An open letter to Leonardo DiCaprio

2/29/2016

Dear Leo,

From your early roles as sweet Romeo and Jack to clever Frank Abagnale and later in one of my favorite movies, Inception, I've always been a fan. I became even more of fan when you started using your fame for communicating about an issue that I care deeply about and spend my career on - climate change and the environment.

In your Oscar acceptance speech, you said that "Making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history."

I was struck to hear you say that your production team needed to move to the southern tip of the planet just to be able to find snow. I am all too familiar with the lack of snow this year, as I tore a ligament in my knee last weekend skiing in the Alps on fake icy snow.

"Climate change is real - it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating."

I agree with you that we "need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations but who speak for all of humanity." That we need to divest from fossil fuels and invest in clean energy.

However, clean energy should include a portfolio of energy technologies that are sustainable and non-polluting. 100% renewable could be viable but we should stop favoring one technology over another and start using all available solutions where they are appropriate.

You don't mention nuclear energy in your advocacy for clean energy and I ask that you consider supporting it, along with renewables and other clean technologies.

Nuclear energy is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases (on par with wind and solar) and already avoids the emission of 2 gigatons of CO2 per year. Nuclear energy is available now and advanced nuclear technologies are even more efficient and sustainable.

I congratulate you on your well-deserved Oscar and respect you for talking about this extremely important issue in your acceptance speech. I know that you can make an even bigger difference by advocating for and investing in all clean energy technologies.

Sincerely,
Lenka Kollar

2 Comments

Diana Broadhead link

2/29/2016 06:34:10 pm

METHANE
This segment illustrates how fast Methane release is now happening-it is in Waking the Giant (Bill McGuire) published 2012.
PERMAFROST MELT – Monitoring by Russian scientist suggests that the permafrost shell is already starting to break up in places, releasing millions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere of the Arctic. This could, however, be just the tip of the iceberg, with up to 1.4 trillion tonnes of gas hydrate and methane gas suspected of being trapped beneath the submarine permafrost in the region. Especially worrying is the observation that up to 10 percent of this area is now being punctured by so-called taliks areas of thawed permafrost that provide avenues for the ready escape of methane and opportunities for warmth to penetrate deep into the frozen hydrate beneath. This is a recipe for a climate catastrophe. Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Centre, and her co-workers, are concerned that up to 50 billion tonnes of methane could be released abruptly and without warning from the Arctic sea bed, pushing up the methane concentration of the atmosphere 12-fold virtually overnight and driving cataclysmic warming. This, in turn, would likely lead to further methane release as permafrost on land thawed rapidly to release its store, and as wetlands – already big methane producers – spewed out even more. (I add here that only months ago it was discovered methane release continues during winter freeze on the tundra as plants act like chimneys. This data has not been fed into computer models until during this winter Arctic season.)

Prof Wade Allison in his latest book Nuclear for Life ‘the atmosphere is tiny, equal in mass to a layer of water just ten metres thick around the world’

Methane is a light gas that goes higher than CO2. It forms a veil travelling south at the rate of 1 K a day with the spin on the Earth. It comes down in storms acidifying land and seas as it goes. At the time I learnt this New Zealand had about 6 years before Methane mainly Arctic gas then, would reach us. White whales were seen in our waters this season for first time ever – they had escaped the Arctic and heading for Antarctic. Scroll down to Sam Carena’s red graph on this page- it shows that a large area of methane hovers now above Australia, NZ’s next-door neighbor – the data is taken from satellites. http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/26/2-c-coming-on-faster-than-we-feared-atmospheric-methane-spikes-to-record-3000-parts-per-billion/?utm_content=buffer6981e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

Clearly other sources of long captured methane are releasing. 80% of volcanoes on the planet are subterranean. They will activate with changes in sea currents, sea warming and added weight from land based ice melt. In recent years submarines strong enough to take the pressure have filmed sea floor where bubbles confirm an active volcano. The methane continues to the atmosphere.

https://vimeo.com/143043363 Like Stuart I believe we’ll save the planet out of Hollywood – not the politicians- globally. (2min video).

I included these links in a letter I sent to NZ politicians media (largely oil funded) scientists I could think of on advice of Stuart Scott Climate Matters who pointed out politicians will only act when they sense a voting bloc.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xdOTyGQOso June 2015. Peter Wadhams is Professor of Ocean Physics, and head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge. He talks about sea level rise from 4.48 mins in.
(2) http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0415-danger-of-methane-explosions-on-yamal-peninsula-scientists-warn/ September 2015
(3) http://envisionation.co.uk/index.php/blogs/99-russian-scientists-excluded-from-presenting-important-research-as-nasa-goddard-director-tries-to-discredit-observational-scientific-research Oct 2014
(4) http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/20140451.figures-only 2015

These are some links Stuart Scott

http://climatematters.tv/dr-james-hansen-speaking-truth-to-power/ Hollywood is already present for this one at Paris - following him to make a film. James & Stuart don’t have control of the slide system this time which will probably make editing the film easy?

http://paulbeckwith.net/2015/12/10/rap-music-and-moral-obligation-on-climate-matters/ Go 11.20 Baba Brinkman also touching on sensitive areas of the climate problem – overpopulation of the planet.

http://www.bababrinkman.com/religion-evolves-new-music-video/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apICqy01jo4&ebc=ANyPxKphpYng2MBIef94d3vL-ESWtW3JXLtoHQoAn1FH0NusCuezEKqB2DF6YqXqOj7OM-fYcjDZkywDiRWCJVpA06-VBUYqLQ

I am layperson read Prof Wade Allison’s book Radiation & Reason, asked questions Geoff Sl

False Progress link

1/2/2020 12:42:03 am

Many of us see profound environmental hypocrisy in those who would cover (even more of) the world with the visual and sonic blight of industrial wind turbines, built with the very fossil fuels they claim to replace, killing more wildlife with each installed "farm," and doing nothing significant to reduce carbon emissions. DiCaprio's documentaries are full of wind power cameos, like so many other sellouts.

Such people scoff at nuclear power, based on outdated designs and narrow fears, like Germany's 2022 phase-out over Merkel's hasty reaction to Fukushima (the German countryside has been ruined by huge wind machines).

The world's remaining landscapes & seascapes must be protected from wind energy sprawl per the original purpose of environmentalism, which was not to be in the sprawling construction business, "green" or otherwise.

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