Climate Today

URGENCY OF HOT WATER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . May 4-10, 2012

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:47:20 +0000

QUOTE

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:46:40 +0000

“Why aren’t you young people out protesting the mess that’s being made of the planet?
Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s?
Why aren’t you in the streets?
And what in the world has happened to the green movement that used to be on our minds
and accompanied by outrage and high hopes?
What went wrong?”
E.O. Wilson, prominent researcher and author, age 82

- URGENCY:

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:44:20 +0000

I just got back from a week on St. John, in the Virgin Islands, staying in an eco-tent with solar power, water catchment, and more. While swimming in the warm Caribbean water was certainly a treat, the real news is that snorkeling revealed my very worst fears. When I got out of the water after snorkeling around an entire bay I had been in 8 years before, a man came up and asked me “What do you think?”

I hesitated a brief moment, then gave my true opinion. “This bay is 90% to 95% dead.” His big smile in response was startling, disturbing. He said “You are good! The latest research for this bay says that only 8% of the life here has survived.” While my unofficial guesstimate apparently concurred perfectly with the scientific research, my beloved underwater life was dying, the visions piercing deeply into my heart and soul. I may never go snorkeling again.

Most people were not talking about this tragedy! The denial is huge! Yet, one source said there was a massive die-off in 2005. Coral has a narrow temperature range between 71 to 80 degrees, and in 2005, the water temperature was a killing 86 degrees that went an astonishing 50 feet down!

When I got home and shared my grief with a friend, it turned out she had just been to the Florida Keys, snorkeled, and had found a similar depletion compared to her previous visit 10 years prior. She got out of the water and asked her hosts “Where are all the fish?” Her hosts claimed nothing was wrong, but she knew better.

Maybe it’s not the frog in the boiling water- maybe its coral and fish! Letting such important ecosystems die is far more than just plain stupid, especially when humans CAN stop putting carbon into the atmosphere!

- Editor

Life in the Sea Found Its Fate in a Paroxysm of Extinction

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:41:22 +0000

Permian extinction — 252 million years ago — was by far the most catastrophic of the planet’s five known paroxysms of species loss.
No wonder it is called the Great Dying: Scientists calculate that about 95 percent of marine species, and an uncountable but probably comparable percentage of land species, went extinct in a geological heartbeat.
In two recent papers,(researchers) concluded that animals with skeletons or shells made of calcium carbonate, or limestone, were more likely to die than those with skeletons of other substances. Being widely dispersed across the planet was little protection against extinction, and neither was being numerous. The deaths happened throughout the ocean.
The animals died from a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water, an excess of carbon dioxide, a reduced ability to make shells from calcium carbonate, altered ocean acidity, and higher water temperatures. They also concluded that all these stresses happened rapidly, and that each one amplified the effects of the others.
So what happened 252 million years ago to cause those physiological stresses in marine animals? A “perturbation of the global carbon cycle” the scientists’ paper concluded — a huge infusion of carbon into the atmosphere and the ocean.
Carbon (is) being injected into the atmosphere today far faster than during the Permian extinction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/new-studies-of-permian-extinction-shed-light-on-the-great-dying.html?_r=1

E. O. Wilson wants to know why you’re not protesting in the streets

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:38:22 +0000

Isn’t that astonishing? We’re destroying the rest of life in one century. We’ll be down to half the species of plants and animals by the end of the century if we keep at this rate. Very few people are paying any attention, just dedicated groups. The only way we’ve been able to get people’s attention is through big issues like pollution and climate change. They can’t deny pollution because you can give them the taste test. You can say, “We just took this out of the Charles River. Here, drink.” But they can deny climate change. We’re in a state of cosmic or global denial.
However, there are changes. The general direction is going up the right way. The only question is how much damage are we going to do to biodiversity before we catch on.
http://grist.org/article/e-o-wilson-wants-to-know-why-youre-not-protesting-in-the-streets/

E.O. Wilson’s latest book- The Social Conquest of Earth.

ACTION: This Saturday, May 5, Climate Impacts Day

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:24:24 +0000

- ACTION: This Saturday, May 5, Climate Impacts Day is a global day of action. Join the action in your area or if there isn’t one, do something simple with friends and activists, take photos of it, and send to http://www.350.org/en Every bit counts- let’s get off our duffs and take part in this international event. To check for events- http://act.climatedots.org/event/impacts_en/search/?akid=1852.134998.YkMNqE&rd=1&t=2

In email from Bill McKibben today- We desperately need to put real human faces on climate change — to make sure that people understand it’s not an abstraction and a future threat, but a very present and very real crisis. And a crisis with solutions — in many places people are putting up green dots of hope, at their solar panels and windmills. (At my mom’s retirement home the residents are heading out to dig a big new community garden!) We’re asking everyone, at every local event, to take a photo of their “climate dot” and upload it to our website — and we’ll assemble those images into a global mosaic that puts a real human face on climate change.-

VALUABLE RESOURCE: Social Capitol Project

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:16:12 +0000

We just learned about this potentially very useful project for people who are working or want to help with climate change. It is worth watching the short video, and reading the report, then signing up because this group appears to be very useful in getting all of us to be more effective, with multiple useful services! - Editor

Social Capital Project at the Resource Innovation Group works to understand and close the gap between why so many people care about the environment but don’t act. They work with practitioners from nonprofits and government who are trying to engage the public in addressing the climate and environmental issues.
Research is not enough. Show me successful campaigns. Show me the tipping points. Please connect me with other people to share and learn from.
Some of the resources include synthesis and analysis, a blogging resource hub that is searchable, and has easy to understand cheatsheets, summaries with the top take-aways, collection of resources- most popular tips and tools section and tracking what is going on on the ground.
http://www.climateaccess.org/about_us

Cara Pike of the Social Capital Project discusses how the Research Innovation Group is addressing the gap between research, action and evaluation with the group called Climate Access - a “network of networks” approach to tracking the latest research, best practices, and development of case studies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hPr-Vot583k
and

Climate Communications and Behavior Change-A Guide for Practitioners

http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Climate%20Communications%20and%20Behavior%20Change.pdf

SOLUTION: Painting roofs white is as green as taking cars off the roads for 50 years, says study

webmaster — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:07:23 +0000

Painting roofs white and using light-coloured materials to surface roads and pavements would not only make cities cooler in summer, it would save the same amount of carbon as taking all the cars in the world off the roads for 50 years, a study has found. One of the simplest, yet most effective, ways of engineering the urban environment to cope with global warming is to increase the reflectivity of the cityscape so that more of the incoming sunlight is directed back into space.
They estimate that a city or town where the roofs and the pavements and roads have light-coloured surfaces can increase their albedo by about 10 per cent, which globally would provide a CO2 offset of between 130 billion and 150 billion tonnes – the same as taking every car in the world off the road for 50 years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/painting-roofs-white-is-as-green-as-taking-cars-off-the-roads-for-50-years-says-study-7640770.html

SPRINGING INTO ACTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . April 13- May 3, 2012

webmaster — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:52:12 +0000

People power- Crowdfunding fires up local solar projects

webmaster — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:51:28 +0000

- ACTION: For a heart-felt project that could multiple to every city, this is it! Help both our imperiled planet and local deserving non- profits by adding solar power to reduce the community groups’ expenses. This is such a win-win, helping people and planet! Start one in your town!!!- Editor

Here’s a not-terribly-novel idea: Get a bunch of people together, pool your money, and invest it in a project or a business that will make enough money to pay you back. Banks will fund huge commercial solar projects, but when it comes to community-level solar installation, they won’t touch it, says Billy Parish, president of Solar Mosaic, a Berkeley, Calif.-based company that seeds local solar projects. Solar Mosaic started using this “crowdfunding” model in 2010, and to date, the company has raised roughly $320,000 to fund five solar installations.
http://grist.org/business-technology/people-power-crowdfunding-fires-up-local-solar-projects/
For Solar Mosaic- https://solarmosaic.com/