right is right and you ain't been right yet, these boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do, and one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you"© (pretend "these boots" are the stock market and opinion polls).

The same is true about population - if the pollution impact per capita on Earth is curtailed increasingly, then more people can be supported. But until then we are "over-driving our headlights". Which is why in our Eco-Table again and again we refer to all these issues because, as it stands now, there are innumerable instances where country "c" is speeding faster than is safely illuminated on the road in front of them. It absolutely does not mean you cannot "develop", rather it means that smoky gray development has to stop, to be replaced by sky blue, forest green alternatives. It's not necessarily a slow-down of development, it's a change-up of the mode and manner of development. If you do not have the required capability, you have to look for a better alternative or wait until you can gain that capability. Human progress, wisdom, self-awareness and ingenuity in action.

The rule of law is paramount among men and women. It has been hailed as the codification that, properly attended to, can solve any problem humanity can thrust on us. Most people believe it takes mere days, weeks or, at worst, years to reach agreement, a treaty or new laws concerning even the most horrible kinds of things like, for example, war. Whatever the situation is, given enough political brainpower, charisma and will, the most grievous crisis will be solved before too long by the powers that be. Hear, hear, the ayes have it.

Politicians used to strafing opposition positions, partisan pining and whining, posturing, bluster, obfuscating, contorting, maneuvering, mocking, stonewalling, head fakes, dipsey-doodling, pulled punches, spin-a-ramma moves, dust-ups, attack ads and what-not may be slow to assimilate that we are not talking politics here. Or anything vacuous, lacking rigour or prone to misleading interpretation. And no twittering, tweeting one of us is able to alter that characteristic of the situation we find ourselves in. This is not about pitting one person, group or jurisdiction against another. Rather, collectively we have ourselves pressed against the window. It's our Earth, our real world that we see out there the other side of that window. Metaphorically, Mother Nature has a bit of a fever right now and doesn't really like the incessant demands we are placing on her. She's asking us again to clean up her house for her because she doesn't feel all that great at this time. The outstanding question that remains from our point of view is: will we do it for her? Or not? Is the time for playing her requiem approaching or will we take heed?

But look, ...out on the horizon, what is that sickly-pink mass lighting up the silvery dun-brown haze? Enter nature's law. The advisors for nature are sorry to report that nature's law operates on nature's time scale. That's right, on the geologic time scale not according to a leader's calendar. Remember those secondary school science courses? Now we are not talking about some obstinate leader "x" in some area of the world "y" who will not cooperate with "z". We are talking about temperature, pressure, mass wasting of terrain, oxygen, humidity, rainfall, acidity, bacteria, viruses, biodiversity, invasive species, in short, about physical phenomena that affect everyone. There is nowhere to hide from nature, no way to fool nature and unlikely to be a second chance to deal with nature if we botch it up the first go-around. We may not be around by the time the Earth recuperates over geologic time.

By deciphering the information contained in polar ice cores, which can only "see back" about 800,000 years, we can interpret that greenhouse gas levels are higher in the air today that at any time during that interval. Over the prior two generations alone, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere has risen to about 45% from 40%. It is now known that the oxygen content of our atmosphere has dropped from about one-third in ancient environments to a mere one-sixth of the air now in many of our polluted cities, a reduction by half. What is this doing to us? As the average temperature of the world's air masses and water bodies rise, the dissolved oxygen content of ocean water diminishes. This increases the likelihood of formation in the water of more extensive anoxic zones, a situation that has proven fatal to many members of various marine species who became trapped in such conditions.

10,000 years ago, forests and other vegetation were twice as prevalent as they are today. That factor of two is looking pretty ugly in this juxtaposition. As time goes by and temperatures rise and oxygen levels decline, biomes suitable to support life are expected to progressively lessen in areal extent. Many forms of life are seen to be, and expected to try to, move to higher latitudes, higher altitudes or some combination of the two. Migrations of trees, fish, birds, people and more are, and will be, migrating away from oppressive heat, dryness and low oxygen environments associated with global warming, particularly affecting tropical and sub-tropical locations.

This means that added to the existing demographic pressure from population explosion will be an added influx of individuals to places having climates that are more hospitable to most species. Given this backdrop, going forward there can only be a marked intensification of competition to latch onto a decreasing share of the ever-dwindling amount of natural and other resources available per individual. If you still need a jolt of adrenalin, there are authoritative figures who claim it conceivable that only one in nine people projected to be on Earth by later in this century will actually be on a hotter Earth given the devastating ramifications traced to climate alteration that may come about. A very high degree of cooperation will be necessary to ensure this ominous scenario never occurs. We must realize and respect that the Earth is affectively the boss of all of us. No subset of people imaginable would be able to dictate to, dominate or otherwise "stand up" to the Earth in the name of what they want. Solar and geophysical forces are awesome and should not be toyed with in some foolish macho-driven show of brinkmanship.

On average globally, 0.4 degree Celsius of that temperature change has taken place over just the past 30 years. Some claim this pace of temperature rise of about 0.1 degree Celsius per decade has been going on for a century. Across the Andes including Ecuador and Bolivia, that magnitude of temperature rise has been affirmed over a time period of at least the past three generations. Ten of the warmest years recorded near the Earth's surface over the past 130 years have occurred since 1997. According to NASA, 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade ever recorded in terms of average global temperature. By the metric of worldwide average minimum daily temperature, this most- recent calender decade was by far the warmest time verified since the advent of modern meteorology. This indicates a worrisome failure of the Earth to cool, and could be prima facie evidence of where "missing heat" is, namely, in the "body" of the planet as a whole. We hope it's clear even to politicians and advisors with grade-school science experience that we won't be able to take a hose and cool down the surface of the Earth by spraying it with water. Or what if "missing" carbon dioxide has been accumulating in the deep ocean environment and, at some point in future, somehow suddenly disgorges massive amounts of the gas into the atmosphere prompting a fairly-immediate incremental rise in average global ambient temperature? 

We believe the 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global average temperature that has already taken place relative to pre-industrial times is already too much and we are virtually-certain of more to come. Contemplating up to a two degree Celsius rise is quite nutty. The last time the Earth was that much warmer than it is now, sea level worldwide was four to eight meters higher than today. During the Eemian interglacial period, 128,000 years ago, the Earth was only about one degree Celsius warmer than it is now and sea levels were four meters higher than today. Worse yet, existing, persisting atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases mostly originating from our pollution to date are said to pretty-well ensure us of another 0.7 degree Celsius increase in global average temperature over time. This is because there is an incomplete, lagged response of incremental temperature increase of the air and water expected from this buildup of gas. So including effects to come, this makes it a 1.4 degrees Celsius rise that we have already bagged. So we are about two-thirds the way to a two degree Celsius rise relative to per-industrial times based on what we have done already. This lagged effect is especially unsettling because the Earth is still in the long-term process of absorbing or utilizing those emissions.

Yet, as we document here, the absorptive capacity of our Earth including water, air and soil, has been clipped significantly by our collective actions. The ability of the Earth to continue to absorb various pollutants at the rate it has been is a faulty assumption. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists integrating such dynamics into their global climate change model conceives in a probabilistic manner an average Earth temperature rise of a whopping 7.4 degrees Celsius before 2100 unless carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollution being generated by us is cut drastically and soon. A study tabled for the UK government cites the likelihood of a 6.4 degree Celsius rise in average ambient summer-time temperature by 2080 affecting the south of England. Such an increase embodies an average rate of nearly one degree Celsius up-and-up with every passing decade although the change in temperature is not expected to occur smoothly and uniformly.

Nowadays, virtually every forecast and projection applicable to the decades to come being made by climate scientists involves a rate of temperature increase somewhere in the range from one-half to two degrees Celsius per generation. Furthermore, a dizzying pace of temperature rise of one-half degree Celsius per decade has already been documented spanning at least one generation across many vast and diverse geographies around the world including tundra areas of northern Canada, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China and the Sunderbans mega-delta setting of Bangladesh and India. Seawater temperature has likewise been rising at that rate in the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Gulf and Kuwait Bay to name a few examples.

As a corollary, it may now be considered quite unusual for Earthly-inhabitants to encounter any year cooler than the scorcher of 2005. This is hardly- surprising given our predicament with global average temperature ratcheting-up relentlessly. Sounds surreal to us. And we may have to adapt to the surreal: it is widely-believed by very knowledgeable people that it will take centuries for our Earth to be restored to "the way we were" even if we begin the rollback now. Carbon dioxide lingers naturally in the atmosphere over hundreds of years before its concentration lessens. The same is true of the insidious, heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbon gases which are still in broad use in many countries.

If our Eco-Tables were based not on ecological survivability but rather purely on the relatively-narrow conception of the concentration of all greenhouse gas emissions trapping heat in our atmosphere, our colored lights of hope would appear something like what's shown below:

This paints a bracing picture and one for which there is no point in our forseeable solution space that intersects with an ecological scenario achievable anytime soon where we can be assured of preventing runaway climate change. There are too many co4ntries lagging too far behind to wrest us from the mean average global temperature rise we presume is coming. Many so-called "developing" countries and other nations, too are apparently still years away from their peak generation of emissions of heat-trapping gases. That means they are even further afield from becoming zero net carbon emitters or carbon neutral. Yet, according to the table of lights above, our interpretation is all countries have to arrive at the sky blue, forest green band level to ensure we do not cause temperature to rise by more than two degrees Celsius. This would have to happen very soon now. Some experts say there exists the distinct possibility this should occur before 2020 but almost-certainly before 2050. Or the chance for us all to hold the rise to only two degrees Celsius will have evaporated. Forever. Because our fix, our remediation efforts are just not happening. Fast enough. Which means we have to make it happen faster. Because it's not happening fast enough yet. So the ecological risk of running up temperatures as indicated above are no longer most-likely by century's end, rather the risk no longer exists in a probabilistic sense because it just happened. Let's not end up that way.

All countries are somewhere along a continuum of economic progress and ecological well-being. Even a cursory look at the contents of our Eco-Tables on Investigations1, Investigations2, Investigations3 and Investigations4 pages demonstrates we are nowhere- near our top-tier result where all countries are Sky Blue, Forest Green Eco-Touring Countries. "Nowhere- near" in any of our timeframes - not in 2010, not by 2019, not by 2029 or 2039 nor 2049. There exists the prospect of more green and blue lights appearing for more locations as time goes by. But ecological survivability is not being enhanced fast enough in enough places on Earth.

The average increase in atmospheric temperature already this millennuim across the East Siberian Shelf region of Russia has been found to be four degrees Celsius. As scientists are now warning, we'll be blooming-lucky if we can limit climate change to a maximum four degree Celsius mean global temperature rise over the next generation or two or three. A four degree Celsius worldwide average temperature rise some time this century would mean northern climates such as that affecting much of Canada and Russia can expect a six to eight degree regional rise in average temperature some time this century. With that, the risk of runaway temperature change and associated widespread ecological catastrophe is very high due to follow-on, permafrost-melting-induced carbon-bomb type releases of greenhouse gases including methane and more carbon dioxide. We outline this "wild card" or tipping point phenomenon and other ones, too in more detail below on this webpage. Already, Arctic tundra mosses, lichens and plants are being supplanted across wide areas by boreal forest, shrubs and grasses. This "ups the ante" further as the latter, more-southerly vegetation is generally darker and more massive, thereby retaining even more sunlight and heat. Bog areas once frozen melt and/or the trend of depths where permafrost remains intact progressively rises closer to the surface. Species endemic to these vast expanses of tundra experience a disruptive loss of habitat that negatively affects their ability to survive.

We know this is not a pretty picture and it's one for which the blame game should be considered to be over and done with. It's too late to cast aspersions. There's no one left to blame and point a finger at save and except into the mirror of time. So we look in that mirror and remember our earlier self and how we appeared and what we did. We can think of our ancestors deeds, too. We can think through what could have been, what should have been but then what? Irrespective of whether we question the actions of our predecessors, we are met with the forward arrow of time that characterizes ecological survivability, entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We realize the potentially-chaotic world of climate change and a maelstrom of pollution is here with us now. Today. Never mind yesterday. Our time has come today. It's the situation we are in and it has happened to a significant degree during the watch of our generation. That's this generation. And there is no escape clause to look for because this is not some legal construct that exists on a piece of paper or in the minds of men, women and children. Rather, it increasingly is manifesting itself in the guise of environmental diseases inflicted on people, as illness and maladies that need to be treated not ignored. Our environmental scourge has evidently become part and parcel of our current physical existence. Our progenies well-being and very existence now appears to depend upon our collective ability to address it and roll it back before it unravels any further than it already has. It's our duty collectively to mitigate further environmental chaos before it becomes environmental catastrophe for our descendants.

Because we are generating heat-altering emissions so much faster than the Earth can naturally absorb same and break it down, scientists at authoritative institutions such as United Nations, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, the Met Office in Hadley Centre, Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, University of Oxford and Cambridge University in United Kingdom, Stockholm University, Stanford University in California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Princeton University, University of Alaska, Harvard University, New York University, University of Colorado, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, World Wildlife Federation, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Energy, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing Climate Center, State Oceanic Administration in China, Max Planck Institute and Umweltbundesamt environment agency in Germany, the state climate monitoring agency at Murmansk, Russia and many more have collectively made it abundantly clear from their work that generation of greenhouse gas emissions is increasing, the planet is warming, ice is melting much faster than it is accumulating around the world, sea level is rising, oceans are acidifying, pollution is arcing up, biodiversity is lessening and forests, wetlands and other vital natural habitat are disappearing. Innumerable species are threatened with extinction. Soils are being depleted and eroded on a mass scale. Drought and desertification are increasing their grip over many countries. The intensity of heat waves and tropical cyclones has ratcheted-up relative to historical norms. And our climate is being affected in a myriad of ways that is raising eco-pressures and risks virtually on a daily basis. All of this means we must soon solve our environmental conundrum by highlighting and giving precedence and priority to the ecological survivability aspects of our existence. And reduce a selfish focus on the purely-economic aspects of our existence.

A temperature rise of four degrees Celsius is very possible before this century is over, some say even by 2060 or 2070. We have not had that amount of heat on Earth for 30 million years. That intensity of heat will mean havoc for one-quarter of humanity including severe fresh water stress, food insecurity, spread of disease, flooding, "camels are down" drought, loss of livelihood and terrain to live on. By then, about one-sixth of now-arable land in temperate climate zones and one-third in tropical and subtropical climates will be too parched for agricultural purposes.

There exists little realistic possibility of our limiting the average ambient global temperature rise to less than two degrees Celsius or to reduce greenhouse gases concentration-equivalent to somewhere in the 300 to 400 ppm range unless carbon emissions are zeroed sometime very-soon-now to avoid further accumulation in the atmosphere. Not long ago, we thought we had the fate of no more than half a chance, a flip-of-the-coin 50:50 chance, of a cumulative two degree Celsius rise if we cut back emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. An updated view is even starker: we need 100% reduction in those emissions by somewhere in the timeframe of 2020 to 2035 just to preserve this 1 to 1 even-chance crapshoot for no more than two degrees of global warming. This is what we are reduced to now in our natural world. This against a backdrop where global greenhouse gas emissions have risen by an astounding one-third and glacier melting has doubled since the onset of the new millennium, a mere blink of the eye ago in geologic time. And we have no global agreement yet for even a 50% cutback of emissions in our world versus 1990 levels before 2050.

Global emissions of greenhouse gases have been increasing at an average rate of 2% to 3% per year since the new millennium. Unfortunately, we need to decrease those emissions on average by about 2% to 3% a year until Earth reaches net zero carbon, then to keep it that way or better indefinitely. There is no grace period, no buffer of time left until we reach peak carbon emissions and start to decline. That window of time for negotiation, contemplation,  relaxation and transition does not exist. The time of peak heat-altering gases building-up in our atmosphere and peak concentrations of carbonic acid in our water should already be in our past. Speaking of peak emissions still to come is an artificial construct, a negotiating stance, a courtesy, ploy or device. There is no defensible physical basis for extending any more rope to any polluter regardless of location because there is no slack in it left to offer in the real world we now live in.

We are deluding ourselves to believe its somehow okay to continue gushing carbon for a while longer. Meanwhile, let's solve more poverty files, create a few more old fossil economy jobs and dump some more outrageous pollution into our Earth's lap. What about the many-more poverty-stricken cases that surely will be arising if we allow ecological survivability to deteriorate further from the troubling situation we have now? We need to create progressive, clean, green new economy jobs of the future to drive change for the better. Otherwise, we will be facing the unknown, the abyss concerning how big and bad a price we will pay in future for eco-errors we continue to knowingly commit every day. We cannot continue this masquerade. Many people are now aware of our unfolding eco-tragedy. But some of those parties nevertheless choose to gainsay or ignore the doctrine of ecological survivability. Invariably they offer up a purely economic justification for their decisions and actions that make no sense at all in the broader context of the real world we live in. We believe those people are a minority and should not prevail over the will of the majority or a super-majority in negatively affecting decisions. Critical decisions and actions about matters concerning the very inhabitability of our planet. Decisions and actions that are so imperative they are existential in nature. 

Due to the insidious rise in global temperature and associated changes in rainfall patterns, we are all but assured of more chaotic world events to come that will be unsettling to many life forms. The consequences of some of those events undoubtedly will result in further human displacements geographically, migration attempts and localized disruptions to peoples' health and livelihoods. It is also expected to result in further species being wiped out, threatened or endangered, so we have an ongoing loss of biodiversity. Our interpretation of research by Harvard University life scientists, is that one-third of species are likely to be extinct by mid-century, 2050.

Unfortunately, even a modicum of average temperature increase of ocean water is believed to be sufficient to add an extra dollop of wallop to storm events. We are for accelerating the migration of millions of people from submerging island economies and very vulnerable, way-overpopulated countries such as Bangladesh and Haiti to other richer, higher elevation nations especially those still having relatively abundant ecological capacity for survivability relative to the pollution and waste-stream load already being shouldered.

Unabated pollution and continuing deforestation, resulting in warming temperatures from rising greenhouse gas emissions, are already known to be have been primarily responsible for large-scale physical phenomena. This includes rearranging ocean currents; fracturing massive blocks of polar ice; affecting rainfall patterns leading to droughts and flooding; melting glaciers, perennial ice floes and ice sheets; triggering, with increased frequency, heat waves, thunderstorms, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons and more. Its also quite clear now that the ongoing northward and southward expansion of the upper atmospheric jet streams is driven by some mass scale phenomena such as global increase in temperature and/or ozone depletion or holes at the poles of the Earth.

For more than a generation now, the intensity of cyclones has increased in tandem with the rising temperature of tropical and sub-tropical ocean water. Furthermore, we now have findings and analysis linking increases in average ocean surface temperature in the tropics to increases in very high cloud cover, in particular, storm clouds such as cirrus and nimbostratus, ones associated with high winds, heavy rainfall and hail. The problem is, as the sheer number of particles in the atmosphere proliferates due to various pollution, the gross volume of moisture in the air has remained about the same over time. Water in the air coalesces around the escalating number of available aerosols until a threshold is reached and water drops away. This phenomenon acts to delay the time when agriculturally-friendly light rainfall would normally commence. Instead, it comes later but as heavy rain that may disrupt and wash away seeds, crops and more. In eastern China, for two generations the incidence of desirable light rain has been decreasing by about one-weeks-worth per decade. The culprit: people are pointing at air pollution and there is little in the way of credible alternative explanations.

Storms including hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, etc. have been widely-reported as being of greater intensity when they occur now that global warming is upon us. Observers of weather patterns have been noticing the ever-increasing frequency with which ocean surface waters in various areas heat then cool then heat again. Episodes of greater evaporation of warmer water into the atmosphere are followed too-often by downpours and flash flooding in the direction the weather system moves. More heat is trapped in the air due to the increased water vapour content. Superimposing a relatively-steadily-rising average ambient temperature on this oscillation could one day transmogrify it leaving in our wake bodies of continuously-warmer water that trigger even more frequent and extreme flooding events. So the cycle escalates and repeats ever-faster. The specter of "continuous Copenhagen's" has apparently already arrived for many of us and is not far in the offing for many, many more.    

Whether there is less or more extreme weather depends on how "extreme weather" is defined. Research shows that presently the number of a broad range of "extreme weather" events per unit of time, as characterized by various well-defined sets of physical parameters, is actually less frequent. This is so even though the disruptions that far-and-away pack the most wallop and devastation, the category 5 hurricanes for example, appear to have become more frequent. If one considers "extreme weather" to be only the latter, or only to refer to the incidence of locked-down drought, then "extreme weather" on Earth is already both more severe, powerful and frequent. The really worrisome weather patterns, the ones that have great potential to seriously disrupt peoples' lives, are increasingly upon us now.

An extreme weather event and the associated calamity on average now occurs somewhere on Earth at least once a day, double the rate of just a few years ago. The 100-year ocean wave, heat wave or sandstorm of yore has become an "x"-year wave or storm. Many people in many localities have noticed "x" is now much less than 100. Oxfam estimates that by 2015 there will be 375 million people per year afflicted by extreme weather events, up from about 250 million per year currently. That's a rate of more than one million persons per day whose lives have spun out of control and been disrupted by insidious climate change phenomena beyond their control. 

In Africa alone over the past generation, the number of people afflicted by climate-change-induced natural disasters has doubled to nearly 20 million. 10 million of those have had their lives disrupted to the point that they have been displaced internally in their country. Food and water insecurity is widespread. The prospect that this phenomenon will continue and intensify in future is very real, even probable. In many localities, drought cycles have contracted from being many years apart to only several years or one year apart.

We risk triggering dangerous climate change and the attendant likely consequences of that warming, namely, widespread social unrest, calamity from spread of disease vectors and mass migration attempts by people from various hotspots. Yet another example of this may be the en masse migration of Mongolian nomadic herders into cities as a result of weather-induced disruption attributable to climate change. Nomadic pastoralists in Kenya have been giving up their traditional lives after recurring droughts felled too many of their animals and people. Similarly, reindeer and caribou herders near the Arctic have been devastated in recent times by the effects of warming that has already taken place in the north. This is happening to them currently even though they have been herding for their livelihood since about 1400 without any weather-related impacts to knock them out of herding permanently.

Another example could be intense water conflicts arising in Peru and Chile that have prompted miners to resort to pumping ocean water hundreds of kilometers into the Andes mountain ranges where their mineral and metal extraction and refining operations take place. All this work and infrastructure is required to avoid drawing any more water from watershed areas, a practice that had led to clashes with the local people who also depend on the groundwater, lakes and rivers. Drought affected 120,000 people in Chile in 2008. Patagonian ice-fields of southern Chile have been shrinking alarmingly as temperatures have risen in the area by about one degree Celsius over the past century. Recent times has seen the worst drought in Chile in 50 years. If the dots are being connected here, it appears that huge coal-fired power plant slated for construction in Totoral, Chile is not such a good idea. The Andes Mountains have in places such as Ecuador and Bolivia, lost half the volume of glaciers in half a century or so. Unfortunately, up to one-quarter of fresh water supply comes from these glaciers, the precise amount depending on the water-filtering action of alpine grasslands and the amount of snow and rainfall.

In recent years, we have had prolonged drought in southern and Western Australia, parts of Ukraine, Russia, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, southern Brazil and northern Argentina, Niger, Ethiopia, Somalia, northern Yemen, the Sahel belt region of Africa, southern Madagascar, northern Uganda, northern Kenya, regions of Russia, Tajikistan, central, southwestern and northern China, northern Thailand, Laos, Nepal, Bangladesh, parts of India, Cyprus, southern Iraq, eastern Syria, Jordan, regions of Turkey and Spain, eastern Guatemala, a significant area of Mexico, southwestern USA and more. Scientists further worry that this increased dryness is a phenomenon that results in further releases of greenhouse gas, amplifying the impact and tacking on yet another incremental contribution to global warming. This is despite the fact that less water vapour in the stratosphere and the presence of more black carbon in the atmosphere both act to mask the actual extent of greenhouse gas forcing by 20% to 80% thereby limiting the temperature rise that has occurred. Various junk particles in the air block or reflect some sunlight back into space just as sulfate aerosols and other releases from a spewing volcano would act to cool the earth below the shroud of matter ejected from it. This picture is complicated in the atmosphere by localized absorption of radiation and heating in the atmosphere especially if it is a dark-colored aerosol as opposed to a lighter-colored aerosol. 

Any fires, intentionally or naturally-started add to the calamity as more smoke and soot further reduces rainfall and incrementally increases temperature. Thereafter, the risk of more fires rises with any increase in temperature and evaporation or reduction in rainfall. Australia added its quota of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere for the entire year of 2009 even before the first quarter ended thanks to contributions from rampaging wild bushfires. We've seen scientific studies attesting to the distinct possibility of centuries-long drought locked-in some areas of the world if humanity does not very-soon-now get a grip on the rising global temperature scalar field. Multi-year drought affecting the Horn of Africa region has had particularly gruesome consequences for people many of whom have become destitute and malnourished. Waterholes have not replenished, camels are down, croplands are dust and starvation is a very real worry for millions of people. Philippines has suffered a kind of revolving drought that has set in every three or four years since 1998-1999.

Rampant desertification crowds out people and arable land once used for grazing and farming. Internal migration begins as it has in many countries in Africa. Even with a static worldwide population, this phenomena of creeping desertification eventually leads to greater anthropogenic pressure to deforest other areas to in-effect replace or make-up for the shortfall arising from other regions whose usefulness was wiped-out by advancing sand dunes and parched lands.

The rate of change in global temperature may now be greater than at any time over the last 50 million years. Lake Baikal in Siberia contains nearly one-fifth of the world's fresh water. It has warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius in just over 60 years. The Tibetan Plateau has warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius in 50 years and Alaska by about the same amount in a similar time period according to independent records and research of the China Meteorological Administration and Alaska Climate Research Center, respectively. A significant portion of the Earth's surface in polar and high-altitude areas has already surpassed the two degree Celsius threshold of temperature increase since the 1800's. The Met Centre weather office in UK has reported loss of snow cover of 5% over a 20 year period, that's in less than a generation. If we don't get our act together soon, northern climates in Russia, Canada, United States, Scandinavia and more will rise by the end of this century by something like eight degrees Celsius relative to pre-Industrial times. The consequences of this in producing further releases of greenhouse gases are very likely, virtually-unavoidably, to become staggering as ice, snow, hydrates and permafrost soil and frozen layers with high organic content melt, absorbing more and more heat and releasing more and more methane and carbon dioxide.

Moreover, there is considerable evidence of reduced day-night temperature variations in many parts of the world which may be causing autumn leaves to lose their brilliant orange, red, yellow and burgundy colors. Soot coated with sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, nitrogen dioxide and the like causes a brownish-colored, visibility-reducing haze in the atmosphere that reflects sunlight and reduces overnight cooling of air masses beneath it. Besides black carbon particulates there is the dark junk of carbon-rich oil droplets, jet and diesel fuel combustion particulates, tire, wood and dung combustion residues and metal particles, too. Coalesced around these various aerosols may be invisible greenhouse gases. All this pollution affects formation of clouds and hinders or lessens the chances of rainfall. When the rains finally do come, it occurs increasingly in the modality of a torrential downpour. Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon results in the swamping of storm sewer systems and greater incidence of severe flash flooding events. Flash floods are well-known to be associated with mayhem including spread of sewage and industrial waste, loss of potable water, destruction of crops, proliferation of bacteria and viruses, loss of property or lives and various other disruptions and tragic consequences. Ecological survivability is decidedly a cross-border paradigm. There is no political boundary associated with it. What we are left with is political posturing, risks and policy formulation.

We are now at about 394 parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere of carbon dioxide at the far north Svalbard station of Norway although Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii reported 387 ppm in January, 2009 so there is some spatial variation in readings. This is an appalling number considering that until the Industrial Revolution started in the 1800's the concentration in the air of one greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, was generally below 284 ppm. This latter level is believed to have been the highest level of carbon dioxide for at least 650,000 years and our primordial Earth had levels that have already been found to be as low as 175 ppm.

Of course, there are many other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. When we include ones like methane, nitrous oxide, tropospheric ozone and hydrofluorocarbons we are well over 400 ppm carbon dioxide- equivalent in the current concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Some reliable sources put the current concentration of all heat-trapping gases in the air at 420 ppm CO2 equivalent but it could well be even higher. We have seen 460 ppm equivalent cited, too. Concentrations of methane are now at about 1800 parts per billion in the atmosphere, a level more than double the amount present for at least 500,000 years. Over the past generation alone, methane concentration in the atmosphere has risen by 10%. A given molecule of methane may only last about half a generation in the air, unfortunately, spread over a generation its heat-trapping potential is 60 to 70 times greater than carbon dioxide. We further have reactive nitrogen compounds to contend with. Some scientists are warning their impact is similarly-devastating. Furthermore, the high concentrations of carbon dioxide or methane and certain nitrogen compounds are being implicated in formation of oceanic dead zones.

We oppose the ceiling for carbon dioxide of 455 ppm cited by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being too lax. This is a level whereupon coastal cities around the global would be at severe risk of being inundated. Unfortunately, something like one-third of humanity currently live less than 10 meters above yesterday's mean sea level. Moreover, oceans would be too acidic for most coral reefs at 450 ppm CO2. Based on the opinion of Britain's former chief scientific advisor, a level of 450 ppm of carbon dioxide results in odds of about four to one that we will have a temperature rise of four degrees Celsius by 2050. We would add to that a 50% probability of a three degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial levels. Of course, we still have the other greenhouse gases to worry about too not to mention pollution generally. Other pollutants may well be shown to contribute to global warming or some other aberration of climate such as the frequency or duration of drought or heat waves, the intensity of storms or to affect cloud formation or ocean current circulation.

350 ppm of carbon dioxide is a much more realistic level to be at if we want to ensure our planet is inhabitable for succeeding generations. Coral reefs almost-certainly will be beyond hope of recovery, indeed will be in-line for continued degradation unless we get back to somewhere approaching the 350 ppm level. Estimates are that one-third of coral reefs will be dead and gone within a generation in tandem with capitulation of various species of plankton and shellfish. About one-sixth of coral reefs have been destroyed already as ocean acidity ratchets up and coral-bleaching spreads.

Furthermore, we do not know the level at which polar ice sheets may break down and collapse but we do have evidence that if we go beyond that tipping point level for too long it may be too late because belatedly cutting back to 350 ppm thereafter may not save very much of those precious frozen fresh water masses.

We are wondering how with less than seven billion people on the earth now generating waste-streams, what about the 35% to 40% increase in emissions by 2050 as a result solely of the population explosion, ceteris paribus, when the global population is said by demographers to likely approach nine to 9.5 billion people? This means for example that if you cut back pollution by 50% by 2050, the average polluting individual "point source" will have to cut back by much more than 50% to achieve the overall 50% reduction. According to our simple calculation, all else being equal, it would be effectively a 70% cutback on a per capita basis that is needed. If by 2050 say, this ole' Earth can only handle 20 billion tonnes or so per year more greenhouse gases to avoid high fever, we are looking at only two tonnes per year per person on a planet with 10 billion souls. Or is five billion people more realistic? This is why we think it's far easier to start now reducing population growth in many jurisdictions or we'll be having to face a severely-reduced quality of life for the huddled masses. Our Earth and ecosystems react to absolute quantities not to a relative measure calculated on a per capita basis. Worse, as deglaciation, deforestation and desertification increase, the absolute quantities of various pollutants the Earth can successfully grapple with and assimilate is apt to decrease. This means the ecological survivability of our Earth in aggregate will be such that a sharply-lower number of people can be supported than the four and a half billion or so that once were able to live in a state of quasi-sustainable equilibrium with the planet. We have seen estimates by authoritative people that this life support figure could ultimately dip as low as one billion people who can survive and prosper on Earth. It is not said to be most likely but it is conceivable.

Interpretations of recent NASA satellite data reveal that global sea levels are rising 50% faster than was the case only 15 years ago. Global warming increases the rate of organic decay and ice melt thereby increasing the albedo or darker surface area which is then expected to result in enhanced warming. To the extent that sea ice melts and thins and coniferous boreal forests spread north into tundra regions, the associated increase in dark matter and water much darker than snow and ice reduces the reflectivity of sunlight at the earth's surface relative to what it was previously thereby accelerating the warming process. Dust, soot and other particulates from pollution around the world may end up settling on ice and snowpack, darkening the surface area further. Water temperature anomalies of as much as seven degrees Celsius have been recorded in the Beaufort Sea near Alaska and air temperature anomalies of five degrees Celsius above the Eastern Siberian Shelf. Spring melting in the Beaufort Sea area of the western Arctic has been found to be occurring some two weeks earlier in recent times than it did merely a generation ago.And we are still not through facing up to the full magnitude of potential or likely temperature increases. Alarmingly, a five or six degree Celsius temperature increase has already occurred on average in midwinter in the Antarctic Peninsula. Rain is becoming more frequent here which further contributes to lubricating, refreezing, cracking, heaving, bursting and calving of ice and, of course, to enhanced melting. The average time per year the ocean has ice proximal to the peninsula has dropped by a full three months over a generation. Across the greater expanse of West Antarctica the average temperature has risen by more than half a degree Celsius in less than two generations. In less than a generation, at least six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed and disappeared. Remember what you were doing in 2000? Seems like the blink of an eye ago and it most certainly is when talking about geologic time intervals. Nevertheless, in that brief time span, the outlook for "m" amount of melting to occur on Pine Island of West Antarctica is for that melting to occur not over more than half a millennium as was thought in 2000 but rather in less than a century. This revision involves not a factor of six, not two. 

What's more, as ice calving and ice tongue melting occurs at greater scale due to warming water and air above and below the ice mass, there may be less frictional resistance and inertia to follow-on cracking and conveyor of huge hunks of ice shelves seaward. Even the bluest ice, that which survived centuries intact, may now be seen crashing into the Arctic Ocean and melting away in the saltwater in less time than a fortnight. The impact from collapsing ice sheets can be so powerful it sometimes constitutes a newly-recognized type of earthquake epicenter. Less than a generation ago, most earth scientists would have balked at the thought of seeing glaciers move with the naked eye. Nowadays, its undeniable that it is happening in some places. The creepiest part may be what we cannot see, that which is taking place at the base of ice flows. Unfortunately in Antarctica, we already have news about this gleaned from satellite data analysis of glacial lakes beneath land-based ice sheets. The problem is that the extent of melting ice can be detected but exactly where the meltwater is going sometimes cannot be. This prompts the worry that perhaps it is accumulating as a lubricative layer of great areal extent at the base of ice masses. Such a phenomenon, if it is occurring, would increase the likelihood of huge volumes of ice creeping, in effect sliding slowly, into the ocean and eventually melting there resulting in a substantial further rise in global sea level.

If you like rolls of the dice, it's now said there is already a 50% chance, that is, half a certainty that the Greenland ice sheet will melt in its entirety, an event that over many decades would result in worldwide sea level rise of about seven meters. Warming of a cumulative 1.9 degrees Celsius could conceivably trigger meltdown of all Greenland's ice irretrievably. It has been thousands of years since the massive Ilulissat glacier of Greenland has been as small as it is now and there are already far-reaching changes taking place in Greenland as a result of global warming. It is known that melting in 2008 was three times greater than what occurred during 2007. Scientists also point out that the surface area in Greenland undergoing melting has increased by more than half in less than a decade. Beyond gainsay regarding the fate of Greenland, many scientists have cited a five meter rise of global sea level being entirely-possible sometime this century, although magnitudes up to perhaps-half that amount are still considered to be the mainstream of expert opinion and advice.

Arctic sea ice has disappeared by one-third in a generation or so. Moreover, the remaining ice has become noticeably thinner, weaker and greasier in its luster. Dark specks of various pollutants are evident. The Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat has said that if Norway's average temperature in 2008 is merely as warm as the prior year, that conceivably could be enough to melt the Arctic ice cap in the summer of 2008 but it did not happen that year. British scientists said Arctic ice was melting even during the winter of 2008. Arctic Ocean temperatures were reported for October, 2008 to be as much as five Celsius degrees warmer than the norm. The cause of melting could well be an increase in temperature of water below the ice. Ice that did form during winter of 2008 was weak and thin thereby setting up the Arctic potentially for some very sorry follow-on summers of colossal melting. Reports are that three-quarters of Arctic ice is thin, seasonal ice whereas a generation ago less than half of it melted and refroze each year. Some researchers claim it to be about 75% probable the north pole will be sea-ice free some time before 2020. In other words, the cumulative probability of this sorry melting event happening is 0.75 by 2020 (a probability value of 1.00 would imply the occurrence of that event is certain). Apparently, most scientists studying the problem believe the time frame for melting of virtually all northern sea ice is most likely to be about a generation from now. When and if Arctic sea ice does melt, it will be the first time this occurred in at least 100,000 years. If it happens, the Arctic Ocean is expected to continue being free of ice every summer thereafter.

Worldwide, the rate of melting of alpine glaciers has more than doubled over the prior generation. Tropical glaciers on several continents including the Andes in South America and Ruwenzori in southern Africa may be gone completely in less than a generation, perhaps in as little as 15 years. Glacier melting ongoing in Central Asia and, in particular, across the Himalayas, will at some point result in disastrous debris falls, mudslides, flooding then follow-on drought and consequently, reduced crop yields. Snowpack of large areas of the Himalayas has been lost at an average rate of about 1% per year for a generation now. Himalayan glaciers are retreating at a pace of 10 to 20 meters per year from Kashmir to Tibet. Most rivers have had the volume of flow reduced by about half in less time than it takes for a child to wait to see his or her grandchildren. Run-off from Himalayan glaciers feeds most of the water for nine major rivers in the region including the Ganges, Indus, Sianyan, Muntushun, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. Conceivably, this ice could all be melted before 2049, though it is more likely to occur sometime during the latter half of this century. In Bhutan, many glaciers now recede at a rate of 30 to 35 meters per year. Sounds to us like a recipe for epic chaos and misery given the staggering number of people in Indochina alone who could be victimized by such phenomena.

Towering temperate climate mountain ranges including the Alps, Rockies and Pyrenees are said to be in-line to lose most awe-inspiring snow and ice caps before mid-century. Before 2100, more than half Alps glaciers are expected to no longer exist implying loss of about one-quarter of the current fresh water supply in Europe. Records and data regarding Glacier National Park in USA show that as many as seven of every eight glaciers that existed in pre-industrial times there are history today. Kaput, gone. The worst part of all this glacial melting is the stark realization that a retreat of glaciers and snowpack around this Earth generally constitutes unequivocal, physical evidence and independent proof that global warming is upon us. All that polar and terrestrial ice is our stored fresh water supply; all alpine glacier and snowpack melt-water that ends up in the ocean becomes part of our salt water supply (guess which one we like to drink).

Watch that ice cube in your water while casting an eye on your timepiece. Melting ice cubes and glaciers are not linear processes through time of volume, thickness nor linear extent. Rather, conversion of solid to liquid typically begins relatively-slowly during every seasonal glacier-melting episode. As time goes by, ice bonds and the lattice progressively weaken. Net phase changes of H2O increase in aging, pollution-gray glaciers with rise in average ambient global temperature, a phenomenon that is particularly acute in polar and high-altitude regions today. Old ice that melts in any given year is generally not being replaced by an equal or greater amount of new ice. Nor are weakened glaciers restrengthened back to the condition of one year prior. Ask any civil engineer about this. So every year old ice weakens further and more net melting occurs. Both phenomena are the consequence of global warming that is upon us. We believe pretty well any solid state physicist will concur with us that the extent of glacier ice melting and phase change of H2O generally are nonlinear functions of time today in our natural world. Pass along data from 2009 regarding melting, including a startling 1% to 2% or more net loss in the overall thickness of many glaciers, and ask the physicist how long the remaining mass is likely to last. The answer of "another three and a half centuries" sounds very much like a fairy tale to us.

These observations are decidedly not welcome news but we believe it is far better and more responsible to be aware and ready to face it than to be a cavalier, ecological risk-taker angling and arguing for others to share in the inevitable consequences of their risky behaviors. Capitalism and markets never intended there to be schemes to develop such as they have whereby profit-taking is privatized to shareholders whilst material risks associated with the project producing the profit are socialized. Also, various commercial interests fail to disclose the true nature of the risks their investors and financiers may unwittingly and regretfully find themselves party to. This appears to us to have occurred with many pollution-generating activities and has culminated in the proliferation of various ecological risks that society generally has to deal with now and buck-up for. In some cases, the private interest responsible no longer exists in a legal sense so it becomes a cost to society by default because there is no entity to pursue to perform the reclamation or at least attempt to recover the expenses involved.

Additional information has become public recently that wave height, at least in the Pacific Ocean, has been increasing progressively over the past generation. But we do not know why yet. Waves are now nearly one-half meter higher than they once were and coastal erosion and flooding has increased accordingly. Clearly, storm and tidal surge events will not be as romantic in future as they once were.

So we still have rising greenhouse gases overall on Earth. Couple that with the observation that historically we have relied on the land and water to absorb about half of those emissions naturally, the other half destined to remain in the atmosphere for great lengths of time. Many generations may pass and our current emissions may still be in the air we breathe. Trouble is, now we realize that not only have about half the world's rainforests been decimated over time but now apparently the capacity of marine water to absorb carbon dioxide has been reduced by about half as well. Feeling nauseous from factors of two not going in your favor? Here's another one: Following careful longitudinal study involving all kinds of trees spanning western North America, the rate of capitulation has been found to be double the norm. The phenomenon is being attributed to global warming and the extended, locked-down drought it appears to be causing. Still standing? Here's another: Global demand for energy is expected to double in a generation driven by booming population growth, increased urbanization and consumption.

Some scientists have cited a possible six centigrade degree rise globally by about 2050 if the capacity of oceans, flora and the atmosphere to absorb and utilize carbon dioxide diminishes over time because much more greenhouse gas could remain in the atmosphere or be expelled from the ocean back into the air. Extra heat in the water is likewise released back into the atmosphere. It is now known that as the temperature of marine water increases, its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide diminishes. For example, this may contribute to disruption of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation. There are already results from EU-sponsored research on the North Atlantic showing that in as little as 13 years, the earth's ability to utilize atmospheric carbon dioxide in that area has been reduced by one-eighth overall due to reduced capacity of this ocean water to uptake carbon dioxide by a factor of about one half. Likewise, recent results from Sea of Japan showed that uptake of carbon dioxide this millennium so far was only one-half that of a comparable time frame during the 1990's. The cause for that phenomenon was judged to be less vertical ventilation, mixing and overturning circulation in the sea. If this vital fluid dynamics were to slow, the amount of heat and carbon the water could absorb from our atmosphere would diminish.

As the acidity of oceans increases shell-forming organisms have difficulty in the changing milieu and sequester less carbon from the water into their shells. Additionally, as nitrogen and nitrate concentrations increase in marine water, there is less ability of organisms and the physical environment to utilize it. This may lead to more algal blooms and marine dead zones. As global warming builds momentum, we can expect less interchange of layers of the ocean. Ocean currents deliver less oxygen and carbon dioxide to greater depths and the absorption capacity for ever-more carbon dioxide to come out of the atmosphere and into near surface water is thereby constrained. Gross concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by some 5% overall in the past 50 years or so. We interpret all this as a dire warning that we are functioning in an unsustainable mode. Any time, the carbon cycle could start to break down incrementally.  

Further, we have a selection of "wild cards", so-called because the effects associated with these phenomena are apt to be potentially very significant and can occur rather abruptly. However, there is currently large uncertainty associated with forecasts of the processes involved. For example, we have a peat lands wild card to contend with. This threat is illustrated well by recent findings from the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology. They report that a four degree Celsius rise in average temperature proximal to peat lands would drive the release of anywhere from about 40% to 85% of the existing, vast carbon content of peat, the expected percentage amount being dependent on the depth of burial of the peat below the surface.  

Another wild card is large-scale deep melting of northern tundra, frozen soil permafrost areas, crystallized methane in soil, and/or methane clathrates, icy hydrate nodules beneath the ocean floor containing frozen methane gas. Plateau areas such as the Tibetan Plateau also may contain vast quantities of combustible ice, methane in an icy hydrate state. A global warming-induced melting event or regional temperature increase may result in possibly-gargantuan releases of methane and carbon dioxide greenhouse gas into the atmosphere where it would then be available to trap heat and contribute to further incremental global temperature rise. Recent thorough research across the Arctic has determined the permafrost soil there contains about twice as much organic remains, microbes and potential climate-warming gases as heretofore had been recognized. According to geophysical research from the University of Alaska, the upper three meters of permafrost store nearly two trillion tonnes of carbon, more than double the amount in our atmosphere today. As much as one-half of that is said to be within one to 1.5 degrees Celsius of wholesale thawing. Their estimate is that if only 1% of permafrost carbon were to be released each year that much alone could double the current worldwide amount of carbon emissions. After a decade of such releases, other research estimates that scenario would result in another 80 ppm worth of carbon dioxide-equivalent escaping into the atmosphere causing perhaps another 0.7 degree Celsius average warming of our planet. In addition, as temperature increases overall, more permafrost oscillates with increasing frequency between a frozen and partially-thawed or melted state. Unfortunately, due to the legacy of agricultural chemical residues present in a lot of ice, the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide is also released in the process. 

Methane levels more than 100 times greater than background levels of methane have been measured over hundreds of square kilometers in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. Places have been found where ten times as much permafrost has melted in less than a generation than occurred there over the prior 1000 years. As ambient temperature has risen historically, the depth at which methane hydrate nodules and plumes become unstable and  melt thereby releasing methane into the ocean has been changing. The level at which such phase changes occur has been descending ever-deeper into the Earth at a rate of about one extra meter downwards per year for at least a generation. The implications here may be far-reaching because the volume of methane-laden hydrates that may potentially-dissolve further acidifying our oceans and adding more heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere is ratcheting ever-upwards as time goes by. Some scientists that study ice ages over geologic time claim that melting methane hydrates are the leading suspects for, or were the primary cause of, climate warming, retreat of glaciers and loss of fresh water stores that affected ancient environments.

Increases in methane may also be attributed to deep-sea viral activity. It appears that as we continue with our wanton polluting, we are upsetting the biochemical balance in the oceans and one major consequence is that bacteria are proliferating at the expense of oxygen-producing phytoplankton. As bacteria breaks down an organic compound called methylphosphonates, water is becoming supersaturated with methane such that methane concentration eventually becomes greater in the surface water than the air. This concentration gradient ensures that more methane will escape into the atmosphere than otherwise would be the case. We can ill-afford this happening as methane is already the number two greenhouse gas with an overall impact on global warming already about one-third that of carbon dioxide. Moreover, it persists longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

There have been reports of methane releases from the Arctic Ocean into the atmosphere possibly as a result of warming of the water. The methane may be originating from heretofore frozen hydrates at or near the ocean floor that are starting to melt and form methane gas chimneys piping up from below. But also, as once-frozen organic matter is increasingly set free and washed away by melt water, it tends to end up on the ocean floor. There, microbes feed on it in an anaerobic process that generates carbon dioxide and methane. The extent to which methanotroph or methane-metabolizing bacteria could slow submarine methane releases in polar regions is not well understood. Also largely-unknown is relying on ocean water density gradients to block or deflect the rise of large amounts of methane from near the ocean floor from possibly reaching the surface and bubbling out of solution into the atmosphere. 

Further, we also have a kind of background level of methane gas from decayed organic matter that comes into the air due to soil degradation generally. Release of more greenhouse gases on a lagged basis, perhaps up to a decade, occurs from many soil types in the vicinity of prior deforested areas. There are also now reports from scientists who connect the two prior phenomenon together. The reasoning is that the reduced albedo or reflectivity of sunlight in the northern polar region warms the ocean more than previously had been the case. Then, with the onset of seasonally cooler temperatures, due to the temperature gradient the extra heat rises out of the water. This unusually warm mass of air may end up far inland and conceivably it may enhance the amount of methane gas released from permafrost areas. So there is a kind of natural, positive feedback loop established resulting in ever-higher levels of heat-trapping emissions.

There are several other follow-on or higher order effects from global warming and increased pollution. Any phenomenon that may very well cause amplification of global warming are decidedly not good news. Some of those effects may be partly behavioral as people react to various weather-induced calamities. For example, where drought persists, more land may be cleared or burned in an attempt to compensate for the loss of productivity of other parched lands. Oilsands tailings ponds wastewater leaks into the surrounding area poisoning fish and stunting the growth of vegetation. This reduces the capacity of the boreal forest to act as a carbon sink further beyond that associated with extensive felling of trees to strip-mine for raw bitumen. Peat bog wetlands destroyed during strip-mining have never been restored and the outlook for being able to do so in future is all but nonexistent because we do not have tens of thousands of years to wait for proxy wetlands to form.

Any trend higher in global temperature has many ramifications including increased drying of forests, peat lands, croplands and grazing areas, increased tendency for desertification to advance and increased humidity in the air from evaporation arising from incremental warming. The incidence of wildfires will increase as average ambient temperature rises causing a further outgushing of emissions and possibly fire-retardant chemicals containing bromine or chlorine. This phenomenon is already clearly at work in boreal forest regions. Rampaging bushfires in Australia, California and elsewhere spook many people. As well, any combustion of wood causes outsize emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, various smog-forming nitrogen oxides and dreadful microparticulate matter. The Massachusetts Medical Society considers wood biomass burning for energy to be an unacceptable risk to public health.

The potential drying out of some Amazon Rainforest is characterized as a serious, potential wild card that we do not want to tip into. Some say the heat-trapping properties of water vapor in the stratosphere could effectively deliver a double-whammy of global heating relative to the effect on temperature from greenhouse gases assuming no additional moisture in the atmosphere. Increases in temperature increase evaporation from soil moisture and water bodies and evapo-transpiration from vegetation which then is available to trap more heat. This tendency is offset to some extent if it rains back down or if increased cloud cover reflects more incoming infrared radiation back toward the sun.

Another freaky wild-card scenario is if large quantities of soot and sulfates that have accumulated in the upper atmosphere at stratospheric heights, mostly from burning fossil fuels, were to be reduced, clear or be cleaned away somehow. If that transpired, scientists say, based on presently-observed concentrations of black carbon and sulfates there, thermometers could rise by about another 0.9 degrees Celsius. The effect on temperature of the long term recovery of the ozone hole above Antarctica is quite uncertain presently but very well could augment warming. All this tells us that on the climate change front we are in a deeper "hole" than we thought before recognition of these phenomenon. We believe we have to face up to it because getting rid of these mostly man-made aerosol pollutants to curtail acid rain and for other prudent reasons is advisable. We have to treat the underlying disease (too much pollution) not the symptoms (a secondary effect or aggravating factor arising from pollutants the presence of which happens to result in an incremental decrease in global temperature).

Unfortunately, especially troubling is the proliferation of dark-colored soot deposited over the ages on snowpack and ice causing more and more sunlight to be absorbed as opposed to being reflected. Black carbon and foreign pollutants of various kinds that have been deposited in ice over the years are invariably darker than the host ice meaning more heat is retained in that ice than otherwise would be the case so the ice is more likely to melt. Paradoxically, black carbon tends to augment or concentrate heat locally even if its coated with sulfate. So if that gunk were cleared from the lower troposphere around the world, that is, in the air nearest the surface of the Earth, that may, depending on the particle density of aerosols, proximity to the Earth's surface and other factors, actually reduce global warming in the short term. Needless to say, we are for getting rid of soot and atmospheric brown clouds in their entirety regardless of the climate consequences. It's better to confront this aspect of our vast pollution problems squarely and forthwith and grab the wholesale health benefits of ridding as much particulate matter as we can.

We understand its only the troposhere, not the stratosphere that has so far been implicated in global warming. Obviously this leads credence to the view that variation in activity of the sun is not the primary cause of global warming as some stock portfolio-value change deniers, excuse us, climate-change deniers claim.

Now, setting aside the potential contributions arising from any of these wildcards, let's add up the global average temperature rise increments again. On a preliminary basis at least, we now want to take stock of the situation even if it is done grossly on the back of an envelope using basic probability concepts. Finished? Do you think that number is now enough of a warning to give us all pause? Prominent US researchers have recently reported greater than 90% likelihood by 2100 that low temperatures in tropical and subtropical areas then will be hotter than high temperatures of the past 15 years or so. This is decidedly not good news for agricultural productivity. Across Southeast Asia people are already smarting from the possibility that crop yields of rice paddies will diminish by 50% or so perhaps as soon as 2020 due primarily to climate change, in particular, to increase in ambient temperature.

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