Climate Change

WJZ meteorologist Bernadette Woods is leaving the CBS-owned station to join a non-profit firm in New Jersey focused on climate change, she said Wednesday night. Woods, who has been with WJZ for seven years, said she will remain at the station helping with the transition for the next month. After that, she, her husband and their two children will be moving to Princeton, N.J., where she will join Climate Central as staff meteorologist. "I'm very excited about the opportunity in Princeton," she said.

The latest word on climate change is not good — world emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent last year to set a new record, according to the International Energy Agency. At this pace, the agency reports, global temperatures could rise a startling 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, which would be disastrous for all nations. And yet this latest report has received minimal attention in the United States, at least outside the climate science community and its usual advocates.

Teachers in Maryland are about to get new help and encouragement to talk about the touchy topic of global warming in their classrooms. The National Science Foundation announced Wednesday that it is awarding $5.8 million for improving climate-change education in Maryland and Delaware through a partnership including universities and school systems from both states. The two-state initiative is one of six such education projects the foundation is funding across the country and in the nation's Pacific island territories.

For too long, many environmentalists have been ambivalent about nuclear energy. It conjures fears: meltdowns, cancers, Chernobyl, Fukushima, overtones of nuclear bombs. Yet, we also know that nuclear power provides 70 percent of all the greenhouse gas-free electrical power in the United States (hydropower, in which dams block many great rivers like the Susquehanna to fish migration, provides much of the rest). Neither does nuclear energy produce the nitrogen oxides of fossil fuels that are a major Chesapeake pollutant, or the mercury from coal plants that contaminate so much of our seafood.

The climate-transformed planet of 2100 offers, as Mike Tidwell states, little reason for optimism ("The hottest issue," Dec. 15). Further gloom is warranted by the fact that a plurality of Americans have been egregiously misled by the industry-fueled message of triumphant consumerism and climate-change denial prevalent in our media. In the fantasy land inhabited by conservative denialists, the notion of climate change as a liberal conspiracy to enact a one-world government (forced re-education camps for SUV owners!

The pace at which the world's glaciers are melting can't hold a candle to the rate at which public acceptance of climate change is losing ground. Two years ago, about 7 out of 10 Americans linked greenhouse gases to global warming, but today it's closer to a 50-50 split. There are any number of reasons for this, ranging from the "inconvenience" of climate change policy during an economic recession to the growing partisan divide over the science of it. The fact that Republicans willingly nominated a presidential candidate in 2008 whose position on climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions was not much different from his Democratic opponent's seems largely forgotten today.

Warning that the water is rising in the Chesapeake Bay, scientists and activists urged Tuesday that Congress act to reduce climate-warming pollution that threatens to flood bayfront communities and worsen the fish-suffocating "dead zones" that plague North America's largest estuary. With a House vote possible Friday on a bill that would seek to curtail greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, two natural resources subcommittees held a field hearing Tuesday at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater to learn more about what global warming might mean for coastal regions like the Chesapeake.

WASHINGTON -- The doors swung open and he made his entrance as cameras clicked. The man who was called a wooden politician, was denied the presidency and was derided as "Ozone Man" was coming home to the Capitol. But this time they called him a movie star and likened him to a prophet. Al Gore left Washington seven years ago after the disputed 2000 election. He returned yesterday as the subject of an Academy Award-winning film, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, a 58-year-old who can share a stage with Leonardo DiCaprio and manage to be the center of attention.

The latest word on climate change is not good — world emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent last year to set a new record, according to the International Energy Agency. At this pace, the agency reports, global temperatures could rise a startling 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, which would be disastrous for all nations. And yet this latest report has received minimal attention in the United States, at least outside the climate science community and its usual advocates.

Kudos to Mike Tidwell for his clear commentary explaining why we need a revenue-neutral carbon tax to reduce emissions and slow climate change ("Forecast calls for pain," Feb. 6). I'm convinced, but how are the American people going to convince Congress to pass such a tax? Readers should go to Washington, D.C. on Feb. 17 for a noon rally and march assembling on the mall near the Washington Monument. The goal of the march is to let President Barack Obama know we have his back on his plans to impose more EPA regulations, to deny permission to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and whatever other environmental orders he chooses to issue with his executive authority.

A review of 12,000 papers on climate change in the May 15 issue of "Environmental Research Letters," found that 97 percent of scientists attribute climate change to human activities. Although we're unlikely to reverse climate change, we can mitigate its effects by reducing our driving, energy use, and meat consumption. Yes, meat consumption. A 2006 U.N. report estimated that meat consumption accounts for 18 percent of man-made greenhouse gases. A 2009 article in the respected World Watch magazine suggested that it may be closer to 50 percent.

Even the most jaded observer must acknowledge there's something admirable about the desire of so many living on Smith Island to see their community survive and prosper. Residents of this marshy (and shrinking in both population and real estate) archipelago on the lower Eastern Shore have had to overcome much in recent years, particularly as their chief means of livelihood, harvesting the seafood bounty of the Chesapeake Bay, has declined. But it's one thing to admire the hard work, independence and faith of Smith Island's residents - who number a mere 276, according to the 2010 Census - and it's another to deny the reality of their circumstances.

Tim Wheeler 's report on the future of Smith Island and the state's idea to buy residents out so they may relocate tells a heartbreaking story of people whose attachment to the island goes back many years, 400 years in some cases ("Smith Islanders debating a state buyout proposal," May 13). If the buyout is taken by just some residents, it may make life untenable on the island for those who want to stay. They have organized a letter-writing campaign to fight the buyout idea. It is very important to fight climate change on the local level.

To the age-old question of how many conservatives does it take to screw in a light bulb, we now have a definitive answer: Just one, but it will take him weeks to chase down a vintage incandescent bulb because he won't touch an energy-efficient one. At least that's the obvious conclusion to draw from a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, put together by researchers from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, asked hundreds of people to pass judgment on light bulb options.

I was happy to see that National Aquarium CEO John Racanelli wrote about the important activities that we, as individuals and as a society, can do to protect the environment, without once mentioning the impossible goal of "stopping climate change" ("Take back the planet," April 22). Sadly, Earth Day Network, the organization behind Earth Day, is not so practical. Their website for 2013 Earth Day focused so intensely on climate change that one would think they were promoting "Climate Day. " This is a big problem for Earth Day's future.

Today is Earth Day , a day when environmentalists and concerned citizens around the world demonstrate their caring for the health of their communities, the natural world and the planet. Forty-three years ago, the first Earth Day drew an estimated 20 million Americans into the streets, into parks and onto campuses for teach-ins and protests over environmental degradation.  Organizers today claim the observance has gone global, with more than 1 billion participants. Earth Day helped launch the modern environmental movement, which provided public pressure for passage of many of the environmental laws we have today.  Like the movement, its focus has shifted from fighting obvious air and water pollution to knottier issues around how and where we live, and what we consume, most notably climate change.

Thanks for your article on climate change and rising sea levels ("Survey shows Americans wary of sea level rising," March 29.) Global warming is driving major change in sea levels. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on climate science, projected an annual sea level rise of less than 2 millimeters per year. But from 1993 through 2006, the oceans actually rose 3.3 millimeters per year, more than 50 percent above projections, according to Scientific American magazine.