How do you know that concern about climate change has reached the mainstream? When a product’s carbon footprint is a factor in every buying decision.
And how do you know the carbon footprint of a product? Through eco-labeling – a label disclosing the amount of energy used to produce the product, or the amount of CO2 that producing the product released into the atmosphere. The idea is similar to nutrition labeling – give consumers the knowledge they need to make informed choices.
Hopefully my posts have sparked your curiosity about global warming and climate change. Here is a short list of user-friendly books and other resources that may interest you.
Coral reef brilliance
Bleached white by loss of algae,
Killed by warming sea.
Left: Healthy corals (iStockphoto). Right: bleached corals (Ray Berkelsman, CRCReef, Townsville).
Good news for the climate! The auto industry is calling for cap-and-trade legislation to fight global warming. Car manufacturers have been among the fiercest defenders of business-as-usual, so it’s great to have them on board.
Even better, this shift seems to be a trend. The Chicago Tribune recently reported that big business is starting to push for federal legislation to cap carbon emissions, because the blizzard of individual state laws is driving them crazy.
ignoratio elenchi n.
A logical fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but has nothing to do with the proposition it purports to prove. Also known as “irrelevant conclusion”. [Lat. ignorance of refutation.]
The recent NY Times piece on the scientists who have criticized the movie An Inconvenient Truth has generated a flurry of discussion. What I saw when I read it was a series of Ignoratio Elenchi fallacies, so the scientists featured in the article win this week’s Ignoratio Elenchi Award.
This is the second installment of a four-part series to be published each Wednesday on Action Needed to Stop Global Warming.
1. How Warm is Too Warm?
2. Worldwide Emissions Target
3. U.S. Emissions Target
4. Technologies to Get Us There
In Part 1 of this series, we described why scientists and policy-makers have identified the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would lead to a 20-foot rise in sea level, as the tipping point that must not be crossed. To stay below the tipping point, average global temperatures must not rise more than 3.6oF above pre-industrial temperatures, or 2.3oF above current temperatures.Today we consider how global emissions of greenhouse gases must change over the coming century to stay below that tipping point.
