Wave goodbye to global warming, GM and pesticides - Independent.ie

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/wave-goodbye-to-global-warmin

New Oceans Study: Global Warming Accelerated in Past 15 Years

Perhaps the most important result of this paper is the confirmation that while many people wrongly believe global warming has stalled over the past 10-15 years, in reality global warming has not paused, it has accelerated.

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/202626/hot-water-global-warm

NY Times Editorial Makes The Climate Case Against Keystone

The March 11 editorial in the New York Times says the overriding reason President Obama should reject the Keystone XL pipeline is climate change.

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/197221/climate-case-against-

Obama Nominee for EPA Has Track Record of Safeguarding Health and the Environment

President Obama has announced he is nominating Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy's track record of standing up for clean air, climate action, and public health shows that we can count on her to protect our environment and communities.

http://theenergycollective.com/francesbeinecke/194791/obama-nominee-ep

State Dept. says no environmental bar to Keystone XL

To the chagrin of environmentalists opposed to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a State Department report released Friday afternoon stated there is no conclusive environmental reason it should not be built.

The report makes no recommendations for the president's anticipated decision on whether or not to approve the project, which will carry crude oil from Alberta's tar sands to the Gulf Coast, while -- according to opponents -- producing high levels of carbon emissions, disturbing communities and adding to the coffers of oil magnates such as the Koch brothers. Friday's lengthy report suggests environmental objections have been overestimated by the project's critics. Via the New York Times:

Continue Reading...

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/01/state_department_says_no_environmental

Fiscal Cliff Threatens Environmental Protections

If Congress fails to reach an agreement, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would kick in, making it much harder for the government to deliver the health and environmental protections people value. We would feel these punishing cuts in our daily lives.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theenergycollective_allposts/~3/i9HNxT_pjWg/fiscal-cliff-threatens-environmental-protections-voters-supported

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/142946/fiscal-cliff-threatens-environmental-protections-voters-supported

Are humans, simply by existing, destroying the planet?

On TWiE Episode 13. Engineering a miracle my fellow electric vehicle online journalist (Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield) had an interesting thing she said. That simply by existing humans are destroying the environment. No matter what we do to minimize our impact on the environment, no matter how green we are, we're destroying the planet.

While I grok and agree with what she's going after, there's something this is missing. And the thing she's missing has in it an interesting bit of teaching that I've been pondering.

Much as we seem to hate to admit it, we are animals. Human beings are animals. We aren't plants, we aren't fungus, we're animals. It doesn't matter how smart we think we are, nor does it matter how distanced from our animal nature we get due to the our animal nature. We are animals.

Every animal and heck every plant modifies its environment.

As such humans do modify our environment. It's rather obvious that we modify our environment. We humans build buildings, houses, roads, parking lots, airports, etc. All those things modify the environment around us. Other modifications are various chemicals from all the metals and everything we build and use. There is a huge long list of things humans do to modify our environment.

While all animals (and plants) modify their environment, there is a huge difference between the modification done by humans or by other animals. Our ability to harness energy resources act as an amplification to human activity. A single human acting on their own using their hands probably can't do any more environment modification than any other animals. Give a tool to a human, give them a powered tool, give them a car, put them in an airplane, etc, and the amount of dama..er..modification they can do increases dramatically. Give a phalanx of construction engineers the backhoes and jack hammers and concrete mixers etc, and pretty soon you have a highway or a building.

It seems to me that if human beings had kept to non-powered hand tools the damage (modification) we do to our environment would have remained just as minimal as other animals. But we had to go and develop technology, develop oil refining techniques, and develop these huge planet crushing machines.

Taking my tongue out of my mouth ... Sure those planet crushing machines also act to give us the comfortable homes and highways we live among. The benefit however comes at a cost, and that cost is huge dramatic modifications to the environment.

Our fellow human beings may be acting under the delusion that the pitiful puny efforts of humans cannot possibly make any lasting damage to the planet. To an extent dramatic planetary effects like earthquakes (such as yesterdays 8.8 magnitude one in Chile) or hurricanes do demonstrate that the planet is much bigger than us puny humans, even when we equip all 6 billion of us with planet crushing machines. The pattern however is that human ingenuity continually acts to learn new ways to harness energy resources for ever-increasing magnification of our impact on our little planet. Eventually (if it hasn't already happened) this pattern will result in humans literally able to crush planets.

That is, unless humanity learns that there are better ways to live. An idea I took away from watching the recent movie Avatar is that if humanity were to be traveling among the stars (as shown in the movie) that we would be like a horde of ravening locusts swarming over planets stripping them of their resources. Just think how modern businesses act today, and amplify it a million times more.

WiserEarth

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WiserEarth

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Serves the people who are transforming the world. It is a community directory and networking forum that maps and connects non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights and more. Content is created and edited by people like you.

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Living on Earth

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Living on Earth

Living on Earth Podcast

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Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is the weekly environmental news and information program distributed by Public Radio International. Every week approximately 300 Public Radio stations broadcast Living on Earth's news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues. The show airs in 9 of the 10 top radio markets and reaches 80% of the US.

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Acidic oceans

The acidity of the ocean has increased by 30% since pre-industrial times and is predicted to double by 2100 because of increased uptake of CO2 according to expatriate Australian Australia’s leading oceanographer, Dr Tony Haymet, former Chief of Marine and Atmospheric Science at CSIRO, now director of the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California.

Increasing the amount of CO2 in the oceans causes an increase in hydrogen carbonate ions, HCO3-, but a decrease in carbonate CO22- which organisms need to make calcium carbonate shells and other structures.

The predicted acidity increase will have unknown consequences for marine life and ecosystems such as coral reefs, tiny marine organisms called pteropods, and fish larvae to name but three.

Article Reference: 

Acidic oceans

Toxic truth of secretive Siberian city

Catalytic converters use Palladium as a catalyst to remove pollution out of car exhaust. But in this BBC report we are taken to a city in a remote region of Siberia which is one of the major producers of Palladium, producing almost half of the worlds supply.

The city was built by the Soviet Union to mine ores and produce metals from the ores. A rich mix of metals is produced there, including nickel, copper, palladium, platinum, gold and silver. But the ore also contains a large amount of sulphur. When the ore is smelted to extract the metals, the sulfur is released along with other toxic chemicals, into the environment.

This is acid rain.. and there is a dead zone around this city for 30 kilometers (or more) radius.

This one city produces almost two million tons of sulfur dioxide a year.

Article Reference: 

Toxic truth of secretive Siberian city

Antarctic Melting May Be Speeding Up, Scientists Say

Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.

...But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.

...About 100 million people around the world live within a metre of the present-day sea level, CSIRO Marine Research senior principal research scientist Steve Rintoul said.

Article Reference: 

Antarctic Melting May Be Speeding Up, Scientists Say

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

Apparently while scientists are applauding the attention Al Gore is bringing to the issue of global warming, they're (some of them) concerned about the little details and wish he would cool the hype. It's not clear whether this article is the typical bashing that's been aimed in the direction of Al Gore and his movie An Inconvenient Truth, bashing that says he's full of bunk or that there is a legitimate debate going on. The article is in the mold of cover the controversy which is the tactic used by, for example, those pushing the Intelligent Design concept to establish some credibility for themselves when very few scientists buy into those ideas. By covering the debate the news media helps to establish in the publics mind that a debate exists when the debate may not be very strong or well thought of.

The statements sound very nice ... that they're concerned Al Gore is going "beyond the science". That's a real and legitimate concern alright. Would Al Gore, in the quest for publicity, go to creating a controversy to help him ride the wave of publicity? I don't know about that, but what I do know is there's an alarming series of news articles I've seen about environmental problems. Problems that threaten the survival of all of us, and are scary enough in consequence that we should be thinking of solutions now rather than debating. The solutions for the problems unfolding before us will take years to have a serious effect, making time of the essence.

Article Reference: 

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

2007 world's warmest winter on record

Weather records have been kept for a bit over a hundred years, so in terms of global climate this is pretty scant evidence given the age of the planet. Still the last 10 years has seen record warm winters year after year. That sure indicates a trend. This last winter was the warmest yet on record, a thought we shouldn't be surprised over given how warm it was in January. There were several reports throughout the winter where bears were not hibernating, because it wasn't cold enough to trigger that response. In Moscow, Russia, they didn't have a white christmas. etc.

Can we just get past the question of whether this is happening and get on with a solution?

Article Reference: 

2007 world's warmest winter on record

Carbon dioxide levels threaten oceans regardless of global warming

Regardless to the truth of the idea of human-caused climate change, carbon dioxide growth in the oceans is still a problem. This is from a study published in the March 9, 2007, issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters authored by Ken Caldeira from the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University and Long Cao and Atul Jain of the University of Illinois. Increasing absorption of carbon dioxide is acidifying global oceans, because carbon dioxide absorbed into water becomes carbonic acid. This is putting sea life at risk because carbonic acid is a corrosive agent, which can eat away shells of important species in the global food chain. This would disrupt the food chain of the creatures we hunt in the oceans for our seafood supplies.

Scientists estimate that the oceans have soaked up about half of all carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuel emissions over the past 200 years. Had oceans not absorbed this carbon, current atmospheric carbon dioxide would be much higher than the current 381 parts-per-million (ppm)--probably closer to 500-600 ppm say climatologists.

Article Reference: 

Carbon dioxide levels threaten oceans regardless of global warming

Re: WILL WARMING END SNOW SPORTS?

WILL WARMING END SNOW SPORTS? is a report from EcoShock News about winter sports, the issue of retreating glaciers, and related issues. One of the effects of the retreating glaciers is to threaten the possible continuation of "winter sports" such as Skiing. This then threatens the livelihood of those whose life is those winter sports, such as professional competition skiers, skiing competitions, and ski resorts.

One of the coping strategies used by ski resorts is to install snow making machines. If there isn't enough snow, they can make the snow, right? Well ... that is just like one of the scenes in An Inconvenient Truth (DVD) with a "solution" to global warming where giant ice cubes are made and dropped into the ocean to cool the ocean. But in truth that's no solution of any kind, for instance it takes an expenditure of energy to create the ice and snow, and that expenditure of energy probably involves emission of more greenhouse gasses to run the ice or snow making machines.

However the EcoShock report includes a discussion about sustainable energy installations being put in at the Whistler-Blackcomb resort. At this resort they have begun showing pictures of the changes in the glaciers around them, which then demonstrates in very real terms the effects of global warming. This would be just like the glacier I visited in Alaska which had an informational sign showing where the glacier was over the last 100 years, and just how far up that valley the glacier had retreated. They are exploring wind power, micro-hydro-electric power generation, etc. I suppose this is at least a solid symbolic gesture that has to be connected with their message that the glaciers are melting. "Look", they're saying, "the glaciers are melting, and here are some simple things we can and are doing to mitigate the cause of the melting glaciers".

The last thought I want to mention is the ecological arrangement people around the world have learned to live in. Around the world areas exist where there isn't much rain most of the year, and the rivers stay full because of water coming from snow that accumulates during the winter and melts during the summer. So long as more snow falls in the winter than melts in the summer then you have a continual presence of snow on the mountain top. That's what a glacier is, technically speaking, is a snowpack that lasts year-round.

In those areas of the world often there are societies of people who develop and are able to live there because water is available year-round even if there is little rain most of the year.

California is just one example. What draws people to California today is that it "never" rains. Well, actually, it does rain during the winter, but the rest of the year is essentially without rain. And, you might ask, just how is the state of California able to supply enough water year-round to slake the thirst of over 30 million people? Well, part of it comes from the Colorado River, but the vast majority come from snow accumulations in the Sierra Nevada mountains and other mountains in Northern California. That water is accumulated in reservoirs, is used for hydro-electric power generation, is used for drinking water, is piped around the state in an aqueduct system, etc. The movie Chinatown dramatizes some of the shenanigans concocted in the early 1900's to tap that water for the use of the Los Angeles area.

But there are other cultures world-wide, some not so rich and fortunate as California. 10 years ago I visited the far reaches of the Andes mountains in Peru, and in part of my trip I attended an indigenous ceremony performed by the local people for over 1000 years. In this ceremony they traveled a strenuous and long journey deep into the mountains to visit the glaciers and perform sacred ceremonies with them. One of the things which struck me deeply witnessing these ceremonies is how they kept alive this wisdom that their livelihood depends on the continued existence of those glaciers.

And, uh, it is the melting snow from those glaciers which feeds the rain forest regions of Brazil and other parts of South America. I wonder what proportion of the water flowing through the Amazon and other rivers in that area come from melting snow, and what proportion come from rainfall?

So, that is an important consideration if you remember that one of the big ecological worries we face is the continued existence of that particular rain forest. It is widely held that the rain forests, not just the Amazonian rain forest, are the lungs of the planet. If those rain forests disappear then where will there be enough plant life to convert the CO2 we exhale into the O2 that we breath?

Swirling plastic vortex menaces sea life

What happens to plastic stuff that gets tossed into the ocean? Swirling plastic vortex menaces sea life discusses a huge vortex in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the U.S. Mainland. This vortex is full of plastic refuse in various stages of decomposition. The plastic is poisoning the animals, and as it breaks down the constituent chemicals become part of the ocean. Most of the chemicals in plastics are persistent, meaning they take a long long long time to completely break down.

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish

'Only 50 years left' for sea fish tells that at the current rate of decline for wild fish stocks, that we have 50 years left of enjoying seafood. That means our grandchildren won't understand the joke "I'm a seafood lover, I see food and I eat it". But seriously can we continue with the current management policy? The article describes it as we've been acting as if there's an infinite number of species, that we use up one specie and another one will become available. But clearly there is a fixed volume of ocean, and only so much space to hold fish. Eventually we're going to run out. This has to change.

External Media

Stop Global Warming

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Stop Global Warming

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There is no more important cause than the call to action to save our planet. This is a movement about change – as individuals, as a country, and as a global community. We are all contributors to global warming and we all need to be part of the solution. Join the 507,913 supporters of the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, and become part of the movement to demand solutions to global warming now.

Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA)

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Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA)

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Pesticides are hazardous to human health and the environment, undermine local and global food security and threaten agricultural biodiversity.

Yet these pervasive chemicals are aggressively promoted by multinational corporations, government agencies, and other players in this more than $35 billion a year industry.

PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to insure the transition to a just and viable society.