Yule Heibel's Library tagged climate_change →  View Popular, Search in Google

Very effective video, and sobering commentary.
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And if you’re wondering about the link between CO2 and global warming, here’s what the data from NASA shows:

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins.
By 1960, the average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million.
Today it exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating pace.

While scientists don’t expect temperatures to rise consistently year after year, they do expect those figures to continue climbing over decades with extreme temperatures predicted in the next two to three years due to increased solar activity and the effects of El Nino on the tropical Pacific region.
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climate_change nasa video smartplanet global_warming

On the question of earth's changing tilt as a contributor to climate change, don't discount CO2 yet:
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Though his [Peter Huybers] work suggests that orbital configuration contributes to the loss of glacial ice, Huybers was quick to emphasize that it is only one factor among many.

“It could also be that orbital forcing causes a rise is atmospheric CO2, and that it’s the increased CO2 that drives the loss of ice sheets,” he said. “In all likelihood, both CO2 and increased summer radiation contribute to deglaciation. They’re both expected to push the climate system toward less ice.

“Another important aspect to consider is that the orbital configuration we now have is almost exactly where it was 20,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, but this time we’re near a glacial minimum,” he said. “If you think about what the difference is between then and now, it’s not the orbital configuration, it’s the CO2. I think that’s important to keep in mind, because it shows that glacial changes are not a simple function of the orbital configuration.”
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Awareness of climate change has filled Chicago city planners with deep concern for the trees.

Not only are they beautiful, said Ms. Malec-McKenna, herself trained as a horticulturalist, but their shade also provides immediate relief to urban heat islands. Trees improve air quality by absorbing carbon dioxide, and their leaves can keep 20 percent of an average rain from hitting the pavement.

Chicago spends over $10 million a year planting roughly 2,200 trees. From 1991 to 2008, the city added so many that officials estimate tree cover increased to 17.6 percent from 11 percent. The goal is to exceed 23 percent this decade.

The problem is that for trees to reach their expected lifespan — up to 90 years — they have to be able to endure hotter conditions. Chicago has already changed from one growing zone to another in the last 30 years, and it expects to change several times again by 2070.
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We need to focus, ironically, on ends, not means. For example, in passive solar buildings, focusing on the end goal (thermal comfort) rather than the means (heating air) changed the design approach dramatically. It turns out that human comfort has more to do with surrounding surface temperatures than with air temperature in a building, so massive walls that absorb and store the sun’s gentle heat also provide a more comfortable environment without all the hot air. Or, if lighting is the goal, electricity and bulbs are just one potential means; a building that welcomes daylight is the simple, elegant solution—even better than a complex system of wind farms generating green electrons for efficient fixtures. Likewise, the goal of transportation is access, not movement or mobility per se; movement is a means, not the end. So, bringing destinations closer together is a simpler, more elegant solution than assembling a new fleet of electric cars and the acres of solar collectors needed to power them. Call it “passive urbanism.”
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sustainability cities urbanism energy streetsblog peter_calthorpe climate_change

Getting people on board with climate change reduction strategies, even the orthodox religious who deny the science of it: money, fiscal conservatism, frugality - an appeal to the virtues prized by those communities:

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“It is in our DNA to leave a place better than we found it,” he said.

Elliot Lahn, a community development planner for Merriam, a city that reduced its energy use by 5 percent, said that when public meetings were held on the six-town competition to save energy, some residents offered their view that global warming was a hoax.

But they were very eager to hear about saving money, Mr. Lahn said. “That’s what really motivated them.”

Jerry Clasen, a grain farmer in Reno County, south of Salina, said he largely discounted global warming. “I believe we are going through a cycle and it is not a big deal,” he said. But his ears pricked up when project workers came to town to talk about harnessing wind power. “There is no sense in our dependency on foreign oil,” he said, “especially since we have got this resource here.”

Mr. Clasen helped organize a group of local leaders to lobby the electronics and energy giant Siemens to build a wind turbine factory in the area. When the company signed a deal in 2009 promising to create as many as 400 local jobs, it stirred a wave of excitement about the future of wind power.

Now, farmers expect to lease some of their land for turbines and rely on wind power as a stable source of income, he said, and land prices are rising as result.

“Whether or not the earth is getting warmer,” he said, “it feels good to be part of something that works for Kansas and for the nation.”
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climate_change kansas nyt strategies

Must-see video, with Tom Rand explaining clean-tech.
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Tom Rand, Cleantech Practice Lead at MaRS Discovery District, inventor of the Green Bond, previous entrepreneur and successful Venture Capitalist talks about his journey to build "the continent’s greenest hotel" - Planet Traveler.

Rand sees the world through green-colored glasses. There is too little time and too much at stake to invest in “green” technologies that do not succeed in effecting a substantive reduction in carbon emissions. Low carbon technologies represent a third-industrial revolution that Rand believes must take place. And soon.

In pursuing the goal of building the greenest hotel, Rand didn’t waste time quibbling over payback periods on geothermal heat exchangers, or spend months negotiating with government agencies to obtain retrofit grants. In fact, Rand and his partner are making this project work without the help of any grants or subsidies as an example to others that the adoption of green technologies isn’t prohibitively expensive. Day-to-day building operations are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions: a huge market. And greening buildings are the low-hanging fruit of carbon emissions reduction, ripe for the adoption of new green technologies.

Rand talks about City cooperation, payback periods, technology and financing options and how to measure the cost savings of green technologies.
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Interesting alternative take on the news item around ocean iron fertilization, which is intended to create an algae bloom that's supposed to absorb CO2.

climate_change hacking

Reading this article, I was again reminded of Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's book, Dazzle Gradually, and the Gaia hypothesis. Fascinating to think that the planet is regulating itself - and if it's a sentient organism as proposed, why wouldn't it?
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A team of UK scientists have discovered a natural process that could delay, or even end, the threat of global warming.

The researchers, aboard the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance, have found that melting icebergs off the coast of Antarctica are releasing millions of tiny particles of iron into the southern Ocean, helping to create huge ‘blooms’ of algae that absorb carbon emissions. The algae then sinks to the icy depths, effectively removing CO2 from the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

According to lead researcher, Prof. Rob Raiswell of Leeds University, “The Earth itself seems to want to save us.”
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cleantechnica polar_ice global_warming gaia climate_change