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Next meetings of Transition Town Louth:

Monday April 19th 2021 7pm on Zoom: Send mail to get login details.

Louth's Favourite Tree

The hunt is on for Louth�s Most-loved tree

The next time you go for a walk around Louth � have trees on your mind and a camera in your pocket. You just might be that keen-eyed person who finds the tree we love the best!

Transition Town Louth and the Louth Leader are launching a competition for adults and children, to find �Louth�s Best-loved Tree� for 2021.

Of all the trees you pass in and around town � which one is the most beautiful, the most useful, the most unusual, or the most meaningful to you? We would like you to send us a picture of your chosen tree and a few words about what it means to you. The words may say why you like this tree, or be a little poem, or a bit about its biology or history, or you could send us just one word that sums it all up for you.

We are already excited to know where they will be, and what you will say! All submissions will be uploaded into an online gallery and a panel of judges will create a shortlist of six trees. The Louth Leader will publish these six finalists, and all residents and visitors to Louth will have a chance to vote on which of these six is to become �Louth�s Most-loved Tree 2021� � perhaps it will be yours!

The �winning� tree will be honoured with a small ceremony. The winning person will have their entry published in the Louth Leader and receive a special certificate from the Mayor!

Because of the rich history of Louth, the town has a wide range of native and exotic trees � some are outstanding examples of their species, others intriguing for the stories behind them, and others are special for the poetry they inspire. Some trees are newly planted, and others may be so old they witnessed the civil war 350 years ago, or sheltered people as they listened to the outdoor preachers of the 18th century. Many trees uplift us with their changing colours, amazing branches or roots, enduring capacity for growing and fruiting year after year, or simply providing shade or a place to play on a hot summer�s day. All of them magically, and fortunately for us, are busy recycling the air that we breathe.

We are looking forward to a community discovery of all our wonderful trees and to be able to share what they mean to us. With the recent explosion of walking and cycling in and around Louth, this could be a good, if not the best, time to do it.

More information see here

April 2014 was the first month in which CO2 concentrations topped 400 ppmv at Mauna Loa. In April 2017 the record reached 410 ppmv, having risen more than 3 ppm in a year. By May 2019 the number exceeded 415.

Policies that set target dates for 'net-zero emissions' some way into the future are just a new form of denialism. Our task is not just to stop emisission but to reduce what we have already emitted, back to the pre-industrial level. See Blog

More graphs from the Mauna Loa observatory here.

Time and Tide Bell

The blue line, updated daily, shows the extent of sea ice. The extent of Arctic ice is, over several years, a good indicator of global warming. There is variability from year to year depending on the weather, storms breaking the ice up and spreading it about. After a strong melt year the ice regrows quickly as the water is not insulated by a layer of ice, so the following year is usually a weaker melt year. On the other hand, water has a much lower albedo than ice so absorbs more solar energy and reflects less. Open water therefore warms quickly in summer.
The Antarctic sea ice pretty much all melts and regrows each season. In recent years there has been an increase in its area. Several factors contribute. Increased melting on the land glaciers is making the sea surface less saline, allowing quicker freezing of the sea surface. Increased rain and snow fall resulting from the greater water content of a warming atmosphere also contributes to this reduction in salinity. Increased wind speed resulting from greater temperature gradient between the Antarctic interior and the surrounding ocean help spread the ice out, increasing it's overall area. Thus increased Antarctic sea ice is an expected freature of a warming planet

The last few years have seen summer melting that far exceeds recent forecasts and raises the serious possibility that some global climate models are not giving the right results - with the errors all on the bad side.

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Click here for much larger picture (4Mb). Photo credit: Chris Vernon

There are now over 300 Transition Initiatives, Louth being the ninety-ninth. Transition Towns are completely autonomous organizations, linked by the Transition Network, which provides and shares ideas, resources and support. The common thread is a belief that energy security in the time following the peak in oil production and the risk of global warming, present threats so large that we will be forced to make a transition to a very different world from that to which we are accustomed. The Transition movement is driven by optimism and a determination to learn to adjust to whatever the future brings. Preparing in good time to meet the challenges is the wise approach. Our government, driven by the need to address the climate change issue and knowing that fossil fuels will be increasingly hard to come by, has a policy of reducing CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050. Even that drastic change may be understated as we compete for what little fossil fuel remains. This is not a target that can be missed but a reality that we are forced to accept. Indeed, the problems may press harder and faster than the government is prepared, as yet, to admit. It behoves each of us, as individuals or working through community groups and within local government, to accept that reality promptly, and to work together to make the transition as painless as we can, moving positively to a future where life may actually be better. Transition Town Louth is a grassroots grouping of people who share a determination to act. We are not concerned with debating whether global warming caused by man's actions is a problem, nor whether energy security is soon to be the most significant constraint on economic activity. We have accepted the issues, moved beyond debating the realities, and are ready for actions.

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