We're getting ready to head out to the second day of the 13th Annual Wallace Stegner Symposium, Alternative Energy: Seeking Climate Change Solutions. Yesterday was exhausting in some ways, so much data, so many ideas.
For example, our new friend Kevin from Salt Lake was spreading optimism at lunch yesterday. He reminded a skeptical Ol' Coyote that all three presidential candidates that are left have acknowledged that climate change is real and they have said that action will be a priority in the next term. Being from Salt Lake Kevin would only talk about John McCain but that's OK. 
Action is the underlying theme of the symposium. Every speaker underscored the need to act soon, as one planet, to head off the worse effects of warming. Most agree that serious carbon dioxide action is required in the 2010 to 2015 time frame and that carbon emissions need to fall by leaps and bound starting around 2050. Speakers kept showing essentially the same slide from the IPCC's report released last year. (Click on the thumb above for one example.)
One very serious note came from Dr. Terry Root a lead author of the recent IPCC report. She warned that with the amount of heating from carbon already in the atmosphere that we will probably lose 20-30% of animal species no matter what action is taken, putting the world into the 6th mass extinction, all from one species, humankind. The critters can't adapt quickly enough.
"2008 pres"
7:12:28 AM 
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