New Blog!

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Can plankton help save the planet?

The New York Times published an article about us today. The article focuses on questions about plankton sequestration, ranging from profitability of carbon credits to effectiveness of iron fertilisation. These issues are clearly important, but in the end, it may not really matter.

Global warming is a problem that needs to be fought now - not later. And ocean sequestration is one of few strategies that can correct for our dirty past on a large scale. Even if iron fertilisation fails to lower carbon dioxide concentrations, having that information is invaluable. Someone needs to figure out what CO2 mitigation strategies are going to work, and we can't wait for a hundred different studies to be conducted before going into the oceans.

We're taking our chances on this one, hoping "save the planet, and make a little money of the side"(as our CEO likes to say). If things go as planned, we'll have taken millions of pounds of carbon out of the atmophere and begun to restore ocean ecosystems by the end of the year. The upswing is, even if things fail completely, then we'll still have obtained priceless information about our oceans, and our fight against global warming. And we're going to do it without burning a single tax dollar.

The New York Times raises some important questions, but in some ways misses the point. What really matters is that we're doing something, and that's a lot more than most people can say.

Carbon Bartering

Since Planktos was the official carbon neutralizing agency of the Chicago Green Festival, Russ George (our CEO) was asked to give a public speech at the event.

On the way back to the aiport after the festival, Russ told his taxi driver about the trip. Moved by our company's mission, the taxi driver accepted payment of the cab fare in the form of carbon offsets for the taxi.

I find this wonderfully hilarious. And good for the jolly green cabbie.

Buy one pound, get one free!

Today, I purchased a package of grapes. On the label of the grapes, it says that the fruit was “grown in Chile.”

This doesn't surprise me. In my birth-given rights as a wealthy American, I deserve to consume any piece of food I feel like consuming at any given point in time, even if this requires shipping the piece of food halfway around the world for my personal self enjoyment. Obviously.

So, how much CO2 is produced by shipping grapes around the world? Let’s find out.

Some rough estimates:
The middle of Chile is about 5270mi from the middle of the US.
A 747 cargo plane uses about 6.8 gal/mi. Yikes.
At full capacity, a 747 can carry an impressive 450,000 pounds of cargo.

So, we use a little math magic and we get
(6.8 gal/mi x 19.4 lbs of CO2/gal gasoline x 5270 miles) / 450,000 lbs cargo =
1.5 pounds CO2 per pound of fruit

This is actually much less than I had expected. To put this number into perspective, the average American produces a whopping 122 pounds of CO2 daily. Although, eating grapes in April is rather unnecessary, and every pound I can keep out of the atmosphere makes a difference.

I’ll make up for myself at the farmer’s market this weekend, to free myself of liberal guilt.

Carbon Credit Card?

One day, your wallet might hold not just your credit, debit and department store loyalty cards. It might also hold a carbon card. One day, you might be worrying not just about how much money is in your bank account, but also how much is in your carbon account.

Every time you fill up at a petrol station, every time you pay your electricity bill, you will be grumbling not just about the price of fuel or power, but about the price of carbon.

In this future world carbon will be the currency you need to pay for your contribution to greenhouse gas pollution.

You will be allotted a "free" amount of carbon to spend on electricity, petrol or air travel. If you exceed your account you will have to buy carbon from someone else or go without.

Radical though it might sound, it is a concept being taken seriously in Britain by both the Labour Government and the Tory Opposition as they try to outbid each other in the climate change stakes.

The British Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband - tipped by some to be the country's next prime minister - wants to test a scheme under which all British citizens would be issued an identical annual carbon allowance, stored as points on an electronic card. Points would be deducted at the point of sale for every purchase of non-renewable energy, according to reports in the British media.

If holders do not use their full carbon allotment - say, because they used public transport instead of a car or took domestic holidays instead of flying overseas - they would be able to sell their leftover points.

The idea of individuals being held directly responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions is being taken so seriously in Britain that the Conservative Opposition wants to apply it to the airline industry. It has proposed a series of taxes on flights, including a fuel duty.

Read more...

Green is good in any shade

‘Green’ is not synonymous with ‘elite.’ It’s not a club, it’s not exclusive, and there are no rules to being green. Every person who ever recycled a bottle or rode a bicycle is helping to some degree, and any shade of green is better than none at all.

The reason I say this is because recently, I have witnessed environmentally conscious people criticizing one another for the way they practice their beliefs. I heard a bicyclist talk down to a carpooler. I saw a vegetarian sneer at a meat-eater… in an organic restaurant. Even Al Gore is being criticized for using too much electricity, as if his impact as a public speaker does not do enough for the planet.

This phenomenon is especially confusing to me. I’m sure Snoop Dogg uses just as much energy as Al, and he’s not getting criticized for it. Even President Bush gets by without having his energy bill scrutinized. If Al is a bad person for heating his swimming pool, then I am a better person than my vegan friend, because she once killed a mosquito while we were camping. (Even though I was eating a hamburger.)

When it comes down to it, we are fighting a difficult battle, and we are going to have moments of frustration. Let us channel that frustration into warmth and encouragement, instead of separating into Yankees and Dodgers. With a little love, we can inspire a Hummer-driver to stop at the local farmer’s market. And that is a good first step.

(And while we’re at it, let’s make sure Snoop Dogg keeps his tires properly inflated.)

Watt's your problem?

Sometimes people ask me why global warming focuses on CO2 instead of heat. When I burn gasoline, doesn’t it produce heat? Isn’t heat responsible for global warming?

When you drive your car, fuel gets burned and a lot of heat is produced. In order to keep your engine cool, this heat gets sent through the radiator, where it gets released into the atmosphere. This warms the air around your car and keeps your car cool.

Despite this, the amount of heat released into the atmosphere while driving is very small when compared to the amount of heat trapped by carbon dioxide. Let’s look at some numbers to make sure.

World-wide, we are using somewhere around 6 x10^12 (6 million million) watts of energy at any point in time. That’s a whole lot of light bulbs. Since burning fuel usually makes more heat than useful energy (about 3 times as much), we’ll estimate that 18 million million watts of heat are being produced at a time. Yikes!

Now let’s compare that to the amount of heat being trapped by greenhouse gases. According to the most recent IPCC report, the atmosphere captures 1.6 watts/square meter more heat than it did before the industrial revolution. That means for every square meter of space on our planet, 1.6 extra watts of sunlight are warming the atmosphere. How much heat does that produce? Well,

1.6 watts/sq meter x 510 trillion square meters on our planet =
816 million million watts of heat trapped by greenhouse gases

That’s a whole lot more than we calculated for burning fuels.

Maybe heat produced by a car engine or a power plant is enough to warm the earth, but I am pretty sure that greenhouse gases are responsible for our hyper-speed climate change. At this very moment, greenhouse gases are warming our planet 45 times more than the burning of fuels.

Global Warming May Transform Southwest United States Into Dustbowl

Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.

Much of the nation west of the Mississippi River is likely to get drier because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but the greatest effect will be felt in already arid areas on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. By the end of the century, the climate researchers predict, annual rainfall in that region will have decline by a worrisome 10 to 20 percent.

A similar drying-out of the "subtropical" belt above and below the equator will hit the Mediterranean region and parts of Africa, South America and South Asia, the report said, as the overall warming of the oceans and surface air transforms basic wind and precipitation patterns around the Earth.

The prediction of a drier Southwest was made by 16 of 19 climate computer models assembled for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific effort to assess the impact of global warming, which is releasing a new report today. The drought results were analyzed separately in a paper published online yesterday by the journal Science, which also predicted that regions outside the drying belt will get more rain.

"It's a situation of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer when it comes to rainfall," said Yochanan Kushnir of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, one of the paper's authors. "From a climate perspective, these changes are quite dramatic."

He said that the paper's authors have a high level of confidence that droughts will develop, and that they will result from increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases created through burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

The researchers said droughts in the affected regions will be different from those in the past, which were caused by local weather conditions and the effects of El Ni?o and La Ni?a ocean-temperature variations. The Southwest has had significantly below-average rainfall since 1999, and preliminary information suggests that global warming is already playing a role in the current drought.

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Emissions Already Affecting Climate, Report Finds

Published: April 6, 2007

BRUSSELS, April 6 — Earth’s climate and ecosystems are already being affected, for better and mostly for worse, by the atmospheric buildup of smokestack and tailpipe gases that trap heat, top climate experts said today.

And while curbs in emissions can limit risks, they said, vulnerable regions must adapt to shifting weather patterns and rising seas.

The conclusions came in the latest report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has tracked research on human-caused global warming since being created by the United Nations in 1988. In February, the panel released a report that for the first time concluded with 90-percent certainty that humans were the main cause of warming since 1950. But in this report, focusing on the impact of warming, for the first time the group described how species, water supplies, ice sheets, and regional climate conditions were already responding.

At a news conference capping four days of debate between scientists and representatives from more than 100 governments, Martin Parry, the co-chairman of the team that wrote the new report, said widespread effects were already measurable, with much more to come.

“We’re no longer arm waving with models,” said Dr. Parry, who identified areas most affected as the Arctic, Sub-Saharan Africa, small islands and Asia’s sprawling, crowded, flood-prone river deltas. “This is empirical information on the ground.”

The report said that climate patterns were shifting in ways that would bring benefits in some places — including more rainfall and longer growing seasons in high latitudes, opening Arctic seaways, and reduced deaths from cold — but significant human hardship and ecological losses in others.

The panel said the long-term outlook for all regions was for trouble should temperatures rise 3 to 5 degrees fahrenheit or so, with consequences ranging from the likely extinction of perhaps a fourth of the world’s species to eventual inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people.

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Supreme Court Says EPA To Regulate Vehicle Emissions

By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY

By a bitterly divided vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate vehicle emissions that cause global warming.

In a major victory for environmentalists, the justices rejected the Bush administration arguments that any limits on new cars and trucks would be incremental at best and not help solve the nation's pollution problems related to increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

"Today's ruling is a watershed moment in the fight against global warming," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club's executive director.

"The ruling is a total rejection of the Bush administration's refusal to use its existing authority to meet the challenge posed by global warming. … It also vindicates the leadership that California and other states have taken on this issue," he said.

The overall tone of the 5-4 decision, written by the liberal wing of the court, showed concern for global warming and respect for the worries voiced by Massachusetts and other states about diminished coast line and other atmospheric problems associated with warmer temperatures.

The Bush administration had said that those concerns — brought before the justices by 12 states, three cities and several public health and environmental groups — did not merit federal court intervention. The administration also argued that the agency lacked the authority to regulate air pollutants associated with climate change under the Clean Air Act.

"The EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

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World's Most Important Crops Already Being Affected By Climate Change

The Independent, UK

Published: 19 March 2007

Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops.

Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn.

Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world.

There was a clear trend, showing the cereal crops were suffering from lower yields during a time when agricultural technology, including the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, became more intensive. The study's co-author, David Lobell of America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said that the observed fall in cereal yields could be clearly linked with increased temperatures during the period covered by the study.

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Maine Climate Summit says Thank You!

We just received this lovely little note from the organizers of the Maine Climate Summit.

Watch these folks for great things in the coming years as they graduate and go on to save the world.

A great blog for keeping tabs on the youth climate movement is www.itsgettinghotinhere.org

also check out www.sustainUS.org for some great youth sustainability movement info.

Can China Go Green?

16.03.2007

Pollution is invariably one of the first impressions visitors form of China. From bicycles to cars in 25 years, urban China rarely sees much in the way of blue sky anymore. Rapid and large-scale industrialization only compounds the problem. The Chinese government knows full well it must take prompt and forceful actions to avoid an environmental crisis. There are encouraging signs it is now rising to the occasion. Can China pull it off while, at the same time, staying the course of its remarkable economic development strategy?

What is the scale of China's pollution problem?

On a per capita basis, China’s pollution problem hardly jumps off the page. Its ratio of carbon emissions per person is less than half the global average and less than one-tenth that of the world’s biggest polluter – the United States. China’s enormous population, of course, distorts those comparisons. On an absolute basis, it’s a different story altogether. China’s total carbon emissions are more than double those of Japan and Russia, fractionally behind the European Union, and a little more than half those of the US. The essence of the Chinese environmental degradation problem is both its scale and growth. Over the 1992–2002 period, CO2 emissions in China have expanded at a 3.7% average annual rate – more than two and a half times the global average of 1.4%. At that rate, according to a recent report issued by the International Energy Agency, China will surpass the United States as the global leader in carbon emissions by 2009.

Read more about China's pollution problems here.

Clean Energy Market Expected To Reach $230 Billion In 10 Years

Revenues from clean energy will grow to $226.5 billion in the next decade, up from $55.4 billion last year, according to Clean Edge. In its annual report on clean energy, the US-based cleantech consultancy said that the market for biofuels, wind power, solar photovoltaics (PV), fuel cells and hydrogen grew 39% in the last year, and is expected to quadruple by 2016.

Much of this growth will come from the biofuels sector, which it expects to expand from a $20.5 billion business in 2006 to an $80.9 billion a year business in 2016.

Solar power revenues are also set to grow to $69.3 billion from $15.6 billion over the same period, with wind expanding more slowly from $17.9 billion to $60.8 billion. Revenues from fuel cells will also rise from $1.4 billion in 2006 to $15.6 billion in 2016, the report projects.

Ron Pernick, a principle at Clean Edge, said that one of the factors behind last year's growth was the growing acceptance of the science of climate change. "The most ardent nay-sayers began to change their tune," he said.

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LogicaCMG, Asia Carbon sign agreement for first Asian carbon credit exchange

KUALA LUMPUR (XFN-ASIA) - LogicaCMG said it has signed an agreement with Asia Carbon (ACX-Change) to set up Asia's first carbon credit exchange and establish national registries for key Asian countries.

Under the terms of the agreement, LogicaCMG will provide the technical expertise to establish a web-based trading platform to facilitate buying and selling in carbon assets.

At the same time, it will also study the possibility of facilitating the setting up of other exchanges in several Asian cities under the Asia Carbon banner, it said in a statement.

EU Sets Green Energy Targets

Dan Bilefsky
Published March 9, 2007

The European Union on Friday drafted a compromise agreement that would make Europe the world leader in the fight against climate change, but that would also allow some of Europe's most polluting countries to limit their environmental goals.

The draft agreement, reached after two days of heated negotiations, commits the bloc to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020. It also will require the EU to derive a fifth of its energy from renewable sources like wind and solar energy, while fueling 10 percent of its cars and trucks on biofuels made from plants.

But under pressure from several countries of the former Soviet bloc, which rely heavily on cheap coal and oil for their energy and are reluctant to switch to more costly environmentally friendly alternatives, the EU agreed that individual targets would be allowed for each of the 27 EU members to meet the renewable energy goal.

That means that Europe's worst polluters in the fast-growing economies of the East will probably face less stringent targets than their Western counterparts.

Many of the eight former Communist nations that joined the EU in May 2004 are far behind the rest of the union in developing renewable energy. Poland, for example, derives more than 90 percent of its energy for heating from coal.

During the negotiations, landlocked countries like Slovakia and Hungary argued that developing solar and wind- based energy would burden them unfairly.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that the agreement would help the EU become a model for the rest of the world. "This text really gives European Union policies a new quality and will establish us as a world pioneer," she said. She said she planned to press the issue in June at a meeting in Germany of the Group of 8 nations, including the United States, Japan and Russia.

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House Approves Global Warming Committee

Associated Press
Published March 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - Democrats in the House of Representatives, intent on making climate change a marquee issue, created a special panel Thursday to study and offer recommendations on how to deal with global warming.

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, advanced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat, was approved on a vote of 269-150. A majority of Republicans voted against it, arguing that the committee was unnecessary or that its budget could be used better by the ethics committee.

"Global warming may be the greatest challenge of our time, setting at risk our economy, environment and national security," Pelosi said in a statement. With the new committee, "the House is giving these issues the high visibility they deserve."

The committee, comprising nine Democrats and six Republicans, will be chaired by Democratic Rep. Edward Markey. It will hold hearings and recommend legislation but in a concession to existing committees will not write legislation and will exist for only two years.

Click here to read more about the committee, or here to read Speaker Pelosi's press statement.

Scientists Uncover Link Between Ocean's Chemical Processes and Microscopic Floating Plants

March 7, 2007

Scientists have discovered that increased levels of ocean acidity and carbon dioxide concentrations have resulted in unexpected changes in oceanic chemical processes. Their research results are published in the March 7, 2007, issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

This study links the effect of increasing ocean acidity to changes in phytoplankton, which themselves produce "greenhouse gases."

"Pronounced changes in some phytoplankton have been observed during previous experiments," said Wingenter. "The consequences for marine organisms, their ecosystems and climate-relevant gases are unknown."

During the study, concentrations of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and chloroiodomethane, produced by phytoplankton in ocean water, were measured.

"In the atmosphere, DMS is rapidly oxidized to sulfur dioxide, which can form sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere," said Wingenter. These aerosols can act as nuclei for cloud formation. Increased cloudiness could block sunlight, thereby cooling Earth. "Therefore, additional DMS production in a higher carbon dioxide environment may help contribute to self-regulation of Earth's climate."

"The bottom line is that carbon dioxide-loading of the atmosphere could lead to environmental changes we have not even begun to think about, effects beyond acidification of surface seawater and greenhouse warming," said Donald Rice, director of NSF's Chemical Oceanography Program.

-NSF-
Media ContactsCheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov

UN Chooses San Francisco For Climate Initiative Partnership

San Francisco
Published March 1, 2007

The United Nations Global Compact, the City of San Francisco, the Bay Area Council and a wide array of Bay Area businesses today launched a unique partnership designed to provide meaningful actions that businesses and cities around the world can take to combat global warming.

The initiative - the Principles on Climate Leadership - will give Bay Area businesses a strategic framework to address climate change as well as a forum to share best practices to reduce greenhouse gasses in both large and small companies. In addition, the initiative will create a model for climate action in the commercial and public sectors that the UN Global Compact will seek to place in companies and cities around the world.

More the 20 companies from a variety of sectors, including Gap Inc., Gensler, Google, PG&E and Shaklee, officially endorsed the Principles and, in relation, announced the Business Council on Climate Change (BC3) at a special event in San Francisco - the city that gave birth to the United Nations with the signing of the UN Charter in 1945. More than 100 leaders from business, government and civil society attended the event, which was presided over by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

"Voluntary initiatives such as the BC3 and the Principles on Climate Leadership will be crucial in bringing about progressive and robust action on the global climate crisis", said Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. "At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that voluntary action cannot be a substitute for effective regulation - rather, it informs and complements regulation".

"Local actions can have a positive effect on the entire planet," observed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "The Bay Area is fortunate to have a visionary business community that is willing to get out in front of a daunting issue like global warming, and we are honored that the United Nations Global Compact will be working to bring this message to other communities and companies around the world."

BC3 member companies pledge to address greenhouse emissions throughout their operations and corporate cultures, and agree to follow the five Principles on Climate Leadership: Internal Implementation, Community Leadership, Advocacy and Dialogue, Collective Action, Transparency and Disclosure.

Find out more about the initiative and the Global Compact at the UN Global Compact Website

China Will Soon Pass U.S. As Top GHG Emitter

Robert Collier
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Published March 5, 2007

Far more than previously acknowledged, the battle against global warming will be won or lost in China, even more so than in the West, new data show.

A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This information, along with data from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based alliance of oil importing nations, also revealed that China's greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together.

"The magnitude of what's happening in China threatens to wipe out what's happening internationally," said David Fridley, leader of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Today's global warming problem has been caused mainly by us in the West, with the cumulative (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, but China is contributing to the global warming problem of tomorrow."

New statistics released in Beijing on Wednesday by China's National Bureau of Statistics show that China's consumption of fossil fuels rose in 2006 by 9.3 percent, about the same rate as in previous years -- and about eight times higher than the U.S. increase of 1.2 percent.

While China's total greenhouse gas emissions were only 42 percent of the U.S. level in 2001, they had soared to an estimated 97 percent of the American level by 2006.

"The new data are not encouraging," said Yang Fuqiang, China director for the Energy Foundation, a San Francisco organization that works extensively with Lawrence Berkeley scientists and the Chinese government on energy-saving programs. "China will overtake the United States much faster than expected as the No. 1 emitter."

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Polar Regions To Be Studied During "International Polar Year"

Angela Charlton
Associated Press
Published March 1, 2007

Are we really heading for an ice-free Arctic?

More than 50,000 researchers hope to find an answer during a massive study of how global warming and other phenomena are changing the coldest parts of the Earth – and what that means for the rest of it.

Scientists formally kicked off the International Polar Year on Thursday, the biggest such project in 50 years. It is unifying researchers from 63 countries in 228 studies to monitor the health of the polar regions, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines. The project ends in March 2009.

Global warming "is the most important challenge we face in this century," Prince Albert of Monaco said in launching the project in Paris. "The hour is no longer for skepticism. It is time to act, and act urgently."

He noted an authoritative report released last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that said global warming is unequivocal, very likely human-caused – and will last for centuries.

A scientist on that panel warned that the world could be heading for an ice-free Arctic, a proposition backed up Thursday by Ian Allison, a co-chair of the International Polar Year committee.

"The projections are that ice in the Arctic will disappear in the summer months. There will no longer be perennial ice ... sometime within the next century," he said.

"This will have enormous consequences" on the four million people living in polar regions – and well beyond, he said, as the melting ice disrupts ecosystems all the way to the equator.

Many people rely on multiyear snow packs for their water, for example, the scientists said.

In stressing the global impact of the polar study, Michel Jarraud of the UN World Meteorological Organization said a major breakthrough of the last International Polar Year, in 1957-1958, was in scientists' understanding of the tropics and their weather systems.

This time, the scientists are armed with much better technology, especially satellites to study polar regions, known as the cryosphere. They will study everything from the effect of solar radiation on the polar atmosphere to the exotic marine life swimming beneath the Antarctic ice.

The polar year is being sponsored by the UN's World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science. About $1.5 billion has been earmarked for the year's projects by various national exploration agencies, but most of the money comes from existing polar research budgets.

In classrooms around the world Thursday, teachers conducted ice-related activities and experiments to call attention to the project, organizers said.

Two leading researchers formally launched the project at Paris' Palace of Discovery museum by slicing into an enormous cake made to look like a glacier, topped with meringue and caramelized ``icicles."

Besides yielding a more complete picture of the impact of global warming, the co-operation will help try to quantify the amount of fresh water leaking out from underneath ice sheets in Antarctica. The melting, which is distinct from the break up of glaciers, has alarmed climate scientists because it takes place beneath the ice and is difficult to measure.

Other projects include the installation of an Arctic Ocean monitoring system, described as an early warning system for climate change, and a census of the deep-sea creatures that populate the bottom of Antarctica's Southern Ocean.

The Antarctic's lakes and mountains – some trapped under about five kilometres of ice for more than 35 million years – will be sounded. Using telescopes, balloons and spacecraft, scientists at the poles will investigate plasma and magnetic fields kicked up by the sun since the dry, clear polar air is ideal for astronomy.

Anthropologists also are planning to study the culture and politics of some of the Arctic's inhabitants.

Nearly all the projects touch in some way on the fear that the environment being studied might someday melt away.

If you would like to know more about the International Polar Year, visit the IPY website at http://www.ipy.org/

Governor Signs Historic Regional Agreement

Today at the 2007 National Governors Association Winter Meeting Governor Schwarzenegger signed an historic agreement with the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Western United States. The Governor also challenged the federal government to follow California's lead and take bold action with two new environmental initiatives: a national market-based cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions, and a nation-wide Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Governor Schwarzenegger establishes the nation's largest and most comprehensive regional greenhouse gas reduction program with four other states.

The agreement tackles all emissions sources and, like California's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), is market-based. The Western Regional Climate Action Initiative commits California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington to:

• Set regional GHG reduction goals within the next six months.


• Create a blueprint for a regional market-based program by August 2008 to meet these goals.


• Participate in a multi-state registry to track and manage GHG emissions.


• Continue promoting clean and renewable energy, increasing energy efficiency, advocating for sound regional and national energy policies and identifying new measures to fight global warming.

The agreement is larger and goes further than others. In the absence of federal action to curb GHG emissions, states must lead the way.

In 2003, California, Oregon and Washington created the West Coast Global Warming Initiative, and in 2006, Arizona and New Mexico launched the Southwest Climate Change Initiative.
The Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states' Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) focuses specifically on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Currently New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont participate in the RGGI effort.
The agreement achieves Governor Schwarzenegger's vision for the west.

In June 2006 Governor Schwarzenegger called on the Western states to join California's fight against global warming by establishing a regional greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction program-using market-based mechanisms, such as cap and trade-to reduce harmful emissions.

Governor Schwarzenegger calls for a nation-wide market for greenhouse gas emissions.
The Governor's leadership set the stage for a national goal and a market to meet it. AB 32 authorizes the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations and market mechanisms, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading, to achieve California's historic reduction targets.

GHG emissions trading is a system where companies and other emitters are given credits that represent the right to emit a specific amount of GHG. The total number of credits on the market cannot exceed the emissions cap. Emitters that exceed the cap must buy credits from those who emit less. Like other commodities, credits are bought and sold by brokers on financial markets.
Credit trading allows emitters to choose if or how they will reduce their output while reducing harmful GHG emissions overall.

Trading achieves a healthy economy and strong environment by giving businesses flexibility while reducing emissions overall. Just a month after signing AB32, Governor Schwarzenegger directed the California Air Resources Board to ensure that the state's emissions trading system will sync with others to achieve maximum market efficiency.

Markets must be compatible with one another so that trading can occur quickly and effectively. In October, Governor Schwarzenegger met with New York Governor Pataki to explore how California's future emissions trading market and RGGI can be linked to provide greater market opportunities.

Under the Governor's direction, California's program will also be compatible with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Chicago Climate Exchange.



Elizabeth Ashford Perry
Deputy Communications Director
Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
elizabeth.ashford@gov.ca.gov
(916) 322-3651 - Telephone
(916) 324-6357 - Facsimile

Global Average Temperature For January Highest On Record

from creating commons under the sun

NOAA reported today that the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest for any January on record. According to the NOAA National Climatic Data the most unusually warm conditions were in the mid- and high-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.53 degrees F (0.85 degrees C) warmer than the 20th century average of 53.6 degrees F (12.0 degrees C) for January based on preliminary data, surpassing the previous record set in 2002 at 1.28 degrees F (0.71 degrees C) above the average.

Last month's record was greatly influenced by a record high land-surface temperature, the fourth warmest global ocean-surface temperature was in the 128-year series, and a moderate El Niño episode that began in September 2006. In the contiguous United States, the monthly mean temperature was near average in January.

The presence of El Niño, along with the continuing climate change trend, contributed to the record warm January. NOAA reported that the monthly mean temperatures more than 8 degrees F above average covered large parts of Eastern Europe and much of Russia, and temperatures more than 5 degrees F above average were widespread in Canada. The unusually warm conditions contributed to the 2nd lowest January snow cover extent on record for the Eurasian continent.

Pelosi: Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts Needed

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, February 8, 2007 (ENS) - The United States cannot effectively tackle global warming without enacting mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today.

"Scientific evidence suggests that to prevent the most severe effects of global warming, we will need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions roughly in half from today's levels by 2050," Pelosi said. "We cannot achieve the transformation we need, both in the United States and throughout the international community without mandatory action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution."

Pelosi, who has vowed to ready climate change legislation by July 4, told members of the House Science and Technology Committee not to fear the economic costs of mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.

The House speaker said she now has "a more open mind" about increasing nuclear power as part of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"We need to compare it to the alternatives … I think it has to be on the table," Pelosi said, adding that waste disposal "is the big challenge."

Leaders of some of America's largest corporations agree with Pelosi's move towards mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Read More

China to set up Asia's first carbon-credit exchange

BEIJING: China, set to overtake the US as the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter, will soon set up Asia's first carbon-credit exchange in Beijing, allowing the country a head-start in the multi-billion-dollar global carbon market.

The exchange and 12 brokerages in western China, estimated to cost $1.7 million over three years, will be established with financial backing from Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest steelmaker, which is scouting for major forays into China. The project aims to establish the clean development mechanism (CDM) technical service centres in 12 provinces, like Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Inner Mongolia.

These centres will act as brokers between international investors and local partners to kick-start Green Investment in China's less developed regions.

The initiative aims to pilot carbon trading in China, build capacity and provide policy input for the expansion of carbon market and reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in China, UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative Inichina, Khalid Malik said.

Read More

California emissions law inspires Illinois

By Michael Martinez
Tribune national correspondent
Published February 12, 2007

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Juan Molina can no longer wait for the nation's green movement to come to his doorstep, which is one house away from the "diesel death zone" of Interstate Highway 710.

Frequently the trendsetter, California is providing the nation's most aggressive law yet in response to a growing belief, advanced by an international study this month, that mankind and its pollutants are making the planet warmer.

With Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger taking a lead role against traditional interests in his party, California will impose restrictions on just about every business to reduce carbon emissions under a law that took effect in January.

Other states in the West as well as New England are devising measures, but none has passed a law as groundbreaking as the Golden State's, experts and officials said."California has taken the lead in actually establishing a law to do it," said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. "I think one of the goals of the California legislature and governor was to come up with an initiative that was tougher than anybody else's, and they want the bragging rights of having the strongest climate policy."

Read More

Climate Exchanges prove big

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Los Angeles Times
The Chicago Climate Exchange is the first and only legally binding carbon emissions market in North America. In the absence of federal controls on greenhouse gas emissions, it applies an axiom of economic theory to the problem of global warming: People in search of profit can be expected to do just about anything for a buck -- even save the planet.

That concept of the market forms the cornerstone of regulatory efforts to fight global warming.
Interest in carbon trading as an arcane but powerful tool to fight global warming has intensified following the release last week of a landmark United Nations report that found rising temperatures will continue to increase even if greenhouse gas emissions can be held to current levels.

It’s a new form of environmental bookkeeping that theoretically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases responsible for gradually rising global temperatures.
Since the exchange opened in 2003, almost two hundred companies -- including the Ford Motor Co., Du Pont, IBM Corp., Amtrak and American Electric Power Co. -- have volunteered to buy and sell the right to emit tons of carbon dioxide and five other key greenhouse gases.

California officials are beginning to frame market-based trading schemes, inspired in part by the Chicago Climate Exchange, to curb industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent over the next 14 years. State and federal regulators already use market trading to control the sulfur emissions responsible for acid rain.

Read More

Dispatches from the Maine Climate Summit

Here I am - reporting from the Maine Climate Summit.

The Maine Geocluster of SustainUS is hosting the 3rd annual Maine Climate Summit at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Current temperature - 19 degrees, but according to the weather website, it feels like 9 degrees.

There is a high energy level despite the cold. Over one hundred listeners appeared for the keynote speaker last night, Alison Drayton. A hundred people may not seem like a lot, but for a small town, on a Friday night, in the middle of the winter, not a bad accomplishment.

Alison Drayton is an international climate negotiations expert. She is a senior official of the United Nations Development Programme with an extensive history in international climate change negotiations. She is the former Counselor in the Permanent Mission of Guyana to the UN, where she coordinated the Group of G-77/China on climate and sustainable development issues during the formative years of the Framework on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. According to COA President David Hales, "Her visionary leadership and her superior negotiating skills helped set the basis for international progress in addressing global warming."

Drayton addressed a number of key issues in her address last night. The disproportionate impacts of climate change on developing countries and the rising costs of action were two points that were emphasized.

The threats of rising famine and malnutrition are not limited to developing countries. Avoiding these crises requires changes at the fundamental level of many of these regions. Costs of action are still less expensive as the future costs of inaction.

She also pointed out that the developing world blames the industrialized world for their historical role in climate change, their lack of inaction and in some cases their refusal to acknowledge the threat.

She ended her talk with some practical, realistic changes we can make in our daily lives.

1) exercise voter power. Vote for the greener alternative, lobby your elected official
2) save energy, save the planet, save dollars. Wash in cold water, use long life lightbulbs,
3) exercise consumer power. Support green companies. 12 billion dollars are spent on plastic bags alone.
4) exercise ethical investment. The power of the individual share holder in the united states is very important
5) support clean tech
6) require public companies to report on their emissions
7) buy local

The question and answer period following her presentation provided a very candid look at the negotiations process within the UN.
Other issues raised included our current level of preparation for the worst case scenario, as well as the post-2012 question that has been plaguing Kyoto-watchers for quite some time.

The role of international negotiations in mitigating climate change raises a number of key points regarding states varying levels of commitment to solving the climate crisis. Issues of sovereignty, wealth and global influence all play a key role in how we will solve this problem.

Maine house Representative Ted Kauffman raised some interesting points regarding the role of US States acting as incubators for legislation. As more US states are entering into climate change policy, both locally and regionally, businesses are beginning to fear the changes required to comply with a number of different systems. This is prompting lobbying at the Federal level by companies who are not necessarily in support of climate policy. This is illustrative of the high level of adaptability individuals and businesses can have in the face of legislation and compliance. By implementing important policy at the State level, we can make a strong statement - to constituents, businesses and other governments, that the state of the climate is posing severe problems around the world. Governments need to implement policy, and individuals need to be enterprising.

Let's hope that $25 million dollar prize gets awarded soon!

-julia

news from the (water)front

Hello everyone -

we just received a note from our wonderful Dave who is bravely facing the cold in Norfolk, VA, checking on our wonderful Weatherbird.

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce the Planktos Weatherbird Blog

planktosweatherbird.blogspot.com

we'll be sending regular boat updates, bloom updates and hillarious open ocean stories (unlike the very educational, but rarely personal postings on this blog).

Check out pictures of the boat and keep up to date on Planktos EcoRestoration!

Who said Plankton aren't beautiful?

I found this site while googling David Thomas - an associate professor of marine biogeochemistry at the University of Wales in Bangor, Wales. You can read the article about him here.


At Planktos, we're always looking at plankton in an appreciative way. A recent addition to our library is Plankton: A Critical Creation.






The image on the right is a plankton-inspired carving by Louise Hibbert.









Her partner, Sarah Parker-Eaton works in silver and gold to create her plankton creations, seen to left.








Sarah, Louise and David all collaborated on a plankton project and created some amazing work which can be seen here, or below.

Maine Climate Summit

BAR HARBOR - As frigid weather maintains its stranglehold on the state, the phenomenon of climate change isn’t immediately palpable in this tip of the United States.
But organizers of the third annual Maine Climate Change Summit, to be held next weekend in Bar Harbor, said global warming and its environmental impact reach everyone, and any chance to discuss the topic is a good one.

The summit, which begins Friday, Feb. 9, and runs through Sunday, Feb. 11, was organized by COA students and members of SustainUS, a youth environmental movement. It also is sponsored by the Sierra Student Coalition and a Planktos, a San Francisco-based ecosystem restoration company.

Saturday's mid-afternoon workshop focuses on a panel on science and technology with environmental engineer Robert Niven, who has been working on developing a cost-effective, environmentally-benign carbon capture and storage process, called CO2 Accelerated Concrete Curing. Also on the panel is transportation engineer and land use planner Jon Slason of Burlington, Vt., who has worked with organizations, municipalities and states to assess the impacts of development and land use changes while encouraging growth and economic stability. Additional panel members are solar engineer David Kaufman and COA 2006 alumna, Julia Clark who is representing Planktos, a company researching the role of plankton in carbon storage.

Read More here or here

although the climate and oceans are inexorably intertwined, the critical role oceans play in climate change is seldom addressed

Oceans Report Card Gives U.S. Government an F for Funding

WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2007 (ENS) - The failure of Congress and the President to commit sufficient funding to oceans protection in 2006 earned the federal government a grade of F on the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative's U.S. Ocean Policy Report Card, issued today.


Admiral James D. Watkins, co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, told reporters on a conference call today that the oceans are in deep trouble, in part due to the effects of climate change.

Read more

UN Climate Change Report On Global Warming

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to release a report in Paris on Friday entitled Climate Change 2007 in which 2,500 scientists from 130 countries unequivocally state that the current trend towards potentially catastrophic global warming has been induced by human activity, which began with the dramatic increase in fossil fuel use during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century.
read the complete article here

Fudging the evidence

Tuesday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), held a hearing on “Political Interference with Science: Global Warming.”
Turns out (surprise surprise) that the Bush administration is muzzling federal scientists and suppressing or distorting their research on climate change.

Click here to read the full article online.

California Recognized as Pioneer of Ocean Conservation

California is leading the way in ocean conservation as reported by the NRDC. Planktos hopes to further this environmental leadership in California though our ocean ecosystem restoration projects.
Check out the article here:

----
SAN FRANCISCO - January 30 - California made the grade in a new Ocean Policy Report Card issued today by the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative. The state rose to the head of the class with an A-, compared to a C- grade for national ocean governance reform. California deserves top billing for its ocean policy leadership, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

NRDC said California deserves special recognition for creating a network of marine protected areas, akin to national parks and wildlife refuges on land; implementing an interagency council to promote coordination and innovation; and establishing an ocean trust fund to help finance the transition to a healthy ocean. California’s move toward a holistic approach is an important shift away from managing on a species-by-species basis, which often misses broader systemic threats, the group said.

Business smells whiff of money in climate change

By Gerard Wynn
REUTERS
11:49 a.m. January 22, 2007

LONDON, – A spate of corporations flaunting their environmental credentials, and especially their concern about climate change, says as much or more about a shifting commercial landscape as the planet's future.

The so-called U.S. Climate Action Partnership called Monday for a federal plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a day before President George W. Bush is expected to avoid proposing just that in his State of the Union speech.

“These recommendations should catalyze legislative action,” said Jeff Immelt, chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric Co. , a member of the group, which also includes BP America.

read more

Oceans in Danger News ranks number 3 is most censored stories of 2006

3. Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are now pandemic. Data from oceanography, marine biology, meteorology, fishery science, and glaciology reveal that the seas are changing in ominous ways. A vortex of cause and effect wrought by global environmental dilemmas is changing the ocean from a watery horizon with assorted regional troubles to a global system in alarming distress.
According to oceanographers the oceans are one, with currents linking the seas and regulating climate. Sea temperature and chemistry changes, along with contamination and reckless fishing practices, intertwine to imperil the world's largest communal life source.In 2005, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found clear evidence the ocean is quickly warming. They discovered that the top half-mile of the ocean has warmed dramatically in the past forty years as a result of human-induced greenhouse gases.
One manifestation of this warming is the melting of the Arctic. A shrinking ratio of ice to water has set off a feedback loop, accelerating the increase in water surfaces that promote further warming and melting. With polar waters growing fresher and tropical seas saltier, the cycle of evaporation and precipitation has quickened, further invigorating the greenhouse effect. The ocean's currents are reacting to this freshening, causing a critical conveyor that carries warm upper waters into Europe's northern latitudes to slow by one third since 1957, bolstering fears of a shut down and cataclysmic climate change. This accelerating cycle of cause and effect will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Atmospheric litter is also altering sea chemistry, as thousands of toxic compounds poison marine creatures and devastate propagation.
The ocean has absorbed an estimated 118 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, with 20 to 25 tons being added to the atmosphere daily. Increasing acidity from rising levels of CO2 is changing the ocean's PH balance. Studies indicate that the shells and skeletons possessed by everything from reef-building corals to mollusks and plankton begin to dissolve within forty-eight hours of exposure to the acidity expected in the ocean by 2050. Coral reefs will almost certainly disappear and, even more worrisome, so will plankton.

Phytoplankton absorb greenhouse gases, manufacture oxygen, and are the primary producers of the marine food web. Mercury pollution enters the food web via coal and chemical industry waste, oxidizes in the atmosphere, and settles to the sea bottom. There it is consumed, delivering mercury to each subsequent link in the food chain, until predators such as tuna or whales carry levels of mercury as much as one million times that of the waters around them. The Gulf of Mexico has the highest mercury levels ever recorded, with an average of ten tons of mercury coming down the Mississippi River every year, and another ton added by offshore drilling.

Lower your carbs!

The Guardian has released an amusing little article full of very useful information.
As part of Britains plan to reduce their carbon emissions, articles and tips like these have been popping up all over the UK.

This article defines a 'carb' as 100g of CO2. There is a list of all the foods you eat and the 'carbs' required to produce them, transport them to you, and cook them.

Check out the article here and see if you can lower your carbs.

Its information like this which will help us to combat climate change from every possible angle!

Bringing carbon buyers and sellers to market

Governor Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech emphasized his commitment to reducing greenhouse gases. His recent executive order to begin implementation of a market-based compliance program encouraging businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is clearly a step in the right direction toward cleaning our air of harmful carbon particulates. The next step is to make it financially attractive enough for businesses to comply with the program.

Ask any inventor: Thinking up a workable idea is one thing. Marketing it in a meaningful way is another. It's the difference between, say, having the blueprints for the internal combustion engine and an assembly line ready to roll out a fleet of Model Ts.

The carbon market is in a similar situation. We know that sustainable forestry can help lower atmospheric carbon levels, a stated goal for those concerned with global climate change. Well-managed forests flush with rapidly growing trees remove or "sequester" carbon quite efficiently. But we don't know yet whether markets can be established in this country to provide any economic incentive to do so.

Read More

From Competition to Cooperation: Companies Collaborate on Social and Environmental Issues

Momentum is gaining on collaborations. The United States Climate Action Partnership -- a group of ten major companies including Alcoa, Duke Energy, DuPont, and General Electric -- announced a push for carbon regulation in the US. The move was timed right before President Bush's State of the Union address. The partnership, which grew out of discussions last year between GE and the World Resources Institute and Environmental Defense -- seeks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 10 to 30 percent over the next 15 years through a carbon cap-and-trade system.

California is leading the way

While the Planktos family lives (for the most part) in California, we have a special connection with British Columbia. About a third of the folks around here hail from Victoria, so imagine my excitement when I saw the following Tyee article about Cambells rumored energy plan, which it is hoped, will largely be based on the California Global Warming Solutions Act

This is yet another reminder that the world is watching California. We need to ensure that the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act sets the standard for future state and provincial (as well as federal we hope soon!) legislation.

Secret Energy Plan: Will Campbell Top Schwarzenegger?
'The Governator' raises the bar, BC pushed to match California global warming targets.

By Tom BarrettPublished: January 9, 2007

TheTyee.ca

Environmentalists are hoping that Premier Gordon Campbell can measure up to a certain former action hero when it comes to fighting climate change.

Climate change campaigners say they've been hearing rumours out of Victoria that the Campbell government intends to announce action on greenhouse gas emissions soon.

Their hopes were raised by a year-end interview with Jeff Rud of the Times-Colonist in which Campbell said B.C. needs to be a leader on climate change. A forthcoming update of the government's energy plan will "deal directly" with the issue, Campbell said.

"I think there's probably a lot of people who are hoping it's going to [contain] some greenhouse gas targets," says Lisa Matthaus, campaigns director for the Sierra Club of B.C. "As good as, if not better than, California has."

Environmental groups see the California standards, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last fall, as the standard for other jurisdictions to meet. The California Global Warming Solutions Act aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 through market-based mechanisms.

Schwarzenegger isn't stopping with AB 32

Apparently, reducing overall emissions by 25% isn't enough! The Governer has decided to tackle the fuel industry as well which makes up a significant portion of California's emissions.
The article below outlines Schwarzenegger's plans to announce a mandate to reduce fuel emissions by 10%, resulting in a decline in overall gas comsumption as well as a boom in the alternative fuel industry. Who knows? Maybe we'll start seeing biodeisel stations popping up next to every McDonalds!

Next Schwarzenegger target: fuel emissions

By Marc Lifsher, Times Staff WriterJanuary 9, 2007

SACRAMENTO — Escalating California's battle against global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce today that he will order a 10% cut in motor vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide.

Under the proposal, petroleum refiners and gasoline sellers would be ordered to reduce the carbon content of their fuels over the next 13 years.

The order could also usher in a new generation of alternative fuels in California, experts say, as refiners consider adding ethanol or other biofuels into gasoline blends. It could also mean a shift of part of the state's auto fleet to hydrogen or electric power.

Experts have said the changes could mean an increase in fuel prices over the years, but industry officials declined to comment Monday.

"Basically, California is signaling the beginning of a whole new era for fuels and for renewable energy," said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, a New York-based activist group.

Schwarzenegger plans to include the environmental proposal as part of his annual State of the State address. Contents of the planned executive order were disclosed to The Times by industry sources and confirmed by administration officials familiar with the plan.

Great Emissions Calculator!

I stumbled across a fantastic emissions calculator today while doing some research.

The EPA Clean Energy Department has a 'power profiler' which will provide you with detailed information about where your energy comes from.

The tool uses your zip code to provide a fuel mix comparison, an emissions rate comparison and provides suggestions on how to make a difference.

Then, you can use your actual monthly energy use, your average monthly energy use or the square footage of your home or business to determine your emissions. This provides you with the estimated pounds of nitrogen oxide, sulpher dioxide and carbon dioxide you emit each year.

This is translated into real terms, aka how many cars produce the equivalent, or how many trees need to be planted to compensate.

Give it a go! See how you compare to the national average

Ocean Acidification is on the Senator's Radar

Barbara Boxer's global hot seat

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who takes over as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has promised that combatting climate change will be her top priority. While Congress will likely move "incrementally," she vows that there will be a "sea change" in how the committee addresses environmental issues.

Boxer and other committee members might look no further than the sea for a sense of just how far beyond a certain "tipping point" climate change has already taken us.
According to a New Yorker article entitled 'The Darkening Sea,' nearly half of all the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted since the start of the nineteenth century has been absorbed by the sea -- which covers 70 percent of the earth.
That has led to a 30% increase in what is called 'ocean acidification' -- a term coined by two Lawrence Livermore Lab scientists -- which will only increase as we continue to dump billions of tons of carbon into the oceans every year, resulting in a process that cannot be reversed, according to scientists quoted in the article.

How is marine life dealing with what is threatening to become one gigantic, global bath of acid? Well, for one thing, the calcium-containing shells of pteropods, part of the zooplankton family, are dissolving."I think there's a whole category of organisms that have been around for hundreds of millions of years which are at risk of extinction -- namely, things that build calcium-carbonate shells or skeletons," says one of the Livermore scientists, Ken Caldeira.
So, what can be done about it?

"To a first approximation, if we cut our emissions in half it will take us twice as long to create the damage. But we'll get to more or less the same place. We really need an order-of-magnitude reduction in order to avoid it."

And that's just what planktos ecorestoration projects will provide!

New Certification Standard Proposed for Climate Offset Products

There is a lot of uncertainty in the voluntary carbon offset market. With no standardized system for verification and certification presently in place in the United States, it is hard for the consumer to be able to judge the quality of the offsets they are purchasing.

This uncertainty has raised the need for a national or state-based certification system. There are several initiatives currently in place. The following article outlines one such program. I encourage you to log onto their website and submit your comments or read their report here. What is important to you in terms of verification and certification offsets? Are all offsets equal? Let them know. But before you do, check out this article:

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 21, 2006 - A new Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Product Certification Standard has been published for stakeholder comment by the Center for Resource Solutions. CRS is developing the new standard with the Green-e GHG Advisory Group, composed of key environmental organizations, government agencies, businesses, and advocacy organizations who work on climate change issues. CRS believes the creation of this draft standard is the first step in ensuring credibility in the marketplace for voluntary GHG reduction products, such as carbon offsets offered to help "neutralize" an individual's or organization's climate impacts. Based on recent press coverage and uncertainty in the marketplace, it is evident that buyers of these products are seeking a higher level of certainty in the market about the quality of products. CRS aims to provide consumer protection to the growing number of individuals and businesses who choose to decrease their own contribution to global warming by purchasing greenhouse gas reductions.

Read More

Happy New Year!

Hello Planktos shipmates!

This is just a quick new years greeting message to all our friends.

This is a very exciting year for Planktos. Our store was bustling over the holidays with all kinds of eco-friendly folks neutralizing their friends and families this holiday season. And its not too late! What a better way to start the year than by neutralizing your 2007 carbon footprint in advance. Just visit our store to look at your options.


Within the year, we will be heading out on our new research vessel as well. Be sure to keep an eye on this space for all the exciting bloom updates.

On the land side of things, Klimafa is going ahead with its new partnership with with UNEP billion tree campaign. For more information, check out the blog archive.

Climate change consciousness has reached the tipping point. Over the last six months, the level of awareness of the crisis we are facing has exploded. The media is teeming with stories about the Kyoto Protocol, voluntary emissions offsets, and local and international efforts to raise awareness and develop solutions for climate change.

Many of these exciting initiatives are coming out of the youth and on University Campuses. A great blog to keep up to date on the campus climate initiative is itsgettinghotinhere.org. You can get information about local, regional and national initiatives and events.

Over the new year I met a recent McGill graduate who had helped to develop technology that sequesters carbon dioxide in concrete! It not only makes the concrete stronger and impermeable, but has the capacity to sequester a billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year. It is this kind of innovation which is needed to attack the climate crisis from as many sides as possible.

and here is a great quote passed along to be by my lovely friend Rosemary -

From an op-ed in the New York Times:

"...while our embrace of green has finally reached a tipping point, the tipping point on climate change and species loss is also fast approaching, if it’s not already here. There’s no time to lose. “People see an endangered species every day now when they look in the mirror,” said the environmentalist Rob Watson. “It is not about the whales anymore.”

Let's hope 2007 sees an explosion in climate mitigation success!