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Posts tagged with “Climate Change” (All posts)

  • Professor Camill receives NSF grant to study arctic climate change

    January 2, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Via Carleton News,

     "Northfield, Minn.—Phil Camill, associate professor of biology at Carleton College, has received a National Science Foundation grant of more than $400,000 to study climate change in the Canadian Arctic.

    Camill, a specialist in global change ecology, will undertake the project with three colleagues: Charles Umbanhower, professor of biology and environmental studies at St. Olaf College, Christoph E. Geiss, associate professor of physics and environmental science at Trinity College (Conn.), and Mark B. Edlund, senior scientist at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The overall project has been funded at $775,000; Camill’s portion of the grant represents the lion’s share at roughly $412,000 for three years of work.

    The project’s goal is to improve the scientific understanding of how landscapes (the geographical location of a site, such as being upland or lowland and the abundance of peat-forming wetlands) mediate the responses of lake and terrestrial ecosystems to climate change. The study will look at more than two-dozen sites in the forest-tundra region of northern Manitoba, a region experiencing some of the fastest rates of warming in the world. Warming in Arctic regions is expected to cause large ecosystem changes, including increases in lake productivity, permafrost thaw, shrub expansion, and northward shifts in the sub arctic tree line. However, preliminary work in these sites by Camill and colleagues suggests that landscapes with high abundance of acidic wetlands may alter lake chemistry enough to influence how lakes respond to climate change. The project will test these ideas by examining the relationship between modern lake chemistry and landscape attributes as well as lake and peat land sediments over the past 8,000 years."

  • Cap-and-Trade 101

    December 7, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    Musical Chairs

    Have you heard the term cap and trade, but you're still a little confused about how it would work out?

    Holmes Hummel, an AAAS fellow in Jay Inslee's office, has a great powerpoint explaining how the carbon reduction scheme
    works using musical chairs as an analogy.

    Grist recently posted the slide show with a neat java-applet called Slide share. To see it, click here.

    Photo by Flickr user David Maddison used under a Creative Commons license

  • Becky in Bali: Apprehensions from Baltimore and Taipei

    December 2, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    Note: As a part of the ENTS climate change theme year, senior Becky Dernbach will be reporting on her experiences and observations from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali. Look for regular posts from Becky over the next two weeks.

    Taipei is my new favorite airport in which to have a layover. So far I have discovered a garden of purple Taiwanese flowers, a modern art exhibit, free Internet, three prayer rooms for different religions, a bamboo hut honoring one of the Architecture Styles of Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan, and an entire gate decorated with a Hello Kitty theme, complete with pink and white Hello Kitty chairs and a large TV screening area with colorful bleacher-style seats. Rather than Buy Stuff and Buy More Stuff, the theme of most American airports, the message here seems to be Buy Stuff but also Enjoy Life, a theme I appreciate after traveling for 35 hours including a claustrophobic overseas thirteen-hour middle-seat flight.


    Continue by clicking the "read more" link below

  • The Saudi Arabia of Renewable Energy

    November 16, 2007 at 9:07 am

    Via Environmental News Network,

    Yesterday a group of Midwest governors including Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty agreed to a plan that would support renewable energy and cut greenhouse gases in the region.

    A broad agreement was reached to support a region-wide renewable energy standard of 30% by 2030 and an increase in the use of biofuels in the region.

    An additional accord, agreed upon by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, and Manitoba, will set up a regional carbon trading system by 2010, although the group did not set any greenhouse gas reduction targets.

    The governors are hopeful about the prospects for their plan. Iowa Governor Chet Culver said the agreement is "a great opportunity for our country to come together and put partisan politics aside, and become an international leader on this issue." Particularly hopeful about the prospects for wind production in the Midwest, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle said the region could "become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy."

    The agreement is the third of its kind among U.S. regions. Groups of Western states and Northeastern states have made similar moves in the absence of an overarching federal policy.

  • Coal Plant

    Where is Your Power Coming From?

    November 15, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    Catering to GIS and data geeks, the Center for Global Development has a new web-based tool for monitoring GHG emissions from powerplants across the world. Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) reveals the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies in every country on Earth.

    To me, this has some really cool features. Embarrassingly, I had no idea where the most of the local power plants were located. Now, not only do I know where they are, but also how many megawatts they produce and how many tons of carbon dioxide they emit.

    It would be really cool if they continue to develop this tool and would begin to indicate power sources and also show pictures of the plants (GIS tagged photos anyone?).

    Update: Here's why there's little information on power sources: "Proprietary licensing agreements with some of our data suppliers prevent us from revealing the fuel sources (coal, gas, nuclear, etc.) of individual plants. Whenever possible, we reveal this information at the level of companies and geographic regions, although we group coal, oil, and natural gas into a "Fossil" category and combine various renewable technologies under a single heading (see the Glossary for details)."

  • Cyclone Sidr keeps gaining strength

    November 14, 2007 at 11:46 am

    Via Chris Mooney, Cyclone Sidr, a category 4 storm, is heading for Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable sites in the world for a large storm. The storm is still gaining strength.

    Will anyone take notice? Apparently, CNN.com won't so far.

  • volcano

    Geo-engineering Discussions Heating Up

    November 14, 2007 at 11:04 am
    Two recent Op-eds in two of our nation's leading papers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have intensified discussions about geo-engineering as a potential solution to global warming. Fred Ickle and Lowell Wood (subscription required) lambaste all parties involved in developing an international treaty on global warming because they have focused only on mitigation and have intentionally ignored "climate geo-engineering". Ken Caldeira took a different stance arguing that while we should continue to try to apply regulation with the goal of transitioning to a new, clean energy system, we should also set aside 1% of research funding to large-scale techno-fixes just in case we're unable to reduce emissions enough to limit the impacts of climate change.

    While I agree with Caldeira that we shouldn't remove these options from the table, it's important to recognize that every hypothesized solution so far has the potential of creating new problems. Do we really want to solve one problem while creating a catastrophe of a different variety?

    Some of the potential solutions I've seen include James Lovelock and Chris Ripley's recent letter to the editor in Nature who advocate for the use of pipes "to increase the mixing of nutrient below the thermocline with the relatively barren waters at the ocean surface."

    Continue by clicking the "read more" link below


  • Differences between RECs and Offsets

    November 9, 2007 at 5:16 pm
    Our friends over at Williams had their take on this, and I wanted to add a few more points about the differences between Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and Offsets.

    First of all, RECs and offsets are entirely different environmental commodities. There are many misconceptions about RECs and offsets, and while some will say that it is because vendors have been misleading, I think it is more likely due to the fact that they are both somewhat abstract concepts to consumers and it does require a fair amount of research to be able to understand the differences between them.

    A REC, also referred to as a green tag, represensts the environmental benefits of one megawatt-hour of electricity generated by a renewable sources such as wind, solar, or small-scale hydropower. Another commonly cited benefit of RECs is that the money will incentivize the production of renewable energy resource.

    As many of our readers probably know, with out turbine, Carleton's renewable energy credits were sold to Xcel and served as a monetary incentive to construct our wind turbine. Though I was not at Carleton when talks about the turbine were taking place, it is easy to say that the project might not have been financed if Carleton hadn't been able to sell the credits.

    Continue by clicking the "read more" link below


  • :60 Seconds to Save the Earth

    :60 Seconds to Save the Earth

    November 7, 2007 at 9:13 am

    I know there are a lot of people trying to go today without using their computers, but I thought I would highlight this Current TV's :60 Seconds to Save the Earth video contest.


    Some of these are really inspiring, check them out here.

  • Washington DC

    Global Warming Bill Advances in Senate

    November 2, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    Via the AP, important news for the wonks in our audience:

    "Lawmakers took the first step Thursday on a bipartisan global warming bill that would impose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases from power plants, industrial facilities and transportation.

    Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., pushed the legislation out of his global warming subcommittee by a 4-3 vote, agreeing to a number of changes aimed primarily at garnering the needed majority to advance it."

    Continue by clicking the "read more" link below


  • Dot Earth added to our blogroll.

    November 1, 2007 at 10:05 am
    Andrew Revkin has been reporting on the environment for the New York Times since 1995, and just recently started working on a blog titled Dot Earth.

    Dot Earth will be providing information on climate change and sustainability. Revkin explains, "I've decided to focus Dot Earth on the broad-brush theme of sustainability for a few reasons. One is that "slow drip" issues are hard to capture and convey through traditional media tools, which are mostly (and appropriately) focused on dramatic events happening now, not eventually momentous trends that hide in plain sight.

    Another is that some of the underlying problems related to humanity's impact on the environment are largely irreversible. The greenhouse effect appears a lot easier to amplify than to reduce. Extinction is forever (at least for now). Such issues deserve sustained attention.

    Finally, I just have this innate interest in subtle problems, or solutions, that over time can change the world, for better or worse."


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