“It’s bigger than CO2.” UVA Launches a Huge Climate Change Mapping Project

The University of Virginia is bringing experts in the United States, China, Canada, and Russia together to use new computer models to analyze the world’s forests in the context of global climate change. The project will examine the world’s boreal and temperate forests, which are enormous carbon “sinks,” storing more than 35 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide. Deborah Lawrence of UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences says, in a press release posted on UVA Today:

Policymakers are getting pretty good at accounting for CO2. They know what China needs to do and India and us (the United States.) The point of our project is to say ‘It’s bigger than CO2.’ It’s physical, in the water cycle and the energy budget that really affect climate. We have to put that into the model before we really assess these options for policies on how to mitigate climate change . . . . By interpreting climate models through a broadly interdisciplinary lens, we hope to understand not just what happens in a future world, but what it means to live in that world – for an individual, a society or humanity as a whole.

For more details about forests and climate change from Dr. Lawrence, listen to her interview on WAMU Radio’s Kojo Nnamdi Show.

Happy Earth Day, Virginia!

Earth Day is always a time for organizations to launch new initiatives or bring attention to the most pressing issues affecting the intersection between the natural and human worlds. Today, The Nation magazine has stepped up with a brilliant bit of public service: an entire issue devoted to climate change. Writers contribute well-researched articles from a wide variety of perspectives, including how climate change hits people of color hardest and species extinctions that will be sparked by climate change. I’ll be recommending other articles in a post later today.

From the point of view of this blog, one of the most important articles brings attention to a huge issue in our neighboring state of Maryland. Cove Point is a natural gas facility proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, that would transform natural gas (much of it derived from the environmentally destructive practice of fracking) into a liquid that can be easily exported. Opponents argue that the facility would 1) encourage an expansion of fracking; 2) produce more pollution than most of Maryland’s current coal-fired plants; and 3) raise natural gas prices due to increased exports of the product, adding to gas company profits and hurting consumers. I really like journalist Mark Hertsgaard’s primer on the topic, “The Other Keystone.”

If you’d like to learn more, go to the organizations that are taking the lead in fighting Cove Point: the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) and the Sierra Club. On the other hand, Dominion Power’s official project site for Cove Point explains the company’s side of the issue.

Here’s a three-minute video from CCAN that will explain why we Virginians ought to say no to Cove Point.

Introduction

Sunrise on the eastern shore

This blog will collect and curate information about the impact of climate change in Virginia and what our government, nonprofits, schools, and citizens are doing about it. I’ll post about climate science, public policy, education, activism, and the arts. Any topic that touches on the present and future of the commonwealth and our warming, storming planet is fair game. I hope the posts will be helpful to anyone trying to learn more about the topic or searching for ways to take action.

Welcome!