Blog & news round-up 11/13: Obama in Japan, Arctic ice science explained, dancing on the beach and more

This week we see lots of meetings and lots of dancing in the fight for climate action. We'd prefer to do more of the latter, but that's why we have politicians to the meetings for us. President Obama met with the Japanese prime minister and a coalition of island nations met, both with eyes toward the UN Climate Change Conference in December.

We also have posts breaking down some of the confusing science behind all this work and a video of a woman who lives and survives on the Arctic ecosystem telling her story. All that... and dancing.

This morning, the White House released some information on President Obama's meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama and their discussions on clean energy and climate change. According to their press release and Talking Points Memo's coverage, both leaders agreed to push for 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050 as well as a number of specific goals including:

Establishment of a task force that will evaluate the achievements of existing clean energy projects in Hawaii and Okinawa to enable the islands to be energy independent, including micro-grid projects, and develop activities to help the two islands share experiences and knowledge with each other;

Deepening of cooperation in the area of smart grid through such activities as information and experience sharing from demonstration projects, and development of standards;

Read the full article for more, including emphasis on developing carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy. While those last two are not directions we would like to go, overall it is good to see the start of international agreements.

One of the things that has come out of the climate talks this year has been greater attention paid to small and developing countries that are at the greatest risk because of climate change. Foremost among those countries' leaders has been President Nasheeed from the tiny island nation of Maldives. He, along with delegates from other at-risk countries, met this week to prepare to present a unified voice at the UN climate conference in December. Solve Climate had a great post on Tuesday covering their meetings and their call for developed nations to contribute 1.5% of their annual GDP to help vulnerable nations cope with climate change.

Infographic of the week: This interactive infographic comes to us from Forbes.com. The map visualizes the world's dirtiest power plants and the annual carbon emissions from each. As those smaller nations brought to attention, it is mainly a few areas of the world who produce the most green house emissions, so it's our responsibility to do something about it.

(via Treehugger)

Reuters Environment blog featured two videos of native Arctic women who came to Washington, DC this week to talk about the effect of climate change on their lives right now. Below is a video of one of those amazing women, Norma Kassi, discussing the effects she's seen for her people.

Speaking of the Arctic... well actually the Antarctic this time, there is often much confusion regarding whether polar ice is melting or not (mostly from "global cooling" proponents). John Cook over at Skeptical Science recently wrote a post explaining how, while Antarctic sea ice is increasing, Antarctic land ice is decreasing. The post is very interesting and uses simple language (and pretty charts) so we non-scientists can understand what's going on and what this has to do with global warming.

In case you haven't had your daily dose of inspiration today, we have one more video to share with you. According to the Dance for Climate website, over 10,000 people gathered in August on a beach in Belgium to, well, dance for the climate! More specifically it was done, like the creative actions on October 24th, to bring attention to the need to act now on climate change. Watch it in full screen. You'll thank me if you do.