.
No Location Yet!!
After numerous Phone Calls to Islip Area Venues we still do not have a meeting place for September!! Where can we meet in the Islip/Bayshore/Brentwood Area? (See the attached for where I have called.)
Sept. 17th Agenda
1. 7:00 pm Welcome; Announcements, News: National Grid, Offshore Wind, Broadwater, etc.
2. 7:20 pm Fall/Spring Calendar of Events: 2007 – 2008
Nov 3: Events & Themes
Jan 31: Repowering Event
3. 8:00 pm Sept 29th Summit – Presentation by CSTL Director, Dr. Ray Ann Havasy.(To Be Confirmed)
Revised Draft of a Fall/Spring Calendar – based on our July meeting:
September 29 – LI Climate Summit – Farmingdale
October 14, 2:00 – 4:00 pm. Patrick West. Cold Spring Harbor Library
Nov 3 – Step Up Day of Actions
Jan 31 – Repowering Long Island (Matt Cordero, LIPC, SEA, etc.)
April/May Events – May Partnership with Prevention is the Cure/Earth Day Partnerships
July – 2nd Annual Climate Concert
Future Fall Meetings: Oct 15th – Preparation for Nov. 3 – Step it Up! Nov. 19th –
Recent News Stories
Newsday
LIPA chief kills wind farm project
BY MARK HARRINGTON ,mark.harrington@newsday.com August 23, 2007 business …price tag for LIPA’s proposed offshore wind farm could have reached $811 million…be one of the nation’s first offshore wind farms. Law said LIPA will…expectations” for North American offshore projects “given the early-stage…
Report puts windfarm costs at $811m
BY MARK HARRINGTON ,mark.harrington@newsday.com August 23, 2007 business …LIPA’s proposed off-shore wind farm could have reached $811…nation’s first off-shore wind farms. Law said LIPA will study…expectations” for North American offshore projects “given the early…is a premium for building an offshore wind project when compared to…
Fear of National Grid/KeySpan deal ramifications
BY MARK HARRINGTON ,mark.harrington@newsday.com August 26, 2007 services With National Grid’s buyout of KeySpan accomplished in…announced in February 2006, the buyout by National Grid puts more than a dozen power plants…questions about service problems and National Grid’s plan to cut jobs to produce “synergy…
National Grid finalizes takeover of KeySpan
BY MARK HARRINGTON.mark.harrington@newsday.com August 25, 2007 services London-based National Grid said Friday it completed the $11…some expressions of foreboding among National Grid’s newest staff members. “The…Wednesday, with stiff new conditions that National Grid agreed to meet. Revelations that…
Newsfeeds – Climate Crisis Coalition
Study Predicts More Severe U.S. Storms. By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press, August 31, 2007. “As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests. While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming. The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist… With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world’s climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms. A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world’s hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere’s jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine. Del Genio’s computer model shows global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways. ‘The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail,’ he said.”
Vienna U.N. Talks End With Agreement on Some Post Kyoto Guidelines. By William J. Kole, The Associated Press, August 31, 2007. “Negotiators from 158 countries reached basic agreement Friday on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world’s biggest polluters to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases. A weeklong U.N. climate conference concluded that industrialized countries should strive to cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent of their 1990 levels by 2020. Experts said that target would serve as a loose guide for a major international climate summit to be held in December in Bali , Indonesia … The Bali conference will try to forge a new global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires. The Kyoto accord requires 35 industrial nations to cut their emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Friday’s agreement does not include the U.S. , which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol… WWF International called Friday’s agreement a ‘safe range for emission reductions,’ but cautioned that it would have to be put into action. ‘In Bali , they will have to formally adopt this,’ it said in a statement.”
Momentum Building for September 4th Climate Emergency Fast. ClimateEmergency.org, August 31, 2007. The September 4th (and beyond) Climate Emergency Fast is gaining strength. As of this morning, 970 people have signed up from around the country and around the world. Coordinator Ted Glick: “Whether fasting or not, we urge people to take action on September 4th, to apply pressure on their Congresspeople and U.S. Senators. You can organize a vigil outside one of their offices. You can set up a meeting with their staff people (since they’ll be in D.C. on this day). You can get your friends, co-workers, colleagues and anyone else you know to make phone calls or send emails or faxes urging that they support our demands and take strong action to address the climate crisis. We are focusing on three main demands, which are: 1) no new coal or coal-to-liquid plants; 2) freeze and major reductions in carbon emissions; 3) A $25 billion downpayment in the 2008 fiscal year for conservation, efficiency and renewables.” Register for the fast. Find a faster near you.
Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change. By Claudia H. Deutsch, The New York Times, August 29, 2007. “Animal rights groups do not share the same mission, but they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases. When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the ‘Go Veggie!’ bandwagon, but that did not happen. ‘Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,’ said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA… The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has taken up the issue as well, running ads in environmental magazines that show a car key and a fork. ‘Which one of these contributes more to global warming?’ the ads ask. They answer the question with ‘It’s not the one that starts a car,’ and go on to cite the United Nations report as proof… On its Web page and in its literature, the Humane Society has also been highlighting other scientific studies — notably, one that recently came out of the University of Chicago — that, in essence, show that ‘switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry,’ said Paul Shapiro, senior director of the factory farming campaign for the Humane Society.”
SUV’s ‘Versus’ Meat. By Charles Komanoff, Streetblog.org, August 31, 2007. In reference to the NY Times article above “I spotted one glaring error and one questionable assumption in the U of Chicago article (Diet, Energy, and Global Warming, PDF, 17 pages) that underlies the Humane Society’s claim. First, the authors evidently used a figure of around 16 lb of CO2 emitted per gallon of gasoline burned. (They don’t give their figure; I backed it out of their Table 1.) But the standard coefficient, easily derivable, is approximately 19.6 lb per gallon. Switching to the correct coefficient would add 22-23% to the ‘SUV’ side of their comparison. Second, the authors based their ‘SUV’ calculations on average US per capita miles driven (8,332 miles/yr). The appropriate basis, in my view, would be the number of miles a typical motor vehicle is driven, which is around 12,000 (that’s the figure US EPA uses in its calculations of carbon impacts of driving). After all, switching from an SUV to a Camry would mean switching out 12,000 miles, not 8,332. Substituting the higher figure would add 44% to the ‘SUV’ side of the comparison. Making both changes simultaneously would increase the SUV emission figures by 75-77%, which pretty much invalidates the triumphalist statement by the Humane Society’s guy. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are similar errors undermining the ‘food’ side of the comparison. Maybe someone else will take a break from their seitan preparation and check it out. And maybe the Humane Society and their allies can find ways of advancing the worthy cause of vegetarianism that don’t require belittling SUV damages and Al Gore.”
Can You Buy a Greener Conscience? By Alan Zarembo, The Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2007. “The Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth touted itself as the world’s first carbon-neutral documentary. The producers said that every ounce of carbon emitted during production — from jet travel, electricity for filming and gasoline for cars and trucks — was counterbalanced by reducing emissions somewhere else in the world… Co-producer Lesley Chilcott used an online calculator to estimate that shooting the film used 41.4 tons of carbon dioxide and paid a middleman, a company called Native Energy, $12 a ton, or $496.80, to broker a deal to cut greenhouse gases elsewhere. The film’s distributors later made a similar payment to neutralize carbon dioxide from the marketing of the movie. It was a ridiculously good deal with one problem: So far, it has not led to any additional emissions reductions. Beneath the feel-good simplicity of buying your way to carbon neutrality is a growing concern that the idea is more hype than solution. According to Native Energy, money from An Inconvenient Truth, along with payments from others trying to neutralize their emissions, went to the developers of a methane collector on a Pennsylvanian farm and three wind turbines in an Alaskan village. As it turned out, both projects had already been designed and financed, and the contributions from Native Energy covered only a minor fraction of their costs. ‘If you really believe you’re carbon neutral, you’re kidding yourself,’ said Gregg Marland, a fossil-fuel pollution expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee who has been watching the evolution of the new carbon markets. ‘You can’t get out of it that easily’… The race to save the planet from global warming has spawned a budding industry of middlemen selling environmental salvation at bargain prices. The companies take millions of dollars collected from their customers and funnel them into carbon-cutting projects, such as tree farms in Ecuador , windmills in Minnesota and no-till fields in Iowa . In return, customers get to claim the reductions, known as voluntary carbon offsets, as their own. For less than $100 a year, even a Hummer can be pollution-free — at least on paper.”
Filed under: Environment, events, Global Warming, Green Party Websites, More Events Calendars, rants, social & economic justice Tagged: | Environment, turkey
Leave a Reply