Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Dr Who: Day of the Doctor

We saw this last night - Jill, Nick, Debbie and myself - at Loews in Methuen. Even for those who you haven't seen much of the Who story (as I'm guessing applies to many parents), this movie is entertaining and very enjoyable, and is well worth going to.

The story, acting, special effects (including 3D) and the Who-vian humor (as always) were just great.

Cheers to the Dr Who writers and producers! Well done!

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Germany sets new solar power record


Germany sets new solar power record
BERLIN | Sat May 26, 2012 2:02pm EDT
(Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.
They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.
Solar panels line Germany’s residential rooftops and top its low-slung barns. They sprout in orderly rows along train tracks and cover hills of coal mine tailings in what used to be East Germany. Old Soviet military bases, too polluted to use for anything else, have been turned into solar installations.
Twenty-two percent of Germany’s power is generated with renewables. Solar provides close to a quarter of that. The southern German state of Bavaria, population 12.5 million, has three photovoltaic panels per resident, which adds up to more installed solar capacity than in the entire United States.
With a long history of coal mining and heavy industry and the aforementioned winter gloom, Germany is not the country you’d naturally think of as a solar power. And yet a combination of canny regulation and widespread public support for renewables have made Germany an unlikely leader in the global green-power movement—and created a groundswell of small-scale power generation that could upend the dominance of traditional power companies.
Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.

SC Green Team Climate Reader


South Church Green Team
Climate Reader
Here is a collection of articles that serve as a starting point on what you need to know on the scientific, political and moral aspects of the climate change crisis, the crisis of our age.

These articles are a way to help you get started to understand:
1)   The situation we face (Yes, it’s serious)
2)   Why the scientific debate is over (Yes, the evidence is unequivocal)
3)   Why we need to act now (We have only a few decades to make significant cuts in emissions)
4)   How it can be solved with today’s technology (We don’t need to give up everything to solve it)
5)   How people and countries around the world are already succeeding in the transition to a low emission economy (How the changes are also making life in their countries better and healthier)
6)   The few simple big things that will get us there (Starting first with a fee on carbon emissions. This uses the free market to find solutions, and taps into the incredible inventiveness and creativity that we have, and that we’ll need to solve this)

The climate change problem is different and more challenging than anything the human race has faced before. It can and must be solved if we want to have a stable, habitable planet for ourselves and our children to live on.  If we don’t get on a path to solve this, and act soon, climate change will soon dwarf any other problem we face. 
      
Now is the time to act.




SC Green Team Climate Reader
Table of Contents
(Note: Not all content has been uploaded yet, so some presentations and links are not yet live. But feel free to start reading what's here!)

1.    What You Need to Know about Climate Change
Bill Schroeder and the SC Green Team
·         The Big Picture 
                and 
·         The Scientific Guide To Global Warming Skepticism
John Cook, et. al., www.skepticalscience.com
William D. Nordhaus
www.skepticalscience.com
Bill McKibben
·         Climate Change Is Simple
David Roberts, Grist.org, TEDx talk

2.    What We Need To Do

-         A Climate Fix That Conservatives Can Love
                                                            Elliot Spitzer, Grist.org
-       Why Conservatives Should Support a Carbon Tax
Byron Smith
Citizens Climate Lobby

3.    What Can I Do to Make a Difference for Myself and My Family, Right Now?

·         Go Green: Improve the Energy Efficiency of Your Home
·         Go Solar: Install Solar Photovoltaics on your home
·         Go Renewable: Choose the renewable energy option from your electricity provider
·         Go Offset: Reduce your impact by purchasing “carbon offsets”

4.    Success Stories

·          South Church Green Team
               Scroll down to the link to the church solar panel output 


 
Where Can I Find Out More?

Web Sites

 

Best source for the latest science. A scientific site with references to the latest papers and findings. It’s also a compendium of latest climate news. Also the best up-to-date responses to the misinformation by climate deniers.

From the 350.org mission statement:
“350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.
“350 means climate safety. To preserve our planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm. But 350 is more than a number—it's a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.”

NOAA’s site for climate information

Political group advocating for climate policy

Books


Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
This book was written by the man who is perhaps the world’s leading climate scientist. It’s the best book I’ve read so far because he covers the whole scientific picture of climate change from millions of years ago through the changes we’re introducing today in clear and understandable way. Secondly, and just as importantly, he also tells the story of how the Bush administration played games with science by attempting to manipulate or block the research that he was trying to report.
 
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Online review comment: “Earlier this year I read The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. It was an excellent book full of scientific explanations to nearly all the questions I had about the issue of climate change. Now I have just finished Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. It also is an excellent book. In fact, I wish I had read it first - not because it is the better of the two books, but because it is a better introduction to the subject.”
 
The Weather Makers (2005) by Tim Flannery"
“The author, Tim Flannery, has succeeded in writing one of the most comprehensive and easy to understand books on climate change and the effects fossil fuel consumption has on our planet. He lays out the science, the politics and economics behind the effects greenhouse gases have on our planet. These effects include mass species extinction, rise in temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, as well as its oceans, and sea level rise just to name a few. Flannery also does a wonderful job of laying out some of the practical steps we need to be taking in order to avoid catastrophe for future generations and possibly even our own. Highly recommended.
 
Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future (2009) by Tim Flannery 
He has some significant ways (that were mostly new to me) that we can make changes to how we live as a species on this planet and how we can take steps to limit or reverse our impact.
 
The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate by David Archer (2010)
 
The Climate War by Eric Pooley
Eric Pooley has served as managing editor of Fortune and national editor, chief political correspondent and White House correspondent for Time.  He is now deputy editor of Bloomberg Business Week. No Rolling Stone there. A lot of behind-the-scenes reporting on both sides of the climate change argument. Here you see why the deniers case is not defensible.
 
Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is military analyst, and he runs through some of the likely/possible scenarios over the next 50 years, and how countries are likely to react to loss of water, droughts, constant storms, refugees streaming across their borders. Not pretty.  Think about what WW I was fought over. In that case, millions died over treaty obligations, colonial rights in Africa and bad feelings?  What happens when countries are in real stress and their neighbor countries have food and water?
 
Books for kids

The kids books are actually good for adults looking for a fast way to come up to speed on the topic, and make for a quick read!
 
Our Choice (Young Reader's Edition) by Al Gore - aimed at the 6th-8th grade audience.
 
How We  Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate; Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming Cherry, Lynne and Gary Braasch. (Grades 4-8)
An introduction to scientists around the world and their research into global warming. Also work of citizen scientists, including children. Covers where clues are found about climate change, combining clues to  get the big picture and how the resulting information is used, and what we all can do. List of all scientists introduced and their locales at the back of the book. 

 
"What’s it going to be like when the number of wildland fires doubles or triples over the next half century? What’s it going to be like when we have these droughts? What’s it going to be like when the 100-year event becomes the every-year event, which is what we’re right on track for.
"The scientists have been consistently wrong about climate change in the following way: They’ve always been too conservative. The things that are really happening are happening faster than the predictions, than even some of the most pessimistic predictions. Scientists are human. They’re going to have a denial mechanism. They’re, in a way, almost hesitant to say how bad it could be because they don’t want to be considered alarmists. But it’s consistently coming out worse than even their dire case predictions. So when you’ve got the rightwing demagogues saying that the scientists are wrong? Yeah, they’re wrong. They’re wrong the other way. It’s much worse than they’re saying."
Director James Cameron, speaking at the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Why Conservatives Should Support a Carbon Tax by Byron Smith


      Conservativism, as defined by Edmund Bourke, the father of conservatism, is based on the desire to hand on to our children a world that resembles the one we received from our parents, on the assumption that human knowledge and wisdom is incapable of handling too much change all at once.
      On that criteria, today's "conservatives" espouse the most radical position possible: that we should continue to alter radically the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere.
       I am a conservative. I wish to pass to my children a world that is still somewhat recognizable. This is not possible with continued use of fossil fuels.
      The idea of a fee and dividend is not slapping a price on a product I don't like. It is simply reflecting the true cost of emitting carbon to ensure that the polluters don't get to dump their waste into the atmosphere causing everyone to suffer as a result. In no other industry are waste products able to be dumped without charge. Charging polluters for their waste is an idea thoroughly compatible with conservative economic assumptions.    

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Saw this quote from Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring":

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the Earth. - Rachel Carson

Hard to believe she wrote this in 1962, and wasn't even thinking about climate change. 

Friday, January 11, 2013

James Cameron's statement on climate change

Director James Cameron spoke at the American Geophysical Union meeting last month in San Francisco. Here's some of what he had to say. There's more at the link below, but how's this for a sobering statement:
"What’s it going to be like when the number of wildland fires doubles or triples over the next half century? What’s it going to be like when we have these droughts? What’s it going to be like when the 100-year event becomes the every-year event, which is what we’re right on track for.

"The scientists have been consistently wrong about climate change in the following way: They’ve always been too conservative. The things that are really happening are happening faster than the predictions, than even some of the most pessimistic predictions. Scientists are human. They’re going to have a denial mechanism. They’re, in a way, almost hesitant to say how bad it could be because they don’t want to be considered alarmists. But it’s consistently coming out worse than even their dire case predictions. So when you’ve got the righ
twing demagogues saying that the scientists are wrong? Yeah, they’re wrong. They’re wrong the other way. It’s much worse than they’re saying."

http://sites.agu.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Cameron_Web.pdf
Ok, this is me now, not James Cameron: Can you believe that there are STILL people who say that climate change is not happening (have they stepped outside lately?), or it's not us, or even worse - that it's it's too big and hard to do anything about? It's time to move past these people, and make some big bold changes. Let's make policies and elect officials and choose energy providers and everything else we need to do individually and as a nation to go from fossil fuels to all renewables. That's it. That's what we need to do. We will need a full-on combination of government, industry and the free market to make this change work. The alternative is much much worse, so let's enjoy life, and let's get to work!