365.org, an eco-group concerned with raising public awareness of what it considers to be the negative effects of climate change, declared Saturday, May 5, to be “Climate Impacts Day.”
Connecting the climate dots in the courtyard of the Garage Cafe on Southside. L-R: Garage owner Jimmy Watson, Quinton Brown, Joyce Lanning, Tom Walker and Jerry Lanning. Photo by Mark Kelly.
The group established a theme for the day — “connect the dots” — to encourage people around the world, including political leaders, to recognize what they say are the connections between excessive amounts of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere and radical changes in the weather.
Concerned people around the world were asked to gather in groups, take pictures and video, and upload those images to the 365.org site, and people in more than 100 countries did so.
May 5, 2012, was declared "Climate Impacts day" by eco-group 365.org.
At least one group got into the act in Birmingham, posing in the courtyard of The Garage Café on Southside with five dots – each showing what climate activists believe to be a consequence of unchecked climate change.
What’s the significance of the number 350? 350 parts per million (ppm) is what many scientists and climate experts say is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere, according to the web site.
Accelerating arctic warming and other climate impacts have led some scientists to conclude that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390 ppm.
Joyce Lanning is enthusiastic about connecting the dots. 350 parts per million is the most C02 that the atmosphere can handle, according to many scientists. Photo by Jesse Chambers.
Unless we are able to return to below 350 ppm, these scientists say, we risk such irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from permafrost melt.
350.org has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009, according to the web site. It was founded by American author Bill McKibben, who in 1989 wrote one of the first books on global warming for a mass readership, The End of Nature.
For more about Connect the Dots, visit 350.org or www.climatedots.org.
