• Grist - How to talk to climate skeptic
• Pew - Realities vs. misconceptions about the science of climate change
• Union of Concerned Scientists - Global Warming Contrarians

• Union of Concerned Scientists
• Pew Center on Global climate Change
• Real Climate - a forum for climate scientists
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• US Government research on climate change
• Climate vs. Weather
• NRDC climate education center
• Former Asst. Secretary of Energy, Joseph Romm interprets climate science and policy
• Former NYT journalist, Andrew Revkin
• Climate Change Education - Portal Web Site Dedicated to: Global Warming Education, Climate Change Education Science, Solutions.

Throughout the last year it has been hard to miss the news reports, blogs and editorial commentary on the extreme weather events that have been sweeping the country. Tornadoes, flooding, snowstorms, above normal and below normal temperatures have caught the media and the nation’s attention.

Learn More…

Reducing the total carbon load on the atmosphere begins with choices individual consumers can make every day. Find out how much carbon you are personally responsible for by using a carbon footprint calculator. Then, trim off as you can in your daily life through energy-efficient lifestyle choices. Finally, go completely carbon-neutral by purchasing offsets for your remaining emissions from reputable organizations.

Step 1: Calculate your carbon footprint

As with any diet, all the little things add up – a re-charger here, an incandescent bulb there, no one’s going to notice, right? Well, you might be surprised at how much carbon you personally emit. Try using one of these carbon calculators to get the big picture on your carbon footprint: The Safe Climate Calculator, The Home Energy Saver, and The Home Energy Checkup.

The major drawback of buying energy-smart is that it can mean an initially high investment. This can be something of a barrier for very limited budgets and low-income households. Other than that, there are no major drawbacks for being energy-efficient; in fact, consumers can recoup the costs of mid-sized renewable energy investments (such as Energy Star -rated refrigerators and other major household appliances) in less than five years. And some investments, such as programmable thermostats, will save about $100 per year on heating bills – more than three times the initial cost.

A carbon neutral lifestyle, business, or organization is an attainable goal. It can mostly be achieved through energy conservation and use of alternative fuels. But in these transitional times, before things like biofuels and wind power become widespread in the economy, there are instances when you just can’t avoid the use of fossil fuels. This is especially true for transportation over long distances, be it by plane, train, or automobile. To take those stray emissions out of the air, you can offset them.

Carbon offsetting involves undertaking an activity that ultimately takes carbon out of the air. Some projects involve donating money to startup alternative energy companies in exchange for emissions credits, considered to be a long-term investment in zero-carbon power or fuel production. Other projects, such as reforestation projects or just planting a few more trees, enhance the natural processes that trap carbon dioxide into solid form, thereby directly taking it out of the atmosphere. If you are responsible for more pounds of carbon than you can handle by yourself, there are companies that can help by doing the work for you.

Ethanol and biodiesel are the first steps in the development of a multifaceted, carbon neutral biofuels industry. By filling up with ethanol-enriched fuels at the pump, you can make a choice today to curb global warming by reducing harmful tailpipe CO2 emissions.

Switching to renewable resources is already identified as a necessary step by industry leaders around the globe, not only because we will eventually run out of fossil fuels, but because processing plant-based fuels and other products will be much less expensive in the long term, leading to greater profitability overall. Industry foresight and support will play a major role in proliferating sustainable fuel technology worldwide.

Fagen, Inc and the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC) are proud sponsors of the Global Warming 101 Expedition 2007. The Will Steger Foundation recognizes that ethanol is one of many important ways to reduce global warming pollution and its impacts on the Earth’s atmosphere. While ethanol only nets 11-13% less carbon than gasoline, it is a choice people can make today while we develop more effective options for tomorrow. Climate researchers have predicted that if nothing is done this decade to stem the flow of greenhouse gases into the air, the Earth will soon reach atmospheric temperatures that have not occured since the Eemian Period (120,000 years ago), when the temperatures were ony one or two degrees warmer but the sea level was 4-6 meters higher than it is today. In this context, ethanol provides a great transitional technology that can get us on the right path, right now, as we continue to look for even better alternatives to fossil fuels.

There's no one solution to slowing global warming -- there are many. From energy conservation to biofuels, there is a whole toolbox full of exciting possibilities to help human communities reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. In 2005, Princeton scientists Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala developed the concept of "climate wedges," based on graphs of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. They project that currently available technologies can act as a "wedge" to level off carbon emissions. Click here to read their paper.

Renewable energy solutions represent a wide array of projects in which communities large and small can become involved. Energy companies can invest in huge solar arrays, wind farms, geothermal and hydroelectric facilities. Rural communities can use wind farms as a way of bringing additional revenue into struggling family farm-based economies. Individual households and businesses can install rooftop solar panels, a small wind turbine, and of course engage in energy conservation by purchasing Energy Star-rated appliances. And biofuels are the wave of the future -- Michael Pacheco of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently announced that "the United States has the ability to yield more than a billion tons of biomass annually for energy needs without negatively affecting our needs for food or fiber." An important feedstock currently being tested is corn stover, or the waste parts of plants that include stalks, leaves, and husks. Combined with other feedstocks, including other plant waste from agriculture and forestry, as well as prairie grasses and other woody plants grown commercially for biofuel production, it will be possible to replace 30% of the 2004 gasoline consumption levels with cellulosic ethanol by the year 2030.

The Will Steger Foundation strongly believes that market-based solutions are the way forward in creating the sustainable economy of tomorrow. We also believe that a sound national energy policy is necessary to provide incentives for industry and communities to switch from fossil fuels to renewable solutions.

The Will Steger Foundation also endorses the urgent need for an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.

Most trucks in the United States and many cars around the world have diesel engines. To make these vehicles greener involves replacing their current petrodiesel fuel with biodiesel. It only makes sense, considering that the inventor of the diesel engine, Rudolf Diesel, originally intended for them to run on fuels derived from vegetable oil.

Biodiesel is manufactured using vegetable oil (derived from corn, soybeans, peanuts, and other sources) that has been specially treated. All diesel engines are able to run on a fuel that is part petrodiesel, part biodiesel, as well as 100% biodiesel fuel (although it is known to cause problems in normal diesel engines in cold weather). Some vehicles, however, have special modifications that allow them use 100% pure biodiesel in any weather. It is best to ask the advice of an auto dealer when determining which type of fuel is best for the life of the engine

There are numerous benefits to using biodiesel. It keeps the fuel tank cleaner (this can also be a drawback; see below) as well as being free of fossil fuels. It has great potential as a “homegrown” energy source and therefore as a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil. It is also cleaner than diesel fuel; it produces less toxic chemicals then petrodiesel when burned in an auto engine.

Driven by a commitment to solutions, the Will Steger Foundation provides information on climate change basics, giving educators and learners background knowledge to work towards slowing climate change.

Categories:

• Basics
• Extreme Weather 101
• Solutions: Personal Behavior
• Solutions: Renewable

If you spend enough time studying up on fossil fuel alternatives, you will often encounter the phrase “hydrogen economy.” But what is it? And what does it mean for the future of global energy production (not to mention global warming)?

First of all, let’s look at a fuel cell. A fuel cell is something called an “electrochemical energy conversion device.” Basically what this means is that it is a device that converts a fuel, such as hydrogen, into water – releasing heat and energy in the process. The energy is then harnessed as electricity and can be used to, say, power your electric hair dryer. There are many types of fuel cells that can use many different types of fuel sources – including fossil fuels (the waste products are carbon dioxide and water). But hydrogen just happens to be the most abundant substance on earth, and its waste product (water) does not contribute to global warming.

People have been burning garbage for a long time, and until recent technology and new systems became available, it was generally a bad idea. Open-pit trash burning gave way to municipal solid waste incinerators and so-called “waste-to-energy” facilities, but all of them involved the burning of general household, industrial, and even medical garbage – spewing toxic chemicals like dioxins and PCBs into the air.

Biomass gasification and anaerobic digesters are a totally different way of turning waste materials into fuels for energy – and with state-of-the-art pollution control devices, they are almost completely clean and renewable sources of electricity.

One of the many ways to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is to conserve energy. However, it is often difficult for people to build lifestyles of energy efficiency when living in communities whose infrastructures were designed with the assumption that fossil fuels were cheap, inexhaustible, and did not harm the environment. It may therefore be necessary to reshape the infrastructure of automobile-dependent countries such as the United States to help its citizens reduce their carbon footprints.

A fairly unobtrusive way to introduce more energy-smart infrastructure is to set up green building quotas for all new construction. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a certification system instituted by the US Green Building Council. It would not be too difficult or pose an undue burden on developers for city and/or state governments around the country to require that a certain percentage of all new construction be LEED certified. Some cities are already doing this. Seattle, for example, has already mandated that all new construction in the city meet green building requirements of at at least a silver LEED certification level.

Harnessing the heat from deep inside the earth is one of the world’s oldest sources of energy. The Romans bathed in spas built around natural hot springs, and Native Americans cooked food and heated their homes with geothermal energy. Now this power source is being tapped for both heat and electricity.

Geothermal energy is used mostly in volcanic regions, where hot magma pools close to the earth’s surface. There are three ways to use geothermal energy. The first is direct usage: heating water by running pipelines close to hot spots in the earth. The second is to tap into underground steam vents; the steam is used to turn the turbines in a power plant. The third is to pump water from an outside source into the ground, where superheated rocks boil the water to generate steam. The steam is then sent to a power plant to turn turbines.

Steam is, of course, generated by boiling water, which is boiled using the combustion of a fuel. Today, those two main fuel sources are coal and nuclear (though there is a growing number of biomass combustion facilities coming on line). Unlike steam-powered turbines, hydroelectric facilities use no fossil fuels. They involve the use of either hydroelectric dams on rivers or tidal facilities on ocean coastlines.

Recent commercials produced by the fossil fuel industry claim that their products are necessary for light and heat. But the light and heat stored by fossil fuels originally came from the Sun. Why not cut out the middle-man and go straight to the source?

Solar energy can be harnessed directly for heating and indirectly for electricity. Passive solar design in architecture and engineering allows the warmth of the Sun to be captured in buildings and water systems, while photovoltaic cells use semiconductors to collect the energy of sunlight and channel it through electrical wires to power light bulbs, machinery, and all other electrical needs.

Passive solar design in architecture allows buildings to trap heat from the sun through a combination of windows and skylights that raise the daytime air temperature, as well as conductive building materials (bricks, masonry, etc.) that store heat during the day and release it slowly throughout the night.

Wind power is one of the best energy alternatives in existence today. Once installed, it is one of the world's cheapest modes of energy production -- the fuel is free! And one of the many other benefits of wind power is that it provides an economic boost to struggling rural communities.

Wind power has come a long way from small-scale production on individual farms. The latest design coming out on the market today is a turbine as tall as a 30-story building that is capable of generating enough power to provide light and heat for up to 600 homes. If such turbines were installed throughout the Midwest, they could potentially provide a percentage of the energy needs of all the lower 48 states. This estimate might sound ambitious, but President Bush recently announced that the country could meet as much as 20% of its energy needs with wind power alone. Wind currently accounts for 0.2% of our energy consumption.

And although the big power companies and municipalities are starting to get serious about large-scale wind production, it still makes a great small-scale community generation project. A mid-sized wind turbine costs about $500,000 to purchase and install, and can power up to 150 homes. Any excess power can also be sold back to the grid as a way of generating revenue for the community. New wind farms also create jobs in rural areas that otherwise have a hard time finding a competitive edge in the economy.