Hoping to spark local dialog on climate change issues, Calistoga 350, a grassroots coalition of residents that has aligned itself with the international 350.org to raise public awareness on the importance of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, is hosting a candlelight vigil on Sunday, Dec. 11, at Pioneer Park.

“We wanted to do something to send people a message on this very important issue,” said one organizer of next week's vigil, Shelly Boudinot.

Co-planner, Heidi Ticen, added, “With world leaders gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark starting this week, we thought holding the event Dec. 11 - right in middle of the two weeks of talks - a local event would help keep local attention on the need to reduce greenhouse gases.”

Greenhouse gases, according to expert worldwide, threaten to choke the planet with rising temperatures. The groups, 350.org and Calistoga 350, and hundreds of similar groups around the globe, tout the message that the world's population must work together to lower carbon dioxide level of Earth's atmosphere to 350 parts per million (PPM) from its current estimated level of 390 PPM.

The 350 PPM goal is said to be the highest level at which life on Earth can flourish, preaches 350.org founder, author and environmentalist, Bill McKibben.

McKibben's evangelizing is based on the results of a survey of the planet conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, in the summer of 2007. Prior to 2007, scientists believed the highest livable carbon dioxide level was 450 PPM. The 2007 survey, sparked in part by the rapid polar ice melts, produced the lower level requirements after researchers recalibrated their instruments.

McKibben and others, including Rajendra Pachauri, the United Nations' top scientist, concur with the NASA report that says, in part, that any level of atmospheric carbon dioxide above 350 PPM is not compatible with “…the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.”

Ninety-two of Earth's poorest nations have officially signed on to commitment to reach that target.

Science has long purported that life on earth depends on energy from the sun. About 30 percent of the sunlight that bathes the Earth is deflected by the outer atmosphere and scattered back into space. The rest reaches the planet's surface and is reflected upward again as a type of slow-moving energy called infrared radiation.

The heat caused by infrared radiation is absorbed by so-called “greenhouse gases,” water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone and methane, which slows its escape from the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases only make up about one percent of the Earth's atmosphere, but scientists have long held that the gases regulate the planet's climate by trapping heat and holding it in a kind of warm-air blanket that surrounds the planet.

Without that trapping of greenhouse gases, scientists estimate that the average temperature on Earth would be colder by approximately 54 degrees Fahrenheit, far too cold to sustain the planet's current ecosystem.

Not buying it

The message however, has not swayed everyone who's heard it.

Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe is, according to reports, on a self-appointed mission to be a one-man truth squad at the Copenhagen summit. He has pronounced activists working to lower greenhouse gases guilty of “environmental thuggery.”

As recently as Dec. 2, Inhofe, according to Tulsa World newspaper, has called for the “persecution of climatologists.”

Tulsa World reported Friday that Inhofe had called “… on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to delay a greenhouse gas endangerment finding in light of “…allegedly stolen e-mails the Oklahoma Republican says show leading scientists apparently manipulated climate change data.

“Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson declined Inhofe's request,” the report said.

President Barack Obama has

Next Sunday's vigil in Pioneer Park is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. Boudinot and Ticen urge those who attend to bring a candle “in a safe container” and take a stand for environmental change.

 

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