Echo

Take action now on climate change

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(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – For more than 30 years I have studied weather and climate, and I believe human activity is upsetting our planet’s well-balanced, natural systems. This is not a blind belief in some quasi-religious or ideological position. It is a matter of the preponderance of evidence. Consider that for 200 years humans have mined massive amounts of carbon in the form of oil and coal from the Earth, and released it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That’s not part of the planet’s natural cycle of carbon. This carbon has been stored away, out of the natural cycle, for eons before being released by humans and their machines into the atmosphere.

Echo

America’s dirty little secret

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(ON) The Globe and Mail –  The United States has proved to be the biggest laggard, refusing to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or to adopt any effective domestic emissions controls. As we head into the global summit in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. is once again the focus of concern. Even now, American politics remain strongly divided over climate change — though President Barack Obama has new opportunities to break the logjam. A year after the 1992 treaty, Bill Clinton tried to pass an energy tax that would have helped the U.S. to begin reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. The proposal not only failed, but triggered a political backlash.

Echo

Shifting carbon from roads to roofs

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By Haley Walker

Oct. 19, 2009

Planting the rooftops in Detroit has the same environmental benefit as removing 10,000 SUVs off the road, according to a recent study. Michigan State University researchers found that planting vegetation on roofs can store heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. “This study is the first of its kind,” said head researcher Kristin Getter. “We knew these roofs had benefits, but we didn’t know they would be able to store carbon.”

Green roofs have been used to control temperatures, improve storm runoff and increase vegetation and wildlife habitat in urban areas.

Echo

Global warming could spur algae growth, oxygen loss in Lake Superior

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By Emma Ogutu
ogutu@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Oct. 7, 2009
Editors note: This is part of a series relevant to the International Joint commission’s biennial meeting in Windsor today and Thursday. One of the reports a U.S. and Canadian advisory commission will consider today in Windsor will look at runaway plant growth in the Great Lakes. Members of the International Joint Commission, which advises the governments on environmental issues, will likely hear that there is no cause for alarm about excessive growth of algae in Lake Superior. But global warming is catching up with the Great Lakes, Superior included, and it may soon undergo changes that could turn it into the perfect host for algal blooms.

The effects of global warming could actually be more complicated than just that.  An important question is how prepared the commission and other government agencies are to handle emerging global environmental issues.

Water

Study projects steep Great Lakes water level drop if greenhouse gases remain unchecked

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By Haley Walker
Walkerh4@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 30, 2009

Great Lakes water levels could drop by up to two feet by the turn of the century as temperatures rise, according to a recent series of reports released by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The water decline is a response to global climate change, according to the report by the group of scientists and citizens that advocates for science-based solutions to environmental problems. Warming temperatures reduce ice cover and increase evaporation. Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are projected to have the greatest changes. “Less winter ice and warmer temperatures in the summer could mean a decrease of one to two feet in Great Lake levels by the end of the century,” said Melanie Fitzpatrick a climate scientist with the organization.

Echo

Energy Secretary Steven Chu promotes cap-and-trade bill in Cleveland

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(OH) Cleveland Plain Dealer – A Senate version of controversial and far-reaching federal climate-change legislation is expected Wednesday with initial hearings possible later in the week and throughout October. As passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June, the so-called cap-and-trade law would remake American industry and change everyday life in ways that neither critics nor supporters have probably imagined. More

Echo

It’s Easy Being Green

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(NY) The New York Times – It’s important to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either. How do we know this? First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now.

Echo

The wrong way to regulate carbon

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(MI) The Holland Sentinel – The most effective way for the United States to fight global warming is for Congress to put a price on carbon, either through a cap-and-trade system or, as we’d prefer, a carbon tax that rebates the revenue to taxpayers. But last month the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee announced a delay in introducing its climate change bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, D-Nev., said last week that such legislation might not be acted on until next year. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to regulate carbon under the Clean Air Act. As Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., once warned, EPA action would create “a glorious mess” of regulation.

Echo

Refitted to Bury Emissions, Plant Draws Attention

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(NY) The New York Times – Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth. A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. More

Echo

Buses May Aid Climate Battle in Poor Cities

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(NY) The New York Times – Rapid transit systems may hold a key to combating climate change. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles in the booming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America account for a rapidly growing component of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While emissions from industry are decreasing, those related to transportation are expected to rise more than 50 percent by 2030 in industrialized and poorer nations. And 80 percent of that growth will be in the developing world, according to data presented in May at an international conference in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Air Institute. More