Global Warming

Interested in a discussion online about carbon emissions and real, science-based solutions to global warming? This comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

A Target for U.S. Emissions Reduction

Join Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel for free web seminar on the analysis for determining “A Target for U.S. Emissions Reductions.” Following a presentation on the findings, will be a Q&A session.

Date: February 20, 2008
Time: 2:00 pm (EST)
Click here to RSVP. Directions on how to join will be emailed to you.

Substantial scientific evidence indicates that an increase in the global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial average (i.e., prior to 1860) poses severe risks to natural systems and human health and well-being. The European Union as well as climate legislation moving through the U.S. Congress both employ 2°C as a guide for policy goals.

A recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and scientists at Stanford University and Texas Tech University analyzes available options for industrialized and developing nations’ respective share in reducing emissions. The study found that the United States must cut its emissions by at least 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050, along with a global effort to make deep emission reductions, if the world is to stay below the 2°C policy target. Cutting emissions soon is essential.

Addressing Climate Change for Sustainable and Profitable Business

February 27 - February 29, 2008
Denver, Colorado

The rules of business are changing. Climate change is at the height of media attention and has become an important part of current business trends. The 2008 Sustainable Opportunities Summit will explore how companies can financially benefit from becoming more engaged in addressing climate change.

As evidence mounts that human activity is contributing to global warming, many leading businesses are taking meaningful steps to address the climate challenge. In the process, they are realizing significant opportunities by creating new sought-after products, realigning the way they operate, and reducing their energy costs. Companies are finding that managing the risk of climate change and lowering their impact on the environment allows them to gain investor confidence, reduce their exposure to non-compliance, and increase their profits.

In a carbon-constrained world, the political, economic and legal rules governing commerce are certain to change. Colorado’s Governor Ritter has made a commitment to establish a New Energy Economy. Policy, legislative and regulatory shifts are all being considered at the state and national levels.

The 2008 Sustainable Opportunities Summit brings together corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists from across Colorado and the nation in a unique forum to assess the growing opportunities created by climate change.

"The last 50 years stick out like a sore thumb... The temperature's gone up and up and up. It bears the imprint of human activity."

--Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University

"It's not something we can adapt to...we can't let it go another 10 years like this."

--Dr. James Hansen, Director NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, member National Academy of Sciences

"The weight of evidence for climate change is very strong indeed, and it has gotten stronger over the years...The rate of warming is now greater than it has been for 10,000 years; that means the rate of climate change is greater than it has been for 10,000 years."

--Sir John Houghton, Professor in atmospheric physics, University of Oxford, recipient of Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal, Honorary Member American Meteorological Society

"This is the biggest challenge our civilization has ever had consciously to face. If this goes on, we will lose ice cover on our planet. The process will cause such rapid transformation we will have enormous trouble adapting."

--Sir David King, Professor of Physical Chemistry at Cambridge, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government

[All of above quotes from Paul Brown's Global Warming: The Last Chance for Change]

Sometimes when I set out to review a book, certain parts of the book inspire me to write before I am even ready to review it. I made many references to parts of what I was reading in John and Teresa Heinz Kerry's book, This Moment on Earth, before I reviewed it, for example.

Right now I am finishing up the latest book on Global Warming, titled...well, Global Warming: The Last Chance for Change, by Paul Brown, a long-time correspondent for The Guardian. I will review this book soon. It is excellent, far better than my initial expectations of it. Simply put, it is the most comprehensive and thorough discussion of the issue to date. A must read even for skeptics because if they can't address what is in this book then they have no right to be skeptics. But more on that in a later diary someday soon.

Right now I want to focus on a single chapter of this book: Chapter 13 discussing Nuclear Energy.

I have written about the issue of Nuke Enegery as it applies to Global Warming before. I have been swarmed by Nuke industry advocates, both reasonable and irrational, and discussed it at length. We had some Nuke Advocates of the more or less reasonable end on Culture Kitchen for awhile. But the arguements put forward by the nuke advocates alwasy struck me as too one-sided and too dismissive of any other opinion.

Since I find out today is Global Warming Blog Action Day, I think it is appropriate to repost this. All of it still applies and, to be honest, the whole thing is still freaking me out. We are further along the global warming curve than we thought and we probably have LESS than ten years to deal with it.

Martin Frobisher in 1576 was one of the first navagators to try and find a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He was 431 years too early.

This year, global warming has hit the Arctic sea ice harder than ever before, and the Arctic ice has melted to record lows...opening up the Northwest Passage to navagation.

From the Guardian:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.

Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.

So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.

Ummmm...let me just say holy shit!

I have been nudging everyone to get busy and get active because we only have 10 years to deal with global warming, according to the more optimistic climate scientists. Well, the more pessimistic climate scientists think we may already be irreversibly fucked, to use the technical term. For my son's sake I sure hope the 10 year window holds and that we start fucking doing something. But what is increasingly clear is that the consequences of global warming are coming on faster than the most expert scientists have predicted. The current debate among climate scientists is not whether global warming is happening, but whether it is coming fast or REALLY fast and whether we have any time left to deal with it.

Martin Frobisher in 1576 was one of the first navagators to try and find a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He was 431 years too early.

This year, global warming has hit the Arctic sea ice harder than ever before, and the Arctic ice has melted to record lows...opening up the Northwest Passage to navagation.

From the Guardian:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.

Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.

So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.

Ummmm...let me just say holy shit!

I have been nudging everyone to get busy and get active because we only have 10 years to deal with global warming, according to the more optimistic climate scientists. Well, the more pessimistic climate scientists think we may already be irreversibly fucked, to use the technical term. For my son's sake I sure hope the 10 year window holds and that we start fucking doing something. But what is increasingly clear is that the consequences of global warming are coming on faster than the most expert scientists have predicted. The current debate among climate scientists is not whether global warming is happening, but whether it is coming fast or REALLY fast and whether we have any time left to deal with it.

The more optimistic global warming scientists believe we have a good 10 years to deal with global warming. After that, all bets are off. Some even say all bets are off right now, but I think we still have time. But either way, the time to act is 20 years ago...or, since we were to goddamned stupid to do that, how about right now.

My main efforts this particular year have been the preservation of forests, reforestation, and preservation of wetlands because these three things will be absolutely critical for our abilities to deal with both global warming per se (due to their carbon sequestration abilities) and in dealing with the CONSEQUENCES of global warming, including flooding, soil erosion, etc.

So, in the spirit of this particular focus, this comes from something I wrote long ago, but is still very relevant and bears repetition. We ALL need to pay attention to these things because if we don't, we are screwed, our children are screwed and our grandchildren are screwed. Beyond that I cannot predict.

As I read Jared Diamond’s excellent book Collapse a couple of years ago, I was struck by the fact that among all the various environmental issues that led to major economic and social problems, deforestation stood out as a major factor in almost every case examined, from Easter Island to modern Montana. Throughout history, and continuing today, deforestation has been one of the single most common reasons for the agricultural and economic collapse of civilizations and nations. The simple explanation for this is that forests represent not only a major resource whose depletion affects not just the logging industry, but also construction and transportation industries as well as, in most places, heating and cooking. But deeper than this simple explanation is a much more fundamental one. Forests are a major determinant of rainfall patterns, water runoff patterns and soil erosion patterns. Deforestation almost invariably reduces rainfall regionally. Deforestation leads to much faster water runoff leading to disastrous rainy season floods followed by dry season droughts in areas where prior to deforestation water runoff was better held by forests, preventing floods and mitigating the dry season. And deforestation, both by removing extensive root systems that hold soil in place and because of it’s limiting rapid water runoff, leads to greatly increased soil erosion. In areas of the world where deforestation has occurred, agriculture declines due to water scarcity, rainy season floods, and massive soil depletion. More distant problems are the loss of reliable watercourses due to the floods and erosion, often rendering hydroelectric power and irrigation impossible, and the destruction of downstream delta fisheries that depend on the nutrients washed downstream by a healthy river/soil ecosystem. Thus forestry, agriculture, infrastructure and fisheries suffer severely after the deforestation of an area and this alone has led to many economic crashes in many parts of the world through history.

In a recent article I described how a detailed analysis of energy production and usage in the US shows that about 51% of the energy produced is wasted. One of the best ways of addressing our energy problems is energy efficiency. True, we need to do more: carbon sequestration (saline wetlands and trees in all but the northernmost latitudes are the best ways of sequestering carbon) and alternative energy are necessary. But even without changing our energy production, we can get a good head start on dealing with global warming by improving energy efficiency. In John and Teresa Heinz Kerry's book, This Moment on Earth, they describe how Texas Instruments was able to design a factory in Texas where energy efficiency was the primary design element that saved them so much money that it allowed building in Texas to be competitive with outsourcing to India. They saved money, saved energy and kept jobs in the United States all by designing with energy efficiency in mind.

Energy efficiency is the smartest step towards dealing with global warming.

There are many ways that you as a private citizen can be part of the solution. Carpooling, using mass transit, bicycling, walking, buying a hybrid car, turning your thermostat down a degree in the winter, and up a degree in summer, turning off lights, insulation, etc. are all ways where YOU can both save money in the long run and save energy. They all make sense both for your budget AND for dealing with global warming. You should do all you can to do these things. But there is one that is such a no-brainer, that if you haven't already done it, you are losing. The number one change you should have made at least 5 years ago is to switch your light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs.