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I.THOREAU’S SEARCH FOR PLACE:
From New York City (1843) to Walden Pond
III. PRESERVING THOREAU’S & OUR PLACE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE
II. “MEN OF CONCORD” N. C. WYETH’S ILLUSTRATIONS OF THOREAU’S JOUNALS
In the spring of 1843, Henry David Thoreau, 26 years old, set off for New York City to seek his place in the
city’s sparkling literary scene.
Ralph Waldo Emerson had made arrangements for Henry to live with Waldo’s brother Judge William Emerson on Staten Island to tutor son Willie.
Ralph Waldo Emerson with Brother William
From Staten Island’s natural beauty, Henry made frequent trips to Manhattan to advance his ambition of becoming a great writer.
Map of blue ferry route from Staten island to Manhattan
Thoreau met such literary figures as poet Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Henry James (father of the novelist).
Poet Walt Whitman
Thoreau met editor of the Tribune Horace Greeley
Unfortunately Henry’s nature writing was not well received in the city dedicated to money and power: He wrote to Emerson, “Literature comes to a poor market here, and even the little that I write is more than will sell.” Henry, searching for his individuality in the crowds among the city’s affluence and squalor wrote:
“The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population. When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?”
Discouraged in December 1843, Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he determined to “be humbly who you are.”
In 1845, Henry found his place and voice in the cabin he built on Walden Pond, where he completed A Week…, his first drafts of Walden, and Civil Disobedience.
Henry’s sojourn in New York provided an experience of the most hectic and temporal of cities that gave a strong impetus to his lifelong project: cultivating the garden amid the machines.
I.THOREAU’S SEARCH FOR PLACE:
From New York City (1843) to Walden Pond
III. PRESERVING THOREAU’S & OUR PLACE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE
II. “MEN OF CONCORD” N. C. WYETH’S ILLUSTRATIONS OF THOREAU’S JOUNALS
THOREAU’S CREATIVE EXAMPLE
INSPIRED N.C. WYETH’S ART
American Illustrator, Newell Convers Wyeth, grew up in Needham, MA. He studied painting with Howard Pyle and then lived in Chadds Ford, PA.
For many years he was a student and admirer of Thoreau, whose spirit became a part of him.
Henry: Herein you will find, I think, a few echoes of our remembered New England. If you do hear them, even faintly, it will please me. Affectionately, Convers
Wyeth’s cousin, my grandfather Henry Holzer, lived in Hyde Park, MA, and was President of U. Holzer Bookbinders, Inc.
Plate II.
THOREAU FISHING
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”Walden
Plate III.
The Carpenters Repairing Hubbard’s Bridge
August 17, 1851. “…their bench on the new planking …in the sun and air, with no railing to obstruct the view, I was almost ready to resolve that I would be a carpenter and work on bridges, to secure a pleasant place to work.”
Plate IV
Thoreau and Miss Mary Emerson
Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson, over whose development she exercised a strong influence.
November 13, 1851. “ … She, more surely than any other woman, gives her companion occasion to utter his best thought. In spite of her biases, she can entertain a large thought with hospitability…“
Plate VMr. Alcott visiting tomb of Dr. John Alcott in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston
August 11, 1852. “Alcott, the spiritual philosopher, is, and has been for some months, devoted to the study of his own genealogy,-he whom only the genealogy of humanity, the descent of man from God, should concern… He has visited the only bearer of the Alcott name in Boston,---though there is no evidence of the slightest connection except through Adam.”
Plate VI.Thoreau and the Three ReformersJune 17, 1853. Ultra-reformers, lecturers on Slavery, Temperance, the Church: A.D. Foss, once a Baptist minister in Hopkinton, NH; Loring Moody, a traveling pattern working chaplain; & H. C. Wright, who shocks all the old women with his infidel writings. Wright, author of A Kiss for a Blow, behaved as if there were no alternative between them, or as if I had given him a blow. I would have preferred a blow, but he was bent on giving me a kiss, when there was no quarrel between us.
Plate VII.
The Muskrat-Hunters, Goodwin & Haynes
May 1, 1854 They shoot at any rat that may expose himself… One that they had wounded looked exactly like the end of an old rider stripped of bark.
How pitiful a man looks about this sport.
These men represent a class which probably exists, even in the most civilized community, and allies it to the most savage.
Plate VIII.
Fishing Through the Ice
February 8, 1856 The fishermen agree in saying that the pickerel have generally been eating, and are full, when they bite. Some think it is best to cut holes the day before, because the noise frightens them.
E. Garfield says that his Uncle Daniel was once scaling a pickerel, when he pricked his finger against the horn of a pout which the pickerel had swallowed. He himself killed a pickerel with a paddle, in the act of swallowing a large perch.
Plate IX. Barefooted Brooks Clark Building Wall
October 20, 1857. “It pleased me to see this cheery old man (~80) enjoying the evening of his days…. It is worth a thousand of the church’s sacraments…It was better than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy.”
My grandfather, Henry Holzer’s wheelbarrow.
Plate X
Johnny and his Woodchuck-Skin Cap
February 29, 1860.“Passed a very little boy in the street, who had a home-made cap of woodchuck-skin, which his father had killed and cured, and his mother had fashioned into a nice warm cap…. So much family history, the human parents’ care of their young in hard times. The boy’s black eyes sparkled beneath it, when I remarked on its warmth, even as the woodchuck’s might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear.”
Plate I.
“A man of certain probity and worth, immortal and natural.” Oxen (and horses) were the sustainable source of locomotive energy since the beginning of civilization 10,000 years ago. Fossil fuel burning emits CO2. These fuels will be depleted in 100 -200 years.
Miami Beach is a flood zone during King High Tides.
III.PRESERVING THOREAU’S & OUR PLACE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE
CO2 levels now 110 ppm above the pre-industrial average
1875
• Carbon isotope ratios indicate the CO2 increase since 1850 is from burning ~300 million yr old fossil fuels.
CORRELTAION BETWEEN TEMP AND CO2 INCREASE
Average Temperature Increase 1 deg C
Increasing CO2 gas density: 1. raises temperature of earth’s surface. 2. reduces temperature of the stratosphere. 27
During the steepest warming, the CO2 released (dots) from the sea preceded the global temperature rise (green line) by several centuries. CO2 RATE OF CHANGE is 1/300 of the PRESENT RISE.CO2 greenhouse effect drove the 3.5 C increase in average global temperature. Sea levels rose ~ 100 meters (~ 328 feet). Flood stories
4 M PEOPLE 7 B
Ice Age
Nature, 484, 49-54 (05 Apr 2012)
CHANGES IN THE EARTH’S TILT & ORBIT TRIGGERD THE ICE AGE WARMING
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At present rate of 2.5 ppm rise per year, humans are increasing CO2 at a rate 300 times faster than the recovery from the ice age 18,000 -10,000 years ago.
CO2 CONCENTRATIONS, HIGHEST (33%) IN 800,000 YRS, WILL REACH 1000 PPM IN 240 YEARS.
• Our present level of 400 ppm could reach ~ 1000 ppm in 240 years.
• Arctic became ice-free 8 M years ago when CO2 = 300 - 450 ppm.• Antarctic melted ~ 40 M years ago, CO2 ~ 700 ppm -Earth was ice-free, sea levels 100s meters higher.
Dinosaur Extinction 65M Yr. BP Figure from Dr. James Hansen, NASA GISS
RISING SEAS WEATHER EXTREMES ARE INCREASING
Record Cold & Hot, Winter 2015
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WEATHER EXTREMES ARE INCREASING.
• Record-Cold and Snowfall in New England during 2015 winter.
-Record high sea temps, 11.5 C, put more water vapor (snow) in the atmosphere.
• Record-Hot West Has First 100-Degree Temperature of 2015.
- CA 4 yr. drought longest in history.
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A darker Arctic is boosting global warmingFrom1979 to 2011, less reflecting ice, more absorbing water made North Pole warm twice as
fast as the rest of the earth. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/02/13/1318201111.abstract
Proc. National Academy of Science, Feb 18, 2014.
ARCTIC MELTING IN THE LAST 32 YEARS SATELITE PHOTO
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PAST COLD ARCTIC PRESENT WARMER ARCTIC
Higher pressure sub-tropic constrained the low-pressure arctic
Lower pressure difference allows waves of arctic air to invade the South: Warmer & Colder Winters.
Cold Air Oscillates South from the ArcticThe Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of our earth.
Therefore the temperature and the accompanying pressure difference that used to keep arctic air up North comes South, bringing cold air to Atlanta & New Orleans.
A Wacky Jet Steam Is Making Our Weather Severe , Scientific American, Nov 18, 2014
2434
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The jet stream that circles Earth's north pole travels west to east. But when the jet stream interacts with a Rossby wave, as shown here, the winds can wander far north and south, bringing frigid air to normally mild southern states. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/16/277911739/warming-arctic-may-be-causing-jet-stream-to-lose-its-way
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Social unrest accompanies food price increases. Summer 2010 drought in Russia: No longer exported wheat. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/deja-food-will-social-unrest-surge-corn-prices-soar
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The rate of sea level increase correlates with the blue line of CO2 increase.
Sea level rise is a proxy for global temperature, due to thermal expansion (50%) & the melting of ice (50%)
Sea level rise rate has increased 4 times: 3.1 mm/year ( 1 ft/100 yr. ) now from 0.8 mm/year in 1900
Gravity Satellite Ice Sheet Mass MeasurementsMELTING OF GREENLAND & ANTARCTICA IS RAISING SEA LEVELS FASTER
Greenland Ice Sheet Antarctic Ice Sheet Source: Velicogna, I. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19503, doi:10.1029/2009GL040222, 2009
Greenland’s largest glacier is now flowing faster towards the sea 4 times faster than in the 1990s..
Since Sandy, 2012, Federal Coastal Flood Insurance is up 2X - 10X
• Sea Levels could rise as much as
3 to 15 feet in 50 to 150 years
• The Gulf Stream, which warms Northern Europe, will slow & shut- down.
• Referred Journal article Atmos. Chem. Phys. Mar. 2016 by retired NASA scientist James Hansen and 13 co-authors.
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 3761–3812, Mar 2016 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/ doi:10.5194/acp-16-3761-2016 © Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License.
Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 C global warming could be dangerous
James Hansen1, Makiko Sato1, Paul Hearty2, Reto Ruedy3,4, Maxwell Kelley3,4, Valerie Masson-Delmotte5, Gary Russell4, George Tselioudis4, Junji Cao6, Eric Rignot7,8, Isabella Velicogna7,8, Blair Tormey9, Bailey Donovan10, Evgeniya Kandiano11, Karina von Schuckmann12, Pushker Kharecha1,4, Allegra N. Legrande4, Michael Bauer4,13, and Kwok-Wai Lo3,4
1Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10115, USA 2Department of Environmental Studies, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, NC 28403, USA 3Trinnovium LLC, New York, NY 10025, USA 4NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA 5Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Gif-sur-Yvette, France 6Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry & Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710075, China 7Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA 8Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA 9Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723, USA 10Department of Geological Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA 11GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Wischhofstrasse 1–3, Kiel 24148, Germany 12Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, University of Toulon, La Garde, France 13Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USACorrespondence to: James Hansen ([email protected])Received: 11 June 2015 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 23 July 2015 Revised: 17 February 2016 – Accepted: 18 February 2016 – Published: 22 March 2016
Received: 11 Jun 2015 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 23 Jul 2015Revised: 17 Feb 2016 – Accepted: 18 Feb 2016 – Published: 22 Mar 2016
Sea levels could rise by 1 m (3 ft) by 2050. Could we take action to prevent a 5 m (15 ft) rise by 2058? The lifetime of CO2 is 100 years.
Atmos. Chem. Phys., March 2016. J. Hansen et. al.
1 M TIPPING LEVEL
43Sea level rise of 2-4 feet will flood Boston & Cambridge.
TREADING WATER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, FEB 2015
Teaching Climate Change to Skeptics Forbes. Sept 9, 2013.
Carmen Nobel, Harvard Business School.
Predictions of massive flood losses for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities are US$60-$63 billion per year in 2050 compared to $6 billion in 2005.
Failure to act could lead to global losses upwards of $1 trillion annually.
REFERENCES: H. Paulson, M. Bloomberg. www.riskybusiness.org
The Coming Climate Crash:Lessons for Climate Change in the 2008 RecessionBy HENRY M. PAULSON Jr. Secretary of the Treasury under Pres. George W. Bush.Co-Author of www.RiskyBusiness.org JUNE 21, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/lessons-for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html
“We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.
A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy products and infrastructure.
Climate change is the challenge of our time. We’ve seen and felt the costs of underestimating the financial bubble. Let’s not ignore the climate bubble.”
10/9/15
www.CitizensClimateLobby.org
- Revenue neutral carbon fee with dividend.
-Dividend would be returned to everyone.
-Stimulating economy & creating 2 million jobs.
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SOME CONCLUSIONS1. WEATHER EXTREMES ARE INCREASING -Wet areas are becoming wetter: Floods, Snow Atmosphere holds more water at higher temps. -Dry areas, drier: Droughts, Wildfires
2. IF SEA LEVELS RISE BY 1 M, THERE WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TIME TOPREVENT A RISE TO 5 M (15 FT)?
3. START PHASING-OUT FOSSIL FUEL BURNING WITH CARBON FEE & DIVIDEND
Prophetic Pope Francis:
• MORAL IMPERATATIVE: Stop plundering our planet for profit, the poor suffering the most.
200 Page Encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home. June 2015
THE “WICKED PROBLEM” OF CLIMATE CHANGE: WHAT IS IT DOING TO US AND FOR US?
62nd Conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, www.iras.org
June 24—July 1, 2017. Star Island off Portsmouth, NH.
• Climate change is complex with causes and consequences in economic, ecological, ethical, and technological realms.
• How can global warming be a catalyst for societal and spiritual transformation?
IRAS CLIMATE CONFERENC SPEAKERS TO DATE
Theologian, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Chaplain, Rev. Dr. Mary Westfall
Scientists: Paul H. Carr,PhD; Robert S. Pikart,PhD; Emily Austin,PhD; Solomon H. Katz,PhD; Bill Shoemaker,PhD.
Star Island 200 year-old Chapel
S Sunrise on Star Island
SUNSET OVER PORTSMOUTH, NH FROM STAR ISLAND
RISE Course No. 2098Science & Religion: Henry D. Thoreau & the Future
Wednesdays 10:45-12:15, October 19 – Nov 16, 2016
1. Thoreau: From Mystical to Mathematical Beauty
2. Thoreau’s Search for Place, Creative Example, & Climate Change. 3. Might Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” improve income inequality? 4. Has religion helped or hindered the development of science?
5. The Future of Religion and Science: Beautiful Music, Math, Myth.
