Somewhat interesting NYT op

Check out Thomas Friendman's new column. I just like the sentence "climate change means “global weirding,” not just global warming"

Greenland....Ascendant?

Another chapter in the (mostly) unforeseen consequences of climate change; apparently Greenland is agitating for independence from Denmark, and probably will get it. Global warming makes many more resources available as the ice moves. Weird huh.

Define Irony

When a discovery of huge oil resources in the Arctic is made possible by global warming, that irony.

This really scares me

I wish Scientific American would site their sources for this report (I'd love to learn more details) but assuming they know what they're talking about this is a really scary illustration of a worrying trend: the disappearing of freshwater resources worldwide.

Mental note: buy the hardcopy of the august edition of Sci-Am

Arctic Development

The rush to exploit the arctic kind of saddens me in some ways, especially since people are getting interested in methane-hydrates reserves which are a) far more larger than oil reserves and b) far worse for the environment if used (for more reading start here). Anyways here's a good post on the matter from Yale's Environment Blog.

Also, if WWIII were started over disputes around Arctic exploration (don't laugh, when Russia, Canada, America, Europe, and China all have legitimate or semi-legitimate claims to the vast natural resources you realize that it isn't funny) I'd be really pissed

Terrifing and Saddening Destruction of Forest Due to Global Warming

The Economist is running an article on the destruction of vast swathes of forest in British Columbia due to the Mountain Pine Beetle. Why hasn't this happened before you ask? Well said Beetle is normally killed off in the icy BC winters but since the last several years have been so warm it's allowed the beetle to flourish.

I don't intend to post articles like this often. The Environmental News Network, Dot Earth, and others document environmental degradation far better than I can. What I'm interested in is the long term problem of becoming sustainable, what the issues are, and how we can get there.

The reason I'm posting this is because it exemplifies some of the big picture problems of climate change:
1. Climate change is positive feedback loop. These trees are dead and will no longer be able to store carbon which will in turn accelerate the climate change.
2. Climate change will bring new problems that we could never have modeled or anticipated because it operates in such a large and dynamic system that it ripe for emergent properties.
3. This is the kind of problem that we will see increasingly in the future if climate change isn't slowed: a vast natural change that has negative consequences for us and which we have no solution for. Our children will increasingly be faced with situations that render the life we would want for them impossible.

Inteligence Community on Climate Change

I won't link directly to the PDF (Breakthrough Gen has the link and their take) but basically the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has put out a long term analysis of climate change politics and it's implications for US security. Check it out if you like environmental policy.

One thing I was really interested is the concept of technology transfer for climate change. Quote:
“Elsewhere, developing countries—particularly major greenhouse gas emitters—may demand that the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) be amended to allow for the production and development of generic copies of green technologies, citing the precedent of HIV AIDS drugs.”

I find it astounding that I haven't heard this way of framing the concept of technology transfer. If you think about it the entire field of Appropriate Technology could be looked at as aid through innovation man-hours. Does this concept frame change anything? I'm not sure, but I wonder if we'll start to see more non-profit design companies or initiatives ala Design that Matters, or ones that have more government funding.