One of my favorite free article sources, Articlesbase.com has recently disappeared. Articlesbase permitted 100 reprints at any one time. I didn’t delete any additional articles that would have pushed Earthpages.org over the 100 article limit. Instead, I made them private posts.
Now that Articlesbase is no more, I think it’s fine to bring these private posts forward. (If any authors disagree, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll happily remove your work asap).
Here’s the first “EP Rewind,” originally published on 2009/11/16. — MC
The Green Revolution is here! Many are concerned about saving the planet and restoring it to its pristine glory.
Is it a movement just for the elite?
The green movement is currently a lifestyle choice that people can embrace if money is available to buy organic food and hybrid cars. It is important that it should become main-stream if it is to have any real influence on all of us.
The green solutions prescribed by pundits are expensive and many are not able to afford them. How many of us can afford to install solar- powered panels on the roofs of our homes? These are expensive consumer choices. However, it goes without saying that environmental concerns are the topmost priority.
What isa sustainable blog?
A sustainable blog brings out ideas from different sections of the society to lessen noxious emissions and suggest ways to use clean and green technology that is simple and accessible. For instance, instead of throwing away plastic bottles, why don’t you give them away to the factory to make polyester? Polyester garments are an eco-friendly option.
Its importance in the virtual world
Global warming is not something that is going to happen ten or twenty years from now. It is already happening.
Unfortunately, governments and industries have been slow in waking up to this fact.
Blogs and online communications are an excellent way to keep the pressure on the state for concrete action and measures to minimize the effects of climate change.
These are advocacy tools by means of which extensive and broad campaigns can be conducted by environmentalists and the civil society to save the planet from further destruction.
Everybody has a stake here and a significant role to play.
Eco-themed blogs from around the world discuss issues on the current eco crisis and the measures to tackle it by sustainable means.
You would be able to know about clean technology in the UK, climate change concerns in Italy or green farming in Canada.
It is important that an economy has to evolve from green technology and provides a sustainable life to us. A sustainable community would suggest ways to minimize our negative impact upon the planet. There has been a growing awareness among environment and sustainable groups to ensure that the existing resources on the planet do not get wastefully depleted.
The future generations should not suffer for the negligent actions of the past and present communities. Sustainable living is not an option. It is a necessity.
Overpopulation and a fierce battle for resources have wrecked havoc on the fragile eco-system of our planet. It is imperative that you should be conscious of your actions in conserving the planet by eco-friendly methods and limit over-consumption.
About the Author
Commoncircle.net is a social networking site where you can post and share your reviews, information on sustainable blog.
Lava and plumes from the Holuhraun Fissure Eruption by the Bardarbunga Volcano, Iceland. On August 29, 2014, a fissure eruption started in Holuhraun at the northern end of a magma intrusion that had moved progressively north, from the Bardarbunga volcano. Bardarbunga is a stratovolcano located under Vatnajokull, Iceland’s most extensive glacier.
When David Bowie was still with us, God Bless his forever hip soul, I got into this big, gnarly debate about climate change at his web site forum. I had thought that fans of Bowie would be intelligent, open-minded folk. But to my surprise I often found uninspiring conventionality, especially when it came to thinking intelligently about the multifaceted phenomenon of climate change. I simply wanted to question not only the science but, perhaps, more important, the interpretation of findings about climate change. Science always has an interpretive stage, no matter what data it looks at.
Today I found this article, which suggests that cosmic events, way beyond our atmosphere, may have a profound effect on climate. Another factor often overlooked is that magma flows below the Earth’s surface. So fissures and leaks could possibly affect surface temperate, along with the generally agreed upon factor of CO2.
Anyhow, I imagine Dr. Bowie would have endorsed intelligent thought on this, rather than an uncritical, clannish acceptance of the mainstream explanation for and interpretation of global warming.
Nearby Supernovae Seeded Earth’s Oceanic Crusts With Radioactive Iron https://t.co/YL15HIuFcv – CO2 is just one variable in climate change..
Continuing with my “science is not objective” argumentation on another website, the owner of that site offered some opposing opinions. It’s usually good to be challenged. It makes us reflect, focus and articulate our views in the most, we would hope, helpful way. Not to say anyone has the final word on anything. But I do think that in certain circumstances some opinions could be of more value or “closer to the truth” than others.
Regarding science, we’d do well to remember that regardless of whatever data we are dealing with, there is always an interpretation stage. People interpret data.
So here’s a slightly different take on yesterday’s story.
Global Warming and Climate Change is Threatening Our Life – New Day Post https://t.co/Qq3uy8Juos
There is such global hysteria about climate change that few would stop to consider its potentially positive effects. To attribute all global warming to CO2 in my opinion is lousy science. And I wonder who gets funded these days: Those researchers who lament global warming or those who simply want to study it as calmly and objectively as possible?
Not too hard to guess.
But that’s the point. Science is not entirely objective. It’s a human enterprise, grounded in social norms and expectations. Unfortunately, too many folks these days are brainwashed by science to appreciate that. So that’s why I often call science the “new religion” of the 21st C.
The climate talks that convened in Paris at the end of 2015 produced a historic agreement, giving negotiators and climate activists good reason to celebrate. Now the task is to ensure that the ambition shown in Paris is matched by action.
The good news is that there are a number of viable ways to meet the Paris climate goals. It was reported a couple of weeks ago that, since 2007, the output of the U.S. economy has grown by around 10 percent, while primary energy consumption fell by 2.4 percent over the same period. It is now possible to imagine that the economy can grow, even as fossil fuel-based energy production declines. Add to this an announcement from the International Energy Agency that electricity produced worldwide from renewable sources looks to be on track to overtake coal-fired generation by 2030, and the much-needed renewable energy revolution may well be upon us.
A second piece of bad news, or, at least, news that will be unwelcome in many quarters, is that matching the ambition of Paris will demand consideration of options for addressing climate change that to this point have been widely deemed unpalatable.
Our read is that the Paris agreement will, through time, force closer consideration of so-called “climate engineering” or “geoengineering” schemes. In particular, we foresee increasing attention being paid to solar radiation management (SRM) or albedo modification technologies. This is a class of speculative responses that might cool the planet by reflecting some amount of solar energy back into space before it can trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Leading SRM proposals include depositing reflective sulfate particles into the stratosphere or increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds via the introduction of saltwater droplets.
Such ideas have to this point been confined to the fringes of the climate change conversation. That looks set to change. Here’s why.
Energy transition is imperative (but not easy)
A critical piece of the Paris agreement is a change to the agreed “threshold” level of climate warming. The prior goal, established at the 2009 international climate meeting in Copenhagen, was for the international community to work to cap global warming at no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages. The new agreement is more ambitious. It urges, in the preamble, “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2℃ above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5℃.”
At the same time, as critical as it is, restricting planetary warming to 1.5℃ amounts to a Herculean undertaking.
One recent study suggests that to limit warming to 2℃ via energy transition alone, more than 80 percent of coal reserves, half of all natural gas, and one-third of the world’s known oil should remain buried beneath the earth. A target of no more than 1.5℃ of warming means the task is that much harder. The new target rapidly accelerates the required timetable for ratcheting down greenhouse gas emissions.
For starters, while renewable energy availability is increasing rapidly, developed and developing countries alike are still counting on the burning of vast amounts of fossil energy to drive economic growth. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies still play an outsized role in setting national and international priorities and policies. Breaking the hold of fossil fuels is not just a technological task, in other words. It is also an immense political and social undertaking.
Finally, it is important to note that the Paris agreement isn’t due to take hold until 2020, and even then the entirely voluntary pledges announced by countries in Paris set the world on a path to warming of 2.7℃ or more. Even an optimistic reading of the kinds of follow-on actions Paris might set in motion to limit warming to 1.5℃ suggests an extraordinarily tough road ahead.
Might 1.5C demand other forms of action?
So what more can be done? Another piece of the puzzle may be large-scale schemes to remove carbon dioxide and, perhaps, other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and hold them in long-term storage or put them to productive use.
Capturing and then sequestering the carbon released by coal-fired power plants has been discussed for years. A number of demonstration projects have been developed or are in development. The model, though, is still not considered economically viable.
Such ideas strike some as dubious propositions. In fact, though, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) schemes are already baked into the 1.5℃ target. The most recent IPCC assessment report examined a wide variety of possible pathways by which atmospheric warming might be kept below 2℃. Almost all of the IPCC projections required not just decarbonization of the energy economy but also the invention and deployment of what the report called “negative emissions” technologies.
Similarly, it should be noted that the Paris agreement has language not just about greenhouse gas emissions but also about greenhouse gas “removals.” The aim expressed in the Paris document, in other words, is not necessarily full decarbonization of the energy economy, but rather “net zero” emissions. That implies greenhouse gas emissions are offset by carbon removal from the atmosphere.
Yet CDR or negative emissions technologies receive comparatively little attention. That’s a misleading way to view the climate puzzle.
We need an open conversation about climate engineering proposals
As difficult and contentious as the conversation about CDR technologies promises to be, the conversation about solar radiation management (SRM) technologies will be thornier still.
A small but respected group of scientists has been calling for consideration of SRM as a third piece of the climate change response puzzle, in addition to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks. The argument that they make is that SRM represents the only known option that can quickly suppress temperatures, to buy time for other forms of response to take hold.
SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) was a UK government-sponsored research program to investigate the feasibility of one particular mechanism by which reflective particles could be delivered into the upper atmosphere. Hughhunt, CC BY-NC-SA
There are research programs on SRM science under way at Harvard, Stanford and elsewhere. However, to date there has been next to no public attention to SRM proposals. Nor have the nongovernmental organizations that often generate public engagement been paying SRM much attention. In fact, many groups that work on climate change policy and advocacy have been studiously avoiding consideration of SRM, for quite legitimate reasons.
A major fear is that if more attention is given to this subject by more people and groups, then momentum may build in support of the project, even should negative consequences be seen to outweigh positives. The preliminary research undertaken to date suggests clear upsides to SRM development use, but also well-documented downsides. The promise of some kind of technological “fix” for climate change may also pull support from other, more needed forms of action.
At this point, though, our contention is that there is little to be gained by willfully ignoring SRM technologies.
First, the ambition of climate response expressed in Paris is driving the world toward consideration of SRM. Remember that even with the incorporation of CDR or negative emissions technologies, the models suggest that keeping temperature increases below 2℃, let alone 1.5℃, will be immensely difficult. If the gap between what has been promised and what materializes widens, and as climate impacts become more present and urgent, then pressure on climate decision-makers to take action will increase. Even previously outlandish plans will be on the table.
Second, and related, talk of SRM is advancing, whether people wish it to or not. At this stage, the tentative conversation about SRM is taking place largely in scientific and insulated policy circles, beyond the reach of ready public scrutiny and engagement.
This must change. In our view, the concern that consideration of SRM might be a distraction from decarbonizing the global energy system is now outweighed by the need for robust, honest and open analysis that something of this magnitude deserves. This is true, if only to make it widely and abundantly known that SRM technologies are not any kind of magical climate cure-all.
What will it mean for the world to live up to the promises of Paris? The post-Paris moment calls not just for ambition, but also an honest assessment of all the potential tools available to us. Honest assessment will generate much consternation and disagreement. Better that, however, than proceeding from a position of ignorance.
One of my favorite free article sources, Articlesbase.com has recently disappeared. Articlesbase permitted 100 reprints at any one time. I didn’t delete any additional articles that would have pushed Earthpages.org over the 100 article limit. Instead, I made them private posts.
