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 * Background.**


 * September 26, 2007** Our school has adopted 'Sustainability' as a them for this year. We are kicking this off on Friday September 28 by devoting most of the day to viewing 'An Inconvenient Truth' and then having small breakout groups of students and faculty discuss their perspectives and ideas.


 * Feb 3, 2007** Our high school students have been organizing a series of activities focusing on climate change awareness. The events will commence with a two showings of the Academy Award winning film **‘An Inconvenient Truth'.** The first was on Thursday February 8 at 5 PM in the library -an audience of 50 students, faculty and friends were in attendance. The school was awarded a DVD of the movie with a license for public presentation by //participate.net,// an organization that has distributed 50,000 copies of the film free to schools across the country. The distributed version of the movie includes a 2006 update of progress and problems regarding climate change awareness. The film presentation is sponsored by three student groups at Hamden Hall - The Science Club, the Environment Club and the class of 2009.

The film sets the launch for two other major climate activities at the school. The same three student groups are participating in the ‘Cool-it Climate Challenge’. The goal of this national program is to make students aware of energy consumption. The students will be conducting home and school energy audits.


 * Feb 4 2007 Update.** On Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the deliberations of an international panel of 150 scientists. This panel was originally convened in the late 1980s and released their first report in 1990. In that report they were not able to reach a consensus on whether human activities were contributing to global warming. Then their summary statement read " "

In three reports since then (in 1995, 2001 and now in 2007) they have issued ever-firmer statement on the contributions of human activity to global warming. In Friday's report they wrote "Most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations". To these scientists using the term 'very likely' means that they are confident within the 90% level of certainty or in other works there is just a10% chance that the human caused increased in greenhouse gases is an incidental observation that has no causative effect on global warming. (To see their full report go to [|http://www.ipcc.ch).]

In the Saturday (2/4/07) edition of the New York Times, [|ROSENTHAL&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ELISABETH ROSENTHAL&inline=nyt-per|ELISABETH ROSENTHAL] and [|ANDREW C. REVKIN] quote Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which administers the panel along with the World Meteorological Organization. “Feb. 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planet,” and he went on to add “The evidence is on the table.”

"We have met the enemy and he is us!" Pogo "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" George Santayana .....
 * Food for thought**

Speaking of history - take at look at this article published October 28,1956! And for some more interesting history check out this web site. [|History of Climate Change and CO2]