writeaboutwarming

I was listening to Science Friday on NPR today, and Ira Flatow said that increasing numbers of people now understand that climate change is really happening. He or a guest remarked that many of those same people ask, What can I do to improve the situation? Since that's a subject I haven't written about in awhile, and since there is so much each of us can do, let's talk about it. Where to start - what we eat? what we wear? what we drive? There are right answers to each of those questions. If you're eating conventionally grown food, that needs to change, because foods that "require" chemicals to be grown are killing all of us, both because of airborne pollutants, and because of the poisons that wind up in our bodies. While it is difficult to eat a diet that consists only of organic foods, there are so many organic options (especially produce, dairy foods, and meat) that you should acquaint yourself with what's available. The end result will be healthier bo...

April 12 – Lots of people are wondering about the number of severe earthquakes experienced recently. Our perception that there has been an increase in the number of earthquakes of significant magnitude is difficult to verify. The little bit of hard data available, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, does not indicate an increase, though it does depend upon what magnitude you’re researching, and which years. Are the media giving earthquakes more coverage than they used to? That possibility certainly cannot be discounted. I’ve heard an interesting theory that’s been offered to explain an increase, and I thought I’d share it with you. It is highly theoretical, and, as I say, the numbers pro or con are difficult to verify. Figures lie, and liars figure. Slicing and dicing numbers can lead in many different directions. This theory is, in my opinion, worth pondering, so – for whatever it’s worth – here it is: we know that an enormous amount of Arctic ice has melted. The water t...

My apologies for taking so long to write this article. I hope you'll find it worth the wait! November 19, 2009 – I’m learning more about Transition Towns (see my Oct. 20 blog). Read on to learn more about the concept and its current status. First, though, let’s get started with some transition vocabulary. Two ideas that are central to understanding this grassroots movement are relocalizing and permaculture. Relocalization is, in fact, the United States’ own version of transitioning. While transition takes its name from the need for communities to make the transition from being carbon-based to post-carbon, relocalization focuses on the need for communities to make basic goods and services available locally. This, in turn, necessitates re-skilling. More vocabulary! Let’s go back over this paragraph and make some sense of it. What is meant by saying that a community is carbon-based? Simply this: communities throughout the world derive their energy from fuels containing lots of carbon:...