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The number of organizations dealing with climate change is in the hundreds, if not the thousands. Here are several prominent groups with excerpts from their "about" blurb and a number of "what you can do" webpages.
Environmental Groups
Environmental Posts
The "Global Warming 101" series of four posts explains what is behind the rise in global temperatures, what are the expected effects and what we can do to mitigate the impact.
Global Warming 101 Part I - Aug. 21, 2011
Greenhouse gases and their effects
Global Warming 101 Part II - Aug. 22, 2011
The Carbon Dioxide Balance - why the relatively low amount of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions is doing so much damage
Effects and Complications - why things could be even worse than you thought
Worst Case Scenario - why you really need to hope this doesn't happen
Global Warming 101 Part III - Aug. 25, 2011
Disaster time frame and the mitigation effect of reducing greenhouse gases
Global Warming 101 Part IV - Aug. 27. 2011
Greenhouse gas "sinks", engineering and technology solutions
Silent Spring, Nuclear Winter, Gaia and Medea - Aug. 15, 2011
2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, an event that launched the modern environmental movement and altered human history...
Turning the Clock Back - Aug. 19, 2011
An aol-care blogger recently wrote that she couldn't believe we were again talking about fighting for clean air and water. Republican politicians, always on the lookout for ways to help their corporate sponsors, have been making loud noises about cutting funds for the EPA....
Now That's Hot - May 8, 2012
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the past twelve months (from May 2011 through April 2012) were the hottest ever recorded for the contiguous 48 states.
Rio + 20 - June 12, 2012
Twenty years ago, the United Nations held a major conference in Rio de Janeiro to address various ecological and development issues - among them, global climate change, alternatives to fossil fuels, the development of public transportation and the growing scarcity of water....The "Rio + 20" conference on sustainable development will be held in Rio de Janeiro from June 20 to June 22. Whether this Rio conference will have more success than the first on changing the behavior of nations is debatable...
Past the Point of No Return - Nov. 24, 2012
Climate change deniers are put on official notice. Stating that greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 20% since 2000, a recent United Nations report indicated that it was unlikely that the goal of stalling global warming at the 2 degree Celsius level by 2020 could be met...
The $60 Trillion Climate Time Bomb - Aug. 9, 2013
In an August 2011 post, I mentioned the severe impact on the global warming process from the release of methane trapped in ice and ocean sediment in arctic regions....In July, the journal Nature published a study of the economic impact of the release of methane from a 50 billion ton reservoir of methane on the East Siberian shelf....
Yup...it's still warming Oct. 2, 2013
...Moving on then, maybe we should turn our attention to another area of right-wing and special interest misinformation - climate change. Last week's release of the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report provides stronger evidence than ever that human activity is seriously impacting global warming....
Earth Day - Apr. 20, 2012
Ever since mankind first orbited our planet more than 50 years ago, "Spaceship Earth" has been a popular image. Viewed from the near reaches of space, the Earth is seen as the oasis that it is...
Our successes range from protecting millions of acres of wilderness to helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. More recently, we've made history by leading the charge to move away from the dirty fossil fuels that cause climate disruption and toward a clean energy economy.
Natural Resources Defense Council
Our priorities include:
Curbing Global Warming and Creating the Clean Energy Future
Reviving the World's Oceans
Defending Endangered Wildlife and Wild Places
Protecting Our Health by Preventing Pollution
Ensuring Safe and Sufficient Water
Fostering Sustainable Communities
Greenpeace is the leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future...
"What You Can Do"
Today, people in 192 countries are celebrating Earth Day. Human-induced climate change is happening and regular readers of this blog will recall that it's become almost de rigeur for science-fiction writers to propose some climate catastrophe or another as background for their near-future stories. Other major threats to the world ecosystems include pollution and overfishing. I've pulled a number of pictures from the Web that remind us what is at stake if we don't get our act together on the environment....
Environmental Developments Mar. 12, 2014
The much-publicized but little-watched Senate "all-nighter" to raise awareness on the environment has come and gone...So in preparation for Earth Day, here are some environmental actions, study results, and recommendations from the last six months or so...
The first Earth Day in April, 1970 was celebrated shortly after James Lovelock began his work on the Gaia Hypothesis. He formulated the hypothesis in the 1960's as a result of work he had done for NASA on the detection of life on Mars. In February 1975, he wrote an article for New Scientist magazine with Sidney Epton called "The Quest for Gaia", wherein they explained and developed the hypothesis. It became Lovelock's life work and, in 2009, the then ninety-year-old scientist wrote The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.
The Sixth Extinction Sep 10, 2014
In the 525 million years or so since creatures with backbones first appeared on our planet, there have been five mass extinctions....Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction takes a look at the evidence that we may be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction - what may come to be known as the Anthropocene extinction....
Sunday Roundup Sep 28, 2014 (UN Climate Change Summit)
In advance of the UN Climate Change Summit, marches were held worldwide to demand action on global warming....The Summit itself featured speeches and commitments to action. Perhaps the most encouraging announcement was that of China's Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli who went a step further than China has ever gone before in announcing that the country's emissions of manmade greenhouse gases would peak "as early as possible."
The Republican War on Science Oct 22, 2014
Sunday Roundup Oct 26, 2014 (Climate Change)
With an eye on the global climate conference in Paris in 2015, the EU agreed on goals for greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Guardian reported on October 23: European leaders have struck a broad climate change pact obliging the EU as a whole to cut greenhouse gases by at least 40% by 2030...
The first part of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on global warming was released last week...Scientists stated with more certainty than ever that the global warming is caused primarily by human activities. (See October 2 post.) The implications are ominous if the nations of the world do not act in a coordinated, meaningful and intense manner to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change"...The second part of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report on global warming was released last week. Computer simulations backed by empirical data "repeatedly drew causal links between the punishing natural phenomena [observed in recent years] and extended human activity."
Sunday Roundup May 25, 2014 (Honeybee Colony Collapse)
Honeybees pollinate several hundred billion dollars worth of global crops every year. So when honeybees started dying off in Europe and North America at unprecedented rates in the 2000's, scientists worked to find the cause....
Sunday Roundup June 1, 2014 (Greenpeace and the Amazon)
Greenpeace has turned its focus once again towards the Amazon rainforest - specifically, the illegal logging there. Besides being one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world (an estimated one-quarter of all known land and fresh water species live there), the rainforest is also one of the world's largest "carbon sinks", thus playing a major role in reducing the impact of human-induced climate change....
The United States and China announced a historic agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions. The plan...involves a series of initiatives to be undertaken in partnership between the two countries...
Sunday Roundup Dec 14, 2014 (Lima Climate Conference)
Negotiators went into overtime and worked through Friday night trying to work out differences among the 195 countries attending the climate change conference in Lima, Peru, for the past two weeks. As negotiations continued, National Geographic presented 5 takeaways...
Coal Rules: Ten Things You Should Know Jun 2, 2014
The much-anticipated EPA rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants were released today. The rules call for an average 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from coal (against a 2005 base line) by 2030....As we await the lawsuits and the ongoing cries of pain from climate-change-deniers, here are 10 facts about coal, the environment, and the new law...
Updates and Briefs - Jul 23, 2014
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