The Little Things Count

The Kyoto Protocol has resulted in the emergence of a more than US$60bn (£34bn) carbon market as the world's main mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This is a welcome start. But about 80% of this money goes to countries which cause less than 20% of emissions.
Tropical deforestation contributes about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is about the same as the total emissions from the US, and more than the entire global transportation sector.
You take away the carbon sinks, the carbon is free to rise into the atmosphere and start absorbing and re-radiating the suns solar radiation back to the earth, warming the surface and the atmosphere further. With the blanket of greenhouse gases getting thicker because of human activities, we are increasing the rate at which it is increasing by cutting down such large areas of forest. Logically we should be planting vast areas of forest to photosynthesize the carbon in the atmosphere. A direct counter and along with making efforts ourselves to reduce our emissions and impact on the composition of the atmosphere, we can prevent changes as large as predicted, as will happen over the next few decades.
I don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand. We are responsible for our actions and how they affect the habitats of others.

Beneath a 1.5 million acre tract on the North Slope of Alaska is estimated to be between 3 and 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This area is a specially designated area within the 19.8 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The U.S. imports over 65% of the nation's needed petroleum. These oil imports cost more than $55.1 billion a year. This figure does not include the military costs of imported oil. These figures are rising and could exceed 80% imports by the year 2010.
If the U.S. went ahead with their Arctic drilling plans, the U.S. would save $14 billion per year in oil imports and between 250,000 and 735,000 jobs are estimated to be created by development of the Coastal Plain. More than 75 percent of the citizens of Alaska, the Alaska legislature, the governor, the congressional delegation, and the residents of the North Slope Borough ( including those who live in the only village in the refuge ), support Coastal Plain oil and gas development.

ANWR is a 19 million acre refuge in northeast Alaska over half of which is designated as wilderness. The northern rim of ANWR, 1.2 million acres, was segregated by Congress for resource evaluation because of the potential for crude oil deposits beneath its surface. This area is called the Coastal Plain.
Tens of thousands strong herds of Caribou roam and migrate through the area and thousands of waterfowl nest and reproduce in Prudhoe Bay.
Other creatures such as Polar Bears (around 1000) live in this area of the ANWR with another 1000+ on the coast a short way from the refuge.
Polar bears will be exposed to new dangers and threats if oil exploration, development and extraction go ahead these include

• Death, injury or harassment resulting from interactions with humans (many bears who come too close to communities too often are killed or moved).
• Damage or destruction of essential habitat - just look at the extent of the damage caused by the Alberta Oil Sands and you will understand how such a project would affect the ANWR)
• Contact with and ingestion of Oil and other contaminents.
• Indirect food chain effects due to the impacts of oil and gas related activites on the good web upon which polar bears depend and are a part of.

Muskoxen an endangered species, with 350 in the refuge, live in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge year-round. Deep snow makes it difficult for these animals to survive as their fat-reserves are depleted and fewer calves produced, therefore, they move to areas that recieve less snow and/or are more sheltered. Such as the riparian area of habitats - which are also sites of important sources for water and gravel required for development and exploration. If the Muskoxen are displaced from these areas into deeper snow it will be a butterfly effect. In deeper snow the Muskoxen will expend more energy remaining warm, thus reducing their fat reserves which may well affect their survival.

Other species in the area include Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Bowhead Whales, Gray Whales, Killer Whales, Harbour Porpoise, Pacific Walrus, Bearded Seals, Spotted Seals, Ring Seals, Elk, Wolves, Dall Sheep, Wolverines, Arctic Foxes and Red Foxes. Such biodiversity in an area of a couple of million acres is unmatched anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and possibly in any other areas of Tundra.

Global warming the ANWR is very apparent, over the past century, the average temperature in the arctic region has increased by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. Sea ice is melting earlier, permafrost is thawing and the wildlife migrates at different times. Caribou are departing their wintering grounds a month earlier and still having trouble making it to the coastal plain in time for spring, when the most nutritious forage is available for their calves. Arctic foxes are facing increased competition from the red foxes that are moving north as the climate warms. If warming continues unabated, the melting of the permafrost and the transformation of much of the tundra into woodlands would dramatically affect the migratory birds that breed there and rely on tundra vegetation. That includes more than two-thirds of all geese and most sandpipers.

"At best, ANWR would pump out only about 1 million barrels per day in 2015, when all of the necessary pipelines are in place. That may seem a lot, but in fact it represents only 4% of anticipated U.S. petroleum consumption and 6% of all imports."
Arctic Drilling Is No Energy Answer Tapping ANWR wouldn't help much with the most pressing problem: American dependence on foreign oil.
by Michael T. Klare

The total production from ANWR would be between 0.4 and 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030. So is it really worth entering a wilderness for such a small amount of oil and leaving it in what state?

Against Arctic drilling? Take action here.

Homeostasis is a dynamic state, in which various regulatory systems maintain a fluctuating but overall balanced, set of conditions. If something happens to change conditions from normal, information is fed back to the regulatory systems and action is taken to rectify the situation. The action to prevent the regulating mechanisms going too far is called negative feedback. Since life began, there has been about a 25% increase in the radiation arriving at Earth from the sun. Despite fluctuations the earths surface has remained relatively constant.
The increase in plant life over the years will have increasingly removed CO2 from the air during photosynthesis. This will have reduced the greenhouse effect.

But the greenhouse effect is increasing due to humans adding CO2 to the atmosphere, this with masses of deforestation upsets the balance, so CO2 is increasing faster than it would if we didn't use wood to build our houses. Hence, the enhanced greenhouse effect.


Negative feedback: A system whereby a change is stopped from going too far by adjustments to reverse it.

An example of negative feedback is when increased global temperatures increase evaporation. This may lead to increased cloud cover that can reflect some of the incoming radiation and reduce temperatures.


Positive Feedback: A system whereby a change produces effects that increase or enhance the change to take the system out of balance.

For example, it has been shown that over the last 10 years, the permafrost (area where material just below the ground surface has been at 0°C for 2years+) in Alaska and Siberia has been melting. The organic material that was beneath the ice is now decomposing and releasing large amounts of Methane into the air. This is a powerful greenhouse gas and is leading to to rises in temperatures, which causes more permafrost to melt.

The greenhouse effect is a natural effect that causes the Earth’s atmosphere to be about 33°C warmer than it would be without the layer of greenhouse gases. These gases allow short-wave radiation from the sun to be transmitted to the Earth’s surface but prevent long-wave radiation from leaving the atmosphere. The gases also absorb the heat from the ground, heat up and then re-radiate the extra warmth back down to the Earth’s surface.

There are a number of gases that contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
Water Vapour, although subject to wide fluctuations, does have an enormous long-term effect. E.g. Clouds composed of large amounts of water vapour, reduce heating by day by cutting out the suns radiation, and reduce cooling by night by preventing the escape of long-wave radiation.
Carbon Dioxide is released as a result of respiration and decay.
Methane is released by bacteria during the anaerobic decay of many types of organic matter. Some methane has become trapped beneath the ground, especially in conjunction with coal.
Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is released as a result of bacterial activity in soils and the oceans.


There is strong evidence that the pace of global climate change in increasing and that this correlates with the increase in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activities (industrialisation).
The concentration of the following gases has been increased by anthropogenic means.
Carbon Dioxide is mostly produced through the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain large amounts of carbon that were locked away millions of years ago. Burning these involves oxidation of the carbon, thus it releases carbon dioxide in the air much faster than it can be locked away. Deforestation means not only that there are fewer trees to absorb CO2; but also that additional CO2 is released into the atmosphere when the wood decomposes or burns.

Methane has a greater greenhouse effect. Anaerobic bacteria produce large amounts: in paddy fields, which are flooded during the establishment phase of a rice crop; in landfill sites; and by cattle during the digestion of cellulose. Methane is also released during the ventilation of coalmines, leaks from pipelines and natural gas fields.

Nitrogen Oxides are mostly released into the atmosphere from burning petrol and diesel fuel for transport but some also come from the burning of fossil fuels in power stations, and the production and use of nitrogen fertilisers.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are entirely anthropogenic the have been manufactured for use as aerosol propellants, refrigerants, and solvents, in fire extinguishers and to make expanded plastics such as foam.

Low-level (tropospheric) ozone is produced by photochemical reactions between nitrogen dioxide and non-methane hydrocarbons (NHMC) from vehicle exhausts. NHMC also act as greenhouse gases themselves.

Limiting the extraction of oil would increase prices and slow the economy - which is the last thing the Global Warming skeptics want and of course some political parties and the oil companies. There aren't enough alternatives out there yet that can be used over large areas - it isn't an economically viable option, yet. Our hunger for oil is terrible, the US government authorized oil exploration and extraction in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. The oil reserves are just a few months worth of supply for the US. This to me, is unacceptable, in areas of broad biodiversity and all of the already protected areas, there should definitely be limited extraction of oil - limited to the point that it would illegal to mine in such areas.
More areas need to protected in North America certainly. Alaska may be oil rich but it's also the USA's last area of vast wilderness rich in biodiversity. Similar happens in Canada, there is great risk to the environment from such exploration of fossil fuels. I.e. Strip Mining the oil sands in Alberta Canada. Lush Boreal forest is taken up (and I would hope the wood is used for house building) to expose the oil sands where the extraction begins. Yes, I think there should be a limit on the extraction of oil, but until there is a viable alternative it is very unlikely to happen.Relevant studies are listed in the sources below.
Here are some facts:
Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.

• At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing in them.
• Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes in Canada.
• The toxic tailing ponds are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world. The ponds span 50 square kilometers and can be seen from space.
• Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.
  

Images:

http://image.guim.co.uk/Guardian/business/gallery/2007/dec/07/1/OilJeffMcIntoshAP-5881.jpg

http://www.borealbirds.org/images/tarsands3.jpg

Campaign released by the UK Government








Educating








News

What the experts say:

First of all, we're looking at climate change on a scale that hasn't happened in 650,000 years, maybe more. Second, we're looking at climate change that's happening much more quickly than ever before, which will make it much harder for ecological systems and for humans to adapt. But third, we must recognise that the Earth has been through some truly horrific climate changes in the past and ask the question why we would willingly bring such change on ourselves.
James P. Leape - Director General of the WWF.

A lot of the people who are campaigning against action on climate change - because they say it's not true or it's not to do with people, and even if it is to do with people, then we shouldn't worry about it because it's going to do so much damage to the economy that we should let the pollution just carry on emitting from power stations and vehicles - the people who say that mostly aren't coming from a scientific perspective.They're working in a political context, and what they're trying to do very often is to protect a particular industry.
Tony Juniper - Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and Vice-Chair of Friends of the Earth International.

30 years ago we were talking about the little ice age that was coming, and now it's warming and I think there's a lot of misinformation out there.
Peyton Knight - Director of Environmental and Regulatory Affairs for the National Center of Public Policy Research.

If the system Gaia is compromised - and it has been compromised quite a few times in the past - we know what happens. The carbon dioxide in the air builds up, and the temperature goes up with it, and it can go up by as much as 8C (14.4F). Gaia will respond as it always does. It has a goal, and it has had from the beginning - to keep the planet habitable for whatever life forms happen to be in its contemporary biosphere. It will respond to what we are doing, global change, by moving to the hot state that it was in the last time - 55 million years ago - and stay there for anything up to 200,000 years, slowly sinking back to normal.
Dr. James Lovelock - distinguished scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis.

Explanation of Gaia: In simple terms, the whole of planet Earth - biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere - can be thought of as one giant living organism. Here 'living' is meant in the sense that the hole system appears to have evolved together and to be self-regulating. Mechanisms which keep conditions stable are described as homeostatic. The Gaia hypothesis suggests that it is the interactions between living organisms and each other and with the atmosphere and oceans, that have kept conditions more or less stable for the last 3.6 billion years.


Considering that the climate has remained stable since humans developed civilisations, we have formed a very intimate way of living with the current climate, but since the 1700's the levels of greenhouse gases have been increasing, that is undeniable as they are produced during the combustion of fossil fuels. With increased global industrialisation in the last 100 years and the global population increasing ten-fold since the 1700's and its set to increase by 40% t0 50% by the middle of the century - these greenhouse gas concentrations are going to increase and the blanket of greenhouse gases will get thicker. Which will, in turn, increase the amount of solar radiation reflected to the Earth's surface and re-radiated into the atmosphere - which is very simply the global warming phenomenon.
Increases in populations come with increases in greenhouse gas emissions, just look at how China's emissions have changed in the last 20 years (although still very far behind the USA and Canada per person, considering there are 3 times as many people in China though...) and everyone realises the population growth that has occurred there. We can't control populations so to an extent we can't control our emissions enough to stop global warming. But we can definitely slow it down. It is possible to reduce the effects significantly but scientists say we have 15 years to act before it's too late.
With the many skeptics still out there arguing against the cause of climate change - it is unlikely that we will be able to do enough unless they realise how detrimental climate change will be to the human race as a species if left unchecked.
The media is also playing a role in the understanding of climate change as they like 'sensational' stories on global warming because there is a lot of attention on it. So many scientists aren't being heard. Funding even seems to find its ways only to scientists who are willing to promote certain scientific models and studies. Until this changes we don't have much hope of stopping global warming.
This by no means constitutes dsicontinuing our own individual efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, become more energy efficient and in all, environmentally friendly. There are many things we can do to make our homes energy efficient, with a little investment. Is that investment worth it? In the long term is it yes, hundreds can be saved each year by spending a few hundred $'s or £'s once and it is worth buying high rated appliances for the home to further reduce your energy bill.
But, this alone is not enough, as well one doing the above, and that outlined in the list below, we need our governments and organisations take more action. Canadian Liberals and UK Conservatives 'going green' to try and get more votes is all very well but they have a vested interest in 'going green' which weakens their credibility as a potential ruling party. Will they really do what they promise when they come into power? Or once they are in power will they find the resources and money aren't available to achieve their 'green goals'? This is why if and when I'm confused as who to vote for in an election, I vote for the Green party. I still go out and cast my vote - which is better than not voting at all. It's unlikely that a green party will come into powe anytime soon but it would be nice for them to have more of an influence in government.
What would you do? Vote for a minority party that supports alternative energy and the environment? Or, Not vote because you remained undecided between the main parties or can't make sense of campaigns by other parties?
We live in democracies, we still have a voice and in numbers the echoes ripple through government, so I would encourage your support of online petitions, and 'green' charities.



20 Ways You can 'Go Green'.
1) Turn it off when not in use (lights, television, DVD player, Hi Fi, computer etc.)
2) Turn down the central heating slightly (try just 1 to 2 degrees C)
3) Turn down the water heating setting (just 2 degrees will make a significant saving)
4) Check the central heating timer setting - remember there is no point heating the house after you have left for work!
5) Fill your dish washer and washing machine with a full load - this will save you water, electricity, and washing powder.
6) Fill the kettle with only as much water as you need.
7) Unplug your mobile phone as soon as it has finished charging.
8) Defrost your fridge/freezer regularly.
9) Do your weekly shopping in a single trip.
10) Hang out the washing to dry rather than tumble drying it.
11) Go for a run rather than drive to the gym, or of course run to the gym.
12) Fit energy saving light bulbs.
13) Use the bus or a train rather than a car.
14) Reduce your consumption of meat.
15) Don't buy bottled water if your tap water is safe to drink (especially if it has been shipped from far away)
16) Buy local fruit and vegetables, or even try growing your own.
17) Don't buy fresh fruit and vegetables which are out of season, they may have been flown in 18) Try to buy products made closer to home (look out and avoid items that are made in the distant lands)
19) Recycle as much as possible.
20) If you have your own printer, use recycled paper and have your cartidges refilled instead of throwing them away.

Banff National Park, 5th July 2008

The first national park in Canada, the 3rd in the world (after Yellowstone, USA and Royal, Australia) spans 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 square miles) of valleys, mountains, glaciers, forests, meadows and rivers. On November 28th, 1885, the hot springs at Banff and the surrounding 26 square kilometres became a federal reserve. From then on it was expanded twice, in 1887 and 1902 when it became known as Rocky Mountains Park being officially named Banff National Park in 1930. The park is now 6,641 square kilometres (2,565 square miles) in size and is part of a block of 3 other parks, in totally spanning 20,160 square kilometres (7,784 square miles) which colletectively became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Banff National Park lies 128 km (80 miles) west of Calgary, Alberta.



Columbia Lake, British Columbia - April 2008

The 2,044 km long Columbia River drains an area of 155,000 square kilometres (59,846 square miles) in B.C. and the northwestern U.S. The most southerly source for this mighty river is Columbia Lake (pictured - looking towards Fairmont) 45 km south of Radium Hot Springs. The Columbia River flows north for 250 km before making a hairpin south, flowing past Revelstoke and across the US border. The pacific estaury for the Columbia lies beyond Portland, Oregon.
Since 1961 14 dams were constructed on the river (3 in Canada and 11 in the U.S.) and 18 more on the primary tributaries of the Columbia River. The disadvantage of such developments? The killing of one of the world's greatest salmon runs.

On the east side of Columbia Lake there has been housing developments recently such as those of Spirits Reach. Part of the warm water Columbia Lake is a Provincial park, spanning 257 hectares (635 acres).
The new Fairmont Hot Springs resort owner is planning a $1-billion expansion, which will develop some of the area seen in the centre-left of the photograph above, at the northeast end of Columbia Lake.






Columbia Mountain Range - November 2007

The Columbia Mountain mountain located in British Columbia, and partially in Montana, Idaho Washington. The mountain range covers 135,95 sqaure kilometres (52,491 square miles) - the portion of the Columbia Mountain range here - is the Purcell range they are located on the west side of the Rocky Mountain Trench in the area of the Columbia Valley. The only large settlement in the mountains is the Panorama Ski Resort, although a large destination resort at Jumbo Mountain is currently in the proposal stage. A new local government minister has said he will make the development of Jumbo a priority, despite many locals opposing the large resort development, due its environmetal impacts. Wildsight have a campaign against the development of the Jumbo Glacier resort and hold a very valid environmental argument, which until now has slowed development and planning of the resort.