Socially Responsible Investing- Not just for small corporations

At home, we've been financial planning... how do you want to retire? It seems so far away now, money filtered away and stored in a vault to grow into the dreams of our old legs...what glacier will we live near?

But, we can't in good faith invest in just any IRA. There are socially responsible investments (SRIs). There are funds created from companies striving toward sustainable energy--- and these companies are thriving, with returns equal to, or surpassing traditional IRAs.

That is where our money will go.

In the meantime, big corporations are catching on (led by California- the 5th largest global GDP):

"Mercury News -WASHINGTON - The growing consensus to take national action against climate change received a major boost Monday when 10 leading U.S. corporations - including General Electric, Alcoa, DuPont and Pacific Gas & Electric - launched a coalition with four environmental groups to push for mandatory federal emissions controls.

The corporate leaders, spurred in part by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unilateral proposal to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in California, pledged to work for specific targets and timetables to reduce current levels of carbon dioxide and airborne pollutants by 60 to 80 percent over the next 43 years.

"Action is not only justified, it's critical - greenhouse-gas emissions are rising at an unprecedented rate," said Peter Darbee, CEO of San Francisco-based PG&E, which provides energy to 5 percent of the U.S. market."

The 10 companies include:

Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, Florida Power & Light, General Electric (a founding member), Lehman Brothers, Pacific Gas & Electric, and PNM Resources.

Our future is lead by us, our science, our policy, and our investments

Living in warm times

The lowered jet-stream this last week has us huddled under blankets this week... But we are living in warm times, Niagra hasn't frozen solid in nearly a century (pictured below, courtesy of Dr. Scott Bair). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report and we have much to prepare for...
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," (Temperatures will rise an average of 2-12 F by 2100)--- with a response of up to 1/2 meter of sea level rise....

The prestigious atmospheric scientist Susan Solomon said, "There can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities."

"The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," IPCC co-author Jonathan Overpeck at University of Arizona said. "I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

These are just a small sampling of comments... Dr. Lonnie Thompson (Tropical Ice Core Climate Expert) has pointed out that the recent IPCC report has largely ignored the "gorillas" (melt from Greenland and Antarctica)... so the IPCC report is perhaps too optimistic.

Remember the accelerating rate of population growth and energy use... and take a deep and frustrated breath over how little our government invests in Energy (there is some growth in Hydrogen Fuel research, but the overall energy budget is flat--- and remember the Hydrogen fuel cell still requires energy to operate) I am writing to any policy makers that will read it and hoping that California prospers beyond its wildest dreams with their new energy saving policies and continues with more drastic measures that inspire the world to follow suit... Thanks also to the companies that are investing in a sustainable future- ck out. We can make some money by making our world better. I'm putting my dollars here.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/progressiveinvestor/

Pictures from the North Klawatti Trip (from Erin Pettit)

Here are some pics taken by Erin from last summer. I think of ice often in our recent cold spell. Dream and remember the reflected warmth of summer snows.

Optimism or nebulism

Again, I am in the lab, sinking into the swivel chair in flourescent light optimism. My standards are all faring well today creating nice linear calibration curves---to accurately determine what is in my glacier samples... all is well so far (knock on plastic) in spite of the fact that the glass sample chamber was pink with other people's high concentration samples yesterday. Pink is the color of evil and iron oxidation. Anthony boiled the pink away in nitric acid, and my blanks are clean to the ppt. That's a few drops in the ocean. I'm also writing a paper. Its not taking long. Writing is the easy part... its the ICPMS that is the hard part. The instrument has so many special parts... the contamination of cones, the plugging of nebulizers, the settling of sediment...the paper is not taking long at all... I finished most of it last week...

To more adventures in science in the new year!

2000- Juneau Icefield Research Program

It's the summer after I started my Master's program at OSU. Ben (who I later stumbled upon in Antarctica at 2 in the morning in the McMurdo cafeteria as his disrespectful roommate entertained too much company) and I led a few students down the Gilkey Trench to explore supraglacial melt ponds in the compression zone below the ice falls. We spent all day descending the nunatak adjacent to the ice falls. Exhausted... physically and mentally. We trudged to camp at the medial moraine a kilometer away, the pace quickens with dreams of dinner. I'm ready to be a hero, carrying with me some much sought after mac and cheese. By the time we reach camp, we are drooling... but prematurely. A grizzly bear looms a few kilometers away. And it's plodding our way. Four of us jump on a boulder to match the bear in size, hoping to divert its course. TO no avail!!! We are feeble compared to this trucklike animal. We are nervous.

We radio our above glacier campmates, they advise us to leave fast. We grab some fuel to "light and throw "at the bear--- or if we escape, to use for dinner...

Suddenly the bear is within 100 meters of us. We don't cramponing until 1 a.m., carefully navigating over watery streams... insightful revelations from the undergraduate with us...fear lays it all out....

That night, we rest on the firm and spiky ground of the nunatek to our west. Precariously steep, we set rocks underneath---they'll be no plummeting in the middle of the night. I'm thanking my cheap immitation thermarest that can be blown up in 3 segments... to huge pillows. I sleep like cotton. Before my eyes sand, we witness a spectacular aurora, dining on the finest mac and cheese. Ben and I had a laugh imagining throwing a fire bomb at the grizzly. Its funny from our perch.

The picture is from the next morning.

in a white cave

I'm in the windowless basement of Mendenhall Labratory. It is desolate,the hum of the ICPMS and the faint smell of acid... it feels like a cave, but warm, and I am here by choice. I'm lucky that it is warm, because the furnace is constantly failing, and we must look at our own breath. Similarly, the air-conditioning in the summer fails and we must suffer in our long sleeves(lest the acid drop on our bare skin).

As for now, my mind is sterilized by the hum and I'm having difficulty taking notes, let alone writing Christmas cards, or better yet, looking at data...

My mind drifts worse than the instrument, I'm thinking back fourth graders..... I lit a match and put it in a bottle (lowering the air pressure), then I stuck a hard boiled egg on top and WHOMP, The egg was suctioned in with a thud.

1998

Its the summer of 1998.

Today it is hot and bright. It is 80 degrees going on Mojave the whole week I am alone, except for the final snowy morning my socks freeze like daggers to the laundry cord. My skin turns bright red and I carefully inspect by looking into the blurry lid of my cooking pot. I dutifully measure the lake level in this trapped lake of the Illicillawaet Glacier every morning, noon, and night. The only thru-hiker will be a fury grizzly man whose yellows teeth make me feel even younger. I smile and pretend to be a lumberjack. Puffing my arms out to defeat him should he gnash his stained fangs.

Soon my supplies dwindle and I am low on food and saline solution. That night a beautiful bird helicopter drops me my dreamed of supplies... sadly there is no saline, no food, only some hot chocolate and some rum. Did I miscommunicate??? I feel resigned, having a dinner of kidney beans, laughing more than crying because I am 19 and baffled. It's so beautiful I want to stay forever, journaling my surroundings, becoming one with this melting sad glacier.... and with only booze, one journal, and scratchy contacts I suspect my stay will have to end soon. It is in this sunset that I take a deep breathe, lasting well beyond my hike out.

Illicillawaet picture from: (this most resembles the glacier as I remember it in 1998) www.ljplus.ru/img2/pycaky/Illecillewaet-Glacier,-British-Columbia,-Canada.jpg

1997

Its August 1997 and I'm in Iceland looking for my tent. Maybe it has blown into the future... a katabatic breath pushed it down valley while we were exploring. Returning to camp we found only Chris's tent survived unscathed. The ShopKo tent. Other tents scattered across the terminus of the Svinafellsjökull ..French tourists rescued our luggage saving our thermals (to wear well into the next few decades). And we stayed in a hostel with warm-faced blond people. Icelandic winds are hostile. While the land is forgivingly warm...soothing geothermal pools. (below- growling at the glacier that ate my tent...)

Slow Drip

Andrew Revkin, NY Times Science Writer, spoke yesterday at the Ohio State University " The Daily Planet: A Journalists Search for Sustainability from the Amazon to the Arctic". Revkin, who has written climate change stories for decades, declared, "global warming is not new to the media". Climate skeptics and new climate studies receive much more media attention. Revkin acknowledged we've known for many years that fossil fuel burning elevates carbon dioxide and creates temperature rise. Revkin said this is a "slow drip story". Greenland's eventual melt within the next century is unstoppable if we continue business as usual. The damage will be painfully huge with 7 meters of sea level rise. Slow climate change is no news compared to wars, oil prices, the stock market, job security.

The real story is that although many of us understand the consequences of a warming earth, we are still doing very little to change our future. This morning, I got in my car and went though the coffee drive-thru. The educated may be driving hybrids now, but they're still driving like everybody else. Even those of us who are aware are not taking charge or our futures. At what point will we?

(photo from Erin Pettit GOI 2006)

Road Salt and Crayon Factories

Today, the kids made hills. They stuffed garbage bags briming with newspaper and stretched out their lovely landscapes...perfectly ready for imaginary settlement and eventual industrialization...

I gave them a list of ingredients--- asking them, what role, or job, each ingredient should represent in our town. The ingredients and responses are below.

Coffee- Starbucks! Landscaping! Farming! (A holler came "do you even know what landscaping is?")
Soap- Houses. Hotels. (They both wash lots of towels!!)
Oil- Oil Refineries!!! (yes, this was yelled--- I must talk about oil a bit much)
Salt- Food for animals in farms... Road Salt!! (I'm so proud of the kid who said road salt, my eyes get a little misty--- in most states people have completely altered stream chemistry with road salt.
Powerade- A crayon factory (I went with it...)

The kids put these ingredients spread out on their landscape... And then it rained... and all of the ingredients merged into one lake in the middle of the mountain range. A few well placed factories were spared... but, most of the kids were living in the runoff of a crayon factory?

We're all in one big lake together. Sometimes the blue gets mixed in with the red... All of us a little bit more colorful for the experience...
(photo: http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/school/html/reviews/crayonf.htm)

Awake in the time of the bobbleheads

By 2050 the UN predicts global populations will reach 8.9 billion; a staggering increase of 2.1 billion people from today’s population. In the meantime, oil production in the Middle East is projected to more than half (Simmons & Company). Non OPEC supplies will not keep pace, our ability to discover new oil is outpaced by growing global demands. It is no wonder our President and Congress have called for energy “independence” by 2020. This will require more than a few new green communities and some work to develop hydrogen fuel cell. Our budgeted 2007 federal science and technology plus energy spending equal 26.1 billion or less than 1% of national spending. What do our political candidates propose to solve this? Or is the goal of energy independence as ambiguous as the advertisements?

Mentos in Lake Vostok

Ah Ha! Science thrills again! Today the fourth graders flung themselves at me with full-force for wowing them will Mentos and Diet Coke. After 2 spectacular eruptions- two kids erupted their own homemade volcanoes using standard volcano fare- vinegar and baking soda... I thought it would be a shame if they got sprayed with Diet Coke. Diet Coke carbonation is a great analogy for carbon dioxide release by real volcanoes...

All the Mentos and Coke got me thinking about my favorite lake... LAKE VOSTOK. A lake as large as Lake Michigan covered by two miles of ice!!!! What's in that pesky Lake--- much pressurized gas from dissolved rocks---That's a lot of carbon dioxide.... think about dropping many truckloads of Mentos into the lake.... and Wazammm!!! We won't have to resolve how to keep from contaminating the Lake anymore--- it will spray the entire continent...