You’ve definitely heard stories about how, because the world is getting hotter, the polar ice caps are melting. And while you know that’s bad news, you don’t necessarily know how it affects you.
That’s the same exact thought that the state of Vermont had, which is why they conducted their own report on how climate change will directly impact their 630,000 residents.
Compiled by Gillian Galford, an Earth systems scientist at the University of Vermont, and seven graduate students, the study is the first to analyze the effects on an individual state. In the past 15 years, the U.S. has released three reports on how the nation will be affected, but Vermont is the first state to analyze the next 100 years of climate change’s effects on its own land.
With most climate change reports, top scientists are consulted, but Galford took a slightly different approach: going directly to the heart of the state. Instead of solely using scientists, Galford spoke with state officials, citizen scientists and local famers. Her data consists of an interview with a local apple farmer who keeps detailed records of every growing season as well as the results of the annual competition which guesses what spring day Vermont’s famous Joe’s Pond will melt, among others.
Galford wanted to see how rising temperatures, longer growing seasons and flooding would affect the state. What did she learn?
Perhaps not surprisingly, farmers and low income communities will be most affected. And interestingly, each climate change factor will have both positive and negative effects on the community. While longer growing seasons will boost fruit and vegetable production, higher temperatures will hurt the dairy industry. Hot weather means cows eat less, and consequently produce less milk. Increased rainfall will also yield some mixed results. One positive is that more rain will help with crop growth, but it wasn’t determined how that increase in precipitation will affect the dairy industry. The main negative consequence though is that flooding will ruin the mobile houses in Vermont’s flood plains — affecting thousands of the low-income residents.
Galford’s research adds that personal touch to a topic often viewed in such scientific terms. Hopefully other states will follow in this example and conduct similar research, as this could get more people on board with helping to save the planet.
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Tag: Climate Change
What Is the Battery of the Future Made Of?
From powering pacemakers to kids’ toys and everything in between, we rely on batteries every day.
But with lithium — the material we use to make batteries — becoming a less viable resource, how are we going to power our gadgets?
Turns out, there’s an alternative energy source that grows quite abundantly: Algae.
Sounds like a crazy idea, right?
Not to Adam Freeman and his team at alGAS in California.
Algae, which forms in large blooms on the water’s surface, can be harmful to fish living below, but it has huge potential in the battery-powered world. The prototype creator says that his algae battery is powerful enough to run anything — even a Tesla!
Not only would an algae battery be incredibly versatile, but it could also charge in a fraction of the time that current, lithium batteries do. Turns out, the incredibly thin fibers found in algae are much more conducive for ions to flow through, making charge time as quick as eleven seconds, according to Tech Crunch.
While this innovation is certainly eco-friendly and time efficient, it is also cost efficient: the lithium imported for batteries not just nonrenewable, but it has to be shipped from China — making batteries more costly.
Although still in testing phases, Freeman says he would be able to make a functioning battery prototype with $1,500 more in funding; $5,000 more and an algae-powered battery it could be ready for mass production.
Between Freeman’s work and this experiment that transformed algae into crude oil, this water plant is on track to become a significant part of America’s renewable energy landscape.
DON’T MISS: The Top 5 Ways to Fight Global Warming
The Top 5 Ways to Fight Global Warming
By now you know that global warming is one of the most serious threats we face. So what the heck are we supposed to do about it?
According to an announcement from the UCLA Newsroom, for the first time, scientists ranked all the various strategies that could slow down climate change.
The study, which appears in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, narrowed the vast list down to the top five approaches based upon feasibility, cost, risk, public acceptance, governability, and ethics.
MORE: Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
Here are the top five, ranked from least to most effective.
Stimulate the growth of algae in the ocean. This means adding iron to the ocean to promote the growth of carbon-consuming underwater plants. It’s ranked as the least viable approach because it’s not very efficient and letting algae grow wild could harm sea life.
Create more shade with solar reflectors in outer space or artificially increase the earth’s cloud cover. Injecting more water droplets into the atmosphere to create more clouds reduces the amount of sunlight hitting the planet. Sounds neat, huh? But, as Daniela Cusack, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of geography at UCLA says, “Cloud seeding sounds simple but we really don’t understand what would happen to the climate if we started making more clouds.” (Perhaps we shouldn’t take that risk then.)
Confine carbon by converting CO2 into liquid form and pumping it underground. This however, could be prohibitively expensive or dangerous due to leakage. “No one wants to live next to a huge underground pool of carbon dioxide that might suffocate them or their children — no matter how small the risk,” Cusack says.
Sequester carbon by leaving it up to Mother Nature’s all-natural CO2 suckers: Plants. We’ve got to leave our precious forests alone. And we have to promote regrowth and planet-friendly agricultural practices, too.
Cut emissions. It’s really the most obvious solution. While the Obama administration recently announced a historic push to cut harmful carbon pollution from power plants — the biggest source of CO2 — it’s only a start.
As Grist puts it, cutting carbon means conserving energy, improving efficiency, and curbing our reliance on fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
Besides, the authors found that using all the technology we already have could reduce seven gigatons of carbon per year (humans release nine gigatons of CO2 a year). “We have the technology, and we know how to do it,” Cusack said. “It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be political support for reducing emissions.”
Now if we could only get everyone — regardless of political affiliation — on board.
DON’T MISS: 5 Surprising Things That Harm the Planet (and 5 Simple Ways to Help Save It)
When it Comes to the Planet, Children (Not the Government) Really Are the Future
Warmer temperatures. Rising sea levels. Toxic air. Overflowing landfills. The world our children will inherit has taken quite a beating.
So with lawmakers unable to agree on plans to cut carbon, children are taking matters into their own hands.
In an inspiring (and ridiculously adorable) video from Good Will Students for Peace, students from Lincoln Avenue School in Orange, New Jersey aren’t just learning the basics of reducing, reusing and recycling.
With this semester’s theme, “My Home is the Planet Earth, Our Role as Environmentally Aware Citizens,” students are taking action and becoming leaders in their local community. Students upcycle paper, plastic bottles, cans and cardboard rolls, plus each classroom also has their own perennial garden.
MORE: How One School Is Using the Forest to Improve Education
They also really get their hands dirty with community clean-ups. In the video, one student poignantly points out after one such project, “To the people who didn’t participate in this activity…you should have, ’cause it was actually a fun experience.”
She adds, “This is your community — not just mine. We all live here and other people would like to live here but can’t because of the way we treat our community.” (Don’t you just want to give her a hug?)
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It’s not just the kids in New Jersey who are taking charge in saving the planet. It’s happening all over the country. As Al-Jazeera America reported last month, children as young as 13 are tying to sue the U.S. government for violating their constitutional rights for failing to develop a climate change recovery plan.
The suit — dubbed Kids vs. Global Warming — is backed by more than 30 climate scientists and legal scholars. The complaint reads, “The welfare of youth is directly affected by the failure of government to confront human-made climate change, and unless the government acts immediately to rapidly reduce carbon emissions … youth will face irrevocable harm: the collapse of natural resource systems and a largely uninhabitable nation.”
Looks like children can teach us a thing or two.
Here’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate
As we’ve said before, there’s really no debate whether or not climate change is real. Despite the scientific consensus, however, some people still aren’t quite convinced that the planet is getting hotter. “If global warming is real,” a climate-skeptic might wonder, “why was I huddled under blankets until March?”
Well, if you watch this video from National Geographic, astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson elegantly shuts down that argument in two minutes.
With the help of an enthusiastic dog, he illustrates that weather and climate change are measured in completely ways.
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“Here’s the difference between weather and climate,” Tyson says as he and his furry friend walk along the beach. “Weather is what the atmosphere does in the short term, day to day. Climate is the long-term average of the weather over a number of years.” He points out that dog’s restless wandering represents the daily fluctuation of weather, while he, walking in a steady forward pace, is the long-term trend of climate.
“Weather is hard to predict, like my friend here,” he says about the wandering pup. “But climate is predictable. Climate has changed many times in the long history of the Earth — but always in response to a global force.” By the way, that “force” is the increase in carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels.
ALSO: Would Your State Survive a Climate Change Catastrophe?
We explained in a previous post that as we continue driving our cars and burning fuel at factories and power plants, CO2 gets released into the atmosphere as “blocks” like in the game of Tetris (also known as the greenhouse effect). And just like the video game, if we can’t clear up these CO2 blocks, they’ll just build up faster and faster until it’s game over.
It’s a bit doomsday, but it’s the hard truth. But we suppose climate-skeptics don’t need to worry about the future of the planet in its fight against climate change. After all, as Tyson said, the earth will survive — only we won’t.
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In a Battle Between College Students and Coal Companies, Who Do You Think Won?
When it comes to investing in the future, there are considerations that are much more important than money.
A year-long petition from the student-led organization Fossil Free Stanford has led California’s Stanford University to agree to divest its $18.7 billion endowment away from coal-mining companies due to concerns over climate change.
“We are proud that our university is responding to student calls for action on climate by demonstrating leadership,” Fossil Free Stanford said in a statement. “Stanford’s commitment to coal divestment is a major victory for the climate movement and for our generation.”
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Stanford’s trustees have promised to sell off stocks in companies whose primary business is in coal. The university will, however, hold onto their other stocks in fossil fuel — oil and natural gas. “Stanford has a responsibility as a global citizen to promote sustainability for our planet, and we work intensively to do so through our research, our educational programs and our campus operations,” said Stanford President John Hennessy in a statement. “Moving away from coal in the investment context is a small, but constructive, step while work continues, at Stanford and elsewhere, to develop broadly viable sustainable energy solutions for the future.”
Stanford is by far the biggest and most prestigious name to join the growing list of higher education institutions that are cutting ties from fossil fuel companies. As Reuters points out, San Francisco State University and Hampshire College in Massachusetts have also ditched their holdings in coal.
In fact, Stanford’s move could already be influencing colleges elsewhere, including other big-name universities. California Governor Jerry Brown suggested that the state’s UC system should study the possibility of divesting from the coal industry. And Harvard (which has the country’s largest endowment of $32 billion) is also hearing its fair share of student rumblings.
ALSO: Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
“Having Stanford come out like this is huge,” Alli Welton, one of the student founders of Divest Harvard told Bloomberg. “The decision by Stanford will become a very powerful tool for other campaigns.”
Let’s hope Stanford’s divestment is just the beginning of this movement.
Watch What a Climate Change Debate Should Really Look Like
Mountains of scientific evidence shows humans are indeed warming the planet.
But the way major news outlets present this very serious issue can be scarily misleading, especially when climate change “debates” give equal airtime to scientists and climate change deniers. A Gallup poll recently found one in four Americans are skeptical of climate change — maybe this is partly why?
“Last Night Tonight” host John Oliver is doing his best to rectify that. He counters the all-too-even debates in the hilarious segment below.
“You don’t need people’s opinion on a fact,” he says. “You might as well have a poll asking: ‘Which number is bigger, 15 or 5?’ or ‘Do owls exist?’ or ‘Are there hats?’ ”
MORE: These Scientists Were Fed Up with Climate Change Deniers. Here’s What They Did About It.
When 97 out of 100 climate scientists agree that humans cause global warming, a one-on-one cable news channel debate doesn’t seem like the most accurate way to present the issues surrounding our changing weather. Perhaps the structure of the debate should represent reality in the balance of pro and con climate change believers, to give viewers a truer representation of what the Earth is going through.
That’s precisely why funnyman Oliver staged a mathematically balanced climate change debate featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy and his team of 96 climate scientists against three deniers.
As Oliver says, “It’s a little unwieldy, but this is the only way you can actually have a representative discussion.”
Safe to say, there’s really no debate at all.
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An Idaho Couple Is Literally Paving the Way to America’s Solar-Powered Future
If you’ve ever seen a raw egg sizzle on the sidewalk on a sunny day, then you probably know that our roads can collect a lot of heat. With 4.09 million miles of road and countless parking lots in the United States absorbing the sun’s rays all day long, clearly there’s a lot of solar energy that’s going to waste in this country.
With solar panels going on everything from cell phone chargers to the roof of the White House, an Idaho couple wondered, why not put them on America’s enormous stretches of asphalt as well?
Scott and Julie Brusaw are hoping to re-pave America’s roads and parking lots with their Solar Roadways project. These solar panels can generate enough juice to power our cities, plus withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds), provide illumination for safer night-time driving, and defrost snow and capture water.
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As The Escaptist writes, the inventors claim that a nationwide system of Solar Roadways could produce enough clean, renewable energy that it could power the whole country and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent.
If you think this concept seems a little out-there, their project (now in its eighth year) has already received $750,000 in funding from the Federal Highway Administration. The Solar Roadways team is wrapping up the construction of their prototype parking lot that’s right outside their Idaho lab and are now seeking an additional $1 million on crowdfunding site Indiegogo for commercial production.
According to their website, the super strong glass-covered panels have been tested in civil engineering laboratories across the country for traction, load testing, and impact resistance — exceeding all requirements. There’s even a video demonstrating that these panels can support the weight of a tractor.
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Solar Roadways could help fight not just climate change, but unemployment, too. The Brusaws claim that the implementation of their concept on a grand scale could create thousands of jobs in the U.S. and around the world. “It could allow us all the ability to manufacture our way out of our current economic crisis,” their website boasts.
Currently, the cost of installation of the Solar Roadways is unknown (the hard numbers should be ready for announcement in July, Wired notes), but the Brusaws say their Solar Roadway — like many renewable energy sources — pays for itself over time.
Let’s hope there’s lots of sunny days ahead in the forecast.
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How Tetris Can Simply Explain the Most Important Issue Facing Humanity
Climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time. But as globally significant as it is, it’s also incredibly complicated to explain.
That’s why the geniuses at TED-Ed have put out a new video that uses the game of Tetris as an analogy of this critical problem. Their short lesson clocks in at just 2:49 minutes so it won’t take up too much of your time.
The video simply shows that as we continue driving our cars and burning more fuel at factories and power plants, carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere as “blocks” that warm the planet (also known as the greenhouse effect). It also doesn’t help that we’re mowing down the forests that suck up this CO2.
And just like the video game, if we can’t clear these CO2 blocks, they’ll just build up faster and faster until it’s game over.
MORE: These Scientists Were Fed Up with Climate Change Deniers. Here’s What They Did About It.
“Ultimately it’s a game we are all stuck playing,” says narrator Joss Fong. “And unlike in Tetris, we won’t get a chance to start over and try again.”
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In Sochi, This Olympic Athlete Will Be Skiing Against Climate Change
Getting world leaders to discuss climate change is something that has been notoriously difficult, but Andy Newell, a U.S. cross country skier competing in Sochi this year, is using the Olympic spotlight to bring attention to the issue, hoping global attention on winter sports could highlight the dangers of climate change.
Over the last two months, he has been rallying his fellow Olympic competitors to sign a letter calling on world leaders to come together on a comprehensive climate agreement in Paris in 2015. So far, 82 athletes have signed the letter, which makes an emotional plea to address the issue. Here’s part of the letter:
As winter Olympic athletes, our lives revolve around the winter and if climate change continues at this pace, the economies of the small towns where we live and train will be ruined, our sports will be forever changed and the winter Olympics as we know it will be a thing of the past.
The power we have as Olympians on a global stage is immense. Let’s use this year to make a collective statement, to send a message to the world’s leaders to recognize the impact of climate change and to take action now.
A joint Australian-Canadian study recently made headlines for predicting that 13 of the last 19 Winter Olympic locations, including Sochi, won’t be suitable for winter sports by the end of the century, if the pace of climate change continues.