Though I study climate change and its impacts on the arctic landscape for living, I don’t really study what causes climate change and what we should do about it, and so have no special expertise there. My personal take on these differ from most people’s, so I thought I’d share them.

My family and I live in a small cabin in Fairbanks that is electrically off-the-grid, heated by local wood, and has no running water. Do I think this has any measureable or useful impact on climate? Not a bit. Driving hybrid cars, recycling, etc – I don’t think any of these things are going to help, as they just address the symptoms of the problem, not the causes.

Friends,

This is a very [interesting site from Australia].

I particluarly like their tag line:

The best way to combat Global Warming short term is to reward farmers for cultivating deep-rooted perennial grass species and crops that can lock up vast amounts of carbon in the soil.

They are also promoting a program I know they are also looking into in Canada:

SANTFA’s brave plan for new climate

The South Australian No Till Farmers’ Association has come up with an innovative plan for policing standards for soil carbon credits and other “environmental” payments and finance. Brainchild on SANTFA’s recently-appointed Research & Development Manager Greg Butler, the scheme links together auditing for carbon credits, government environmental incentives, and favourable finance terms from banks. The plan will cover all Australian farmers and will be conducted by the Conservation Agricultural Association of Australia and New Zealand, the peak body of the Australasian no till cropping movement. The Carbon Coalition applauds Greg’s vision and endorses such an industry-wide approach. SANTFA’s plan was developed after consultations with the Carbon Coalition. We will report more details of this exciting development as they come to hand.

We would like to tell you about a project we completed last year.
27 kilos is the amount of CO2 emitted by each person in the UK ever day.

“We wanted to make a personal connection between global warming and our daily lives.”

The installation consists of 27 columns formed from blankets, placed in the gallery space. Each column represents the volume of 1 kg CO2, the gas responsible for global warming. 20% of each column is in a slightly darker colour. This area represents the sustainable level of CO2 emissions averaged out worldwide. The disparity between current emissions and the sustainable level reinforces the urgency to reduce individual emissions.

Artists-Birgit Muller and Mike Moran

More information can be found at www.27kilos.com

27kilos is currently on show at Hotbath gallery, in Bath, UK.

My name is Deb Todd Wheeler, and I am an artist living and working in the Boston area. I would like to introduce my most recent project, Live Experiments in human Energy Exchange, which was an installation of kinetic experiments fueled entirely by bicycle power, installed Oct-Dec,2006 at the Green Street Gallery in Jamaica Plain, MA.

Central to the installation was a modified bicycle, which was hooked up to a generator and various rigs, gears and pulleys. By pedaling the bike, the rider (a gallery volunteer) activated the installation, generating light, wind, sound, and motion to fuel a series of kinetic studies on the fraught relationships between nature and technology. In one piece the bike powered a DC generator that in turn powered fluorescent lights embedded in hacked ant farms, in which worker-ant tunnels were dug beneath looming silhouettes of 1964 World’s Fair pavillions. In another work, the same bike turned gears that transfer energy to wind power by turning a windmill-like form with sails made of recycled plastic grocery bags.

By: Dr. Farooq Hassan *

President’s address to Pakistan Ecology Council

Avari Hotel, Lahore, Pakistan
3rd February, 07

In the current debate on environmental and climate changes many perspectives have been examined by concerned scholars and activists. I have already articulated at length the need for meeting the challenges that lie ahead from Islamic perspectives. This analysis is thus fundamentally an evaluation of the extent of this monumental problem facing mankind. Consequently, in view of the nature and extent of problems in this area, it is submitted that to obtain real progress ahead it seems necessary to work for a true and genuine international cooperation. This is particularly necessary at this juncture as the Kyoto Protocols are expected to expire in 2012 *2. Appropriate thinking and its concomitant remedial steps, if any, have to be devised as such without delay. With these thoughts in mind this presentation anlyses the latest major international efforts that are in evidence on this subject.

This is a collaborative project between Zach Smith, Program Coordinator of the Wright Center for Innovative science education at Tufts University, Medford, MA, and Scott Battaion, Media Coordinator of the Wright Center for science Education
( www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/), and myself, Nathalie Miebach, as the artist. Together we are building data collecting devices that are being used to collect science data from a coastal environment on Cape Cod (Provincetown, MA), which are then used to examine larger environmental changes. These data is being collected using 3-D quadrats, which are essentially 1 m3 cubes, made of PVC pipes, containing scientific instruments for data collection. Functioning as mini-environments, these 3-D quadrats collect real life science data, from which certain variables are selected and examined in the context of larger environmental changes (e.g.: ice on/off dates, faunal migration patterns, floral changes, temperature anomalies, CO2 concentration, and others). These data are then translated into woven sculptures that examine linkages between these locally recorded environmental changes and broader regional and global climate change.

I was discussing this project with my brother, and in one message he sent me he said, “Regardless of whether global warming is an anthropogenic phenomenon or not, all evidence indicates most of our ‘renewable’ resources running out in the next 50-100 years (because our economy doesn’t value them).” He also sent me the 2001 paper “The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics” by Charles Hall, Dietmar Lindenberger, Reiner Kümmel, Timm Kroeger, and Wolfgang Eichhorn. This is an excellent work that I would recommend to everyone. From the abstract:

Neoclassical economics, the dominant form of economics today, has at least three fundamental flaws from the perspective of the natural sciences, but it is possible to develop a different, biophysical basis for economics that can serve as a supplement to, or a replacement for, neoclassical economics.

Hi,

I am an environmental and natural resource economist who studies the effects of projected climate change on our state’s built environment. The built environment in my current project includes bridges, roads, water/sewer, and many different types of buildings.

Prior to arriving in Alaska, I was an economist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO USA) where I built sophisticated models to study the effects of weather variability on the U.S. economy.

As a researcher who works in the arctic where these changes seem to be the most pronounced, I am happy to write in to climate commons to report on my observations.