I just got a note from Ed Mazria -- the person who gave the presentation I wrote about. Seems I got the time line a little wrong, but the overall scenario looks pretty much the same. What remains unchanged is the 10 year push for the 50% reduction of emissions in buildings. And that means that the necessity and opportunity to open a bunch of space for real innovation and collaboration is right there. Ed wrote --
"Thank you again for your offer to help. I will be thinking about it and talking to other folks about it as well. Let me point out one correction though in your understanding of my presentation. We have a 50% chance of reaching 2degC global warming (2degC above pre-industrial levels) by about 2050 and about 3degC by 2080 in a business-as-usual scenario. An Earth at this temperature will be warm enough to melt the Greenland Ice Sheet (a 6 meter sea level rise) in less than 150 years according to real world data from past interglacial periods (see: http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/research/other/climate_change_and_sea_level /future_temperature_anomalies.htm). Scientists do not yet know how Antarctica will play out but they suspect it will begin melting as well. NASA's Dr. James Hansen stated in his lecture in December that we may be in for a sea level rise of a couple of meters per century. Not as dramatic as you stated, but still very scary. Ed" Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20854 Phone 301-365-2093 Skype hhowen Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website www.ho-image.com OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harrison Owen Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 12:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: The End of Quiet Time No - this is not a continuation of the current thread. It is a personal story with, I think, some larger implications. The story begins on Friday, March 3, 2006. I was going down to Albuquerque New Mexico to open a little space for what I have been led to believe was a group of "Green Architects." I already had the theme question: "Building True Green - Issues and opportunities" It had a certain ring to it with overtones of John Wayne, True Grit and life out there in the great American Desert. Frankly, I thought it was going to be a walk in the park, and I was looking forward to a little relaxation in the warm desert. Turned out I was dead wrong. The sponsor told me on arrival that an architect from Santa Fe (just up the road) had some information to share before we got into Open Space. I never like to begin with speeches, but I was assured the speaker would be brief. He was, but when he finished, there was shocked silence. Here in brief is what he had to say. Over the past several months two articles have appeared in the journal "Science," which reported massive increase in the rate of glacial melt in Greenland and Antarctica. Not just a little melting, but 3-4 times the projected rates with strong indication that the increase in rate of melt was heading towards exponential. There was another article which showed up in the New York Times describing how a senior US Government Climatologist had been effectively silenced following an address to 11,000 of his colleagues. I had actually seen all three articles, but never connected the dots. As a matter of fact, I am not sure that I even saw any dots to connect - But the speaker did. And this is how it works. It seems that the senior scientist had access to the reports when he made his address. He could not cite them as they had not been published, but he used the data and offered his conclusions. Apparently his credibility in the world of Climatologist is right at the top - someone called him the "Galileo of the field." His report was disturbing, to say the least. I have scanned the speech, and while I may have a few of the details messed up, I am pretty solid with the general picture. And this is what it looks like. First, the two new studies absolutely demolish the computer models which have been used to this point to predict the rate and impact of glacial melt. They are not just wrong, they are catastrophically wrong. Stuff is happening at 3-4 times the predicted rate, and everything points to an upward curve. Truth of the matter is nobody really knows just how sharp that curve will be - but it is definitely up. Second - a conservative interpretation of the new data yields a disturbing picture, to say the least. Within 10 years we (planet earth and all 6.5 billion fellow travelers) will reach the tripping point beyond which there will be no possibility of reversal. After that, we can look forward to a 1 meter (2.5 foot) rise of sea level in another 10 years, heading towards a 6 meter (20 foot) rise somewhere around 2030 or soon after. Plotting a 20 foot rise on the coast lines of the world shows that available real estate diminishes greatly. Examples: In Louisiana Baton Rouge will be waterfront (New Orleans is gone). The southern third of Florida is under water. Lower Manhattan, up to the Village is good fishing, and official Washington DC is submerged. On the other side of the world, Beijing (now in the interior of China) is beachfront. The endgame is a climate change of such proportions that you have to go back 65 million years to the time when the dinosaurs disappeared. If you want all the pretty pictures etc go to www.architecture2030.org This could be yet another example of conspiracy theory going crazy combined with severe Eco-hysteria. It could be except that a rather interesting group of people are paying a lot of attention. The one that caught my eye was the AIA - the American Institute of Architecture, an organization never known for its radical views. It turns out that buildings (or all sorts) contribute in excess of 50% of greenhouse gasses to the environment. Frankly this figure blew me away for it is vastly in excess of such things as Industry and Transportation. The AIA response is to advise its membership to seek a 50% reduction in emissions in the next 10 years! The governor of New Mexico has set a similar target with an executive order, and apparently, other governors are moving is a similar direction. So what does all this have to do with us here in the OS Community? Leaving aside the obvious personal self interest, I believe we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to offer what we have in terms of knowledge and experience. Obviously there is a "real business issue" with lots of complexity, diversity, conflict/passion with a decision time of yesterday. More directly, Open Space is the only approach that I know of which has the capacity to enable large groups of people to deal with humongous stress and complexity in a quick, efficient, and economical manner. Obviously there are other things out there, and I love them all, but in this case they are just too slow and costly. At least that is what I think. And the group in New Mexico, once they got into the Open Space apparently came to the same conclusion. Most of these people worked in New Mexico, but a number were part of a quickly growing international effort to rally the troops. The individual who made the presentation is off to China this week for a similar presentation to senior government officials. Anyhow, I made bold to offer our assistance world wide, if asked. I think we will get some takers. I also think we might be a little pro-active by seeking out the local architects, etc. I am desperately hopeful that this is an acute case of Crying Wolf, Fire, or whatever. But on the off chance that the wolf is really there, the fire already started, to say nothing of the flood - I think we are in for some interesting times. The End of Quiet time. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20854 Phone 301-365-2093 Skype hhowen Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website www.ho-image.com OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
