Blog Action Day '09 Climate Change

I have really struggled with what to write for this year’s Blog Action Day topic, Climate Change. I discovered to my personal embarrassment that climate change is something I know is occurring, and know the skeleton of, but don’t really know THAT much about the nuts and bolts of it! Well, how do you like them apples?

So, rather than quoting a bunch of articles and trying create some semi-coherent blog post about said articles I thought I would share some of the resources I found while trying to figure out what the heck to write about.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a kids page on Climate Change. Cool! Climate Change Kids Site – if kids can understand it than certainly I can, right? here is the "adult" page, too.

Grist Magazine – a favorite online magazine of mine - has a page devoted to climate change as well as a page to track what is happening with the Senate Climate Bill - Climate Citizens.

7:21 p.m. - Grist just posted on Blog Action Day!

Given the awesome Ken Burns’ National Park pieces that have been playing on PBS non-stop and my LOVE of Acadia, I thought this piece by David Frey, National Parks are a Climate Change Canary, was very interesting.

And finally, here is a list of books on climate change. Before I decided how much time I wanted to/was able to realistically invest in this post I consider reading up and found this useful list: Books about climate and climate change. I read reviews of all the books I thought I might read and narrowed it down to The Change in the Weather: People, Weather, and the Science of Climate by William K. Stevens. You can read a compelling review here. My library has this book and I plan on picking it up today (along with the Omnivore’s Dilemma!).

I hope this post, given it wasn’t about dogs, agility, or herding, made you think for a least a moment about the impact we are having on the climate and the impact climate change is having on our world

The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe.

-Barack Obama