There has been a lot of focus on developing woody biomass projects recently.  President Obama has directed the DOE to develop biomass as part of their sustainable energy options.  Brian Baird, who chairs the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, held a hearing on wood products biofuels, also called woody biomass, last month.  Washington State, under the leadership of Peter Goldmark, is moving to incorporate woody biomass into their forest health program.

There are more and more businesses doing their part to prevent additional climate change.  The efforts on the part of companies like Caterpillar and Duke Energy, two of the business climate change leaders, are a welcome and impressive addition to the groups and individuals working to keep the atmosphere clean enough to support human and other living organisms on this planet.   

It began with measuring the school's carbon footprint.  That was in 2007 as part of what they called the Cool Schools Challenge, which a Redmond teacher and group of students established with help from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and Puget Sound Energy.  They got training in conducting energy audits and learned ways that teachers and students could reduce greenhouse gases.

This is one of the most straight-forward discussions of climate change I've run across.  Aubrey Cohen at the PI wrote a great piece on what a man named Auden Schendler, executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co. and author of "Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability", writes and talks about. 

Schendler spoke at a lunch sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce".  (I want to know if the National Chamber of Commerce and the Seattle Chapter talk to each other.) 

For so many reasons, global climate change is the overarching environmental challenge of this century.  Julie Packard, of the Packard family and prime mover behind the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium, tells us that "the oceans will be our most important battleground".  She reminds us that there is "compelling scientific evidence that climate change is dramatically affecting oceans worldwide in ways that threaten the survival of marine ecosystems and - ultimately - our human societies".  Writing at Huffington Post, Packard talks about the obvious signs: rising sea levels and increasing storm severity.

The USA National Phenology Network is hoping to recruit 100,000 citizen scientists to monitor climate impacts on plants, animals and landscapes.  They want to enlist regular citizen-gardeners, nonprofit groups, schools, government agencies, anyone who is will to volunteer to monitor and record data in order to be able to determine the specific responses of the changing climate on life-cycle timing.  According to an article in the Seattle Times, "phenology is the study of life-cycle timing, from bird migrations and tadpole metamorphosis to the explosion of wildflowers in mountain meadows.