PORT ANGELES — Environmental activists in Port Angeles joined hundreds of concerned citizens Saturday for a worldwide online demonstration meant to illustrate the causes and results of climate change.
Their photo is featured on the “Climate Impacts Day” photo slideshow at www.climatedots.org, along with pictures from around the world, including the Maldives Islands, Mozambique, Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand, Israel, Wyoming and New York City.
As the website puts it, its aim is to “connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather.” Each picture features a large circle, or “dot.”
The photos include scenes from burned forests, eroding beaches, snowless ski resorts, melting glaciers, towns destroyed by hurricanes and tornadoes, drought-parched lakes and riverbeds, and flood-ravaged bridges and homes.
The Port Angeles group decided to take its picture in front of the Nippon Paper Industries USA in Port Angeles.
“Burning biomass is three times as bad as burning coal,” said Maureen Wall of Port Angeles.
Wall, a member of 350.org, a website dedicated to climate change information, spearheaded the effort to create a “dot” in Port Angeles.
The number 350 signifies the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, in 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen predicted marked the climate tipping point for more severe and frequent weather events.
Wall and other local activists have taken aim at Nippon’s new biomass-burning cogeneration plant, with twice the capacity of its existing plant.
The new plant, scheduled to be operational in 2013, would burn slash from Olympic Peninsula logging operations to produce electricity to both run the paper mill and sell.
Plant operators have said that the plant would burn the slash more efficiently than the current method of burning large slash piles on logging sites.
Wall said she believes that idea is deceptive and that more material will be burned in the plant’s boiler.
“Only about 10 percent of the slash in a forest is burned. Usually they just plant around it,” Wall said.
Wall said the Port Angeles “dot” began in April as a photo of herself and friend Diana Somerville, but it grew as people from Port Angeles and Sequim signed up for the photo, both on Facebook and through 350.org.
“Some of these people I have never met before,” Wall said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
