World temperature 1880-2011

NASA published this video rendition of the world's surface temperature from 1880 to 2011.



Speaks for itself.

24 hours of Reality

The Climate Reality project has successfully completed a 24-hour marathon of education on the reality about climate change and the extreme weather conditions we are seeing. Watch the highlights and take action but not letting uninformed deniers get their way. Political action does matter and pays off to make a change. Maybe even organize an event an invite a presenter...

Blue Man Group on Climate Action

Not the most recent, but still very cool, BMG-style call to action!

The planet's vital signs

NASA offers a very cool site to track vital statistics of our planet. The key indicators include CO2 concentration, sea level, ice levels and global temperature. The web site offers lots of valuable information around these stats, but there is also a condensed widget for it.

Protecting natural habitats saves CO2 - buy an acre!

Of course everyone has heard about rainforests, how we burn them down for short sighted monetary gains, etc. Even Sting signs about them for a decade. But how crucial are these large forest areas to reduce CO2 emissions? Massively important!

Conservation International is a highly ranked organization protecting species and habitats. According to them, every 4 hours an area the size of Manhattan is burned down, irrecoverably, releasing more carbon than you can ever emit driving your beloved Hummer. You get the picture, preventing deforestation matters immensely. You can participate in the protection by buying an acre, it's only $15, they make a fantastic party gift and the more people are acting, the better.

Protect an acre!

Making sure the damage lasts...

The current administration might leave us with a terrible good-bye present. Head of the EPA Stephen Johnson has recently announced that despite his earlier stance he does not consider carbon dioxide a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. This impacts the construction of several large coal power plants that are pending this decision. We are talking about 10-12 new large coal power plants producing 8000 megawatts of energy.

This is exactly the kind of outdated argumentation and legislation which will hinder any advances in renewable energy sources. And they are just trying to sneak it in in the last days of old thinking. Read more on it here.

What can we do in 10 years...

In a recent speech, Al Gore poses a bold challenge to the United States: producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

Wow! Unfortunately it's not only bold, but very likely critical to achieve. But can it be done? It would require unifying and modernizing the US energy grid, harvesting solar, wind and geothermal energy, producing cars running purely on electricity, and much much more. Brazil made the switch from foreign oil to only homegrown ethanol in only a few years . Still carbon based and pollution emitting, but a bold change. To me, it seems possible, especially given the engineering and financial resources of the USA.

What do you think?

You can watch and read the speech here: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/304/
To support this initiative, read: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/289/

Story of Stuff

Well done video on how "stuff" gets into our hands as consumers at the Story of Stuff

Why eating green matters

While energy consumption (also of IT) contributes a good portion of the carbon emissions that lead to global warming, the industrial production of food, especially the breading of livestock, adds a staggering chunk.

This TED talk gives some very interesting facts about what we are eating and why it is time to think about it some more...

California leads the way

The state of California has always been a leader in green legislation and the CARB (California Air Resource Board) has now released a draft of Assembly Bill 32 (AB32).

This truly forward-thinking regulation of 2006 calls on California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This will be done by gradually reducing the amount of allowed emissions as well as a cap-and-trade system. Utilities will produce a third of their energy from renewable sources, clean cars will be mandated, solar heating for houses will be the norm.

With legislation in place, technology and businesses now can rise to the challenge of meeting the set goals. There is so much we can do, this shows the way...

How carbon offsets work

Our friends and customers at Salesforce have extended their 1-1-1 program and added another "1": Earth.

Their program "EarthForce" also purchases carbon offsets (like Workday). One of their offset partners, NativeEnergy has a nice short movie explaining the basic working of the offsets: http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/flash/97.php

Check it out.

Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act

Congress is soon deciding on the "Climate Security Act"also known as Lieberman-Warner Act. This effort act will implement a cap-and-trade mechanism to reduce carbon emissions. It will also spark more innovation in green technologies.

Find out how you can support this effort and achieve political action in 2008 with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Some senators are already actively supporting the new legislation. Urge yours to do so as well.

Al Gore gives updated slide show at TED

TED (my favorite website of all) features an new talk by Al Gore. This updated slideshow offers further thoughts on "the inconvenient truth" we are no doubt facing.

As always, well worth watching at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/243.

1.2 billion elephants