Should We Do Something About Climate Change?

Here's something worth watching about the uncertainty of global warming

What do you think? What will you do?

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tags: global warming, climate change, science, risk management

Bovine Belches and Global Climate Change

Cow Burps--A Minor Contributor To Greenhouse Gases

There is a post on Science In Action about the production of greenhouse gases by ruminants. The focus is on cows in the U.S. Rather than republish it I merely suggest you visit it there. You will also find some comments on the indirect emissions from U.S. agriculture associated with beef and dairy production.

How Much Greenhouse Gas Emission Is Too Much?

How much will you have to cut your emissions?

Do you believe some people have a greater right to pollute than others? If so, you can stop reading right here.

But maybe a student in America, a sarariman in Japan, a bureaucrat in Brussels and a farmer in India each have an equal right to generate greenhouse gases. Each has a right to aspire to a good life, and will need to live within the greenhouse gas emission limits needed to keep the Earth from tipping into climate-change catastrophe.

So use a carbon footprint calculator to estimate your current emissions. (There is one here; remember to come back.) Add up all your emissions sources (car, home, flights).

Then compare your results (in metric tonnes of 2205 lb.) with the emissions of others, and with the targets humankind is going to have to achieve on a percapita basis.



We each have a lot of adjusting to do.

Nobel Committee: Climate Change Threatens Peace

"We are what is wrong, and we must make it right."--Al Gore

In the press release announcing the Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee said, "By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control."

Mr. Gore said in his "Nobel Lecture" acceptance speech:

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11^th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

You can read Mr. Gore's speech (in English or Norwegian) here, or even watch a video of it. The speech of Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, who accepted the prize on behalf of co-winner The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of which he is Chairman, is here.