Many in the scientific community believe that greenhouse gases produced by industry contribute to global warming. (Photo Credit: Public Domain/Demokraatti/Wikipedia)

It’s official, says the National Climatic Data Center: despite all the snowstorms, 2010 is tied for the hottest year on record, worldwide. Since 1880 when official world temperatures were first kept, only one year approaches 2010 as hottest year, and that’s 2005 – which is tied with 2010. USA Today reports that according to climate data, the Earth’s average land surface temperature last year was 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average for the 20^th century.

2010: The hottest year on record

When scientists talk about 2010 being the hottest year on record, the operative part of that term is “on record.” The log of world temperatures only goes back to 1880. However, scientists have access to such things as the log books from ocean vessels. U.S. organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to digitize the handwritten logs from ocean voyages that date back 250 years or more, and similar projects are ongoing around the globe. While no ship’s log is as accurate as the climate-measuring technology available today, such artifacts are among the best sources available to the scientific community.

The world has been above average since 1976

National Climatic Data Center logs indicate that in addition to 2010 being the hottest year on record, it marked the 34^th year in a row that world temperatures were above the norm. Most of the globe experienced above-average temperatures, including the high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, Canada, Alaska, the Atlantic Ocean tropics, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the northern latitudes of Africa. Interestingly, nine of Earth’s 10 warmest years have been recorded since 2001, which makes a strong case that greenhouse gases and global warming are affecting the climate. The last time below-normal global temperatures were recorded was 1976.

Surface temperature versus satellite temperature

While the determination that 2010 tied the hottest year on record depended upon surface temperature, climate scientists also use other means to measure world temperatures. Satellite global temperature is another popular measurement that registers lower- or mid-tropospheric (air) temperatures. According to Professor John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, satellite measurements indicate 2010 was .02 degrees cooler than 1998. While there’s little difference there, it does potentially poke holes in the 2010 hottest year assertion. Ultimately, it’s a matter of which tool a scientist uses.

Sources

USA Today

Wikipedia entry on satellite temperature measurements

2010 was a greenhouse gas heat wave, says Newsy

WalMart and global warming are the subjects of two lawsuits heading to the Supreme Court. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Supreme Court has added cases to its docket concerning Walmart and global warming. The retail giant is being sued for gender discrimination regarding procedural issues. In the global warming suit, the state of Connecticut is taking action against a power plant.

Walmart goes to Supreme Court to roll back lawsuit

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases concerning a Walmart lawsuit and a global warming case, according to CNN. Walmart is being sued for gender discrimination  against women in hiring and promotions. The question is whether the suit can be filed as a class action, a lawsuit is brought by a collective body or “class,” of plaintiffs or against a collective body of defendants. If so, it may be the largest suit of its type ever filed, as there are 1.6 million plaintiffs in the case, officially Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The lawsuit alleges that Walmart, as a corporate entity, discriminates against female employees by paying lower wages and by not promoting many female workers to management positions.

Global warming also on the docket

The Supreme Court has also agreed to hear a case over global warming, according to the Los Angeles Times. The global warming lawsuit, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, is being appealed to the high court to determine whether courts and legislatures can place limits on carbon emissions. The state of Connecticut, along with New York, California and eight other states, are suing American Electric Power for emissions from coal power plants. The court is being asked to decide whether carbon emissions can be labeled a public nuisance.

More huge issues

Depending on exactly what happens with the battle over Proposition 8, the highest court in the country may end up having to decide if banning gay marriage is constitutional before too long. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is currently hearing the Prop 8 case.

Sources

CNN

Los Angeles Times

A woman in India holding up a vermi compost she made with the help of earthworms. (Photo: Find Your Feet/Flickr/CC-BY)

Are you one of the many people who are already recycling? Did you know you can do even more by saving certain parts of your garbage that create compost? It is a great way to help keep the landfills from filling up so quickly. In some cities you can save all your food items, such as eggs, vegetables and even coffee grounds, throw them into a bin and the city will haul them off with your other recyclables like plastics, glass and aluminum. Check into your local waste management company to find out if they take compost for recycling.

Landfills and compost — a growing problem

Since landfills are a major source of methane emissions, which is a potent greenhouse gas, anything we can do to lessen the size of landfills will help prevent any more of this relatively potent chemical. In less developed countries, where bad credit loans are not an option, there are many families that make their living off of dump sites. They go in and remove all the items that can be recycled, which has helped keep the size of the landfills down considerably.

Landfill management

When it was decided that a big corporation needed to go in and manage the landfill, and the families were no longer allowed to work there, the landfill grew at a much faster rate. Handing the landfill management over to big businesses not only removed a way to earn a living for many families, but it has also increased the size of the landfill dramatically. Sadly, many of these families in need have no access to quick funding, like an unsecured loan or an installment loan, for instance.

Waste management

Cities have started selling decomposed compost to consumers. And in some cities residents can save money on their trash pickup bill if they do more recycling. You can also find local residents who have a garden and a compost pile of their own. You can donate your compost and maybe, in return, you just might find yourself the recipient of some of their yummy garden treats next summer.

Environmentalism... a little change makes a big difference. CC by chrissatchwell/Flickr

Just about everyone has heard at least part of the environmentalism message. With so many options, though, it can feel easier to just not make a choice and do nothing. If you really want to be “environmentally friendly” the first thing to do is stop beating yourself up. Choose one thing and make small changes.

Issues with environmentalism

Since the 1970s and 1980s environmentalism movement has been growing. Many people started caring about the planet. “Save the planet” started to be stressed more. Earth Day was founded as many protested by chaining themselves to trees and asking for more recycling. Somewhere in the last four decades, though, the message has gone from “reduce, reuse, recycle” to a laundry list nobody can keep track of.

It won’t help to have everything changed

The biggest problem with trying to “be environmentally friendly” is how overwhelming the change can be. It seems like there is too much to do with sorting garbage, using bags over again, driving less, using cloth diapers, stopping smog and millions of other things. It is easier to do nothing at all than try to do everything. It seems like everything has to be done at once. This causes people to think it is easier to just quit.

Start a little at a time

It is easier to not do anything when there is so much to do. It’s hard to remember that the smallest thing can be huge sometimes. Don’t do it all at once. Just do one small thing. It only takes two weeks to get a habit developed, but you should probably only try one new thing per month, or even every other month. Just start with one thing. Do the easiest change first. Here is one easy example. A reusable coffee mug in the morning would be a positive change. Take public transportation to work one day a week. Shop differently. Don’t get regular fruit, try organic. It is hard to make the large and expensive changes. You can start to live better with small changes. That is what it is all about. You will become the change easily if you just make a few changes a year.

The heat wave scorching the east coast is stoking the fires of the climate change debate, and it turns out the Climategate scientists have been right all along. Flickr photo.

A scorching heat wave on the east coast is intensifying the climate change debate. The climate change debate was also hot last March when raging blizzards battered the east. Extreme weather events are being seized upon by both sides to support their global warming arguments in the debate about climate change and energy bill in Congress. And just in time for the heat wave, a British panel exonerated the “Climategate” scientists, saying it found no evidence the group manipulated research to back up global warming. Meanwhile, 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year in history.

Heat wave goes global

The heat wave is news because it’s cooking places like New York and Washington where the national media hang out. But other parts of the world are also roasting. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the heat wave has gone global. Beijing hit a near-record 105 degrees Fahrenheit. In Baghdad and Riyadh, on July 6 it was 113 and 111 degrees. Kuwait set the day’s world temperature high at 122 degrees. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees warmer than the 20th century average.

Climate change: more heat waves and blizzards

During the March blizzards, climate change skeptics built igloos and mocked Al Gore. But will heat waves be the norm if humans fail to reduce carbon emissions? Time reports that the fact that no single weather event is caused by climate change is obvious, but politicians and lobbyists will try to use them in the climate and energy bill debate anyway. Actually, weather and climate aren’t the same thing. Figuring out exactly how climate change affects the weather is tricky. But the March blizzards and the July heat wave conform to a general scientific consensus that climate change will result in more extreme weather.

Climategate scientists’ research is legitimate

The above climate change argument is the position of the Climategate scientists, a group of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. The New York Times reports that these people have played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s climate. Last year some e-mail messages sent by the scientists about global warming were stolen and posted to the Internet. Politicians, lobbyists and other global warming skeptics seized upon the e-mails as proof that the scientists were hiding data that conflicted with their positions on global warming. But a report by the panel investigating Climategate said no evidence was found of behavior that might undermine their conclusions.

Climate change: better safe than sorry

Heat waves and blizzards aside, climate change is such a controversial issue because climate science is incredibly complex and hard to explain, and the people doing the explaining still don’t understand climate as well as they would like. This opens windows of opportunity arguments on both sides of the issue. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post points out that if we can’t deal with a disaster like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 2010, how are we going to reverse concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere?

Carbon tax: pay me now or pay me later

This leads us to the climate and energy bill and its proposed cap and trade system or carbon tax. Republicans against government intervention are potentially setting up a future in which the government is forced to intervene on a planetary scale. Klein said he’s a lot more comfortable with the government’s ability to levy a carbon tax now than its ability to repair the atmosphere later. That’s why, he said, when faced with the choice between being avoiding the economic risk of a carbon tax or taking a step to preserve the future of the planet, we should choose the planet.

New Moore Island is just one of many islands that are sinking into the sea. Image from Flickr.

New Moore Island is just one of dozens of islands around the world that are slowly but surely sinking into the sea. Situated between India and Bangladesh, New Moore Island has long been the subject of a diplomatic dispute between the two countries. Residents of Bangladesh have long since taken a short term loan of living space on other, drier shores, but the issue will only get worse as time goes on. Rising sea levels have claimed more than just New Moore Island, but this tiny disputed island is bringing more attention to the issue than ever before.

New Moore Island by any other name

The disputed New Moore Island was a tiny chunk of land – less than 2 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. The government of India claimed the island as part of its territory, saying that New Moore Island fell within established maritime borders. However, the government of Bangladesh also claims the island, which they call South Talpatti.

There have never been any permanent settlements on New Moore Island. The island came under dispute only about 40 years ago, when New Moore Island/South Talpatti appeared after the Bhola cyclone. India had at one point established a base on South Talpatti/New Moore Island, but international opinion was split on the question.

Rising sea levels engulf New Moore Island

The School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta reported to the BBC recently that New Moore Island had been entirely engulfed by rising sea waters. Confirmed by local fishermen and satellite pictures, New Moore Island is officially no more. Before the year 2000, sea levels in most of the world went up by approximately 3 millimeters a year, but between 2000 and 2010 sea level has risen at about 5 millimeters per year. In the Bengal Basin region and Sundarban Island chain, where New Moore Island was situated, sea levels have been rising by about 3.14 centimeters a year. New Moore Island is the fifth island in the Sundarbans to sink into the sea – preceded by Bedford, Lohachara, Kabasgadi, and Suparibhanga.

Other island nations at risk

New Moore Island and the Sundarban Island chains are not the only islands at risk of sinking into the ocean. The Maldives, an island nation in the Indian ocean, has been losing land mass to the sea for years. The highest point in the Maldives is only 8 feet above ocean level, so even a high tide can cause problems for residents. The government of the Maldives is building an artificial island called Hulhumale nearby for residents to move to. Tuvalu, a Pacific Ocean island between Hawaii and Austrailia, is also quickly losing land mass. Tuvalu has 11,000 residents, and experts estimate the island will be entirely engulfed by the sea in as little as 50 years. Each year, 75 Tuvalu residents can use military personal loans to move to New Zealand – but many more are left behind. Tonga, Kirbati, and the Marshall Islands are also at risk of disappearing just like New Moore Island did.

How to stop the sinking?

In the end, there is no way to accurately measure the cause and effect of small islands ending up in the ocean. Sea levels rise and fall regularly, and island land masses can also rise and sink on their own. There are also arguments about if the increased water levels are due to global climate change or natural variations in the climate. No matter who or what is to blame, though, island nations that are sinking are being forced to find solutions – because there is not yet a way to simply stop the rise and fall of an island in the ocean.

Sources:

Times of India
BBC News
Wikipedia

Earth Hour is easy

In the most basic sense of the word, Earth Hour’s call to action is the very least we can do. Taking part in Earth Hour doesn’t mean we have to actually take responsibility for the environment by changing any part of the way we live or consume. All we have to do is switch off the lights for an hour.

Shop, donate, borrow money

It costs nothing to participate in Earth Hour; however, those who hope that buying more merchandise will help stop climate change, can shop for Earth Hour Gear on the official web site. Those who believe it may make better environmental sense to donate money directly to Earth Hour can do that online, too. At the time of this writing, Earth Hour Gear was not yet available, but donations can be made now, so it’s not too early to fill out a personal loan application if you need a loan to do your part for Earth Hour.

Climate change in a nutshell

According to the Earth Hour web site, the effects of climate change are being felt throughout the United States. Alaska’s climate has warmed twice as quickly as the mainland United States. Spring snowmelt is earlier, sea ice is reduced, glaciers are retreating and permafrost is thawing. In the Northwestern states, winters are wetter and summers are drier, water supplies are strained and erosion is increasing. In the Southwest, water supplies are becoming increasingly scarce and droughts are a significant concern.

In the Midwest, heavy downpours are now twice as frequent as they were 100 years ago and lake ice is reduced. The Northeast has less snow and more rain. The Southeast has more hurricanes, increased air temperatures, higher winds, greater rainfall, and more storm surges. On the coastlines and islands, which are particularly sensitive to impacts of climate change, sea levels are rising, shorelines are eroding, wetlands are drowning and the man-made environment is threatened.

Taking a real stance doesn’t have to be hard

It makes sense to take a stance about global climate change, but taking responsibility for the problem requires more than an annual hour-long blackout ritual. Taking responsibility, on the other hand, doesn’t have to involve living in a teepee without electricity or running water.

A person might ride a bike on occasion instead of driving a car, purchase fewer wasteful and unnecessary products, or choose foods that require less fossil fuel energy to produce. There’s nothing to stop people from switching off the lights for Earth Hour while making real changes, too; except, of course, that change is hard and flipping a switch is easy.

With the coastal Northeast of the United States hit by ferocious storms that have dumped snow everywhere over the past few days, schools, businesses and government offices have closed, flights have been grounded and billions of dollars have been lost. Millions of people are taking snow days, but some of them are still expected to get their jobs done.

For regular telecommuters it’s business as usual as long as their internet connections are still working. Many companies and government offices in New York, D.C., Pennsylvania, Virginia and other affected states have managed to keep vital services running by implementing emergency plans that allow certain other employees to work remotely too.

Telecommuting makes perfect financial sense

Although only 4 percent of people employed in the U.S. currently telework, around 40 percent have jobs that could be done at least partly from home. If all these workers were to telecommute 50 percent of the time, the total economic impact would be around $750 billion each year, according to the Telework Research Network. The group’s latest findings include the following:
The country would reduce its annual oil use by 453 million barrels, which could cut imports from the Gulf by 57 percent and save $31 billion a year (at $70/barrel).

• The nation’s productivity would improve by 6.2 million man-years, or the equivalent of $200 billion of labor every year.

• Businesses would reduce their spending on utilities, real estate, absenteeism and staff turnover by a total of $194 billion a year.

• Individuals would cut their costs for transportation and other work-related items (excluding daycare and eldercare) by $2500 to $11000 a year.

• More then $3 billion would be saved on highway maintenance, since people would be driving 180 billion fewer miles every year.

• Deaths and injuries from traffic accidents would drop by 150000 a year. This would shrink annual accident-related costs by $18 billion.

Teleworking is good for the environment, too

With fewer commuters on the roads and fewer offices requiring light, heat or air conditioning, the planet would benefit as well from having a greater number of remote workers. If more people worked from home, the decreased use of energy could help slow the pace of global warming and pollution.

• Annual greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 84 million tons, which is more than 40 percent of President Obama’s emissions-reduction target for 2020.

• Increased teleworking would sufficiently decrease the use of electrical power in offices to power 1.5 million homes every year.

Remote workers are less stressed

Imagine having two or three days a week when you don’t need to struggle through the traffic to get to and from work. As long as you have a reliable internet connection and a phone line you can do your job from home, wearing whatever you like and with your own coffee mug next to you. Since you don’t have a commute on those days, you can spend more time with your family and maintain a happier work-life balance. Think of all the money you’ll save on gasoline and other transportation costs too!

By saving money for your company you might even succeed in keeping your job more secure as well. Ask your employer if you can do some of your work from home, and you too can experience the personal and financial benefits of telecommuting.

Photo from Picasa

The Cap-and-dividend bill

Global warming is the increase in average temperature of the Earth’s surface air. It is a major concern of the Senate this coming year and new plans are in place to manage it. There is a new proposal on the table to curb global warming and it promises to return about $1,100 annually to American consumers. The new bill is known as “cap-and-dividend.” It would require oil, coal and natural gas companies to purchase permits monthly that would allow them to sell their fuels. Seventy-five percent of the money would be returned to the public every month in the form of a dividend check and the remainder of the money would go towards renewable energy studies and conservation programs.

Supporters of the new bill

Supporters of the new bill note that driving up the cost of fossil fuel and making renewables more competitive will cause the emissions to decline. Senator Maria Cantwell said, “The act provides businesses and investors with a simple, predictable mechanism that will open the way to clean energy expansion while achieving America’s goals of reducing carbon emissions.” It is hoped that the cap-and-dividend move manages to spur a greater nationwide trend of moving to energy-efficient ways of life. Cantwell added, “If the government is behind major changes and so are fuel companies, many consumers will follow suit with smaller, everyday changes they can make.”

Critics of the bill

Despite its supporters, there are still some who aren’t as partial to the new “cap-and-dividend” bill. Critics are worried that the new bill could potentially thwart innovation. By limiting Wall Street’s role in the trading of carbon credits, they believe that new technologies will not be nurtured in development. They are citing the lack of investment capital from communities as a major disadvantage.

The cap-and-trade plan

As of 2009 the most popular plan to reduce greenhouse gas effect is through a cap-and-trade plan. In this plan, power producers and emitters of carbon dioxide would have to purchase annual permits from the government to operate. The number of permits given out would slowly decline in numbers to slowly begin filtering out large emitters of gasses. The industries could then either pay to clean up their facilities, or trade permits amongst other facilities. A preliminary version of the cap-and-trade plan has already passed the House and has now moved on to the Senate floor.

What the numbers mean

Senator Susan Collins is a sponsor of the cap-and-dividend bill. She said that after consumers get their $1,100 in rebate checks annually, while paying higher gas and electric prices, they would end up ahead about $102. Costs of course are going to fluctuate from state to state, but on average the plan should level out at a savings of $175 per household. Collins said, “Climate change legislation must protect consumers and industries that could be hit with higher energy prices.”

The future of the bill

Overall the bill has a way to go prior to approval. It is going to be a difficult climb though. Even Democrats in the Senate are having a difficult time finding support strong enough to pass it. Many believe it is too costly for voters. Only time will tell if the bill gains the needed momentum to be passed, but even if it isn’t legislators are still focusing on aiding the world’s global warming problem.