As per John’s request, here is the climate change guide produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association:

A guide is now available to help individuals of all ages understand how climate influences them — and how they influence climate. A product of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, it was compiled by an interagency group led by NOAA.

“The Essential Principles of Climate Science” presents important information for individuals and communities to understand Earth’s climate, impacts of climate change, and approaches for adapting and mitigating change. Principles in the guide can serve as discussion starters or launching points for scientific inquiry. The guide can also serve educators who teach climate science as part of their science curricula.

“As climate policy is being discussed, it is very important for the citizens of our nation to have an appreciation for some of the fundamental aspects of climate and climate change,” said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., and lead for NOAA’s climate services. “This guide is a first step for people who want to know more about the essential principles of our climate system, how to better discern scientifically credible information about climate, and how to identify problems related to understanding climate and climate change.”

“There is so much misinformation about climate. We want to provide an easily readable document to help everyone make the most informed decisions,” said Karl. “Having one product endorsed by the nation’s top federal science agencies, as well as leading science centers and associations, makes this document an essential resource.”

The 17-page guide includes information on how people can help reduce climate change and its impacts. It also defines important terms and concepts used when talking about climate and approaches to adaptation and mitigation. For print copies of the guide, e-mail NOAA Outreach outreach@noaa.gov or call 301-713-1208.

NOAA, the National Science Teachers Association, and TERC, an educational non-profit organization, are working with education leaders to revise state standards using this framework. The materials also will provide the basis for educator resources and professional development.

Development of the guide began at a workshop sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Multiple science agencies, non-governmental organizations, and numerous individuals also contributed through extensive review and comment periods. Discussion at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NOAA-sponsored Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Literacy workshop contributed substantially to the refinement of the document.

For further information regarding the Climate Literacy document, please contact Frank Niepold at frank.niepold@noaa.gov . Please include “Climate Literacy info” in the subject line.

Michael Collins Climate change Climate change

Take a minute to explore the GreenForAll website.  “Green For All is a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.”  The founder, Van Jones, has been all over the news and has recently joined the Obama administration.

Michael Collins Sustainable development

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch our film Beating the Drum Loudly.  It’s in three parts below, and before the clips is a short description of the piece written by John:

Beating the Drum Loudly is a film that EEMP made in Uganda in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin Global Health Center and other collaborating partners. The film shows how a community can come together and serve everyone and how this collective support can help heal the sick and also heal the spirit of both those who need care and the care givers. It was a great privilege to make this film and shows the power of resolve because it was made only from small personal donations.

Beating the Drum Loudly Part 1

Beating the Drum Loudly Part 2

Beating the Drum Loudly Part 3

Michael Collins Africa, Video Library

Many of us spend a large portion of our time indoors.  The air we breathe at home or in the office is often short on oxygen and full of toxins that make us susceptible to colds.

I just came across this very interesting TED talk from Kamal Meattle, who tells us how to grow our own fresh air with three types of plants.  Be happy, healthy and productive with fresh air.

Michael Collins Video Library TED

Some spectacular photographs of an undersea volcano erupting off of the coast of Tonga.

Michael Collins Photos

Just wanted to share the video.  Traveling for two days.  Will discuss it this weekend when I’m back online.

Update: Willie Smits is working on the same problems as Earth’s Hope.  In this video he walks us through the path of destroying the ecosystem, and identifies the lost functionality.  He links this destruction with poverty.  He smartly understands that complete support and participation from the local population is absolutely necessary in order to rehabilitate the ecosystem.

Let’s learn from Willie Smits and try to figure out how we can help to create the change that he and you and I want to see in the world.

Michael Collins Video Library

I read Paul Kedrosky on a regular basis, and yesterday he posted this article by Elizabeth Kolbert on Drought and Collapse:

I’ll confess to a weakness for anything Elizabeth Kolbert might write, from environmental wonkery to the letter “R” in the Des Moines phonebook, but I liked this piece from the current National Geographic on drought and collapse:

The world’s first empire, known as Akkad, was founded some 4,300 years ago, between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. The empire was ruled from a city—also known as Akkad—that is believed to have lain just south of modern-day Baghdad, and its influence extended north into what is now Syria, west into Anatolia, and east into Iran. The Akkadians were well organized and well armed and, as a result, also wealthy: Texts from the time testify to the riches, from rare woods to precious metals, that poured into the capital from faraway lands.

Then, about a century after it was founded, the Akkad empire suddenly collapsed. During one three-year period four men in succession briefly claimed to be emperor. “Who was king? Who was not king?” a register known as the Sumerian King List asks.

For many years, scholars blamed the empire’s fall on politics. But about a decade ago, climate scientists examining records from lake bottoms and the ocean floor discovered that right around the time that the empire disintegrated, rainfall in the region dropped dramatically. It is now believed that Akkad’s collapse was caused by a devastating drought.

…Quantifying the effects of global warming on rainfall patterns is challenging. Rain is what scientists call a “noisy” phenomenon, meaning that there is a great deal of natural variability from year to year. Experts say that it may not be until the middle of this century that some long-term changes in precipitation emerge from the background clatter of year-to-year fluctuations. But others are already discernible. Between 1925 and 1999, the area between 40 and 70 degrees north latitude grew rainier, while the area between zero and 30 degrees north grew drier. In keeping with this broad trend, northern Europe seems to be growing wetter, while the southern part of the continent grows more arid.

More here.

This article made me think of the research that Earth’s Hope has been doing on the hierarchy of ecosystem functionality.  I emailed John the article with the following note:

Is she missing the forest for the trees?  Is reduced rainfall a symptom of ecosystem destruction/loss of functionality?  What do we know about Akkad?

John came back with two great responses and the promise to work more on the real reasons for drought and collapse.  Here are John’s emails, and I’ll post the others as they come through:

1st -

Dear Michael:

This is very interesting.

When I read this I think it is broadly supporting the “Earth’s Hope” thesis.

If a civilization focuses on politics, economics misses the ecological signs that fundamental systems are being altered there is a strong possibility that you will lose ecosystem function leading to “Collapse”.  We can seek evidence from this example and others and then try and piece together what happened.

What I have noted in the Loess Plateau and elsewhere is that if you reduce organic matter in the soil and reduce vegetation cover then you will reduce soil moisture and relative humidity.  Nature would strive to achieve equilibrium at the degraded state.  But “desiccation from de-vegetation” would occur and this would eventually reduce rainfall.  With reduced rainfall and with reduced infiltration because of the lack of vegetation and soil organic matter then drought is a logical outcome.

So what I believe this is describing.

1. 1. Evolution leading to Equilibrium
   2. Pristine fully functional ecosystems emerge – Humans gravitate toward the most nurturing places.
   3. Human intervention with emphasis on extraction of food, resources fuels short term gains in well being
   4. Humans ignorant of natural systems cause deduction of biodiversity
   5. Reduction of biodiversity results in reduction of biomass
   6. reduced biomass means reduced accumulation of necromass and reduced soil organic matter
   7. reduced soil organic matter means reduced fertility – which often could lead to further destructive agricultural methods to increase productivity
   8. reduced organic matter and reduced vegetation cover also means reduced infiltration and retention of rainfall.
   9. essentially reduction of vegetation means a loss of the tree and grass canopies
   10. loss of tree and grass canopies means physical alteration of evaporation and respiration rates (higher evaporation – lower respiration)
   11. higher evaporation and lower respiration are the signs of arid and semi arid regions.
   12. This trend leads to lowered rainfall
   13. drought is a logical outcome – as is the collapse of civilizations taking this route.
       

Feel free to post this as a response.

Best regards,

John

2nd -

Dear Michael:

There is more to say about this and I want to write more on it.  The fact is that we are only committed to these types of trends if we don’t understand that the evapotranspiration rates are dynamic.  Increased organic matter and vegetation cover can reverse the trend.

I’m off to Thailand and Malaysia tomorrow – I stayed up almost all night last night working on the GREEN CALL Draft that went off this morning.   Please goad me to keep writing on this.

Very best regards,

Comments are open.  Feel free to join the discussion.

Michael Collins Hierarchy of Ecosystem Functionality Loess Plateau

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Changsha, Hunan, visiting Broad Air Conditioning, one of the most successful and environmentally friendly companies in China.  Just outside of Changsha, the Broad campus is a monument to sustainable development:  Energy efficient buildings, with triple paned windows and extra thick (150mm) insulation on the walls, are the construction standard; vegetable fields, chicken and pig pens and fishing ponds provide healthy, pesticide free, locally grown food to the the Broad cafeteria; and, Broad products, air conditioning, air cleaning and air exchange units, heat, cool and clean the air so efficiently that most pay for themselves in 3-5 years when you factor in how much you’d pay to power a comparable, conventional, dirty unit.  The entire company lives up to its motto of “We Protect life/我们保护生命“.

The sales team at Broad encourages its customers to make the trip to Changsha to see the factory and understand Broad’s mission.  After spending two days on the campus myself, meeting employees and learning about the company and it’s products, I don’t doubt Broad’s claim that it successfully sells to every customer who visits.  Book the plane tickets and book the product orders.  The factories, the people and the message are that impressive.

James Fallows did a profile on Broad’s founder Zhang Yue last year in the Atlantic.  Broad is a testament to Mr. Zhang’s hard work and vision.  He is not just the new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, but also the new generation of world-wide, green entrepreneurs.  (Here’s a short Tudou clip of Mr. Zhang.)

Why talk about Broad here?  We know that we cannot invent and invest our way out of our problems of climate change, desertification, loss of soil stability, loss of natural fertility, disruption of natural water infiltration and retention, loss of biodiversity, flooding, drought, poverty.  To do this, we need a complete solution based on ecosystem rehabilitation, sustainable development and poverty eradication.  Nonetheless, Broad’s products will help us solve one important aspect of our problems - finding ways to reduce the amount energy we consume and pollution we emit.

We need companies like Broad if we’re going to create a sustainable future for ourselves.

Michael Collins Sustainable development Air conditioning, Sustainable development

Please take a few minutes to go through the three parts of A Line in the Sand, produced in 2001 by our Environmental Education Media Project in conjunction with TVE International and BBC World’s EARTH REPORT.  It tells the Earth’s Hope story of human actions destroying an ecosystem, creating poverty and desertification and then rehabilitating the damaged area.  You’ll find many of the Lessons of the Loess Plateau themes throughout the video.

Remember the hierarchy of ecosystem functionality.

A Line in the Sand Part 1

A Line in the Sand Part 2

A Line in the Sand Part 3

Michael Collins Ecosystem Rehabilitation, Lessons of the Loess Plateau, Video Library A Line in the Sand

Please take the time to explore the new comments system we’ve installed on the blog.  Disqus is a great service that I originally came across on Fred Wilson’s blog.

Post away!

Michael Collins Uncategorized