www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
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Time Magazine Climate Cover - April 3, 2006 Climate Change
and Global Warming.

In preparation for their April 3, 2006 cover story (left), www.Time.com said, "Global warming is already disrupting the biological world, pushing many species to the brink of extinction and turning others into runaway pests. But the worst is yet to come..."

Al Gore On October 12, 2007 it was announced that Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global warming. This, to me, is great news but underscores the seriousness of human-induced climate change. Mr. Gore, in a statement that day, said he was "deeply honored ... We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

- Roger J. Wendell

Yellow Arrow Pointing Right Click Here for Maria Gilardin's piece on climate change and sleepwalking...
Yellow Arrow Pointing Right Click Here for my page on fossil fuels and Peak Oil...
Yellow Arrow Pointing Right Click Here for my YouTube video on the Bark Beetle infestation due to climate change...

 

Carbon [kahr-buhn] n.

Atom 1. an element that occurs in all organic and many inorganic compounds and has an ability to form biologically and chemically important complex molecules.

Carbon is the elemental building block of all life on Earth. It is also crucial to photosynthesis, which transforms energy from the sun into the energy that sustains animals and other life forms.

But carbon level now pose a threat to life on Earth, as heat-trapping carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere. Carbon that had long been locked up in Earth's crust as fossilized plants and animals has been released in vast quantities in the past century, setting the stage for serious disruptions to Earth's climate.

- Nature Conservancy, Autumn 2008, p. 14

 

What's heating the Earth?
Fossil fuels are to blame, world scientists conclude

"A major international analysis of climate change due Friday will conclude that humankind's reliance on fossil fuels - coal, fuel oil and natural gas - is to blame for global warming, according to three scientists familiar with the research on which it is based. The gold-standard Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report represents 'a real convergence happening here, a consensus that this is a total global no-brainer' says U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, former directo of the federal government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey." "'The big message that will come out is the strength of the attribution of the warming to human activities,' say researcher Claudia Tebaldi of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo." - USA Today, Wednesday, January 31st, 2007, front page

 

BusinessWeek, in their March 27, 2006 edition, reviewed two books on climate change in a piece titled, "No climate for Inaction." One of the books, by Tim Flannery (The Weather Makers), said, "If Humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this centruy...the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable." The BusinessWeek piece, by Adam Aston, ended with, "Don't be paralyzed by indifference or fear. Do begin to act personally and politically. Now."

 

The Heat is On, The Economist Cover Photo - 09-09/09-15-2006
The heat is on...
  		"The uncertainty surrounding climate change argues for action, not inaction. America should lead the way... "Global warming is for real..." - The Economist September 9th-15th 2006, p. 5.

"...10,000 years ago, the wild fluctuations stopped, and the climate settled down to the balmy, stable state that the world has enjoyed since then. At about that time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, mankind started to progress."
"Man-made greenhouse gases now threaten this stability. Climate change is complicated and uncertain, but, as our survey this week explains, the underlying calculation is fairly straightforward. The global average temperature is expected to increase by between 1.4°C and 5.8°C this century. The bottom end of the range would make life a little more comfortable for northern areas and a little less pleasant for sourthern ones [but still unacceptably devastating for the natural world - Roger J. Wendell]. Anything much higher than that could lead to catastrophic hurricanes, flooding and drought, falling agricultural production and, perhaps, famine and mass population movement." - ibidem p. 11.

 

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Scientists:
'No question' that man-made warming exists

Jet Airplane Contrail above Mancos Valley, Colorado by Roger J. Wendell 03-17-2007
Jet contrails over Colorado 		"Global warming exists and will get worse, an international panel of scientists concludes in a report released Friday. Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases can already be blamed for killer heat waves, floods, devastating droughts, and an increase in hurricane strength, the report says." - CNN.com main page, Friday, January 2nd, 2007

BusinessWeek, in their March 27, 2006 edition, reviewed two books on climate change in a piece titled, "No climate for Inaction." One of the books, by Tim Flannery (The Weather Makers), said, "If Humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this centruy...the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable." The BusinessWeek piece, by Adam Aston, ended with, "Don't be paralyzed by indifference or fear. Do begin to act personally and politically. Now."
 

 

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George Bush Fails the G8 Summit on Global Warming:

According to the July 9, 2005 Detroit Free Press;

"...Bush administration officials moved the other G8 leaders to accept soft language in the communique that avoids prolonged discussion of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. Every G8 nation except the United States has signed the document."

Shuttle Commander Sees Wide Environmental Damage
by Jeff Franks - NASA/Reuters August 2, 2005;

"The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin," she said. "We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have." - Commander Eileen Collins from the International Space Station and STS 114

 

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Climate Change Clouds "So, I would suggest that it's in every aspect of your life that you think about the carbon emmissions, you think about the energy impact of your life. Every airplane ride, every car trip, every refrigerator door open, there are just a million little things..."

- Penelope Canan, PhD, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project
in a recorded interview with me at KGNU on 05-27-2005

Yellow Arrow Pointing Right Click Here to download the entire 29 minute interview with Dr. Cannan!
(KGNU broadcast the interview, in its entirity, on 10-19-2005)

 

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What's Happening and What We Should Do:

  1. Global Warming, due to human activity, has already started and is with us now.
  2. In addition to higher temperatures, Global Warming has already brought us weather extremes, deteriorating coastlines, and changes in alpine forests.
  3. It's believed that the atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide (a "greenhouse" gas) causes feedback processes, that build on each other in the atmosphere, eventually raising average temperatures about 4 degrees Celsius (Over 7 degrees Fahrenheit).
  4. The Kyoto climate treaty went into effect in February, 2005 - The Bush administration ensured that the United States was the only advanced industrialized nation not to participate - let's tell our government to do the right thing!
  5. Global warming will adversely impact the environment, our society, and life in general
  6. Although not reversible within our lifetime, Global warming can be slowed down if we only develop the courage to act now!
  7. Ideas include simply limiting the amount of Carbon Dioxide, and other greenhouse gasses that we're dumping into the atmosphere.
  8. Reducing our huge population, keeping forests intact, using renewable energy sources (such as wind and solar) and moving away from fossil fuels all have great importance.

Glaciers Melting on Mt. Kilimanjaro
Near the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro 		In 2003 I had the good fortune to climb Mt. Kilmanjaro in Africa. I am sad to report that the glaciers ARE melting - I've seen 'em with my own eyes! At the time of my climb it was estimated that all of Mt. Kenya and Kilimanjaro's glaciers will be gone by 2012. Prior to my climb I heard with my own ears Rush Limbaugh, and a host of other blowhards, say global warming was a lie. I challenge them to hike up to these melting glaciers and say the same thing... - Roger J. Wendell

 

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In 2004 I also had the good fortune to
interview Paul Roberts about his then new
book, The End of Oil (On the Edge of
a Perilous New World). On page 119 Mr.
Roberts had this to say about climate: 		"Although the causes of climate change are complex, most evidence points to a buildup in the atmosphere of 'anthropogenic,' or man-made, industrial pollutants, especially carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, or CO2. Any activity that burns fossil fuel produces carbon, in surprising quantities. Burning a single gallon of gasoline, for example, relases five pounds of carbon - the equivalent of a small bag of charcoal briquettes. This means that most Americans generate a ton of carbon a year, simply by driving their cars."

 

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore - Summer 2006
An Inconvenient Truth 		Did you know?
Each year humans dump eight billion metric tons of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere.
Source: National Geographic - February, 2004 page 89.

 

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A History of Concern:
Despite Rush Limbaugh, religious leaders, conservative politicians
and a host of other blowhards mocking concerns about climate change
there have been some brave souls willing to speak to power about
this issue for a very long time:

 

Carbon Dioxide Heats the Earth (Modern Mechanics 1932)

DR. E. O. HULBURT, physicist of the naval research laboratory, Washington, has found conclusive mathematical evidence that the earth's temperature is being warmed by the increased amount of carbon dioxide present in the air. Smoke stacks emit huge volumes of this gas, which is also found in the breath and waste products of humans and animals.

 

Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth's Temperature (Modern Mechanics 1952)

Earth's ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air's carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man's industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man's smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.

 

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Links:

  1. Activists - folks on the frontlines!!
  2. Alliance for Climate Protection
  3. Ant Web
  4. Biodiversity
  5. Biomimicry
  6. Bioneers
  7. Climate Crisis
  8. Climate Prediction
  9. Colorado Climate Center
  10. Culture Change
  11. Deep Ecology
  12. Drive Neutral - for a change!
  13. Exxpose Exxon
  14. Fight Global Warming
  15. Flight Pledge Union - Make your pledge not to fly!
  16. Fossil Fuels
  1. Fuel Economy
  2. Global Carbon Project
  3. GMOs and Cloning
  4. Kyoto Protocol
  5. Ocean and Climate Change Institute (Woods Hole)
  6. Organic Evolution 3.8 Billion years of it!
  7. Pew Center - Because Climate Change is Serious Business...
  8. Rocky Mountain Climate Organization
  9. Science Stuff
  10. Transportation
  11. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
  12. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  13. UOP - Upper Ocean Processes Group (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
  14. Water and drought
  15. World Charter for Nature - United Nations

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