Climate Changer

“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf and burning it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.”

Continue reading Obama stimulus plan key for solving climate crisis says Al Gore

Very large and unexpected burst of methane in the Arctic tundra shows new study out in Nature.    

The newly discovered surge of greenhouse gas is brought to you by International Polar Year. Thanks to that research push, a team led by biogeochemist Torben Christensen of Lund University, Sweden, got a two-month extension on the usual field season at a monitoring station in northeast Greenland. Scientists have been measuring methane emissions from far-northern tundra during the growing season for decades, but it had been assumed that once methane levels taper off in late summer, they stay at next to nil over the freezing fall and winter.
Continue reading Gas bursting from the frozen Arctic tundra

As mongabay reports some researchers have devised a scientific methodology for prioritizing conservation of limestone karsts. These limestone karsts are biologically-rich outcroppings found in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. Reuben Clements of WWF-Malaysia reported that larger karsts support greater numbers of endemic snails - a proxy for biological uniqueness among other species - making them a priority for protection. This is according data from 43 karsts across Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah.

Continue reading Limestone karsts, the Asia’s islands of biodiversity are under threat from mining

US President -elect Barack Obama gave the first of his weekly addresses to the nation and declared “that his administration would mark a new chapter in American leadership on climate change.”

Few challenges facing America — and the world — are more urgent than combating climate change, he said. Many of you are working to confront this challenge….but too often, Washington has failed to show the same kind of leadership. That will change when I take office.

Continue reading Barack Obama and his New Chapter on Climate Change

Al Gore announced his strategy for powering the USA entirely from ‘renewable’ resources -a mixture of solar and wind - by a decade from now. (Are the sun and wind ‘renewable’? How?)

The ten-year time-span, and the ‘big project’ are borrowed from JF Kennedy’s speech announcing the plan to put a man on the moon. Gore makes no secret of it, indeed, he is overtly trying to capture the same spirit, and sense of historical moment by paraphrasing Kennedy.