Everyday Bliss

ILLUSTRATED RECIPES INCLUDED BELOW!

Ok! Celiacs and those with irritable bowel syndrome and those of us who are gluten-free by choice and like it, take heart.  There’s more value you can wring out of a pumpkin than just scaring the kids at Halloween. We’re using our Halloween Jack o’ Lantern for toothsome Christmas goodies now. Talk about your Frugal Gourmet!

If you were beaten into frugality by parents who went through the Depression and were determined “never to be hungry again, no not me nor any of my people”,  you probably know all this stuff already. But if not, listen up. It’s now cool again to be frugal. In our house, that means no vegetable end goes wasted but gets put into a container labeled “Future Soup” and used in weekly stock-making.

Even the Halloween jack ‘o lantern does not suffer the ignominy of the compost heap. We paint ours with its festive face, placing a tealight on top of the pumpkin (well glued-down with hot wax) for Halloween night, then remove the tealight, turn the pumpkin around and use it as a Thanksgiving centerpiece with other seasonal fruits and flowers. After Thanksgiving, the pumpkin is scraped of paint, baked, and both filets and chunks carved from it to use in cooking.

One of our favorite dishes is an Afghani entree of sauteed pumpkin filets covered with a delightfully savory sloppy-joe type ragu and finally a yogurt sauce gently scented with garlic and a touch of brown sugar. The dish is called Kadu Borani and is served over fluffy, long-grained jasmine rice. One gluten-free recipe for Kadu Borani is here and here is its graphical representation:

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Awesome-sauce! Right?

Just a handful of ingredients you probably already have on hand and this dish is practically cost-free.

Other less intensive dishes can be made with pumpkin or other squashes, which are highly beneficial for those with celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions that require greater amounts of natural fiber added to the diet. One of my favorites is a recent innovation with this year’s jack o’ lantern cutlets:

5 Minute Breakfast Pumpkin Cheesecake

Now could you “diet” on your busy schedule if you had Pumpkin Cheesecake plus a mouthwateringly luscious cup (real, thanks to the Bear for an early Christmas present!) of Kona coffee for a quick out-the-door breakfast? You can prep all the ingredients the night before. Putting the Pumpkin Cheesecake in your serving bowl and making your tea or coffee is what takes the five minutes in the A.M.  Here’s how:

1. Assemble the ingredients (coffee optional and used as an accompaniment for this dish in the A.M.)

2. For one serving, place a cup of pumpkin cubes in glass bowl and pour half-n-half to cover halfway. Microwave uncovered for 2 minutes on high, or simmer on stovetop until half-n-half is boiling.

3.  Remove pumpkin mix from heat, add yogurt, spices and sweetener to taste, mash with fork or puree with hand blender. I favor Blue Agave syrup or Truvia sweetener made from stevia, as both of these are low to no-gycemic and don’t metabolize in the body as sugar, which makes all the dishes I cook great for diabetics as well.

Additions: If you’re super-bulking your fiber, you can also add a tablespoon of ground flaxseed. If you’d like more high-quality protein, add the same amount of soaked crumbled walnuts or hempseed.

4. Though I have this “crustless”, you can line a bowl with gluten-free cracker crumbs – I use Glutino’s “wholemeal” crackers, with a teaspoon or two of agave syrup or honey and a drop or two of lemon juice just to hold the crumb together.  Press into bottom of bowl.

5. Spoon the rich pumpkin mixture over the crust, or place in bowl just as it is.

Jack o’ Lantern Pumpkin Cheesecake

This is a breakfast yogurt that you can amp up the nutritional complexity of as described above if you wish. It’s also something you might find at a swanky spa or gourmet restaurant. You can serve this for an after-dinner dessert. If so, spoon mix over crust in a glass pie plate and make enough to cover the crust. Freeze until 1o minutes before serving. Thaw very slightly on the countertop, slice and serve. This dish is better scooped out though, a la cobbler.

Enjoy!

As you know, I’m always looking for ways to make things simpler, easier and less expensive while being sustainably good for the planet and all of us living on it. I angsted for ages over the gargantuan costs of organic laundry soap but finally caved when in good conscience, I couldn’t put waste products into our precious water supply. I bought all the brands you’ve seen in healthfood stores and didn’t find one worked better than any other. They cost more than the common grocery store brands, and I knew that the key ingredients could really be had for pennies.

What a racket!

Make Your Own Laundry Soap for Pennies

In just as much angst over the plastic bottle recycling issue, I started making a simple laundry powder out of old homemade soap that had gone a bit hard. Grating it on a cheese grater proved knuckle-busting so figuring it was a clean job anyway, I busted out the Cuisinart and processed large chunks of cut up soap until fine meal resulted.

Caveat: WAIT UNTIL THE DUST CLEARS before you open the food processor’s container!  You can easily inhale soap dust and trust me, you don’t wanna. I say this from experience.

I mixed the resulting two cups of soap powder with equal parts washing soda and borax which you can find cheap as chips in any grocery store. This will give you 24 ounces of product, enough for 12 loads. I store this in a large plastic dry goods storage jar. Be sure to add BEFORE clothes and turn water on so any dust is damped down before you lean over the washing machine to put the clothes in.

Cost Analysis

Given I’d made the soap myself from micro-amounts of essential oils, inexpensive lye and fats (olive oil, coconut oil & solid shortening) that were lying around in the cabinet, this mix cost me pennies a load to make. I estimate less than ten cents per quarter-cup scoop and it cleans the laundry like nobody’s business.

Since the essential oils used to scent the soap had seen better days, I added a few drops of lavender and a few of tea tree – both of these are antiseptic and tea tree is known to kill germs on contact. Grand total, maybe 12 cents a load. Any kind of old soap (exceptions: soaps with cold cream, herb or grit particles added) will work great.

Slightly Rancid Is Still Peachy-Keen…

If the soap is a bit rancid, that’s okay, you can still use it to great effect to clean your clothes and can add a drop or two of essential oil (see “Dryer Sheet” below) to eliminate any rough scent, though scent doesn’t tend to transfer in the washer, even using cold water.  Also, you need hard soap for this, not the soft creamy type of bar. If I had to purchase a soap to use for this purpose, I’d get either Kirk’s Castile, Ivory (or just use Ivory Snow) or Dr. Bronner’s Lavender bar.

Dryer Sheet Of Forever

When I started eliminating allergic substances years ago, I came to realize dryer sheets were one of the worst irritants. We had also just gotten a pile of white cotton shop towels to use for cleaning instead of paper towels. I annointed one of these with a few drops of lavender oil, and threw that into the dryer with a wet load.

Also into the dryer went two clean tennis balls which have the same effect as the village washerwoman beating the clothes with a rock to soften the fibers.  They also reduce static, lint and wrinkle reduction. There are also plastic balls with spikes that you can buy. We have both and I don’t notice a difference in the way they work – tennis balls are less expensive. So both white cloth and tennis balls – with or without your choice of essential oils does the trick so fine you won’t miss those artificially smelly and immune system-compromising dryer sheets. I still use the same cloth I started with six years ago. Wash it every ten loads or so, then when it comes out just add a few drops of oil and toss it in wet and oiled with that load’s drying. Gotta love it!

Caveat: The slight fuzz on tennis balls may come off on your dark and nubby-textured clothing.  Leave out of the dark load if this is an issue, or hang dry fuzzy/nubby textured dark clothes.

Also, make sure dryer cloth is white as oils may cause dyes in colored cloths to come off on your load of laundry. Other essential oils that make your laundry smell fantastic:  ylang-ylang, orange, neroli, eucalyptus or lemon. Try sandalwood when you have a date lined up – the scent is faint but will deepen subtly when your body warms the clothing!

Fancy a “hair gel” textured liquid-y soap? The Comfortable Hippies have one recipe here.

Kellie from “Make it From Scratch” (wonderful place!) offers her recipe, similar to mine here.

While you’re at it, check out their great Make It From Scratch Thanksgiving. Your game plan & recipes = done!

I just created my first couple of HubPages. The second one I did was on Practical Sustainable Living which means, Sustainability without Stress. Simple stuff we can all do. It’s here:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Practical-Sustainable-Living

The first post I made to this hub was so good I wanted to share it with you, because sustainability is dear to my heart and one of the shifts we need to make as a culture. In answer to someone else’s question about whether or not to go organic to avoid hormones in meat and milk, I answered:

Real simple: ORGANIC = YES.

Anything that is an animal product, always, always go organic. This means there are no pesticides, hormones or additives to the animal’s life, and that they were kept in a humane manner, allowed sufficient pasturage to roam in the case of cows, goats, sheep etc., and in the case of chickens, turkeys and other fowl, that they were not cooped, were allowed to scratch freely and have room to stretch their wings. Also, that they were killed humanely and treated with dignity throughout their life and in their final hours. It makes a difference in the taste and nutritional value of meat, milk and eggs of domestic food animals, plus which it’s just the right thing to do for all the reasons above.

Put it this way: Would you eat a piece of chicken pumped not only full of artificial hormones and antibiotics, but the extreme stress hormones from being cooped beak to beak with other birds all its life, who suffered before dying and was killed inhumanely while terrified? I know I wouldn’t. My conscience won’t let me, my tongue detests the taste of non-organic meat, and my body, fed for over a decade now on organics, knows the difference and begs me never again to feed it chemical-laced protiens. Organics are also one of the best ways, animal or vegetable, to cleanse your body of all the poisons you’ve ingested over the years. The benefits of going organic and taking a full body cleanse with time to integrate into new eating patterns, are manyfold and thoroughly blissful.

Some speak of organic farms not producing what pesticided farms do. That may be true or it may not be true…or we may have yet to find out what new organic-friendly technologies can produce. But simply put, would you rather eat poison or quality nutrition? It’s also over 100 years of using pesticides and other chemicals in North America at least, that have leached the core nutrients from our soils such that we have to supplement them by taking vitamins – even with organics. Those farms that have been organic 20 or more years have put back the nutrients into the soil by adding their organic livestock manure or vegetable matter compost and even seaweed top dressings to the tilth.

Food from organic farms is vastly more nutritious, and if you feed on it, your body needs less food to live better. Part of the overeating we’re seeing as pandemic right now is caused by the very poor nutrition available even in plain meat and vegetables that are produced on chemically saturated lands. The body is just trying to get its RDA of nutrition, so the person eats and eats. It’s a shame the available calories in such food haven’t gone down too, or we might be able to break even. But that’s not the case… *wry smile* Also, our bodies have become miniature pharmacies of hormones, antibiotics and a host of other chemicals we have picked up from the chemically treated foods we eat. That makes us more susceptible to influenza and other diseases, and is one of the suspected major causes of some cancers.

Organic food makes us healthier and more able to cope with illness or physical injury.

Also, in turning our lifestyles around from the endless consumption that factory farming is part of, we can leverage other options for food production. Rooftop and back yard gardens – in the 1940’s during WWII, everyone had them and everyone fed their families nearly 100% with them. Farming the seas as well is technology we are only starting to leverage, like seafaring nations such as Sweden, Norway and other Scandinavian countries have done for centuries to create their hearty and disease-resistant populace. We can also learn from Asian teachings and use meats sparingly as flavoring like they do in Japan, another nation whose bulk of protein comes from the sea. Hydroponics, terraced city agriculture and community farms are also extremely viable options, even for city dwellers. There are vast tracts of land in America that is currently being used to house feeder cattle that if turned over to organic farming would feed hundreds more people. And across the pond in England, each family without back yard space for a garden may request an allotment of land from the city for the purpose of growing their own vegetables and keeping small livestock. There are many options to boost farm production other than sticking with chemicals that will continue to damage the earth, even if we stop using them tomorrow, well into the 22nd century.

We might well take advantage of these options no matter what city, state, nation or principality we live in. It’s no longer an east /west issue, or a north / south divide. Food and water are becoming scarcer, but that doesn’t mean the trend has to continue. If we all pitch in towards sustainable longterm solutions, we can still turn back the tide of damage a century of chemicalized living has done.

Go Green! It’s not just for posters anymore…

To see my original post on this: click here. Then read the below, just in, from http://calparks.org:

As you may have heard, last night the Big 5 (Governor Schwarzenegger plus the Democratic and Republican leaders in the State Senate and Assembly) announced they have reached a deal on the state budget.   The details are not yet in print, but several sources are confirming that $70 million of the park system’s General Fund allocation will be eliminated, with $62 million backfilled by other funding sources on what appears to be a one-time basis.

This leaves the state park system with an $8 million gap, and is expected to result in park closures.  At this time, there is not a list of certain closures, we do not know how many or which parks may be closed as a result of the budget deal.

Considering where we started just 8 weeks ago, this outcome is better for state parks than most people could have imagined. We are not finished – the Legislature still needs to approve the budget deal by the end of the week and more details need to come out regarding the parks that will close – but the fact that we’re looking at a much more scaled-down version of park cuts than we started with is welcome news.  It is certainly a testament to the Save Our State Parks Campaign, the tens of thousands of Californians – like you! – who stood up for their parks, and the efforts of all of us that we’ve stared down such a draconian proposal.

In terms of next steps, the deal must be agreed to by 2/3 of the Legislature, and they’re expected to vote on it on Thursday or Friday.  As you can imagine, there are plenty of pieces in this agreement for all sides to hate, but let’s hope there is the will to at least get this passed now, to keep the state moving forward.

Thank you for your efforts to help Save Our State Parks, and we will update you once a final state budget is in place.

Traci Verardo-Torres
Vice President, Government Affairs

Sacramento announced that it is closing 80% of California’s State Parks by Labor Day to save the 1/10th of 1% of state General Fund money the parks, already cut back to the bone, are allotted yearly.

Factor in the estimated 230% of both lost revenue as well as the millions of dollars that would be needed to rehab the parks when (if) they do re-open, the devastating consequences to public mental and physical health that park closure would mean, and this maneuver is simply sheer idiocy.

Rather than belabor the point, I’m simply pasting below the letter I sent my state representatives. All the facts are in it, as well as the link to the State Park campaign online where you can send your own letters. It’s crazy, it’s insane, and it makes no sense. I offer a more wideranging view of what’s going on, plus one workable solution below:

Take Action Here: http://www.calparks.org/takeaction/

Join the Facebook Campaign: http://www.facebook.com/pages/California-State-Parks-Foundation/51483280208

Here’s my letter, please feel free to use it in its entirety if you like, to send to your California State Representatives:

Dear …,

As a strong supporter of our state park system, I am writing to express outrage to the Governor’s proposal to eliminate core funding for our state park system that will close virtually all parks.

I am a psychologist and have made a lifetime study of the behavior of people when removed from the resources of nature. The results of those deprived of greenspace is devastating, not only on personal mental health but on societal behavior patterns.

Persons deprived of their connection with nature withdraw, become less concerned about their fellow human beings, more callous in their behaviors and more predisposed towards violence. It is no coincidence that some of the worst riots and gang violence occur in paved cities with little access to green space. If parks are closed, a mental health disaster would result, to say nothing of the financial disaster this “cost saving” move would engender.

Additionally, the following facts need to be taken into consideration:

(Source: http://www.calparks.org. Observations & additional facts, mine)

1. The General Fund budget that state parks receive account for less than 1/10 of one percent of the entire state budget.

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OBSERVATION & SOLUTION: Stripping the state parks will not solve the budget problem, nor be in any way a significant contributor to defraying state costs. Indeed, it will end up costing us far, far more.

The citizens were never asked if they would consider raising park fees. I for one, would be happy to pay higher fees to be allowed to access my state’s park system. Raise the rate four to six times current rates. Such a move would more than make the park system pay for itself. It might prevent some from attending, but still beats the cost of a traditional family vacation for cash-strapped Californians.
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2. Last year alone, there were over 80 million visitors to state parks – and all indications are that this year was going to be even higher.

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IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: California is KNOWN for our state park system. Thousands of out of state vacationers come to California specifically to visit our park systems. Count on a drastic reduction in tourism revenue with our state parks closed.
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3. For every dollar that funds the parks, $2.35 is returned to the state’s General Fund through economic activities in the communities surrounding the parks.

That means eliminating all funding for state parks could actually result in the state losing over $350 million dollars in revenue.

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VERY IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS: Sacramento needs to take into account the funds needed to put parks on standby maintenance mode, as well as the millions of dollars that will be needed for cleanup and restoration when parks are reopened. In absence of adequate park staff, our now pristine parks will turn into homeless camps and rubbish drops. Parks will also be subject to multiple forms of abuse, such as illegal drug manufacture and all-terrain vehicle traffic, by those for whom a locked gate – and care for the environment – is no barrier.

In addition, locked bathrooms will force such persons to use the local environs for toileting purposes, thus creating a potentially devastating sanitation nightmare. Epidemics start when human waste comes into contact with running water and ground water. Factor in the nightmare this public health issue will create and for the sake of public safety, keep our parks open.
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Our state parks exist to provide educational and recreational opportunities, preserve important cultural and historic resources, and aid the state in protecting key natural resources.  They also serve a critical function in providing respite for the state’s residents in times like these – when economic circumstances keep Californians closer to home, looking for low-cost ways to vacation and spend time with family.

As I have said, the need of human beings to interact with the natural world is paramount in preservation of the public’s mental health. If our children grow up without access to nature, what kind of human beings will they turn out to be? Will they even care about preserving the environment for the future as their parents have? What one is not exposed to, one cares little for. Such persons lack the finer feelings that can only be evoked in nature. And in truth, we are lesser beings for such disconnection. That is why this potential closure of California parks is so deeply frightening.

This is exactly the wrong time to be proposing to eliminate the state’s core commitment to this world-class resource.  Not only would removing the state’s General Fund support for state parks likely close the park system, it would cause an additional economic ripple effect to the state’s budget and to local economies.  The state would lose the ability to generate revenue from popular parks, which drives local economies.  As you learned during last year’s proposal to close state parks, every $1 that funds the state park system returns $2.35 to the state’s General Fund, largely through economic activities in communities surrounding state parks.

I urge you in the STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS to seek creative solutions that provide adequate revenue to keep our state parks open and accessible to all Californians.

Sincerely,
Your Name
Your street address

Friendship and love, even across species. This is what it looks like. Check your heart when you look at this picture…that’s what it feels like. (see below for more)

It always amazes me when I meet people who won’t cosy up to another human being, who won’t accept help, whose stiff-necked pride depends on being “completely, totally independent”.  I used to see that a lot back when I was a social worker. And even today, in some who would consider it beneath them to accept a helping hand, or others who won’t reach out to their networks when they really need to.

Now I enjoy my financial independence, being an independent thinker and things like that, but will I accept a hug, a friendly nuzzle or a helping hand?  Oh, you betcha! And revel in the close-knit communities I enjoy being part of.

Come on, folks. It’s the holidays. If you really need to, and even if you don’t – reach out, please. You’ll be doing someone else the immense favor of allowing them the extreme blessing of giving, and yourself the equal blessing of receiving.  No perps, no victims – it’s an equal exchange. Think about it.

Ask  your mom or maiden aunt for a hug. Get your dad to help you check your tires or change a lightbulb. Sincerely ask a colleague’s opinion on your latest product or business thought. ‘Tis the season of giving, so give that blessing to others.

In that, we can all stand to learn a thing or two from our animal friends. The first thing we can all do with more of that this pair of buddies has down: friendship and love – even across different species. Thanks to Certified Energy Coach Carol Sanderell for sending this beautiful photo essay and heartwarming story of the fawn Finchen and her wild rabbit companion seen above.

The full essay (in  both German and English) with loads of pictures can be found here: http://www.tanja-askani.de/ Talk about magic, communication and inspiration! If you’re a big softie like me, you’ll cry tears of joy. Check out her other photos of interspecies communication.  Warm your cockles for darn sure.

I eat healthy because I want to. Some may say I don’t have a choice, but I prefer to embody the reality of my physical container as a temple, and to keep the temple clean and sacred, I only put the best fuel in it. If I eat bread or glutinous grains of any kind, I blow up like a toad and look like I’m carrying triplets. Discomfort doesn’t begin to cover it.

And when I eat animal products (increasingly rare) they’re organic – meat, eggs and cheese, because even those with their heads still far down in the sand have pretty much acknoweledged the contamination of world food supplies with pesticides, hormones and the like. Ditto veggies, which must be organic.

Above is a picture of my kitchen counter with a few staples on it and my award-winning (with family at least) recipe for Pumpkin Apple Crumblebutter. So healthy it counts as a beefy serving of veggies AND fruit, and I lived on it as a treat and dessert while I was writing the book. Click the link to go to the recipe. It’s gluten free and you won’t even miss Pumpkin Pie at holidays with this stashed in your pantry. 

But if I’m back in my home state visiting friends or in suburban areas, organic is hard to come by, so I’m okay making do with the best I can get. Lots of filtered water, lots of farmer’s market fare. At home, we keep healthy foods on hand and eat more out of the cupboard than outside the house. I pretty much figure out dinner a few hours before we eat.

But I was very suprised to learn that on the other end of the scale from anorexia and bulimia, is a zone where healthy eating becomes unhealthy obsession. Complete with a quiz of course, to see if "this is you".

Check this out, from an article from the NBC11 local television station:

Is there a dark side to such healthy living?  Bay Area doctor Steven Bratman coined the term "orthorexia" from the Greek word ortho, which means correct. The disorder is not in the obsession to be thin, but with being pure.

El Camino Hospital Dietician Kim Bandelier said orthorexia is not a medically-recognized diagnosis, but it’s real and can be very dangerous.

"We normally see it associated with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). It’s a symptom of a mental disorder. They definitely have an unhealthy preoccupation with food," Bandelier said.

Dieticians say the vast majority of healthy eaters are nowhere near orthorexic. But like any eating disorder, there are red flags to watch out for. One of the signs is when someone no longer enjoys food.

Alexis Perlmutter said she and many of her friends have some orthorexic tendencies.  "I used to love Big Macs. Now I look at Big Mac and I think, ‘Poison, poison, poison’ and I won’t eat one," Perlmutter said.

There are some questions you can ask yourself to see if you are obsessed with health foods and may be at risk of developing orthorexia. This quiz is from Dr. Bratman’s book "Health Food Junkies." Give yourself a point for each question you answer with "yes."

• Do you spend more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food? (For four hours, give yourself two points).
  
• Do you plan tomorrow’s food today?
  
• Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat than the pleasure you receive from eating it?
  
• Have you found that as the quality of your diet has increased, the quality of your life has correspondingly diminished?
  
• Do you keep getting stricter with yourself?
  
• Do you sacrifice experiences you once enjoyed to eat the food you believe is right?
  
• Do you feel an increased sense of self-esteem when you are eating healthy food? Do you look down on others who do not?
  
• Do you feel guilt or self-loathing when you stray from your diet?
  
• Does your diet socially isolate you from others?
  
• When you are eating the way you are supposed to, do you feel a peaceful sense of total control?

Light said she’s aware of her hyper-healthy attitude and she believes it that keeps her in balance. So, as the phrase goes, too much of a good thing can be bad for you, even when it comes to health food.

The original article is here: at the NBC11 website

I rarely make political statements, but this is one I happen to think is important, and it’s not about people, it’s about the environment. It’s a good point they’re making along the lines of  an untutored person thinking "if one pill is good, five must be better" and killing themselves through ignorance.  Biofuels are great, but the authors of this newsletter Avaaz (see below) have a good point about green technology caveats. Vote your conscience…

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Biofuels are billed as a way to slow down climate change. But in reality, because so much land is being cleared to grow them, most biofuels today are causing more global warming emissions than they prevent⁵, even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for millions of people⁶.

Not all biofuels are bad–but without tough global standards, the biofuels boom will further undermine food security and worsen global warming. Click here to use our simple tool to send a message to your head of state before this weekend’s global summit on climate change in Chiba, Japan, and help build a global call for biofuels regulation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a person for a year. But not all biofuels are bad; making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is vastly more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and green technology for making fuel from waste is improving rapidly.

The problem is that the EU and the US have set targets for increasing the use of biofuels without sorting the good from the bad. As a result, rainforests are being cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for European biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are running dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country politicians can look "green" without asking their citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness giants are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation will only get worse.

What’s needed are strong global standards that encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in bad ones. Such standards are under development by a number of coalitions⁸, but they will only become mandatory if there’s a big enough public outcry. It’s time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty countries with the biggest economies, responsible for more than 75% of the world’s carbon emissions⁹, will meet in Chiba, Japan to begin the G8’s climate change discussions. Before the summit, let’s raise a global cry for change on biofuels:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60989106

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

‘TIPPING POINTS’ COULD COME THIS CENTURY

A number of key components of the earth’s climate system could pass their ‘tipping point’ this century, according to new research led by a scientist at the University of East Anglia. The collapse of the Indian monsoon season could happen as early as next year, followed in ten years by the complete melt of the Arctic sea ice and displacement of the West African monsoon season causing greening of the Sahara desert and Sahel border territories. The Sahel includes Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and the "Horn" of Africa.

Other events are hundreds of years in the future, and are increasingly worse in perspective. And may or may not be good.

Published today by the prestigious international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the researchers have coined a new term, ‘tipping elements’, to describe those components of the climate system that are at risk of passing a tipping point.

The term ‘tipping point’ is used to describe a critical threshold at which a small change in human activity can have large, long-term consequences for the Earth’s climate system.

The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:

• Melting of Arctic sea-ice (approx 10 years)
• Decay of the Greenland ice sheet (more than 300 years)
• Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (more than 300 years)
• Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (approx 100 years)
• Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (approx 100 years)
• Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (approx 1 year)
• Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon (approx 10 years)
• Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (approx 50 years)
• Dieback of the Boreal Forest (approx 50 years)

These were the findings of lead author Prof Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and colleagues at the Postdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), Carnegie Mellon University, Newcastle University and Oxford University.

The paper also demonstrates how, in principle, early warning systems could be established using real-time monitoring and modelling to detect the proximity of certain tipping points.

"Society must not be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change," said Prof Lenton.

"Our findings suggest that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under human-induced climate change. The greatest threats are tipping of the Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and at least five other elements could surprise us by exhibiting a nearby tipping point."

Read the original here: http://snipurl.com/9climatetippingpoint