The success of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative shows we can be green and create good jobs. By George Lapointe and Tom Tietenberg Portland Press Herald op-ed We know that the threat of climate disruption to Maine is real, in part because we are experiencing early warning signs. The science is also clear that the Read More
climate change
Puffin Chicks In Gulf Of Maine’s Largest Colony Starve To Death At Record Rate
By Colin Woodard, staff writer Portland Press Herald news story Machias Seal Island, home of the largest puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine, has had the worst breeding season ever recorded, with the vast majority of chicks starving to death in their burrows. The disaster followed a sudden drop in the puffins’ food supply Read More
The Value of Carbon Capture and Sequestration as an Ecosystem Service
by Stephen Mulkey for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s lifecycle.” Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) speaking in the House on Earth Day 2009 “Essentially these communities of organisms are our life support system.” Hal Mooney, Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology, Stanford University, Read More
Rising Sea Levels Could Wash Away $3.1B in Maine Property
By Darren Fishell Bangor Daily News news story If sea levels rise six feet by the year 2100 as projected, that would put an estimated $3.1 billion in Maine residential real estate under water. The property site Zillow matched up its proprietary data on current home values with federal projections of how sea level rise Read More
The Integrity of Ecosystems
by Stephen Mulkey for the Natural Resources Council of Maine “An essential paradox of wilderness conservation is that we seek to preserve what must change.” Steward Pickett and P.S. White 1985 “We must focus our attention on the rates at which changes occur, understanding that certain changes are natural, desirable, and acceptable, while others are not.” Read More
What Qualifies as Scientific Authority?
“Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) “…this 97% [of climate scientists accepting human-caused global warming], that doesn’t mean anything.” Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Stephen Colbert, satirist Recently I sat dumbfounded watching Marco Rubio tell South Floridians about all Read More
Higher Education in the Environmental Century
“….what we’re doing today with greenhouse gas emissions — which is just a moment when you look at the geophysical timescales — has consequences for decades, centuries, millennia.” —Ricarda Winkelmann, Climate Scientist, Potsdam Institute, 2016 “Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring its natural systems, eradicating poverty, stabilizing population and climate, and, above all, Read More
Tourism, Conservation, Public Health Experts Urge Support for Clean Air and Climate Protections for Acadia National Park and Region
Say ecosystems, public health, and economy all depend on effective Clean Air Act protections NRCM News Release Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park – With one of Maine’s most famous vistas at their back—the mountainous rocky coast of Acadia National Park—diverse speakers urged support for two important air quality standards that are needed to protect the Read More
Carbon Capture and Sequestration the Old Fashioned Way
This week the mainstream media and many of the social media outlets have hailed the experiment in Iceland that has demonstrated the ability to capture CO2 from the air and turn it into rock. The Guardian proclaimed “CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough” and the journal Science headlined “Inject baby, inject!”. Read More
