Save the rainforests, save the planet

OK, it does sound a little cheesy, and yes I kind of copied it from the popular show “HERO”….  

But there’s no joke about the disappearance of rainforests around the world and the significant impact on climate change!  Rainforests have traditionally been some of the best carbon sinks in the world.  Unfortunately, with severe deforestation and occasional unusual draughts, we’re quickly loosing the carbon sink!  This is a great article by Steve Connor focused on the Amazon rainforest, the biggest rainforest in the world.  Some of the most interesting facts are extracted from his article here:

• The Amazon rainforest covers an area of some 600 million hectares (2.3 million sq miles), an area of land 25 times bigger than Britain. 
• Responsible for about 40% of the world’s rainforest absorption of carbon dioxide.
• About 5,800 sq miles of the Amazon rainforest is burnt or cleared each year for cattle ranching, farming, …etc.
• More than half of the world’s estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world’s fresh water moves through the Amazon basin.
• Scientists estimate at least 100 billion tons of carbon stored in the trees of the Amazon rainforest 
• Each year the Amazon absorbs about 2 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
• During the extreme drought of 2005, the Amazon became a net producer of carbon dioxide, releasing an estimated 3 billion tons of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere – a net increase of 5 billion tons.

Apart from Amazon, there are many other rainforests around the world and many projects to preserve the rainforests.  I came across “Replanting the Rainforest” and thought their campaign to raise $1 Mil by Earth Day 2009 is quite an exciting and ambitious venture!  Although their primary focus is to preserve wildlife, I believe that we should explore all opportunities that will make a difference to climate change whether it’s the primary objective or an “added value” to the project.  They are keen to kick off projects this year on Earth Day to replant three rainforests and need our help.  Please go to their website and have a look at their projects and understand the endangered species in some of the rainforests they work at!  

There is a really powerful and important message from Replanting the Rainforest:  

Replanting the Rainforests is not another “Plant a Tree” campaign.

- Replanting the Rainforests

Honestly I never thought much about the difference. It is quite interesting to note that planting trees in large scale, or “controlled forestry”, a methodology for forestry industries to continue generate revenue without severely harming the land.  I’m OK with that, because it’s not like we’ll stop using wood in many different capacities including fighting climate change through using wood pellet stoves and so on.  But controlled forests can’t increase it’s carbon sink capacity!  

And how do Replanting the Rainforests intend to replant the rainforests?  They developed a Sustainably Managed Permanent Rainforest Habitats.  The focus is to find under-producing agricultural lands, cattle ranches and degraded forests and restore them to more natural conditions. Read more about their projects here and chip in if you can!

BC will lose its position as an environmental leader if carbon tax is dropped

Today, three prominent environmental groups have denounce their support to the BC NDP because of NDP’s agenda to get rid of the carbon tax, as published on this article on CBC.ca.  These three groups are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pambina Institute, and ForestEthics .  They held a joint newsconference and stressed that:

Thousands of jobs in the green economy will be lost, and the province will lose its position as an environmental leader if the tax is dropped.

- David Suzuki Foundation + Pambina Institute + ForestEthics

On the other hand, Carole James, the leader of NDP, stressed that:

We disagree with the environmental movement. “We believe a bad tax is a bad tax.

- Carole James, BC NDP Leader

A “bad tax is a bad tax”?  What does that mean anyway? I think she needs to revisit what it means by revenue neutral carbon tax, and how this is a “tax shift” and not a “tax grab”!

I’m glad to see more articles on BC’s carbon tax as the provincial election is officially kicking off today, but i’m disappointed again that the article refers the “carbon tax” as “gas tax”.  BC’s carbon tax is more than just the gas tax…  In BC, only 14% of the carbon tax collected is from gasoline and diesel for transportations!

Reducing climate change impacts one piece of meat at a time

I grew up in a Taoist society; even though I never understood the religion that well and was never really “religious”.  For a child, it was just part of our culture - we pray so many times a year, especially during Gods’ birthdays, and we (try to) eat vegetarian food on 1st and 15th of each lunar month.  Why two days a month?  I think it’s because most people can’t give up meat and just be a vegetarian…  But being a vegetarian is a good thing, for Taoist it’s to spare lives (of animals).  Now, there’re other reasons to reduce meat consumption!  It’s hard to go cold turkey with meat, but it is not that hard to reduce meat intake - one meal at a time.  Like Earth Hour, it could be something that we participate once a year to once every few months to once a month to more often!  

This is a great article by  Kathy Freston on Huffington Post with very interesting stats about the startling effects of going vegetarian for Just One Day. The stats are for US only.  I assume that the stats is based on the total population of approximately 300 Million.  Canada has roughly 10% of the US population, so it’s easy to do the math:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

There’re more stats on the original article:

• if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the CO2 equivalent savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads; and
•  switching from standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against global warming than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid.

I propose to establish “vegetarian days” like the Taoists to reflect on our behaviour to the earth and reduce climate change impacts one meal at a time.  What do you say?

Global Warming Skpetics: “Direct Correlation between Pirates and Global Warming”

Last week,  the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change was held in New York City between March 2 and March 4.   March 8 - 10.  This is the biggest conference of gathering and presentations of Climate Change Skeptics. I agree that we should try looking at climate change from all angles possible and yes there are a lot of uncertainties of the future of our climate that we’re predicting.  I went through a few presentations from last year and found a lot of interesting stories to share….  I’ll start with this one that included the adage “Correlation Is Not Causation the correlation” between pirates and global warming! (*posting updated as Dave pointed out that I’m incorrect on blaming Prof. Hayden for including this slide in his presentation)

This is in the presentation by Howard Hayden, Professor of Physics Emeritus of University of Connecticut, U.S.  Here’s the link to his presentation.  In his presentation, he inserted this slide that he took from the open letter by  the Church of flying spaghetti monster to imply that correlations that current scientists have produced may not have any impact on climate change just like the graph below. The main conclusion was that the fewer pirate there are, the warmer the globe is….  In the open letter, it was stated that quite a well fitted graph can be made when correlating number of pirates versus global temperature.   The graph is included below.  On first glance, it does look like a really good linear fit… BUT.. look again!  the x-axis is not spaced evenly!!! Actually the first number from the left on the x-axis is smaller than the second number while all subsequent number are smaller than the second number!  Well….  this is the type of presentations in this conference?!  

It’s quite a clever graph that Bobby Handerson (the founder of FSM) had! Although his original intention was nothing about mocking the scientists (for climate change), but I guess it has been used here as such tool.  

Do you think climate change evidence provided by scientists are just random correlations?

Global Warming for Dummies by Elizabeth May

Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader of Canada, and Zoe Caron of the Sierra Club, have joined force and published a book that they would like our prime minister, Stephen Harper, to read it…no pun intended, the title is: Global Warming For Dummies.  It was out since October 2008 and May was supposed to give Harper a copy back then.  I wonder if he’s read it…..

I actually haven’t read it… anyone with comments??