Today, all over the world, bloggers are writing about climate change as part of Blog Action Day.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS is participating in this event for the third year in a row, and as it happens, we write about climate change all the time!

So, for a quick look at this important issue, here are three of our recent articles we think are helpful in understanding the problem and thinking about possible solutions. 

1. Climate Change and Your Garden. For gardeners everywhere, the issue of climate change is getting personal. Here’s how changing climate patterns are affecting what you can grow in your garden.

2. The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat. Here’s a piece of the climate change puzzle you might not have heard before. Raising cattle on grass instead of grain (and buying grass-fed meat) can help sequester carbon, build more fertile soil, and produce healthier meat — all at the same time.

3. A Plan for the Solar Revolution. Burning fossil fuels is a big part of the problem. Renewable energy is a big part of the solution. 

(And for the MOTHER-lode of information on global warming, you can find all the climate change articles we’ve ever written here on our website.)

Check out this compelling roundtable discussion of four expert climate change scientists: The State of the Climate — and of Climate Science.

It originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of DISCOVER Magazine. (I just "discovered" it ...) The introduction does a great job of describing the crossroads we're at today as science and public opinion meet:

"In the list of world challenges, global warming might be at once the most alarming and the most controversial. According to some predictions, climate change caused by human activity could cause mass extinction in the oceans, redraw the planet’s coastlines, and ravage world food supplies. At the same time, a significant portion of the American public questions whether global warming will really cause any major harm; many still doubt that human-driven warming is happening at all."

Here are a few highlights of the discussion:

"I spend a lot of time studying the ice sheets at the bottom of the planet—how they form and how they collapse. The poles are like the planet’s air conditioner. When things are working well, the poles keep the planet nice and cool and we don’t think about it. When things stop working, the poles can start to melt and there’s a puddle on the floor. Today both poles are getting warmer; in Greenland and Antarctica you can see the surface of the ice dropping, and you can see there’s less mass when you measure the ice from space. The process has been ongoing, but it looks like it’s happening faster than it was. We know the ice sheets have come and gone in the past. Why is this any different? One of the most compelling reasons is that in the past the ice sheets from the two poles didn’t move together—one would lead and the other would follow. This time, both the north and south are spewing ice into the global ocean, accelerating at the same time." 

— Robin E. Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

[... the Earth got warm in the past, too] "but it got warm over millions of years, and ecosystems had a chance to adapt. What we’re seeing are rates of increase in greenhouse gases and warming that exceed natural rates by a factor of 100. So what we’re doing is really unusual when seen from a geologic perspective.

[Humans are doing in centuries what natural processes do over millions of years?] "Yes, and the other timescale mismatch is that what we do over the next decades will affect life on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years. We are at a critical juncture in earth history. If we don’t do the right thing and there are geologists around 50 million years from now, they’ll be able to look at cores and see the remnants of a civilization that developed advanced technology but didn’t develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

"To me the most compelling evidence [that human behavior is actually warming the planet] is the fact that the stratosphere — the upper atmosphere — is cooling while the lower atmosphere and the land surface are warming. That’s a sign that greenhouse gases are trapping energy and keeping that energy close to the surface of the earth. I mentioned that in ocean acidification, you actually see animals that should make shells unable to make shells anymore. You could demonstrate the same kind of effect in a bell jar in the lab. There is a level of certainty about it."

— Ken Caldeira, a professor at Stanford and staff member in the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington

"One of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century was the way we were able to increase the global food supply in pace with unprecedented population growth. We will have to raise the food supply another two times to feed all of the people that we think will be alive by the latter third of the 21st century. We have reason to be somewhat sanguine about doing it if climate stays more or less the same, but how will we do it with the climate change? Based on our simulations and on 25 years of research, what bothers us most is that in the tropics, where the majority of poor people live today, crops are currently raised at temperatures pretty close to their photosynthetic optimums."

— Bill Easterling, Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University

You can read the full discussion and learn more about the credentials of the panelists at The State of the Climate — and of Climate Science.

For decades, environmentalists have extolled the virtues of recycling everything from plastic grocery bags to computer components. More recently we've been encouraged to give up single use items, such as paper napkins and plastic water bottles, and return to more sustainable products, such as washable cloth napkins, steel water bottles and glass food storage containers.

We'd like to think that our efforts are having a major impact on the amount of refuse being produced each day - but are they? Are we truly making a concerted effort to give up the convenience of single use products or is the practice so engrained in our culture we can't escape its effects? Read It's Time to Throw Out the Throwaway Economy by Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, then, in  the comments section below, share your most radical return to a non-single-use product in your life.

This week President Barack Obama pushed the issue of climate change at the Group of 8 summit in Italy.

The United States and European countries, such as Germany, England, France and Italy proposed an agreement that called for worldwide emissions to be cut by 50 percent by 2050, with industrial countries cutting their emissions by 80 percent.

The industrial nations such as China, Brazil, India and Mexico did not agree to the proposal.

“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to the New York Times. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”

The New York Times also reported that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the meeting’s host, said it made little sense for Group of 8 countries to take on onerous commitments if “five billion people continue to behave as they have always behaved.”

Instead the group came to an agreement that the global temperature should not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but did not demand any commitments on how nations will do their part to ensure that goal is reached.

The fact that developing countries will not agree to major climate change reform means there is a lot of work still to be done before the worldwide climate treaty conference in Copenhagen this December.

On Tuesday a White House commissioned research panel released its report saying climate change is affecting the U.S. The group, which is overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is required to report finding on climate effects on the environment ever 10 years.

The group reported that the average U.S. temperature has risen 2 degrees in the last 50 years and is expected to continue to rise at an increasing rate. The group findings were not revolutionary, but the announce comes at a key time when President Barack Obama is supporting a Congressional bill that would cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and when top United Nations climate officials concluded meetings Friday about the upcoming treaty negotiations at the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December.

The Congressional bill written by Representatives Henry Waxman, Democrat from California and Ed Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts, passed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and is expected to be voted on before the Congressional Fourth of July break.

The United Nations Climate Summit in December has been highly anticipated for Kyoto Protocol supporter. After last weeks meetings many climate officials are optimistic that a new better plan will emerge that gets more major countries such as the U.S. and China to sign the treaty.

Did you know that about 25 percent of the world’s insecticide use and more than 10 percent of the world’s pesticide is used on cotton crops? According to statistics from the National Cotton Council of America, through the years 2006 to 2008, cotton was harvested across 10.3 million acres of farmland in the United States alone. Organic cotton production uses no toxic chemicals, but employs natural methods such as beneficial insect releases to protect crops. By opting for organic cotton, you're not only choosing a healthier alternative for yourself, you're also contributing to a cleaner, chemical-free environment.

Click the link to read Why Organic Cotton is Better.

PHOTO COURTESY FORUM FOR THE FUTURE

Solar box cookers have been popular with campers and back-to-the-landers for decades. The Kyoto Box solar cooker, an updated design, has just won first place in the Financial Times Climate Change Challenge.

According to an article in Green Futures magazine, “The Kyoto Box uses the greenhouse effect to boil and bake. This solar cooker consists of two boxes, one inside the other, with an acrylic cover, which lets the sun’s power in and traps it. Black paint on the inner box and silver foil on the outer help concentrate the heat, while a layer of straw or newspaper between the two provides insulation.

In many parts of the world, wood for cooking fires is in extremely short supply and whole landscapes have been ravaged due to the need for firewood. Kyoto Box inventor Jon Bøhmer told Green Futures he “believes it could halve the need for firewood, saving an estimated two tonnes of carbon per family per year, as well as freeing women and children from the health risks of inhaling smoke from the cooking fires.”

Does this new solar cooker  really work any better than earlier designs?  We invite you to build the Kyoto Box solar cooker and tell us how it worked. You can post your results in the comments section below.