Stopping The Coming Ice Age by Larry Ephron & Andy Caffrey

This was probably the first time I actually worked on a project to fight the climate crisis. After leaving The Nature Company in 1986 I moved into a flat in Kensington with Larry Ephron, one of a handful of people I knew in the San Francisco Bay Area who were proponents of what was called the Hamaker Theory. John D. Hamaker, a mechanical engineer and agronomist, and Donald Weaver, who I knew in the Bay Area had published the only book on the theory, The Survival of Civilization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker

In short, the theory is that during interglacial periods, over thousands of years, the earth's soils get depleted of minerals, the plants become less robust and weaker at absorbing carbon dioxide and so carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. It causes more water in the equatorial belt to evaporate and move to the poles where it accumulates as snow. This snow causes the ice caps to advance and a new 100,000 year glacial period begins. During that glacial period, all of that mile-thick glacial ice grinds more rock into dust, so that when the glaciers retreat and the plants recolonize, they have wonderful new soil and can suck down the CO2.

Larry had just begun researching a book and video project to popularize the messages of the Hamaker/Weaver book. He hired me to help him with both. I was his research assistant and he frequently sent me off to the UC Berkeley libraries to do research. And he used a few of the photographs of the Sierras that I shot in my teens while on backpacking trips with the Boy Scouts.

Because the Oakland firestorm destroyed all of my 30,000 slides and negatives, this video is the only surviving copy of those photos!

His book is called The End.

Currently my dear friend and mentor Alden Bryant and the Earth Regeneration Society in Berkeley are the most prominent advocates for this climate and restoration cause. They join me in calling for a crash program to reduce our CO2 levels to 280 ppm (pre-industrial era level) as fast as possible.

http://www.earthregenerationsociety.org/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• global warming
• climate crisis
• greenhouse effect
• ice age
• carbon dioxide
• Larry Ephron
• Andy Caffrey
• Earth Regeneration Society
• Don Weaver
• rock dust
• Ecotopia

[d3ltadrive]

It's a very warm winter this year. Don't get too comfortable. This is the calm before the storm, the temperature is going to drop off the charts in the coming years.

[wagouche]

Great documentary

[Canadian1958Cougar]

This should be shown in all schools at all levels.