From The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (New York: Picador, 2007), p. 530: “Already wealth provides an escape hatch from most disasters…. “Looking ahead to coming disasters, ecological and political, we often assume that we are all going to face them together, that what’s needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I’m not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate... [Read more]

No, it’s not “enterprise,” or “equality” or “economics.” The new E word is ETHICS. Al Gore, Nobel Prize winner and former Vice President, has a new book out today: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.  Published by Rodale, Our Choice strides leagues beyond the fact-based message of his 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth“. It boldly asserts that saving the world is a moral imperative, one which religious leaders throughout the world... [Read more]

The next UN Climate Change Conference,  COP15, in Copenhagen, Denmark is only six weeks away.  Around the world, delegates are jostling to establish which countries should be granted the greatest number of carbon offsets, and who is really at fault for the evolutionary pickle we find ourselves in. Tempting though it is to think we can barter our way out of it, climate will continue to plague us.  And unfortunately, in the US we’re still suffering from the diplomatic and greenhouse gas emission... [Read more]

EOS satellites monitor climate from space The  Earth Observing System (EOS), launched in 1999, uses a series of polar-orbiting satellites to study clouds, the oceans, atmospheric chemistry, as well as water and ecosystem processes and land masses.  Dr. Steve Running, of the University of Montana wrote about why NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) mission was so important at its inception on December 16, 1999.  He wrote:  “Dec 16, 1999, maybe fittingly at the end of this millennium, we... [Read more]

Earlier this week, The Hot Zone spoke with Dr. Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meterological Institute about the need for precise local measurements of climate phenomena.  We need local measurement, he pointed out, in order to tell what the real impact of climate change is on humans – as well as on other species.  How are weather patterns changing, for instance?  What effect does this have on agriculture and fisheries at the local level? I asked Dr. Anastasia Romanou, Associate Research Scientist... [Read more]

Although mathematical modelling of climate trends and weather patterns tells us a great deal about climate change, it has an inherent flaw:  we tend to substitute the map for the territory.  Climate models are good at showing trends on a large scale, the same way a map of North America tell us about large-scale geographical features.  A map depicts mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, plains and estuaries, but it doesn’t tell us anything about rainfall variability in Toledo, Ohio, nor about the... [Read more]

Like it or not, ocean acidification will reverberate through our economy and food supply, in the form of lost habitat, and drastic changes in kinds and densities of certain species. Plankton, which are the the backbone of the marine food chain, have been severely affected.  As the bellweather species of the ocean ecosystem, the fate of plankton - there are thousands upon thousands of varieties - determines the fate of all sea-dwelling life. I stopped eating sushi a few years ago when I began learning... [Read more]

For finfish, direct impacts of ocean acidification may be limited. On the other hand, there are many unknowns: for balance and orientation finfish use calcareous structures in the inner ear (otoliths). How will otolith formation be affected or how will ocean acidification impair, directly or indirectly, the fertilisation success or developmental stages, particularly for indirect developers and broadcast spawners? For instance, salmon yearlings prey mainly on pteropods, which may be among the first... [Read more]

A few facts:* • The ocean has absorbed fully half of the fossil carbon released to the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. • Measurements carried out by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NOAA demonstrated that the upper few hundred meters of the South Atlantic have higher carbon concentrations now than in 1993. • Ken Caldeira, an oceanographer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington has done studies suggesting that within a few centuries, ocean... [Read more]

Until recently, ocean acidification was the quiet step-child lurking in the corner of the climate crisis. Earlier this month, the Expert Panel on Ocean Acidification, organized by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, and the UN Foundation, met at UN Headquarters, to bring to light some of the affects of ocean acidification on marine life and ecosystems. But now that it’s out of the shadows, scientists see the situation as more... [Read more]