Bella Gaia

A unforgettable video by director and composer, Kenji Williams, compiling views from NASA and other sources of the Bella Gaia, the beautiful Earth.


The video was supported by NASA, the Baum Foundation, the Foundation for Global Community, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and is a production of Remedy Arts, LLC.

Please share this wonderful and unique view of the Earth and its environment.

Who Stole the American Dream? Hedrick Smith's Healing Mission

Hedrick Smith is on a mission to: Reclaim the American Dream. The Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter, and multiple Emmy award-winning producer and correspondent for PBS and FRONTLINE is on a mission to expose: "Who Stole the American Dream" (his must-read book), and how we became a divided America that left the Middle Class behind with an educational and action-based initiative: "Reclaim the American Dream" at this website: reclaimtheamericandream.org/.

Click here to learn more→

National Climate Assessment Report: Climate Change is Here

In May 2014, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the Third National Climate Assessment, the authoritative and comprehensive report on climate change and its impacts in the United States.

Evidence for changes in Earth’s climate can be found from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. Researchers from around the world have compiled this evidence using satellites, weather balloons, thermometers at surface stations, and many other types of observing systems that monitor the Earth’s weather and climate. The sum total of this evidence tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming.



More at www.globalchange.gov

It's Earth Day!

For Earth Day: Bella Gaia:

From Earthday.org: Our planet is at a turning point. The massive global migration underway now from countryside to cities will demand huge investments in energy, water, materials, waste, food distribution, and transportation over the next 25 years. If the correct investments are made now, this unique opportunity will be the catalyst for dramatic changes in the built environment and the fight against carbon emissions and climate change. 

Read more...

Assessing "Dangerous Climate Change": Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature

This paper, by an international team of scientists, points out the clear and present danger that today's children may be handed a deteriorating climate with consequences out of their control. 

Dr. James Hansen

by James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Frank Ackerman, David J. Beerling, Paul J. Hearty, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Shi-Ling Hsu, Camille Parmesan, Johan Rockstrom, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeffrey Sachs, Pete Smith, Konrad Steffen, Lise Van Susteren, Karina von Schuckmann, James C. Zachos

We conclude that the widely accepted target of limiting human-made global climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level is too high and would subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use must be reduced rapidly to avoid irreversible consequences such as sea level rise large enough to inundate most coastal cities and extermination of many of today's species. Unabated global warming would also worsen climate extremes. In association with summer high pressure systems, warming causes stronger summer heat waves, more intense droughts, and wildfires that burn hotter. Yet because warming causes the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which is the fuel that drives thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms, it also leads to the possibility of stronger storms as well as heavier rainfall and floods. Observational data reveal that some climate extremes are already increasing in response to warming of several tenths of a degree in recent decades; these extremes would likely be much enhanced with warming of 2°C or more.

We use evidence from Earth's climate history and measurements of Earth's present energy imbalance as our principal tools for inferring climate sensitivity and the safe level of global warming. The inferred warming limit leads to a limit on cumulative fossil fuel emissions.

It is assessed that humanity must aim to keep global temperature close to the range occurring in the past 10,000 years, the Holocene epoch, a time of relatively stable climate and stable sea level during which civilization developed.

Read more here →

Doubling Down on Our Faustian Bargain

by James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato

Faust in his Study by Rembrandt

Humanity is doubling down on its Faustian climate bargain by pumping up fossil fuel particulate and nitrogen pollution. The more the Faustian debt grows, the more unmanageable the eventual consequences will be. Yet there are plans to build more than 1000 coal fired power plants and plans to develop some of the dirtiest oil sources on the planet. These plans should be vigorously resisted. We are already in a deep hole -- it is time to stop digging.

Humanity's Faustian climate bargain is well known. Humans have been pumping both greenhouse gases (mainly CO2) and aerosols (fine particles) into the atmosphere for more than a century. The CO2 accumulates steadily, staying in the climate system for millennia, with a continuously increasing warming effect. Aerosols have a cooling effect (by reducing solar heating of the ground) that depends on the rate that we pump aerosols into the air, because they fall out after about five days.

Aerosol cooling probably reduced global warming by about half over the past century, but the amount is uncertain because global aerosols and their effect on clouds are not measured accurately. Aerosols increased rapidly after World War II as fossil fuel use increased ~5%/year with little pollution control (Fig. 1). Aerosol growth slowed in the 1970s with pollution controls in the U.S. and Europe, but accelerated again after ~2000.

The rapid growth of fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the past decade is mainly from increased coal use (Fig. 1), mostly in China with little control of aerosol emissions. It is thus likely that there has been
an increase in the negative (cooling) climate forcing by aerosolsin the past decade, as suggested by regional aerosols measurements in the Far East, but until proper global aerosol monitoring is initiated, as discussed below, the aerosol portion of the amplified Faustian bargain remains largely unquantified.

Read more→

Awakening the Sleeping Giant of Climate Skepticism

by Joanna Benn 

This Friday, the widely anticipated and long-awaited state of the Earth and its climate will be released by the UN’s climate assessment body, the IPCC. 

In a pre-emptive strike, the right wing media last week launched a full front attack to discredit the climate science using leaked drafts. In the past week, we've seen a host of vitriolic ‘they got it all wrong’ stories ranging from the Mail on Sunday to Rupert Murdoch's The Australian and the Wall Street Journal.

For most of us, being non-climate scientists, it is confusing to make sense of the facts and counter- arguments. If one takes out opinion and ideology and leaves it to the scientists, which seems a good strategy to me– the next stage for climate skeptics is to discredit them.

Read more→

Unearthed Comics

New editorial art from Sara Zimmerman of Unearthed Comics:

More comics→

President Obama's Speech on the Climate

Analysis of the President's Speech on the Climate

President Obama's Next Four Years

Lost in the election's afterglow for Democrats and deep funk of Republicans is the hard work to be done and how much the president's success -- which, by definition, is the country's success -- depends on how many of us will have the president's back for the next four years.

President Obama referred to this point in his historic election night speech when he said: "So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other."

He then added: "The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. America's never been about what can be done for us.  It's about what can be done by us, together."

This is the message every American needs to consider, to face the truth that, prior to the election -- over the last four years -- citizens, democrats included, didn't always have this president's back. There are reasons. The recession, people trying to survive. Ideology. Misinformation. Disagreement. There was also a strange abdication, the sense by some who voted for him that now he can make change.

It doesn't work that way.

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Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Bill McKibben has written an important article on the terrifying new math of climate change. He defines the three numbers we should be following and what they mean. The Environmentalist endorses this article and requests our readers work to make it viral. The article was published by Rolling Stone: 

When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math.


Please read and share: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

The Romney Negative

The Romney negative, a statistic closely watched by campaign aides and pundits, has been consistently higher than his favorables. Those gaffes, policies, refusal to be transparant and those secret tapes are certainly contributing to those numbers.

"Sixty-one percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll hold an unfavorable view of how Romney's handling his presidential campaign, up by 12 percentage points since mid-July. Far fewer, 35 percent, rate Romney's performance positively ..." Link

When I've talked to people who try put into words what bothers them about Romney, both Republicans and Democrats, one answer I've gotten is that he's like those corporate guys who can turn your world upside down. 


To them, at a visceral level, Romney, with his forty-seven percent comment, reminds us of that boss we've all had, the one who comes in, doesn't know who you are, what you've accomplished or your potential and doesn't care. He sees his bottom line, his favorites, cuts coming, and you're in the way.

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Grandparents Oppose Tar Sands

by Dr. James Hansen

Alberta tar sands are estimated to be 240 GtC (gigatons of carbon); see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) Working Group 3 report. That is about seven times greater than the cumulative historical CO2 emissions from oil use by the U.S. (36 GtC). U.S. oil use was 28% of global oil use for the cumulative amounts over the past 200 years. So Alberta tar sands contain about twice the total amount of carbon emitted by global oil use in history.

Yet some people argue that tar sands are not so great that we need to be concerned about their effect on climate. They argue that only about 40 GtC of the tar sands are presently economically extractable. However, if an addiction to tar sands is established, as it would be with big pipelines, you can be confident that the addiction would lead eventually to ways of cooking the oil out of most of the tar sands. Moreover, these numbers do not include the emissions from conventional fossil fuels used to mine and process the tar sands into useable fuel. Nor do they include the other greenhouse gas emissions produced by the mining and processing.

The global stampede to find every possible fossil fuel is not being opposed by governments, no matter how dirty the fuels nor how senseless the energy strategy is from long-term economic and moral perspectives. Instead governments are forcing the public to subsidize the polluters.  Continued...

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Children v. Big Business

by William S. Becker

On May 11, a group of children will face off against the Obama administration and the National Association of Manufacturers for the latest round of a David vs. Goliath battle in federal court.

The kids filed a lawsuit last year against the administration, arguing that common law requires governments to protect critical natural resources on behalf of current and future generations. In this case, the kids argue, the government has an inherent duty to protect the atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions, and all of us from the impacts of global climate change.

In their lawsuit, a group called Our Children's Trust filed against a who's who of administration officials including EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Robert Wikins ruled that the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and several California businesses could intervene against the kids, based on the argument that limiting greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a "diminution or cessation of their businesses" -- in other words, jeopardize their profit margins.

Now, NAM and the administration have asked the judge to dismiss the case. That's the motion to be considered in May. 

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A New Climate Reality: What Happens Now?

by Janet Ritz

In a prior post, A New Climate Reality, I wrote how difficult it has been for specialists to face the more personal aspects of climate change. Some of those who know the science and say, yes, this is really happening, are more easily drawn to the lure of cold data over harsh reality, while those who don't believe take out their fear on those who do in a bizarre spate of bullying that seems to have become the norm in our sadly coarsened society. 

"The world changes so fast, it's difficult to see it in context. Scientists watch from a mathematical point of view, points on a graph, comparative analyses, blips on radar from sensors slapped on the bows of ships. Dry bits of brain matter fight the brain freeze caused by information overload of drought in the Southwest, typhoon-caused floods in Bangladesh, tornadoes in the Midwest, and where's all that snow coming from? It begins to look horrifyingly familiar: one person's agony is another's data." 

That may change. A year ago, the world shivered in unexpected blizzards the scientists warned were like a defrosting freezer as the cold air of the warming arctic rushed south. Just wait until next year, the caution came, when enough of the ice is gone and we really start to heat up. 

NPR tackled this recently on an episode of Fresh Air entitled: "Sunny Days are Here Again -- But is that Good?" where they posit that the early spring is more than just warm weather.  Continued...

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Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice

by James Hansen^a, Makiko Sato^a, Reto Ruedy^b

Should the public be able to recognize that climate is changing, despite the notorious variability of weather and climate from day to day and year to year?

We investigate how the probability of unusually warm seasons has changed in recent decades, with emphasis on summer, when changes are likely to have the greatest practical effects. We show that the odds of an unusually warm season have increased greatly over the past three decades, but also the shape of the frequency distribution has changed so as to enhance the likelihood of extreme events.

A new category of hot summertime outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than climatology, has emerged, with the occurrence of these outliers having increased 1-2 orders of magnitude in the past three decades. Thus we can state with a high degree of confidence that extreme summers, such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, are a consequence of global warming, because global warming has dramatically increased their likelihood of occurrence.  Continued...

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The New Climate Dice

by Dr. James Hansen

Several people have asked for a referenceable version of our paper "Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice", so we have placed the current version on arXiv, the permanent storage for physics preprints. This is the version of the paper submitted to Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. with favorable reviews by Tom Karl and Andrew Weaver, so presumably it is the final version. In any case, arXiv is a permanent storage place of this version. You can find it at arXiv with referencing information or get a PDF from my web site or directly here.

Part A of the first figure in the paper (available as a PDF from my web site) makes clear why extreme anomalies are beginning to pop up all over the place. Summer anomalies over land are the most important, as discussed in the paper. Averaged over a decade the frequency distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies is shifting rapidly toward more extreme hot anomalies, and the distribution is becoming broader (greater extremes). Because the planet is out of energy balance, we can conclude that next decade the distribution will be shifted even further to the right.

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Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature

by James Hansen^a,1,2,3, Pushker Kharecha^a, Makiko Sato^a, Frank Ackerman^b, Paul J. Hearty^c,Ove Hoegh-Guldberg^d, Shi-Ling Hsu^e, Fred Krueger^f, Camille Parmesan^g, Stefan Rahmstorf^h, Johan Rockstromⁱ, Eelco J. Rohling^j, Jeffrey Sachs^k, Pete Smith^l, Konrad Steffen^m, Lise Van Susterenⁿ, Karina von Schuckmann^o, James C. Zachos^p

Summary. Humanity is now the dominant force driving changes of Earth's atmospheric composition and thus future climate (1). The principal climate forcing is carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia (1, 2). The climate response to this forcing and society's response to climate change are complicated by the system's inertia, mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. This inertia causes climate to appear to respond slowly to this human-made forcing, but further long-lasting responses may be locked in. We use Earth’s measured energy imbalance and paleoclimate data, along with simple, accurate representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature, to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on young people, future generations, and nature. We find that global CO2 emissions reduction of about 6%/year is needed, along with massive reforestation.

Governments have recognized the need to limit emissions to avoid dangerous human made climate change, as formalized in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (3), but only a few nations have made substantial progress in reducing emissions. Continued...

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Earth Hour 2012

Hundreds of millions of people, businesses and governments around the world unite each year to support the largest environmental event in history – Earth Hour. 
More than 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour 2011, sending a powerful message for action on climate change. It also ushered in a new era with members going Beyond the Hour to commit to lasting action for the planet. Without a doubt, it’s shown how great things can be achieved when people come together for a common cause.

Earth Hour: March 31st, 2012, 8:30pm - your local time.

Turn off your lights, don't drive, commit to a new lifestyle - what will you do?

earthhour.org