writeaboutwarming

July 18, 2013 - In so many ways, Chicago really is My Kind of Town. I grew up in its western suburbs, and to this day believe I've enjoyed a lifetime of benefit derived from its can-do qualities.   It’s comforting to know that some things never change.   Today, with Rahm Emanuel at the helm, the Windy City puts to work the best environmental ideas out there, as soon as they become available.   Urban planning has become a lot greener over the years in Chicago, because climate change is causing very intense thunderstorms and extreme temperatures.   These worsening problems have caused the city to take an experimental approach to their solution.   Take smog-eating pavement, for instance.   With an active ingredient called titanium dioxide, the cement pavers set off a chemical reaction with sunlight that cleans all the air as far as eight feet above them.   They were developed by Italian cement giant Italcementi when the Vatican wanted to build a churc...

May 20, 2013 – A collaborative bit of research headed up by Oxford and NASA has found that climate change will be a little slower in developing than previously thought.   This is excellent news, no doubt about it.   Assuming this report is correct, how should governments, corporations and individuals proceed?   Surely the most far-reaching results in the shortest amount of time would be the most sensible goal for which to strive.   If you were in charge, what three draconian steps would you take, right now, to change the world’s progress in mitigating climate change?   I realize it sounds as if I were making a game out of this most serious of all problems; it’s really just a way, I hope, of helping readers to grasp the seriousness of this moment.   If researchers are to be believed, we’ve been given the most precious gift of all: time.   What should we do with it? It’s a question with too many answers.   Or should it be phrased a different wa...

April 22, 2013 – Climate change is forcing new international partnerships.   It’s funny, when we’ve run out of choices and find that the only option left is getting along, we not only do so - we find it works to everybody’s benefit.   While the first example might seem to be simply a business arrangement, I would argue there’s far more than money to be gained.   Chances are you’ve heard at least mutterings about the possibility of solar arrays being established in North Africa so that the resulting electricity can be sold, in part, to Europe.   In fact, European investors have gotten well past the muttering stage.   So have the North African countries interested in bringing their populations into the 21 st century.   Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia enjoy endless sunshine. It could ultimately reward them and their European backers with endless electricity.   Morocco and Tunisia are in the process of building plants, and Morocco o...

November 19, 2012 - With the issuance of the World Bank report Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 Degree Centigrade Warmer World Must Be Avoided, the chorus of voices in Washington, D.C. that belong to organizations that have at last found their courage has become quite raucous.  What are they saying? This will happen!  That will happen!  This AND that will happen!  This and that must not happen!  It's serious!  It's very, Very, VERY serious!!  Why?  Because this will happen!  And that will happen!  Etc., etc., etc. Not that they're wrong.  Far from it; the ramifications of doing nothing - which is, in essence, what we are currently doing - are staggeringly awful.  I've covered them quite thoroughly, in the nearly four years I've been writing this blog.  This part of the report they got right. Without mitigative actions, we're in a world of hurt.  Yes, the World Bank speaks truth. They are to be...