Do Flatscreen TVs cause climate change?

An article in the British newspaper The Guardian warns about this new danger to the environment (see excerpt below):

The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes.
As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, yet no one knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by the industry, said Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

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Ice-Free North Pole in '08?

The chances are greater than 50% that there will be no ice at the North Pole this summer, according to this article in The Independent (see excerpt below):

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
"The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the North Pole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I'd say it's even-odds whether the North Pole melts out," said Dr Serreze.
Each summer the sea ice melts before reforming again during the long Arctic winter but the loss of sea ice last year was so extensive that much of the Arctic Ocean became open water, with the water-ice boundary coming just 700 miles away from the North Pole.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

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Al Gore's New Slideshow

See it at the Huffington Post.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Governor's Conference on Climate at Yale

According to the Yale Daily News, Connecticut will soon be the site of a historic meeting of governors who care about climate change. Read the story below:

'Governator’ to talk climate at conference
Schwarzenegger will discuss global warming at forestry-school symposium next month
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to visit Yale next month to deliver an address on climate change, University officials confirmed last week.
Schwarzenegger will speak at a conference of state governors at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on April 17 and 18. The event will not be publicly announced until this week at the earliest, but officials disclosed some details about the conference in advance in response to an inquiry by the News.
The meeting will come exactly one century after President Theodore Roosevelt beckoned the nation’s governors to the White House in 1908 for an environmental conference organized by U.S. Forest Service chief and FES co-founder Gifford Pinchot 1889.
At that summit, the conservation movement was born.
“In our case, 100 years later, we are convening the governors of the United States to discuss what we consider the most challenging issue of our time, which is climate change,” said Melissa Goodall, the associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which is organizing the event.
All 50 state governors, as well as their counterparts in the U.S. territories and Canada, have been invited to the conference, although administrators expect only a fraction of them to attend. State environmental-protection commissioners from around the country and at least two former administrators of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, among them former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, are also expected to make the journey to New Haven.
R.K. Pachauri, a one-time FES visiting professor who received the Nobel Peace Prize last year on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which he serves as chairman, is also slated to attend, as is Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president and an environmental activist himself.
Aside from the A-list crowd, the conference will be centered on the unveiling of a policy statement — agreed upon by governors and state environmental-protection officials from across the country — that “effectively calls for a partnership approach between the federal and state government on addressing climate change,” Goodall said.
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy will coordinate the statement. She was not immediately available for comment last week.
Schwarzenegger’s speech, as well as a roundtable discussion among the governors on the topic of climate change, is expected to be open to the public, although the time of the speech has not yet been disclosed. Reached by telephone last week, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger would not confirm the governor’s planned visit but said more details would be available as the date of the conference neared.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, made headlines in 2006 when he signed into law the first enforceable, statewide cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The program is among the cornerstones of his tenure as governor and drew worldwide praise at the time of its unveiling.
It also addresses an issue that has been a major focus for University President Richard Levin and FES in recent years. During a speech at the University of Copenhagen in January, he called on the world’s economic powers to take action on global warming.
“All of us would like to see the federal government step up — but short of that, the kinds of things that Gov. Schwarzenegger has been pursuing have been very positive,” Levin said Saturday. “He certainly has been a major leader in this field.”
Yale, meanwhile, is making its own effort to fend off global warming: The University is already several years ahead of schedule in its initiative to realize, by 2020, a 10-percent cut in its greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Presidential Candidates, Climate Change and Faith

This item comes from the national IPL Blog:

The League of Conservation Voters has pointed out a serious problem of priorities in the presidential debates thus far, to wit: out of 3201 questions asked of the candidates, only 8 have dealt with global warming.Interfaith Power and Light is doing something about that.In conjunction with Faith in Public Life and religious leaders from across the ideological spectrum, on April 13, the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham will be asking Sen. Hillary Clinton and/or Sen. Barack Obama a question on global warming! And she won't be the only one. In fact, the Compassion Forum is focused on just five important issues to folks of faith: domestic and international poverty, global AIDS, climate change, genocide in Darfur, and human rights and torture. Thus, climate change should get some due attention, and it is significant that this badly needed priority is happening in the faith context. Sen. John McCain has been invited, but not accepted yet."CNN will serve as the exclusive broadcaster of a presidential candidate forum on faith, values and other current issues at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Penn., on Sunday, April 13, at 8 p.m. (ET) CNN Election Center anchor Campbell Brown and Newsweek editor and Newsweek.com election anchor Jon Meacham will moderate what is being billed as The Compassion Forum, which will take place nine days before the Pennsylvania primary."Newsweek has an interesting article up arguing that no matter which candidate wins in November, environmental policy will be different:
The environment, which typically ranks somewhere around "regulatory reform" among voters' concerns, has emerged as a leading issue in this election cycle; last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005. "It was clear starting all the way back in Iowa and New Hampshire that this campaign would be much more about the environment," says Dave Willett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "The questions weren't 'Do you think global warming is happening?' but 'How are you going to deal with it, what's your approach?'"

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Early Spring

Find yourself sneezing from seasonal allergies earlier than expected this year? That's because spring is coming earlier and earlier thanks to global warming, according to this AP story (read excerpt below.)

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.
"The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.
Blame global warming.
The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year's authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.
What's happening is so noticeable that scientists can track it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring "green-up" is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.
Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. EDT Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.
The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is "to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?"
There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.
The changes could push some species to extinction. That's because certain plants and animals are dependent on each other for food and shelter. If the plants bloom or bear fruit before animals return or surface from hibernation, the critters could starve. Also, plants that bud too early can still be whacked by a late freeze.
The young of tree swallows — which in upstate New York are laying eggs nine days earlier than in the 1960s — often starve in those last gasp cold snaps because insects stop flying in the cold, ornithologists said. University of Maryland biology professor David Inouye noticed an unusually early February robin in his neighborhood this year and noted, "Sometimes the early bird is the one that's killed by the winter storm."
The checkerspot butterfly disappeared from Stanford's Jasper Ridge preserve because shifts in rainfall patterns changed the timing of plants on which it develops. When the plant dries out too early, the caterpillars die, said Notre Dame biology professor Jessica Hellmann.
"It's an early warning sign in that it's an additional onslaught that a lot of our threatened species can't handle," Hellmann said.
It's not easy on some people either. A controlled federal field study shows that warmer temperatures and increased carbon dioxide cause earlier, longer and stronger allergy seasons.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 26 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Check out the National IPL Blog.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

The End of Fossil Fuels?

According to an article in the Washington Post, fossil fuel emissions must drop near zero by mid-century to prevent catastrophic consequences from global warming (see excerpt below):
The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.
Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about."
Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world's output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.
For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad. U.S. leaders are just beginning to grapple with setting any mandatory limit on greenhouse gases. The Senate is poised to vote in June on legislation that would reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050; the two Democratic senators running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), back an 80 percent cut. The Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), supports a 60 percent reduction by mid-century.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must act now to address global warming."
"It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves."
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Obama, Clinton Tops on Environment

The two remaining Democratic presidential contenders have a stronger voting record on the environment than GOP candidate John McCain, according to this article from Reuters (excerpt below.)

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - All three top U.S. presidential contenders tout their environmental credentials, but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton cast far more "green" votes in Congress than John McCain, a conservation group reported on Thursday.Sen. McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, rated a zero out of 100 for his votes on environmental issues last year, the League of Conservation Voters said in the group's national environmental scorecard.Over the course of his Senate career, his score was a 24 percent, compared to lifetime scores of 87 percent for Clinton and 86 percent for Obama, both Democrats.The Democratic candidates scored lower in 2007, with Sen. Clinton of New York scoring 73 percent for her votes and Sen. Obama of Illinois getting 67 percent, the report found.McCain has sponsored legislation to combat climate change, and is described on his campaign Web site, www.johnmccain.com, as having a "record of common sense stewardship" of the environment.However, he missed all 15 environmental votes for 2007 that were tallied in the report, including a vote on repealing billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil companies, a measure that failed by one vote, the report said.By contrast, Obama and Clinton each missed four of the 15 key votes on the environment last year, and both were on hand to vote for a version of an energy bill that would have repealed the oil companies' tax breaks."TURNING POINT"Missing Capitol Hill votes is an occupational hazard of presidential candidates on the campaign trail, the report's authors noted.The environment has rarely been seen as a pivotal election issue in the United States, but that may be changing, said Gene Karpinski, the league's president.Pointing to results in congressional elections in 2006, Karpinski said independent voters moved in significant numbers to vote for Democrats, and "by far the single biggest reason was the issue of energy policy," which is closely linked to environmental policy."Clinton and Obama talk about global warming policy every day," Karpinski said at a briefing. "They've made this issue a priority because they know that's what voters want to hear."The report noted an apparent shift along with the change from Republican to Democratic leadership after the 2006 elections."2007 may well be remembered as a turning point for the environment, and especially for clean energy and global warming," the report's overview said.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Global Warming Threatens Penguins

The stars of "March of the Penguins" are endangered by global warming, according to this article in Time Magazine (see excerpt below):

King penguins are supposed to be a wildlife success story. The flightless Antarctic bird — the second-biggest penguin after its movie-star emperor cousin — was hunted into near-extinction by sailors in the 19th century, who used their fat as cooking oil. When the slaughter ended — penguin fat no longer being the preferred way to simmer your cruise dinner — the penguin bounced back, and today numbers about 2 million. This is a healthy, robust species that sits near the top of the complex Antarctic food web.
They may not stay that way much longer. A new report by French scientists in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences finds that king penguins could be wiped out over the coming decades due to global warming. Led by Yvon Le Maho, a physiologist at French National Center for Scientific Research, the team of researchers followed 456 adult birds with radio transponders implanted beneath their skin. Over an eight-year period, the researchers correlated survival rate to changes in sea surface temperatures, and found that in warm years, penguin chicks were less likely to survive the lean months of winter, because there wasn't sufficient fish to feed them. (Warmer temperatures seem to lower fish populations in the Southern Ocean, off Antarctica.) Adult survival rates dropped as well in warmer years. Ultimately, the scientists report that a 0.47 degree F increase in the temperature of the Southern Ocean — considerably below current forecasts for the next several decades — would reduce penguin numbers by 9%, enough to touch off a population collapse. "Our findings suggest that king penguin populations are at heavy extinction risk under the current global warming predictions," the study's authors wrote.
That's bad news for the penguins, and worse news for the rest of Antarctic wildlife. Sitting near the top of the food chain, the king penguins are useful markers for the health of the rest of the Antarctic ecosystem. If global warming means they're not getting enough food, the conditions below the penguins could be even worse. Temperature rise due to climate change is occurring quicker at the poles than the rest of the planet — on the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures have risen five times faster than the global average over the past 50 years. Even if we can manage to slow the growth in carbon emissions, the poles will likely continue to warm. Though the species that have evolved to survive in harsh Antarctic conditions are necessarily tough, they're also delicate. They're built for the snow and ice — change those conditions, and you take away their habitat and their food supply. Extinction comes next, and nothing can stop it.
The situation is no better in the Arctic north, where studies predict that polar bear populations will rapidly shrink over the coming decades, thanks again to warming. Environmentalists are pressing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the polar bear threatened, which would make it the first species to be recognized as endangered specifically because of climate change. The government recently failed to meet a self-imposed deadline to make the decision by Feb. 9, and the fate of the polar bear remains unclear. But if we fail to slow down the rate of warming, the polar regions as we know them will no longer exist — and possibly, neither will many of the species who live there now.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Religious Iowans Reduce Their Carbon Footprints

The Eastern Iowa Gazette has an article about the Iowa Interfaith Power and Light's Cool Congregations program, a program that helps individuals who belong to religious congregations reduce their carbon footprint. Check out the article below:
Corridor congregations get serious about going green
By Molly Rossiter
Within most faiths is a call to members to be good stewards of the Earth. So calling on congregations to "go green" makes sense, say area coordinators of a movement encouraging faith groups to become more environmentally aware."Every faith tradition has an ethic that calls us to care for creation," said Sarah Webb, who, with two other "church moms," started two years ago Cool Congregations, a project aimed at teaching church communities how to be better caretakers of the Earth. "It's something we've neglected over the last millennium, so we're looking to our own Scripture for inspiration."Congregations across the country have noted global warming, climate change and Earth stewardship for decades, but in just the past few years have concerted efforts to make a difference started to occur. When Webb and her home congregation at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Cedar Falls started turning into a "green congregation'' less than two years ago, the church became a leader in Iowa. Now Webb, 49, and other Cool Congregations coordinators hold workshops across the state, teaching participants how to determine their carbon footprint — the total amount of greenhouse gases produced, usually measured in tons of carbon dioxide — and how to improve it. At a workshop in Iowa City last week, Webb said, 54 people representing 15 congregations planned to make a difference. "They have decided to form a network among themselves to keep it going," she said.Jamie McCoy, 47, has taken an active role in getting his congregation at Zion Lutheran Church, 310 N. Johnson St. in Iowa City, more involved. Zion sponsored the Cool Congregations workshop on Jan. 26."The only way we're going to have any action taken on climate change is from a grass-roots effort," McCoy said. "Our government just really isn't that interested."As Christians we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves," he said. "Future generations and climate-vulnerable people around the world are also our neighbors. The Earth itself is also a sacred place entrusted to us by God."Webb said many successful efforts toward social change — for example, the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage and, more recently, the saving of the Endangered Species Act — were strongly supported by faith communities. What many workshop participants find especially interesting, she said, is how little it takes to make a big difference."My friend Kate changed over 75 percent of the light bulbs in her home to compact fluorescent bulbs and was able to reduce her carbon emissions by 10 percent," Webb said. "Her initial investment was about $200 for the light bulbs, but she's saved that and more every year."Washing two loads of laundry in cold water rather than warm or hot each week can reduce carbon emissions by 500 pounds per year, Webb said, and adjusting the thermostat down 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer can save another 500 pounds."There are a lot of inexpensive things you can do that make a big difference," she said.Mark Kresowik, 23, of Des Moines, is interim director of Iowa Interfaith Power and Light, which helps coordinate green efforts in churches across the state. He said the movement for congregations to become more ecologically minded is not new, nor is it focused in Iowa or the Midwest. There are Interfaith Power and Light groups in 25 states, he said, "and we're not the only group out there.""I think part of it is that churches truly recognize the challenge that we are facing in terms of our moral obligations to take care of God's creation, the Earth," Kresowik said. "Certainly with issues like global warming in particular, we are not doing our part." Steve Mitchell might disagree, at least from his church's perspective. Mitchell, 58, is a congregational financial officer at Community of Christ Church, 1500 Blairs Ferry Rd. in Hiawatha, and also serves as an ex officio member on the building and grounds committee. He said church leaders there started going green in 1992, when they started switching incandescent light bulbs over to compact fluorescent.In addition, windows in the church's two largest rooms, the sanctuary and family life center, have been replaced with thermal insulated windows. Because the windows face south, they have a mirror finish to reflect the sun in summer. "We also do a lot of recycling. We don't use Styrofoam, and we use supplies that are environmentally friendly," he said. The church's old lawn mower and snow blower have been replaced with energy-efficient four-cylinder models, and the grounds of the church have been landscaped to include trees and shrubs "to replace as much green as we can.""It's not a new concept, and it's nothing we've just started," he said. Contact the writer: (319) 398-8288 or molly.rossiter@gazettecommunications.com

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Treehugger on Big Think

Graham Hill, founder of online environmental hub Treehugger, has a brief video on the new opinion site Big Think. Here's what Big Think has to say about him:
Hill is the founder of TreeHugger, an online hub for news and information related to environmental sustainability. Hailed as a “green CNN,” TreeHugger hosts a constantly updated blog, newsletters, video and radio segments and a user-generated Graham site, Hugg. In the three years since its inception, TreeHugger has become one of the most high-profile and highly-trafficked sites on the internet.
Recently, Hill his been hard at work developing Planet Green with Discovery Communications. Hill has also worked in a variety of industries prior to starting TreeHugger, including fashion, web-development, and plant-based air filters. He is also a designer, and his New York souvenir coffee mug is sold in over 150 stores. Hill was educated at Carleton University in Ottawa and Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Bad News about Biofuel

Two studies published in the journal Science warn that replacing petroleum-based fuel with biofuels could actually accelerate climate change, according to an article in the Las Angeles Times (see excerpt below):

The rush to grow biofuel crops -- widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming -- is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science.One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air -- far more than the carbon spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of gasoline."We're rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful," said Jason Hill, an economist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the study. "It's a little frightening to think that something this well intentioned might be very damaging."Even converting existing farmland from food to biofuel crops increases greenhouse gas emissions as food production is shifted to other parts of the world, resulting in the destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for farmland, the second study found.The analysis calculated that a U.S. cornfield devoted to producing ethanol would have to be farmed for 167 years before it would begin to achieve a net reduction in emissions."Any biofuel that uses productive land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it saves," said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the study's lead author.The studies prompted 10 prominent ecologists and environmental biologists to write to President Bush and congressional leaders Thursday, urging new policy "that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forests, grassland or cropland." Since 2000, annual U.S. production of corn-based ethanol has jumped from 1.6 billion gallons to 6.5 billion gallons -- supplying about 5% of the nation's fuel for transportation, according to the Renewable Fuels Assn., an industry lobbying group.Federal legislation passed last year calls for production of ethanol to more than double over the next decade. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions relies heavily on biofuels.Food crops such as corn, palm oil, sugar cane and soybeans have so far been the main source of biofuels because they are already grown in abundance and are relatively easy to convert.The fuels are environmentally attractive because, unlike fossil fuels, they are theoretically carbon-neutral. Carbon is released when the fuel is burned, but a similar amount is absorbed from the atmosphere as the crops grow.Calculating the actual increase or decrease in carbon emissions has been difficult because myriad factors are involved, such as the energy used to produce the fuels and the varying amounts of carbon released through cultivation.The biggest source of emissions, by far, comes from land-use changes associated with biofuels, the new studies showed.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Convenient Showing of An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth returns to the big screen at Cinestudio (Trinity College) in Hartford. Here is the Cinestudio write-up:

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (PG)Tue Jan 29 @ 7:30(2006) Directed by David Guggenheim, based on a presentation of Al Gore. Featuring: Al Gore.Not to lessen the positive rewards of making An Inconvenient Truth for former V.P. turned activist Al Gore (like winning the Academy Award® for Best Documentary and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize), but the more amazing impact of this eye-opening film has been the turn in public determination to pay attention to the threat of global climate change. If you've only seen it on DVD, now is the chance to experience the power of its visually stunning evidence of a planet in danger. You may even be inspired to urge the U.S. to get on board with the Kyoto Treaty - or to elect a President who will. 100 min.

CINESTUDIO 300 Summit St

Hartford CT
Telephone: 860 297 2544

Fax: 860 297 5126

Showtimes: 860 297 CINE

Visit http://www.cinestudio.org/ for the latest movie listings! Donate at http://www.networkforgood.org/

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Global Warming Teach-Ins

The Hartford Courant is reporting that thousands of schools, colleges, and other organizations, including some in Connecticut, will participate in a national teach-in on global warming on January 31. An excerpt of the story is below:

Students in Missouri will truck in 15 tons of coal. Wesleyan will serve a "sustainable" dinner, while kids at the Laureate Elementary School in San Luis Obispo, Calif., are using worms to compost the remains of their lunches.Central Connecticut State University invited all the presidential candidates, but none of them can make it. But that's OK: The clowns from Middletown's ArtFarm will be there to perform their show, "Circus for a Fragile Planet."They all will be a part of Focus the Nation, a nationwide effort later this month to teach students and policymakers about climate change and prompt them to act.
With an urgency — and a sense of irreverence — reminiscent of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, a group of activists from Portland, Ore., has recruited students at more than 1,000 college campuses, K-12 schools, civic organizations, church groups and private companies to conduct a massive "teach-in" on global warming Jan. 31."It's kind of overwhelming," said project director Eban Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. "This started out as a project with just two of us, and now we have 10,000 volunteers around the country. … All we have to do is tell people about this and they get excited. People are really recognizing the critical nature of the times we are living in and looking for a way to be leaders."The goal is to bring 1 million or more students into a nonpartisan discussion on global warming and encourage them to fight for solutions, said Alexander Tinker, one of the group's organizers.Events are being scheduled by at least 40 Connecticut schools and organizations, including all six University of Connecticut campuses, the four regional state universities, Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, Connecticut College and many others.The events will begin with an interactive webcast, "The 2% Solution," on the night of Jan. 30, billed as a discussion of what people can do about global warming. Jan. 31 will be a day of workshops, classes and discussions leading up to forums with national and local political leaders.Starting Jan. 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students can vote at the Focus the Nation website for their top five solutions for global warming. The leading solutions will be delivered Feb. 18 by student teams to congressional offices around the country during the Presidents' Day congressional recess.State environmental Commissioner Gina McCarthy will be the keynote speaker at CCSU on Jan. 29. The school has been planning its activities for a year and has a packed a three-day schedule with speakers and events, said Charles Button, an assistant professor of geography who has been involved in the project from the beginning."The 2% Solution" webcast is being produced with support from the National Wildlife Federation, hosted on Earth Day Network TV — an online TV channel — and will be broadcast live from the University of Central Florida in Orlando.The webcast's name refers to what organizers say is the amount by which greenhouse gas emissions would have to drop each year in developed countries for the next 40 years to minimize the damage from global warming. That's a goal also seen in the environmental policies proposed by several presidential candidates.

Related Links:

Focus The Nation

CCSU Focus The Nation

UConn Focus The Nation

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Nature and Humans Fry Arctic

Natural cycles are partly to blame for arctic melting, according to an article in Time excerpted below.

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.
But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone either, scientists say. Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge.
Scientists are trying to figure out why the Arctic is warming and melting faster than computer models predict.
The summer of 2007, like the summer of 2005, smashed all records for loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and ice sheet in Greenland. In September, the Arctic Ocean had 23 percent less sea ice than the previous record low. Greenland's ice sheet melted 19 billion tons more than its previous record.
The Nature study suggests there's more behind it than global warming because the air a couple miles above the ground is warming more than calculated by the climate models.
Climate change theory concentrates on warming of surface temperatures and explains an Arctic that is warming faster than the rest of the world as mostly because reduced sea ice and ice sheets means less reflecting solar rays.
Rune Graversen, the Nature study co-author and a meteorology researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden, said a shift in energy transfer explains the thawing more, including what's happening in the atmosphere, but does not contradict consensus global warming science.
Oceanographer James Overland, who reviewed Graversen's study for Nature, said the research dovetails with an upcoming article of his which concludes that the Arctic thawing is a combination of the two.
"If we didn't have the little extra kick from global warming then we wouldn't have gone past the threshold for the change in sea ice," said Overland, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's lab in Seattle.
Other researchers said Graversen's study underestimates the effect of global warming because it relied on older data that stopped at 2001 and wasn't the most accurate.
Overland and scientist Mark Serreze disagree over which effect — man-made or natural — was the big shove that pushed the Arctic over the edge, but they agreed that overall it's a combined effort.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Free Movie 7 p.m. January 28 in West Hartford

There will be a showing of the 65 minute film, "Green: the New Red, White and Blue" on Monday, January 28 at 7:00 PM at the Hartford Friends Meeting as part of the "Focus the Nation" series of events designed to raise awareness about Global Warming.

The Friends meeting is located at 144 South Quaker Lane,West Hartford.

In "Green: The New Red, White and Blue," Award-winning author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman travels the globe to unravel the tangled web of where Americans get energy, and reveals what viewers can do about their carbon footprint.

The showing will be followed by discussion. Read the full listing here.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Kyoto in Bali

The Kyoto Protocol climate agreement is up for discussion at the UN International Climate Summit currently being held in Bali, according to this article from the Christian Science Monitor (see excerpt below):

Efforts to start two years of talks aimed at crafting a new global pact on climate change enter their most intense phase this week. Ministers from more than 180 countries arrive Wednesday to give final shape to a framework for the talks, which could begin as early as next June.
But even as they look to the future, ministers also will be dealing with the present – giving a final burnish to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol before turning it loose next year. The protocol's first – and perhaps only – enforcement period begins Jan. 1 and runs through 2012.
UN officials here say they are cautiously optimistic that industrial countries as a group will meet – and perhaps beat – the pact's goal for trimming greenhouse-gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide.
But critics of the 10-year-old agreement have already written it off as a failure, even before it takes full force. To some, Kyoto's projected results are based on accounting tricks and fundamental economic changes that predate the agreement. At issue is how the structure of the original accord will shape future agreements.
Critics and proponents agree that from the climate's perspective, Kyoto's impact will get lost in the weeds. Under the agreement, industrial-country participants must reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of more than 5 percent relative to 1990 levels. But that will have a negligible effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Moreover, compared with 1990 levels, carbon-dioxide emissions from industrial countries are at an all-time high, observes Yvo de Boer, who heads the secretariat overseeing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the 1992 treaty that gave rise to the Kyoto Protocol. Rising emissions "would give you the impression that things are going completely in the wrong direction," he acknowledges.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Global Warming Bill Heads to Full Senate

A US Senate committee approved a version of a bill designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions and sent it to the full Senate, according to an article in the San Jose Mercury News (see excerpt below.)

In a landmark effort to tackle global warming, a Senate committee Wednesday approved a sweeping program to slash greenhouse gas emissions through the first half of this century and mandate a low-carbon future for the U.S. economy.
"This is the most far-reaching global warming bill in the world," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment Committee, who was jubilant and tearful after the 11-8 vote that sends the bill to the Senate floor next year.
The measure still faces significant obstacles in the Senate and the House, and the Bush administration disagrees with some of the bill's mandates. But the bill's backers say political and moral momentum are on their side.
"This is historic, and it sends a message to the Senate, White House and the world that the United States is ready to get into this fight and lead," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the co-sponsors of the 300-page measure.
The 10 Democrats and independents on the committee were joined by one Republican, John Warner of Virginia - the other co-sponsor - who predicted the bill would force members of Congress and presidential candidates "to do their homework and take a stand."
The measure would establish a cap-and-trade program, administered by two new federal boards, and set emissions limits that get tougher every year after 2012.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Will You Be in Bali with Al?

Al Gore is speaking at the UN Climate Conference in Bali in nine days and he plans to take a petition on stage with him to demonstrate the support for meaningful action on climate change. If you would like to sign the petition, go to http://www.climateprotect.org/standwithal

Talking About Climate

Today's dot earth blog in the New York Times features a thoughtful examination about how to get across the news about climate change to the public so that they don't become paralyzed with fear or resignation. Here is an excerpt:
In Science Times this week, I have a story examining the limits of language. Can scientists or anyone else find new words sufficiently potent to inspire action on long-term challenges, like shifting from unfettered use of coal and oil to limit the odds of climate surprises?
I only scratched the surface there and now add a few sobering perspectives here. But I can’t leave it at that. I’ve also challenged people involved in climate science, campaigns or policy to come up with strategies that might help bring not only clarity, but actual real-world change (whichever change they seek). I’ll be posting some of their responses starting Tuesday. I’m asking you to weigh in, as well.
First, more of the bad news. One of the additional hurdles to getting people focused on climate and energy is the distinctly human habit of giving outsize consideration to the here and now, even when looming, well-understood hazards pose serious threats.
This is how Tom Lowe, a research associate at the Center for Risk and Community Safety in Melbourne, Australia, put it in a recent e-mail:
“In the absence of physical evidence that something bad is going to happen, people tend to ‘wait and see.’ Evidence for this can be seen in behavior surrounding natural hazards such as wildfires and volcanoes. In many cases people can receive a warning that something bad is headed their way. They may even be well-educated about the processes and dangers of the approaching hazard. However, without a physical manifestation of the hazard, or evidence seen with their own eyes, people may not necessarily do what you want them to do to mitigate the risk.
“A common reaction to this stand-off is for risk communicators to shout louder, to try and shake some sense into people. This is what I see happening with the climate change message. The public are on the receiving end of an increasingly distraught alarm call. The methods used to grab attention are so striking that people are reaching a state of denial. This is partly because the problem is perceived as being so big that people feel unable to do anything about it, partly because the changes associated with impact reduction are unacceptable and/or unviable to many people and partly because this ‘overselling’ of climate change attracts strong criticism from a vocal and disproportionately publicized few.
“Meanwhile, the public holds the story of climate change in its mind in much the same way as folklore, fairy tales or historical events are retained in the memory. When asked about climate change (research has found), people describe an apocalypse, devastating scenes of flood, disease and drought in a far and distant land. Are they concerned? Hell yes! Is there anything they can do about it? Definitely. Are the going to do something about it? Maybe.
“It is this dislocation that concerns me; as long as the language of chaos continues, it seems the public are faced with a threat which looms so large that it is beyond our focus.”
Another troublesome trait is the tendency to normalize a bad situation. Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University, tutored me through a series of recent e-mails on a body of research showing how bad conditions become unremarkable over time, making it harder to seek change.
The best-known response of society to environmental signals is denial, but a more important one in the long run, perhaps, is accommodation, Dr. Brulle said:
“Basically, I read it that we become used to the environment we live in. Since most of the population has very limited or no access to a relatively unpolluted environment, they take it as normal that you can’t eat the fish in the river, that the air is always dirty, etc.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/