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Climate Change

Americans Less Concerned About the Environment, Poll Says

According to a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in early March , Americans are less concerned about eight specific environmental issues than they were one year ago. Fewer than half of those surveyed–32 percent–said they felt that that climate change will have an impact on their way of life as compared to a high of 40 percent in 2008.

Close to 50 percent of Americans believe the threat of global warming is exaggerated. Fifty-three percent believe that economic growth, especially with regard to jobs and unemployment, is more important even if it has a negative impact on the environment, according to Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, as quoted in an article in USA Today .

Surprisingly, many Americans perceive that environmental woes in the US are improving; those polled were less concerned about other environmental problems than at any other time in the past 20 years. According to Gallup, in 1989, 72 percent of Americans were worried about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.

By 2004, only 54 percent were concerned, and 46 percent are worried about water pollution today. Concern about pollution of drinking water is at the top of the list.

03/30/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Freeing Energy Policy From the Climate Change Debate

written by Yale Environment 360

Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.

The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to “Climategate” and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.

While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home.

03/29/2010 1 comment

Water & Conservation

Lower Ocean Oxygen Levels Predict Catastrophic Change

written by Walter Wang

There is a cascade failure going on in the world’s oceans that promises nothing but trouble in the future, and the problem stems in part from agricultural practices developed over the last half-decade aimed at growing more food on the same amount of land to feed rising populations.

A cascade failure is the progressive collapse of an integral system. Many scientists also call them negative feedback loops, in that unfortunate situations reinforce one another, precipitating eventual and sometimes complete failure.

The agricultural practices relate to “factory farming,” in which farmers grow crops using more and more chemical fertilizers, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus, which are the first two ingredients (chemical symbols N and P) listed on any container or bag of fertilizer. The last is potassium, or K.

03/29/2010 3 comments

Renewable Energy

Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rules May Also Track Oil Industry

written by Environmental News Network

Before reporting even begins, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to include additional emissions sources in its first-ever national mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting system. The EPA expects that the data from these sectors will help provide a better understanding of where GHGs are coming from.

“Gathering this information is the first step toward reducing greenhouse emissions and fostering innovative technologies for the clean energy future,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “It’s especially important to track potent gases like methane, which traps more than 20 times as much heat as carbon and accelerates climate change.”

The EPA finalized the greenhouse gas reporting requirement in October of 2009. That rule required 31 industry sectors, covering 85 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, to track and report their emissions.

In addition to those 31 industries, the EPA is now proposing to require reporting of emissions data from the oil and natural gas sector, industries that emit fluorinated gases, and from facilities that inject and store carbon dioxide (CO2) underground for the purposes of geologic sequestration or enhanced oil and gas recovery.

03/24/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Book Review: Requiem for a Species

written by Walter Wang

Eighteen months ago Clive Hamilton finally admitted to himself that we’re not going to act with the urgency needed to meet the action required by the science. Hence his new book Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change.

It is now too late to prevent far-reaching changes in the earth’s climate. An optimistic outlook could see global emissions peaking in 2020 then declining by 3 percent each year, with emissions in rich countries falling by 6 to 7 percent. It’s not enough.

Drawing particularly on the 2008 paper by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows from the United Kingdom’s Tyndall Centre, Hamilton concludes that this would see the greenhouse gas concentration rise over the century to 650 parts per million, far in excess of the ‘safe’ 450 ppm talked about.

Four degrees of warming is more likely by the century’s end than two degrees. The assumptions on which international negotiations and national policies are proceeding have no foundation in the way in which the Earth’s climate system actually behaves.

03/24/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Media Misrepresents Climate Change Challenges

written by Walter Wang

For the last six months, major newspapers and news magazines have completely misrepresented climate science to the detriment of our public discourse and our planet.

Newsweek argued that climate scientists are playing “fast and loose” with facts. The New York Times reported a controversy raging in the field of climate science. And countless other news outlets, blogs, pundits and writers followed these leaders.

As in the case of evolution, anti-scientific activists are demanding “both sides” of a one-sided issue. By “teaching the controversy” of climate science, newspapers, magazines, blogs and TV personalities damage society’s ability to deal with climate crisis.

03/24/2010 1 comment

Renewable Energy

Deal on Senate Climate Change Bill Close

written by Walter Wang

Smoke rises from chimneys at the Sugar Cane Growers cooperative in Belle Glade, Florida January 6, 2010. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate change bill, said a top Democratic lawmaker who discussed ideas with industry groups on Wednesday.

“We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Kerry is working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill to require U.S. industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

03/18/2010 0 comment

Energy Efficiency Renewable Energy

Climate Change: A ‘Fair and Balanced’ Look

written by

William F. Stewart is the author of Climate of Uncertainty: A Balanced Look at Global Warming and Renewable Energy, from Ocean Publishing. He is co-chair of the climate change and energy practice at Cozen O’Connor.

CleanTechies had four questions about his new book.

CleanTechies: You promise a balanced look in your title, and you give the global warming nay-sayers a chapter. Why do you feel it’s important to take this approach?

William F. Stewart: I know it is a cliché, but skepticism really is the lifeblood of science. Historically, it is through the intense questioning of conventional wisdom that advancement has been possible. Although there are certainly a lot of cynics and charlatans masquerading as skeptics, good faith skepticism itself must be embraced if we are to achieve new discoveries.

03/18/2010 1 comment

Renewable Energy

Deception of a ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’ Dissected

written by Walter Wang

Is it worth spending a whole book dissectinig the writing of Bjørn Lomborg, the self-proclaimed “skeptical environmentalist?” Certainly not in terms of the quality of Lomborg’s argument, which simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But Lomborg’s writing has been permitted to exercise a widespread and harmful influence.

For that reason, Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent.

Friel identifies two strains in Lomborg’s work: his “theorem” that though global warming is happening and is human-induced it is far from a catastrophe; his “corollary” that there is therefore little need to incur the costs of reducing greenhousegas emissions to the extent urged by concerned experts.

03/16/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

U.S. Scientists Propose New Procedures for U.N. Climate Panel

written by Yale Environment 360

More than 235 U.S. scientists, including some of the nation’s most prominent climate researchers, are recommending new procedures for the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including acknowledging errors on the organization’s website as soon as they are known.

In an open letter, the scientists, some of whom have contributed to IPCC reports, defend the quality and transparency of the panel’s research. But they suggest the IPCC should become more responsive in acknowledging mistakes and should publish an erratum online that corrects any errors discovered after publication.

03/15/2010 1 comment

Recycling & Waste Mgmt.Renewable Energy Water & Conservation

Can Farming Be Carbon Friendly?

written by Walter Wang

As the climate crisis accelerates, farmers are placed in the ever more precarious position of growing food for an increasing population in the face of increasingly bizarre weather patterns. Weather patterns are shifting due to the increasing amount of energy trapped in our atmosphere by greenhouse gases.

And yet, farming offers the fastest way to slowthe climate crisis. This is because farmers manage photosynthesis, the biological process within green plants that pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores it in a stable, useful form: organic carbon. Organic carbon is the chemical basis of leaves, shoots, roots, fungi and all the other living things that make up healthy soils.

Good farmers can accelerate this process and pull huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air into soil organic matter. Increased soil organic carbon can help us manage dry and wet years better by storing water. And the practices that build soil organic carbon require more diverse cropping systems, making farmers (and us) less reliant in any one crop.

03/05/2010 1 comment

Renewable Energy

Younger Americans Disengaged About Climate Change, Survey Says

written by Yale Environment 360

Although they have grown up during an era when global warming has emerged as a major issue, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are relatively apathetic about the threat, according to a new survey.

And even when they do think about it, young Americans are just as divided as older Americans about whether global warming is real, according to results of the survey conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Adults under 35 are significantly less likely than older Americans to say they have thought about global warming, with 22 percent saying they have never thought about the issue.

03/05/2010 1 comment

Renewable Energy

Sending a Valentine for Planet Earth

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

This post comes from Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, the founder of the San Francisco-based Interfaith Power & Light, a national campaign with affiliates in 30 states. The group is organizing the Valentine’s Weekend Preach-In on Global Warming.

Valentine’s Day typically conjures up images of roses and sweets for our loved ones, a time when we recognize the many virtues of romantic love. Yet this coming Valentine’s Day, leaders of communities of faith throughout the United States will be bringing forth a different kind of love — a deep, abiding love for God’s creation and our neighbors now threatened by the calamity of global climate change.

Hundreds of congregations of many faiths have signed up for a National Preach-In on Global Warming on Valentine’s Day weekend. We are showing our love for the poor, disadvantaged and most at-risk peoples and creatures of the world on this traditional day of love.

02/14/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Farm Holds Key to Food Production Despite ‘Global Weirding’

written by Walter Wang

We’re in for some climate chaos. The Copenhagen Accord means at least two to four degrees of warming over the next fifty years — and who knows how much “global weirding.” As greenhouse gases trap more heat, or energy, close to the earth, and that energy is used by large weather systems, which move faster and are more intense than ever.

This means more Category 5 hurricanes. More likelihood of Florida snow. My biggest concern about all this change? Eating. If crop yields drop 80 percent as they’re expected to, if we don’t adapt to a changing climate, I might get hungry.

So how do we produce food in a changing climate? How do we produce food with shortages of oil and fuel around the corner? Well we might start, like Joel Salatin’s family-owned Polyface Farm in Virginia, by decreasing inputs to the farm.

02/12/2010 0 comment

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