Design of the Svalbard seed vault as of early 2007

In 1992, the Global Biodiversity Convention (GBC) was adopted in Rio de Janeiro, and which placed the biodiversity issue center stage–calling for the world-wide preservation of biodiversity and its equitable and sustainable use. The convention was established in response to both the increasing rate of plant extinction (through habitat loss), fears by poorer nations of “biopiracy”, and the increasing agricultural use of land for high-value crops, to the exclusion of lesser-value ones–a practice that diminishes crop biodiversity. These lesser-value crops are typically grown by independent and small farms in less economically advanced countries. Many of these so-called “orphan crops” risk becoming extinct. Further, many species of plant or tree that fall outside the conventional definition of agriculture–such as the sea-water tolerant mangrove tree–are being ignored, to the possible peril of future agriculture.

Recent warming trends pose the greatest threat to preserving global “agrobiodiversity” due to its predicted alterations in temperature, precipitation, and sea level (thus the intrusion of saline water into fresh water ecosystems). Also, computer models show that global warming will increase the frequency and duration of flood and drought cycles. To protect civilization’s long-term food supply (and to protect against the social chaos of food shortages from consequent crop failures) from these potentially calamitous effects, scientists and agricultural policy experts, in cooperation with various governments, have begun establishing cryogenic gene banks to preserve the seeds of various, valuable crops for future agricultural use. The most notable example of this is the International Rice Research institute (IRRI) in the Philippines which stores over 100,000 strains of rice.

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Fishing and refuse disposal are to be banned in the 1st high seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Southern Ocean, an area of the ocean that contains more species than the Galapagos Islands.

This will allow scientists to monitor the effects of climate change in this region. This is only the first of possibly twelve such areas.

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If the city council of Downey, CA, approves it tonight, Tesla’s new factory to build the upcoming Model S sedan will be at the site of Downey Studios, just outside of Los Angeles. The plant is expected to initially create up to 1,200 much needed jobs in a city with high unemployment.

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Overall, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels increased 29% between 2000 and 2008 and 41% from 1990-2008, and the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now at its highest in at least 2 million years, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The new report published this week by an international team of researchers who are part of the “Global Carbon Project” shows emissions trends through 2008 (including changes in emissions causes and in the amount of emissions remaining in the atmosphere) and brings up some major questions for the future as well.

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Oceans regulate our climate. They play a key role in keeping the world’s “homeostasis” in tact. However, their ability to absorb carbon & keep the climate in balance is dwindling, a new report shows.

In a year-by-year study from 1765 to 2008, researchers found that the oceans are struggling to meet increasing emissions demands. They cannot take in as much carbon as they used to.

The study, published in the November 19 issue of the journal Nature, found that the percentage of fossil fuel emissions the ocean has been taking in since 2000 has decreased by as much as 10%.

This is the first study of its kind or breadth. One previous study had attempted to measure the oceans’ industrial carbon absorption for one year — 1994. This does so for a period of 200+ years.

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It’s been known for a long time that the emissions from coal are harmful, both to the environment and human health. Yet, because it’s so plentiful, the U.S. still gets the majority of its electricity from coal-fired power. With the world focused on increasing the use of plug-in cars, where we get our future electricity becomes a key question.

Yesterday, a medical report was released, “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” highlighting the dangers of coal, by the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Other study participants included the American Lung Association and the American Nurses Association.

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In total, the report showed that China, Japan, and South Korea will invest about $509 billion in clean tech over the next 5 years, whereas the US (with our greenest President in decades, maybe ever) is only expected to invest $172 billion (about 3 times less) — this is assuming the climate and energy legislation in Congress passes.

If the US were to invest the same percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as South Korea, it would invest almost $140 billion per year ($700 billion over this five year period)! Compared to China, the anticipated per-GDP investment ratio is 1:4 (US to China).

In 2008, Japan almost matched US R&D spending on energy and achieved almost the same number of international clean energy patents despite having dramatically lower GDP.

The financial investment is not the only thing giving these countries a major advantage in this field, though.

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With bike weddings, bike parades, hundreds of naked bicyclists, bike fashion shows, popular & interesting cargo bikes, and travelling bike pubs, Portland is #3 on this great bicycle city photo tours list.

Portland has great bicycle facilities (colored bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, great bike signs, off-road bicycle paths, etc.), a large number of people using the bicycle for transportation, and a bike culture that brings the fun of bicycling to another level.

As a result of these factors and more, Portland was the first large city in the US to achieve the Platinum level Bike Friendly award from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) — the Platinum level being the highest level possible (above Gold, Silver and Bronze). It is truly a world-class bicycle city now, and the amazing photos in this photo tour help to show that.

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Move over CO2—you’ve been ousted, along with methane, as the biggest offenders of global climate change. According to a new a study by Purdue University and NASA, the major chemicals most frequently cited as leading to climate change, namely carbon dioxide and methane, are actually outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention. The majority of “greenhouse gases” are created by humans.

The results were discovered when researchers studied more than a dozen chemicals, or greenhouse gases as classified by their warming properties defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From there, the team developed a blueprint for the underlying molecular machinery of global warming. The results appeared in the November 12, 2009 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry, just in time for the convergence of world leaders in Copenhagen.

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A trek across a frozen lake proved to be a deadly journey for hundreds of reindeer last week.  Sami herders in Sweden were leading 3,000 reindeer to “greener pastures” across a frequently-traveled route during their annual migration to their winter grazing grounds when tragedy struck.

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Copenhagen is a water town, and the iconic symbol of Denmark’s capital city is the Little Mermaid silently standing watch over the harbor. Next month the Little Mermaid welcomes the global community coming to negotiate at least the foundation of an international treaty at the COP15 climate conference to carry beyond the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012.

The Little Mermaid takes her role as a symbol of climate change seriously. And she’s angry. Angry because also coming to her town are thousands of lobbyists and business (as usual) representatives intent on holding back progress for a dangerously warming world, opting instead for short term profits over long term sustainability.

The Little Mermaid is now the Angry Mermaid:

“So the Angry Mermaid decided to launch an award – in her own name – to highlight how corporate lobbyists were scheming to sabotage action to save the climate. She asked people she knew if they could suggest which companies were doing the most to undermine climate action – and she decided to publish a shortlist and ask the public to vote.”

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For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security.

We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recent projections show that it could rise by up to 6 feet during this century.

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The book covers giving to deserving charities as well as using quilts as an activist tool. There are patterns and projects to replicate those the organizations make as well as where to donate your creation if you so choose.

From veterans to kids, Quilting for Peace covers a wide range of issues in which sewing has brought people together for a cause. We asked Katherine to stop by talk a bit about her book and quilting from an environmental perspective.

The following is written by Katherine:

Quilts can change people’s minds and alter the course of history. That was the idea behind 19th century quilts promoting prohibition and abolition, the 1,293,300-square-foot, 54-ton AIDS Memorial Quilt, and The Ribbon, a project that wrapped the Pentagon and Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome in miles of quilts to protest the nuclear arms race. Now a new generation is using patchwork to call attention to an existential threat – this time it’s climate change. Here are three ways you can join them.

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Ok, I didn’t actually clear this challenge with the Nobel Committee, but I think we could convince them.  Nobels were awarded early in the 20th century when German scientists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch made the sequential advances that made it possible to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizer from the nitrogen gas that makes up ~80% of the atmosphere.  Without their contributions we could not have improved the lives of billions of people, and we could never have fed the increase in world population that has occurred since their work.  Of course that comes with the environmental issues I’ve been discussing in my previous posts.  I’m not forgetting that there are changes that need to be made in the way we farm to make nitrogen use more efficient and to prevent water pollution issues.

The Carbon Footprint of Fertilizer Issue

The other thing that would be good to address is the “carbon footprint” of running Haber-Bosch.  For every pound of ammonia that is synthesized, about 3.7 pounds of carbon dioxide is generated (mainly through the use of natural gas to generate hydrogen). That means to fertilize an acre of corn at 120 pounds of nitrogen, there are carbon dioxide emissions that are the equivalent of ~20 gallons of diesel. That works out to 1.59 billion gallon equivalents for just the US corn crop - some serious carbon emissions (I’ve already posted about why Organic fertilizers are not the solution here).

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With the US and Canada sharing a border while Mexico meets with the United States, in order to protect North American wildlife and wilderness a collaborative effort is necessary, particularly as global climate change is beginning to put many North American species at risk.

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2 C is the least we can realistically hope and aim for now. This would be less disastrous than the 4 C or the completely catastrophic 6 C (10.8 F) average worldwide temperature rise we would headed for under a business-as-usual continuation of current overall trends in carbon emissions.

Faith Birol, the IEA Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency said that the world must speed up the reduction in fossil energy use and make a transition faster to clean renewable energy, not only because because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and possible implications for the global economy.

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A new report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), attempts to bring to the world’s attention the truly great economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the benefits of taking these into account when making policies.

The value of the world’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity is something lacking in most economic analyses. Lack of value for what is truly priceless doesn’t just hurt the environment, however. It is also a sort of economic suicide. This new report, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and supported by key EU, UK, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian bodies, attempts to bring all of this to our attention more and show some positive case studies of how taking the environment into consideration can actually save us money.

As the report says: “the failure of markets to adequately consider the value of ecosystem services is of concern not only to environment, development and climate change ministries but also to finance, economics and business ministries.”

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More data show that ‘Yes, climate change is happening, ice is melting at alarming rates, and the time for action is now.’

Independent research using state-of-the-art modeling and satellite observations shows that melting of the Greenland ice sheet is speeding up.

Four months ago, new research showed that Arctic sea ice was at its lowest point in about 800 years, another study a couple months ago showed suprisingly fast melting in Greenland and Antarctica. Now, research from other scientists in Bristol (UK) published in Science confirms that ice sheets in Greenland are melting at an unprecedented rate.

There has been a lot of effort in the past few months to knock down climate change activists, say it isn’t happening. No wonder, of course, given that we are quickly approaching one of the most important meetings in the history of the human race — the climate change conference in Copenhagen. This new report shows again that whether we admit it or not, ice is melting, sea levels are bound to rise, climate change is happening, and the whole world will be changed as a result of it.

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Many environmental activists have opposed the Olympics for the role they claim it plays in environmental degradation, release of carbon emissions through the construction process and the displacement of animals from their habitat. Whether you’re of this viewpoint or not, you will be happy to know that the Olympics hopes to bring environmental benefits by increasing the world’s knowledge about climate change in Northern areas of Canada and the impact upon the polar bear.

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