Green Arch Design

“For some industries, the prospet of $3.5 billion in federal subsidies now, and double that in three years, might be a powerful incentive.  But not, apparently, for the oil industry, which is seeing crude oil prices soar to record highs.  Despite collecting billions for blending small amounts of ethanol with gas, oil companies seem determined to fight the spread of E85, a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gas.  Congress has set a target of displacing 15% of projected annual gasoline use with alternative fuels by 2017″. - Excerpt from Businessweek Magazine.

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Ethanol

“Could a microbe from hell help slow the pace of global warming? In the simmering, corrosive muds of Hell’s Gate hot springs of Rotorua, New Zealand, researchers have discovered bacteria that devour methane, a greenhouse gas that environmentalists consider 20 times more harmful that carbon dioxide.

GNS Science, a research organization owned by the New Zealand government, says the tough new bug is the first methane-loving bacterium found to flourish in conditions as hot as 158F, with a chemical ambience similar to stomach acid. This makes it potentially easier to adapt to other hostile environments such as landfills, which leak methane as trash decomposes.

Matthew Stott, a GNS microbiologist, says the bug could also be adapted for use in other methane-venting sites, such as mines. Publishing in Nature, the researchers dubbed their superhardy discovery Methylokorus infernorum, a mix of the Latinized names for methane and the infernal place the bug was found”.

—By Adam Aston

For more on this subject, click on the links below.

Methane-eating bacteria could halt warming

New methane-munching bacteria discovered

Okay, so you’ve decided to do your part in helping to reduce global warming by recycling.  You know that you can recycle plastic bottles, but what about the little plastic rings?  Yep, it’s okay to leave them on the bottles but you do need to throw away the top. 

By recycling your plastic bottles, you are helping to keep them out of landfills.

According to the 2005 National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report, “total post-consumer plastic bottle recycling increased by more than 187 million pounds in 2005.  The total pounds of plastic bottles recycled crossed the 2-billion-pound-per-year threshold to reach a new record high of 2,102 million pounds”.

Keep up the good work.  Every little bit does count!

“Only time will tell if global warming will be minor or catastrophic; if it can be mitigated or will destroy the planet, to use the phrase. But one thing is certain. Companies shouldn’t wait to find out.” - Excerpt from the February 26, 2007 editorial The Welch Way in BusinessWeek.

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The Global Warming Wager

Click on link below to listen to the podcast.

The Global Warming Wager - Podcast

“In China, the line below which there are no hard freezes has moved northward. Since freezing temperatures kill the snail that spreads the parasitic disease schistosomiasis, this change is putting 20.7 million additional people at risk for the illness. Field studies show that the snail can survive in the new areas, says Guojing Yang, an infectious disease expert at Jiangsu Institute of Parasitic Diseases in China.” - Excerpt from the July 17, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet 

“The American Petroleum Institute has issued tougher standards, such as anchoring drilling platforms more securely.  In San Francisco, planners are exploring beefing up the storm sewer system to deal with heavier rains.” - excerpt from the July 17, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“The residents of the village of Shismaref are literally on the edge.  Melting permafrost and the disappearance of sea ice that once protected the town from pounding waves, “Shismaref is literally being battered to the point of falling into the sea.”  The townspeople have voted to move the entire village, which will cost more than $100 million.”

“In the Arctic, where a four-degree jump in average temperature over the last 30 years is “climate change on steroids.” - excerpts from the July 17, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“Over the last several decades, temperatures are up two degrees in Mali, and the rainy season has decreased by more than a month,” says Exponent’s Ebi. That means the growing season is too short for standard rice. Researchers are developing a faster-maturing variety, but that’s only a partial solution, health experts caution, since the dry season’s potato crop is starting to fail as a result of increased heat. The economic system of the whole country could collapse, says Ebi. “In the village I’m working with, the elders know they are on the edge.” - excerpt from the July 17, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“…in Alaska, a rise of 9F in the temperature of the Yukon River since 1985 has been linked to the spread of a salmon parasite. By the time the fish make it upriver, they’re too diseased to be sold. That’s wiping out upstream fisheries and contributing to an overall decline in commercial fishing, explains Richard M. Kocan, professor of fishery sciences at the University of Washington.” - excerpt from the July 17, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“This is just the beginning.” - Excerpt from Peter Hoppe, head of Geo Risks Research at Munich Re.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“When it comes to the big picture, the proverbial canary in the coal mine ‘is dead’.” - Excerpt from Peter K Gleick, presiden of Pacific Institue for Sudies in Develpment, Enviroment & curity in Oakland, California.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“How do we adapt to a future of melting permafrost, less water, and more extreme weather?” - Excerpt from Robert Page, vice-president for sustainable development at TransAlta Corp. in Calgary.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“This is not just an issue our kids will have to deal with.  It’s happening now.” - Excerpt from Allan Carroll, an insect ecologist at the Pacific Forestry Center in Victoria, B.C.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“I think a lot of people are becoming more convinced that climate change is real.” - Excerpt from Mark Anderson

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“Several years ago, (Allan)Carroll (an insect ecologist at the Pacific Forestry Center in Victoria, B.C.) predicted that warmer temperatures could flip an ecological switch, causing the loss of valuable forests of lodgepole pine to the mountain pine beetle.” - excerpt from the July 17, 2006 BusinessWeek Magazine.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“We long ago gave up covering the skeptical antics of the Wall Street Journal or Canada’s National Post; it just got boring and repetitive. Now Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics does the numbers and asks: ” Does big business care about climate change as much as everyone else?  Judging from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the answer is yes.

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Headlines

“Starting here at home, we need to make environmental sustainability a national priority.” - Excerpt from the October 30, 2006 issue of BusinessWeek Magazine.

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America’s Supersized Footprint

“No matter what we do now in terms of mitigation, changes in climate are inevitable.” - excerpt from Ivo Menzinger, head of sustainability an emerging risk management at insurance giant Swiss Re.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

Change has begun. Rising temperatures are melting ice roads, forcing villages in Alaska to move, shortening growing seasons in Africa, and causing oil companies to change the way they drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Business on a Warmer Planet

“Arctic sea ice melting past an irrevocable tipping point…” - Excerpt from Bill McKibben.   

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National Geographic Voices - Bill McKibben            

The Voices section of the August 2006 edition of National Geographic Magazine features an essay by Bill McKibben titled, “A Deeper Shade of Green”.  In it McKibben powerfully argues that American Environmentalism so far has ”flunked” when it comes to adequately dealing with global warming. He says, “Environmentalism’s method of handling global warming is flawed… we might need a new idea.”

“They are a strange fowle, or rather a miscellaneous creature, of Beast, Bird and Fish” - in 1776 French Naturalist Fierre Sonnerat, on a visit to the South Sandwich Islands, said this about the thousands of Penguins he found.

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Underworld

The December 2006 issue of National Geographic Magazine  features this article by Jennifer Holland. Have you seen the movie Happy Feet? We at the Green Arch Design Group, LLC see this as the real Happy Feet. The movie said nothing about the threat Global Warming presents as rising temperatures threaten “the Southern Ocean’s krill-based food chain.” Penquins & Global Warming

“Everything hinges on our ability to somehow gracefully make the jump from fossil fuel to … something else,” - excerpt from Bill McKibben article in Sierra Magazine. 

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Energizing America

The January/February 2007 issue of Sierra Magazine features an article by Bill McKibben titled ”Energizing America”. In it McKibben argues, ”now it’s time to make the leap to safer, cleaner, climate-friendly alternatives”.

“Clean water and a healthy ocean are important to everyone…” - excerpt from Wyland Ocean Wisdom.

Click on the link below to purchase Wyland Ocean Wisdom

“To create this brilliant masterpiece, Wyland wrote over 500 affirmations, sutras and mantras over a ten-year period, and he has edited them down to over 100 perfect meditations and original brush art drawings for the twenty-first century.” - excerpt from Foreword by Mark Victor Hansen

“Only in today’s time have our great oceans become threatened, we must save man from himself…” - excerpt from Wyland Ocean Wisdom.

Click on the link below to purchase Wyland Ocean Wisdom

“To create this brilliant masterpiece, Wyland wrote over 500 affirmations, sutras and mantras over a ten-year period, and he has edited them down to over 100 perfect meditations and original brush art drawings for the twenty-first century.” - excerpt from Foreword by Mark Victor Hansen

“We have less than ten years to reverse course on global warming.” That’s the conclusion of writer Bill McKibben as he cites research by NASA climatologist James Hansen. 

Click on the link below to view the entire article.

National Geographic Voices - Bill McKibben

The Voices section of the August 2006 edition of National Geographic Magazine features an essay by Bill McKibben titled, “A Deeper Shade of Green”.  In it McKibben powerfully argues that American Environmentalism so far has ”flunked” when it comes to adequately dealing with global warming. He says, “Environmentalism’s method of handling global warming is flawed… we might need a new idea.”