Stephen Hawking

[sidecross]

Prophet of Doomsday: Stephen Hawking, Eco-Warrior

Published on Sunday, January 21, 2007 by the lndependent/UK

In a world that is in chaos, politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?' So asked the most famous scientist on the planet, the newest recruit to the mission to save the Earth.

by Geoffrey Lean

It is the question most troubling the most famous brainbox on the planet and - as one of the world's least likely, but most successful, communicators - he chose a suitably hi-tech way of posing it. "In a world that is in chaos, politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" asked Professor Stephen Hawking on the internet site Yahoo! last summer.

An astonishing 25,000 browsers rushed to give him their answers - ranging from "We won't" to "Somehow we will", and proposing solutions from banning nuclear weapons and tackling global warming to escaping into space. The Cambridge professor, who has been said to sell physics better than Madonna can sell sex, seems to agree with many of them.

In a few weeks, Britain's longest-surviving sufferer from motor neurone disease will meet the almost equally high-profile Sir Richard Branson to discuss how his giant brain and broken body, complete with wheelchair and voice synthesiser, are to be accommodated on the first space flight of the tycoon's Virgin Galactic service next year. It is to be a dramatic demonstration of Professor Hawking's controversial conviction that humanity will have to "spread out into space for the survival of the species".

Last week, ahead of his putative trip into orbit, he joined his old schoolfriend and colleague, the Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, to sound one of the starkest alarms yet of the dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change. At the Royal Society, of which Sir Martin is president, they formally moved the hands of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' clock to five minutes to midnight - midnight being the figurative end of civilisation.

Over the past 60 years - since it was instituted in the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the clock has been changed 18 times in response to the nuclear threat (it was closest to midnight, two minutes, in 1953 after Russia and the US tested weapons; furthest, at 17 minutes, after the signing of the 1991 nuclear arms treaty). But this movement, closer to the hour of doom by two minutes, takes into account climate change, for the first time.

In a necessarily terse statement - he has to pre-prepare each one by laboriously selecting words from a computer screen, building up a passage, and then sending it to his voice synthesiser - Professor Hawking starkly spelt out the twin threats.

"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth," he said. "As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge, and to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day. We foresee great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

It was an important moment in the growing campaign for urgent action to control the heating of the planet - like Sir Richard Branson's conversion to the cause, reported in The Independent on Sunday last September, and Sir David Attenborough's belated decision to throw his weight behind it last May.

It was not the first time Professor Hawking has voiced his concern; he has a good record on climate change, stretching back a decade. But it was the most public and most dramatic, and its timing - just as political pressure for action is reaching a new peak - will greatly magnify its effect.

Stephen William Hawking has had an extraordinary life. He was born in Oxford on 8 January 1942, 300 years to the day from the death of Galileo. He was raised in a somewhat bohemian household in St Albans, the son of a researcher in tropical medicine so that, he says, "I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be". Holidays were spent in a Gypsy caravan.

Always a clumsy, ill-coordinated child - with a lisp and terrible handwriting - he was persecuted as a swot at his minor public school, St Albans. (He revisited it for "a very enjoyable day" last year). He came into his own when he got to University College Oxford. He gained a first in physics at the age of 20, and then moved to Cambridge to study cosmology.

But life was waiting just around the corner with a cosh. His lisp became a slur. He began moving awkwardly, staggering and stumbling. At just 21 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) a motor neurone disease of unknown cause. Doctors gave him about two years to live.

It was doubly cruel, as he was already making a noticeable mark. Just a year after his diagnosis, he attended a lecture at the Royal Society by Sir Fred Hoyle, a bombastic figure who was then one of Britain's cult scientists. When the great man asked for questions, the 22-year-old Hawking coolly told him that his calculations were wrong.

"Would you like to tell us how you know this, young man?" asked Sir Fred, with heavy sarcasm. "Because I worked it out," said the young Hawking. And he had.

Despite the progression of his disease, he continued his work. He describes it as "a condition in which the nerves controlling muscles die off, but the sensory nerves continue as before. It is not supposed to affect intelligence, but maybe I am too far gone to notice.

"Had I chosen any other career, my ALS would have ended it. But theoretical physics is all in the mind, so I was able to carry on. I can't say that my disability has helped my work, but it has allowed me to concentrate on research without having to lecture or sit on boring committees."

He found that, contrary to scientific orthodoxy, some radiation escaped from black holes (discovering something new, he says, "is the most wonderful feeling in the world, like sex but it lasts longer"), and at 37 was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (Sir Isaac Newton was a predecessor).

But six years later he lost his voice after a bout of pneumonia that almost killed him. Doctors saved him with a tracheotomy, an operation that allows you to breathe through your neck, but bypasses your voice box. At first he could only communicate by raising his eyebrows when someone pointed to letters on an alphabet card. Now his computer and synthesiser allow him to articulate about 15 words a minute, about a tenth as much as in normal speech.

Does he get angry about it? "He takes the view that that is a luxury he cannot afford," says his friend and assistant Judith Crowsdale. She describes a remarkably busy, uninhibited life of constant activity, including much foreign travel.

He left his wife of more than 20 years - who had supported him through his growing disability, and brought up his children - for one of his nurses, who he married.

For more than three years, he went on to suffer a series of mysterious injuries - once getting severe heatstroke and sunburn after being left out in his garden in his wheelchair on the hottest day of the year. Police investigated, but he made no complaint. Ms Crowsdale says: "We are way beyond all that now."

His friends are mainly fellow academics, but he is close to Matt Groening - who featured him in an episode of The Simpsons - enjoys the company of Jim Carrey, Richard Dreyfuss and Kevin Costner, and gets on with Al Gore.

He has long been concerned about global warming, signing (with his thumbprint) an open letter to George Bush six years ago with other leading figures, protesting against the President's decision to turn against the Kyoto Protocol and urging him "to reduce US production of greenhouse gases".

And while other scientists have drawn back from spelling out the worst possible consequences of climate change - fearing being accused of sensationalism - he has been prepared to do so, repeatedly warning that global warming could run out of control so that "Earth might one day soon resemble the planet Venus", with temperatures of 250C and sulphuric-acid rain.

His authority comes as much from his courage and sheer persistence as from his scientific knowledge. He is not, after all, a climatologist and - despite the popular hype, which has compared him to Einstein and Copernicus - the planet's top physicists failed in a poll to rate him among the top practitioners of his profession

But he himself says: "I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these how and why questions. Occasionally, I find an answer."

A brief history of (the end of) time

Stephen Hawking's blockbuster 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes' has sold 25 million copies. Cynics say it is the least read best-seller since the Bible. His next book will be ambitiously called 'The Grand Design', but here are ideas for the three biggest perils that he believes threaten humanity.

Chapter 1: GM virus - the plague next time

Most of the threats we face come from the progress we have made in science and technology. Often they make natural ones worse. Take the pandemics that occasionally sweep through the world killing millions. Influenza has been the worst culprit, and if the bird flu now spreading round the world mutates it could be one of the worst plagues yet. But the release - by accident or design - of a virus, genetically modified so that people could not resist it, would be far worse.

Chapter 2: Not with a whimper, but with a bang

Nine countries have nuclear weapons, and Iran and North Korea are believed to be developing them. Terrorists seek them and there are more than enough weapons held by existing nuclear powers to destroy the planet. Some experts thinka nuclear conflict in the coming decades is inevitable.

Chapter 3: If it's not Mars, it could be Venus

Waiting until the ill-effects of global warming become obvious will be too late; action must be taken now. The warming process could run out of control, as "positive feedbacks" in the Earth's natural systems magnify it. That could lead to the planet becoming uninhabitable - turning it into a hot dead one like Venus, which has long been known to have suffered the ultimate greenhouse effect.


http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/...07/0121-04.htm

[Thom]

It's weird to see stuff I read in mainstream newspapers over breakfast turning up on the "breaking open the head" message board. This is happening quite frequently. Maybe the mainstream is catching up with the counterculture, maybe the counterculture is stuck in a rut.

But BOTH is hardly cutting edge these days.

[drew hempel]

Sidecross always posts Leftist news (commondreams, etc.)

What's left out is that Hawking called for everyone to get MICROCHIPPED so that we can better compete with machines.

Also I think his latest was that we need to colonize the moon since Earth is doomed.

hmmmm.

[Thom]

The implant and bionic man microchip thing displays a deeply disturbing contempt for the human body.

[sidecross]

Originally Posted by Thom

It's weird to see stuff I read in mainstream newspapers over breakfast turning up on the "breaking open the head" message board. This is happening quite frequently. Maybe the mainstream is catching up with the counterculture, maybe the counterculture is stuck in a rut.

But BOTH is hardly cutting edge these days.

Please post some 'cutting edge news'!

[Rob P]

......

why does it always have to be 'us and them'??

.......

yet we're all guilty of it....

.......

[nyk]

hawking? someone please give that guy a brain.

and while they are at it, a better speech synthesizer. i mean really, it
sounds like crap. i am guilty of eighties nostalgia from time to time, but
not every time i break wind.

[Thom]

Does anyone feel any different since the winter solstice?

[Damien]

Originally Posted by Thom

Does anyone feel any different since the winter solstice?

Not since the solstice but more generally since September of last year, desperation for change, revelation, gathering. etc. But also just more calm and able to flow with the patterns of life and disruptions.

[sidecross]

Although I have read and reread Stephen Hawking, I am not a big fan of all of his thinking, but when someone of his nature says it may be time to leave the planet I put this in ‘cutting edge’ thinking.

Are we so jaded that ‘cutting edge’ is mere reactionary thinking; if so fascism may be for this forum’s the new ‘cutting edge’.

[nyk]

Originally Posted by Thom

Does anyone feel any different since the winter solstice?

since the equinox - september - like damien - bigtime.

[nanouk]

Originally Posted by Thom

Does anyone feel any different since the winter solstice?

our beautiful sister Venus is glowing like a giant orb in the western just-sunset sky, and spring is nigh, of course i feel different!!!

Much Love and Respect, Welsh Brother in the West,

~N~

[nanouk]

by the way, Brother nyk, where the Hemingway is Korangar?!?

[craazyman]

yeah, I feel different. I want to stay with the silence of the solitary December woods with the low orange of twilight and the early night and Orion rising through the trees. Then the dark, dark, dark night with porchlights through the woods and the branches black against the stars. I want to stay there and rest and See. I don't like the sun setting later and rising earlier now, the light gaining seems too fast, the brightness coming soon again makes me nervous. Time the whirlpool, faster and faster. Too fast. Too fast. Pass the scotch. For God's sake it'll be July again soon and hotter than hell. Shit. I'm still in November.

[Damien]

Originally Posted by nyk

since the equinox - september - like damien - bigtime.

Its intense!!!!

[sidecross]

I must be brain dead; the only I have noticed in the San Francisco Bay Area is cold weather and very little rain.

[sidecross]

UN's vast report will end the scientific argument. Now will the world act?


Three year study by panel of experts published this week will kick off tortuous negotiations on new emissions treaty to replace Kyoto agreement in 2012

David Adam, environment correspondent

Saturday January 27, 2007

The Guardian


For the hundreds of scientists arriving in Paris this weekend, next week will mark the end of a tortuous three-year process to put everything they know about climate change down on paper. But for the politicians who must read the results, the tortuous process is only beginning. If 2006 was the year the world accepted climate change as a serious problem, then 2007 is the year that its leaders must do something about it.

Friday sees the release of a vast report on the science of global warming written by the experts of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report will contain few surprises - by definition it is based on research already published - but it will add to growing calls for action to tackle the problem.
Such a boost would come at a critical time. Negotiations on a new international agreement to significantly curb greenhouse emissions are currently stalled, but they must make progress this year for any new treaty to come into force by 2012, when the first phase of the existing Kyoto protocol expires. Analysts say any delay could be a disaster for emerging carbon markets, the preferred solution to bring down the bulk of emissions.

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, told Reuters: "I hope this report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work. So I hope this will be taken for what it's worth. There are a lot of signs and evidence in this report which clearly establish not only the fact that climate change is taking place, but also that it really is human activity that is influencing that change."

The likely contents of the report have been an open secret since the US government posted a draft on the internet in April, a move which angered some climate scientists because it seemed to breach the strict confidentiality code that surrounds the IPCC process. The US said it wanted as many people as possible to comment.

Scientists involved remain reluctant to speak about the report's conclusions until they are released, but successive drafts show they will reflect a scientific debate that has moved on from whether humans are warming the planet to what the impacts will be and what we can do about it. Even the US administration, which has repeatedly played up the uncertainties in climate science, has not quibbled with the inclusion of statements such as "human activities since 1750 have very likely (>90%) exerted a net warming influence on climate", and "further emissions of greenhouse gases would be expected to change the climate of the 21st century".

The final wording of Friday's report will be hammered out this week, but a senior author said it was unlikely to change significantly: "We'll go through it line by line so the exact wording might change between now and then, but the key messages won't," he said.

The report will say that it is "highly unlikely (<5%)" that observed warming and ice loss are due to natural factors, and that human activity will increase global temperatures, sea levels and extreme weather events in coming decades. Estimates vary depending on different emission scenarios, but they predict temperatures could increase by as much as 5.8C by 2100. The most likely emission scenario will see sea levels rise by 0.14 to 0.43 metres by 2100, but it could be more.

Crucially, the report points out that a lag in the global climate system means that average temperatures would continue to rise by 0.1C a decade even if all sources of emissions were frozen today. And it says various positive feedback effects - such as forests, oceans and soil becoming less able to absorb carbon dioxide - could contribute another 1.2C of warming by the end of the century. An unexpected surge in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels recorded since 2001 has triggered fears that such feedbacks may already be kicking in.

In some respects the final report will be more conservative than some scientists want. Some studies have suggested that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over pre-industrial levels could force temperatures up by as much as 11C, which suggests climate is much more sensitive to human interference than we thought. The IPCC report will say the most likely warming under that scenario is 3C, but it will acknowledge that much higher values cannot be ruled out.

The report raises the prospect of severe melting of Arctic ice this century and the Greenland ice sheet over the next few hundred years, but dismisses the common myth that a change in Atlantic ocean currents that drive the Gulf Stream could plunge Europe into a new ice age. Increased global warming will swamp any small cooling effects, it says. The much colder Antarctic ice sheet is predicted to grow with increased snowfall to 2100, offsetting about 0.1m of sea level rise.

Richard Betts, a climate expert at the Meteorological Office and one of about 130 senior authors of Friday's report, said: "This is the culmination of three years' work. It's the first major report since 2001 and sets up the next five years, so it will be a very important document." The senior authors, who start their final talks on Monday, have processed the work of thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of review comments.

The science report is the first of three major IPCC reports this year; similarly weighty analysis of the impact and possible solutions will follow in April and May respectively. The full triumvirate will then be given a final once-over in November, in time for key UN climate talks in Indonesia in December.

Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, says the next 12 months are a critical phase. "We can no longer afford to ignore growing and compelling warnings from the world's leading experts. Further delays in agreements at the international level are unacceptable in light of these findings. As well as national action, governments around the world should be working together to secure urgent agreement on a more effective second round of Kyoto from 2013 with the industrialised world taking on stronger emission reduction commitments."

The first round of the Kyoto protocol was never intended to make a serious dent in emissions, but rather to set up a framework under which more stringent cuts could be made. For that to happen, a successor needs to be signed in the next two or three years. Existing mechanisms set up under Kyoto, such as the European emissions trading scheme, only run to 2012 and a new treaty would probably need to be in place for them to continue.

Tony Blair insists any such international agreement has to include the US - which has refused to sign up to Kyoto - as well as the key developing economies of China, India and Brazil. Despite growing calls for a change of approach at home as well as abroad, senior British officials privately say the best they can expect from the Bush administration is that it does not block the negotiations, as it has in the past.


Four scenarios Increasing risk

1: Mild impact 1C to 2C rise on pre-industrial levels

We have already experienced a temperature rise of 0.7C since 1900 and the inertia in the climate system from greenhouse gases already emitted means we will be extremely lucky to get away with a 1C or 2C rise. A 1C rise would remove small glaciers in the Andes and 2C would make dry regions much drier. Mediterranean countries, parts of southern Africa and South America would experience 20% to 30% less water availability. Up to 10 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding and 40 million to 60 million more people will be exposed to malaria in Africa.

2: Significant impact 3C rise on pre-industrial levels

In southern Europe, serious droughts occur once a decade. Between 1 billion and 4 billion people will suffer water shortages. Agricultural yields will be higher in mid-latitude countries such as Britain and the US, but there will be sharp drops in the tropics, putting 150-550 million people at risk of hunger. Between 1 million and 170 million more people will be affected by coastal flooding. One study suggests that between 20% and 50% of species will face extinction. On current trends, temperatures are predicted to rise 2C-3C by mid-century, which would result in 150-200 million climate refugees.

3: Strong impact 4C rise on pre-industrial levels

Dry regions such as the Mediterranean and southern Africa will suffer a 30% to 50% drop in water availability. Agricultural yields will fall by 15% to 35% in Africa and up to 80 million more people will be exposed to malaria. Between 7 million and 300 million more people will be exposed to coastal flooding. Half of the Arctic tundra will be lost. The west Antarctic ice sheet may collapse, leading to significant sea level rise.

4: Catastrophic impact 5C rise or above

This is equivalent to the temperature rise since the last ice age. Most Himalayan glaciers will disappear, depriving 25% of China's population and hundreds of millions of Indians of water - melt water provides 70% of the water in the Ganges, for example. Sea level rise threatens cities such as London, New York and Tokyo. Rising ocean acidity will disrupt ecosystems and fish stocks. Feedback effects such as carbon dioxide release from soils and methane from permafrost kick in.


Key dates

February 2 Release of IPCC report into science of climate change. The world's scientists will confirm the debate on the causes of global warming is over and try to predict the future

March 8-9 EU spring summit, Brussels. Crucial chance for the continent to pick up momentum on the isssue it has championed

April 6 IPCC report into climate change impact, adaptation and vulnerability. More from the science community, including just how bad things could get for people and wildlife

May 4 IPCC report on mitigating climate change. The last of the three big UN reports, which will look at how we could tackle global warming

June 5-7 G8 summit, Heilgendamm, Germany. Potential showdown with the US over its continuing resistance to even serious talks about action

December 3-14 UN climate talks, Indonesia. The big chance for world governments to show that they understand the urgency of the problem. Progress on a new agreement is critical



environment.guardian.co.uk/clim....html

[nyk]

Originally Posted by nanouk

by the way, Brother nyk, where the Hemingway is Korangar?!?

where...or izit what?

[polaroid]

Originally Posted by Damien

Not since the solstice but more generally since September of last year, desperation for change, revelation, gathering. etc. But also just more calm and able to flow with the patterns of life and disruptions.

exactly. the shame of it all is the difficulty of finding others comfortable with that desperation and subsequent calm.

[Damien]

Originally Posted by polaroid

exactly. the shame of it all is the difficulty of finding others comfortable with that desperation and subsequent calm.

*hugs* there seems to be a great movement towards the will to ignorance...as Nietzsche would say. It seems that people will only continue to turn up the volumes of their stereos as they try to ignore the impending changes that will rock their world as they know it. I fear that many will be left behind, so many already choose to evolve, this could be for the reason that they are simply now ready to move forward with the rest of the planet...including the planet itself.