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In Today’s Big Story at thetyee.ca perhaps the most interesting aspect was the (wisely) restrained reaction of Jack Layton – “It’s certainly incumbent on somebody proposing to use nuclear plants to provide the power for the oil sands to tell us where they are going to put the waste. And I don’t think that question has been answered.” It is important not to insist that it will always remain unanswered, and in fact finding a satisfactorily answer may be our only realistic hope for solving the CO2 problem.

The Tyee review of this movie (which I saw last weekend) is in my opinion off base.

The film is technically quite well done with effective cinematography and acting, but the premise is more than silly; in fact it is quite harmful. I am not referring primarily to the implausibility of sudden global unexplained human-specific infertility, but rather to the fact that the story would have us believe that decades of such infertility lead to massive refugee camps and violence everywhere and that our salvation lies in restoring our fertility. What bunk! The miracle of childbirth is all very nice, but now and for the foreseeable future the less often it happens the better.

What Al Gore Hasn’t Told You About Global Warming is a review on Alternet by David Morris of George Monbiot’s book ‘Heat’

A group of my colleagues at Langara College have been looking at the possibility of significantly increasing the attention paid to environmental sustainability – both in terms of our college’s physical operations and in terms of what we teach. Some feel that what is needed can be accomplished within our existing governance structures and others demand some new source of direction. Rather than be distracted by debating this in the abstract it would be better to push on and see what we can do with the present structure, and let any suggestions for change be informed by that experience.

• Award from national Climate Change Voluntary Challenge and Registry
• Article from Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada
• Another from OEE
• More from OEE
• status (gold) record at VCR/GHG Challenge Registry
• CS Workshops in partnership with CityGreen
• Report by Prism Engineering on Langara Project
• Evaluation by Campus Sustainability Assessment Project
• Reference to the CityGreen CS course at Coquitlam Environment Committee (see page 7 of this)
• CityGreen again (same link?)
• Langara cited as reference by Assn of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future
• CS brochure re CityGreen workshops
• Langara cited as example in BCIT environmental plan — see page 12
• Promotion at Lighthouse of CS course on energy efficient building
  
• Promotion at SolarBC of CS course on solar hot water
• Reference to our environmental footprint calculation in planning document for Slippery Rock university (see page

“. . .identifying several simple directions to focus on and then getting on with the work, would work best I think.”-LH http://csap.envs.wmich.edu/pages/bestpracticeevaluation2.htm http://www.wilson.edu/wilson/uploadedfiles/offices/academic_affairs/fulton_ctr/163-177-policy-steven%20doherty.pdf (see page http://www.ghgregistries.ca/challenge/cha_entity_e.cfm?no=2314 http://www.langara.bc.ca/news/archives/2004/news-040327-vcraward.html –

Carbon Footprint includes a “calculator” for estimating one’s personal contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere and suggests various ways of reducing or offsetting it. But the encouragement to “plant trees” (or pay for same) may be misguided, since it seems clear that it is the lifetime carbon sequestration that is being assigned for each tree so the instruction “plant 5 trees” means plant 5 trees every year AND make sure that they all grow to maturity and are never used for fuel.

RealClimate is a blog about climate science maintained primarily by Gavin Schmidt. It appears to be a forum for active discussion of current issues with input from a wide cross section of those active in the field.