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Ecological Internet (EI) is launching our 2008 mid-year fund-raiser during which we must raise $70,000 to remain in operation. Please make your tax-deductible donation now at http://www.climateark.org/donate/. Doing so now is best as the first $15,000 in donations will be doubled by a matching grant, and once you have donated, we promise not to bother you again during this fund-raiser. Every May and November we launch a six week donation campaign that meets most of our modest costs for computers, bandwidth and salaries. Tax-deductible gifts and tithes can be made with credit cards and by mail. EI depends upon YOU and others that love the Earth to continue to succeed.

The Earth system and all life are under threat as never before — forest decimation, climate change, water scarcity and ocean decline are some of the threats destroying our planet. Non-profit Ecological Internet specializes in the use of the Internet to defend the Earth from these threats. EI’s mission is to empower the global movement for environmental sustainability by providing information retrieval tools, portal services, analysis that aid in the conservation of global ecosystems.

Bill McKibben [search] writes in “Civilization’s last chance” [ark] the best summing up of the known threats facing humanity now from climate change if major emission cuts are not pursued immediately. His latest campaign efforts highlight the number 350, which he calls “the most important number on Earth” because of scientific understanding that if carbon emissions are not stablized at 350 ppm, it will not be possible “to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed.”

It has been noted here that at 383 ppm we are already well past this threshold, and thus achieving 350 ppm will require gargantuan efforts if we are to survive much less prosper. The piece is a clarion call that long predicted limits to growth have arrived and the fate of civilization depends upon urgest massive emission cuts now, tomorrow, next year and certainly well before 2050 as is being proposed [ark | search].

Much ado has been made [ark] regarding a study last week in Nature which found that global warming may continue to slow or even cool some places over the coming decade. This was seized upon by all sorts of climate skeptics [search] and charlatans to suggest climate change is not so important after all. I have three brief responses. Firstly, the rise in average global temperature is only one way to characterize change in atmospheric patterns and processes. It is becoming apparent that broader extremes around temperature averages as demonstrated by unusual weather events — including quite possibly the cyclone in Myanmar — may be the greater harm. This is why “climate change” has long been recognized as a better term than “global warming” to communicate these dynamics.

Secondly, as RealClimate points out in their post “Global Cooling - Wanna Bet?” — this study and other recent coverage of a lack of warming in recent years are flawed because they compare long term climate change to short term weather variability [search]. There have been lulls, peaks and troughs in the plainly evident past human-caused global warming and their will be as we go forward.

It is gravely unethical and ecologically devastating to expand production of biofuels by allowing land to be stolen from local Afro-Colombian communities; and at the expense of Colombia’s ancient primary rainforests, food security, water resources and regional climate

TAKE ACTION! Plantation expansion for agrofuels remains a major threat to the lives, livelihoods and the environment of Afro-Colombian and other peasant communities in Chocó, Colombia. This is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, with large areas of rainforest now facing destruction. The Chocó rainforests [search] are home to 7,000 to 8,000 species, including 2,000 endemic plant species and 100 endemic bird species. Even before the current palm oil and agrofuel expansion, 66% had been destroyed. Communities and rainforests are under threat from palm oil and sugar cane expansion for agrofuels in other parts of Colombia, too, for example around Tumaco, near the border with Ecuador, in Santander and in Magdalena. If agrofuels — growing food for fuel — continue to expand in Colombia, food prices are bound to rise and the nation’s food security erode as is happening around the world. Please ask the government to stop and reverse those policies and to protect Colombia’s communities and rich environment from further destruction for agrofuels. TAKE ACTION!

New York Times: In 1945, when Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, Mikhail M. Kozhov began keeping track of what was happening under the surface of Lake Baikal, the ancient Siberian lake that is the deepest and largest body of fresh water on earth. Every week to 10 days, by boat in summer and over the ice in winter, he crossed the lake to a spot about a mile and a half from Bolshie Koty, a small village in the piney woods on Baikal’s northwest shore. There, Dr. Kozhov, a professor at Irkutsk State …

Associated Press: They drive hybrid cars, if they drive at all, shop at local stores, if they shop at all and pay off their credit cards every month, if they use them at all. They may have disposable income, but whatever they make, they live below their means, in a conscious effort to tread lightly on the earth. They are a new breed of Gen Xers and Ys, Young and Wealthy but Normal, or Yawns. The acronym comes from the Sunday Telegraph of London, which noted that an increasing number of …

Telegraph: Never has the challenge of saving the world felt as simple as it does right now. Sitting on the sofa in front of me, Jeffrey Sachs is leaning back, gingerly sipping his coffee and sweeping away some of the most intractable problems facing our planet with the barest waft of his palm. Poverty and a billion starving people in Africa? Whisked away like dust. Overpopulation and water shortages? Waft, waft. Global warming and climate change? A little brush and they’re gone. It would …

Asia Times: China in recent months has taken center stage in the international debate over global warming. It has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and it became developing nations’ diplomatic champion at the recent United Nations climate negotiations in Bali. Now China may become the target of a full-fledged trade war that could destroy, or perhaps rescue, the chances of bringing rich and poor nations together to fight global warming. The focus on …

Independent: Tropical insects rather than polar bears could be among the first species to become extinct as a result of global warming, a study has found. Insects in the tropics are already living at the limit of their temperature range and any further increases could quickly kill them off with huge repercussions for tropical habitats, which rely on insects for everything from pollination to waste disposal. Scientists have found that a rise in average temperatures in the tropics of just 1C or 2C …

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Grape growers are being warned to take climate change more seriously. A visiting American academic, Professor Greg Jones, has warned that wine grape-growing will suffer greatly from the effects of climate change. South Australian Wine Industry Association chief executive, Brian Smedley, thinks only some growers will modify their irrigation techniques because many do not believe in climate change. "There is a need to consider what’s happening every day and to …