Resignation letter being read at mid-Atlantic fish meeting; says Lubchenco will return to family and academia.

Dec. 12, 2012

Dear NOAA Family,

I write to let you know that I have decided to return to my family and academia at the end of February. I am immensely proud of all we have accomplished in the last four years and know full well that we have been able to do so much only because of your impressive talent and dedication. It has been a special privilege to serve as Administrator and work with all of you.

As many of you know, my home and family are on the West Coast. I'm deeply grateful for the support and love of my family, but as wonderful as Skype is for staying in touch, it is not a viable long-term arrangement!

As I reflect on my time with you, I'm delighted with all we've been able to do - big and small. The list is far too long for complete enumeration here, but I've listed 20 of our top achievements below. I invite you to share with me your top-tier list, as well as any especially memorable moments or photographs from the work we have done together.

We've tackled some big challenges together. Through an emphasis on transparency, integrity, innovation, team work and communication, we have made significant progress on multiple fronts. As you know, NOAA's breadth is one of our greatest challenges, but it's also our great strength. Both are in evidence below. Our notable progress includes (in no particular order!):
1. Ending over-fishing, rebuilding depleted stocks, and returning fishing to profitability;
2. Strengthening the Nation's environmental satellite infrastructure because it underpins national security, economic activity and public safety by providing data essential to our short- and long-term weather forecasts;
3. Delivering life-saving weather forecasts and warnings and strengthening our ability to do so in the future through Weather-Ready Nation, dual-pol upgrades, investments in high performance computing, research, and weather satellites;
4. Helping create the first National Ocean Policy that recognizes the value of a healthy marine environment, emphasizes collaboration between regions and the federal government and coordination across federal agencies to achieve healthy oceans, coasts and Great Lakes;
5. Leveling the playing field for our fishermen by reforming international fishery management organizations with the adoption of management measures in line with scientific advice and with strengthened compliance and enforcement tools, and by reducing "pirate fishing" (illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing);
6. Creating a new generation of climate services to promote public understanding, support mitigation and adaptation efforts, enable smart planning, and promote regional climate partnerships;
7. Investing in coastal communities and their future resilience through more strategic and better integrated conservation and restoration;
8. Better serving recreational anglers and boaters by convening a saltwater sport fishing summit, developing a recreational fishing action agenda and ensuring follow through on key commitments;
9. Strengthening science with our first Scientific Integrity Policy, doubling the number of senior scientific positions, establishing a new Council of Fellows, reinstating the Chief Scientist position, supporting AAAS and Sea Grant Fellows and promoting climate, fishery, ocean acidification, weather and ecosystem science;
10. Responding effectively as "one-NOAA" to disasters such as Deepwater Horizon, the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/radiation/marine debris catastrophe, Hurricanes Irene, Isaac and Sandy, including helping open ports and waterways, survey coasts, and rebuild and restore communities and coastlines to enhance resilience in the future; 11. Bringing experience, scientific and legal expertise to bear on the federal response to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe (as detailed in two papers in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), jumpstarting Gulf restoration efforts through partnerships and the Trustee Council, and assessing the full impact of the disaster on natural resources with the goal of holding responsible parties accountable and restoring Gulf ecosystems, communities and economy to health; 12. Championing NOAA's lean, but effective, education program that plays a unique role in providing atmospheric and oceanographic education to young and old and making NOAA-related sciences more accessible to underrepresented groups; 13. Creating NOAA's first Aquaculture Policy and a National Shellfish Initiative and using science to ameliorate short-term impacts of ocean acidification on shellfish; 14. Setting a stronger course for endangered species conservation in places like California's Central Valley and the Columbia River and in the ocean, e.g., for coral conservation.
15. Streamlining regulations to save taxpayers time and money and improve efficiency, for example in fisheries regulations and shellfish aquaculture permitting; 16. Increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs of corporate services such as acquisitions and IT, for example by migrating our communication systems to the cloud to enhance functionality, strengthen security and reduce costs 17. Developing and implementing a "One-NOAA" Arctic Vision and Strategy and Task Force to address environmental, social, economic and safety issues emerging in the fragile Arctic region, including mapping to support new safety, a precautionary fishery management plan, launching the Arctic ERMA tool, and innovative research and data partnerships to improve science-based decision-making; 18. Strengthening NOAA's fishery enforcement program by implementing policy, oversight, personnel and procedural changes to increase effectiveness and transparency; 19. Embracing social media, effective communications and communications training to share NOAA science, information and decisions with our diverse constituents, stakeholders and partners - including creation of NOAA's and my Facebook pages, multiple NOAA Twitter accounts, and use of crowd-sourcing to digitize old weather records; and 20. Ensuring all our policies, regulations and statements are consistent with the law and legal best practices.

All this and more for less than a nickel a day from each tax payer - now that's a bargain!

Much of this progress required integration of efforts across line and staff offices and with a wide variety of partners and stakeholders. Our One-NOAA approach has proven its power time and again.

I am well aware of how much work lies ahead. But because I have experienced your impressive talent and your deep-felt dedication to our mission, I am confident that you will continue to tackle problems and devise creative solutions.

I'm proud to have been part of your mission. And I am grateful to Acting Secretary Rebecca Blank and her capable staff and numerous members of Congress for their staunch support for our mission. I appreciate the President's confidence in me and the invitation to be part of his science team and serve at the helm of the Nation's spectacular ocean, climate, weather and coastal agency.

But most of all, I appreciate the opportunity to work with all of you. I will miss you, but know you will continue devoting your energy and talent to fulfill our mission. I wish you all a joyous and peaceful holiday season and New Year.

Sincerely,

Worcester will receive $3 million from the state to help it replant 30,000 trees cut down to stop the spread of a tree-killing Asian beetle.

The goals is to replant the trees by 2014, said Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray and Congressman Jim McGovern.

"Investing these capital resources will make it possible for us to reach our goal of fully reforesting Worcester and the surrounding towns that were devasted by the Asian Longhorned beetle infestation," said Murray.

The beetle was first found in Worcester in August 2008. Since then, more than 32,000 landscape trees and thousands of open forest trees have been removed to try and eradicate the beetle.

Sustainable building developer, Ari Nessel, wants to give you $1,000 for your passion project that will make the world a better place. Ari has been giving to non-profits for awhile, but was looking for more meaning from his donations. He wanted his money to go directly to help people launch their projects, not to non-profit overhead costs.

Inspired by micro-lending groups like Kiva, Ari and his sister-in-law Stephanie Klempner came up with the Pollination Project. "I wanted to up the ante. I make more money than I need, and I don't want more toys," Ari explained. Starting January 1st, Ari will be giving away $1,000 a day for a year to people who have transformative projects that need a bit of money to get started. In his words, he's matching their sweat with his capital.

The biggest problem Ari has right now is finding the right people to fund. That's where you, Boston.com Green Blog reader, come in. Do you have a project that needs some seed money to get started?

Apply here and make Boston a better place.

The Forum program at the Museum of Science works hard to engage the public in conversations around questions that lie at the intersection of science, technology and society. One recent forum focused on biodiversity, which the museum is also spending a lot of time on by taking part in an international collaboration, called World Wide Views on Biodiversity, that engaged 3,000 citizens from 25 countries to raise public awareness on biodiversity and include the public in global policymaking. We recently caught up with David Sittenfeld, (above) manager of the Forum program at the Museum of Science who is giving a talk on the Museum's role in the global project - and is part of a group releasing a report about it - this week in D.C. Here is an edited version of questions and answers.

We hear a lot about biodiversity – what is it and why does it matter?
Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is the extraordinary variety of all living things. It includes plants, animals, and microorganisms, where they live (ecosystems such as lakes, forests, mountains, wetlands or deserts), and the genes that make each individual and species unique. Conservation biologists tell us that living things depend on this diversity to function in ecosystems. Genetic variability provides support for all organisms, making ecosystems resilient to disease and balancing competing forces. As humans, we rely on these interconnected relationships for necessities such as food, clean water and air, shelter, and medicine.

Where, or what, are the most serious threats to biodiversity?
Unfortunately, the greatest threats to biodiversity come from human activities, such as our demand for food, water, industrial materials, land and energy. Scientists are assessing the loss of species worldwide as a result of factors such as loss of natural habitat, overfishing, pollution, impacts from invasive species, and climate change. Major threats to biodiversity include deforestation and the loss of coral reefs, as forests and coral reefs are considered to be biodiversity “hotspots,” or places with high amounts of biodiversity. Recent studies have shown about a 50% decline n the Great Barrier Reef off Australia in the last three decades where enormous numbers of species live, and coral loss is happening even more quickly in the Caribbean.

How are extinctions today different from those in the long ago past?
Because scientists primarily investigate extinctions long ago through the fossil record, it is more difficult to establish causes of past extinctions. Scientists generally attribute these past extinctions to global shifts in climate or biogeochemical cycles, which took place over relatively long time scales and all over the globe. Changes in biodiversity because of human activities have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history. Every day species’ extinctions are continuing at up to 1,000 times or more the natural rate.

What are ways to solve that threat?
Members of the United Nations are actively creating effective policies such as the establishment of marine protected areas, which show promise in preserving crucial ocean biodiversity hotspots. But more work needs to be done at the policy level, such as managing products from forests sustainably. Consumers and citizens can also help address the threats to biodiversity by purchasing sustainably managed products.

How are you involved in trying to address threats to Earth’s diversity?
The Museum of Science was part of a global deliberation on biodiversity policy that provided public input from ordinary citizens from 25 countries to the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity in October.
Over 3,000 people around the world learned about biodiversity, discussed policy questions, and made recommendations. Although the results differed somewhat among different countries, participants broadly agreed that: efforts should be made to protect natural areas around the world; incentives and subsidies leading to overfishing should be phased out; and all countries should pay for protecting biodiversity in developing nations.

What struck me in particular was that before this global event, 30% of the participants said they knew nothing or very little about biodiversity, but afterwards, 97% said they were very concerned about the global decline.

What can a member of the public do to help preserve biodiversity?
We can all help scientists assess biodiversity through citizen science projects, such as the Museum of Science’s Firefly Watch or the many projects at scistar. People can also search for organisms in a neighborhood park, a freshwater marsh or an urban area, and see what other people have located as well, through biodiversity quests created with the Encylopedia of Life. To learn about where products we use and consume come from, visit MIT’s Sourcemap, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch.

It's that time of year again. Every year, community and activists "celebrate" New England's worst polluters. This year, on the 25th anniversary of the Dirty Dozen awards, the Toxics Action Center released a report profiling 12 sites and companies across New England, naming them "the most notorious pollution threats in the region" and proposing solutions to long-term pollution trends.

“The Dirty Dozen Award winners are dinosaurs. Their business practices are antiquated and becoming extinct. They could stave off extinction, but they would need to move forward in adopting many of the recommendations we outline in this report, including moving towards clean renewable energy and energy efficiency and phasing out persistent toxic chemicals.” said Sylvia Broude, Executive Director for Toxics Action Center.

Here is the list. For the press release go here.

FULL LIST 2012 DIRTY DOZEN AWARD RECIPIENTS
Advanced Disposal
Moretown, VT and South Hadley, MA

Brayton Point Coal Power Station
Somerset, MA

Casella Waste Management
Old Town, ME and Scarborough, ME

Central Landfill
Johnston, RI

Connecticut Environmental Council
Marlborough, CT

Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority
Hartford, CT

Entergy Nuclear
Vernon, VT and Plymouth, MA

General Electric
Pittsfield, MA

New Bedford Harbor Superfund Site and Parker Street Waste Site
New Bedford, MA

Public Service of New Hampshire Coal Power Plants
Bow, NH and Portsmouth, NH

Raymark Superfund Site
Stratford, CT

Tar Sands Pipeline
South Portland, ME

A day after a Boston University report revealed thousands of natural gas leaks under Boston, U.S. Rep. Ed Markey Wednesday asked the federal agency in charge of pipeline safety why it has not required pipeline companies to supply data on risk assessments and inspection and maintenance plans for aging pipelines.

“This study shows that we need a plan to ensure leaks from aging natural gas pipelines in Boston and other cities and communities are repaired, so that we can conserve this important natural resource, protect the consumers from paying for gas that they don't even use, and prevent emissions of greenhouse gases into the environment,” Markey wrote in a letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. “We shouldn’t wait until a worst-case scenario occurs before we act to protect consumers, citizens and the environment.”

Markey said because the agency does not adequately define what hazardous leaks are, or exactly how quickly they need to be repaired, "leaks that have a high risk of becoming hazardous could be left unrepaired for years."

Journalist Barbara Moran has broken ground on environmental health hazards that even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it has overlooked in the past: Industrial Laundries.

Some excerpts the piece in the Hartford Courant today:
"Laundering shop and print towels, which are cloths used to wipe oil, solvent and other chemicals off machinery, can fuel the release of VOCs above federal limits. The use and processing of shop towels is largely under-regulated, despite its potential to emit toxic substances into the air."

and

"The state and federal investigations have also exposed a potentially bigger problem: the spotty oversight of chemical-laden shop towels as they travel from factory floor to washing machine. The EPA and the laundry industry disagree on who bears liability for VOC emissions along this supply chain, with the EPA targeting laundries and the laundries pointing at customers."

Mayor Thomas Menino has written a strongly worded letter to the state Department of Public Utilities urging its chairwoman to step up scrutiny of utilities following a story in today's Globe about more than 3,300 natural gas leaks from the vast pipeline system under Boston.

Requesting a meeting with the DPU, he said regulators need to ensure National Grid, the city's main gas distributor, are "proactively searching for leaks and monitoring minor leaks that will no doubt worsen over time."

Menino said the cost of leaked gas - at least tens of millions of dollars a year in Massachusetts - is being passed onto families as they struggle to recover from tough economic times. In addition, he said natural gas may be damaging trees and contributing to climate change. Natural gas leaks, along with other unaccounted gas, could amount to about five percent of all the greenhouse gas emissions in the state.

Menino requested more information from the DPU to allow the city to take a "stronger response."

A movement is building on some New England college campuses that takes a page from the South African divestment movement more than two decades ago: Fossil Fuel divestment.

Earlier this month, the Board of Trustees at Unity College in Maine voted to divest their endowment from fossil fuel industries. And last week, the Harvard College Undergraduate Council announced 72 percent of voting students wants Harvard University to divest its $30.7 billion endowment from fossil fuels.

"In 1990, 52 percent of voting students supported complete divestment from apartheid South Africa. Today 72 percent of voting students are raising their voices for fossil divestment, telling Harvard to stop investing in companies that are threatening our future,'' said Chloe Maxmin, a co-coordinator for Divest Harvard.

The Divest Harvard campaign is part of a college-divestment movement now at 50 universities and colleges. The Better Future Project and 350.org, both climate advocacy organizations, are behind the growing movement.

It's a big challenge: Fossil fuel companies are highly profitable and virtually all large funds SICH AS endowments invest in oil giants including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell, which raked in $100 billion in profits in 2011 alone. Persuading Harvard money managers to miss out on those kinds of returns will be much harder than it was to get universities to drop their much smaller investments in South Africa.

* Clarification: An earlier post said that 72 percent of the student body voted to divest. It is 72 percent of those that voted. Post has also been rewritten slightly.

A sold-out crowd gathered at the Orpheum last night for the climate advocacy group 350.org’s “Do the Math” national tour. Founder Bill McKibben, and The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein explained their new strategy to combat fossil fuel companies: Simple math.

One, the world can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide. Two, this would allow us to stay below two degrees Celsius of global warming - but anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on Earth. Three, this is a problem, because fossil fuel corporations have 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide in their reserves.The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a group that assesses climate change risk, estimates this is five times the amount we can release to maintain two degrees of warming.

Before the show, McKibben and Klein answered a few questions from journalist Sarah Betancourt for the Globe’s Green Blog. Here are edited answers.

Green Blog: What actions have been taken by 350.org to halt the approval of the Keystone Pipeline (The controversial pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to the U.S. that President Obama is scheduled to rule on.)
Bill McKibben: The Obama administration is back considering all of this. The media has said that the administration has made implicit promises that they would pass the Keystone Pipeline. We don’t know if that’s true. We’re going to have our road show early in Washington on Sunday (November 18th), at 1p.m., so we can join a whole lot of other people for a big march to the White House.

GB: How do you think the pipeline decision will play out?
BM: It’s clear that this is going to be the purest test of President Obama that we’re going to have. On one hand he wants to stop the rise of the oceans, but on the other hand, he spent the summer boasting about wrapping the country in pipelines.
Naomi Klein: The pipeline was only assessed for the environmental impact of the territory it crosses. The Obama administration needs to take responsibility for the carbon that would be expelled (from the production of oil that will be traveling along) from the Keystone pipeline.

GB: Why is it so important to you to stop the pipeline from being built?
BM: (The Alberta tar sands is the) second biggest pool of carbon on Earth. It would be unbelievably foolish to tap more heavily into it. The International Energy Agency released a report last week that vindicates our math and the crazy thing is fossil fuel companies have not pushed back or claimed it to be untrue. We need to leave 80% of the fossil fuels currently available in the ground.

GB: What would you like to see happen as a result of the Do the Math Tour?
NK: One of our goals is divestment of funds, like what occurred on college campuses during the apartheid. We want people who take money from fossil fuels to have to justify themselves.

GB: What has the response been from the public on your tour?
BM: In Portland, Maine, the President of Unity College told the crowd that the college’s trustees had voted to divest all funds from fossil fuels. I don’t think they’ll be the last college do to that. In Seattle, the mayor told us that he was going to look at the books and see how they could divest fossil fuel stock and funds. We also have a show tomorrow in New York City. It’s going to be pretty emotional, with Hurricane Sandy just having happened.

The Museum of Science in Boston is dedicating Sunday, Nov. 18 to biodiversity and tackling a big question: How can we work to preserve life on our planet while coping with the needs of our species?

The first Biodiversity Day will allow visitors to embark on biodiversity adventures and citizen science activities to live animal presentations and forums where visitors join scientists to address the complexities of protecting Earth's diversity of life. It is included in the cost of an entry ticket to the Museum's exhibit halls.

"As humans, we rely on the extraordinary variety and interconnectedness of life on Earth for food, medicine, industrial products, clean air, water and soil, stable climate, education, research, even fun," says David Sittenfeld, the Museum's Biodiversity Day coordinator. "We also have an observable impact on this biological diversity, though we often forget it."

The Museum was one of several institutions around the world to lead consultations of 3,000 people in 25 countries on Earth's diversity of life and how to manage threats to it. In October their recommendations were presented to the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad, India.

Here are some highlights of the day:

2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Aaron Bernstein, associate director of Harvard University's Center for Health and the Global Environment and coauthor of Sustaining Life, will address how human health depends on biodiversity. A panel discussion, moderated by former Public Radio International Living on Earth host Bruce Gellerman, will explore biodiversity through the eyes of environmental scientist Marie Studer; Staples environmental affairs vice president Mark Buckley; Whole Foods Market ecoczar Lee Kane; and a citizen who participated in the global biodiversity consultation. Audience questions will follow.

3:45 p.m. – 5 p.m. A forum will engage interested visitors and experts in thinking critically about threats to biodiversity and who should protect and regulate biodiversity at a policy level.

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. MassAudubon, Boston Natural Areas Network, Grow Boston Greener, Grow Native Massachusetts, the Bracken Lab, Arnold Arboretum scientists, the Encyclopedia of Life, students from MIT, and others will offer activities, information or research on biodiversity.

--1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Museum educators demonstrate live animals and other hands-on biodiversity activities.

NEWPORT, R.I. -- A passionate debate among grim-faced New England fishermen and regulators in a hotel Wednesday was a stark reminder of an unfulfilled promise.

Deep cuts to the once-booming fleet over the last decade were made palatable by government assurances that key fish populations would rebuild and fishing nets would be teeming again. But with two critical species -- Gulf of Maine cod and Georges Bank yellowtail -- doing poorly, those assurances have disappeared.

Instead, members of the New England Fishery Management Council spent the day first attempting to drive up the number of yellowtail that fishermen could catch, then figuring out how best to allocate a still severely limited amount of fish next year among the region’s fishermen.

“The problem with all these choices is that there is no good outcome,’’ said Rip Cunningham, chair of the Fishery Management Council, during the gathering Wednesday at the Marriott Newport hotel.

The yellowtail flounder catch was cut 80 percent this year, and an estimated 50 percent cut is expected for the next fishing year that begins in May. The population is so low that few fishermen target the fish on Georges Bank, but they are still pulled up in scallop dredges and groundfish trawls because they are found on the sea floor with the species fishermen are trying to catch. As a result, scallop and groundfish fishermen must abide by yellowtail catch limits.

Fishermen, and some council members, argued that the overall yellowtail catch next year would be so low it could cripple the estimated $400 million a year scallop industry or the groundfish business.

“This is pitting brother against brother,’’ said Peter Hughes, of Atlantic Capes Fisheries Inc. of New Jersey, which fishes for and processes scallops. “These numbers are not healthy numbers for a domestic US fishery.”

Hughes, along with other fishermen and council members, expressed deep frustration with the science behind the projected yellowtail cuts, and and the need to adhere to a US-Canadian agreed-upon quota on the submerged Georges Bank plateau that the United States jointly manages with Canada.

In two votes, the council narrowly voted to reject the joint quota and set a higher one, creating confusion about how much yellowtail flounder could be allocated. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is all but guaranteed to reject that higher quota, said John Bullard, New England regional chief for NOAA.

The future does not look optimistic: There are few signs the yellowtail population could rebound quickly in coming years.

And next month, just before Christmas, the council is scheduled to make draconian cuts to Gulf of Maine cod, the fabled white fish that was once so plentiful fishermen were said to be able to fill baskets by merely lowering them into the sea. Many in the industry -- and even environmentalists -- acknowledge it is likely to decimate an already deeply suffering fishing fleet.

Are you a high school student who cares about the environment?

If so, you could win a free trip to Costa Rica this April to study environmental sustainability, with the weeklong program culminating in an environmental summit with former Vice President and climate activist Al Gore.

EF Education First, an international education company with North American headquarters in Cambridge, is holding a contest for 20 students - most from Massachusetts – to join 1,000 other students in a Global Student Leadership Summit.

Students will spend six days exploring sustainability efforts in Costa Rica and learning about tropical ecology, wildlife conservation and reforestation. In the “action-based” program, some students will help with Mangrove reforestation on the Central Pacific Coast or learn about turtle conservation in Tortuguero National Park, among other trips. At the end of the trip a two-day conference in San Jose will include Gore and Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

Here’s how to apply:

1. Choose an environmental issue you are passionate about.
2. Create a video, digital media project or essay to answer this: What are the global implications of this issue? What ideas do you have to address this issue? Why do you want to be part of a team working on a solution?

Then submit it to EF’s facebook page by the end of the month.

Her is an example of a previous entry for a different EF program.

Looking for a summer job yet?

If clean energy woos you - and you are a college student or recent grad - the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Internship Program may be for you.

Over the past two summers, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Internship Program placed more than 262 students and recent graduates in internships at more than 77 clean energy companies across the state. As a result of the internship program, 38 students gained full-time and part-time employment.

Now, the expanded program, which will begin taking applications on November 1, will include 10-week internship sessions in the fall and spring, as well as its traditional 10-week summer program.

MassCEC will provide Massachusetts-based clean energy companies with stipends of up to $12 per hour for up to 10 weeks for each intern. The summer session will continue to provide for full-time internships, with a cap of $4,800 per intern, while the spring and fall sessions will provide for part-time internships, with a cap of $2,400 per intern.

Patrick made the announcement earlier this week at the Global Cleantech Meet-up, an annual conference for clean energy technology industry professionals being held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

“I am proud we are able to expand this program and provide more students with an opportunity to gain the world experience necessary to compete in the 21st century global economy,” said Patrick.

Clean energy employment in Massachusetts grew by 11.2 percent from July 2011 to July 2012. The sector now employs over 71,000 people throughout Massachusetts.

Earlier this month, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranked Massachusetts as the number one state for energy efficiency policies and programs.

Go here for application information.

Climate change finally made its way into President Obama’s acceptance speech, although the United States’ role in aiding a warming planet is still largely uncharted.

Now, as the world’s nations prepare to meet in Qatar for annual United Nations climate change treaty negotiations later this month, the world’s 48 least developed countries have issued a strongly worded letter to Obama urging him to take a leadership role in helping poor countries prepare for climate change. Poor countries have long charged they suffer the most from climate change brought on by wealthy countries that are emitting the vast majority of heat-trapping gases from power plants, cars, and industry.

Brown University’s Climate and Development lab has shown that “climate related disasters such as droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, and hurricanes have caused an estimated 1.3 million deaths since 1980. Two-thirds of these deaths (over 909,000) occurred in the least developed countries. We are only 12 percent of the world’s population, but we suffer the effects of climate-related disasters more than five times as much as the world as a whole,’’ according to the letter by lead least-developed countries negotiator Pa Ousman Jarju of Gambia.

Here is the full text of the letter. The Brown lab is also collecting signatures for a related petition here.

Dear President Obama,
As the lead negotiator for the world's 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the United Nations climate change negotiations, I congratulate you on your re-election. I also want to express my admiration for your response to superstorm Sandy: without the preparations that you made, the impacts to those hit by the storm would have been even more devastating. As communities in the north-east work to rebuild and recover, the world has an opportunity to begin a new, reality-based conversation about climate change.
I write with a simple request: as this discussion continues in the world's most developed countries, remember those who live in its poorest regions. Remember that as a result of climate change, this kind of fatal weather event has become commonplace for us while we lack the infrastructure and resources to adequately protect our citizens.
As researchers at Brown University's climate and development lab have shown, climate-related disasters such as droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, and hurricanes have caused an estimated 1.3 million deaths since 1980. Two-thirds of these deaths (over 909,000) occurred in the least developed countries. We are only 12% of the world's population, but we suffer the effects of climate-related disasters more than five times as much as the world as a whole.
Given this reality and your early commitment to leading a science-directed discussion about the changing climate, I was surprised that you only mentioned climate change in your re-election campaign a few times, and not once in your three debates with Mitt Romney. We know that 70% of US citizens now recognise the reality of human-caused climate change. As the world's largest economy, the US has a unique opportunity and responsibility to take bold action on this issue. Indeed, the wellbeing of the citizens of your nation and mine depends on your ability to lead at this critical juncture. It is time to end the climate silence.
Later this month, representatives of the world's nations will meet in Doha, Qatar, for the annual negotiations on the UN climate change treaty. When you were first elected president, your words gave us hope that you would become an international leader on climate change. But you have not lived up to this promise. The framework that you put in place sets the planet on course to warm dangerously, and delays action until 2020 – this will be too late. This year's meeting in Qatar may be our last chance to put forward a new vision and plan to reverse this course. Your legacy, and the future of our children and grandchildren depend on it. We ask you to lead in two ways.
First, join with the European Union, the LDCs and the Alliance of Small Island States in taking on ambitious national commitments to reduce climate pollution. Go beyond the commitments that you made in Copenhagen in 2009. The climate is changing faster than we thought, and we must respond with increased ambition.
Second, provide adequate funding to help the LDCs and other vulnerable nations to adapt to this new climate reality. In 2010, the wealthiest countries directed about $1.5bn to help developing countries adapt to a changing climate. Over the same period, they spent over $400bn subsidising fossil fuel industries. They gave the main contributors to human-caused climate change more than 250 times the support they offered those whom it harms most.
Countries from Gambia and Haiti, to Malawi and Bangladesh need the "predictable and adequate" funding promised in Copenhagen so that they can take simple steps to protect their citizens. This means moving drinking water and irrigation wells away from coasts, where saltwater is intruding into aquifers; it includes developing drought-resistant crops and helping small farmers in fragile, semi-arid regions survive. We have to prepare roads and cities, villages and farms for floods, hurricanes and heat waves. We need to equip people with the weather prediction, early warning systems and emergency response that citizens of the developed countries take for granted.
With 20 years of international climate change negotiations behind us, there is simply no longer time or cause for wealthy countries to continue to stall in taking real action to fulfil the promises they have made. Having the wealthy nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions steeply is fundamental, but helping the poorest of us cope with its impacts is an immediate necessity.
Mr President, remind the world that the devastation of climate change is shared by all its citizens. Remember that this reality is changeable. Make changing it your legacy.

It's probably a safe guess you've never been to the Phoenix Islands, a group of atolls and submerged coral reefs in the central Pacific. But the islands' isolation has its perks: Home to some 120 species of coral and 500 species of fish, the thriving area stands in stark contrast to the all too familiar news of coral deaths from ocean acidification and warming.

But the ecosystem has not been left to chance. In an effort spearheaded in part by the New England Aquarium, The Republic of Kiribati in 2008 declared more than 150,000 square miles of the region a protected area, making it at the time the largest protected marine area in the world.

Now there is Underwater Eden, a book edited by the Aquarium's Greg Stone, that chronicles the story of how conservationists, businesses and governments worked together to save one of the last truly wild places on earth. On Thursday, Nov. 8, at 6:30 p.m. the Aquarium will hold a free public talk with Stone and contributing authors Steve Bailey, Randi Rotjan, Heather Tausig of the Aquarium and legal consultant Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation to discuss how it happened.

The Green Blog caught up with the authors to ask them a few questions. Here are their edited responses.

Green Blog: How did the New England Aquarium begin to focus on Phoenix Islands?
Randi Rotjan and Heather Tausig: NEAq regularly leads and participates in expeditions to explore the world's oceans. From this effort, a signature project was born - the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), developed by the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati with the support of the NEAq and Conservation International. The recent PIPA expedition in June, a collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution examined how PIPA has changed, and is changing, in response to a changing climate.


GB: How do you get there?
Randi Rotjan: To get to the Phoenix Islands is no small feat, since they are approximately a thousand miles from anywhere. The best way to think of them geographically is to picture where the international dateline meets the equator – smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It requires about a week of travel in each direction. Most expeditions have left from Fiji; some from Samoa. From Fiji, it is a 5.5 day boat trip to the Phoenix Islands. All told, 11 days at sea, and 4 days of flights. Make sure you have a charged kindle!

GB: Describe the ocean life there.
Randi Rotjan: The ocean life is relatively untouched; the remoteness of the archipelago, coupled with the regulations of the marine protected area, protect the island areas from fishing, development, pollution, and other local threats. Hence the large presence of sharks, large fishes, giant clams, and others that are typically overharvested or rare.

GB: How did you work with locals to preserve the area given pressures of fishing, etc.?
Peter Shelley: Key to this project was acknowledging that the Kiribati people have spent millenia dependent on their reefs for survival. Thus, the protection of PIPA also needed to accommodate the nation's financial, health and education needs - that was the origin of the idea of adapting the conservation endowment “trust” model to the oceans of Kiribati.

GB: How are the reefs responding to climate change?
Randi Rotjan: However, while beautiful and relatively robust, the ocean life is still sensitive to global change, and recent high temperature events in 2002 and 2010 have taken their toll on even these remote reefs. Safe from a barrage of local threats, however, these reefs seem to be recovering faster than many others that are in closer proximity to human populations and the associated stressors.

Nearly 30 years after the W.R. Grace & Co. property in Acton and Concord was designated as a national Superfund hazardous-waste site, environmental officials have removed all contaminated sediment and constructed new ground-water treatment systems.

The US Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it has finished its construction work at the site, but will continue to monitor activity there for the foreseeable future.

“We’re finally coming to the end of the race,’’ said Doug Halley, Acton’s health director, who has worked on the project since 1978. “The hard part, the hills, are behind us.’’

The EPA will conduct five-year reviews, continue the operation and maintenance of the ground-water treatment systems, and monitor the restored wetland areas and ground water.

Read more of Globe Correspondent Jennifer Fenn Lefferts' story here.

Joan V. Ruderman has been named the first woman President and Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, the nearly 125-year-old nonprofit research center for biology, biomedicine and environmental science.

Ruderman is the Marion V. Nelson Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. She succeeds Gary Borisy, Ph.D., who is retiring as MBL President and Director.

Ruderman has been closely affiliated with the MBL for nearly four decades and has been on the board of trustees since 1986. She was first a student in the MBL's embryology course in 1974 and later returned to teach the same class. She's worked at MBL for more than 20 summers.

"I am honored to lead the MBL, an extraordinary institution that has catalyzed the careers and contributions of countless leaders in the biological sciences," Ruderman said. "My priorities as President and Director will be to maintain the MBL's leadership role in driving scientific discovery and knowledge for the benefit of human health and the environment, and to develop a sustainable plan to support the MBL's mission into the future."

Ruderman is best known for her work on the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell division. More recently, she has investigated environmental contaminants that can mimic estrogen, chemicals that may increase the risk of developing breast cancer and other hormone-dependent cancers. She has been elected into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.

Ruderman received her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from M.I.T., both in biology. After postdoctoral work at M.I.T., she joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1976. She moved to Duke University in 1986 and returned to Harvard Medical School in 1989.

In case you are missing the New England Aquarium's climate talk tonight (more than 400 people are expected to go), here is a question and answer with the featured speaker, Oxford University's Timothy Palmer. His lecture is called Predicting Climate in a Chaotic World: How Certain Can We Be?

Here are a few questions and edited answers the Green Blog posed to Palmer before the talk.

Green Blog: Historically, what has been climate models' greatest obstacle and how far are scientists along in overcoming it?

Tim Palmer: I think it is simply that Earth's climate is an extraordinarily complex system. We can work out some of the basic principles of climate using simple "back-of-the-envelope" calculations. However, if we want to know what will happen to climate at a detailed quantitative level - relevant if we are to inform government policy - we have to try to represent this complexity with mathematical models which describe as comprehensively as possible all the processes that are relevant: from the atmosphere and oceans to the land surface and ice sheets. Unlike some other sciences, we have no "laboratory" where we can answer "what if" questions (what if we perturb the system this way, or that way).

To overcome the obstacles of complexity we need three things: climate observations, big computers and lots of scientific intuition and insight. The big computers are needed to actually solve the equations - the scientific intuition and insight are needed to formulate the models so that they are as close as possible to the underpinning laws of science, to design the types of computer experiments that need doing (computer time is precious), and to analyse and understand the results that come out from the computer experiments. The observations, of course, are needed to study how the real system works, and to assess whether the mathematical models are realistic simulators of current and past climate.

GB: How reliable are climate models in looking at small geographic regions, such as the Northeast U.S., and are they getting better?

TP: This is a difficult question to answer. For example, if you asked me, are the models reliable enough to inform on new infrastructure investment to adapt to future climate change, then my answer would depend on whether the investment is more about temperature or precipitation changes. I think the predictions of regional temperature change are pretty reliable and robust, but precipitation changes are less reliable and robust. But certainly the models are getting better. On the one hand the amount of detail in these models (what a climate modeller would call "resolution") is increasing and this is making the models look more and more like the real world. On the other hand, we have better ways of representing the inherent uncertainty in these computer representations of the real world. This means that we can put more realistic "error bars" around the predictions that are made.

GB: What is the one message you want the public to understand about climate prediction?

TP: Simply this. Don't treat climate change as a matter of belief or denial. When we take out house insurance, it is not because we believe our house will get burgled or burnt down. Similarly, we should be asking whether it is worth taking action now to minimise the risk of the types of climate which our best disinterested scientific estimates suggest may occur in this century and beyond. I don't think it is the job of the scientist to answer this question, but rather to ensure that those that seek their own answers have the information they need to form an opinion.

5. How confident should people be in weather - and climate predictions?

As Ed Lorenz showed, weather is chaotic - the flap of a butterfly's wings a few weeks ago could indeed have made the difference between Sandy heading inland or out to sea. Hence people should by wary of any predictions of weather and climate which come without any properly quantification of uncertainty. But in a sense this is true of any prediction. A prediction without an estimate of uncertainty is not a scientific prediction. I am not aware of Astrologers putting error bars on their predictions! As I have tried to show with the Sandy example, we can be confident in our probabilistic estimates of future weather. We are currently putting these insights into our climate prediction models and increasingly I believe people can be confident in future climate predictions, not just of the large scale temperature changes, but even of regional precipitation changes.

Ed was an inspiration to me. But I am also reminded of the great theoretical physicist Richard Feynman who, according to his biographer Gleick, "believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish on our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing!".

The public is invited to three free events on climate change at the New England Aquarium examining the science and impact of manmade climate change.

On Nov. 1 at 6:30 p.m., a special event with the MIT Lorenz Center will feature the lecture: Predicting Climate in a Chaotic World: How Certain Can We Be? Oxford University’s Timothy Palmer will speak about the science and difficulty of predicting weather – and on a larger scale – global climate change. Can we have any confidence at all in long-range predictions of weather or even human-induced climate change?

On Nov. 8 at 6:30 p.m., the Aquarium will feature its new book Underwater Eden: Saving the Last Coral Wilderness on Earth.
This book is about the Aquarium’s work over the last decade to set up one of the world’s largest marine protected area in the Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) in the central Pacific Ocean. Most of Phoenix Islands’ fabled coral reefs have begun to recover despite recent bleaching incidents. In 2010, the area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Several Aquarium, some who contributed to the book will speak about their expeditions to te isolated archipelago including Steve Bailey, Curator of Fishes, Dr. Randi Rotjan, coral reef research scientist, and Heather Tausig, Vice President of Conservation. Peter Shelley, an environmental lawyer who helped create the marine protected area, will also participate. The book’s author, Dr. Greg S. Stone, will also be part of the discussion. A book signing will follow.

On Nov. 15 at 7 p.m., a photographic then and now called Double Exposure: Photographing Environmental Change will document the impacts of climate and change on specific locations and will be presented by David Arnold, a former Boston Globe reporter. Arnold has been tracking the dramatic changes taking place around the world, revisiting glaciers photographed decades ago by the late Bradford Washburn of Boston’s Museum of Science and coral reefs shot by the underwater photography pioneers. Arnold will present his photos along with New England Aquarium President and CEO Bud Ris who will give a brief overview of the latest scientific information about climate changes’ impact on the oceans.

The Nov. 1 event will be in the Simons IMAX Theatre on Central Wharf at the Aquarium. The events on Nov. 8 and 15 will be in the Aquarium’s Harborside Learning Lab. For more information and to register, please go here.