Re/Action on Climate Protection

How to solve global warming

Stopping "dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate" is the most important problem facing humanity today. Significant action at the local level is one of the major keys.

Disclaimer

Dear Readers: Through this blog I aim to stimulate dialog, information exchange and debate. Opinions and ideas expressed in this blog are my own, and therefore may occasionally differ from those of the Climate Protection Campaign, where I work.

Essay by Shepherd Bliss on climate change and peak oil

Shepherd Bliss has contributed an essay titled, "The Four Horsemen of Industrial Society: War, Over-Population, Climate Change & Peak Oil". In it, he examines the threat of climate change and peak oil to human society and the planet, and possible responses. He compares the effects of climate change and Peak Oil on the motivations of humans to change the way society operates.Download four_horsemenshort1.doc

US behavior at Montreal-More bad news

Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

And so ends the Montreal talks. The officials of the American government have, once again, offered a gesture of arrogance and contempt to the rest of the world on the most significant environmental problem of our time.

And here we have Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,

"James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was even more skeptical of Saturday's pact, saying it would lead only to "a dead end economically."

"Two weeks of costly deliberation only resulted in an agreement to deliberate some more, so Montreal was essentially a meeting about the next meeting," Inhofe said in a statement. "The Kyoto Protocol . . . is a complete failure."

(Remember, ol' Jim invited Michael Crichton, a writer of fiction, to testify as an expert, before Congress, on climate science.)

A complete failure also of American democracy to deal with the most pressing issue of our time.

Report on the Prince of Wales visit to Northern CA

The Prince and the Peak

By Shepherd Bliss, sb3[at]pon.net

England’s Prince Charles convened a Nov. 7 dialogue in San Francisco on “Peak Oil, Climate Change, and Business Action.” 300 high-level guests from corporations, government, and non-profit groups attended.

“We simply can’t go on as we are,” Prince Charles said to the select audience. He cited statistics and stories about global warming and oil depletion, contending, “Somehow we have to find the courage to reassert the once commonplace belief that human beings have a duty to act as the stewards of creation.”

Climate Change Newsfeeds

You may not have noticed the left column of our blog. It has been reorganized so that some newsfeeds that we feature are more accessible. The three newsfeeds on our left column are The Climate Ark (Climate Change Newsfeed), a site from the UK called Climate Change Action, and the premier climate change science site RealClimate.

These newsfeeds are updated constantly, with the five most recent entries shown in the left column. Clicking on the link will take you to the article. The Climate Change Newsfeed is very active, with the latest news items related to climate change. Climate Change Action is an interesting site, with links to the "Campaign Against Climate Change", a UK climate activism group.

RealClimate isn't updated very often, but it contains a wealth of information about the latest findings in climate science. It contains refutations of some of the most popular climate change myths, as well as rebuttals of Michael Crichton's book, State of Fear.

Enjoy the links, and also check out our Climate Protection Campaign website and white paper wiki links.

Bill McKibben on Global Warming

What Part of 'Global Warming' Don't We Get?
By Bill McKibben, Prairie Writers Circle
Posted on October 25, 2005, Printed on October 25, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/27034/

Forget about the hurricanes. Put them out of your mind. We'll never know for sure that any particular hurricane is caused by global warming, so just don't think about them. Instead, concentrate on the other evidence for climate change that's appeared recently:

More on Warming in Sonoma County

Did some more analysis on temperature data in Sonoma County. This time the data is from the Santa Rosa C weather station, and goes back to 1950. Santa Rosa is the biggest city in Sonoma County, and has experienced the largest population growth. Interestingly, this data also shows warming, about 2 degrees, in the average of annual high and low temperatures

However, there is a fundamental difference with the Graton data.

CA Energy Commisions - Conference on Climate Change

http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/events/2005_conference/index.html
Good information about what is happening at the state level

Against the backdrop of the borderless battle against global warming, the California Energy Commission and the California Environmental Protection Agency will hold the Second Annual Conference on Climate Change Research.

Sir David King, the chief science adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will deliver the keynote speech at this year's gathering (on Thursday). Through Sir David, the United Kingdom will forge a united front with California and its two closest Western neighbors - in hopes of complementing worldwide strategies to soften the economic and environmental blows inflicted worldwide by the climactic phenomenon.

The carbon cycle

There is a strong and well-known correlation between the level or concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (expressed in parts per million or ppm) and the average global surface temperature. It has been shown by the work of Michael Mann and others that as the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased in the past 200 or so years, the global average surface temperature has increased. This is the basis for the theory of global warming.

Why has the level of carbon dioxide increased?  It is widely agreed that two human activities are primarily responsible: 1) the burning of fossil fuels; 2) deforestation. Fossil fuels are "ancient carbon." Deforestation decreases the biosphere's ability to take up and store carbon. Why do these factors change the atmosphere?

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is regulated by the carbon cycle. This is a natural process whereby the element carbon is transferred between "natural sources" and "natural sinks". Sources and sinks are like pipes that are connected to "carbon stocks." The largest natural carbon stocks are the lithosphere (crude oil, coal, magma), the biosphere (all carbon-based life), the oceans and the atmosphere. Carbon is transferred among the stocks via flows between sources and sinks. The uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by plants is an example of a flow to a sink. Decomposition of organic material is another example of a flow. A volcanic eruption is another example. The amount of carbon in the cycle changes over geologic time, i.e., eons.

When humans burn coal or products derived from crude oil, the carbon dioxide from this burning is composed of carbon that was stored in the lithosphere eons ago. It was taken out of the carbon cycle and stored, or sequestered, in the lithosphere. Now it is being re-injected into the carbon cycle at a rate that is unprecedented in the history of the planet. The "ancient carbon" that is being emitted is ending up in the two stocks that are able to accept it: the oceans and the atmosphere. The signs of increased carbon levels in the ocean are increasing pH level or increasing acidity. This is having a profound effect on ocean life. The sign of increased carbon level in the atmosphere is increasing carbon dioxide concentration. The carbon dioxide level is now the highest it has been in the last 400,000 years, and possibly the last 20 million years. The rate of increase of the carbon dioxide level is unprecedented in the history of the planet.

Here is a link to the IPCC TAR discussion of the carbon cycle.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/098.htm