China & India: Will devise a new Global System for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases and make it operational by 2020

Free Markets, Carbon Tax Best Way to Fight Climate Change: View - Businessweek: "The best instrument for coordinating climate-change efforts is the price of carbon. The impact of any carbon-abatement plan -- emission quotas, cap and trade, carbon taxes -- can be measured by its effect on this price. The aim should be to equalize worldwide a gradually rising price of carbon. As a matter of practical politics, this flexibility is essential. It would allow governments to more easily tailor their climate-change policies to political and economic circumstances, altering them on the run if need be. The price of carbon would provide an international gauge of their abatement efforts, so that peer pressure could be brought to bear. For most countries, the simplest and clearest way to hit the price target would be with an outright carbon tax. The economic benefits are well known: By letting markets work, a tax achieves a given amount of emissions abatement at the lowest cost. The world needs to cap its greenhouse gas emissions, but there’s no obligation to do this in the most expensive, painful or disruptive way."

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Tip: Stop the Stigma Habit & Help Everyone Achieved Balanced Mental Health

Stigma removes minorities from various avenues of competition. "It is associated with unemployment, low earnings, lack of housing, diminished self-esteem, weak social support, new disorders or repeat episodes of existing problems, etc. Stigma can be instrumental or institutional causing resource limitations and unsupportive policies. To the perpetrators, stigma plays functions of reducing prevalence of “undesirable” behaviours and thus providing a means of social control, enhancing personal or group self-esteem and alleviating discomfort and anxiety on the part of the “normal”. Stop stigma today."

'via Blog this'Stop stigma in mental health:

Solar Experiment:"We need 0.05% of the land to capture adequate sunlight (the entire Earth) in 4.5 hours (1.25 hours) to satisfy our needs for a year"

"Catching energy from the Sun is pretty simple. Sit in the sun on a cool day and benefit from its warmth. Situate your house so that south-facing windows can swallow sunlight and offset (or obviate) conventional sources of heat. Use thermal collectors for domestic hot water and/or interior heating. Stick a PV panel outside and it will generate electricity provided it is not placed face-down. Concentrate sunlight to heat a fluid and/or create steam for electricity production in a heat engine (possibly combined with thermal storage). Lots of options, when the sun shines."

'via Blog this'Solar vs. Wind - Who Wins? at Oil Price:

Of the 1370 W/m² incident on the upper atmosphere from the Sun, 30% is reflected straight away without pausing long enough to say hello. About 20% is absorbed in the atmosphere and clouds, and 50% gets absorbed at ground level. Note that 7% of the energy budget goes into conduction and rising air (separate phenomena; the latter relating to wind). Virtually no heat is able to conduct through the thick atmosphere, so really this figure is all about convection, or moving air. For comparison, the energy consumption (conversion) rate of the human race is about 13 TW (13 trillion Watts), which works out to an average of about 2,000 W per person on the globe (Americans are 10 kW). We can also divide by the area of the globe to get a power density of 0.025 W per square meter, or 0.09 W/m² if we just count land area.

If 50% of the incoming solar radiation makes its way to the ground, then we have about 700 W/m² for the average terrestrial square meter facing the Sun. But the Sun puts this onto the projected ?R² area of the Earth (the disk of the Earth as seen from the Sun), while the actual 3-D globe has an area of 4?R². So we must divide by four to get the flux per unit area of actual terra firma, yielding 170 W/m². We can think of this factor of four as being made up of a factor of two for day and night, plus a factor of two because the Sun is not overhead all the time, resulting in a loss of intensity per square meter at the ground. A panel tilted to the site latitude can compensate for some of the slanted-sun-angle loss (for high latitudes, the ground always suffers from this geometric dilution, even at “high” noon), so that the ½ factor becomes 2/?, or 0.64, representing a global 30% boost over horizontal panels. In this scheme, we get 220 W/m² for our latitude-tilted panel (nearly independent of latitude, weather notwithstanding). The tilted panels will require more land to avoid self-shadowing, so that the amount of land area needed is stuck with the pre-adjusted value of 170 W/m².

Note how much bigger the solar potential is than our demand of 0.09 W/m² of land area. This implies that we need only 0.05% of the land to capture adequate sunlight, or that enough sunlight strikes land (the entire Earth) in 4.5 hours (1.25 hours) to satisfy our needs for a year. That’s a powerful resource!

But once we factor in efficiency—say 10% for simplicity and conservatism—we need ten times the land area computed above. Still, it’s a pittance. I have used the following graphic before to illustrate how much land would be occupied by solar photovoltaics (PV) at 8% efficiency to produce 18 TW of electrical output (note that about half of the 13 TW consumption today is lost in heat engines, so 18 TW of electricity more than satisfies our current demand)

Durban Climate Change Conference: More than 120 Countries now Support a Timetable towards a Legally Binding Agreement

"The world is within reach of a new deal to stop global warming", said Chris Huhne, the UK’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary. That obviously puts a substantial amount of pressure on countries that are not signed up to our vision and a number of them are beginning to back it and you saw that today with the US coming up and saying it’s in favour of a road map,” he said. “A comprehensive global agreement is not beyond our reach,” he said. “We can achieve when we display flexibility and the will to compromise. If we continue to choose co-operation over conflict, we can show that all nations are indeed united by a common ambition: to protect our planet and our people from the dangers of climate change.” The EU want a deal in place by 2015 but sources close to the talks say the date could be pushed back and emissions are unlikely to start coming down before 2020. Joseph Alcamo, the UN Environment programme chief scientist, pointed out that emissions need to peak within the decade or the world will be “locked in” to dangerous global warming."

'via Blog this'Durban Climate Change conference: world close to deal on global warming - Telegraph:

Tip: EXERCISE regularly, Physical inactivity, a risk factor for death from heart disease & stroke

"Researchers said changes in BMI might have a significant effect on death risk in obese people. A healthy score is between 18 and 25; overweight is 25 to less than 30; obese is 30 and over. Many people don’t realize they are actually obese or near that mark.

In Indiana, the obesity level just went over 30 percent (30.2 percent). Another third is overweight. So, we have a long way to go. But, hopefully, some of these people are at least exercising regularly so they are lessening their chances of dying an early death."

'via Blog this'Good news for overweight exercisers! | Fit For Life blog | The Indianapolis Star | IndyStar.com:

Carbon War Room: Solutions to Energy Problems have to come from New Technologies

"Business titan Sir Richard Branson, philanthropist extraordinaire, Chairman of Virgin Air, and an early investor in the green energy sector, has taken a lead role in the global search for biofuels for use in the airline industry. Appearing on MSNBC earlier this week, Mr. Branson laid out the rationale for investment in the green energy sector, and his long term commitment to the effort through the creation of the Carbon War Room. The Carbon War Room is a global, independent non-profit that brings together complementary NGO's, entrepreneurs, corporate entrepreneurs, financiers, and the climate change community to focus on gigaton-scale, market-based solutions to climate change."

'via Blog this'VG Energy Highlighted in Branson's "Carbon War Room" Jet Fuel Initiative - MarketWatch:

Update: Fishing Industry on Climate Change: Success happens when there is right mix of fishing regulations to rebuild depleted ecosystems

"Participants in Durban could offer a significant boost to fishing communities by committing to facilitate good resource governance and build adaptive capacity. Specifically, this means nurturing the social organization, assets, and learning that will provide a basis for adaptation. It also means that aid and fisheries contract money need to be fair, reflect the value of the fish, and promote social capacity development and improved ecosystems management. Additionally, most developed countries have failed to meet their international commitments of contributing just 0.7 percent of their Gross National Product (GNP) to international aid. New commitments to support the Green Climate Fund—created in part to help developing countries cope with climate change—also appear to be soft and need to be a higher priority. Honoring these commitments is necessary to move beyond disaster relief and toward the proactive assistance that will help both people and ecosystems successfully confront the growing threat of a warming planet."

'via Blog this'Global Fishing Communities Putting the Heat on Climate Change Talks – News Watch: