Tag Archives: New York

New York invests in California’s carbon

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US carbon asset manager Natsource LLC said on Monday it has invested in the first forest-based greenhouse gas emissions reductions under California rules. Natsource paid a private owner of a redwood forest in Humboldt County represented by nonprofit group the Pacific Forest Trust for credits representing 60,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. – NY Company Buys First Californian Forest Carbon Credits, PlanetArk

The emissions reductions were created through sustainable forestry on a permanently conserved property in California. This deal illustrates the significant role that management of existing forests can play in addressing climate change. The transaction is the first commercial delivery of certified emissions reductions under the Forest Protocols adopted last fall by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The Protocols are the first rigorous governmental accounting standards in the U.S. for climate projects embracing forest management and avoided deforestation, while ensuring emissions reductions are real, permanent, additional and verifiable. – Joint Press Release (PDF), NatSource and Pacific Forest trust

Links

California Air Resources Board (CARB) NatSource Asset Management LLC (NatSource) The Pacific Forest Trust

Two Flatbush Churches Receive Grants

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Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church, Dorchester Road between East 18th and East 19th Street, Ditmas Park Historic District
Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church

Four Brooklyn churches are among the 66 religious properties statewide that received preservation funding from the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
– Four Brooklyn Churches Receive ‘Sacred Sites’ Grants From Landmarks Conservancy, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Two of the four in Brooklyn are in Flatbush.

Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church, on Beverly Road between East 17th and East 18th Streets in Beverly Square East, was awarded a Robert W. Wilson Sacred Sites Challenge Grant Pledge of $40,000 for the restoration of its copper roof.
Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church, East 17th Street

Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church

Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church in the Ditmas Park Historic District was awarded a grant of $10,000 for window restoration. FTC has got a hell of a lot of windows. I’m sure that $10K doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. I suppose it’s probably for their stained glass, rather than these.
Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church, Ditmas Park

Here’s a view from the inside.
Interior, Flatbush-Topmkins Congregational Church

The other two are St. George’s Episcopal Church of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which received $6,000 for stained glass restoration, and St. Philip’s Episcopal Church at 334 MacDonough Street in Stuyvesant Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant, which received $10,000 for the restoration of its tower, masonry and roof drainage.

Links

New York Landmarks Conservancy
Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church
Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church

Gardening as if our lives depended on it

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2014-10-13: I just discovered that none of the original links are good. Two web sites linked from this post – Climate Choices, and the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA) – now redirect to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

I first started writing this post in the Fall of 2006. I drafted it in October 2006, but never published it. I think I was too overwhelmed by the impact of what I was writing to release it. The IPCC report has been issued since then. What I wrote over a year ago no longer sounds so alarmist to me. A post on Garden Rant spurred me to dust this off and get it out there, however imperfect I may think it is.

There’s a lot to this, and I’ve gone through some changes just to take it all in. Here’s the short version:

  • Climate change is inevitable. It’s happening already. We can’t undo the damage we’ve already caused. We can only ride it out.
  • If we continue as we have, the impacts will be severe. It’s going to get really, really bad.
  • Actions we take now can reduce the impact. If we start doing things differently now, it won’t get as bad as it could. We can affect the future.

There are those who cling, at times violently, to ignorance and dismissal of the facts of climate change induced by human activity. “De-nial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” It reminds me of the classical stages of grieving described 40 years ago by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, all of which are demonstrated in different responses expressed around this topic:

  • Denial. The three-dog argument – denial, minimization, projection – applies here: There’s no climate change (it’s not a problem). The climate change is within historical ranges (it’s not so bad). It’s a natural process (it’s not my problem).
  • Anger. Protest, boycott, rage against the machine, fight the system, fight the man.
  • Bargaining. Carbon “credits” is the most obvious example. Little different from buying indulgences from a corrupt church.
  • Depression. There’s nothing we can do about it.
  • Acceptance. It’s going to happen. It’s happening. Now what do we do about it?

In July 2006, I wrote about the Bemidji Statement on Seventh Generation Guardianship:

The seventh generation would be my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren’s children. (If I had, or were going to have, any children to begin with.) If a generation occurs within the range of 20-30 years, we’re talking 140-210 years. Call it 175 years from now.

It’s the year 2181. It’s hard for me to imagine anything I can do to stave off or reduce the multiple disasters which we will have caused.

That was the voice of depression. I feel some hope now. The changes I make now, the work I do now, can make a difference. But only if I accept what’s going to happen if I do nothing.

A report (PDF) issued in October 2006 details what’s going to happen to the climate of the Northeastern United States – Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania – in this century:

The Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA) is a collaboration between the Union of Concerned Scientists and a team of independent experts using state-of-the-art tools to assess how global warming will affect the Northeast United States following two different paths: A higher emissions path with continued rapid growth in global warming pollution, and a lower emissions path with greatly reduced heat trapping emissions.


The goal of this assessment is to provide opinion leaders, policymakers, and the public with the best available science as we make informed choices about reducing our heat-trapping emissions and managing the changes we cannot avoid.
– Climate Choices in the Northeast, Climate Choice

The [Northeast] region, comprising nine of the 50 US states, is critical, since it alone is the world’s seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind the entire nation of Germany and ahead of all of Canada …


Climate changes already under way will continue to accelerate in the next few decades, whether the high-emissions or low-emissions path is taken, but the results will diverge dramatically by the time today’s newborns reach middle age, the study found.
– US Northeast Could Warm Drastically by 2100, PlanetArk

Even the more optimistic, lower-emission scenario – if we aggressively reduce our contributions to global warming – is concerning. If we do nothing, NYC will become unliveable by the end of this century.

The higher-emission scenario … represents a future with fossil fuel-intensive economic growth and a global population that peaks mid-century and then declines. In this scenario, concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (the main heat-trapping gas) reach 940 parts per million (ppm) by 2100—more than triple pre-industrial levels.


The lower-emission scenario … also represents a world with high economic growth and a global population that peaks by mid-century, then declines. However, the lower-emission scenario includes a shift to less fossil fuel-intensive industries and the introduction of clean and resource-efficient technologies. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550 ppm by 2100, about double pre-industrial levels. Current carbon dioxide concentrations stand at 380 ppm (about 40 percent above pre-industrial levels).
– Scenarios and Models, Climate Choice


Over the past 40 years, NYC has averaged 15 days over 90F, and 2 days over 100F each year. In the lower-emission scenario, by the end of the century NYC will have 39 days over 90F, and 7 days over 100F. Under higher (unreduced) emissions, NYC will have 72 days over 90F (five times the current historical average), and 25 days over 100F (ten times the current historical average).

While these urban temperature projections seem to include the overall urban heat island effect, they do not describe surface temperatures, which I wrote about in August 2006. Rooftop temperatures can exceed 150F in the summer. These effects will be amplified even more when the city bakes for weeks and months without relief. We can expect heat-related deaths in the tens of thousands. Heat-related structural failures are not out of the question; the infrastructure of the city was not built with these conditions in mind.

What about winter temperatures? These will also increase. They have already increased by 3.8F from 1970 to 2000. Under the lower-emission scenario, average winter temperatures over the region will increase by 5-7.5F. With higher emissions, we will see 8-12F increase in winter temperatures. The USDA Hardiness Zones are delineated by 5F, so this means my garden is moving 1-2 zones this century, from Zone 7a to Zone 7b or 8a.

For another point of comparison, when things were that much cooler than they are now, NYC was under a mile of ice.

The temperature projections do not include the apparent temperature caused by increased humidity – the heat index – which can make it feel up to 20F hotter. Warmer air can hold more moisture. The increase in humidity will ramp up the heat index faster than the actual temperature.

This map represents how climate will shift in the NYC area through this century. This includes consideration of the heat index. Basically, we’ll be somewhere between Virgina Beach and Savannah.

Thanks to PlanetArk for bringing this to my attention
[bit.ly]
[goo.gl]

Related Posts

Imagine Flatbush 2030, November 20, 2007
Barbara Corcoran Hates the Earth, November 18, 2007
Preserving Livable Streets, November 7, 2007
2006 was the fifth-warmest year on record, February 20, 2007
The IPCC Report: Grief & Gardening #6, February 4, 2007
Buying Indulgences: The Carbon Market, November 23, 2006
NASA Earth Observatory Maps NYC’s Heat Island, Block by Block, August 6, 2006
The Bemidji Statement on Seventh Generation Guardianship, July 22, 2006

Links

Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA) (link corrected 2014-10-13)
Full report (PDF, 159 pages, link corrected 2014-10-13)
Summary (PDF, 8 pages, link defunct 2014-10-13)
Climate Choice (link defunct, 2014-10-13)
Union of Concerned Scientists

Fall Approaches

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Fall Colors around Lake Superior, September 23, 2007. Credit: NASA Terra–MODIS (Satellite-Sensor)

The autumnal equinox of 2007 occurred at 09:51 UTC on Sunday, September 23, or 05:51 Eastern Time. “Autumnal” instead of “Fall” because:

  1. It’s okay to use for both hemispheres.
  2. Also, you could use this term on any other planets on which you should find yourself.

In northeastern North America, we measure fall by the changes in foliage. And it’s on its way south from Canada.

The calendar may have set September 23 as the first day of autumn in 2007, but the forests that line the eastern shore of Lake Superior had already started to mark the turning of the season. By September 23, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this photo-like image, the forests of northern Michigan and southern Ontario flamed orange as the first trees of the season—maples—began to display their brilliant red and orange fall colors. Veins of green run through the sea of orange where the deciduous forest gives way to deep green pine trees.

The most vivid color is concentrated in Canada’s Ontario Province. Located farther south, Michigan’s trees show only a hint of color. …

The large image provides an unusually cloud-free view of all of the Great Lakes. Similar spots of color stretch across southern Canada and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The northern plains of the United States have started to turn yellow as grasses ripen, but the eastern forests in Pennsylvania and New York remain deep green.

– Fall Colors around Lake Superior, NASA Earth Observatory

New York State operates its own fall foliage watch. You can track the progress of the changes on the map provided on their Web site. They were predicting “vibrant, near-peak autumn color” this past weekend for the Adirondacks, the peachy area in northern New York state on the map below.

Here in NYC, we’re still in the green, but I’ve been watching the subtle changes. Individual trees in my neighborhood, including the cherry tree in my backyard, are already picking up shades of yellow and orange.

Vernal equinox and autumnal equinox. These names are direct derivatives of Latin (ver = spring, autumnus = autumn), and as such more apt to be found in writings. Although in principle they are subject to the same problem as the spring/autumn names, their use over the centuries has fixed them to the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere. As such the vernal equinox is the equinox where the Sun passes from south to north [across the equator], and is a zeropoint in some celestial coordinate systems. The name of the other equinox is used less often.
– Wikipedia:Equinox:Names

Links

Wikipedia: Equinox
I Love NY (State) Fall Foliage Report

Related Posts

The Return of Persephone

News, New York: Assembly Approves Marriage Equality Bill

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In an historic vote late in the evening on Tuesday, June 19, the New York State Assembly approved legislation guaranteeing marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples.

The measure was approved by a vote of 85 to 61 after a floor debate that lasted more than three hours.
– New York State Assembly Approves Gay Marriage Law, Gay City News

Approval of the measure in the Assembly, even with its overwhelming Democratic majority, marks a dramatic turnaround for the cause of marriage equality in New York, coming less than a year after the Court of Appeals, in a 4 to 2 vote, rejected the claim that the fundamental right to marry recognized in the state Constitution extends to an individual’s right to marry someone of the same sex.

Prior to this week, only in California – where the Senate and Assembly passed a gay marriage bill in 2005, which was vetoed by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – has a legislative body in the U.S. affirmatively embraced equal civil marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
…
With Assembly passage secured, marriage equality advocates now turn their attention to the tougher task of moving the state Senate, where Republicans hold a two-seat majority and whose leader, Joe Bruno, from upstate Rensselaer County, has stated his firm opposition. Senator Tom Duane, an out gay Chelsea Democrat, sponsors a marriage bill that is nearly identical to the Spitzer-O’Donnell measure that passed the Assembly, for which he has lined up 18 co-sponsors in the 62-seat chamber.

Nobody expects that bill to make significant headway, however, as long as Bruno stays in charge of the Senate.

News, February 26: NY helps MD fight EAB

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The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets announced Monday that they were responding to Maryland’s call for help from neighboring states to deal with Emerald Ash Borer, Agrilus planipennis in that state. Although the the presence of EAB in Maryland was confirmed only in August of last year, it’s believed to have been introduced by an illegal shipment of infested ash trees from Michigan, a quarantine state for EAB, as far back as 2003.

New York is already dealing with Asian Long-Horned Beetle (ALB), Anoplophora glabripennis. New York is sending 11 New York horticulture inspectors and 17 foresters.

… In December 2006, the Maryland Department of Agriculture asked neighboring states for assistance in conducting an inventory of ash trees, identifying infested trees and assisting with the removal of infested trees. A contingent of 11 New York horticulture inspectors and 17 New York foresters will be working with their counterparts in Maryland to quickly isolate and remove infested trees.
…
New York’s participation will provide Maryland with experienced plant pest regulatory officials knowledgeable in tree identification, the target pest and landowner interactions. In return, New York inspectors and foresters will have the opportunity to observe an actual EAB infestation and gain valuable knowledge and experience that will enhance the surveillance and early detection of this pest in New York State.

– Emerald Ash Borer Detected in Maryland; New York State Helps in Eradication

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via Invasive Species Weblog

Interactive Keys for Woody Plants in New York

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In the Spring 2007 edition of their Members News newsletter, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden noted a new Web resource available from the BBG Research department:

BBG scientists have developed interactive identification keys to woody plants of the region …
… Users often experience difficulties naming a plant when the [field] guide refers to a structure (e.g., flowers) that the specimen does not have. If the structure doesn’t exist, the user is stuck at that identification step, with limited options for further classifying the plant.
– Woody Plant Identification Made Easy With Interactive Keys, BBG Members News Newsletter, Spring 2007 (PDF, requires membership login), p. 3

The keys are available for the New York City Metropolitan Area, and for New York State. They’re packaged as ZIP files for download for PCs and PDAs. I downloaded both PC versions to try them out; each file is about 4MB in size. (The PDA versions are huge, over 100MB, for reasons I’ll explain later.)

The PC version comes as a handful of HTML files (Web pages), Javascript files (little chunks of programs and information), and JPEGs (images). I tested using the keys with Internet Explorer 7. You need to enable or allow scripting to use the keys; if the IE Information Bar tells you it “restricted this webpage from running scripts”, you need to “Click here for options..” and select “Allow Blocked Content…”

The main page is a frameset (a Web page with different areas). The left-hand frame, or pane, provides the key. It’s much like a traditional key, a series of yes-or-no questions. However, instead of the traditional hierarchical key, the key is flattened out so that all 106 questions are presented at once. For example, here is their question #34:

34. Leaf (leaflet) apex:
mucronate-cuspidate
otherwise

Of course, you still need to know what “mucronate-cuspidate” means. That’s where the images come in. The text for each key links to a JPEG file which provides an example of the key, and sometimes additional text. For example, here’s the image which comes up when you click the “Left (leaflet) apex” label from Key #34:

Leaf apices

The right-hand pane lists plant taxa, either genus or species. Clicking a genus expands to the list of species. For example, Amelanchier expands to:

Each species name links to the details for that plant. This Amelanchier example is from the Metro version of the keys; each name links to its page on BBG’s New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF) Web site. The NY State version takes you to the New York Flora Association Atlas (NYFA) Web site. I’m guessing that the PDA versions of the keys load all these pages onto the PDA instead of linking to the external Web sites, which is why those download files are so large.

The next to each name gives you the keys for that species. Here are the keys for Amelanchier canadensis:

Amelanchier canadensis

Habit: undefined
Habit: not stoloniferous
Leaf development at flowering time: most leaves not fully developed (i.e., folded or in bud)
Underside pubescence in young leaves: densely pubescent
Color of young leaves: undefined
Leaf outline: undefined
Leaf outline: undefined
Leaf outline: undefined
Leaf outline: undefined
Leaf outline: otherwise
Leaf apex: undefined
Leaf apex: undefined
Leaf apex: undefined
Leaf base: acuminate, acute, cuneate, obtuse or rounded
Leaf base: undefined
Leaf margin: finely toothed (more than 6 teeth per cm.)
Inflorescence: many flowered (usually more than 5) raceme
Inflorescence: erect or ascending
Inflorescence: axis and pedicels pubescent
Petal length: usually less than 10 mm.
Micropetaly (petals greatly reduced to nearly absent): absent
Ovary summit: glabrous or slightly pubescent and glabrate (i.e., not persistent)

Finally, the top frame/pane has two buttons which allow you to synch up or filter the contents of the left and right panes. After selecting one or more keys in the left pane, clicking the button filters the list in the right pane to matching genera and species. Similarly, after selecting a genus in the right pane, you can click the button to filter the keys to relevant questions to distinguish species within the genus. (This seems to happen automatically when you select a genus anyway, so I’m not sure why this button is needed.) If you know you’re looking at an Oak or a Maple, for example, you could use this feature to identify which species.

I haven’t had a chance to actually use the keys yet to identify anything. But there are some confusing Maples I’ve got my eyes on.

Links:

Coleomegilla usurps Coccinella as New York State Insect

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[Update, 2006.08.15: Corrected the date to 2006 from 2005!]

News, June 15, 2006, Albany, NY: The New York State Assembly bill A06247 passed and delivered to the Senate:

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL : Alters terminology of the state insect.

JUSTIFICATION : To change the official state insect from the Nine-spotted lady beetle (Coccinella novemnotata) species of the lady bug, which is no longer found in New York State, to another species of Lady Bug, the Spotted lady bug (Coleomegilla maculata).

PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY : New Bill.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS : None.

EFFECTIVE DATE : Immediately.

Here’s how the New York Times reported it today, June 23:

The state’s official insect, a nine-spotted ladybug, would no longer fly in that role: it is extinct in New York State. So legislators took a break from bickering over health care spending and property taxes in the waning days of the session and found common ground on the issue of designating a new state insect, making it the pink spotted ladybug instead.
– A Few Things Lawmakers Can Agree On [requires subscription for viewing]

I think the correct term would be “extirpated” in New York State. Regardless, the article goes on to quote Nancy Calhoun, Republican, sponsor of the bill:

… “I know it’s not earth-shattering,” said the assemblywoman, Nancy Calhoun, who represents parts of Orange and Rockland Counties.

Ms. Calhoun says she was just trying to right a wrong. Lawmakers first adopted the state’s official bug in 1989, but the nine-spotted ladybug had already become extinct in the state. Ms. Calhoun was alerted to the error by a reporter a couple of years ago and she submitted a bill to rectify the matter.

“Why do we want to get something like this wrong?” Ms. Calhoun said. “It would be like having a dinosaur as our state reptile.” …

It’s an interesting question. In fact, New York State has a state fossil, the Sea Scorpion, which is an extinct relative of the Horseshoe Crab, which is not. So intentionally selecting an extinct state symbol is not out of the question. The comparison is not accurate, however. Dinosaurs were extinct before we got onto the scene; C. novemnotata was once common. A better question is: How did New York State get to have a once-native-but-no-longer-resident state insect?

The back-story can be found in the Fall 2003 issue of Wings, the magazine of the Xerces Society:

In 1980, fifth grader Kristina Savoca sent a letter – along with a petition bearing 152 signatures – to New York State Assemblyman Robert C. Wertz, urging him to introduce legislation designating the lady beetle as the official state insect. The proposal languished for a number of years, passing in the Assembly but not being considered in the Senate. Approval finally came in 1989, after Cornell University entomologists suggested that Wertz propose the nine-spotted lady beetle (Coccinella novemnotata, usually abbreviated to C-9) as the state insect because it was one of the most important native lady beetles and was believed to be common. The red-and-black insect is also widely recognizable to the public as a ““ladybug.””
…
Among the several dozen species of lady beetles in New York state, C-9 was the clear choice in 1989 because it had been -— and was assumed still to be -— the most common lady beetle in New York and the northeastern United States. It ranged across the United States and through southern Canada. However, several recent [as of 2003] surveys in New York and the Northeast in general have not recovered any individuals of C-9 … It is now clear that C-9 occupies only a tiny fraction of its former range in North America.
…
Many entomologists suspect that introduced lady beetles, such as the seven-spot (Coccinella septempunctata) and Asian multi-colored (Harmonia axyridis) lady beetles, played a role in C-9’’s disappearance. … Qualitatively, several native lady beetle species have declined as first the seven-spot and then the Asian multi-colored lady beetles established and rose to prominence. Introduced species may also replace each other, as the Asian multi-colored lady beetle’s arrival seems to have led to the seven-spot lady beetle becoming increasingly rare.

The cause for concern is that introduced species may fill the same ecological niche native species once occupied. [Emphasis added] This is problematic because many of these species are from Asia and are not adapted to the harsh Northeastern winters or climatic irregularities like droughts. Unlike native lady beetles, which overwinter in hedgerows and in the duff of trees, the introduced coccinellids take to people’s garages and homes, often by the thousands, creating a considerable nuisance. More important, introduced species may out-compete native species for food and replace them …
…
We can hope that the decline of C-9 and several other conspicuous coccinellids will lead to a greater focus on this valuable family. To call attention to their plight, listing the species as ““endangered” in New York state and ““threatened” at the national levels is warranted. This is a task that the Xerces Society will be undertaking in the coming months. Other native lady beetles have similar habitat requirements and probably suffer from similar limiting factors, so efforts to survey for and conserve C-9 should prove useful for a suite of species. What began as a simple letter from a student to a state assemblyman has resulted in a greater awareness of the threats to apparently ubiquitous creatures often assumed to be safe from the pressures of environmental change.
– The Decline of C-9 – New York’s State Insect, By Erin J. Stephens and John E. Losey

Here’s how we can “right the wrong”: instead of introducing a bill to gloss over the extirpation of a species, let’s reintroduce and restore C. novemnotata to New York State. Then our state insect would be a symbol to aspire to, and not simply an “error.”

[goo.gl]

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