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EcoVersity
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Santa Fe, NM 87505
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Ecoversity is a non-profit educational center which explores and demonstrates concepts of sustainable living, ecological design, and responsibility for the wise stewardship of the Earth.
Established in 1999 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ecoversity focuses on practices and solutions designed to regenerate the Earth and revitalize the human spirit.

Here is the story of Charles David Keeling, who began tracking atmospheric CO2 in the mid-fifties and whose son continues the project today, producing the hard data that has so unnerved the scientific community, represented by the Keeling Curve of atmospheric CO2 concentration made familiar by Al Gore in his movie and book titled "An Inconvenient Truth". It is also the story of the history of our growing understanding of the threat increasing CO2 emissions pose to the stability of the climate in which we humans have evolved over the millennia.

"When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. . . By 2005, the year he died, the number had risen to 380 parts per million."
On Dec 11 of this year, the carbon dioxide level was at 390 and rising. (NYT: A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning)

Airports in Europe are in chaos as arctic cold and snow snarls travel for the second year in a row. Is Arctic warming causing severe winters in Europe? More on 2010 extreme weather and it's hypothesized causes in Case Focus / 2010 Record Warming.

Summing up the results of
the International Year of Biodiversity
2010 has officially been the International Year of Biodiversity, with several important UN policy conventions reporting, culminating in the Nagoya Conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October. Sobered perhaps by the reported lack of progress since the CBD was set up in 2002, and by the failure of the Copenhagen climate change conference last winter, delegates in Nagoya managed to reach a breakthrough agreement in the last days of the conference. Ahmed Djoghlaf, the Convention on Biological Diversity's Executive Secretary, said in the press release: "History will recall that it was here in Nagoya that a new era of living in harmony was born and new global alliance to protect life on earth was established." Read about the issues and policy decisions reached in our Case Focus coverage.

The Symphony of Science
Mashups of 'Cosmos' and 'Life on Earth' beautifully melodified with heavenly chill music. What a wonderful project!
"The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. Here you can watch music videos, download songs, read lyrics and find links relating to the messages conveyed by the music." -SymphonyofScience.com
Watch "Symphony of Science: The Unbroken Thread", with Attenborough, Goodall, and Sagan.

Extreme weather, infrastructure and food supply
Over the last 12 months we've witnessed a high number of extreme weather events worldwide, record storms, record droughts, downpours and flooding, record snowfalls, heat waves and deep-freezes. Consensus among scientists is that this is due to "more energy in the system" - i.e. global warming, and that these will only increase in frequency and strength over the coming years. One thing that's clear is that these events have serious and sometimes unpredicted effects on infrastructure. Leaving aside the more dramatic destruction of cyclones, floods and fires, in the recent bout of sub-zero weather in the US, natural gas pumping stations in Texas failed, leaving tens of thousands of people here in Northern New Mexico without heating gas during the coldest nights in a half century. And 'infrastructure' is also food-production infrastructure: many natural gas heated greenhouses were a loss during the same extreme cold, leaving many growers with little to sell at local markets. Meanwhile, in the midwest and northeast, roofs were collapsing under the weight of the snow, including those of barns and livestock buildings. In one case, 85,000 chickens were crushed and frozen.
Paul Krugman writes: "We're in the midst of a global food crisis- the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils . . . While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we'd expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate- which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning." (Droughts, Floods and Food, Feb 6, 2011)
The planet's recent extreme weather episodes have shown the diverse breaking points of a human infrastructure already in need of overhaul. And we'll have to do more than just refurbish and replace- we'll have to assure a more robust infrastructure, capable of handling even more severe weather outbreaks. As Bill McKibben said in his recent book Eaarth, "We imagine we still live back on that old planet, that the disturbances we see around us are the old random and freakish kind. But they're not. It's a different place. A different planet."

Update New York, Feb. 10 - UN: Invest in Natural Disaster Risk Reduction
"Natural disasters last year set a record for lives lost and infrastructure destroyed, the UN General Assembly acknowledged Wednesday during its first-ever debate on disaster risk reduction. With increasing risk from extreme weather events triggered by climate change, the 192-nation UN body urged investments now to reduce the toll of deaths and damage by building safer schools, hospitals and cities . . . " (story)

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Assessing Cancun COP16
Cancun Report

Recent Updates:
News and Resources
Case Focus: 2010 Hot Year
Case Focus: Climate Chaos
Biomagic
EcoVersity TV
Books of Note
CF: Copenhagen and Tiquipaya

Recently at Ecoversity Santa Fe

Affiliated Blogs:
Biomagic
Monday's Poem
Jeff Harbour
Vortex-Eco
Heraclitus Report

Bioneers Conference Oct 15-18
The annual Bioneers conference is held this weekend in San Rafael, CA. More presenter information and webcasting links at Bioneers.org.
We will be posting reports from our correspondent at the conference on this page.

Oct 17: Conference Plenary Session
Oct 16: Conference Opening
Oct 15: Pre-Conference Farm Tour

Recent Press:

Transitions Radio
Interview 5/12/10: Ecoversity's Jeff Harbour with Alan Hutner for Transitions Radio (to be broadcast on KBAC 98.1FM) (listen)

Santa Fe New Mexican 11/28/08
"A New Energy Frontier"

KSFR: Diego Mulligan Interviews
- Mar 24 2009: Diego interviews Andrew Fikiforuk, author of Tar Sands, and Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zone, with Ecoversity's Jeff Harbour accompanying. (download mp3)
-Interview with Ecoversity's Jeff Harbour and Willem Malten, 12/30/08 (mp3)
-Interview with Alphonz Viszolay 12/16/08 (mp3)

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