This is a video of David Suzuki’s daughter at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. It’s a powerful statement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmuUVkG-Uw

Geoengineering to Stop Climate Change: The Effective, the Risky and the Useless Outlined in New Research Paper

Geoengineering projects to combat global climate change seem to bring out vocal opinions, both pro and con, and while there are compelling arguments from both sides, one thing that I think can be agreed upon is that more research is needed into the benefits of such schemes, as well as possible side effects and unintended consequences. Well, here it is.

For full article, visit:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/geoengineering

Geoengineering is seen by Samuel Thernstrom in this article in The American as a way to buy time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Q: What is geoengineering?
A: Many scientists and policymakers have become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects in the near future of sharply reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, so scholars have begun to consider whether there might be other ways to counteract global warming, particularly if it proves to be severe. “Geoengineering” is the most common term for efforts to intentionally change the Earth’s environment in ways that would compensate for the effects of elevated greenhouse gas concentrations. “Climate engineering” might be a better term for this concept.

For full article, visit:
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/november-december-magazine/

Thanks to Dick Cornelius for alerting me of this paper http://www.ehproject.org/PDF/phe/population-greenhouse2008.pdf

Environmental Failure: A Case for a New Green Politics, By: Gus Speth (Word doc., 51 KB)

Thanks to Edmund Levering for this article.
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Tree deaths, spurred by global warming, have more than doubled in older forests across Western states, federal scientists reported Thursday.

Droughts and pests brought on by warmer temperatures have killed firs, hemlocks, pines and other large trees in particular over the past 30 years without allowing replacements to sprout, the study published in the journal Science finds.

For full article, visit:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article.

Bruce Sundquist responded to the article two days ago (“World of Wasted Time” by Wayne Roberts) with the following comment: “I became aware some time ago that the usual methods for fighting global warming like energy conservation, sequestering in pressurized tanks of CO2, nuclear power etc. would no longer work. But two alternatives would still work – sequestering in forest biomass and sequestering of carbon in tropical cropland soils (the terra preta strategy). These two alternatives have the ability to extract greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere and therefore could halt global warming, and reverse it and cool the earth. The forest biomass alternative comes with an astronomical price tag and four serious risk factors that pretty well insure failure of that option. The terra preta alternative has plenty of sink capacity, and could pull greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere fast enough to halt and reverse global warming, and at a low (if any) cost and minimal risk.” Bruce’s comments are equally applicable to the item below.

I have previously distributed Bruce’s article on terra preta. If you would like to see it, view it at http://home.windstream.net/bsundquist1/tpgw.html.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Edmund Levering for this article.
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Antarctica is getting warmer rather than cooling as widely believed, according to a study that fits the icy continent into a trend of global warming.

A review by U.S. scientists of satellite and weather records for Antarctica, which contains 90 percent of the world’s ice and would raise world sea levels if it thaws, showed that freezing temperatures had risen by about 0.5 Celsius (0.8 Fahrenheit) since the 1950s.

For full article, visit:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews

It would have been better if this article had mentioned population.
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Ironically, the memo has come too late – and is no longer true.

Two new science reports from authoritative United Nations agencies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) confirm confidently what is now denied only by climate perverts: global warming has been caused by human activity

But this truth, representing the hard-won consensus of thousands of the world’s leading scientists, is no longer as relevant as some hoped.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues

Polar bears in the western Arctic are struggling to find food during the critical spring period, according to a recent report.

University of Alberta and Environment Canada scientists compared current samples of the bears’ waste with those from 20 years ago and determined that nearly a third more polar bears are going hungry in the spring than went hungry in the 1980s.

For full article, visit:
http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=2066