LEED AP Credential Program Overhauled
About 65,000 people have become LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs) since the program began in 2000 as a way to recognize experts in the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) LEED Rating System. In November 2008 at the Greenbuild conference, the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), the organization that administers the LEED AP credential, announced substantial revisions to the program. After June 2009, existing LEED APs will have to opt in to an updated version of the program with continuing education requirements, while aspiring LEED APs will find that accreditation requirements have become more rigorous.
Cool Summer, Warm Future: Extreme Heat Days Increase For Southern California
Summer 2008 in Southern California goes down in the books as cooler than normal. The thermometer in downtown Los Angeles topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) just once in July, August and the first two-thirds of September. But don’t expect this summer’s respite from the usual blistering heat to continue in the years to come, cautions a group of NASA and university scientists: The long-term forecast calls for increased numbers of scorching days and longer, more frequent heat waves.
Airborne Study Of Arctic Atmosphere, Air Pollution Launched
This month, NASA begins the most extensive field campaign ever to investigate the chemistry of the Arctic’s lower atmosphere. The mission is poised to help scientists identify how air pollution contributes to climate changes in the Arctic.
China Power Plant Emissions to Rise 60% by 2017
Climate-warming emissions from China’s power plants — already among the world’s worst greenhouse polluters — will rise by some 60 percent in the next decade, a new global database showed on Wednesday.
Read more
Japan Struggles to Meet Its CO2 Emissions Limits
As Americans, we generate twice as much carbon dioxide as the average Japanese. The average Japanese lifestyle is greener than the average American’s because of the personal efforts of many Japanese. As a group, they recycle and ride bikes more than Americans. However, Japan is still struggling to meet its limits for CO2 emissions.
Japanese officials are counting on one incentive that Americans don’t have, which involves shaming Japanese companies.
“Basically what happens is that we publicize their name, the company name,” says Masa Ohara, the environmental policy director for the city of Tokyo. “And [we] tell publicly that they’re not [reducing emissions],” Ohara says. “This works very well for the Japanese.”
NWF Global Warming in Greenland
A team of researchers and scientists from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) have been to Greenland to study the impacts of global warming on glaciers. Here are the video clips for their 4-day visit. See for yourself what we have done in changing the global climate and livelihood of people from other parts of the world.
Gas emissions said at unsafe threshold
Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
“What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change,” Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. “We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that’s what these figures say. It’s not next year or next decade, it’s now.”
Read More here.
Americans Willing to Pay for Global Warming Remedies
Nearly three-quarters of Americans are willing to pay more taxes to support local government efforts aimed at mitigating global warming, according to the findings of two recent national surveys conducted by Yale University.
“Nearly half of Americans now believe that global warming is either already having dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in the next 10 years—a 20 percentage-point increase since 2004. These results indicate a sea change in public opinion,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale Project on Climate Change, in response to the findings of the earlier poll.
