Posted by cdchase on December 16, 2009 | No Comments
They are now severely limiting access to the Conference Center itself, but climate change-related exhibits and activities are everywhere around the City center itself.
There was a climate-change-related display in every square I came across in Copenhagen – and every temporary advertising venue had something related to climate change.
Scouting had set-up a gigantic potted-plant sculpture next to Parliament Square. World Wildlife Fund had a Arctic-themed set of photos, the melting ice-polar-bear skeleton sculpture, and a large “igloo” tent with speakers and live music. I came across a huge pile of recyclable trash-as-art along with a display of green rooffing planting examples.
Seimens was at the center of the glossy corporate-sponsored “Hopenhagen” installation near Tivoli Gardens (the world’s first amusement park). At night the earth was projected from the inside onto a large white sphere.
An “Earth Fair” was set up for the Danish public to visit, called Klimaforum09. I couldn’t tell you how many hundreds of exhibits, installations and events there were, since there was no centralized calendar that I came across, but suffice it to say if you wanted to educate yourself about climate change, the causes, impacts and what to do about it, you could – from all possible angles.
The other consistent feature was a very large police presence. They were everywhere in group along with vans making the obvious statement: ‘get out of line and we will cart you away.” And they did. Next installment: what was the rally really like?
Posted by cdchase on December 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
It is Oceans Day at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change on Copenhagen, Denmark.
It has been said that if we were truly honest in our nomenclature, we would call this planet “Ocean” rather then “Earth”.
I made a point to attend a briefing held by scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography where they reported their research on ocean acidification. Ocean acidity has increased by 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This increase is 100 times faster than any change in acidity experienced by marine organisms for at least the last 20 million years. If the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase at the current rate, the ocean will become corrosive to the shells of many marine organisms by the end of this century. One recent paper shows part of the Arctic Ocean is already “corrosive” and that’s before what the models have predicted, so we’re seeing organisms that already will not be able to adapt.
Increasing acidification means that organisms either cannot produce new shells, existing shells break down, or it takes more energy than they can muster to create new shells. Literally it means dissolving of shells in an acid solution as the oceans absorb our increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Sixty-five million years ago, ocean acidification was linked to mass extinctions of calcareous marine organisms, an integral part of the marine food web. At that time. coral reefs disappeared from the geologic record and it took millions of years for the coral reefs to recover.
I asked the SIO scientists what needs to be done. “We are already in an overshoot situation. Our emissions are going past what we regard is a safe level so the actions that are going to take place in COP15 are designed to bring us back down to a safe level as quickly as possible. We’re already past a point that any of us would regard as safe. We need to minimize the time we’re in this dangerous regime.”
Where do the oceans fit into the COP15 process? Oceans are not even addressed directly since they are not “owned” by any one nation. The oceans are a “sink” (dump) for our activities (emissions and waste) from industry, agriculture and land use. If we address those emissions, the oceans should improve.
SIO was also there to report some good news – that they have created the techniques required to improve measurement and verification of what is actually going into the atmosphere. It turns out that current raw measurements and industry reporting of emissions is off by as much as a factor of two and this is extremely significant. “To really know if the actions a community is taking are working, we will be able to put a virtual curtain around an area of the globe and measure the emissions in that area both in and out. This has not been done yet, but we think this is a tremendous trust building opportunity and we will be able to deploy detectors and have measures that can be compared. Methods to verify both from the ground and from space are improving quickly.”
See also:
http://centerforoceansolutions.org/climate/blog/
http://oceanclimate.org
Posted by cdchase on December 13, 2009 | No Comments
Despite the news reports, in the main it was a happy, peaceful scene in Copenhagen today as thousands rallied to demand substantive action from the COP15 process.
Click here to see my pix prior to the bruhaha
p.s. the weather was fantastic! Clear, sunny and beautiful though about 0 degrees Celsius (that’s 32F). My local Danish friends said it probably the best December 12 in decades for such a rally. After the rally I went for a fantastic hot chocolate Danish-style – with lots of whipped cream on top!
Posted by admin on December 10, 2009 | No Comments
We arrived yesterday… unfortunately, Carolyn has caught a cold, which is slowing up down some. However, this evening we did go to the Bella Center, where the conference is taking place, and picked up our (Sierra Club/NGO) badge. We attended the daily Sierra Club briefing, and visited the exhibit area. You can see photos of the exhibits here:
Not a lot to report about the conference proceedings for the day… the proceeding were suspended for much of the day over a political dispute. Still a lot of uncertainty over whether the conference will produce great results, nothing at all, or something between.
Chris