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New federal climate service would help businesses adapt to change
From Green Right Now Reports
Who says the federal government isn’t moving in response to climate change? A proposed new service is designed to help businesses adapt to global warming and to encourage development of new technologies to cope with it.
“Even with our best efforts, we know that some degree of climate change is inevitable and American citizens and businesses, and American governments … must be able to rise to environmental and economic challenges that lie ahead,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke says.
NOAA Climate Services requires a reorganization at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department and includes the National Weather Service.
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Tags: · Climate Change, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, U.S. Commerce Department
Study finds catch shares improve consistency, not health, of fisheries
From Green Right Now Reports
Catch share programs result in more consistent and predictable fisheries but do not necessarily improve ecological conditions, according to a new study published online this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Employed by nations around the world, catch shares — a management system that divides up and allocates percentages, or shares, of the total allowable catch to individual fishermen or fishing groups — have generated controversy as to whether they lead to better environmental stewardship than other fishery management options. The study, funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program, concluded that these programs help to eliminate erratic swings in fishing rates, catch landings and fish population sizes, among other factors, but may not necessarily lead to larger fish populations.
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Tags: · Catch share programs, Lenfest Ocean Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
My Green Job: Claire Fackler, marine life educator
Claire Fackler, 36, Santa Barbara, California
What I do:
I have been working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), National Ocean Service since 1999. Currently as the National Education Liaison for the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, I work with various partners, such as National Geographic  Society and the Institute for Exploration on national and regional educational programs that enhance public awareness, understanding and appreciation of the marine environment, particularly America’s underwater treasures, known as national marine sanctuaries.
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Tags: · blue planet, California, Claire Fackler, Hawaii, marine life, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Ocean for Life, Ocean Guardian Kids Club, Oceans
Big pollution from cargo ships
By John DeFore
Green Right Now
Wondering how much it matters that your sneakers were made in China and your coffee grown in Kenya? Consider this: The ships that brought those goods to America belch enough particulate pollutants into the world’s air to match half of all cars combined.
So says a paper just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, in which scientists led by Boulder, Colorado researcher Daniel A. Lack analyzed readings taken in and around the Gulf of Mexico during the summer of 2006. The team trailed over 200 commercial vessels that summer, measuring the emissions of everything from cargo freighters to cruise ships, and what they found isn’t happy news for those living in coastal areas.
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Tags: · carbon soot, cargo ships, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sulfate pollution, University of Colorado, University of Delaware
Google Earth heads to sea
By John DeFore
Green Right Now
Google has a way of attracting attention, whether it’s by upending cell phone paradigms with an open-source platform or frightening publishers with its quest to digitize every book ever written. Now environmental groups have reason to hope one of the search giant’s projects will raise eco-consciousness among people who spend more time playing with the latest techie fad than they do reading conservationist pamphlets.
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Tags: · Google Earth, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Oceans
Global warming won’t go away any time soon
By John DeFore
Green Right Now
President Obama may be moving swiftly to turn his environmental campaign pledges into official policy, but even a miraculous transformation of our behavior at this point would be too late to stop some effects that are “basically irreversible,” according to statements made by climate scientists this week.
In a press teleconference held in advance of the publication of their research, the scientists said that, contrary to what many laymen and policymakers assume, the earth’s temperature would not return to normal even if carbon emissions were cut to zero tomorrow — not in 100 years, not in 200 years, and probably not within this millennium.
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Tags: · Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, global warming, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oceans
Hurricane Ike: worse because of global warming?
September 16th, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Hurricane Ike, which knocked Galveston and Houston with a right hook reminiscent of Katrina, again raises the question of whether global warming is fostering monster storms.
 It has become almost ipso facto among many climate change scientists and activists that global warming is a key culprit behind worsening hurricanes. They point out that tropical storms feed on warmer water, and warmer sea waters are a given these days, whether you believe that the sea change is caused by Mother Nature, greenhouse gases or little green men in space.
But weather forecasters and meteorologists take a more measured view of hurricanes. Trained to distinguish between causes and consider time lines and probabilities, they do not use “weather” and “climate change” interchangeably. Weather is a sudden occurrence – albeit with a hurricane it can malinger and loom with maddening deliberateness – whereas climate change is a gradual thing, building over many years.
So to the weather experts, the shorthand formula is not as simple as Storms + Warmer Waters = Worse Storms.
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Tags: · hurricanes, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
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