Group/Chapter Election Coming Up
The following slate will be running for 2-year terms on the North Group Executive Committee, to begin in January: Ned Forsyth, Gregg Gold, Felice Pace, and Jennifer Wood. Watch for the next issue of the Redwood Chapter Needles newsletter that contains the ballot.

Campers Learn & Enjoy Themselves
"Thrilling," "awesome," and "fun" were among the adjectives used by the four campers North Group members supported to attend July's Towering Trees & Tide Pools Camp near Orick. The children, age 10-12, learned about beach creatures, dissected a squid, wrote stories, hiked through old-growth redwoods, studied a stream, and made and raced boats. Their essays described evenings of games, skits, singing, Native American storytelling, and munching S'mores around the campfire.

NG Screens Ocean Acidification Film
More than 50 people -- both Sierra Club members and the general public -- attended a free showing of "Sea Change," a film about ocean acidification, on October 22 in Arcata. The group's Climate Change chair, Jennifer Wood, organized the session and invited Humboldt State oceanographer Dr. Jeff Abell to answer audience questions about this growing environmental problem.

The movie follows a quest by a Norwegian fisherman's son to find out about the problem of ocean acidification by interviewing scientists and journalists. According to the film, one third of the carbon dioxide put into the air ends up in the ocean. CO2 was once considered a waste product that the ocean could take care of, but it's becoming more difficult to counter as the ocean becomes more acidic. The lower pH is starting to dissolve the shells of tiny organisms known as pterapods, which represent the second lowest level of the food chain.

A warming Earth changes both ocean chemistry and biology. "We are conducting an irreversible experiment on the one ocean we have," stated one expert. "Ocean acidification poses an unambiguous threat to commercial fishing... If you're a shellfish, you're in trouble." Coral reefs face another potential disappearance from the Earth (these organisms went when the dinosaurs went extinct and were gone for 2 million years).

One filmed interviewee stated that the problem could be solved through devoting 2 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product to cut greenhouse gas emissions; another opined that calls for alarm may be heeded so close to the tipping point that the situation can't be reversed.

Dr. Abell stated that the ocean's natural buffering could handle 350 ppm of CO2, which has already been exceeded in the atmosphere. "The rate of acidification is important because organisms can't adapt fast enough," he said. Abell believes the role of scientists is to make sure than people have good information and politicians don't bend the truth.

Audience awaits showing of Sea Change film.
(Photo by Sue Leskiw)