Climate 411

Vienna Climate Change Talks

By Kyle Meng / Published: August 28, 2007

The author of today’s post, Kyle Meng, is a Research Fellow at Environmental Defense.

You probably haven’t heard much about it in the news, but the fourth meeting of the U.N. working group on action to address climate change is happening this week in Vienna, Austria. Negotiators are preparing for the next major international climate agreement – what happens when the Kyoto accord’s carbon market runs out at midnight, December 31, 2012. The goal is to strengthen the carbon market framework so it does an even better job of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The question is how best to achieve this.

The Environmental Defense International Climate Team is busy communicating with delegates from various countries to encourage broad participation. Major emitting nations must be part of the accord if we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change.

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Posted in International / Read 3 Responses

Posted: No Idling!

By Sheryl Canter / Published: August 27, 2007

The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Forward-looking New Jersey has done it again with its "Stop the Soot" initiative – an outreach program to educate people about the impact of idling car and truck engines. Idling spews pollutants into the atmosphere and burns a surprising amount of fuel. As noted on our driving tips page, idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas and creates more global warming pollution than simply restarting your engine.

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Posted in Cars and Pollution / Read 6 Responses

How Not to Manage Risk

By Jon A. Anda / Published: August 24, 2007

Today’s post is by Jon Anda. He is President of the Environmental Markets Network, an organization within Environmental Defense focused on legislation to create an efficient carbon market.

Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote the infamous “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” has a book coming out this fall called “Cool It.” He says we should spend minimal resources to fight global warming.

I wrote a guest post for Grist yesterday about why his approach is wrong. Here’s a key point from it:

Lomborg’s preference is to leave future generations more cash and less technology. Our grandchildren can easily go back to burning coal if climate turns out to be manageable. But how easily can they spend the extra cash if the Greenland ice sheet is irreversibly melting?

And here’s the whole post.

Posted in Economics / Read 3 Responses

Increased CO2 and Food Quality

By Lisa Moore / Published: August 22, 2007

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on Food and Farming.

1. Increased CO2 and Food Quality
2. Farm Animals and Methane
3. “Food Mile” Complexities

The author of today’s post, Lisa Moore, Ph.D., is a scientist in the Climate and Air program.

When people talk about the harmful effects of fossil fuels, they usually focus on global warming. But as I explained in my post about nitrogen pollution, and Bill discussed in his post about ocean acidification, fossil fuel use has other unintended consequences.

Here is yet another example: increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) can affect the food chain. There’s a lot to be concerned about, but today I’ll focus on livestock.

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Posted in News / Read 3 Responses

How Much Heat Can We Stand?

By John Balbus / Published: August 21, 2007

Today’s post is by John Balbus, M.D., the Chief Health Scientist at Environmental Defense.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That saying may work for part-time chefs, but it doesn’t do much for the victims of recent heat waves. They couldn’t escape the unusually severe temperatures.

A warmer world is likely to bring two different types of heat: warmer average temperatures, especially at night, and more frequent extremes. What do higher temperatures mean for us? Read More »

Posted in Health / Read 6 Responses

Beat Global Warming, a Slice at a Time

By Sheryl Canter / Published: August 20, 2007

The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

When you talk about the consequences of global warming, people can feel overwhelmed and fear there’s no solution. But there is! And a new game illustrates it.

It’s based on work by Princeton University’s Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, which they describe in their paper “Wedges”: Early Mitigation with Familiar Techology [PDF]. Their study showed that existing technologies can lower emissions sufficiently to stop global warming. (Bill discussed their work in his post on green technologies.)

Pacala and Socolow identified 15 existing technologies that they refer to as “wedges”. Only seven are needed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, so we can choose what combination to use.

To help people, particularly students, understand wedges and explore different scenarios, Princeton University has created the Stabilization Wedge Game, where teams of players can “build a portfolio of stabilization strategies and assess their impacts and costs.”

Try it with your friends or family — you’ll come away understanding better how we can stop global warming. Here’s the background page, and here are the instructions and the game [PDF] – you set it up by printing out and cutting up colored wedges.

Posted in Energy / Read 1 Response