Science Library Pad

Ottawa Tulip Fest 2009 - Celebridée events with science content

I don't have any details about these, but from my reading of the schedule, the science-y ones look to be

The Environment: Individuals Making A Difference (In English) 

Sunday, May 3 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission) 

The Perimeter Institute: The Physics of Innovation (In English)

Tuesday, May 5 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

UPDATE 2009-05-05: Andre sent me some descriptive text

With Dr. Richard Epp of the Perimeter Institute Outreach Team

Where does technology come from? Because computers, cell phones, DVD players and countless other innovations are completely integrated into our daily lives, few of us stop to think how such technological marvels are possible. The answer, of course, is physics! Since all technology is ultimately subject to the laws of physics – the “gears and wheels” of how our universe works – the better we understand those laws, the more powerful and beneficial the technologies we can create.

ENDUPDATE

For Physics event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

The Environment: What Should We be Doing? (In English)

with Elizabeth May

Wednesday, May 13 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$10 (Adult)

$8 (Student)

$20 (Reserved Section)

For Elizabeth May event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

This is not at all to say there aren't many other interesting talks - as you might imagine, there are a few on the financial crisis, this one seems particularly apropos:

Tulipomania: The Dutch Tulip Bulb Crisis of 1637 (In English)

with Jules Muis and Mike Dash

Saturday, May 9 @ 10 a.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission)

The ubiquitous Michael Geist will also be speaking  

Surveillance (In English) 

with Michael Geist and/et David Lyons

Sunday, May 17 @ 7:30 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

For Surveillance event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

Ottawa Writers Festival Spring 2009 - Science and Big Ideas

There are lots of authors coming to the Spring Writers Festival, I am just highlighting the science ones below.  You can see the full programme at

http://www.writersfestival.org/events.html

You have to pay, except some events are free for Carleton students.

Wednesday April 22, 2009 - 7 PM - Earth Day - New Science Series: Washing the Water

Alanna Mitchell discusses Seasick: The Hidden Ecological Crisis of the Global Ocean;

Wayne Grady discusses The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 7 PM - The Big Idea: Carbon Shift

Join editor Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down, and contributor William Marsden, author of Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care) for a conversation on their new book Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

Sunday April 26, 2009 - 2 PM - New Science Series: How Mathematics Orders Our Lives - with Jason I. Brown, hosted by Stephen Brockwell

Thursday April 30, 2009 - noon - Masterclass Series: Why Poetry Antimatters - Metaphor, Entanglement and Particle Poetics

Join two stellar poets for a team Masterclass on poetry. Jeramy Dodds, recently shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, and Matthew Tierney, author of The Hayflick Unit and Full speed through the morning dark, for an exploration of the intersection of science and poetry.

Saturday May 2, 2009 - 4 PM - New Science Series - Cyburbia: Consciousness, Communication and Community in the Digital Age

The way we live has apparently been transformed by new ways of communicating. But where did these trends start? And if they can change our behaviour, can they also change the way we think? In Cyburbia James Harkin describes how the architecture of our digital lives was built over seventy years.

I have also added these events to LibraryThing, you can see them e.g. attached to the Saint Brigid's venue:

http://www.librarything.com/venue/40511

It was a bit of a pain transcribing all this stuff - organisations need to get smarter about providing information in machine-readable formats.  I can't think of an easier standard format than calendars.  Jon Udell is trying to address some of this with his community calendar project.

science book audio from Ottawa International Writers Festival

Lots of great audio of authors talking about their books, including

• Gwynne Dyer talking about Climate Wars
• Leonard Susskind on Black Holes, October 24, 2008

Writers Festival New Science Series - October 2008

The Ottawa International Writers Festival has a jam-packed lineup, including a New Science Series.
As usual when these sort of things happen in Ottawa, I just discovered I will be away for all of it.

Friday October 24, 2008

6:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: Dan Falk on Understanding Time
Nature Network: Dan Falk

7:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: THE BLACK HOLE WAR:
      Leonard Susskind on Quantum Mechanics and Black Holes

Saturday October 25, 2008

NOON

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
      Stephen Pinker on Language as a Window into Human Nature

2:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: CLIMATE CHANGE
      With Jay Ingram and Andrew Weaver

Sunday October 26, 2008

NOON

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
      John W. Moffat on Reinventing Gravity

Nature of Things - Climate Change - free

Canada's The Nature of Things, episode on Climate Change, free on iTunes (other episodes cost $2)
If you want to navigate to it, set your iTunes to Canada (My Store: Canada at the bottom of the iTunes home window).  Then TV Shows->Nonfiction->The Nature of Things->The Best of The Nature of Things.  I don't know if it's geofenced.

UPDATE: Incidentally I notice that CBC documentaries has a Twitter feed,

https://twitter.com/DocsCBC

but like some other shows, they're using it more like an RSS feed; it just has tweets about the latest documentaries, no discussion or individual voice.

Monbiot in Second Life, round 2

Speaker: George Monbiot
Topic: Global warming and what to do about it
Date: Thurs 21st Feb, 2008
Time: 5pm GMT, 9am SLT (Pacific)

Nature Network - Joanna Scott - February events: Manatees, George Monbiot

Previously:
December 06, 2007  Nature Climate Change series in Second Life

Nature Climate Change series in Second Life

Tues 4th Dec 2007, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT [1 PM Eastern]
Tara LaForce, Imperial College, on her research into carbon capture and storage

Thurs 6th Dec 2007, 6pm GMT, 10am SLT, PST [1 PM Eastern]
Professor Euan Nisbet, Royal Holloway, London on why it's so important to monitor the climate properly, and the many ways in which we've been doing it wrong.

Tues 11th Dec 2007, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT [1 PM Eastern] POSTPONED
Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change

Thur 13th Dec 2007, 5pm GMT, 9am PST, SLT [12 PM noon Eastern] POSTPONED
George Monbiot, Guardian Columnist and author of Heat: How we can stop the planet burning

See http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/joannascott for more information and a SLurl to the Second Nature location.

There was an interesting and season-appropriate podcast on Christmas Commercialism and Ethical Travel last year featuring an interview with Monbiot, but I can't locate the file any more.

Lancet says eat less meat, save the world

The Lancet doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61256-2

Series, Energy and Health

Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health
Prof Anthony J McMichael PhD, John W Powles PhD, Colin D Butler PhD and Prof Ricardo Uauy PhD

Because rapid reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of livestock production would be technically and culturally difficult in the short term, the prime objective must be to reduce consumption of animal products in high-income countries, and thus lower the ceiling consumption level to which low-income and middle-income countries would then converge.

The headline the Lancet put on the news item was "World meat consumption should be reduced by 10%: less meat means less heat".

The bloody Lancet has an elaborate registration process whereby you name your medical subspecialty and probably at some point your blood type, if you prefer to bypass such things, you can try BugMeNot.

The above article is part of a Lancet Web Focus Series on Energy and Health.

There is also accompanying audio from the 15 September 2007 issue (MP3) as well as from the press conference (MP3, not great quality) that launched the new Web Focus.

The Globe (from Agence France-Presse) reported the story as "Limits on meat eating could keep global warming at bay" on September 13, 2007.

the Nature of rain and fire in the 21st century

July 22 2007: The town of Tewkesbury surrounded by floodwaters
Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Above image from Guardian Unlimited - Severe flooding.

Another view of this iconic image was also on the front page of the Globe and Mail yesterday, above the story Human activity altering rainfall patterns

"It's the first time that we've detected in precipitation data a clear imprint of human influence on the climate system," Francis Zwiers, one of the lead authors of the study and director of the climate research division at Environment Canada, said in an interview Monday.

"Temperature changes we can cope with. But water changes are much more difficult to cope with. That will have economic impacts, and impacts on food production, and could ultimately displace populations."

The study, to appear Thursday in the science journal Nature, comes as record rainfalls wreak havoc in Britain and force thousands from their homes.

Nature has a news item Rainfall changes linked to human activity ( doi:10.1038/news070723-4 ).

The article itself is Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends ( doi:10.1038/nature06025 ).

We used monthly precipitation observations over global land areas from the most recent version of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)21 to analyse precipitation trends in two twentieth-century periods (1925–1999 and 1950–1999), during which observational data are considered to be sufficient to describe global-scale land precipitation change. This data set has been carefully quality controlled.

You can follow more of the discussion in the Nature climate change blog, Climate Feedback.

while individuals scrimp, the world burns and chops

Feeling virtuous about the carbon offsets you've purchased for your transatlantic flight?

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?

The Independent - Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming - May 14, 2007

Switched to clean-burning natural gas?  Too bad oil fields around the world simply burn "useless" natural gas directly into the sky.

150 billion cubic metres of gas is burnt off or `flared’ every year - before it even leaves the gas fields.

That’s $20 billion worth - enough to supply the whole of the United States for three months. Flaring sends 350 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – more than cancelling out the proposed annual reductions under Kyoto.

TVE - Billion Dollar Bonfire

BBC - Billion Dollar Bonfire

The World Bank, not exactly a historical friend of the environment, does at least perhaps recognize wasted wealth when it sees it.  The have a programme called Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR).

http://www.worldbank.org/ggfr

open analysis of open data - climate change challenge

Business Objects is a powerful but expensive business intelligence tool (NRC uses it).  Therefore I was surprised to see that

Business Objects, a company that focuses on helping businesses make the most of the information they already have, is announcing an effort to foster a new community around open data analysis. The project will be called Insight and to help draw participants to it, they're announcing the first of what they hope will be a series of challenges: use the available data to help cities approach the problem of climate change.

...

The first challenge is being unveiled today at the Large Cities Climate Summit, happening right now in New York City.  The city of Toronto has worked with the environmental group zerofootprint and Business Objects to create what they term the GoZero Footprint City Calculator. At the press conference announcing the effort, Toronto's mayor, David Miller, expressed very high hopes for it: "Climate change is the issue of our time and it’s up to all of us to do our part to minimize the impact of day-to-day activities. Zerofootprint Toronto is going to help make my city not only one of the greenest on the planet, but one of the most innovative as well."

Via Ars Technica.

The Insight site bears the rather provocative banner "Can Open Data Save the World?"

It's interesting to contrast this with thw recently-launched Yahoo Green site, which takes a more traditional hectoring-you-into-conservation approach.

4th IPCC Climate Change Assessment Report - WG2 released

For those of you keeping score at home, WG1 was "Physical Science Basis", WG2 is "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability".

The WG2 Summary for Policy Makers (PDF) was released Good Friday, April 6, 2007.  Err, way to hit the news cycle, PR geniuses.  Maybe you should release your next report on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, to summarize the summary: we're screwed.

Previously:
February 02, 2007  4th IPCC Climate Change Assessment Report - WG1 released

CPAC and CBC climate changingness

Apparently there was an event called Canada 2020 in Gatineau, they had a variety of high-power speakers.  Unfortunately, while I think I'm supposed to consider Gatineau an integrated part of Ottawa (NOTE TO READERS: very slightly humour-tinged aside coming up) it might as well be on the far side of the moon for most practical purposes for me.  Plus which, I don't circulate in such lofty company.

Anyway, amongst other speakers (one of which to be mentioned in subsequent posting), Tim Flannery, the The Weather Makers author, "discussed ways to bring the public into the debate on global warming".

The video (Windows Media format) is available from CPAC: http://www.cpac.ca/asx/show_pr_can2020Flannery_mar27-07_eng.asx

If you want to skip the part with the politicians talking, Flannery starts at 15:23 into the feed.

CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster, has also been doing a series this week on global warming, with the anchor and others reporting from all over the world.  I haven't actually looked into it in enough depth to know whether they offset all that travel, if anyone knows, please leave a comment.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/climatechange/roadstories.html

Apparently, Australia is a tad dry these days.

Canadian and US incandescent lightbulb ban bills

A Private Members’ Bill that would effectively phase out the sale and use of incandescent bulbs is being drafted by NDP MP Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre).

NDP News - Dewar bill to end use of incandescent bulbs - March 8, 2007

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would set target dates for certain types of light bulbs to be prohibited for sale in the United States.

Harman calls the bill [H.R. 1547] "an important first step toward making every household, business and public building in America more energy-efficient."

...

An average traditional incandescent bulb based on a filament emits 12-15 lumens per watt (a measurement of the bulb's lighting output.) Harman's bill would require all bulbs to produce 60 lumens-per-watt by January 2012; 90 lumens-per-watt by January 2016; and 120 lumens-per-watt by January 2020.

Currently available compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) are about halfway to the ultimate goal, offering approximately 60 lumens-per-watt.

CNS News.com - Bill to Ban Regular Light Bulbs Introduced in House - March 21, 2007

Harman takes a good approach in regulating lumens-per-watt, as Glen has said, this is better than targeting a specific technology.

Ontario mulls banning incandescent lights too

Ontario is considering becoming the first province in Canada to follow Australia's lead in banning old-fashioned, energy-sucking light bulbs, Environment Minister Laurel Broten said Wednesday as the province draws up a plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

Conservative Leader John Tory and environmental groups are urging the government to ban incandescent bulbs in favour of energy-efficient ones, saying it's the push people need to save electricity...

By [Liberal] Premier Dalton McGuinty's estimate, replacing every old-fashioned bulb with an energy-efficient one would allow the province to shut down one coal-fired power plant.

...

Ontario would be breaking ground in Canada if it started phasing out incandescent bulbs. The province has to do something to reduce harmful emissions, Mr. McGuinty said.

“We'll take a look at a host of options that might be available to us to help Ontarians better understand that we're entering into a new era,” Mr. McGuinty said.

But Conservative Leader John Tory said the Liberals should stop mulling over options and act now.

(Apologies to Americans if our conservatives sound more environmentally "liberal" than some of your liberals.)

Globe and Mail - CP - Ontario may ban old light bulbs - February 21, 2007

Previously:
February 20, 2007  Australia to ban incandescent light bulbs

Australia to ban incandescent light bulbs

Australia will ban incandescent light bulbs to help cut greenhouse gas emissions, its government announced today.

Malcolm Turnbull, the environment minister, said replacing the country's incandescent bulbs could prevent up to 4m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions entering the atmosphere every year by 2015.

Banning the bulbs would also help cut 800,000 tonnes from Australia's current greenhouse gas emissions level by 2012 and lower household lighting costs by 66%, Reuters reported him as saying.

Guardian Unlimited - Australia switches on to light bulb change - February 20, 2007
also see e.g. CBC - Australia says lights out to incandescent bulbs

California is also considering a ban:

Slashdot California Proposes to Ban Incandescent Lightbulbs /.

I delight in this news as I hate inappropriately inefficient technology.

Canada and Kyoto

Canada ratified Kyoto in 2002, but then didn't actually take any steps to implement it.
Here's what's going on:

The opposition parties teamed up Wednesday to pass a private member's bill that requires the government to meet international Kyoto targets

CBC - Opposition MPs pass Kyoto bill despite Tory resistance

It's Bill C-288 in the current session.  It now goes to the Senate (it is not yet law).

5. (1) Within 60 days after this Act comes into force and not later than May 31 of every year thereafter until 2013, the Minister shall prepare a Climate Change Plan

There has also been recent provincial activity.  Prime Minister Harper gave the province of Quebec hundreds of millions of dollars to support its goal of full Kyoto compliance, as part of a $1.5 billion initiative.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled a $1.5-billion fund yesterday to help provinces reduce greenhouse gases, allocating the first $350-million to Quebec on the eve of an expected provincial election.

The province of British Columbia is also setting a goal of a "33 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from current levels by 2020".

TVO's The Agenda has had a couple recent shows on Kyoto and the environment, you can watch the video online (Flash format).

Monday February 12, 2007 - Kyoto and You
Tuesday February 13, 2007 - The Greening of Big Business

Nature - Climate Change 2007 special

The IPCC report, released in Paris, has served a useful purpose in removing the last ground from under the climate-change sceptics' feet, leaving them looking marooned and ridiculous. However, this predicament was already clear enough. Opinion in business circles, in particular, has moved on. A report released on 19 January [2007] by Citigroup, Climatic Consequences — the sort of eloquently written, big-picture stuff that the well-informed chief executive reads on a Sunday afternoon — states even more firmly than the IPCC that anthropogenic climate change is a fact that world governments are moving to confront.

Nature - Light at the end of the tunnel (editorial, links to rest of special report)
Nature 445, 567 (8 February 2007) | doi:10.1038/445567a; Published online 7 February 2007; Corrected 9 February 2007

(The full Citigroup / Smith Barney report "Climatic Consequences: Investment Implications of a Changing Climate" is apparently now only available from Citigroup Financial Advisors.)

climate change references from Library of Congress

In United States they shoot you... with knowledge.
The rather bizarrely named "Science Tracer Bullets" series from the Library of Congress highlights resources in a particular topic area.  A recent one is

Global Warming & Climate Change

via ResourceShelf

4th IPCC Climate Change Assessment Report - WG1 released

• Webcast of the press conference (Windows Media, audio but no video on my Mac, only works in IE on my PC - a bit slow to start showing new slides, but they do start eventually, out of sync with the audio)
• Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis - Summary for Policymakers (PDF, 21 pages)

More info at http://www.ipcc.ch/

There are two more working group reports to come out during the rest of 2007.  There will also, if I understand correctly, be a final, brief (30 page) synthesis report.

new blog categories for climate issues

In advance of tomorrow's the Friday February 2, 2007 release of the 4th IPCC Assessment Report, I have created new Climate Change and Carbon Offset categories.

While you're waiting for the report, you can check out the Globe and Mail special focus The New Climate and the Toronto Star's Sunday cover feature Who's still cool on global warming?.

The Guardian also has a big section of articles on climate change.

UPDATE 2007-02-01: The New Scientist also has a section on climate change.

Nature web focus on new energy technologies

The good news is that Nature has a new web focus

Energy for a cool planet

The most pressing technological problem facing the world is uncoupling the provision of energy from the production of carbon dioxide.

the bad news is that very few of the articles are FREE ACCESS

Beeb calls bluff of climate sceptics

If you accept the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus view of climate science, humankind is involved in an unprecedented and highly risky experiment with the only ecosphere it has, and climate sceptics are simply vandals laying a tree trunk across the train tracks which society must traverse to escape its fiery grave.

If you dissent from the consensus, you take the view that public opinion and much of politics has embarked on a wild decarbonising goose chase which will break economies, restrict personal movement and distract resources from other important societal challenges.

... it is the accusations of scientific bias which hit hardest.

Science is supposed to be evidence-based, open, inclusive.

...

If you have evidence of research grants turned down because of a clash with the prevailing consensus, of instances where journals or conference organisers or consensus bodies have rejected "inconvenient" findings, please send it to us [at the BBC]

...

For our part - the Science and Nature team on [the BBC] website - we undertake to deal with what you send in seriously.

BBC News - Sceptics: Cards on the table please
via Slashdot BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias /.

In case you think that people don't use vague assertions about bad science to justify their actions, witness US Rep Joe Barton.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said yesterday [Dec 4, 2006] he intends to block Democrats from passing a mandatory federal cap on heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

“I will be an active part of any leadership effort to prevent it passing in the House,” the outgoing chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee told reporters after speaking at an event hosted by the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Department.

Barton says his action is justified because global warming science is “pretty weak stuff.” Barton added, “But for us to try to step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the Earth from getting any warmer in my opinion is absolute nonsense. It’s not going to happen.”

This is the same guy whose previous leadership on this issue included sending a threatening letter  (PDF) [as] chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to the heads of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Science Foundation, along with three respected climate scientists who produced the fabled "hockey stick" study. (For background on the hockey stick controversy, see here.)  An action to which pretty much the entire serious science establishment AND many other politicians, including other Republicans, responded with appropriate outrage.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Science Committee, sent a letter to Barton. It was not friendly. It begins this way ...

I am writing to express my strenuous objections to what I see as the misguided and illegitimate investigation you have launched concerning Dr. Michael Mann, his co-authors and sponsors.

So anyway, climate skeptics, here's your chance.
So now, where's your science?

airlines and everything with built-in carbon offset

Will SOA save the world?  We're working on it.
Jon Udell has a fascinating InfoWorld article "The carbon-adjusted supply chain: SOA-enabled optimization can help reduce businesses' impact on the global environment" and accompanying blog posting.

Does Amazon know enough about its supply chain, ... to assign a value to the atmospheric carbon attributable to the manufacturing and shipping of its products? Bezos thought that the answer was no, but he was clearly intrigued by the question. So am I.

...

Economists have a wonderful euphemism for environmental impacts. They call them “externalities,” and we can blithely ignore them until Rhode Island-size chunks of Antarctic sea ice start to vanish. Then we start to realize that, in a closed ecosystem, there are no externalities.

In order for Amazon to be able to measure and report its externalities, of course, Amazon’s suppliers would themselves have to be able to measure and report theirs. That would be a major challenge, to be sure. But it’s exactly the kind of challenge that SOA-enabled supply chain optimization prepares us to tackle.

To my surprise, there are already a number of initiatives to help people offset their carbon from air travel, although I don't know how big the idea is yet in those paragons of carbon production, the US, Canada and Australia.

Anyway, my Big Idea is quite simple and appears to be already underway at various sites: every airline should include, as one of its option fees, a pre-calculated carbon offset cost with a trusted offset vendor.  Air Canada, are you listening?

Ideally, offset providers should have calculation Web Services and payment Web Services that other sites could use.

[UK] DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) - Carbon Offset Scheme Launched - September 12, 2005

British Airways has launched a new scheme, backed by the government, where its customers can volunteer to help to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from their flight by making a contribution to an environmental trust.

The money raised will be used by an organisation called Climate Care to invest in sustainable energy projects that tackle global warming by reducing carbon dioxide levels.

Air travellers can choose to make a donation from today (September 12) via a link from the airline's website, ba.com, for the cost of the emissions created by their journey. For example, the donation on a return flight from London Heathrow to Madrid will cost £5 and a return flight from London Heathrow to Johannesburg will cost £13.30.

You can visit http://www.britishairways.com/travel/climateimpact/public/en_gb for more info.

Silverjet, also in the UK, is building carbon neutrality into their price.

Silverjet, the first British airline to offer a low fare, exclusively business class service across the Atlantic, today announces that it will be the world’s first airline to become carbon neutral on all its flights.

Included within its ticket prices will be a mandatory carbon offset contribution, giving passengers the opportunity to reinvest the “carbon points” thus earned back into a number of climate friendly projects around the world. This still enables Silverjet to offer low fare long haul, exclusively business class, transatlantic flights from as little as £999, return.

The scheme is being set up in partnership with the leading climate change business, The CarbonNeutral Company, and it has been developed in accordance with the CarbonNeutral protocol, which is the leading standard and quality mark for action on climate change.

Silverjet PR - Silverjet is the world's first airline to go carbon neutral - November 26, 2006

In Canada, there is UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight Program

UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight Program is one of the ways you can achieve your CO2 reduction goals.

UNIGLOBE Travel's Green Flight program is getting much press for its ability to provide companies in Canada with the mechanism that has, for a long time been missing to meet carbon emission offset goals. One way to achieve these goals is to purchase carbon offset credits from UNIGLOBE Travel that are calculated on the number of miles flown in an aircraft generated by companies business, conference or employee incentive travel.

The monies collected from the credits are then invested into environmental programs supported by Environment Canada.

UNIGLOBE's offset provider is Baseline Emissions Management Inc., and the specific site provided by Baseline is

http://www.greenmyflight.com/

Also, via The Great Canadian Carbon Offset 2006, I find a rather roundabout offset arrangement - buy a WestJet ticket via offsetters.ca and offsetters will use their affiliate income to offset some of the carbon. (GCCO2006 link via Treehugger.)

lastminute.com UK also offers this option

Customers using lastminute.com are to be given the option to offset carbon dioxide emissions from flights.

The online retailer claims to have become the first major travel company to make CO2 offsetting an integral part of buying a flight in a Government-backed initiative.

Payments will be invested in sustainable energy projects to reduce the damage done to the environment in a partnership with Climate Care, an organisation which tackles global warming.

TravelMole - Lastminute.com to offer emissions offset option - November 24, 2006

and indeed the option appears prominently at the top of their UK site, with accompanying web page

and not at all on their US site

cheapflights.co.uk has a variety of information - Air passengers can offset CO2 at Treeflights

Passengers who want to offset the carbon dioxide emitted from their flights have the option of using a new carbon-offsetting website where they can pay to plant a tree.

Treeflights, whose motto is "You fly – we plant", will plant one tree in a Welsh forest for each flight taken, at a cost of £10 (or $19/€15).

as well they list other options on their Carbon Emissions page

Al Gore uses Native Energy to offset all of his travel, but unfortunately it's a bit US-centric (miles? map of the USA?)

http://www.nativeenergy.com/travel/

There are lots of competing carbon offset providers, unfortunately I have neither the skills nor the time to evaluate them all.  I may expand this posting as I learn more.

Wikipedia - Carbon offset is probably another good starting point, and they'd take away my Canadian environment blazer badge if I didn't point to David Suzuki.org - Go Carbon Neutral.

wise crowds ruled by foolish governments?

Thomas Homer-Dixon is a deep and interesting thinker, I really enjoyed his book The Ingenuity Gap (see my review).

He has a new one out, The Upside of Down, which is currently sitting at the top of my Books to Read pile.
(Incidentally, according to his book tour info, he will be in Ottawa on December 5, 2006.)

As a side note, according to the pictures on the book site, only Canada gets the upside-down book cover.  I guess Americans can't read upside-down?

The Globe had an interesting interview with him in the Saturday paper, unfortunately it is not free online.

He has some provocative things to say about our decision-making structures, he is really wondering whether the Internet can enable citizens to work together in a better way than our government currently does.

   MV: I don't find this conversation about values taking place in my democratic Parliament or other legislatures. Why not?

   TH-D: I don't know. And it gets us to a conversation about the failure of our institutions. A substantial two-thirds of my book is about how serious our situation is, because I want to make that case very clear. When people say we're heading for breakdown, it comes across as kind of whacko Doomsday. So I spend a fair amount of time in the book just making a solid, well-researched case that we've got serious trouble. And I don't see that sense of urgency reflected in our political institutions.

   MV: Why?

   TH-D: In a larger way, I would say this is an example of what I call negative emergence. We're actually stupider as a whole than we are as individuals.

   MV: Why?

   TH-D: Well, this is an interesting thing that needs to be examined. There have been two books, Smart Mobs [by Howard Rheingold] and The Wisdom of Crowds [by James Surowiecki], that have made the point that often large numbers of people together can be very, very smart. But I think our political institutions in Western society and just about anywhere in the world, our formal political institutions, are actually producing decisions that are radically sub-optimal.

...

   MV: Do you see enough signs in the broader civil society that gives you confidence?

   TH-D: I want to expand on my point about negative emergence. The idea here is that there are some social arrangements where the whole of the group is smarter than any one individual. Our current political systems seem to have created a decision-making whole that actually in many ways is stupider than any one individual.

   I find commonly in my conversations with people, even people with whom I have a strong ideological disagreement, that actually there's a lot of wisdom there, there's a lot to respect. And yet you get us all together collectively, and you look at something like what we're doing with our carbon-dioxide output, and we're acting about as smart as protozoa. We're pooping up our environment and poisoning ourselves.

Globe and Mail - 'It's really late and it's really desperate' - Saturday. November 4, 2006  - pp. F4-F5

This is interesting in that it is basically arguing that representative democracy, which was designed  to save us from the folly of mob rule by providing wise decision-makers, is actually not able to keep up with what the wise crowd of world opinion wants.

I'm not sure that this is a general failure of all Western governments, aren't Canada, the US and Australia the main offenders in terms of climate folly?  All of Europe seems to be, err, all hot to act, at both the citizen and government levels.

I guess it's not surprising that the governments are lagging citizens in terms of their thinking.  In Canada at least we seem to have an excellent government structure... for 1850.  I'm not kidding.  We have a ministry of more fishing, a ministry of more farming, a ministry of more mining and more forestry, and a ministry of more factories.  We do not have a ministry of science, or a ministry of sustainability, or a ministry of cities (despite Canada being one of the most urban nations in the world), or basically a ministry of anything newly important since about 1920.  (Wikipedia - Cabinet of Canada.)  Behold 21st Century Canadian Government, boldly prepared to serve a rural population of hewers of wood.

Gratuitous Amazon pluggery

UPDATE 2006-11-14: I have written a brief review.