It's time for a mass-ecophiny, or else Guy McPherson will be proven right.

Guy McPherson is a Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, and is the leading proponent of Near Term Human Extinction.

For those of you who have not heard of Near Term Extinction hold on tight. It's grim.

According to the theory, we humans have already forced the climate beyond the tipping points, and nothing can be done to prevent abrupt global warming with the result that humans and most of Earth's life will be swept away in a mass extinction event sometime soon.

And by sometime soon, we're talking 2030. All dead, 14 years from now.

The RT interview linked below is a good primer. Of note, the journalist is Tom Hartmann, author of the 2004 book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, in which he warns of similar things.

According to McPherson, the reason that humans will be extinct by 2030 is because the Arctic has warmed. Formerly frozen ground (formerfrost) is releasing huge volumes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The gas is also being released from clathrates - a type of methane-rich ice - found in the Arctic ocean. To use the terminology, the Clathrate Gun has been fired, and this is leading to a voluminous burp of planet-cooking gas.

As the methane is released, the region gets hotter and more methane is released. This positive feedback loop will take the planet to 3, 4, 5, 6 degrees Celsius above baseline within just a few years, according to McPherson. He says that catastrophic abrupt climate change is upon us, and nothing can be done to prevent it. We are all going to die.

He is not alone in his concerns. The image below links to a video of scientists talking about the Arctic Methane Emergency at the UN Climate talks in Lima, 2014. Of note, they say that the UN's official climate science reports are always four years out of date because of the publishing rules. This goes some way to explain why this Arctic methane concern has yet to become mainstream.

If McPherson is right, then 7.3 billion humans will perish in the next fifteen years. Averaged out, that's a death rate of 500 million people a year, or ten times more death than the whole of WWII, every year. The deaths will come from massive heatwaves, monster storms, lightning-strikes, and the falling apart of society, law and order breakdown, and war.

A handful of survivors might get by in post-apocalyptic type of existence (think the movie The Road). However, once the systems of the modern technological state start to crumble, the world's 440 nuclear power stations won't get maintained, the water will evaporate from the cooling ponds, the spent fuel rods will meltdown, and this will cause the irradiation of the Earth's surface.

According to Guy McPherson, the end is nigh. When asked if he has any sage advice for people who might find his prognostication troubling, he says, "Be decent with each other."

Thanks Guy.

Now, I don't know whether McPherson is right, or not. I hope not. But, I do believe that irreversible climate change tipping points do exist, and that we are close to them. Very close.

We are out of time. It is time for action now. This moment is the inflection point. It's time for a mass-ECOPHINY to help change global consciousness.

An ecophiny is an ecological epiphany, an epiphany about our role in the global ecosystem. An ecophiny is a wake up call, a realization that environmentally responsible behavior is a form of enlightened self-interest. An ecophiny sets us in motion to become a cause in the achievement of the Long Future.

It starts today. But where does it start? There is so much work to be done. There are different starting points for all of us.

One good starting point would be to halt the $5.3 trillion dollars that we annually gift to the fossil fuel industry. Instead, that money could be used for a massive roll out of energy efficiency, renewable energy, mass tree planting, and soil carbon enhancement in order to pull the heat out of the Near Term Human Extinction monster that stalks us.

The time to act is now. The Guy Lane route offers an ecophiny and a pathway to the Long Future. Either that, or you get the other Guy.

Guy Lane - 11 July 2016

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