Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

The Northwest Passage across Northern Canada is completely ice free for the first time ever, as Arctic ice cover dropped to around 3 million square miles this summer, a million square miles less than the previous recorded low.  Arctic ice cover has dropped by an average of around 100,000 square kilometers a year over the last ten years, so this year’s million square kilometer drop is itself a remarkable occurance.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Arctic sea ice hit a record low of 4.42 million square kilometers on September 4. The lowest absolute minimum previously recorded was 5.32 million square kilometers on September 20–21, 2005. With several more weeks to go, the absolute minimum this year will likely be even lower.

Andrew Leonard writes in Salon that global stockpiles of grain are plunging. A fascinating article that dovetails quite nicely with the documentary “The End of Suburbia.” Here’s a link to an article about sugar cane-derived biofuel.

In an age of global warming and increasing energy prices, living in a neighborhood where you can walk to stores or services in an important consideration.

Now there is a website that will calculate how walkable your neighborhood is.  Just type in your address and it will calculate a walk score from zero to a hundred, with a hundred being the best.

Kensington, an older neighborhood that was originally built around a rail line scores a 69 out of 100.  See how your neighborhood compares.

Co-op America reports that Dominion Power has canceled three of four planned coal fired power plants, including two in Virginia.  This comes after a campaign that gathered at least 20,000 signatures opposing the plants. 

Co-op America’s Climate Change Program Director Todd Larsen had warned:

Dominion’s plans for our future are a giant step backwards for America. At a time when energy companies are increasingly recognizing climate change, and even calling for federal regulation of carbon, Dominion is moving forward with three polluting plants that will pump enormous amounts of carbon into our skies. Dominion has refused calls to report out on its climate emissions and how it can curb them, despite growing interest from their own shareholders. Dominion is also pushing for nuclear power - touting it as a safe, environmentally sound energy solution - and ignoring local opposition and real concerns around safety and proliferation.

Now Dominion and the US Department of Energy have reported that three of four new coal-fired power plants are no longer scheduled to be built.   Now they pledge to triple wind power investments in West Virginia over the course of this year, and also, at this year’s shareholder meeting, Dominion finally recognized the reality of climate change. 

Activist pressure combined with the steady drumbeat of news confirming global warming fears can make a difference.  This sort of pressure should be extended to other major utilities as well.

Of course, the right wing nuts will say that all we have to do is beef up our air conditioning…

Previous and widely used global warming computer estimates predict too many rainy days, the study says. Because drier weather is hotter, they underestimate how warm it will be east of the Mississippi River, said atmospheric scientists Barry Lynn and Leonard Druyan of Columbia University and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

 http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/05/11/hoteast_pla.html?category=earth&guid=20070511101500

On the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, there is no Category 6. But 2005’s Hurricane Wilma brushed up against where a 6 would be if the scale were logically extrapolated to include another category.

An extrapolation of the Saffir-Simpson scale suggests that if a Category 6 were there, it would be in the range of 176-196 mph. Hurricane Wilma, which had maximum recorded wind speeds of 175 mph, would have been on the verge of breaking into this hypothetical new category.

2006 was a quiet hurricane season, in part due to El Nino conditions in the Pacific, but 2007 has gotten off to an early start with subtropical Andrea hovering off the coast of Florida, three weeks before the traditional start of the hurricane season–an ominous portent for the hurricane season this year.

When it opened here in 2004 on a reclaimed mining dump, the Geosol solar plant was the biggest of its kind in the world. It is so clean and green that it produces zero emissions and so easy to operate that it has only three regular workers: plant manager Hans-Joerg Koch and his two security guards, sheepdogs Pushkin and Adi.

The plant is part of a building boom that has made gloomy-skied Germany the unlikely global leader in solar-generated electricity. Last year, about half of the world’s solar electricity was produced in the country. Of the 20 biggest photovoltaic plants, 15 are in Germany, even though it has only half as many sunny days as countries such as Portugal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402466.html?nav=most_emailed

A record drought–now in its sixth year–is forcing Australia to consider drastic action to preserve its dwindling water supplies.  Two rivers that feed the Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia are so low that they barely have enough water for drinking supplies.

The Murray-Darlin basin supplies 40 percent of Australia’s agricultural output, including rice cotton, wine, citrus, olive and almonds, along with livestock.

Prime Minister John Howard has announced that unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the basin, creating a disaster for the farmers and devastating the harvests.

Environmentalists have blamed the drought on the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Nino weather patterns, caused by global warming.  The recent UN climate planel predicted that droughts would be a growing problem for Australia.

Prime Minister Howard has until recently been a skeptic about global warming, but now says that he accepts the science behind climate change.

A new island has appeared of the coast of Greenland, discovered by veteran American explorer, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it “Warming Island.”

Previously, it had appeared to have been an integral part of the Greenland coast, but as the ice melted away, the ice bridge that attached the island to Greenland became thinner, until in the summer of 2005, it became completely separated.

If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt, sea levels would rise 7 meters–over 20 feet, and would innundate most of the world’s coastal cities.