This is part of the reason I like this guy.

Matt

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he would travel to Copenhagen next month if a climate summit is on the verge of a framework deal and his presence there will make a difference in clinching it.

It was Obama’s strongest assertion yet he may go to Denmark in mid-December to help secure a new global compact in the fight against climate change, a process clouded by disputes between rich countries and big developing nations.

“If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that’s something that I will do,” Obama told Reuters in an interview.

Obama, who has faced resistance from opposition Republicans and even some fellow Democrats to setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions, acknowledged that the U.S. Senate would not pass climate change legislation before Copenhagen.

Delays in the U.S. Congress have rankled European allies and added to questions about how significant the deal that emerges from Copenhagen will ultimately be.

But Obama insisted he remained optimistic that the December 7-18 summit could yield a “framework” agreement.

“I think the question is can we create a set of principles, building blocks, that allow for ongoing and continuing progress on the issue and that’s something I’m confident we can achieve,” he said.

Obama made clear he considers his talks with Chinese leaders during an Asia tour later this month to be crucial in clearing remaining obstacles to some kind of accord.

“The key now is for the United States and China, the two largest emitters in the world, is to be able to come up with a framework that, along with other big emitters like the Europeans and those countries that are projected to be large emitters in the future, like India, can all buy into,” he said.

“I remain optimistic that between now and Copenhagen that we can arrive at that framework,” he added.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

I saw this happening when a good bill on cap and trade got over to the Senate. That is where the word glacial really takes on meaning…It may mean global warming will reach what scientists are calling the “Tipping Point”. This “running in place”  is bad news. Call your Senator tell them that cap and trade makes huge sense.”Glacially slow” does not. Go Boxer and go Kerry in the molasis slow and very unpredictable Senate. I got a letter from Max Baucus on this issue. He has his own ideas on global warming. This is scary and even though I follow the debate on global warming very closely I have to admit I am confused. I want to see if Baucus is throwing the baby out with the bathwater on cap and trade so we have a strong economy. Quite frankly economic arguments give me the willies, churn my stomach. Read on to find out where thoughtful policy is at.

Matt

November 7, 2009

By Brad Knickerbocker

Political and diplomatic advances on global climate change are proceeding at a snail’s pace. Or to use a better metaphor, like the drip-drip-drip of glaciers melting in the heat of a warming planet. Which is to say, slowly – very slowly.

That’s true in Washington , where lawmakers are trying to craft a climate bill. And it’s also true abroad, where diplomats are preparing for a 192-nation conference in Copenhagen next month.

 As the Associated Press reports:

 “At U.N. climate talks in Barcelona , Spain , African nations walked out of meetings to protest rich nations’ reluctance to make substantial carbon-cutting commitments. In Washington , some conservative Republicans boycotted the start of committee debate on a bill to curb greenhouse gases, fearful of the cost to the U.S. economy.”

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint session of Congress this past week “there is no time to lose” in tackling climate change, according to the AP. “But the lukewarm response to her comments on global warming — in contrast to the ovations she received at other times — only underscored the skeptical mood in the United States about climate action, which would require a shift away from fossil fuels to wind and solar power, smaller cars and — the Republicans argue — more expense to consumers.”

 Senator Barbara Boxer (D) of California pushed a climate bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee the other day. But as Reuters reports, “it’s becoming clear the bill won’t get far before the world meets in Copenhagen .”

 Most climate science experts agree that the earth is warming at a pace that may be dangerous, and reports from Earth keep illustrating that.

 A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calls global warming “the greatest threat” to national parks in the United States .

 And as Monitor science writer Peter Spotts wrote the other day, there’s new evidence that “Global warming appears to be melting the ice on Tanzania ’s Mt. Kilimanjaro .” He notes that “mountain glaciers in tropical South America and the Himalayas are undergoing similar changes.”

 Even so, reports Voice of America, “world leaders say a global climate treaty might be postponed by up to a year.”

 Meanwhile, President Obama is throwing what political weight he can behind efforts to stem global climate change. After meeting with European Union leaders in Washington this week, he told reporters:

 “We discussed climate change extensively and all of us agreed that it was imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to ensure that we create a framework for progress.”

 There may be some wishful thinking there. It’s not only recalcitrant Republicans and global warming deniers he faces. Within the environmental community there are sharp differences over how to proceed, reports David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post. He writes:

 “Now, some groups have muted their alarms about wildfires, shrinking glaciers and rising seas. Not because they’ve stopped caring about them — but because they’re trying to win over people who might care more about a climate bill’s non-environmental side benefits, such as “green” jobs and reduced oil imports.Smaller environmental groups, however, say this is the wrong moment to ease up on the scare because that might send the signal that a weaker bill is acceptable.At the heart of this intra-green disagreement is a behemoth of an unanswered question: Even after years of apocalyptic warnings about climate change, how much will Americans really sacrifice to fight it?”

 Meanwhile, drip-drip-drip…..

On the post before this one I talk about chapters in Gore’s latest book on global warming, Our Choice.           

Another point to make is that there is a version of this book for teens and this should go with video games, graphic novels and clothes for a teen over the holidays. It has a lot of pictures and some good information on global warming an issue that will definitely impact the younger folks, teens out there. It is priced at 16 dollars, a price most of you can afford and a great investment with no Green Line  to follow (joke son).

This book has no Simpson like or South Park animation and no animay animation but the book has enough pictures for teens and in school science it is a contemporary and meaty topic for a book report. When I read it I will tell you more about it. The adult  version, Our Choice, is quite good from my perspective.

Matt

Since I last posted on this blog I read the chapters in Gore’s new book, Our Choice. The chapters were on forests, soils and populations. All three chapters very much reminded me of Environmental Biology, an undergraduate biology class, in whick we had a text that was very much like Our Choice, many of the issues are basically the same, but Gore goes out of his way to show how carbon, and other  fossil fuel gases like methane gas, have run amok in our ecosytem a processes that was predictable before are not so predictable now and we humans caused this and we are continuing to cause this : “amokness” (not a word, but you get the point). The next chapters are new information on Global Warming. Some like the Super Grid get to the heart of pragmatic mitigations to global warming. Other chapters deal with such things as change and political will which do get to the heart of how we propose to live with climate change…MORE!!!!

Matt

I just finished Chapter seven of “Our Choice”, Gore’s spin on Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Gore reviewed large sequestration projects throughout the world and he did not mention Montana, although I know this town’s university, Montana State University, got a 63 million dollar grant for some aspect of Carbon Sequestration. They got their grant from the Department of Energy and it made the front page of the local paper.I know of at least two projects where sequestration of carbon dioxide is a process that is being proposed in Montana…interestingly enough Gore is somewhat optimistic about the potential for this process but he says in his book, at some legth, that carbon sequestration has promise. I very much agree with Gore but I do not want to see carbon sequestration become the format for developing a dirty coal resource. We have a lot of coal in Montana.

Matt

I feel very guilty, that I should put some natural history in this blog while I write so much about things about global warming that are not natural history, but I view global warming as the topic of our times and I find the new Gore book to be chock full of interesting tidbits on global warming.

I was at my camp at point 9648, named after an elevation, for some of the best times I can ever remember. I was their for 4 seasons between the end of June and early September, about 20 to 15 years ago. I would see an average of about 9 grizzly bears per evening. I would see moose every evening. I saw about 150 to 185 elk on most evenings. I saw black bears and coyotes commonly. I saw 2 wolverines and 1 mountain lion and several mountain goats. Lots of mule deer and a huge flight of raptors. There were yellow-bellied marmots. Pikas and Richardson Ground Squirrels chirped, and beeped seemingly everywhere. There were Golden Eagles, Ravens and a lot of Clarks Nutcrackes. There were numerous red squirrels, you get the picture, a lot of mega fauna.

The views were gorgeous. I escaped crackling lightning by going in my tent.

I have since learned that it rains a lot more in Florida but the lightning is more violent in Montana. It is funny but the most violent thundrstorm I have seen was in the state of Maryland, near Fredrick.

Up at point 9648 when whitebark pine, a productive stand near my camp, had a productive cone crop I saw 11 grizzly bears right near the camp eating white bark pine nuts. We had minimal impact on our camp area and did not scare the grizzly bears out of the area, and we made hardly any noise.

We got real good looks at grizzly/black bear interactions and grizzly bears digging up red squirrel caches to get at white bark pine nuts.

On another subject, the Gore Book, Our Choice, writes about new jobs created by building bolts for wind turbines. The company that makes bolts for wind turbines now made bolts for the Golden Gate Bridge and for the Statue of Liberty.

I live in Bozeman, Montana where they have a sixty three million dollar grant to build a large carbon dioxide sequestration demonstration project. I hear mixed reviews about carbon sequestration as a tool that alternative energy producers can use.

The Gore book writes that carbon sequestration demonstration projects have been too small to say whether, or not, this process will work on larger projects. Gore remains optimistic that carbon dioxide sequestration will work and that is good in a state like Montana.

The problem is that if sequestration works we might see a proliferation of coal use which is the way Montana has potential to go with its huge coal deposits in the state’s Southeast.

Which brings up an environmentally horrific practice that you see in state’s like West Virginia where entire mountaintops are lopped off in the quest for coal and stream waste is excerbated from this terrible practice which needs to be outlawed.

A lot of US coal goes over to China where 1 coal gasification plant is built per week. This definitely increases the climate changing polution of fossil fuels.

Trivia: I find “tar sand” production in places like Northern Alberta and lopping off West Virginia mountaintops as two of the most horrific human practices out there. These practices are up with Tiger Bone and bear part uses in countries like China and Shark fin soup. GO FIGURE.

Matt

This seems like an easy aspect of winpower to resolve now while the “iron is hot”.

In his new book entitled, Our Choice, about global warming Gore writes a subsection he titles this section, Are Windmills a Threat To Birds?

Some sidebars to this are:

1) Some of the strongest supporters I have seen advocating alternative forms of energy are birders. I also know that at least two of the smartest skeptics I have seen opposing mitigations of global warming are birders. In both cases I see these birders as being very close to accepting the negative impacts of global warming on faunal forms like birds.

2) I have yet to see a situation where windturbines threaten birds and I have seen wind turbines on private lands near wildlife refuges and along rivers.

This issue, from Gores’s perspective, is an engineering design issue. He writes that engineers have designed “smart turbines” that shut down when they detect approaching flocks of birds.

This is good and can be easily built into the development of wind turbines…I have know idea if building these turbines is cost prohibitive. Yet I see much of the potential problem with winpower and birds as the siting of wind farms. I have  seen windfarms right in the middle of grainfields and I do not see this as a threat to birds. If farms are built in Important Bird Areas then they are potentially a problem and in my area I see that as a potential problem, especially when these farms can happen and produce lots of alternative energy and not harm birds.

I see that alternative energy advocates like Gore tend to be the easiest persons to talk to about this wildlife quandry, windpower companies are harder to talk to, but persons like Gore can talk to these folks in the windpower community.

An aside: I see real opportunities in the countryside to have windpower on private lands that will not harm birds; even potentially so. These same  opportunities are worth income to the private landowner and they produce a advocate for alternative forms of energy. Two things come to my mind as we site wind farms.

1) Is that birds are killed by a variety of things and I see a lot of birding conservation energy going to the mitigation, or elimination, of these mortality sinks. Some of the mortality sinks for wild birds include things like energy lines, buildings and cats, both feral and pets.

2) Cummulative Effects. Birds are killed by energy lines, cats, buildings, automobiles and pesticides. There is no reason for windfarms to be one of the mortality forms for birds. As global warming becomes a harsh and negative impact in the ecology of birdlife and many birds are rarer, things like Cummulative Effects become more important.

I remember driving by a windfarm and antelope used this farm for shade and it was sited in an area where little, or know birdlife would be impacted. I would think of things like this 19 years ago.

One neat place to find cold weather songbirds was in very windy areas with drift fences where the flocks of birds could use the fences to get out of the way of harsh winds. These would be great sites to locate wind farms and birdlife would use wind turbines to avoid harsh winds and the flocks of birds would fly under the wind turbine blades (I have seen these flocks of birds fly a foot or two above the ground) to stay ahead of their percieved predator. These areas might be attractents, because of prey, for wintering Snowy Owls or species like the Rough-legged Hawks but I tend to see these predators closer to tree cover. It seems that a good birder or bird-oriented wildlife biologist can consult in the wind farm siting and negate, or minimize, negative impacts to birdlife.

Matt

I have read several books on global warming…Our Choice is the title of Gore’s latest book. I started  reading books about global warming in 2005, the year Gore’s Inconvieniant Truth book cane out, which was a good and fulfilling read. I think Our Choice might be that way. Certainly the photographs are good. I have read as far as chapter 1 so it is too early to comment.

On another, closely related topic: I watched 3 Gore interviews on his Our Choice book the other day. On two of the interviews Gore got a ration  from the interviewing journalist about soon being the first climate change billionaire. Gore laughed and basically told the journalist that he puts his money where his mouth is. If that is the case I say more power to him. People, like Gore, who make a fortune doing what is right for the survival of the human species can, and should, get rich as they help lead our country out of oblivion (doing nothing about a changing climate: mitigations). I woul rather see Gore get rich on investments in alternative forms of energy then some Executive at the Bank of America or Wells Fargo  for helping to almost lead our country over a financial cliff and us rewarding that person with several billion dollars. I see Gore as a smart man on the subject of global climate change and as having the political chops to represent the US in difficult climate change treaties…

Matt

First, off from what I read it is said we will lose 50% of the wildlife species we know by the end of this century. Ican see worse thanI this scenario and that is not good if it is even partially true. I view that as an optimistic viewpoint. Dr. Molly Cross, of the highly esteemed Wildlife Conservation Society, thinks that some species of wildlife will make it across this climate change boudary and we should manage for that.

That is Cross’s job. Not mine! She did say that the data said things out in the field, for example plant growth, to be compelling and a Cross’s “just the fact”,  parsemonius, scientist viewpoint. Cross gave a conservative view of the impacts of climate change on wildlife her view was quite optomistic.  This is the topic that interests me the most and I came away from the lecture very impressed with Dr. Cross. I think the scanario where scientists like Cross will be overwhelmed by climate change is the scenario we will see. Climate change will ovewhelm scientists like Cross like a great tsunami wave. I will be long gone but I would like to see the Cross’s of the world be more right then wrong. Cross  used the word iconic three times. I wanted to ask Cross if she worked at all with the wildlife icon, Dr. George Schaller. Maybe so, but Cross was young enough to be a “maybe not. “

One good takeaway that I got from Cross is that we could start mitigating global climate change by closing dow nthings like old logging roads and cattle grazing in the riparian zones…but we as a species are not doing enough to mitigate global climate change as a whole right now.

Cross was the third in an important lecture series here in Bozeman, Montana on climate change. her talk and slides were quite good. Cross ’s talk was entitled: Protecting Wildlife in a Changing Climate. Read my opinion piece in the blog entry just below this one.

Matt

There were many messages in the last election but I fear that Cap and Trade are one of those threshold issues that will fall by the wayside as a result of the elections; this “falling by the wayside” is one of the outcomes of this most recent election and I do see this as a long view of what we need to do as a society. 

I will use me and this blog as an analogy. I prefer to write about birds and bears and trees and plants I like to write about these topics way more than global warming but the fact is that I see global warming as the most important issues of our time.

I do not want to see us in the world solve our financial and in the US health problems only to be overwhelmed in the near future by global climate change because we didnt even give such an issue the time of day and let the issue “fall by the way” and that is where we are headed as I see things. The bottom line is that I see the concern over our immediate financial troubles and I have personal experiences with health care costs run amok and I really see our educational standards as needing to rise while new technologies arise to mitigate global climate change. It is no joke that I see my children as way ahead of my generation on products like the computer and the advanced cell phone.  Bottom line is that I dont see my generation leaving much for my children’s future but a strong, foward facing, educational system is something we can leave our children in a changing world so they have the intelectual tools to mitigate climate change.

Another message I took away from the recent elections is the message of “jobs, jobs and job’s”.

 My take on that is much like our president’s take on this, that is lets focus on creating a large part of our economy in alternative forms of energy and what is called the green job. An example of an alternative energy job is the installer of electric panels on you roof or the person who hooks you into a “smart grid”. I have seen small solar companies and wind energy companies pop up all over the landscape in recent times.

 A green job is like the peron who installs energy efficient windows with fortified weather insillation in the window seal. There is a real need for both of those things to happen in our society and it will create jobs but at this time it is hard for the general public to afford efficiency and alternative forms of energy, although this is “just what the doctor ordered” for earth to survive. I see this as where we (the US) should place our emphasis now. We should place our emphasis there and not in things that will continue our reliance on fossil fuels, consumerizm (I had to toss that in) and inneficient, wasteful infrastructure.

Matt