Kalinaw Mindanao Movement Inc., Environmetal Committee Affairs

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Mail all environmental concern/s to:

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Kalinaw Mindanao Movement Inc.,

Office of the Chairman, Environmental Committee Affairs

MS. MARICRIS MORENO

#074, Zone-10 Patag, Cagayan de Oro City

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Date: March 20,2009

UMC 2009-003 series 2009

From: The Office of the President

To all : Board of Directors, Chairman’s and volunteers/members

Subject:Earth Hour Global Event.

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The office of the President (K-Mindanao) thru its Environmental Committee affairs urge every Board of Directors, officers, members, volunteer and to all citizen of the land, to please get involved in campaigning against global warming.At 8:30 PM on 28 March 2009, cities and towns all over the world will switch off their lights for one hour— EARTH HOUR—sending a powerful global message that it is possible to take action on global warming. You can help and participate in this global call to action on global warming by switching off your lights during Earth Hour, and do more by getting more and more people to make a difference on climate change.For Local Government Units:• Switch off lights in major thoroughfares and landmarks in your areas of jurisdiction during Earth Hour, if and when possible.

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• Mobilize your communities to switch off their lights in their households.

• Mobilize stakeholders in organizing Earth Hour events in your city or community.

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For Businesses:

• Switch off your corporate signages and/or majority or all of the lights at your headquarters and facilities during Earth Hour.

• Encourage your employees to switch off lights in their households during Earth Hour.

• Place standard Earth Hour banners/streamers in your building facade and facilities that are seen or accessed by the public as part of awareness building.

• Use your communication channels to promote Earth Hour.

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For the Church/NGOs/Civil Society/Academe:

• Encourage your networks and communities to switch off the lights in their households during EarthHour.

• Mobilize your networks and communities to participate at the Earth Hour Countdown Event to be held at the SM Mall of Asia on March 28, 2009, from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM.

• Organize your own Earth Hour event in your community or locality to widen the reach of the campaign, and relate this event with your own environmental programs and other advocacies.

• Use various communication channels to promote Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a major call to action for every individual, community, business, and government to act and ensure a sustainable future.

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Join us as we unite with the world in taking a stand on global warming.For more information, please visit http://www.earthhour.org/.

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Please pass this message to your friend.

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Repost this smg.

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Thank you.

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From:

K-Mindanao online staff and

Office of the President.

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Date: March 29,2008

UMC 2008-0001 of Series 2008

From : The Office of the President
To all : Board of Directors, officers, members , volunteer and citizen of the land
Subject : Awareness on Global warming, Fight mother earth against global warming

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The office of the President (K-Mindanao) thru its Environmental Committee affairs urge every Board of Directors, officers, members, volunteer and to all citizen of the land, to pls get involve in campaigning against global warming.

This coming March 29,2008 at 8:00Pm to 9:00 PM calling all of you to turn off your light - Switching the lights off for an hour is not going to make a dent in global emissions," organiser Charles Stevens, of the environmental group WWF. "But what it does do is it is a great catalyst for much bigger changes. It engages people in the processes of becoming more energy efficient."

K-Mindanao responses to the call of international organization to fight global warming. As a youth, one of the millions things that we can do, to fight global warming is to educate our fellow citizen the effects, pros and con of this problem.


k-Mindanao support >>>'Earth Hour' founder Andy Ridley


please pass this message to all your friend. Repost this smg.


From:K-Mindanao online staff and
Office of the President

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Date: June 9,2008

Email from: John Conner
To Kamindanao@yahoo.com

aGrassroots Coalition Bulletin #3
IPCC 2007

For the past six years, some 2,500 of the world’s leading climatologists, glaciologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and specialists from dozens of other disciplines have trawled through all that has been published in the scientific literature on climate change and related matters.

It is clear that no one could go away with the impression that climate change is some conspiratorial hoax by the science establishment. Far from it. There is now overwhelming evidence to link man-made emissions of greenhouse gases over the past 250 years to dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate.

Within the climate change community, the IPCC has a reputation of being conservative and erring on the side of caution. It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of decision-making by committee, especially one that has come under huge pressure from various governments trying to downplay the scale of global warming. But what is interesting about their current report, the 2007 assessment, is just how far the panel has come in terms of recognizing one of the great unspoken fears of climate change – that it may be far worse than anyone can predict.

The IPCC now says it cannot rule out a rise of 10° F. or more this century. This would be cataclysmic given that the difference between global average temperatures now and during the last ice age 12,000 years ago is about the same, showing that a 10°F change would produce massive changes.

In addition to the human-caused temperature rise, the IPCC recognizes that there are many ‘positive feedbacks’ in the climate system, which could make matters worse as levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures continue to rise. Some of these feedbacks are pretty well understood, but many are not. And there may even be some that we don’t even know about. This is one of the reasons why there are still many levels of uncertainty when it comes to the future.

But whatever the uncertainties, one thing is clear. We are changing the face of the planet and we have a limited period of time in which to do something about it.

This 2007 report is the latest stage of a progression:
· In 1990, in its first report, the panel found evidence of global warming but said its cause could be natural as easily as human.
· In a landmark 1995 report, the panel altered its judgement, saying that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
· In 2001, it placed the probability that human activity caused most of the warming of the previous half-century at 66-90%.
· And now it has supplied an even higher, more compelling seal of numerical certainty – 90-99%, which is a frightening measure of Global Warming’s risk to humanity.

The panel said that the fact of global warming itself could now be considered ‘unequivocal’ and certified that 11 of the past 12 years were among the 12 warmest on record worldwide.

But perhaps the most striking aspect of the 2007 report is the sheer number and variety of directly observed ways in which global warming is already having a ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ impact on the Earth.

Changes in Recent Times

In temperate zones, the frequency of cold days, cold nights and frosts has diminished; the frequency of hot days, hot nights and heat waves has increased. Droughts in some parts of the world have become longer and more intense. Precipitation has decreased over the subtropics and most of the tropics, but increased elsewhere in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

There have been widespread increases in the frequency of ‘heavy precipitation events’, even in areas where overall precipitation has gone down. What this means is that in many places, it rains and snows less often but harder – well-documented characteristics of a warming atmosphere.

All these trends are rated 90 percent to 99 percent likely to continue.

Carbon Sinks and Positive Feedbacks

Predictions by international scientists that global warming will lead to a sharper rise in temperatures than previously thought make sobering reading. But what is the major factor that has driven their gloomy conclusion?

Dramatic changes in the way ecosystems absorb carbon dioxide will see oceans and vast swaths of land falter in their ability to draw up greenhouse gases, allowing them to build up in the atmosphere and cause more warming. The phenomenon is known as a positive feedback – where global warming drives changes in ecosystems that themselves cause more heating.

The IPCC report on climate change suggests average temperatures could rise more than expected – by as much as 10° F, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reined in. The IPCC upgraded its 2001 estimate that temperatures would rise by at most 8° F, because at the time the positive feedback mechanisms were either unknown or poorly understood. The report states “the broader range of models now available suggests stronger climate-carbon cycle feedbacks.”

One of the earliest feedback mechanisms identified was the melting of ice sheets and sea ice. The vast sheets of bright white ice reflect nearly 80% of sunlight that falls on them. But as they melt they reveal dark waters or soils beneath that absorb sunlight, warm up and cause yet more melting, which produces more warming, which produces more melting and so on.

The latest IPCC report for the first time includes climate models that take into account two other ecological feedback mechanisms that accelerate global warming: the ability of the oceans and land to absorb carbon. “The oceans and the soils and trees absorb half of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from human activity. With climate change, they will get worse and worse at doing that, so more of our human emissions of carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere.”

As the world warms up, the oceans become less able to dissolve carbon dioxide. Warmer oceans are also having an adverse effect on carbon-absorbing marine phytoplankton, the organisms that lie at the bottom of the aquatic food chain. As warming continues, scientists fear that phytoplankton will begin to die off, creating a positive feedback cycle where warmer oceans release more carbon which in turn leads to more warming.

At the same time, carbon dioxide that now fertilizes soils and boosts the growth of forests and other plants will reach a saturation point, so the land’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide will stall. As temperatures rise even further, many plants will become stressed by drought conditions and microbes in the soil will start breaking down organic matter from dead plants faster, meaning large areas of land will begin emitting carbon dioxide instead of acting as an overall sink for the gas.

Signs that soils were starting to become part of the problem of global warming emerged in 2005 when researchers discovered that a vast expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an unexpected thaw. The region, the world’s largest frozen peat bog, covering an area the size of France and Germany combined, had begun to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago.

A team of scientists from Tomsk State and Oxford Universities believe that this huge peat bog could begin to release billions of tons of methane locked up in the soil. Methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The team found that if methane seeped from the peat bogs over the next 100 years it would add 700 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. It would effectively double the atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10-25% increase in global warming.

What Would a 10°F Rise Mean?

Buried within the newly released IPCC report is an apocalyptic warning: if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates, the rise in temperatures by the end of the century could total 10° F. A rise in temperatures of this magnitude would catapult the planet into an extreme greenhouse state not seen for nearly 100 million years. It would cause a mass extinction of almost all life and probably reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles.

Life on a 10° F. warmer globe would be almost unimaginably hellish. A clue to just how unpleasant things can get is contained within a narrow layer of strata recently exposed at a rock quarry in China, dating from the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. For reasons that are still not properly understood, temperatures rose by 10° F over just a few thousand years, dramatically changing the climate and wiping out up to 95% of species alive at the time. The end-Permian mass extinction was the worst ever, the closest that this planet has ever come to becoming just another lifeless rock orbiting the sun.

Clues as to how the world would look in a long-term greenhouse state come from the Cretaceous period, 144-165 million years ago, when there was no ice on either pole and much of Europe and North America was flooded by the higher seas. Tropical crocodiles swam in the Canadian high Arctic, while breadfruit trees grew in Greenland. The oceans were incredibly hot: in the tropical Atlantic they may have reached 104° F, while at the North Pole itself the oceans were as warm as the Mediterranean is today. The tropics and sub-tropics were so hot that no forests grew, and desert belts probably extended into the heart of modern-day Europe.

During the Cretaceous period, species evolved over millions of years to be able to survive on a much hotter planet. Nowadays, very few species could survive such a sudden transition. Cold-adapted species like polar bears would obviously be an early casualty, and coral reefs would also disappear from the tropics. The Hadley Centre in the UK has predicted that the Amazonian Rainforest could start burning as early as 2050, gradually becoming desert as temperatures soar in the interior of South America. Ash and smoke would blanket much of the Southern Hemisphere, and nearly half of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity would be wiped out at a stroke.
How people might fare is anyone’s guess. With the tropics too hot to grow crops, and the sub-tropics too dry, billions of people would find themselves in areas of the planet which are essentially uninhabitable. This would probably include even southern Europe as the Sahara desert crosses the Mediterranean. As the ice caps melt, hundreds of millions will be forced to move inland due to rapidly rising seas. As world food supplies crash, the higher mid-latitude and sub-polar regions would become fiercely contested refuges.

Effects of Rises in Temperature

Consequences of temperature rises predicted by the 2007 IPCC report:
· A rise of 4.5° F. from pre-industrial levels: In North America, a new dust bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centered on Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north. Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru, disappearing Andean glaciers mean 10 million people face water shortages. A third of all species on the planet face extinction.
· A rise of 6.3° F. from pre-industrial levels: The Amazonian Rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America with ash and soot. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and huge amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. The entire Arctic ice cap disappears in the summer months, leaving the North Pole ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away.
· A rise of 8.1° F. from preindustrial levels: Rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic put Siberian permafrost in the melt-zone, releasing vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide. Global temperatures keep on rising rapidly in consequence. Melting ice caps and sea-level rises displace more than 100 million people. Heat waves and drought make much of the sub-tropics uninhabitable. Large-scale migrations even take place within Europe, where deserts are growing in southern Spain, Italy and Greece. More than half of wild species are wiped out, in the worst mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs.
· A rise of 10° F. from pre-industrial levels: The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up, eventually adding another 45 feet to global sea levels. If these temperatures are sustained, sea levels will be 220 feet higher than today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas, drying up the Indus River, while in East India and Bangladesh, monsoon floods threaten millions. Super El-Ninos spark global weather chaos. Most of humanity begins to seek refuge away from higher temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of refugees force their way into Scandinavia and the British Isles. World food supplies run out.
· A rise of 12° F. from pre-industrial levels: Warming seas lead to the possible release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic sediments. Methane fireballs tear across the sky, causing further warming. The oceans lose their oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas and destroying the remaining ozone layer. Deserts extend almost to the Arctic. Hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity circumnavigate the globe, causing flash floods, which strip the land of soil. Humanity is reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.

Grassroots Coalition HCR 83 Box 881 Shade Gap PA 17255
815-259-3372 grassroots1@pa.net