John.

I hope Obama, or at least a few companies, will open up a couple of olivine mines near the coast. It’s likely to be highly lucrative and support local jobs creation with Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade system, considering it’s pretty ambitious, the price for permits should exceed the cost of olivine sequestration relatively quickly.

Acidifying Oceans Add Urgency To Carbon Dioxide Cuts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/ 2008/ 07/ 080703140716.htm

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2008) — It’s not just about climate change anymore. Besides loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases, human emissions of carbon dioxide have also begun to alter the chemistry of the ocean–often called the cradle of life on Earth.

The ecological and economic consequences are difficult to predict but possibly calamitous, warn a team of chemical oceanographers in the July 4 issue of Science, and halting the changes already underway will likely require even steeper cuts in carbon emissions than those currently proposed to curb climate change.

Oceans On The Precipice Of

Mass Extinctions And Rise Of Slime

http://www.terradaily.com/ reports/ Oceans_On_The_Precipice_Of_Mass_Extinctions_And_Rise_Of_Slime_999.html

by Staff Writers
San Diego CA (SPX) Aug 15, 2008

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world’s oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.

Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048

http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/ 2006/ 11/ 02/ health/ webmd/ main2147223.shtml

Study By Ecologists, Economists Predicts Collapse of World Ocean Ecology

(WebMD) The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.

That’s when the world’s oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.

The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, — with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama — was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.

The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.

“I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected,” Worm says in a news release.

“This isn’t predicted to happen. This is happening now,” study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.

These two documentaries will show you where the GW deniers came from and who they are . you may be surprised to see the real truth.

The American Denial of Global Warming

http://www.uctv.tv/ search-details.asp?showID=13459

( uctv.tv documentary 58 minutes; 12/12/2007)
Polls show that between one-third and one-half of Americans still believe that there is “no solid” evidence of global warming, or that if warming is happening it can be attributed to natural variability. Others believe that scientists are still debating the point. Join scientist and renowned historian Naomi Oreskes as she describes her investigation into the reasons for such widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientific consensus and probes the history of organized campaigns designed to create public doubt and confusion about science.

The Denial Machine

http://www.cbc.ca/ fifth/ denialmachine/ video.html

CBC Documentary can viewed on line

In the past few years, a rhetorical firestorm has engulfed the debate about global warming, pitting science against spin, with inflammatory words on both sides. That debate only intensifed recently when former Vice-President Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his populist environmental campaign.

The Planet Part 1

http://www.linktv.org/programs/special_planet1

This outstanding documentary series outlines the challenges faced by humanity in the grip of global environmental change, making a strong case for mankind’s own contribution to this life threatening problem. Not limited to climate change, The Planet examines global changes brought about by overpopulation, the destruction of plants and animals, high levels of consumption, growing economies and industrialized farming.

for more news visit
http://www.aroadmap2extinction.com

Climate Change sure is a quietier, much less immediately deadlier problem than what they faced in World War II. But Climate Change is the problem of our time. It sure does seem that the United States now has a good leader that can help. lets hope our hope turns out to be realized.

I think your commentary on what the Chinese are saying is a bit dated. Yes that is what they were saying and sometimes their rhetoric is still along those lines, but they just released an official Chinese document from their Cabinet that said:

“The developing countries, while developing their economies and fighting poverty, should actively…reduce their emissions to the lowest degree…”

So this no longer says that they will only do what they get paid for as I discussed here: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/ blogs/ jschmidt/ changing_climate_in_china.html

Also, that isn’t exactly what other developing countries are saying as the South Africa (as I note here: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/ blogs/ jschmidt/ south_africa_stakes_out_its_effort.html) and South Korea (as I note here: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/ blogs/ jschmidt/ south_korea_will_announce_climate_target_next_year.html) are saying similar things…they will take some level of action on their own.

Please consider the following proposal as an alternative to what appears to be a soon to become unsustainable business-as-usual course of action. This idea for change results from the realization that we have to protect both the Earth’s ecology and the human community’s manmade economy.

First, the Earth and its environs are to be spared further wanton dissipation and reckless degradation; and second, the global economy needs to be rescued from becoming patently unsustainable in the relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible world we are blessed to inhabit.

What could be accomplished if the human family determined to provide “stewardship incentives” to people who choose to protect the Earth and its environs, the same kind of incentives that are now routinely handed out in huge annual payouts to people who are supposed to be growing the global economy….. something the economic powerbrokers are clearly not doing now?

Please note that billions of dollars are being proposed in financial bailouts for companies building unsustainable products and factories and that year-end bonuses are being directed to “wonder boys” in investment houses and banks who have been uneconomically growing humanity’s global economy by collusively creating dodgy financial instruments (e.g., credit default swaps) and fraudulent business models (e.g., Ponzi schemes). These self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have ignored requirements of practical reality and turned a great economic system into a paltry gambling casino, making themselves the primary beneficiaries of pseudo-business activities along the way. In the light of such avaricious risk-taking and conspicuous hoarding behavior, they can no longer be called by any name other than “thieves of the highest order”.

Perhaps reasonable and sensible people can agree that the greed of arrogant, self-serving tycoons and bankstas no longer is to be condoned, much less extolled as somehow good, and that the preservation of Earth and its environs needs to given some immediate attention in terms of funding substantial stewardship incentives equal in size to the financial rewards now directed to the economic powerbrokers.

By redirecting wealth, my generation of elders can begin to put the global economy on a sustainable, more reality-based foundation as well as to more reasonably and sensibly fulfill our responsibilities as good enough stewards of the Earth.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176

Eventually down the road we will be able to make our infrastructure on solar and wind further reducing our carbon footprint. Biofuels made with renewables instead of the heat process with coal. It may not happen in my lifetime, but its important to happen in my grandchildren’s lifetime.

If oil goes to $100 a barrel again — and I’m confident that will happen sometime next year — the US will be paying more than $500 billion annually to import oil. Can’t you at least concede that this money would be better spent within the US, especially since it’s money that would create US jobs?

I couldn’t find the original story that I was going to link to… so consider this one instead, talking about the revitalization of small towns in West Texas…

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008271.html

@Bill Mckibben… It was a great day. I haven’t stopped smiling since the election, and I’m Canadian.