The global warming movement finally went global yesterday, said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, in reaction to the International Day of Climate Action, marked yesterday by more than 5,000 demonstrations in 181 countries.

A 350 is mowed into a meadow 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Copenhagen, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held this December. This picture was taken as part of the 350.org International Day of Climate Action on October 24, 2009.

Photo courtesy of Henrik Jørgensen, Chairman of The Strøgårdsvang Mowers Association

Founded by McKibben, an American environmentalist and author, 350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis. Its mission is "to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis--to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet."

Students in Cebu City, Philippines gather in a giant 350.

Photo by Vito Selma/courtesy of 350.org

350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments think is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, 350.0rg explained in a press release about yesterday's global demonstration.

"Scientists have concluded that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390ppm, and that unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt."

More than 1,200 people took part in an event at the Sydney Opera House to call for climate action as part of the 350.org Global Day of Climate Action on October 24. Hundreds took part in spelling out 350 on the steps of Sydney's iconic Opera House.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

For yesterday's International Day of Climate Action, 350.org combining the Web and SMS networks, distributing Flip video cameras, and training young people in "climate workshops" on multiple continents.

"Event organizers filmed and photographed their actions and uploaded them immediately to the group's website and Flickr account, and organizers will displayed hundreds of them on the giant advertising screens of Times Square [in New York City] before hand-delivering shots to United Nations delegations on Monday," 350.org said.

Joseph Rotella and Aravinda Ananada hold a 350 sign at the melting glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

Photo courtesy of 350.0rg

Thousands of photos from 5,248 rallies and protests spread across 181 countries flooded into the Web servers of 350.org over the last 36 hours--marking, 350.org said, "the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history."

"And there wasn't a rock star or movie actor in sight," McKibben said. "It was ordinary people rallying around a scientific data point to send the message that our leaders actually need to lead."

Fisheries Minister of the Maldives Ibrahim Didi signing the 350 declaration during the underwater cabinet meeting on October 17.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

"Parts per million CO2 sounds too obscure an idea to attract crowds on six continents, but there were thousands of people in the streets from Togo and Ethiopia and Paraguay to Seattle and London and Sydney," McKibben said.

The Wilderness Society made this statement in a logged portion of the forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia (Just outside of Melbourne).

Photo by Andrew North, Cloud 9 (Aerial Photography)/courtesy of 350.0rg

Highlights of the day, 350.org said, included a "planet-scale game of Scrabble," with citizens in Wellington, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia, forming giant human 3s, London, UK, and New Delhi, India, enormous human 5s, and Quito, Ecuador, and Copenhagen, Denmark, massive 0s.

"The point was you had to put them together across global borders if you wanted to solve the puzzle," said 350.org media coordinator Jamie Henn. "Just like the climate negotiations set for Copenhagen in December."

 

Women in Bangladesh

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Around the shore of the Dead Sea Israeli activists made a giant 3, Palestinians a huge 5, and Jordanians a 0. In South Africa, climbers with banners dangled beneath the cable cars on Table Mountain. In Canada, thousands thronged Parliament Hill in Ottawa, 350.org reported.

"People in almost all the nations of the earth are involved ," said 350.org honorary spokesman Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican archbishop and Nobel Laureate. "It's the same kind of coalition that helped make the word apartheid known around the world."

Buena Vista, Colorado

Photo courtesy of 350.org

The International Day of Climate Action is the second key moment in the Tck Tck Tck campaign on the road to the next UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen this December, 350.0rg said. "Tck Tck Tck is an unprecedented global alliance of civil society organizations, trade unions, faith groups, and millions of individuals all calling for a fair, ambitious, and binding climate change agreement.

"The Day of Action is a part of an effort to build the world's biggest mandate for bold climate action."

Children, young people and elders, all of them Totonacas, an ancient native tribe from the northern region of the State of Veracruz in Mexico, gathered to create a  350. "We all sang and danced to make it happen, to reach a better world for all," said the submitters of the image.

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Istanbul, Turkey

Photo courtesy of 350.org

Members of Pasumai Thaayagam (Green Motherland) in Chennai, India form a human chain for a fair and just climate change treaty as part of the 350.org International Day of Climate Action, October 24.

Photo by R. Arul/courtesy of 350.org

Lantern walkers in Sydney, Australia

Photo by Peter Solness/courtesy of 350.org

 

The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, said today.

Photo courtesy NASA

"Unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary if we are to cool the planet," the Royal Society says in a report, "Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty."

Geoengineering technologies were "very likely to be technically possible and some were considered to be potentially useful to augment the continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions," the report says.However, the report also identifies major uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts.

"Geoengineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

"It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases," says Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the geoengineering study.

"Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems--yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them.

"Geoengineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

Carbon Dioxide Removal vs. Solar Radiation Management

The report assesses the two main kinds of geoengineering techniques--Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and Solar Radiation Management (SRM).

"CDR techniques address the root of the problem--rising CO2--and so have fewer uncertainties and risks, as they work to return the Earth to a more normal state," the Royal Society says in a news release about the report. "They are therefore considered preferable to SRM techniques, but none has yet been demonstrated to be effective at an affordable cost, with acceptable environmental impacts, and they only work to reduce temperatures over very long timescales.

"SRM techniques act by reflecting the sun's energy away from Earth, meaning they lower temperatures rapidly, but do not affect CO2 levels.

"They therefore fail to address the wider effects of rising CO2, such as ocean acidification, and would need to be deployed for a very long time.

"Although they are relatively cheap to deploy, there are considerable uncertainties about their regional consequences, and they only reduce some, but not all, of the effects of climate change, while possibly creating other problems."

The report concludes that SRM techniques could be useful if a threshold is reached where action to reduce temperatures must be taken rapidly, but that they are not an alternative to emissions reductions or CDR techniques.

Plan B: No Magic Bullet

"None of the geoengineering technologies so far suggested is a magic bullet, and all have risks and uncertainties associated with them," Professor Shepherd said,

"It is essential that we strive to cut emissions now, but we must also face the very real possibility that we will fail. If Plan B is to be an option in the future, considerable research and development of the different methods, their environmental impacts and governance issues must be undertaken now.

"Used irresponsibly or without regard for possible side effects, geoengineering could have catastrophic consequences similar to those of climate change itself."

"Used irresponsibly or without regard for possible side effects, geoengineering could have catastrophic consequences similar to those of climate change itself. We must ensure that a governance framework is in place to prevent this."

Of the CDR techniques assessed, the Royal Society said, the following were considered to have most useful potential:

• CO2 capture from ambient air: This would be the preferred method of geoengineering, as it effectively reverses the cause of climate change. At this stage no cost-effective methods have yet been demonstrated and much more research and development is needed.
• Enhanced weathering: This technique, which utilizes naturally occurring reactions of CO2 from the air with rocks and minerals, was identified as a prospective longer-term option. "However more research is needed to find cost-effective methods and to understand the wider environmental implications."
• Land use and afforestation: The report found that land use management could and should play a small but significant role in reducing the growth of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However the scope for applying this technique would be limited by land use conflicts, and all the competing demands for land must be considered when assessing the potential for afforestation and reforestation.

Should temperatures rise to such a level where more rapid action needs to be taken, the Royal Society report says, the following SRM techniques are considered to have most potential:

• Stratospheric aerosols: These were found to be feasible, and previous volcanic eruptions have effectively provided short-term preliminary case studies of the potential effectiveness of this method. "The cost was assessed as likely to be relatively low and the timescale of action short. However, there are some serious questions over adverse effects, particularly depletion of stratospheric ozone."
• Space-based methods: These were considered to be a potential SRM technique for long-term use, if the major problems of implementation and maintenance could be solved. At present the techniques remain prohibitively expensive, complex and would be slow to implement.
• Cloud albedo approaches (eg. cloud ships): The effects would be localised and the impacts on regional weather patterns and ocean currents are of considerable concern but are not well understood. The feasibility and effectiveness of the technique is uncertain. A great deal more research would be needed before this technique could be seriously considered.

The following techniques were considered to have lower potential:

• Biochar (CDR technique): The report identified significant doubts relating to the potential scope, effectiveness and safety of this technique and recommended that substantial research would be required before it could be considered for eligibility for UN carbon credits.
• Ocean fertiliization (CDR technique): The report found that this technique had not been proved to be effective and had high potential for unintended and undesirable ecological side effects.
• Surface albedo approaches (SRM technique, including white roof methods, reflective crops and desert reflectors): These were found to be ineffective, expensive and, in some cases, likely to have serious impacts on local and regional weather patterns.

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To the many beautiful pictures made of our planet from space, add this one, released today by NASA as its image of the day. It reminds me how thin and fragile is our precious atmosphere.

Image Credit: NASA

"Layers of Earth's atmosphere, brightly colored as the sun sets, are featured in this image taken by the STS-127 crew on the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Endeavour," says the NASA caption. "This image was taken on July 29, 2009, one day before the shuttle landed, completing a 16-day, 6.5-million mile journey."

Five or six miles up in the atmosphere, near where airliners reach cruising altitude, very strong winds blow incessantly over many densely populated regions of the world.

Researchers at the Carnegie Institution and California State University believe that, if the technical challenges can be resolved, large metropolises like New York, Seoul, and Tokyo may be able to tap into the high-altitude winds for abundant energy.

One possible way to do this could be by using giant tethered kitelike wind turbines, like the one imagined in this illustration.

Illustration of four-rotor flying generator by Ben Shepard

"There is a huge amount of energy available in high-altitude winds," said study coauthor Ken Caldeira. "These winds blow much more strongly and steadily than near-surface winds, but you need to go get up miles to get a big advantage. Ideally, you would like to be up near the jet streams, around 30,000 feet."

The study identifies New York as a prime location for exploiting high-altitude winds, which globally contain enough energy to meet world demand 100 times over.

"The researchers found that the regions best suited for harvesting this energy match with population centers in the eastern U.S. and East Asia, but fluctuating wind strength still presents a challenge for exploiting this energy source on a large scale," says a Carnegie Institution statement.

Using 28 years of data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction and the U.S. Department of Energy, Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, and Cristina Archer, of California State University, Chico, compiled the first-ever global survey of wind energy available at high altitudes in the atmosphere.

The researchers assessed potential for wind power in terms of "wind power density," which takes into account both wind speed and air density at different altitudes.

     "A potentially vast and dependable source of energy"

"Jet streams are meandering belts of fast winds at altitudes between 20,000 and 50,000 feet that shift seasonally, but otherwise are persistent features in the atmosphere," the Carnegie Institution said. "Jet stream winds are generally steadier and 10 times faster than winds near the ground, making them a potentially vast and dependable source of energy."

Several technological schemes have been proposed to harvest this energy, including tethered, kitelike wind turbines that would be lofted to the altitude of the jet streams. Up to 40 megawatts of electricity could be generated by current designs and transmitted to the ground via the tether, the researchers said.

Jet stream clouds picture courtesy NASA

"We found the highest wind power densities over Japan and eastern China, the eastern coast of the United States, southern Australia, and north-eastern Africa," said lead author Cristina Archer. "The median values in these areas are greater than 10 kilowatts per square meter. This is unthinkable near the ground, where even the best locations have usually less than one kilowatt per square meter."

Included in the analysis were assessments of high-altitude wind energy for the world's five largest cities: Tokyo, New York, Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Mexico City. "For cities that are affected by polar jet streams such as Tokyo, Seoul, and New York, the high-altitude resource is phenomenal," Archer said. "New York, which has the highest average high-altitude wind power density of any U.S. city, has an average wind power density of up to 16 kilowatts per square meter."

Tokyo and Seoul also have high wind power density because they are both affected by the East Asian jet stream.

Challenges

Mexico City and Sao Paulo are located at tropical latitudes, so they are rarely affected by the polar jet streams and just occasionally by the weaker sub-tropical jets. As a result they have lower wind power densities than the other three cities.

"While there is enough power in these high-altitude winds to power all of modern civilization, at any specific location there are still times when the winds do not blow," Caldeira said. "Even over the best areas, the wind can be expected to fail about five percent of the time. This means that you either need back-up power, massive amounts of energy storage, or a continental or even global scale electricity grid to assure power availability.

"So, while high-altitude wind may ultimately prove to be a major energy source, it requires substantial infrastructure."

Unchecked emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would lead to a tenfold expansion of low-oxygen areas in the global ocean that will remain for thousands of years to come, adversely affecting fisheries and ocean ecosystems far into the future.

Mississippi Dead Zone image courtesy NASA

This prediction is made by Danish scientists in a paper "Long-term ocean oxygen depletion in response to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels," published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Also known as "dead zones," low-oxygen areas in the ocean are where fish, crabs and clams are not able to live. In shallow coastal regions, these zones can be caused by runoff of human waste or excess fertilizers from farming.

Oxygen-starved areas in bays and coastal waters have been expanding since the 1960s, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (see sidebar). There are now more than 400 known dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, compared to 305 in the 1990s, National Geographic News reported in August last year.

Gary Shaffer, of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who is the leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS), says in a news release about the paper published in Nature Geoscience today that expansion of low-oxygen zones "would lead to increased frequency and severity of fish and shellfish mortality events, for example off the west coasts of the continents, like off Oregon and Chile."

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Researchers are using sophisticated technology like Doppler weather radar to study the aerosphere -- the air and the organisms that migrate and feed within it.

"The air is full of life, often unnoticed," said Elizabeth Blood, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Biological Infrastructure, which funds the research. "The skies hold secrets about animals that live at least part of their lives there. Research in aeroecology is opening a window into this unseen world."

Thermal infrared image of flying Brazilian free-tailed bats in Texas by Thomas Kunz, Boston University

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