- I went to the cohousing conference Sustainability through Community (www.cohousing.org/2010/overview) in Boulder this past weekend since my work and heart are in sustainability, and I live in cohousing. It was gratifying to hear the plenary speakers have a clear view of just how much and how fast we need to change to save our planet. The new element was how to relate this urgency to cohousing. When people visit our Commons cohousing, they ohh and ahh over its lovely landscaping and how adorable it is that the kids are constantly having a blast. Yet, the potential is far deeper. We who live here know the value of sharing resources such as tools and Common House, but now we must probe deeper into “Waking Up from the American Dream.”

Kids thriving in cohousing

 
The first speaker was David Wann (http://www.davewann.com/), who gave an articulate explanation of voluntary simplicity, begging us not to “Drop the Egg that Belongs to the Future.” He’s coming out with a book in January- The New Normal: Agenda for a Healthy Planet, but his other books are excellent, too. For cohousing, his vision is to have cohousing become political- as examples of a more sustainable lifestyle, we need members on City Councils, we need to be activists, “converting shame to pride.” The psychological and social aspects of shared living can replace the emptiness of the mainstream American lifestyle that relies on consumption rather than social connectedness. Get him to come speak at your conferences- you won’t regret it.

Conference Chart- the US has 2% of the world’s oil resources, yet we use 25% of the oil.
Do we want to continue this? Think of the dolphins and turtles that are dying. 

Two and a half days of speakers and sessions revealed so much. How to reduce energy- new cohousing is creating net zero energy buildings- no need to wait for 2030! Older ones can use DER- Deep Energy Retrofits. One cohousing estimates that their energy savings have saved $720,000 in energy bills! One family used only 1 tank of gas in an entire year in part because the resources they needed were right there!  How to reduce waste- composting, fun clothing swaps, shared resources, permanent give-away bins, etc. How to eat locally- community gardens, a CSA on your own land, strong ties with coops and nearby CSA’s, a formal commitment to eat organically, and more. You have never wanted to plant potatoes? Well, when your community is having a “Cinco de Mayo” potato planting party, with chips, salsa, beer and music- you won’t want to miss the fun party!  And get the job done amidst laughter and camaraderie!

There is no doubt that cohousing has the potential to become powerful incubators of “The New Normal” where less is more, used is great, sharing is better than possessing, growing food, seeing solar panels and clothes lines are the norm, eating with your friends regularly means walking a few yards, having no more babysitting worries- and more! Even outside of cohousing, we all need to replace our unprecedented material expectations with healthy psychological bonds.  - Editor

- This article didn’t have a picture, so we searched- egad! Gravity makes our little blue ball lumpy! The implications are quite significant, especially when this appears to mean that the eastern shores of the U.S. will suffer higher sea rises than elsewhere on the planet. Fascinating! Don’t you wish you were at Harvard for that course? - Editor

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region
As the world warms, sea levels could easily rise three to six feet this century. But increases will vary widely by region, with prevailing winds, powerful ocean currents, and even the gravitational pull of the polar ice sheets determining whether some coastal areas will be inundated while others stay dry. There’s this great big gorilla in the room- an effect so large that it overwhelms the others- is something called the geoid. It’s an imaginary surface that maps the strength of Earth’s gravitational field, and it’s as bumpy as the surface of the actual planet. “When I give talks about this, people don’t believe me,” says Jerry Mitrovica, a geophysicist who teaches an entire course on sea level at Harvard. He doesn’t blame them, either. “It’s just wacky when you think about it, completely counterintuitive,” he says. “But it’s true.” It’s even measurable, despite the fact that the melting of the ice sheets has barely begun. “It’s profoundly puzzling,” he says, “until you realize you’re seeing the gravitational signal of Greenland melting.”
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2255

- People ask us to get specific all the time- what temperatures, what changes, and when. The when and where is impossible except in broad terms, making detailed planning a challenging nightmare. Now the U.S. government has a plan to use the world’s most powerful computer to get specific, and grants to researchers are being offered. It’s important that the Dept. of Ag is involved, too. Some of our readers will want to check Earth System Models (“EASM”) out! - Editor
Can Climate Models Predict Global Warming’s Direct Effects in Your City?
Nobody lives in the global average climate. Now the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the U.S. Energy and Agriculture departments are teaming up to financially support the development of new computer models aimed at revealing the anticipated effects of climate change at the regional level. “The impacts of climate change are becoming more immediate and profound than anticipated,” NSF Director Arden Bement said. “We must be able to predict how climate change will impact regions in the next 10 to 20 years.” A big part of the effort will rely on advances in computer power; the Department of Energy (DoE) now hosts the world’s most powerful supercomputer at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Such computers will help scientists to improve both the time and spatial scales of their models. “We love to be able to go exoscale -another 1,000 times faster and bigger.” “Producers of food will need to know what to expect in the future to be ready for the kinds of changes that are anticipated,” said Department of Agriculture chief scientist, Roger Beachy. “We are concerned about the impact on our ability to grow food.” We need to have the data before we embark on big policy changes.
For a rather dull video explaining the project and its grant opportunities- http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_images.jsp?cntn_id=116602&org=NSF ;
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-models-predict-global-warming-effects-in-cities

- Here’s one glitch in climate data that skeptics no longer can use. - Editor
High-carbon ice age mystery solved
How come a big ice age happened when carbon dioxide levels were high? It’s a question climate sceptics often ask. But sometimes the right answer is the simplest: it turns out CO2 levels were not that high after all.
The Ordovician ice age happened 444 million years ago, and records have suggested that CO2 levels were relatively high then. But when Seth Young of Indiana University did a detailed analysis of carbon-13 levels in rocks formed at the time, the picture that emerged was very different. Young found CO2 concentrations were in fact relatively low when the ice age began. Lee Kump of Pennsylvania State University says earlier studies missed the dip because they calculated levels at 10-million-year intervals and the ice age lasted only half a million years. The dip, he says, was triggered by a burst of volcanic activity that deposited new silicate rocks. These draw CO2 out of the air as they erode.
Journal reference: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.02.033
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18618-highcarbon-ice-age-mystery-solved.html

- A corporate executive reported to us last week  as he travels from boardroom to boardroom that he is hearing more and more execs not from fossil fuel industries making snide remarks about how climate change is a big hoax. This is serious! We all need to continue to disseminate facts about climate change- we are losing ground over people’s minds. - Editor
American Opinion Cools on Global Warming
The Yale Climate Project and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released the results of national survey that follows up on their 2008 survey.  The survey focused on the public’s belief about global warming and how they’ve changed since 2008. The results are alarming. In the past year public opinion on the topic has cooled; Americans are less convinced that climate change is happening. Americans who believe that most scientists think global warming is happening decreased 13 points, to 34 percent, while 40 percent of the public now believes there is a lot of disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is happening or not.
The report- http://environment.yale.edu/uploads/AmericansGlobalWarmingBeliefs2010.pdf
http://www.gcbl.org/blog/laura-christie/american-opinion-cools-global-warming
A similar pattern is happening in the U.K. as well- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/23/british-public-belief-climate-poll

- Some parts of the world are experiencing excessive snow and cold, not a good argument for global warming, which really should be called “climate change.” In case a climate denier concludes warming is not occurring, do share information from these 2 articles. - Editor

Feeling That Cold Wind? Here’s Why
A bitter wind has been blowing over parts of North America, Europe and Asia. What’s going on? Global cooling? Nope. A mass of high pressure is sitting over Greenland like a rock in a river, deflecting the cold air of the jet stream farther to the south than usual. This situation is caused by Arctic oscillation. This winter’s cold has not been global. Santa, by North Pole standards, has been experiencing a balmy winter. “Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal,” said Dr. Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. In some areas, the temperatures are as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10chang.html?ref=science

- There’s a new tool on line by the Nature Conservancy that allows each area of the U.S. to see the temperature increases anticipated. - Editor
Climate Wizard
With ClimateWizard you can: • view historic temperature and rainfall maps for anywhere in the world • view state-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall around the world • view and download climate change maps in a few easy steps ClimateWizard enables technical and non-technical audiences alike to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth. http://www.climatewizard.org/

- A changing climate is not just a smooth, even ride. While islands are slowing going under, here new golf courses are built on land rising from the sea because the extreme weight of the ice is disappearing. - Editor

Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat. Morgan DeBoer, a property owner, opened a nine-hole golf course at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1998, on land that was underwater when his family first settled here 50 years ago. Now, with the high-tide line receding even farther, he is contemplating adding another nine holes. “It just keeps rising,” he said. The geology is complex, but it boils down to this: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land has risen much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch. The land is ascending so fast that the rising seas- a ubiquitous byproduct of global warming- cannot keep pace. As a result, the relative sea level is falling, at a rate “among the highest ever recorded,” according to a 2007 report by a panel of experts convened by Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/science/earth/18juneau.html?scp=1&sq=alaska%20rising&st=cse
 

The melting of one of the world’s largest ice sheets would alter the Earth’s field of gravity and even its rotation in space so much that it would cause sea levels along some coasts to rise faster than the global average, scientists said. The rise in sea levels would be highest on the west and east coasts of North America where increases of 25 per cent more than the global average would cause catastrophic flooding in cities such as New York, Washington DC and San Francisco. A study into how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could respond to global warming has found its disintegration would change the focus of the planet’s gravitational field, so sea levels would rise disproportionately more around North America than in other parts of the world. If the ice sheet covering West Antarctica disappears, the loss of so much mass from the southern hemisphere would effectively make the pull of gravity stronger in the northern hemisphere, affecting the spin of the Earth and causing sea levels to rise higher here than in the south, where the mass of ice is currently located.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/melting-ice-could-cause-gravity-shift-1685201.html 

- Adapting to climate change will mean dealing with climate refugees, but is this what the Scouts are for? Are people crossing the borders really terrorists? Isn’t there enough violence in our society? This is a far cry from learning nifty skills during camping trips in the woods. Sad. I wouldn’t let my kids join this! Would you? - Editor

Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence - an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters. Many law enforcement officials, particularly those who work for the rapidly growing  Border Patrol, part of the Homeland Security Department, have helped shape the program’s focus and see it as preparing the Explorers as potential employees. The training can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters.” In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout. “Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html?_r=1&em