Its too much to get into right here, but perhaps the Christian environmental theology you mention is at least somewhat influenced by the Gnostic traditions Elaine Pagels writes about in 'The Gnostic Gospels', which deals with the 52 papyrus texts found at Nag Hamadi in 1945, and which clearly demonstrate that the Church in the early Christian era in the first and second centuries AD was far from monolithic, with many branches of Christianity simultaneously extant, some of which promulgated an Immanent God. Scientific materialism was a development that occurred within the culture-sphere of these Occidental religions, rejecting the belief in the Transcendent God, but continuing to accept the idea of duality, the separation of the material world from the mental (what religion would term the spiritual) world (this is Cartesian duality). Science could operate without persecution from the Church so long as it confined itself to investigating only the material aspect of things. But, as Rupert Sheldrake argues, this materialistic view has hardened into a dogma amongst modern scientific materialists, who position themselves as self-appointed guardians of the materialist creed, pretending to represent science as a whole, when in fact science is a method, not a position, and the materialists are actually defending an ideological position that can be termed 'materialism'. Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens are two prominent materialists. Rupert Sheldrake points out that these dogmatic materialists tend to be atheists whose antipathy towards Christianity is so strong that they will go to any lengths to deny scientific evidence for the existence of consciousness existing independently of the brain, lest this open the way for spirituality, or worse, the Pope, to slip in through the back door. The point I was trying to make is that our cultural traditions in the West have made it easy for us to regard the Earth as something that is there to be exploited, without any real concern for its well-being. The field of Economics has run with this idea, with its concept of 'externalities'. I was trying to suggest that we should try to understand what elements of our culture have brought us to this unfortunate point, the point that Edward Albee has called 'the saddest of all points, the point where there IS something to be lost', so that we may pick out the best elements to carry forward, while leaving behind the worst. I am not hostile to Christianity, for it has at least kept alive the idea of divinity, of sacredness. Nor am I hostile to science, which, as a method of rational inquiry, is innocent of ideologies such as materialism. I think, in fact, that it is time for science and religion to become much more unified through the scientific exploration of consciousness. The word 'religion' itself, I remember from my Joseph Campbell, comes from re-ligio, referring to the ropes (ligatures) that bound a team of oxen together, with 're', indicating a re-uniting with the ineffable, with God, binding us once again to God. Science, without the dogma of materialism, seems to me to be a quest for exactly that.

And from: http://content.unity.org/publications/archives/unityMagazine/religionAtoZen.html "Who or What Is God? Joseph Campbell made a useful distinction. In the religions that originated east of Iran, ultimate reality is generally understood as an immanent, impersonal energy within everything, whereas west of Iran, ultimate reality is understood as a transcendent being, a personified entity above and outside the created world. This fundamental distinction would have far-reaching effects. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, this immanent source is known as Brahman, Buddha-consciousness and Tao, a reality beyond all concepts and definitions—the mystery behind the masks. All existence, including the gods, flows from this ultimately nameless source. In Hinduism, this is particularly apparent. The many gods of the Indian pantheon are part of the created world, not its ultimate cause. West of Iran a very different understanding of God or ultimate reality emerged out of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Here God attained personhood and stands above and outside the created world. We are not manifestations of God-consciousness; He is the creator and we are merely creatures. This fundamental dualism shapes all of the other elements of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview. In the fundamentally nondualistic eastern worldview, the spiritual path involves realizing one's unity with this divine source, a realization covered over by ignorance. God-discovery is, in a very real sense, self-discovery. The purpose of religion and spirituality in the east is to awaken us to who and what we really are. In the western traditions, the spiritual path is one of obedience to a set of divinely revealed doctrines, beliefs and practices designed to bridge the chasm between us and a distant God, a God who cares, but a God who we have exiled through disobedience."

A4R, Thank you for clarifying the position of modern Christian environmental theology, of which I was unaware. You said: "James, your reference to Joseph Campbell exposes a gap in either his or your understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview of the sacred relation of the world in relation to God. Also, the Biblical-Christian worldview is counter to your presumptions above." I do not think that I have misrepresented Joseph Campbell's position. Whether there are gaps in his understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview I leave to scholars more competent than I to judge. Briefly, here is Campbell's position, from a review of his book 'Masks of God' found here: http://www.amazon.com/Masks-God-Vol-Occidental-Mythology/dp/014019441X "Religion in the West is the story of the battle between immanence (God as present in and suffusing the existence of the world) and transcendence (God as removed from and greater than existence). OCCIDENTAL MYTHOLOGY, Volume III in Campbell's MASKS OF GOD series, tells this story: how Western mythology turned slowly away from polytheism, the transcending of duality, and God's immanence, and toward monotheism, the ontology of duality, and God's transcendence." /cont...

Sorry A4R, I didn't see your comment. I will reply later on today.

Thank you Neven, for reposting my fragments, and more importantly for launching your new Sea Ice Forum later this week. Judging by the pool of talent your ASI blog has attracted, its fair to say that you may soon have two blogs of world-class importance and influence. You are building the kind of community that I wrote about above, and that is sorely needed. I only hope that you will find the time to be as active a participant in that discussion as we all would wish. Cheers to you, Neven.

Thanks Neven!

Neven, I think typepad just spammed my comment.

High Arctic, Low Ice. 80% of sea ice gone.

Arctic sea ice corks the Weather genie in its bottle

Healthy planet: Priceless Dying planet: Iceless

Yesterday I went to see Chasing Ice, the film chronicling James Balog's Extreme Ice Survey project (trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZTMVNBjc4 ), and since then I've been trying to come up with some way of visualizing the yearly addition of GIS, WAIS and glacial meltwater to the world's oceans. What would it look like if all that meltwater was averaged out to a steady flow from a single source? Would it look like a river? How big a river? How many fire hoses would it take? How many garden hoses? What I've come up with so far seems unbelievable to me, so I would appreciate it if someone could check my math and point out where I may have gone wrong, because if my crude calculations are correct then it would take 8.6 Niagara Falls flowing for an entire year to equal 500 cubic kilometers. Can that much ice really be melting now? My first assumption is that about 500 cubic kilometers of water is being added to the world's oceans every year. I know that this figure is higher than the average since 2000, but it seems reasonable to me given this year's 574gT loss from Greenland alone (I'm assuming a gigaton of ice is roughly equal to one cubic km.of water). Am I right to think that the real figure might be much higher, say at least 600 km^3? So, 500 cubic km = 500,000,000,000 cubic meters, divided by 365 days = 1,369,863,013 divided by 24 hours = 57,077,625 divided by 60 minutes = 951,293 divided by 60 seconds = 15,854 cubic meters of water per second. Wikipedia says the average flow rate of Niagara Falls is 1,834 cubic meters per second, so 15,854/1,834 = 8.65 Niagara Falls! Can that be right? If this is correct, then 15,854 m^3/s could also be visualized as: water spewing out of a one-meter-square culvert flowing at a rate of 15.854 km/s or 57,074 km/h (!)(the jet of water would exceed escape velocity and continue into space), or: 1,014,331 2-inch fire hoses pumping out 938 liters/sec. or: 14,783,387 common garden hoses pumping out 64.34 liters/sec. or: water flowing out of one of the 7.6 meter diameter channel tunnels at a rate of 349 m/s or 1,258 km/h (nearly ten times faster than the trains!), but: only 0.075 Amazon rivers, at 209,000 m^3/s Or have I made some obvious mistake?

Meanwhile thursday saw record high temperatures here in Ontario: 24C in Wiarton (on Lake Huron) and over 20C from Toronto to Sudbury. Weird indeed to be so hot when the CBC warns that the Snowicane is coming.

Scarlet, Or how about: A barrel of oil: $90 A doomed civilization: iceless

Brian Wind | October 04, 2012 at 07:14 "What we are seeing here is: No arctic ice by 2015. We all see this. But by 2015, what will the Greenland ice be doing? Antarctic ice? Both melting much faster than expected, much faster than we want to admit. How about the possibility of massive methane release? How about severe weather and drought? And ultimatly agriculture... We cannot grow food with spiking temperatures and irratic weather, and global population will be hitting 8 billion people. Basic ecology and natural history suggest we are about to lose about 7 billion people within 20-30 years. I have young adult kids and I bet you do too. People around me think I am a nut if I discuss these things, so I rarely do, but I am sure we all see... We are looking at the beginning of a huge planetary catastrophe." Brian, I share your forebodings. The fairly near-term future may turn out to be somewhat apocalyptic. Too many separate strands are tending in the same (negative) direction to allow one to reasonably expect a salutary outcome. Climate change, peak oil, suicidally psychopathic corporations and governments, mystifyingly bizarre US Republicans, etc., etc. As they said in No Country for Old Men, 'its not the one thing, its the dismal tide'. As has been discussed on this blog, a main source of distress is likely to be food shortages due to widespread drought. I am beginning to learn how to grow my own food in case I am still around when things start to really change. I have just run across what seems to be a very informative site run by Jules Dervaes at http://www.urbanhomestead.org/ He and his three young adult children produce about 6000 pounds (about 2700kg)of produce each year on their 1/10th acre city property. Watch this 15 minute youtube video, and perhaps you will feel as eager as I do to start digging in the dirt! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IbODJiEM5A&feature=related

Hi, first time posting. A heartfelt thanks to all the contributors here who have put so much effort into crafting such excellent and informative posts. Here's a program from Alex Smith at Radio Ecoshock that some of you will likely be intersted in. My apologies if it has been posted before. Its about the government's muzzling of climate scientists in Canada and the US. While the situation in the US under Obama seems to be improving, that in my country, Canada, has grown far, far worse since the development of the tar sands. The Canadian gov't doesn't want any pesky climate scientists educating the public: http://www.ecoshock.info/2012/02/free-climate-scientists.html From the intro: "Dr. John Mashey investigates right-wing billionaires & corporations who pay alleged "charities", bloggers, & old weathermen to deny climate science. Canadian journalist Margaret Munro on government muzzling scientists, plus update by UCS Francesca Grifo on science freedom in U.S. The fossil fuel industry have teamed up with very wealthy idealogues to make you doubt global warming is happening, or that we are forcing big changes in the climate. For years, we guessed and partly knew that a small group of Right-wing think tanks, weathermen, and bloggers, and even a couple of low-grade climate scientists, were being paid off. We just couldn't see through the corporate veil of deception. Now we know many of the same people hired by the tobacco industry to create doubt that smoking killed millions of people, found a new source of funding, and a new cause. They are attacking climate science, and the scientists. Hidden money fuels a campaign of lies, inuendo, fear mongering and fake science."