GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS

GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS
from Jan 1, 05 to Jan 1, 06

Skip down to "The News".
See the news from before that, here.

Dec 29, 05: "By conservative estimates, production of cement accounts for 7% of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere annually, worldwide", Dahmen explained. "In contrast, rammed earth is a minimally-processed natural material." The product can't withstand the same kind of pressures as concrete, so it wouldn't be a suitable replacement for structures where strength is at a premium, such as bridges or tall towers.
. . These buildings aside, if rammed-earth architecture caught on across the United States as Dahmen hopes, architects would have some natural forces to consider.

Dec 27, 05: A study billed by its researchers as the most detailed projection yet of climate change says hotter, drier Southwestern summers will become a reality by the late 21st century if human-caused global warming continues. The number of extremely hot summer days —-those in the top 5% of the 105- to 112-degree range-— could jump 560% by late in the century from today, according to the Purdue University study.
. . The study also says heat waves would last longer, up to 15 days each from northern Mexico into Nevada and Utah. Summer rainfall, which can cause severe flooding but also nourishes rivers, streams and aquifers that provide water to people and wildlife, would fall.
. . The predicted changes are large enough to substantially disrupt the U.S. economy and its roads, bridges and other public infrastructure, said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Purdue assistant professor who headed the research team behind the study. Diffenbaugh said the study targets the period 2071-85 and assumes the temperature and rainfall changes would occur gradually, starting before then.
. . Two climate specialists at the University of Arizona agree the Purdue study is one of the most thorough of its type, but they say it's still not the last word on the regional effects of global warming. Jonathan Overpeck, director of the UA's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, said the study is one of the first to use really good global and regional computer models together to look at possible climate change during the next 90 years.

Dec 20, 05: Seven northeastern U.S. states have signed the country's first plan to create a market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants, New York Gov. George Pataki said today.
. . In a break with fellow Republican President George W. Bush, Pataki helped create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in which participating states agree to curb emissions starting in 2009, with cuts in emissions starting in 2016.
. . Environmentalists and growing ranks of carbon dioxide brokers hope one day the northeastern states will link with western states such as California to create a national greenhouse gas emissions market.
. . Other members of the RGGI are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont. Membership is open to other U.S. states. The states in early 2006 will issue for public review a draft of a memorandum of understanding on the plan that they signed on Monday. Each state then must proceed with required legislative or regulatory approvals to adopt the program.
. . The Kyoto pact, ratified by 156 nations, created a greenhouse gas market in the European Union earlier this year. In that market, industrial plants that have cut carbon emissions can sell credits to those that have not. A similar Kyoto-created market will open in Canada next year.
. . U.S. emissions brokers said RGGI should create a vibrant market by allowing power plants to mostly invest in clean energy projects, such as wind farms and burning methane at landfills. Stakeholders' short positions in RGGI will be created by a rule in which at least 25 percent of a state's CO2 allowances will be dedicated to energy efficiency and new clean energy technologies.
. . Under RGGI, emissions of CO2 from power plants in the seven states beginning in 2009 would be capped at current levels of about 121 million tons until 2015. The states would then slowly reduce emissions, aiming for a 10 percent reduction by 2019.
. . Massachusetts and Rhode Island quit the program earlier this month, saying it would raise power prices. But some utilities, perhaps wanting to prepare for future carbon regulations, applauded the plan. KeySpan Corp. and Public Service Enterprise Group support the RGGI, while Dominion Resources Inc. and NRG Energy have come out against it.
. . The RGGI's own studies suggest that the plan could boost electricity bills by as much as $30 a year, but that bills could be eventually cut through increased efficiency of clean energy projects.

Dec 16, 05: This year has been the warmest on record in the Northern Hemisphere, say scientists in Britain. It is the second warmest globally since the 1860s, when reliable records began, they add. Ocean temperatures recorded in the Northern Hemisphere Atlantic Ocean have also been the hottest on record. Eight of the 10 warmest years since 1860 have occurred within the last decade.

Dec 15, 05: Trees in the Amazon grow slower and are older than scientists thought, a discovery that has implications for computer models of climate change. Up to half of all trees greater than 10 cm (4") in diameter in Amazon tropical forests are more than 300 years old, the study found. Some are 1,000 years old. The conclusions result from radiocarbon dating methods.
. . "Little was known about the age of tropical trees, because they do not have easily identified annual growth rings", said study team member Susan Trumbore of the University of California at Irvine. "No one had thought these tropical trees could be so old, or that they grow so slowly." Because the trees are old and slow-growing, the Amazon forests, which contain about a third of all carbon found in land vegetation, have less capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon than previous studies predicted.
. . This has implications for the role the Amazon plays in determining global carbon dioxide levels. "In the Central Amazon, where we found the slowest growing trees, the rates of carbon uptake are roughly half what is predicted by current global carbon cycle models", Trumbore said. "As a result, those models—which are used by scientists to understand how carbon flows through the Earth system—may be overestimating the forests’ capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

Dec 9, 05: On the final day of the November 28-December 9 U.N. conference on climate change, environmentalists said they were losing hope that the United States --the largest producer of greenhouse gases-- would sign a separate agreement for all nations, not just Kyoto members.
. . Although the United States is not one of the 157 countries that have subscribed to Kyoto, Canada wants a deal on open-ended talks among all countries about long-term cooperation on climate change.
. . Delegates said U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson walked out of a session of talks overnight, saying host Canada's proposal for dialogue on long-term actions was tantamount to entering negotiations.
. . "Sixty years ago, Winston Churchill told the U.S. Congress the United States always does the right thing, after having exhausted all other options'", EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a news conference. "I think it will be very difficult for the United States not to join the dialogue that has almost unanimous support."
. . Regardless of U.S. resistance, countries participating in Kyoto are meant to announce an agreement to launch negotiations next year for the second phase of the protocol. This would give members seven years to negotiate and ratify accords by the time the first phase ends in 2012.
. . Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who supported Kyoto but failed to convince U.S. lawmakers, will enter the fray on Friday with an appearance on the sidelines of the conference.

Dec 9, 05: Signs a three-decade long drought in Africa's arid Sahel belt may be ending could herald an increase in hurricanes battering the eastern seaboard of the United States, a leading climatologist in West Africa said.
. . Hurricanes which pummel the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico each year often start their lives thousands of kilometers to the east as black storm clouds which cross the Sahel from the mountains of Chad or Sudan. The Sahel, a semi-desert zone which separates the Sahara from Africa's more tropical regions around the Equator, has been gripped since the 1970s by the worst drought in modern history. That appears to be changing. The heaviest rainfall in some thirty years in mainland Africa's most westerly country, Senegal, coincided with a record hurricane season this year.
. . "If the trend continues for five years, people will say the drought is over."

Dec 8, 05: Clouds help keep Earth's temperature within a habitable range, and they shuttle life-giving rain to different regions of the planet. Monitoring clouds is a crucial part of weather forecasting. So you'd think scientists know what a cloud is.
. . A cloud is now categorized according to a wide variety of properties that takes into account everything from its shape and the altitude at which it appears to its internal structure and transparency. After 200 years of tweaks and enhancements, Howard's system is beginning to show its age.
. . Not all satellites detect clouds using the same methods. Many record visible wavelengths of light, but others use micro- or infrared waves, so satellites often give conflicting readings. "At visible wavelengths, a thick ice cloud is very easy to detect", Ackerman said. "However, the same cloud will be invisible to a satellite instrument that measures microwave energy." They will also need to be able to distinguish between natural processes and the effects of improving technology.
. . A recent study predicted that climate change will cause storm clouds to shift poleward as the century progresses, leading to more intense rain and snow storms near the Earth's poles and higher chances of drought in the planet's middle regions.

Dec 7, 05: Canada will meet 2012 goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol even though the country is far above target, Prime Minister Paul Martin said at a U.N. conference.
. . But U.N. data showed that Canada's emissions of greenhouse gases are running 24.4% above 1990 levels even though the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol binds Canada to cutting its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Dec 7, 05: Just days after the official close of the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record and with one hurricane still churning in the Atlantic, the first 2006 forecast is out already. To the surprise of no one, it predicts an active season. "However, we do not expect to see as many landfalling major hurricanes in the United States as we have experienced in 2004 and 2005."
. . Klotzbach, Gray and colleagues calculate an 81% chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coast in 2006.

Dec 7, 05: A split emerged between two U.S. state governors who are developing plans with other states to reduce damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Nine states in the northeast United States are planning to launch a market in carbon emissions by 2009 that would cut global warming gases, in a break from the policy being pursued by President Bush's administration.
. . Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney proposed rules today in his state alone that would cap the price that companies would pay for carbon dioxide credits. In carbon markets, such as the European Union's, companies that cut emissions under mandatory limits can sell credits to those that choose not to.
. . Business groups, including the American Council for Capital Formation, say RGGI states would suffer from increased energy costs and relocation of plants to other states without limits.

Dec 7, 05: [Yes Global warming causes more extreme cold, too!] Bitterly cold air poured southward across the nation's midsection today, dropping temperatures to record lows from Montana to Illinois. The mercury dived to a record 45 below at West Yellowstone, Mont., the frequently cold spot at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

Dec 6, 05: It's been the driest year in decades in the Amazon, where a drought may surpass anything in the past century. Waters in the Caribbean were also hotter for longer, causing extensive coral-bleaching from Colombia to the Florida Keys. In the north, the smallest area of Arctic sea ice ever, was recorded in September —-500,000 square miles smaller than the historic average —-and a 9.8% decline, per decade, of perennial sea ice cover.

Dec 5, 05: Rising rates of deadly heat strokes, salmonella infection and hay fever across Europe are linked to global warming and should push governments to act faster on preventing climate change, the World Health Organization said today.
. . "While scientists used to think that effects of climate change on health would be evident a long time from now, research shows some effects are visible now", said Roberto Bertollini, a health and environment director for the WHO in Europe.
. . Human influence on climate could double the risk of death from heat waves in Europe, the WHO said. In the United Kingdom, annual deaths from heat could rise to 3,300 in 2050 from 800 in the last decades.
. . Floods, the most common natural disaster that causes loss of life and economic damage in Europe, have also been linked to global warming. Europe was hit by 30 major floods in 1995-2004 that killed 1,000 people and affected some 2.5 million people.
. . There is also evidence that warmer temperatures are spreading tick-borne encephalitis in Europe and may increase the risk of malaria, one of the most deadly diseases in developing countries.
. . Studies show salmonella infection, often associated with the use of raw eggs in mayonnaise, rises with an increase in average temperatures in Europe.
. . Allergy sufferers may find their sneezing and wheezing last weeks longer than before as warmer temperatures prolong the pollen-producing season.

Dec 5, 05: Rising seas have forced 100 people on a Pacific island to move to higher ground in what may be the first example of a village formally displaced because of modern global warming, a U.N. report said.
. . With coconut palms on the coast already standing in water, inhabitants in the Lateu settlement on Tegua island in Vanuatu started dismantling their wooden homes in August and moved about 600 meters inland.
. . So-called "king tides", often whipped up by cyclones, had become stronger in recent years and made Lateu uninhabitable by flooding the village 4 to 5 times a year. "We are seeing king tides across the region flooding islands."
. . The scientific panel that advises the United Nations projects that seas could rise by almost a meter by 2100 because of melting icecaps and warming.
. . Many other coastal communities are vulnerable to rising seas, such as the U.S. city of New Orleans, the Italian city of Venice or settlements in the Arctic where a thawing of sea ice has exposed coasts to erosion by the waves.
. . Pacific Islanders, many living on coral atolls, are among those most at risk. Off Papua New Guinea, about 2,000 people on the Cantaret Islands are planning to move to nearby Bougainville island, four hours' boat ride to the southwest.
. . Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999.

Dec 3, 05: Thousands of environmentalists, some banging drums or dressed as polar bears, marched in Montreal today to urge the United States and other nations at a U.N. climate conference to do more to curb global warming. Organizers said similar marches were held in 30 cities from Sydney to London to urge governments to lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.
. . "Time is running out", banners proclaimed in a carnival-like rally in freezing temperatures through central Montreal, where many protesters accused the White House of blocking progress on climate change and threatening the world's future.
. . Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew and Environment Minister Stephane Dion took part in the march. Some protesters booed the ministers, accusing them of doing too little, but the harshest criticisms were for Bush.
. . The Montreal talks are seeking ways to enlist both the United States and poor nations such as China and India in discussing ways to combat climate change beyond 2012.
. . In London, thousands of protesters, some blowing whistles and carrying banners, accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of wavering on pledges to make deep carbon reduction targets beyond 2012.

Dec 1, 05: Cows belching and breaking wind cause methane pollution, but British scientists say they have developed a diet to make pastures smell like roses -- almost. In some experiments, they got a 70% decrease in methane emissions.
. . The secret to sweeter-smelling cows is a food additive based on fumaric acid, a naturally occurring chemical essential to respiration of animal and vegetable tissues. A 12-month commercial and scientific evaluation of the additive has just begun, but he said if it proves successful, it could be a boon to cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.
. . "In total, around 14% of global methane comes from the guts of farm animals. It is worth doing something about", Wallace said. Other big sources of methane are landfills, coalmines, rice paddies and bogs.
. . In New Zealand, the government in 2003 proposed a flatulence tax, with methane emitted by farm animals responsible for more than half the country's greenhouse gases. The plan was ultimately withdrawn after widespread protests.

Nov 30, 05: The Atlantic Conveyor, a life-giving ocean current that keeps northern Europe warm, is slowing down, scientists said today. If the 30% slowdown seen over the past 12 years is not just a blip, temperatures in northern Europe could drop significantly, despite global warming, they added. It had completely shut down during the ice ages.
. . Scientists have long forecast that the Atlantic Conveyor that carries warm surface water north and cold deep water back to the equator could break down because of global warming. According to the theory, rising air temperatures cause ice caps to melt, making the water less salty and therefore less dense so it can't sink and flow back south.
. . The scientists today said this was the first time that observations had put flesh on the bones of the theory. But he said the latest figures were far from proving a trend and that constant and long-term monitoring was needed.
. . The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research has calculated that if the current stopped, temperatures in northern Europe could drop by up to six degrees C in 20 years. The latest figures, collated last year, are from a string of monitoring devices at various depths in the Atlantic from Morocco to Miami.
. . While measurements in 1981 and 1992 had shown little change, those in 1998 and 2004 had shown a major shift, with less of the warming Gulf Stream getting up to Greenland and less of the cold, deep returning current coming back. The so-called Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current is known as the Atlantic Conveyor, of which the Gulf Stream is the surface component.

Nov 30, 05: Two new studies predict that climate change will make dry regions of Africa drier still in the near future. Computer models of the global climate show the Sahel region [just south of the Sahara] and southern Africa drying substantially over the course of this century. There's been a 30% reduction in rainfall from the average for the last century. "Between 1950 and 1999, there has been about a 20% decline in summer rainfall over southern Africa."
. . Sahel rainfall declined sharply in the late 20th Century, with droughts responsible for several million deaths.

Nov 21, 05: Many scientists say there are real risks of "tipping points" -- sudden, catastrophic changes triggered by human activities blamed for warming the planet.
. . The warm Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic might shut down in one possible "tipping point" scenario. Melting ice in Greenland could send a sudden flow of cool water into the North Atlantic, disrupting the giant current that pulls warm water northwards to create the Gulf Stream. This might shut down the warm current and could also make parts of Europe and North America sharply colder, despite an overall warming of the climate.
. . Scenarios like this, and the uncertainty surrounding them, will provide a dramatic backdrop to a United Nations climate change meeting in Montreal, Canada, from November 28 -December 9.
. . Around 190 countries will debate how to expand a U.N.-led fight against global warming to include developing nations such as China and India and skeptic countries, led by the United States and Australia.
. . Under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, about 40 rich nations have agreed to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars by 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.
. . Records of the ancient climate found in ice caps and ocean sediments show there have been staggeringly big shifts in the past. "Past climate change is ringing alarm bells." Rahmstorf said, referring to the climate's fragility. During the last Ice Age, temperatures in the North Atlantic region once soared by 12 Celsius (22 Fahrenheit) in just 10 years, perhaps because of swings in ocean currents linked to small shifts in the sun.
. . Such drastic changes have stopped since the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, maybe because ocean currents are more stable outside Ice Ages, according to a study co-authored by Rahmstorf and published in the Nature journal this month.
. . There are more obvious examples of "tipping points" in nature, like the collapse of cod stocks off Newfoundland, Canada, in the early 1990s from overfishing. And, at some point in the 17th century, hunting of the flightless dodo in Mauritius doomed the birds to extinction.
. . Concerns about "tipping points" today focus on the Arctic. Experts say Greenland's 3,000 meter thick ice sheet, which has been melting at ever higher altitudes in summers in recent years, may be vulnerable to a runaway thaw. If the Greenland sheet melted entirely over the next few centuries, world sea levels would rise by about 7 meters. Antarctica's far bigger ice cap is likely to be more resilient as the giant continent acts as a deep freeze.
. . Assessing risks of "tipping points" is almost impossible. Rahmstorf said he recently polled 12 experts on the chances of a collapse of the Gulf Stream: four said risks were above 50% if world temperatures rose by 5C (9F) by 2100. "That was unexpected for me; I reckon the risks are lower."
. . Skeptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle. The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view, however.
. . Today's still rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27% higher than its peak during all those millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland. "We are out of that natural range today", he said. Moreover, that rise is occurring at a speed that "is over a factor of a hundred faster than anything we are seeing in the natural cycles", Stocker added. "It puts the present changes in context."
. . The team, which included scientists from France and Germany, found similar results for methane, another greenhouse gas.

Average per capita emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide are 3.6 tons, against 20.1 tons per American.

Nov 21, 05: Coal, a mineral that South Africa has in abundance, supplies about 92% of power generated for South Africa's Eskom Co. Eskom says about 70% of households now have electricity compared to 36% when apartheid ended in 1994. It aims to get all homes hooked up to the grid. Plans to expand industrial capacity --including the construction of an aluminum smelter-- will boost South Africa's energy consumption further. Eskom aims to boost its use of renewables --currently it is next to nothing-- and South Africa is blessed with lots of clean energy sources in the form of sun, wind and surf.
. . Even China has made huge strides in this regard, with some environmentalists lauding it for its "green energy" policies. 35 million homes in China are already getting their hot water from solar collectors --more than the rest of the world combined.

Nov 18, 05: Climate change is warming oceans, rivers and lakes and threatening fish stocks already under pressure from overfishing, pollution and habitat loss, the environmentalist group WWF warned. The decline in numbers of fish could have a devastating impact on human populations, particularly in poorer countries that rely on fish for protein, it said in a report.
. . Higher temperatures reduce oxygen levels, stunt growth, reduce food supplies and can force fish to seek cooler waters to which they may not be as well adapted, WWF added. "As climate change kicks in it adds to the pressure on already strained fish populations", said Katherine Short, WWF's fisheries officer.

Nov 17, 05: Rich nations' emissions of greenhouse gases are likely to rise in coming years after a fall linked to the collapse of smokestack industries in the former Soviet Union, U.N. data showed.
. . Emissions of the gases, widely blamed by scientists for global warming, were down 5.9% overall in 2003 from 1990 in 40 rich nations including former Communist states. That beat a goal of a cut of 5.2% by 2008-12 in the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol
. . Biggest falls in emissions were in the Baltic states while nations including Spain and Portugal were furthest over the Kyoto targets in 2003.
. . Among developing nations, some of which have submitted data for several years even though they have no targets, the UNFCCC said the biggest rise was in Paraguay with a 114% gain in 1994 against 1990 and the biggest fall in Cuba, of 40%.

Nov 17, 05: Global warming poses an enormous ethical challenge because countries that produce the least amount of greenhouse gases will suffer the most from climate change, scientists said. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that climate change leads to more than 150,000 deaths every year and at least 5 million cases of illness.
. . They predict countries in Africa and coastal nations along the Pacific and Indian Oceans will be hardest hit. "Those most at risk from global warming are also those least responsible for causing the problem.

Nov 16, 05: Five million (old)tons of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming, was successfully stored in a Canadian oilfield while doubling the field's crude oil recovery rate, the U.S. Energy Department said.
. . The promising technology in the multi-national project could be used to capture and store carbon dioxide in geologic formations. "By applying this technique to the oil fields of Western Canada, we would see billions of additional barrels of oil and a reduction in Co2 emissions equivalent to pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year", U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said.
. . The carbon dioxide used at Weyburn was piped from the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah, North Dakota. The carbon is a byproduct of the plant's coal gasification process and would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
. . Primary oil recovery uses natural underground pressure to bring oil to the surface but typically produces only 10% of a field's potential. Secondary recovery techniques inject water to flood a field and force the oil upward, increasing recovery by 20-40%. Enhanced oil recovery, the technique used at Weyburn, has the potential to increase a field's oil recovery up to 60%.

Nov 16, 05: Researchers looked at what would happen if a comparable extreme-heat event settled on five major U.S. cities, learning that not only would the country experience massive blackouts, but thousands of people could die. In New York alone, the number of deaths would increase to nearly 3,000 in a single summer.
. . History shows that heat waves are deadlier than hurricanes or tornadoes. And studies have indicated that extreme weather events will become more common with global warming.
. . Scientists expect 2005 to set a modern record for the warmest average global temperature. Leading computer models show continued warming for at least several decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, with only wild schemes proposed to put the brakes on.
. . "We tried to take the Paris heat wave in 2003 and transpose it onto the climate of five different cities", Kalkstein said. The cities: Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. The results were not cool.
. . In the nation's capital, there were 11 days with temperatures at or above 105 degrees in the virtual scenario. St. Louis reached an all-time maximum of 116. New York and Philadelphia each broke all-time highs for four days. In Detroit the mercury set all-time records twice.
. . The total simulated excess deaths were more than five times the historical summer average, with New York and St. Louis showing the highest numbers.
. . Cities could provide air-conditioned shelters and cut down on the use of black asphalt in favor of lighter-colored materials. More heat-absorbing trees and gardens could dot urban areas. Cities could work to provide better public transportation, decrease traffic congestion and minimize commutes. Property owners could be encouraged to paint roofs white and build roof gardens.

Nov 14, 05: Water vapor, experts say, is the culprit behind Europe's rapidly rising temperatures. Evaporated H2O is a known greenhouse gas—a gas that absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation in Earth's atmosphere. Temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere have been increasing in recent years. But Europe has been heating up especially quickly, leading to studies, theories, and debate as to why.
. . According to a team of Swiss scientists, heat from other greenhouse gases is causing more water to evaporate, releasing the vapor into the atmosphere above Europe. That vapor in turn, adds to the greenhouse effect, further warming the region.
. . "It is an experiment that clearly shows which factors are driving the higher temperatures. It is not the clouds, not the sun, not the aerosols. It is the increased greenhouse gases and the strong water vapor impact."

Nov 14, 05: Warmer, wetter weather brought on by global warming could increase outbreaks of the plague, which has killed millions down the ages and wiped out one third of Europe's population in the 14th century, academics said. Migratory birds spreading avian flu from Asia today could also carry the plague bacteria westward from their source in Central Asia.
. . This analysis was important, as it had not previously been clear whether warmer conditions encouraged the bacteria, fleas and rats to grow... or killed them off, Stenseth said. Plague bacteria are often carried by fleas on rats.
. . The plague --caused by the virulent, aggressive and mutating Yersinia Pestis bacteria-- periodically breaks out in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries, and for centuries has been carried around the globe by fleas on the back of rats, birds and in clothing.
. . "If you treat it with antibiotics in a few days, it should be all right, but if you leave it any longer, there is a 60% chance of death."
. . In the 14th century, the plague killed around 34 million people, and some academics believe it reappeared every generation, including the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. "After 1855, when it (plague) reappeared ... there were once again similar weather conditions. The link is very important, and it is also important to link it back to the Black Death in the 1300s, because there were the kind of weather conditions then --warmer and wetter-- that we predict for the future."
. . Plague-carrying fleas do not harm the birds that carry them.

Nov 10, 05: An increase in the planet's temperature 55 million years ago prompted major shifts in plant distribution, researchers reported. A study of plant fossils from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming shows the arrival of plants from warm southern areas, displacing those that had been growing there previously.
. . The group studied a period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the planet warmed up over about 10,000 years, raising the average temperature by between 9 degrees and 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmth lasted for 80,000 to 120,000 years. That warming was caused by an influx of CO2 into the atmosphere, similar to current concerns about the potential cause of global warming.

Nov 10, 05: Japan, host of the 1997 meeting that led to the Kyoto Protocol, is struggling to cut emissions, which have risen 8% since 1990 instead of dropping the pledged 6%.
. . Many in the world's second-largest economy also chafe at the tough targets their nation is bound to meet under Kyoto when the world's largest polluter, the United States, has rejected it and booming nations such as China and India have no obligations to cut emissions for the present.
. . It was partly from a latent sense of unfairness that Japan joined five other nations --including China, India, and the United States-- to form a "Beyond Kyoto" pact that critics say could undermine existing treaties.
. . Tokyo still firmly backs Kyoto. It will press all nations to be bound by the pact's next framework aimed at fighting global warming when 150 countries meet in Montreal later this month to discuss taking the protocol beyond 2012, when phase one ends.
. . Among the proposals Japan might push at Montreal is that any post-Kyoto pact must run over a longer time period, should set goals based on a variety of conditions and not just numbers, and must include periodic review and revision, if needed. But Tokyo's top priority is getting more nations involved.
. . One of the least efficient sectors is private houses, where emissions have risen 28.8% from 1990 levels because of an increase in the number of appliances, such as computers.
. . Environmentalists welcome these efforts, but say the best method would be an environment tax of 2,400 yen per ton of carbon emitted from fossil fuels. The business lobby opposes the measure, which has already failed to pass parliament once.

Nov 9, 05: The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said that quotas restricting industrial CO2 emissions in the European Union between 2008 and 2012 should be tightened to bring more effective climate protection. "WWF demands stricter caps for CO2 emissions and stronger incentives for the second phase of national allocation plans (NAPs) which have to be decided upon in 2006", it said in a study. "Only tight limits and well-designed NAPs will prompt energy utilities to replace dirty coal generation plants with clean gas turbines or renewable energies", it said.
. . WWF said some of the currently applicable NAPs, apart from showing lax upper limits, lacked fairness, efficiency and transparency. "If plans for the 2008-2012 phase turn out as fuzzy, the European climate protection policy will fail terrifically", said Regine Guenther, head of WWF Deutschland's climate section.
. . The EU must cut its emissions of six heat-trapping gases including CO2 by 8% from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Nov 7, 05: Airborne particles are thought to shrink oceans by cooling them, but the effect is small compared with overall global warming. Powerful volcanic eruptions over the last century have slowed the rise in sea level by releasing fine particles that deflect sunlight, cooling the oceans and thus reducing their volume, according to a new study the journal Nature. But the effect is only temporary.
. . Using computer models and satellite data, researchers found that the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines dropped sea levels by about 5 mms within a year. But after two years, the climate began to recover from Mt. Pinatubo's effects, adding 0.5 mm each year for the next decade to the rate of sea level rise, said lead author John A. Church, a senior research scientist with Australia's Marine and Atmospheric Research Center.
. . The findings may explain part of the higher rate of sea level increase since 1993 — about 3 mm each year. The expected long-term rise was 1.8 mm per year. "The cooling effect of eruptions on the atmosphere generally lasts for only two years", Church said. "But large bodies of water can take up to a decade to warm up again.
. . Church estimated that over the last 110 years, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo along with Indonesia's Mt. Agung in 1963 and Mexico's El Chichon in 1982 have reduced sea level rise by about 7 millimeters — only a fraction compared with the overall 180-mm increase in sea levels in the 20th century. "Once a volcano's aerosols evaporate, the pace of global warming will continue to accelerate", said climate researcher James Hansen.

Nov 2, 05: Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a new round of international talks on climate change today, encouraging G-8 nations and major polluters such as China and India to use cleaner forms of energy. He said that when the landmark Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, the international community would need a more sensitive framework for tackling global warming.
. . Setting targets, he added, made countries worry about their economies. "People fear some external force is going to impose some internal target on you, which is going to restrict your economic growth", Blair told environment and energy ministers from 19 countries. "I think in the world after 2012 we need to find a better, more sensitive set of mechanisms to deal with this problem."
. . Blair has made tackling global warming a priority for Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. But he has met strong resistance from the United States. President Bush's administration has refused to sign the 1997 Kyoto accord, saying the caps on greenhouse gas emissions it demands would damage the U.S. economy.
. . Blair has acknowledged he will not overcome such opposition. Seeking to draw the United States back into the debate, he has instead focused on the need for green technology. Britain is also trying to involve emerging economies that are set to become the world's biggest polluters in the future.

Nov 2, 05: One of the world's largest insurers warned today of the economic costs of global warming. "Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences", concludes a new study cosponsored by Swiss Re, a global re-insurance company.
. . The research was done by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School and also sponsored by the United Nations Development Program.
. . Economic implications as well as possible near-future impacts are projected for each case. Costs are already rising. In the report, 10 case studies outline current effects of climate change, from infectious diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus to extreme weather events such as heat waves and floods. Changes to forests, agriculture, marine habitat and water were considered.
. . Lyme disease is increasing in North America as warmer winters allow ticks to proliferate, the study concludes. Ragweed pollen growth, stimulated by increasing levels of carbon dioxide, may be contributing to the rising incidence of asthma, the scientists say.
. . Swiss Re is a global re-insurance company, meaning it assumes the risk from the smaller insurance companies that individuals and businesses deal with. It has been warning about the costs of climate change since at least 2003.
. . "Whereas most discussions on climate change impacts hone in on the natural sciences, with little to no mention of potential economic consequences, this report provides a crucial look at physical and economic aspects of climate change", Jacques Dubois, Chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corporation. "It also assesses current risks and potential business opportunities that can help minimize future risks."

Nov 2, 05: It won't stop, y'know.... If humans don't curb use of fossil fuels, the planet will warm 14.5 degrees F by the year 2300. The polar ice caps will disappear and oceans will rise 7 meters (23 feet).

Oct 27, 05: Prince Charles says climate change should be seen as the "greatest challenge to face man" and treated as a much bigger priority in the UK. "The point here of course is that it is a global problem that can only be solved with global action. So, by putting it at the head of our G8 agenda alongside African poverty, I think that we [the government] did lead the way.

Oct 27, 05: The Mediterranean region will suffer most in Europe from global warming and changing land use this century, with more droughts damaging everything from farming to tourism, an international study said. Elsewhere in Europe, low-lying Alpine ski resorts were likely to go out of business, forests would expand, many species of animals and plants would be driven north and winter floods would worsen in rivers from the Rhine to the Rhone.
. . The report, by 16 European research institutes and published in the journal Science, is the most detailed forecast yet of the impact for west Europe of climate change by 2080, twinned with changes in land use linked to shifting populations and policies.
. . In the Alps, reliable snow cover in winter would rise to 4,920-5,740 ft, from 1,300 now. By 2080, an extra 14-38% of the Mediterranean population would be living in areas with strain on water supplies. It projects that temperatures will rise by 3.8-7.9F by 2080.

Oct 24, 05: African governments and donors launched an ambitious plan to fight desertification, which causes chronic food shortages and threatens to drive millions from their homes in coming decades.
. . The so-called Terrafrica partnership aims to attract at least $4 billion over 12 years to improve the sharing of ideas about how best to combat land degradation, officials told a news conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
. . 65% of Africa's 800 million population is affected by land degradation, mainly in areas where forests have been cleared to make way for agriculture and overgrazing.
. . Around the world, a total of 2 billion people live in drylands vulnerable to desertification.
. . But Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai warned that the initiative would not be successful without the involvement of local farmers. Maathai's grassroots Green Belt Movement has campaigned for years to plant trees in Africa, saying plantings slow desertification, preserve forest habitats for wildlife and provide a source of fuel, building materials and food for future generations.

Oct 22, 05: Not in the last century, since it was decided that the dead and detritus of every hurricane should be recorded, has there been such a disastrous barrage of wind and rain and saltwater on the Gulf Coast.
. . Twenty-two tropical storms and hurricanes in the past five months, the most ever in a single season. A tropical storm that formed Saturday in the Caribbean was dubbed Alpha because the last letter left in the tempest alphabet went to Hurricane Wilma. They've never before run out of names.

Oct 21, 05: In a season that has included three Category 5 hurricanes for the first time on record in the Atlantic Basin, scientists are beginning to wonder if their rating system is adequate. On the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, there is no Category 6. But Hurricane Wilma this week brushed up against where a 6 would be if the scale were logically extrapolated to include another category.
. . "When you get up into winds in excess of 155 mph, you have enough damage", Simpson said in a 1999 interview.
. . Emanuel and other scientists have predicted that wind speeds —including maximum wind speeds— should increase about 5% for every 1 degree Celsius increase in tropical ocean temperatures.
. . Chris Landsea, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, disagrees. Landsea believes that even in the worst-case global warming scenarios, where global temperatures ratchet up by an additional 1-6 degrees Celsius, there would be about a 5% change, total, by the end of the 21st Century. That means that hurricane-force winds are unlikely to exceed 200 mph, Landsea said.
. . Based on ocean and atmospheric conditions on Earth nowadays, the estimated maximum potential for hurricanes is about 190 mph. This upper limit is not absolute, however. It can change as a result of changes in climate. Scientists predict that as global warming continues, the maximum potential hurricane intensity will go up. They disagree, however, on what the increase will be.
. . The fastest "regular" wind that's widely agreed upon was 231 mph, recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934. During a May 1999 tornado in Oklahoma, researchers clocked the wind at 318 mph.
. . Emanuel says a new hurricane rating system will need to have at least three numbers, describing not only wind speed, but also rainfall and storm size. "It will also be continuous, so you can have a category 4.6 or 4.7, and it will be open-ended, so that the categories just keep going up", Emanuel said.
. . A Category 1 storm begins at 74 mph and a Category 5 at 156 mph. On average, there is about a 20 mph increment in wind speed between the categories. An extrapolation suggests that if a Category 6 were there, it would be in the range of 176-196 mph. Hurricane Wilma, which had maximum recorded wind speeds of 175 mph, would have been on the verge of breaking into this hypothetical new category.
. . The scale didn't include a Category 6 for two reasons. First, it was designed to measure the amount of damage inflicted by a hurricane's winds, and beyond 156 mph, the damage begins to look about the same, according to Simpson."If that extreme wind sustains itself for as much as six seconds on a building it's going to cause rupturing damages that are serious no matter how well it's engineered. So I think that it's immaterial what will happen with winds stronger than 156 miles per hour. That's the reason why we didn't try to go any higher than that", Simpson said.
. . Another reason is that Category 5 hurricanes are relatively rare, or at least they used to be. Some scientists predict, however, that the intensity of hurricanes and their maximum wind speeds may be increasing and that Category 4 and 5 storms will become more common in the years to come.

Oct 19, 05: Eight states and the city of New York have appealed last month's dismissal of their global warming lawsuit against five of the largest U.S. utilities, arguing that greenhouse gas emissions from their plants were a public nuisance and would cause irreparable harm to property.
. . They asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to force the utilities to cut their carbon-dioxide emissions. However, Judge Loretta Preska dismissed the suit, saying the issue was a political question for Congress or the President to decide, not the judiciary.

Oct 19, 05: The Puget Sound region is feeling the impact of climate change —-from flooding to warmer waters-— and things could be getting worse, according to a report by University of Washington researchers. "We've been in denial about this problem", said Brad Ack, director of the Puget Sound Action Team, a state agency responsible for protecting the Puget Sound. "Denial is no longer an option."
. . The future of the region in the next 100 years is unknown, but the report released this week makes a number of dire predictions: vanishing beaches; increasingly inhospitable water for salmon and shellfish; more rain and less snow, causing a chain reaction of flooding and landslides.
. . Among the findings in this regional study: The average annual air temperature around the sound rose 2.3 degrees F during the last century, more than double the average increase globally of 1.1 degrees. Water temperatures measured near Victoria, British Columbia, have risen nearly 2 degrees since 1950. Glaciers across the Cascades and Olympic mountains have shrunk.
. . Sea levels have swelled globally between 10 and 20 cms over the past century, due to melting glaciers and polar ice. In the future, the southern reaches of the sound are expected to suffer the most from rising tides because of geological changes causing the land to sink as the water rises.
. . The report suggests climate change will continue to echo across the ecosystem, upsetting links between plants and animals and complicating efforts to manage the threat of a growing human population.
. . "But we also know that when organisms experience catastrophe, it's most often because they're assaulted by more than one problem at a time. The sooner we recognize that things are under pressure because of climate change, we can look at the stressors we can do something about."

Oct 19, 05: Hurricane Wilma doesn't stop making history: It is the strongest, most intense Atlantic hurricane in terms of barometric pressure and the most rapidly strengthening on record. A hurricane hunter plane flying through the Category 5 storm's eye found a minimum central pressure of 882 millibars. That is lower than the 888 millibars recorded in Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. The lowest pressure at landfall on record is 892 millibars.
. . Wilma's top sustained winds were measured at 175 mph, the same as Rita and Katrina when they were at sea, and 105 mph faster than the wind speed measured 24 hours before when it was a tropical storm. That wind speed increase is the fastest ever recorded.
. . Hurricanes Camille (1969) and Allen (1980) were estimated to have winds of 190 mph, the highest ever recorded, but those readings are suspect because of problems with wind gauges.
. . Wilma also fell 9.7 millibars an hour over six hours, beating Hurricane Beulah's drop of 6.3 millibars an hour in six hours in 1967. The lowest pressure ever recorded in a tropical cyclone was 870 millibars in Typhoon Tip in the northwest Pacific Ocean in 1979.

Oct 17, 05: Rainfall over parts of Africa's Sahel appears to be rising, but its greening could prove a mixed blessing if the population surges as a result and then drought follows, a leading ecologist said. "Climate change models suggest the Sahel should be getting drier, but observations suggest it is currently getting wetter", said Jon Lovett of the University of York in Britain.
. . Research done more than a decade ago linked a wetter Sahel to increased hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico.
. . Niger experienced a famine this year brought on by poor rains and locust swarms, underscoring the region's vulnerability.

Oct 12, 05: Authorities declared part of the Amazon River a disaster area after a drought left the levels of parts of the river too low for navigation, officials said. The government of the jungle state of Amazonas declared the disaster, freeing up money, food and medicine to scores of river communities that now can be reached only by air.
. . The level of the Amazon rises and falls regularly, but this year the dry season has been more severe than normal. Officials said the water levels in areas about 35 miles upstream from Manaus have dropped several feet to about five feet, making it hazardous for river boats and difficult for fishing, a key occupation.
. . "We're worried", Manaquiri Mayor Jair Souto said. "We have about 25,000 people whose basic food is fish. We're a community of fishermen."

Oct 12, 05: Researchers believe the massive die-offs of New Mexico's state tree during 2002 and 2003 could be a harbinger of life in a warming world. High elevation pinon forests that had survived previous droughts endured as much as 90% mortality, according to a team of researchers. "Across a whole landscape, this system got whacked."
. . Drought weakened the trees enough for bark beetles to kill them, but warmer temperatures —-only .5 to 1 degrees C higher than the long-term average-— appear to have contributed, the scientists found.
. . Tree deaths occurred in areas that were relatively unaffected by a drier drought during the 1950s. "This drought was hotter." He said dramatic drought-induced changes in the Southwest landscape since the turn of the 21st century are consistent with global climate change projections. "We're more likely to get more frequent, more intense droughts", Breshears said.
. . U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Julio Betancourt disagreed with conclusions reached by Breshears' team. Betancourt questioned whether scientists know enough about what happened 50 years ago to be sure the recent drought was worse. However, he praised the scientists for trying to quantify effects of warming temperatures. "All of us [see] these temperatures going up, and we know it's going to have an effect", Betancourt said.

Oct 8, 05: Scientists have already observed a wide range of changes in the migration patterns of birds, fish and turtles, apparently in response to warming which has already taken place. Some species normally associated with more southerly countries, such as the little egret, the loggerhead turtle, and the red mullet, are increasingly seen in and around the UK.
. . Krill, low down on the food chain, are affected by climate change Wading birds such as the ringed plover are now spending the winter in the east of Britain rather than on the west coast, and chiff-chaffs are remaining in the UK throughout the year rather than migrating south.
. . While many species have been able to adapt to new conditions simply by moving their ranges further towards the poles, the study warns that this option is not available to other animals, such as polar bears and seals whose habitat is disappearing rapidly with the melting of Arctic sea ice.
. . Even subtle changes in sea temperature can have dramatic impacts on wildlife with rapid depletion of the tiny plankton organisms which form the base of the food web in the oceans.
. . Warmer seas could lead to some turtle species becoming entirely female, as water temperature strongly affects the sex ratio of hatchlings.

Oct 8, 05: By the year 2050, warmer temperatures in the Western United States could fuel a doubling in the number of bad air days this time of year, according to a new study.
. . Stagnation events, as they are called, form during dry, windless conditions. Air heats up and becomes laden with dust, ozone and other pollutants. It just hangs there.
. . A temperature rise of up to 7 degrees F by 2050 in the West would mean about two weeks of stagnation instead of the one week that typically occurs now.
. . Things will be different in the Midwest. The model predicts increased cloud cover there, which will reflect sunlight back to space. Temperatures could be unchanged or even cooler. There will as many as eight fewer stagnation days in the Midwest each season, Leung figures. But it will rain more frequently, with up to six more days of rain each season.

Oct 8, 05: A new study suggests natural gas development in western Wyoming is forcing mule deer into less suitable winter range and affecting the animals' movements in an area known as the Pinedale Anticline.
. . The number of mule deer on the Mesa winter range dropped a "disconcerting" 46% from 2002 to 2005. Models and maps indicated that, through at least three winters, deer tended to favor areas further away from well pads. Such behavior suggests that seasonal drilling restrictions may not be achieving what land managers had intended.

Oct 7, 05: The world's first substantially cleaner coal plants are being planned in the United States, but they may do little to cut global warming risks until the U.S. forms climate regulations, experts said.
. . U.S. utilities are planning a fleet of new coal plants amid bountiful domestic supplies of the fuel and all-time high natural gas prices. But only a fraction of those will use the Holy Grail of clean coal technology --integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC)-- because of the high initial cost. IGCC gasifies coal before it's burned, cutting large quantities of pollutants harmful to human health, such as particulates, small components and mercury.
. . IGCC can be paired with pipes that capture the leading greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Capturing can be added much more cheaply to IGCC than conventional coal plants. The technology could increase coal use and open up vast areas of high sulfur coal in the Midwest to mining that have been off limits since the 1990 Clean Air Act.
. . "If IGCC is not built with carbon capture and storage, it may as well be the old dirty stuff", said Dave Hamilton, the Sierra Club's global warming program director. "It will be a cumulative increase in our carbon emissions."
. . IGCC start-up costs can run 20% over conventional plants, but new incentives could ease the pain. The new federal Energy Act contains up to $800 million in investment tax credits for IGCC.
. . Carbon capturing on IGCC plants adds only 25% to the cost of the electricity, compared to a 60% cost boost for electricity from conventional coal plants that add capturing.
. . IGGC's can remove 90% of the mercury in coal at one-tenth of the cost as conventional clean coal plants. And GE also aims to halve the startup cost.
. . U.S. electricity demand should rise 50% from 2003 to 2025, according to the DOE. Much of that generation could be coal-based as natural gas supplies thin and as U.S. communities protest the building of liquefied natural gas (LNG) ports.
. . More than 90% of power plants built since the late 1990s run on gas. As a result, gas prices, which averaged about $2 per mmBtu throughout the 1990s, are on track to average a record $7 per mmBtu this year, their third consecutive record year.
. . In the mid-1990s, not one utility had plans to build a coal plant. Now more than 120 U.S. coal plants have been proposed, more in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Oct 1, 05: Increased output from the Sun might be to blame for 10 to 30% of global warming that has been measured in the past 20 years, according to a new report. But climate models of global warming should be corrected to better account for changes in solar activity, according to Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West of Duke University.
The new study is based in part on Columbia University research from 2003 in which scientists found errors in how data on solar brightness is interpreted. A gap in data, owing to satellites not being deployed after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, were filled by less accurate data from other satellites, Scafetta says.
. . The Duke analyses examined solar changes over 22 years versus 11 years used in previous studies. The cooling effect of volcanoes and cyclical shifts in ocean currents can have a greater negative impact on the accuracy of shorter data periods.
. . Many questions remain, however. For example, scientists do not have a good grasp of how much Earth absorbs or reflects sunlight.

Sept 29, 05: Controversial plans to build an underwater dam to protect Venice from flooding will go ahead, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.
. . Environmentalists have criticized the project, and the mayor of Venice protested against the decision saying the city council had been bypassed. The plans envisage building 78 hinged flood barriers on the seabed which would be raised when high tides threaten the city. But some environmentalists say the 28m high, 20m wide structures will turn Venice into a pond and will cause more damage than the floods which periodically submerge its streets. Currently, Venice is suffering some level of flooding for 200 days every year, compared with only seven at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Sept 26, 05: Rainfall in parts of the United States would be reduced significantly by total deforestation in other parts of the world as the paths of storms are altered, new research shows. The study, led by researchers at Duke University using a NASA computer model, is among the first to reveal potential global effects of localized changes in the land. Among the findings:
. . * Deforestation in the Amazon region of South America would reduce rainfall in Texas by 25% from March to September.
. . * Deforestation in Central Africa would affect precipitation in the U.S. Midwest.
. . * Deforestation in Southeast Asia would alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula.
. . he total amount of rain that falls on Earth would not change, the computer modeling suggests.
. . Deforestation of Central Africa, for example, would cause a significant precipitation decrease in the lower U.S. Midwest during the spring and summer and in the upper U.S. Midwest in winter and spring. And the conversion of forests to shrub and grass in all three tropical regions studied would considerably enhance rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and eastern Africa, by up to 50% in some locales.

Sept 26, 05: The effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth's atmosphere has increased 20% since 1990, a new government index says. The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index was released today by the Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
. . The Earth's average temperature increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that continuing increases could have serious effects on crops, glaciers, the spread of disease, rising sea levels and other changes.
. . In its new analysis, the laboratory, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, compares the amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons in the air. Those gases have been sampled for many years.
. . The index was set to a reading of 1 as of 1990 and the lab said it is currently 1.20, indicating an increase of 20%. The index is expected to be updated each April.
. . "The AGGI will serve as a gauge of success or failure of future efforts to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere both by natural and human-engineered processes", said David Hofmann, CMDL director.
. . In the current reading, for every million air molecules there are about 375 carbon dioxide molecules, two are methane and less than one is a nitrous oxide molecule. The CFC's make up less than one molecule in a billion in the atmosphere but play a role in regulating Earth's climate and are a key factor in the depletion of the protective ozone layer, NOAA researchers say.

Sept 24, 05: Spring snowmelt in Alaska's Arctic is occurring progressively earlier, accelerating the region's climate change and helping produce its warmest summers in at least 400 years, according to a new study.
. . The earlier snowmelt, itself a product of a warming climate, is one of the "positive feedback" factors that accelerates warming in the far north. Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Institute of Arctic Biology and the study's lead author: "Each of these changes seems to trigger other changes that mean more changes will occur."
. . Summer warming will be amplified by two to seven times if trees and bushes continue their northern migration into Alaska's Arctic, the study also said. For now, the tundra is still relatively free of large vegetation, although such plants are starting to colonize more northern areas, which will become even more of a feedback.
. . Caribou time their spring migrations so they can arrive at the Arctic coast just as the snow is disappearing and the most tender plants are emerging from the tundra. If the snow melts too early, the plants could be mature and tough, and snow and ice bridges used to cross rivers could be gone when caribou arrive at their coastal calving grounds.

Sept 21, 05: Africa contributes least to global climate change, but is bearing the brunt of the phenomenon that is expected to exacerbate food shortages in the long term, scientists warned.
. . Global warming has been blamed for increased cycles of drought across Africa, where millions this year face hunger and starvation. Yet the world's poorest continent has the lowest levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said at a conference in Nairobi.
. . Extreme weather patterns, caused by climate change and leading to drought, will trigger deepening food shortages in Africa where most people rely on rain-fed crops to survive, Wandiga said. "Climate change will exacerbate hunger, which now affects about 50% of our population. Above all, climate change will worsen poverty on the continent."
. . In the long term, climate change will force foreign donors to pay more to feed Africa's hungry and add to the current $6 billion spent by humanitarian agencies, Wandiga said.

Sept 21, 05: Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said. Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found.
. . Compiled by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the country's leading medical and environment groups, the study predicts average temperatures will rise by between 1 degree C and 6 degrees by 2100.
. . "We're not just talking about a longer summer or a shorter ski season." In Australia, Haikerwal said up to 15,000 people could die each year due to heat stress by 2100, up from about 1,000 a year at present, while dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases could spread as far south as Sydney.
. . "At the worst case, large scale state failure and major conflict may generate hundreds of millions of displaced people in the Asia-Pacific region, a widespread collapse of law, and numerous abuses of human rights."
. . The report said crop yields were likely to increase in parts of Northern Asia, but would decrease in countries in Southern Asia, where the incidence of floods, droughts, forest fires and tropical cyclones would all increase.

Sept 21, 05: Britain should drastically reduce the growth of air travel to bring greenhouse gas emissions within levels that will avoid dangerous climate change, a report by leading environmental scientists said today.
. . Air travel has boomed in recent years thanks largely to cheaper flights, and the government predicts that the number of air passengers in Britain will more than double by 2020. But aviation is a major source of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, because planes burn huge amounts of fossil fuels at high altitudes.
. . The government says it wants a 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, as the nation's contribution toward preventing an increase in temperatures that would threaten a dangerous level of climate change.
. . Aviation, however, is much more difficult to decarbonize, so growth in the sector must be "dramatically curtailed", the report said.
. . Critic: "I actually think there are other ways of doing it. The most effective one is to include aviation within carbon trading schemes, so there is an absolute limit on the amount of emissions from the aviation sector."
. . The environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, however, said it favored an aviation fuel tax. "Aviation is a rogue sector and its environmental impact is out of control. Climate change is the most urgent challenge facing humanity and yet aviation policy is doing the opposite of what is needed."

Sept 15, 05: The number of strong hurricanes --like the devastating Katrina-- significantly increased in the last 35 years, fueled by hotter seas that have been linked to global warming, researchers reported.
. . Twice as many of the most powerful hurricanes, those ranked Category 4 or 5, have been detected since 1990 as were seen in the period from 1970 to 1985, scientists found in a global survey.
. . Water vapor that evaporates from the sea's surface into the atmosphere eventually condenses as rain, releasing heat and driving a tropical cyclone. The warmer the sea surface, the greater amount of potential evaporation and the greater the fuel for a possible hurricane, Webster said. And even small rises in sea surface temperature can cause rapid rises in evaporation.
. . The surface temperature in the Atlantic Ocean has risen about 0.5 degree C since 1970, the researchers said. They noted, however, that only 12% of the world's hurricanes form in the Atlantic, so they looked at global data dating back to 1970. They discovered that the number and duration of hurricanes has remained generally stable, but the intensity has increased.
. . Because the results were similar across the globe, the scientists *discounted natural variability as the cause.
. . These findings were in line with research published recently in the journal Nature, reporting that hurricanes have become more destructive over the last 30 years.

Aug 17, 05: Fresh from visits to Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska's northernmost city, four U.S. senators said today that signs of rising temperatures on Earth are obvious and they called on Congress to act.
. . "If you can go to the Native people and walk away with any doubt about what's going on, I just think you're not listening", said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
. . Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Hillary Clinton of New York told reporters in Anchorage that Inupiat Eskimo residents in Barrow, Alaska, have found their ancestral land and traditional lifestyle disrupted by disappearing sea ice, thawing permafrost, increased coastal erosion and changes to wildlife habitat.
. . Heat-stimulated beetle infestation has also killed vast amounts of the spruce forest in the Yukon Territory, they said.

Aug 17, 05: Denmark urged "new thinking" about ways to combat global warming at the start of climate talks by 25 nations in Greenland. "Climate change represents a growing global challenge", Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told delegates at the start of the informal four-day talks. "We must find a model for how all big emitters of greenhouse gas can be actively involved in future climate efforts."

Aug 13, 05: A federal judge expressed reluctance about beginning judicial oversight of pollution issues that affect global warming as she heard arguments Friday in a complaint brought by eight states against some of the nation's largest power companies. "Why should I do something that Congress and the president have decided they don't want to do as a matter of policy?" Judge Loretta Preska asked lawyers for the states.
. . Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the states would prove that the five power companies are responsible for 10% of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions. The states are asking the judge to order the companies to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 3 percent annually for 10 years.

Aug 11, 05: For years, skeptics of global warming have used satellite and weather balloon data to argue that climate models were wrong and that global warming isn't really happening. Now, according to three new studies published in the journal Science, it turns out those conclusions based on satellite and weather balloon data were based on faulty analyses. The atmosphere is indeed warming, not cooling as the data previously showed.
. . Sherwood explains these discrepancies by pointing out that the older radiosonde instruments used in the 1970's were not as well shielded from sunlight as more recent models. What this means as that older radiosondes showed warmer temperature readings during the day because they were warmed by direct sunlight. With exposed sensors used in earlier designs, measurements taken in daylight read too warm. Later equipment reduced this effect. "We can't hang our hats on the old balloon numbers."
. . After taking this problem into account, they estimate there has been an increase of 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 degree F) in the average global temperature per decade for the last thirty years. "Unfortunately, the warming is in an accelerating trend --the climate has not yet caught up with what we've already put into the atmosphere", Sherwood said. "There are steps we should take, but it seems that shaking people out of complacency will take a strong incentive."
. . The only group to previously analyze satellite data on the troposphere --the lowest layer in Earth's atmosphere-- was a research team headed by Roy Spencer from University of Alabama, in 1992. The Alabama researchers introduced a correction factor to account for drifting in the satellites used to sample Earth's daily temperature cycles.
. . But in another Science paper published today, Carl Mears and Rank Wentz, scientists at the California-based Remote Sensing Systems, examined the same data and identified an error in Spencer's analysis technique. After correcting for the mistake, the researchers obtained fundamentally different results: whereas Spencer's analysis showed a cooling of the Earth's troposphere, the new analysis revealed a warming. Using the analysis from Mears and Wentz, Santer showed that the new data was consistent with climate models and theories.
. . "When people come up with extraordinary claims --like the troposphere is cooling-- then you demand extraordinary proof", Santer said. "What's happening now is that people around the world are subjecting these data sets to the scrutiny they need."

Aug 9, 05: Pulling up grass in Flagstaff could earn homeowners some greenbacks. The city is offering a one-time $500 rebate to households that remove at least 1,500 square feet of grass and replace it with rock or hardy native plants that require little water. The average homeowner uses about 72 gallons annually to water each square foot of grass.

Aug 10, 05: Georgia pine trees harbor a record of every hurricane to hit the area in the past century, a new study found. Further research across the Southeast uncovered a hurricane record stretching back more than two centuries. Even a storm from 1780 was revealed in the wood.
. . Researchers hope to apply their arboreal archeology to a broader geographic region, and to older trees, to investigate storm frequency over the past 550 years. Scientists have long known that tree rings are annual chapters in the book of climatology. The width and density of rings reveal warm versus dry years. Chemicals in the rings can even tell of forest fires and other atmospheric variations. Researchers have even found gold in tree rings, which they suspect is linked to volcanic activity. "We've taken it back 100 years and didn't miss a storm."
. . They probed woody tissues for sudden drops in a particular oxygen isotope called oxygen-18. Hurricanes deplete the air of oxygen-18, so a hurricane's rain has less of it than other downpours. A shallow-rooted tree like the longleaf pine draws from a storm's rain within a couple weeks, leaving a storm's calling card in the new tissue.

Aug 8, 05: Salmon swim north into Arctic seas, locusts plague northern Italy and two heat-loving bee-eater birds nest in a hedge in Britain. In the United States, some warblers are flying north to Canada. In Costa Rica, toucans are moving higher up into the mountains, apparently because of rising temperatures. In July, a Norwegian man fishing in a fjord had a shock when he landed a John Dory, a fish more usually found in temperate waters off southern Europe or Africa.
. . "There's a long list of migratory species ending up further north. It's certainly a sign of warmer temperatures", said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director at the Greenpeace environmental group. He said salmon had been swimming through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia into the Chukchi Sea, apparently because the frigid water had warmed up. Inuit peoples have noted southerly species of wildlife reaching the Arctic in summertime in recent years, including robins, hornets and barn owls. Growing seasons have extended and seas have become warmer. Such shifts could have vast long-term implications for farmers and fishing fleets.
. . U.N. data show that the warmest year since records began (in the 1860s) was 1998, followed by 2002, 2003 and 2004.
. . In the United States, birds such as the Cape May warbler and Blackburnian warbler are moving north into Canada, causing a headache for forest rangers. If the birds leave, spruce forests in the United States could be vulnerable to attacks by spruce budworm caterpillars, normally eaten by the birds. If the caterpillars are left to thrive they will eat, and dry out, the trees. "The trees could be more stressed which could lead to more fires."

Aug 4, 05: Environmental groups expressed guarded optimism that the management succession at Exxon Mobil Corp. may lead the oil company to taking a proactive role in protecting the planet. But the fact that the heir apparent has the full support of the financial community, which expects him to run the company in the same way as his predecessor, has some critics of Exxon dismissing the chances of any real change.
. . Exxon, the world's largest public oil company, said Thursday CEO Lee Raymond would retire at year-end. Environmentalists revile the no-nonsense Raymond for his refusal to compromise on their issues, and for his stances minimizing the effects of global warming and the benefits of renewable energy.
. . "You couldn't imagine anyone worse on the issue of climate change than Lee Raymond, so there's really nowhere to go but up with his successor", said Andrew Logan, oil program manager at CERES, a coalition of institutional investors and environmentalists.

Aug 4, 05: Hurricane Ivan, which caused a swathe of destruction across the Caribbean last September before crashing into the U.S. Gulf coast, generated ocean waves more than 30 meters high, researchers said. They may have been the tallest waves ever measured with modern instruments, suggesting that prior estimates for maximum hurricane wave heights are too low.
. . The sensors may have missed the largest waves, which the authors estimate had crest-to-trough wave heights exceeding 40 meters. Such giant waves disintegrated before they ever touched land.
. . Ivan sank seven oil platforms and set five adrift. The center of the category 4 hurricane, with winds raging up to 240 kph, passed right over six of the Naval Research Laboratory's wave-tide gauges. It was pure luck that they did. The instruments the researchers used were out there to measure currents. The six sensors turned on only once every eight hours, and sample water flow and pressure for 9 minutes, & the biggest crest-peak wave measured was 28 meters.
. . A wave that big would snap a ship in two or dwarf a 10-floor building. "The waves are about [200 meters] long and there are ships out there that are that long", Mitchell said. "If the wave is under the ship, with a crest in front and a crest in back, there is nothing supporting the middle."
. . (As wind blows, tiny "capillary" waves form. They're about the thickness of a hair. These tiny waves eventually create little ripples, which cause more friction with the wind, and more energy is transferred from the wind to the water. The rougher the water becomes, the easier it is for the wind to transfer its energy.)

Aug 1, 05: Mumbai (Bombay) received more than 65cm (26 inches) of rain y'day --the heaviest recorded in India's history. (The word 'monsoon' comes from the Arabic for 'season')

Aug 1, 05: Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton — the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
. . Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures. Yet few are willing to rule it out. "There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together", said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening."
. . Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife.
. . This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem. Normally, in the spring and summer, winds blow south along the Pacific Coast and push warmer surface waters away from shore. That allows colder, nutrient-rich water to well up from the bottom of the sea and feed microscopic plants called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are then eaten by zooplankton, tiny marine animals that include shrimp-like crustaceans called krill. Zooplankton, in turn, are eaten by seabirds and by fish and marine mammals ranging from sardines to whales.
. . But this year, the winds have been unusually weak, failing to generate much upwelling and reducing the amount of phytoplankton. Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton. Along Monterey Bay in Central California, there are four times the usual number of dead seabirds. NOAA found a 20% to 30% drop in juvenile salmon off the coasts.
. . Scientists have seen some of these strange happenings before during El Nino years, when higher water surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific alter weather patterns worldwide. But the West Coast has not had El Nino conditions this year.
. . As for the possibility that this is being caused by global warming, scientists are not so sure, since climate change is believed to be a gradual process, and what is happening this year is relatively sudden. But "if we did see this next year, the notion that global warming plays a role in this carries more weight."

July 31, 05: Is global warming making hurricanes more ferocious? New research suggests the answer is yes. Scientists call the findings both surprising and "alarming" because they suggest global warming is influencing storms now — rather than in the distant future. However, the research doesn't suggest global warming is generating more hurricanes and typhoons.
. . The analysis by climatologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows for the first time that major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific since the 1970s have increased in duration and intensity by about 50%. He analyzed data collected from actual storms rather than using computer models. These trends are closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period.
. . Researchers are using new methods to analyze those storms and others going back as far as 1851. If early storms turn out to be more powerful than originally thought, Emmanuel's findings on global warming's influence on recent tropical storms might not hold up, they said.
. . Theories and computer simulations indicate that global warming should generate an increase in storm intensity, in part because warmer temperatures would heat up the surface of the oceans. Especially in the Atlantic and Caribbean basins, pools of warming seawater provide energy for storms.
. . Emanuel analyzed records of storm measurements made by aircraft and satellites since the 1950s. He found the amount of energy released in these storms in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans has increased, especially since the mid-1970s. In the Atlantic, the sea surface temperatures show a pronounced upward trend. The same is true in the North Pacific, though the data there is more variable, he said. "In theory, the peak wind speed of tropical cyclones should increase by about 5% for every 1 degree C increase in tropical ocean temperature."

July 27, 05: The United States, the world's top polluter, is set to unveil a five-nation pact to combat global warming by developing energy technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions, officials said. China and India, whose burgeoning economies comprise a third of humanity, as well as Australia and South Korea are part of the agreement to tackle climate change beyond the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol.
. . The US and Australia are the only developed nations outside Kyoto. The pact demands cuts in greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
. . Australia and China are the world's largest coal exporters, while the United States is also a top exporter.

July 20, 05: Global warming is caused primarily by humans and "nearly all climate scientists today" agree with that viewpoint, the new head of the National Academy of Sciences —-a climate scientist himself-— said today, testifying before a Senate Commerce subcommittee on global climate change.
. . Ralph Cicerone's views contrasted with Bush administration officials' emphasis on uncertainty about how much carbon dioxide and other industrial gases warm the atmosphere like a greenhouse. "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at its highest level in 400,000 years and it continues to rise", said Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist who left as chancellor of University of California-Irvine to become academy president this month. "Nearly all climate scientists today believe that much of Earth's current warming has been caused by increases in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fuels."

July 20, 05: Portugal, gripped by its worst drought in at least 60 years, sent hundreds of firefighters to battle blazes across the country on Wednesday and warned of economic fallout to the parched agricultural sector. Spain is also suffering its worst drought since records began in the 1940s, and in western France, water levels are at their lowest since the major drought of 1976. Parched conditions now stretch from north Africa to the French capital, and 11 firefighters died in Spain on Sunday fighting a forest fire.

Over recent decades, the Amazon rainforest has shrunk about 18% from its original size. The world has a stake in a place that contains a fifth of the world's fresh water and almost a third of its species.

July 18, 05: In a new study, some trees exposed to higher rates of carbon dioxide grew more slowly than scientists expected, and didn't absorb as many industrial pollutants. Researchers found that plants and soil were less able to clean the air when ozone levels were high. They discovered that aspens didn't adapt as well to the increased pollution as some other trees.

July 17, 05: In the Tyrol region of western Austria, they're fighting the glacier-melt by covering the weak spots with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out. They can't save whole glaciers, only slow the shrinkage. A patch of white polyethylene as big as a football field works like a picnic cooler, deflecting the summer sun while keeping the contents cool. The 7,500 feet of blanket cost $24,000, plus the expense of putting it down. But that is still cheaper than carting in snow and grading the slope.
. . This year, nearly 40 acres are under wraps in Tyrol —-about 5% of the region's ski areas. Similar work is being done in neighboring Switzerland, where studies show that glaciers there have lost almost a fifth of their total area between 1985 and 2000, at a rate seven times faster than during the entire 123 years up to 1973.

July 16, 05: Europe has embraced carbon trading as a way to meet the goals laid out in the Kyoto Protocol.
. . Conventional wisdom often puts pits business and growth against care for the environment, but Mr Cameron argued that market models could help to address climate change. Environmentalists have long argued that the impact of resource depletion and pollution should be subtracted from calculations of a country's gross domestic product. In essence, this is what carbon trading does. It puts price tags on the release of greenhouse gases so that they can be included in economic decisions.
. . A company that developed a wind farm could receive carbon credits because the technology has a zero carbon output. The company could then sell these carbon credits on the market to help raise capital to set up the wind farm. Advocates also see this as a way to encourage traditional utilities to take up less polluting technologies. There was nothing preventing individual states in the US trading carbon. He believes that California, which is considering adding greenhouse gases to its already strict system of limits, might want to join the EU or global carbon trading scheme.

July 13, 05: With a record number of dead seabirds washing up on West Coast beaches from Central California to British Columbia, marine biologists are raising the alarm about rising ocean temperatures and dwindling plankton populations. "Something big is going on out there", said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington. "I'm left with no obvious smoking gun, but birds are a good signal because they feed high up on the food chain."
. . Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, which may be related to a lack of updwelling, in which cold, nutrient-rich water is brought to the surface. Upwelling is fueled by northerly winds that sweep out near-shore waters and bring cold water to the surface. The process starts the marine food chain, fueling algae and shrimplike krill populations that feed small fish, which then provide a source of food for a variety of sea life from salmon to sea birds and marine mammals.
. . "This is somewhere between five and 10 times the highest number of bird deaths we've seen before. In 50 years, this has never happened", said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore. "If this continues, we will have a food chain that is basically impoverished from the very lowest levels."
. . NOAA's June and July surveys of juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia indicate a 20% to 30% drop in populations, compared with surveys from 1998-2004. Peterson, the NOAA oceanographer, said many scientists suspect climate change may be involved. "People have to realize that things are connected —-the state of coastal temperatures and plankton populations are connected to larger issues like Pacific salmon populations."

Burning a gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of CO². So the average SUV --which travels 12,000 miles a year-- pumps out about 20,000 pounds of greenhouse gases annually.

July 6, 05: The poorest countries where food is scarcest will find it increasingly difficult to feed themselves as global warming exacerbates desertification and drought, a United Nations food agency expert said. In the developing world, global warming is likely to reduce the amount of rain-fed land where crops could be grown by 11% by 2080, according to a study by the FAO
. . Sixty-five developing countries will lose about 280 million tons of potential cereal production, equivalent to about 16 percent of agricultural output. The area of land in Africa where there is a crop growing season of less than 120 days will increase by 5-8% above the current 1.1 billion hectares. But there is already evidence that climate change is hitting Africa. "There has been a steep decline in rain fall during the first part of the growing period in Ethiopia in the last 10 years."
. . Crop yields in the northern hemisphere --including Canada, Russia and the Nordic region-- could be boosted by climate change with more land becoming suitable for cultivation and the effect of additional carbon in the air speeding plant growth.

July 6, 05: High altitude clouds were detected over Antarctica shortly after the fateful launch of the space shuttle Columbia. The fact that some of these clouds are born out of shuttle exhaust may require a rethinking of their role as a diagnostic for global climate change.Researchers using satellite and ground-based instruments tracked the exhaust plume from Columbia's liftoff from Florida on Jan. 16, 2003. The plume was roughly 650 miles long and two miles wide. "Our analysis shows that the Columbia's exhaust plume approached the South Pole three days after launch", said Michael Stevens from the Naval Research Laboratory.
. . As with all shuttle launches, about 97% of this exhaust turns into water --a by-product of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel. The resulting 400 tons of extra water in the atmosphere has an observable effect on cloud formation. Polar mesospheric clouds --also called noctilucent clouds-- form in the summer over the poles at altitudes of about 84 km (52 miles), making them the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.
. . "Because the brightness, occurrence, and range of the clouds have been increasing, some scientists have suggested that they are indicators of global climate change", said Xinzhao Chu from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "That role needs to be reconsidered, however, because of the potential influence of water vapor in shuttle plumes."

July 6, 05: As global warming accelerates, hurricane modellers forecast that these storms will become 10 to 20% stronger as years go by, potentially breeding a greater number of monster Category 5 storms out in the Atlantic.
. . Official figures show more than 770 square miles of China turns to desert every year. The causes are complex --over-grazing and bad agricultural management play a large role-- but north China's changing climate is undeniably linked to global warming. Long-term records show a declining rainfall and temperatures have risen at twice the global average. [A traditional level of grazing may BECOME overgrazing when it becomes dry. JKH]
. . To the west of Inner Mongolia, in Gansu province, river systems have disappeared. The great Yellow River now fails to reach the sea on average for more than half the year. There were eight dust storms in the 1960s, 14 in the 1980s and 23 in the 1990s. In the year 2000 alone, seven dust storms roared through Beijing.
. . Tuvalu is disappearing. Global sea levels have risen by 10 to 20cm in the past 100 years, and on low-lying coral atolls such as Tuvalu the effects are already being felt. Early each year, during the "high tide" season, springs erupt in people's gardens, and torrents flow along the edges of roads and Tuvalu's airstrip. Lakes appear and people have to wade to their front doors. There's nowhere to run if the tide is combined with strong winds or a cyclone --no part of the atoll is more than a meter above sea level.
. . Plans for an evacuation of Tuvaluans to New Zealand have been tied up in red tape for years. A brief attempt to launch legal action against Australia and the US for not ratifying Kyoto never got off the ground. The idea of compensation has raised a host of problems. "How do you put a price on a whole nation being relocated?" asks Paani Laupepa, head of the environment ministry. "How do you value a culture that is being wiped out?"

The record fast start to this year's hurricane season won't alter meteorologists' earlier prediction of a fairly active season with 12 to 15 named storms, forecasters say.

July 1, 05: Global climate change will bring hotter, drier summers to the Mediterranean and hit two of the region's biggest earners, agriculture and tourism, according to a study released by environmental group WWF today.
. . The study forecast what would happen if the world's average temperature increased by two degrees Celsius. The biggest impact on the weather would be to increase the number of extremely hot days and decrease rainfall in the summer, resulting in increased risk of forest fires, lower crop yields and a drop in tourism, WWF said. Heatwaves in the region would not just put off tourists from visiting in midsummer, but warmer summers in northern Europe would also reduce the attraction for many holidaymakers of traveling south as they now do. "We expect that warmer northern European summers would encourage northern Europeans to take domestic holidays."

June 30, 05: Global warming could drastically alter Africa's southern sand dune systems, spreading desert-like conditions and destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people before the end of the century, new research warns. Large parts of interior southern Africa stretching from northern South Africa to Angola, Zambia and beyond are made up of stabilized sand dunes. They are at least partially covered in vegetation and support a growing population of herders and farmers.
. . But research predicts widespread reactivation of these dunes as average rainfall declines, droughts increase and wind strengths pick up in the coming decades — conditions last seen 14,000-16,000 years ago. "By the time you get to 2070, regardless of the model used, you get a landscape that is more desert-like than today", Thomas said in a telephone interview. "Life will potentially be very difficult." The movement of dunes is driven by two key environmental factors: wind strength and the dunes' susceptibility to erosion, which in turn is influenced by the level of rain fall and vegetation cover.
. . The researchers predict this would happen first —-possibly as soon as 2039-— in the southern, driest areas and spread progressively northward, reaching into northern Botswana, eastern Namibia and western Zimbabwe and western Zambia by 2069. The southern dune field has only partial vegetation cover and has already reactivated in areas —-the ridges and troughs undulating with the wind in an every changing topography-— during recent droughts. But what the research suggests is different, Thomas said. "It is region-wide expansion of dune activity, with a long lasting drying and enhanced sand transport in windy months. As the land dries out, so plants die ... and then the wind, if there is enough energy, can pick the sand up and the dunes start to mobilize", he said. The effect is likely to be most dramatic in the eastern and northern fields.

June 30, 05: Thousands of marine species are at risk from global warming because of acidification of the world's oceans, scientists said Thursday. Britain's Royal Society said in a report that the seas were currently absorbing one ton of carbon dioxide per person per year and were simply running out of capacity to absorb it.
. . It called on next week's summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to take action. The society's oceanic expert John Raven: "Failure to do so may mean that there is no place in the oceans of the future for many species and ecosystems that we know today. Basic chemistry leaves us in little doubt that our burning of fossil fuels is changing the acidity of our oceans. And the rate of change we are seeing to the ocean's chemistry is a hundred times faster than has happened for millions for years."

June 29, 05: The ocean's salt content is on the decline, a sign of potentially worrisome consequences that scientists can't accurately predict. Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say. Now for the first time researchers have quantified this fresh water influx, allowing them to predict the long-term effects on a "conveyor belt" of ocean currents.
. . Climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere have melted glaciers and brought more rain, dumping more fresh water into the oceans, according to the analysis. One of the expected high-profile consequences is a rising sea that will swamp coastal communities. But there are other possible effects.
. . Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "In the last decade, fresh water has been accumulating in the Nordic Seas layer (the upper 1,000 meters) that is critical to the ocean conveyor, so it is something to watch."
. . They calculated that an extra 19,000 cubic kilometers of water flowed into and diluted the northern seas between 1965 and 1995. For comparison, the Mississippi River releases about 500 cubic kilometers of freshwater into the Gulf of Mexico each year, while the Amazon, the Earth's largest river, discharges roughly 5,000 cubic kilometers annually.
. . Because water with lower salinity is less dense, adding fresh water may affect ocean flows like the conveyor belt –-a system of Atlantic currents that exchanges cold water in the Arctic region for warm water from the tropics. Slight changes in the currents --both seasonal and longer-term variations-- affect everything from hurricane formation to droughts and heat waves.
. . No significant change in the conveyor belt has yet been observed, however. Curry and Mauritzen estimate that it would take another century to slow the ocean exchanges if the current rate of fresh water inflow continues. A study last year concluded that an altered conveyor belt could actually plunge the planet into a global cooling event.

June 28, 05: The cost of cleaning up storm damage will balloon unless the world takes urgent action to cut harmful emissions warming the globe, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) said. The group will call on leaders of the world's richest nations meeting in Scotland next week to slash carbon dioxide emissions, improve coastal defenses and strengthen buildings to dampen the impact of the predicted storms.
. . "Governments now have a chance to make rational choices for the future, before it is too late", ABI's director of general insurance, Nick Starling, is set to tell a conference. ABI members provide around 94% of Britain's domestic insurance market and hold 20% of the investments on the London stock market.
. . Damage costs from the three most expensive types of storms --hurricanes in the United States, typhoons in Japan and windstorms in Europe-- will rise to $27 billion in an average year by 2080 up from $16 billion today if carbon dioxide emissions double their current rate, ABI's report said.
. . "Insurance acts as a messenger for the financial costs of climate change. Insurance is all about risk and assessing risk", ABI policy adviser, Sebastian Catovsky said. The insurance industry needs to build up its cash reserves to around $200 billion from $120 billion it currently holds to pay for years with severe weather, he said.

June 28, 05: A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes. There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example. And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops.
. . But the idea, detailed in the online version of the journal Acta Astronautica, illustrates that climate change can be battled with new technologies. "Reducing solar insolation by 1.6% should overcome a 1.75 K [3 degrees Fahrenheit] temperature rise", contends a group led by Jerome Pearson, president of Star Technology and Research, Inc.
. . Researchers have suggested such schemes as adding metallic dust to smoke stacks, to flood the atmosphere and reflect more sunlight back into space.

June 27, 05: Climate change in Africa gave rise to modern humans. Now experts fear that global warming linked to carbon emissions will have its worst impact on humanity's cradle. Most African livelihoods depend on rain-based agriculture so droughts and floods will have a serious impact on the workforce.
. . Africa's plight will be high on the agenda of a Scottish summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations next month which could herald increased aid flows to the region. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has also made climate change a priority of Britain's year-long presidency of the G8.
. . But while most past changes in weather patterns were gradual --giving our pre-historic ancestors a chance to adapt-- the pace of global warming today could overwhelm modern Africa. The United Nations projects that temperatures may rise by 1.4-5.8 Celsius by the year 2100.
. . Desertification threatens to drive millions of Africans from their homes, said a recent international report drawing on the work of 1,360 scientists in 95 nations. Global warming may already be a source of violence in central Nigeria, where nomadic cattle herders and peasant farmers have been locked in conflict over scarce land for decades as the desert creeps southwards. Deforestation, dwindling water supplies and rising sea levels could spark mass migrations, provoking ethnic conflict. "Regions that are already least secure in food production, like sub-Saharan Africa, stand to be worst affected by global warming as wet areas become wetter and dry areas become drier", says a recent global report on climate change. Uganda's climate has become hotter and its rains more erratic in the last decade, researchers and the government say, posing a threat to its key coffee crop.
. . Rising sea temperatures are also among the threats seen to the coral reefs off Africa's lush east coast, the life-blood of poor coastal communities dependent upon fisheries and tourism.

It's been the second-wettest spring season on record in Southern California. [as of april!] This year's record rainfall spurred numerous landslides across Southern California, including the deadly La Conchita mudslide that killed 10 people.

The 1938 hurricane around New York dropped an average of 11 inches of rain over a 10,000-square-mile area. [Let alone Florida!] An enormous average for such a huge area! [25,900 Km2 .28 M...] 7252 km2, 1M deep = 7.25 Cubic Km = 7.25 Billion M-tons!

June 21, 05: Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union rose by 1.5% in 2003, having fallen the previous year. The EU aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8% of 1990 levels by 2012. Environmental groups said the figures indicated the EU was now unlikely to meet this obligation --a serious setback in tackling climate change. The report shows the worst offenders to be Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

June 20, 05: New data suggests the impact of climate change on crop production on the African continent will be more severe than previously thought. In its report, Food Crops in a Changing Climate, based on discussions in April by experts on climate change and crop production, the UK science academy says is predicted to be one of the worst hit areas of the world.

June 19, 05: Blair has put climate change at the heart of his year-long presidency of the Group of Eight industrial nations, but his efforts to get radical action agreed at next month's G8 summit in Scotland are being repeatedly torpedoed by the US.
. . Environmental campaigners say this leaves Blair with a stark choice --either drop President Bush and get a strong agreement with the other G8 members or stay with him, get a weak deal and be blamed for missing a crucial opportunity. "There is a train wreck coming", said Jennifer Morgan, climate change expert at the WWF. "There is a very heated debate going on right now about leaving Bush out in the cold."

June 16, 05: "Desertification has emerged as a global problem affecting everyone", said Zafar Adeel, assistant director of the U.N. University's water academy and a lead author of a report drawing on the work of 1,360 scientists in 95 nations.
. . Two billion people live in drylands vulnerable to desertification, ranging from northern Africa to swathes of central Asia. Storms can lift dust from the Sahara Desert, for instance, and cause respiratory problems for people as far away as North America.
. . Over-grazing and over-planting of crops, swelling human populations and misuse of irrigation were contributing to desertification, the report said. It estimated that 10-20% of drylands were already degraded. "Growing desertification worldwide threatens to swell by millions the number of poor forced to seek new homes and livelihoods."
. . Global warming, widely blamed on human emissions of heat-trapping gases from cars, factories and power plants, was likely to exacerbate the problems in coming decades by triggering more floods, droughts and heatwaves.
. . The report said 41% of the world's land area was dryland, including most of Australia, and the western part of North America. Infant mortality in drylands in developing nations averaged 54 children per 1,000 live births in 2000, double the rate in other poor regions and 10 times the rate in industrial nations. "An increase in desertification-related dust storms is widely considered to be a cause of ill-health --fever, coughing, sore eyes-- during the dry season", it said.
. . Some scientists estimate that a billion tons of dust can be lifted from the Sahara region into the atmosphere every year. Dust particles can also carry bacteria and fungi. Dust-borne microrganisms from Africa were believed to have damaged coral reefs in the Caribbean. Some dust carries toxins like pesticides from around the Aral Sea.

June 14, 05: Britain pledged to help companies fund projects to store greenhouse gas emissions under the North Sea as part of the fight against climate change. Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks said technology which would capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants, and pump them into depleted offshore oil and gas fields, could be up and running within a decade. It could reduce emissions from power stations by up to 85%.
. . The move comes as Britain prepares to put climate change issues center stage at next month's G8 Summit. Up to now the government has backed renewable energy, especially wind power, to deliver the biggest CO2 reductions.

June 14, 05: Volcanoes may have a stronger cooling effect on the Earth than previously thought, an Open University team says. The UK scientists say large eruptions can kick off a contest between different types of bacteria in peat bogs and wetlands. Dust and gas from large eruptions are known to block out sunlight, cooling Earth for two or three years.
. . New data show bacteria producing the greenhouse gas methane are suppressed by other bugs, further cooling Earth. The latest study shows that the impact of acid-rain fallout on methane-producing bacteria can outlive the short-term cooling effect of sulphuric acid in the atmosphere. Sulphur dioxide in volcanic plumes turns to sulphuric acid in contact with water and falls to Earth as acid rain.
. . Today, natural and man-made wetlands (rice paddies) contribute about 50% of the total methane source.

June 10, 05: A senior official at the White House Council on Environmental Quality has resigned, days after a newspaper reported he changed some government reports to downplay links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
. . Philip Cooney, the council's chief of staff and a former energy industry lobbyist, resigned today, two days after The New York Times reported he edited some descriptions of climate research in a way that cast doubt on links between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures.
. . The newspaper noted Cooney previously worked at the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group for the oil industry.

June 7, 05: Scientists, including from the United States and China, threw down the gauntlet to world leaders today saying mankind was the major source of global warming and urging action, one month ahead of a G8 summit. As leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations prepare to meet in Scotland --with climate change and Africa at the top of the agenda-- a statement by the national science academies of 11 countries said: "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action", said the statement.
. . British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tackling global warming, with its rising sea levels, increases in droughts and floods and threats to the lives of millions of the world's poorest people, a key goal of his 2005 presidency of the G8. He called U.S. policy "misguided".

June 4, 05: Former Vice President Al Gore urged an assembly of international mayors to fight global warming Saturday, warning of catastrophic consequences for the planet if governments fail to act. Gore, who helped draft the landmark Kyoto treaty on global warming that the United States never ratified, said that climate change was already melting glaciers, raising temperatures and altering weather patterns worldwide. Without significant action, he said, the planet would see a dramatic increase in violent storms, infectious disease, deadly heat waves and rising sea levels that will force the evacuation of low-lying cities such as Calcutta, Shanghai and New York City within decades.

May 31, 05: The Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season opening June 1 promises to be "very active", marked by an above-average number of storms and with high odds of a major hit on the United States, a researcher said. Colorado State University Professor William Gray and his research team expect 15 tropical storms, with eight of those growing to hurricane strength during the six-month storm season that runs to Nov. 30. They expect four storms to strengthen into intense hurricanes with sustained winds of 178 kph (111 mph) or greater, which can cause extensive damage.
. . The revised estimate in Gray's final preseason forecast was up from 13 storms and seven hurricanes initially anticipated in his April forecast. The long-term average is 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
. . "We have adjusted our forecast upward from our early April forecast and now expect tropical cyclone activity to be about 170% of the average seasonal activity." There is a 77% chance of an intense hurricane hitting somewhere along the U.S. coastline in 2005, compared with a long-term average of 52%. The Atlantic coast of the United States has a 59% chance of experiencing intense hurricane this year, compared with a long-term average of 31%. For the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville, Texas, the probability of a major hit is 44%, compared with a long-term average of 30%.

May 30, 05: "Global climate change is happening. The environment in which these hurricanes form is clearly changing", said Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. He is also a lead author of the next major U.N. report on climate change, due in 2007.
. . The warmer waters and increased air moisture that global warming is expected to produce are the primary fuels that hurricanes feed off during the June to November season. A 10% increase in wind speeds leads to a 20% increase in destructive force.

May 26, 05: Global warming is likely to significantly diminish food production in many countries and greatly increase the number of hungry people, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.
. . FAO said that food distribution systems and their infrastructure would be disrupted, and that the severest impact would likely be in sub-Saharan African countries. Global warming would increase the amount of land classified as being either arid or insufficiently moist in the developing world. In Africa, the amount of this type of harsh land could increase by as much as 90 million hectares by 2008, an area nearly four times the size of Britain.
. . Changes in temperature, rainfall as well as an increase in the number of so-called "extreme weather events" such as floods will bring with them potentially devastating effects. They said scientific studies showed that global warming would lead to an 11% decrease in rainfed land in developing countries and in turn a serious decline in cereal production. "Sixty-five developing countries, representing more than half of the developing world's total population in 1995, will lose about 280 million tons of potential cereal production as a result of climate change."

May 26, 05: A warming climate has heated much of Alaska's permafrost to temperatures just below freezing and drastic changes are expected in the coming decades as that layer of frozen soil thaws. ~Vladimir Romanovsky, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute said the impact is already apparent. In Fairbanks a path has buckled into undulating waves, houses are slumping into thawed ground and stands of birch trees are toppling as dying forested areas melt into swamps. Melting permafrost has even opened up a gaping hole in the earth near his office at the university. "It's a great place to study permafrost, right behind the building."
. . Because permafrost holds methane, the thaw will also accelerate the climate-warming greenhouse effect created by gases in the atmosphere "This methane will be released into the atmosphere, adding directly to the greenhouse gases."

May 25, 05: Building higher and stronger dykes will not be enough to protect the world's low-lying areas against rising sea levels and global warming. "It is time for us to say goodbye to the traditional approach of higher and higher dykes and more and more powerful pumps", said Melanie Schultz van Haegen, Dutch State Secretary for Transport, Public Works and Water Management. "There is very little that can be built against the consequences of climate change." An effective approach would be to move dykes further from rivers to leave more space to hold flood water, lower land levels on flood plains and include dredging, hazard maps and flood-proof buildings, she said.
. . The Netherlands, two thirds of which lies below sea level, has battled for centuries to claw back land from the sea and protect itself against floods. But the Dutch model of flood protection is too expensive for developing countries. Instead, countries could use the Dutch experience in flood management, including early warnings and forecasts, to identify land that could be sacrificed to flooding in order to save more valuable areas, Jerraud said.
. . The world suffered 600 floods in the past two and a half years, which claimed the lives of about 19,000 people and caused $25 billion in damages, excluding December's devastating tsunami in southeast Asia.

Can Earth take the heat of 'global brightening'? The Christian Science Monitor file.

May 20, 05: The middle of Europe could become crowded by "climate change refugees" escaping a thawing Arctic to the north and Mediterranean droughts to the south, the head of the European Environment Agency (EEA) said.
. . Indigenous peoples in the Arctic say global warming is a threat to their culture because it melts the ice on which their hunts of seals or polar bears depend. And some scientific models indicate southern Europe may get drier. "I do see even within the confines of Europe from the Mediterranean to the Arctic there is enough momentum to consider we will have 'climate change refugees'", said Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, an arm of the European Union.

May 16, 05: The Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf Coast could be in for another bad hurricane season, one of the government's top forecasters said. The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted 12 to 15 tropical storms, seven to nine of them becoming hurricanes, and three to five of those major hurricanes. "Be prepared for two or three of these to make landfall."
. . On average, the United States is hit by two major hurricanes every three years. Last year, there were 15 tropical storms, with nine of them hurricanes —-six of them major. Florida got hit by an unprecedented four hurricanes.

May 13, 05: A U.N. meeting in Germany next week will start a marathon bid to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol on fighting global warming and persuade the United States and developing nations to take part from 2012. The talks may give early clues to the level of enthusiasm about renewing Kyoto when it runs out in 2012. Greenpeace feared that the seminar was "a prelude to talks about talks about talks."
. . Government experts from almost 200 nations will attend a seminar in Bonn on May 16-17, the first formal U.N. climate meeting since the 150-nation Kyoto protocol entered into force on Feb. 16 after years of delays and hit by a U.S. pullout.
. . Scientists say the rising concentration of gases like carbon dioxide may badly disrupt the climate by 2100 and could trigger more storms, spread deserts, drive thousands of species of animals and plants to extinction and raise sea levels.
. . Developing nations like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are excluded from the first round of Kyoto cuts, binding rich nations to reduce overall emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
. . Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, New Zealand and Canada are among Kyoto backers that are further above their emissions quotas than non-participant the US.

May 12, 05: Many fish species in the North Sea are steadily moving northwards to escape warming waters, researchers report in Science magazine this week. Commercially important fish such as cod, whiting and anglerfish have shifted significantly north, while some other species moved to colder depths. Scientists warn that some fish may disappear from the North Sea by 2050. They say commercial fisheries will have to take account of global warming as well as dwindling fish stocks.
. . Dr Perry and her team have studied data on 36 species of fish going back to the 1970s. Of those species, 21 have moved northwards, some by hundreds of kilometers.
. . Since the 70s, the average winter temperature at the bottom of the North Sea has risen by around one degree Celsius, and the researchers believe that rise, which they say is attributable to global warming, is forcing populations to shift. In some cases, this relocation might be a mere inconvenience for fishermen, but in others it could prove very dangerous for the fish. The main problem is that marine species are shifting at different rates. So some predatory fish might be migrating north, while their prey stay put; and likewise other species might be unable to move even though their habitat is becoming more and more unsuitable for them.

May 10, 05: A changing climate can alter the types and extent of plants in a region, scientists have been telling us. And now the bad news: The altered vegetation can, in turn, can make bad weather worse, a new study suggests.
. . The results are not clear-cut, however. While urban heat waves might get worse, other regions could experience less severe climate problems as trees disappear or the biology otherwise is altered. "This is the first insight we've had into whether those vegetation changes will also change the frequency and magnitude of extreme temperature and precipitation events, such as droughts and severe storms."

May 10, 05: China is facing an "apocalyptic" summer of severe drought and floods, a leading weather expert has warned, with water supplies and grain production under threat. Thousands of people die every year from floods, landslides and mudflows in China, with millions left homeless. While some parts of the huge country suffer massive rainfall, other parts are ravaged by drought, with drinking water and grain yields hit. Most of western and northeast China as well as parts of south China are in the midst of their worst drought in 50 years and no end was in sight, while huge rain belts were forecast for other areas.

Apr 29, 05: If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control", especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the researchers said. International experts predict a 10-degree leap in Fahrenheit readings in such a worst-case scenario.
. . In February, scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said their research —-not yet published-— also showed a close correlation between climate models and the observed temperatures of oceans, further defusing skeptics' past criticism of uncertainties in modeling.
. . Besides raising ocean levels, global warming is expected to intensify storms, spread disease to new areas, and shift climate zones, possibly making farmlands drier and deserts wetter.

Apr 28, 05: Japan's normally strait-laced politicians are getting ready for a tieless look this summer to combat global warming. Huh? Government workers and politicians are being encouraged to dress down between June 1 and Sept. 30 so that air conditioner thermostats can be set higher to save energy.

Apr 28, 05: Climate change has been looked at from many angles. Here's another twist: Scientists have determined that more energy is being absorbed from the Sun than our planet reflects back to space. This energy imbalance, the researchers said today, confirms other predictions that Earth's climate will warm by about 0.6 degree Celsius by the end of this century.
. . The study is based on satellite data and computer models. It precisely measured ocean heat content over the past decade. The imbalance is due to increased air pollution, especially carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that act like a see-through blanket, letting sunlit in but trapping the heat it generates. In scientific terms, the imbalance is 0.85 watts per square meter. It's equal to nature shining an extra 1-watt light bulb on every desk-sized patch of the planet. It all adds up. If the imbalance were maintained for 10,000 years, it would melt enough ice to raise the oceans by 1 kilometer.
. . "This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for", said lead researcher James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "It shows that our estimates of the human-made and natural climate forcing agents are about right, and they are driving the Earth toward a warmer climate."
. . Last year was among the four warmest on record and 2005 is projected to be the warmest.
. . The seas will rise at least 10 cm this century. Since 1993, data from satellite altimeters, used to measure sea level, have shown that the world's oceans have risen by 3.2 centimeters (cm) per decade (plus or minus 0.4 cm). That's twice as large as sea level rise in the last century.

Apr 20, 05: The American hurricane season technically runs from June 1 to November 30. But Mark Saunders and Adam Lea of Britain's Benfield Hazard Research Center looked at US weather records from 1950 to 2003 and found that 86 percent of hurricane strikes --and 96 percent of the worst ones-- occurred after August 1. Their most important discovery was that, in July, anomalies in regional wind patterns give a clear pointer as to whether the hurricane season from August onwards will be severe or calm.
. . Global warming, inflicted by carbon pollution from fossil fuels, is deemed likely to make storms more frequent and more destructive.

Apr 15, 05: Mandatory limits on all U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases would not significantly affect average economic growth rates across the country through 2025, the government's says. That finding by the Energy Information Administration, an independent arm of the Energy Department, runs counter to President Bush's repeated pronouncements that limits on carbon dioxide and other gases that warm the atmosphere like a greenhouse would seriously harm the U.S. economy.
. . William K. Reilly, the commission co-chairman and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President Bush, said it was an old argument that the economy could not withstand greenhouse gas reductions. He said both his commission and the EIA have now shown otherwise.

Apr 13, 05: After a decade of dithering on how to meet its commitments under the Kyoto climate change accord, Canada's Liberal government finally unveiled a C$10 billion ($8 billion) seven-year plan to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
. . The chances of the plan being put into action are mixed at best. The opposition Conservatives, who are ahead in the polls and look set to trigger a June election, say they will scrap the initiative if they win power.
. . Kyoto obliges Canada to cut the output of greenhouse gases by 6% from 1990 levels by 2012. Canada's overall emissions in 2003 were in fact 24% above 1990 levels and Ottawa says it will have to cut 270 megatons of emissions a year by 2012 to meet its target.
. . The new plan would involve purchasing credits abroad from countries that are under their Kyoto targets and would also call for domestic measures such as helping to finance the phasing out of coal-fired power plants.
. . Under previous draft proposals unveiled in 2002, the oil and gas industry, mining and manufacturing sectors --the so-called large final emitters-- were obliged to cut annual emissions by 55 megatons a year.
. . The new plan cuts this to 45 megatons, in part because some emitters found the initial target too strenuous. This prompted environmentalists to complain Ottawa was being too lenient with a sector that has a lot of political influence.

Apr 8, 05: Scientists have spelled it out. The Dec. 22-23 storm broke all records for storm intensity, size, snowfall totals and damages in the region, according to a new study. It was the most significant winter storm in the region in 104 years. More than 120 counties in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio declared snow emergencies.

Mar 31, 05: The atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has reached a new high, say US researchers. The figures --378 parts per million (ppm)-- were gathered by a Hawaiian lab regarded by experts as one of the most reliable in climate research. The trend remains upwards, as it has for every year since measurements began on top of the Mauna Loa volcano nearly half a century ago. The research was carried out by the US government's Climate Monitoring Diagnostics Laboratory.

Mar 30, 05: Oceanographers have predicted that the current that drags warm water from the south to the north could weaken or even come to a halt as global warming melts the Arctic polar icecap and dilutes the ocean's salinity. "A disruption of the Atlantic meridional overturning (AMO) circulation leads to a collapse of the North Atlantic plankton stocks to less than half their initial biomass", said Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University.
. . He said there was evidence that the current had switched on and off during the ice ages, and his modeling work indicated that ocean productivity could drop by 20% as plankton vanished.

Mar 30, 05: Canada, better known for snow than sun, plans to build a 52-home solar powered community in Alberta that will harvest the sun's rays in summer and use them to heat homes in winter, the government said. The Drake Landing development, already under construction in the western province, will be the first of its kind in North America. Officials say it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 260 tons a year and supply the homes with more than 90% of the heat they need. Solar panels mounted on garage roofs will collect energy from the sun and store it underground. Come winter, the thermal energy will heat homes through a central district heating system.

Mar 28, 05: The UK government is not doing enough to tackle climate change, according to a report by a parliamentary committee. The Environmental Audit Committee attacked ministers for believing that new technology and market mechanisms will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The committee says Britain and the developed world need to reduce emissions by 60-80% by 2050.

Mar 25, 05: Many native British species are struggling to cope with the "stop-start spring", wildlife experts say. A survey involving 65,000 wildlife sightings suggests that frogs and bumblebees are among the hardest hit. "Climate change is not something that is happening a million miles away --it is going on in our own back gardens." The peacock butterfly, not normally seen until March, has been spotted widely, with a first sighting on 28 December and well over 2,000 recordings.

Mar 24, 05: Eighty-thousand houses need to be demolished yearly for the next decade if the UK is to meet its climate change commitments, research suggests. Such demolition of older houses built to low environmental standards would be four times the current rate, Oxford University researchers said. It would mean the replacement of about 14% of homes, with 220,000 new homes built and others improved. At present, there are about 24 million homes, with about 180,000 more built each year. Only 20,000 are demolished.
. . The government plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050. Just over 25% of Britain's carbon dioxide emissions come from housing --either from fossil fuels burned in the home or the use of electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Mar 24, 05: The government will start keeping track of all the "greenhouse" gases that farmers and foresters voluntarily reduce to help combat global warming. For example, they can report using no-till agriculture, installing a waste digester, improving nutrient management or managing forest land in ways that cut those gases.
. . David Hawkins, director of Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center, called the reporting registry a "charade that is intended to allow the government and the participants to portray that they are doing something about global warming, when they are not."
. . For example, companies running nuclear reactors can claim greenhouse gas reductions by saying they would have otherwise operated coal-fired power plants. In another case, Hawkins said, one coal-fired power plant in Maryland claims reductions for selling some of its carbon dioxide to the food and beverage industry, even though the carbon dioxide is eventually released anyway once a drink is opened and consumed. "To call it a reduction is absurd, but the Department of Energy allows them to file it as a report and call it a reduction", Hawkins said.

Mar 23, 05: Giant South American wetlands are under threat from farming and house building and could shrink like Florida's Everglades last century, a study by U.N. experts said. It also said that global warming of 3-4 degrees Celsius could wreck 85% of the world's remaining wetlands from Bangladesh to Botswana, home to thousands of animal and plant species. Soybean and sugar cane farming, gas pipelines, roads, factories and towns are squeezing the Pantanal, the world's largest freshwater wetlands, that straddles parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia.
. . "When you talk about environmental problems in Brazil you think about the Amazon. But people underestimate the importance of the Pantanal." There were worries that it could become the "next Everglades", the wetlands in the U.S. state of Florida, withering under farms and homes since the 1940s and whose national park covers a fifth of their historic territory.
. . The Pantanal act as a sponge regulating flows to the Paraguay River and Parana River. Teixeira urged the three nations sharing the wetland to cooperate closely and avoid damaging a region which is home to 650 species of birds, 190 species of mammals from jaguars to giant anteaters, 270 types of fish and 1,100 different butterflies.
. . "Climate modification may cause some wetlands to dry up, and others to increase in size, fundamentally altering their ecology, biodiversity and species composition", said the report.

Mar 18, 05: As heavily indebted Africa sinks under rising oil prices, a U.N.-sponsored project aims to give the continent access to vast reserves of cheap, clean energy. "Oil today is $57 a barrel. That is sucking up every cent of development aid to Africa", a spokesman for the U.N. Environment Program said.
. . The African Rift Geothermal facility project aims to tap the heat trapped in rocks deep beneath the floor of the geological feature. The Rift Valley runs through Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and Malawi through Mozambique.
. . The existing drilling technology --mostly based on oil exploration-- is not suited to the very high temperatures experienced when trying to tap geothermal sources and start-up costs can be prohibitive.
. . A recent report by the U.S. Geothermal Energy Association calculated that the hot rocks beneath the rift valley could produce up to 6.5 gigawatts of energy. But to date, only Kenya is making any effort to exploit the resources that literally lie under their feet --and even so, there are only 121 megawatts of geothermal electric power installed.

Mar 18, 05: A new bill says Japan would introduce summer time by setting clocks forward an hour the first Sunday in April, and back an hour the last Sunday of October. The resulting extra daylight and cooler mornings will yield direct crude oil savings of some 930,000 kiloliters (almost a billion liters!) and 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

Mar 17, 05: Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of researchers reported. Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted. That makes immediate action to slow global warming even more vital, the teams at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado report. "The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future."
. . Virtually no one disagrees human activity is fueling global warming. [note the change in phrasing lately!]
. . Meehl's team ran two computer simulations of climate change --complex programs, he said, that took months to run on supercomputers. Those models included as many variables as the researchers could think of, such as human carbon emissions, other pollution, current temperatures and their rate of change, emissions from volcanoes, changes in solar radiation and shifts in the ozone layer.
. . Experts say sea levels have risen 10cm (4") already over the past century and could rise between .1 and 1 meter more in the next century. If completely melted, the Greenland ice sheet would add 7.5 meters to overall sea level and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise it by 5 meters (16') --enough to swamp most of Florida, Bangladesh and New York City's Manhattan island.
. . In a second study in Science, the NCAR's Tom Wigley said he used a much simpler climate model to make a similar prediction. He found it may not be possible to reduce emissions enough to stop the sea from rising. Even if all emissions stopped now, he calculated, changes were under way that would lead to a rise in sea levels of 10 cm per century.

Mar 15, 05: A "super cyclone" packing winds of over 300 kilometers an hour (185 miles) is bearing down on Australia's remote northwest coast after already striking the country twice in the east and north. It was upgraded to a Category Five --the highest level-- over the Timor Sea and was expected to roar across the coast. It's predicted to have sustained winds of 285 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 320 kilometers per hour!

Mar 15, 05: Britain told the world's biggest polluters including the United States that only by placing the environment at the heart of economic policy could they prevent a crisis caused by global warming. The need for action to avert a looming climate catastrophe was rammed home by graphic images of melting glaciers and makeshift sea defenses. China is embarking on a major investment program in nuclear reactors to reduce its massive dependence on burning coal.

March 14: No country consumes more oil that the United States, but China uses more grain, meat, coal, and steel, according to a new report from the nonprofit Earth Policy Institute. Overall consumption of all goods, per person, is still much lower than in the United States, but there are a lot more people --about 1.3 billion versus 293 million. "With its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its oil and natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until China will also be the world's top emitter of carbon", predicts Lester Brown, the institute's president. "China is no longer just a developing country."

The United States produces more than 300 million tons of corn a year –-nearly half the world production-– according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s about 2,000 pounds of corn for every U.S. citizen. Most folks don't eat that much. So some of the maize gets turned into other things –-from corn syrup used in baking to ethanol employed as an alternative fuel.

Mar 11, 05: The UK government has announced tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions following pressure from the European Commission. The announcement will enable UK firms to join fully with the fledgling European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), a key component in EU plans to combat global warming. Under the ETS, every EU member country has to set a limit --a National Allocations Plan (NAP)-- on the amount of carbon dioxide which its industrial plants can produce during the next three years. Each government must then divide up this limit between the companies involved, each company receiving an 'allowance', which it can trade with other companies at a rate set by the market. The aim is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in a business-friendly fashion.

Mar 10, 05: Australian scientists have found that deforestation along the Amazon River in South America was reducing rainfall and causing climate change in the region. They found that a loss of forests meant less water evaporated back into the atmosphere, resulting in less rainfall.
. . The Amazon is the world's second longest river at 6,000 km, but boasts the greatest total flow of any river, releasing 6.5 million cubic feet per second in the rainy season. It is responsible for a fifth of the total volume of fresh water entering the world's oceans.
. . The Amazon's rainforest drainage area covers 2.3 million square miles and has been called the "lungs of the earth" by environmental groups.

Mar 10, 05: The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned. And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it.
. . Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic eruptions unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else going back dozens of millennia. "Super-eruptions are up to hundreds of times larger than these."
. . "An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following the eruption", Self said. "They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilization."
. . Geologists in the United States detailed a similar scenario in 2001, when they found evidence suggesting volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park will eventually lead to a colossal eruption. Half the United States will be covered in ash up to 1 meter deep.
. . Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone ... And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there." The chances are five to 10 times greater than a globally destructive asteroid impact, according to the new report.
. . Even science fiction cannot produce a credible mechanism for averting a super eruption", the new report states. "No strategies can be envisaged for reducing the power of major volcanic eruptions."
. . A curious bottleneck in human evolution: The blueprints of life for all humans --DNA-- are remarkably similar given that our species branched off from the rest of the primate family tree a few million years ago. Ambrose has said early humans were perhaps pushed to the edge of extinction after the Toba [volcano] eruption --around the same time folks got serious about art and tool making. Perhaps only a few thousand survived. Humans today would all be descended from these few, and in terms of the genetic code, not a whole lot would change in 74,000 years.
. . Self and his colleagues at the Geological Society of London presented their report to the U.K. Government's Natural Hazard Working Group.

Mar 10, 05: With a population of 106 million, including many too poor to use much fuel or electricity, Mexico makes 2% of global emissions. It emits about 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year, slightly below the global average.
. . The northern business city of Monterrey is using methane from household waste to power its street lamps, one of a handful of similar projects in the works, and a batch of wind farms should open this year in the southern state of Oaxaca.
. . Mexico, which already generates nearly a quarter of its power from emissions-free hydroelectric plants, is also switching fossil fuel power plants to cleaner natural gas. Its challenge will be to prevent its efforts being overshadowed by the inevitable surge in emissions as the country gets richer and more families can afford cars, refrigerators and air conditioning.

Mar 7, 05: The President of Britain's leading science academy, the Royal Society, is to accuse the US of undermining global efforts to tackle climate change. Lord May will tell a Berlin meeting that the growth in US greenhouse gas emissions will more than offset cuts made by other industrialised nations. "The Royal Society has calculated that the 13% rise in greenhouse gas emissions from the United States between 1990 and 2002 is already bigger than the overall cut achieved if all the other parties to the [Kyoto] Protocol reach their targets."

Mar 1, 05: Britain launched a campaign today to tackle the global climate change crisis through the sharing of information between 100 cities in 60 countries from Argentina to Vietnam. The network includes cities of the world's biggest polluter the United States, which has rejected the Kyoto climate change treaty.
. . The ZeroCarbonCity campaign is based on cities being the biggest consumers of electricity and therefore the main generators of greenhouse gases. Cities, as major concentrations of people, are a prime focus and have been identified as heat islands with temperatures several degrees higher than the surrounding countryside which in turn boosts energy usage from increased air conditioning use.
. . The Kyoto climate change treaty to curb carbon emissions finally came into force two weeks ago, but critics say it is too little too late with the United States refusing to sign up and developing nations having only to pay lip service.

Feb 27, 05: Weather buffs know that highs and lows swing in tandem across a continent, but a new study shows that climate extremes on one part of the planet are routinely reflected by opposite conditions a world away. The result is a newfound climatic yin-yang that can have unfortunate and tragic consequences for the regions involved. When the Congo Basin floods, South America’s Amazon basin experiences a drought. And conversely, when tropical storms lash in the Amazon to the point of flooding, it’s dangerously dry in the Congo Basin. (The Amazon and Congo rivers carry the largest and second largest annual discharges of water, about 6,300 cubic kilometers and 1,250 cubic kilometers respectively.)
. . The see-saw climate oscillation was discovered by a team of MIT environmental engineers who studied regional satellite observations of tropical rainfall and river flow.

Feb 21, 05: President Bush disappointed European environmental activists who had hoped for a wider commitment from the world's largest polluter to fighting global warming. Bush stuck to familiar themes in a keynote speech meant to mend fences damaged by the Iraq war and U.S. rejection of the Kyoto environmental treaty. Bush, who alienated allies and environmentalists by pulling out of the Kyoto pact in 2001, repeated his call to use technology to fight the effects of rising temperatures. Europeans hoped Bush's rapprochement tour this week would show more U.S. willingness to act on climate change. The issue was likely to come up in private talks with EU leaders during the week.

Feb 20, 05: Global warming could stifle cleansing summer winds across parts of the northern United States over the next 50 years and worsen air pollution, U.S. researchers said. Further warming of the atmosphere, as is happening now, would block cold fronts bringing cooler, cleaner air from Canada and allow stagnant air and ozone pollution to build up over cities in the Northeast and Midwest, they predicted. The model predicted a 20-percent decline in summer cold fronts out of Canada. In the middle latitudes, low-pressure systems and accompanying cold fronts help redistribute heat by carrying warm air to the poles and replacing it with cool air. Warming slows that process down. [ because the poles warm more, the difference that drives weather is less. I had originally thot that warming would increase winds, but the north warms more.]

Feb 17, 05: Scientists have discovered dramatic changes in the temperature and salinity of deep waters in the Southern Ocean that they warn could have a major impact on global climate. A multinational team of researchers had found that waters at the bottom of the Southern Ocean were significantly cooler and less salty than they were 10 years ago. He said the size and speed of the changes surprised scientists, who have long believed deep ocean waters underwent little temperature change, and could indicate a slowdown in the flow of deep water currents. "Ocean circulation is a big influence on global climate, so it is critical that we understand why this is happening and why it is happening so quickly."

Feb 16, 05: The Kyoto pact will seek to limit a cocktail of five less common gases found everywhere from cows' stomachs to aluminum smelters, from car tires to household refrigerators. The European Union has draft legislation to outlaw some of the gases.
. . One of them, sulfur hexafluoride, is estimated to be 23,900 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. It's used to give bounce to some sports shoes, tennis balls or car tires.
. . In 2001, carbon dioxide accounted for 83.6% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human sources, followed by methane at 8.7% and nitrous oxide at 6.1%, according to official U.S. figures. The other gases --sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons (HFC)-- made up the remaining 1.6%.
. . Concentrations of some of the trace gases, albeit tiny, are rising. Methane concentrations have risen by about 150% since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Methane from livestock is the biggest source of greenhouse gases in New Zealand. Changes in diet or in fertilizer use can help cut livestock emissions. Methane is also released from sources which include rice farming, rotting vegetation and coal mines.
. . Some, including those used in refrigerants, were introduced as substitutes for gases that were banned after they were found to be destroying the ozone layer which helps shield the planet from damaging solar radiation.
. . The European Union, for instance, wants to phase out use of HFC-134a, the refrigerant universally used in car air conditioners. The United States, for instance, does not favor some of the HFC substitutes because they are flammable.

Feb 16, 05: Global warming may cost Spain many of its famous beaches and could push summer temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius (122 F) by the end of the century, according to new research. Spain already includes Europe's only desert, and tourism --much of it beach-based-- accounts for more than 11% of the national economy.
. . "Over the last hundred years, Spain has warmed up 1.5 degrees Celsius, while the global average has been 0.6 degrees and the European one 0.95 degrees", the ministry said. Summer, when temperatures have already soared to over 45 degrees Celsius (113 F), could get up to 7 degrees hotter by 2070-2100 under the worst case scenario.
. . Beaches may be swamped by sea waters seen edging up 4 to 27 inches. The tourist-magnet Balearic and Canary islands, and the southern part of the Iberian peninsula could lose over a fifth of their water supplies by the end of the century.

Feb 15, 05: On the eve of the Kyoto Protocol's launch, Canada still has no clear plan for meeting its commitment to reduce the emission of gases which contribute to global warming. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions are steadily climbing in the United States' northern neighbor.
. . It is an uncomfortably paradoxical situation for Canada, long a model of cooperation on international issues and one of the Kyoto treaty's first signatories, in April 1998. But since the US rejected Kyoto in 2001, the Canadian government has been overwhelmed by opposition to the treaty from industries and some of its own provinces, such as Alberta, which sits on the second largest oil reserve on the planet, and Ontario, one of the largest auto producers in North America. They argue that Canadian industry will lose out to US competitors that will not be forced by Kyoto to make costly investments in pollution-reduction measures.
. . Environmentalists deplore especially that, since 2002, Ottawa has not passed any law or rule to force automobile manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles by 25% by 2010, even though this objective was in the government's stated plans.

Feb 13, 05; England: During the 2003/4 financial year, the amount of electricity generated from inexhaustible natural resources was 2.4%, just over half the target of 4.3%. The government hopes to double the amount of electricity from renewables to 20% of the UK's needs by 2020, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by between 20 million and 27 million tons [that's metric, of course].
. . The policy's centerpiece is a commitment to stimulate green energy by making sure those who produce it receive more than the market rate for electricity --known as the Renewables Obligation. In addition, the government is providing capital grants to offshore windfarms, and to power stations that generate electricity from biomass and energy crops. Profit margins varied widely, from a healthy 20% in onshore wind farms in Scotland, to 12% for offshore windfarms.
. . Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner Neil Crumpton said the group was "encouraged" the UK appeared on course to hit its target, but that the government was still not doing enough to combat climate change.

Feb 14, 05: Islanders on tiny Tuvalu in the South Pacific last week saw the future of global warming and rising sea levels, as extreme high tides caused waves to crash over crumbling sea-walls and flood their homes. Tuvalu is a remote island nation consisting of a fringe of atolls covering just 10 sq miles, with the highest point no more than 5 meters above sea level, but most a mere 2. Global warming from greenhouse gas pollution is regarded as the main reason for higher sea levels, now rising about 2mm (0.08 in) a year, which could swamp low-lying nations such as Tuvalu and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
. . But the world's biggest greenhouse polluter, the United States, has refused to join Kyoto, while some Kyoto signatories such as Spain and Portugal have increased greenhouse gas emissions by 40% over 1990 levels.
. . Small island states had originally sought a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases, but accepted the 5.2% agreed at Kyoto as a start. But some scientists say an emissions cut of at least 60% is needed to prevent catastrophic impacts of climate change this century.

Feb 14, 05: Scientists have developed a new way of determining from satellite images the amount of photosynthesis in the ocean. As compared to previous measurements, the new values are sometimes different by a factor of two or more, depending on the region.
. . Photosynthesis converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into food. In the ocean, this conversion, also called "primary production", is carried out by phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that form the base of the ocean’s food chain. Although invisible to the naked eye, phytoplankton account for the production of more than 50 billion tons of organic material each year. And because these floating plants absorb as much of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide as do terrestrial plants, they are important to any global climate study.
. . Their new measurements in tropical zones are two to three times more than what had been previously estimated. Conversely, in other parts of the ocean, the amount of photosynthesis appears to have been overestimated.
. . One complication is that more phytoplankton growth is good in some places – like in ocean fisheries –-but too much can be a bad thing. Algal blooms, for example, which are an overabundance of phytoplankton, can lead to a dangerous drop in ocean oxygen levels, due to bacteria eating dead plant material. Moreover, coral reefs appear to do better when phytoplankton are at lower levels.

Feb 11, 05: Rich nations are setting a bad example to the developing world by failing to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases under a landmark U.N. plan to curb global warning, the United Nations climate change chief said.

Feb 11, 05: A surprising chain of events and chemical reactions link a rise in air pollution over land to a decrease in a common greenhouse gas over sea, announced researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The data revealed a process that begins with the formation of small dust storms over the Gobi Desert in northern China and southern Mongolia. The storms pick up large quantities of the mineral iron and carry it to industrialized regions along the coast, like Shanghai. There, the iron mixes with the sulfur dioxide that factories have pumped into the air.
. . The mixing process lowers the acidity of the dust to a level where the iron can easily be dissolved in water. The transformed iron is carried out to sea in a storm before settling in the water, where it becomes the ultimate nutrient for phytoplankton. To complete the chain, the phytoplankton bloom and begin to use up carbon dioxide during the process of photosynthesis.
. . Larger dust storms don't seem to have the same effect because their acidity is reduced by the great amounts of calcium carbonate that they carry. In essence, they can't pick up enough sulfur dioxide to convert the iron into a dissolvable form.
. . "It says that we need to start thinking about these sorts of connections in the ecosystem. There could be way more mechanisms involved and more links to be found."

Feb 10, 05: 2005 could be THE warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, due to a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases, NASA scientists said. "There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere", said James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
. . 2004 was the fourth-warmest recorded. The warmest year on record was 1998, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively.
. . Short-term factors like large volcanic eruptions that launched tiny particles of sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere in 1963, 1982 and 1991 can change climates for periods of time ranging from months to a few years. Also, El Ninos --when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean-- have intense short-term influences on climate.

Feb 10, 05: The English Department for Transport's new rating system is being launched to tell drivers and car buyers how environmentally-friendly vehicles are. Cars will be rated on a scale from A to F, based on their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions --the same system already used for fridges. Only electric vehicles get an A grade. Smaller cars score a C while 4x4 vehicles, such as Land Rovers and Range Rovers, score an F grade.

The fraction of the Earth suffering drought has more than doubled in the past 30 years --rising temperatures and other climate change are implicated.

Feb 9, 05: A British firm says it has developed an additive that makes diesel burn more efficiently, producing fuel savings of 10 per cent. And the UK's largest bus operator is running large-scale tests to find out for itself if the claims are true.
. . The diesel additive, called Envirox, has been developed by Oxonica, an Oxford-based spin-off company from the University of Oxford. It consists of tiny particles of cerium oxide, which catalyse the combustion reactions between diesel and air.
. . The cerium oxide functions as a kind of oxygen store. It releases oxygen to oxidize carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon gases to form carbon dioxide, and also absorbs oxygen to reduce the quantities of harmful nitrogen oxides. The result is a cleaner burn that converts more fuel to carbon dioxide, produces less noxious exhaust, and deposits less carbon on the engine cylinder walls.
. . Oxonica hopes to do better by using particles a mere 10 nanometers across to create a greater surface area for catalyzing the reactions. Envirox can be used at only five parts per million in the diesel fuel - one-tenth the concentration of previous additives.

Feb 9, 05: When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds. Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds to form, which could have a large impact on the local climate.
. . In the air, DMS is transformed into an aerosol of tiny particles on which water vapor can condense to form clouds. This sulphur compound is also produced in large amounts by marine algae and gives the ocean its distinctive smell. Algae play a vital part in regulating Earth's climate, but no one had looked at whether coral reefs might have a similar role.
. . Graham Jones of Southern Cross U measured DMS concentrations in corals in the Great Barrier Reef and its surrounding water. They found that the mucus exuded by the coral contained the highest concentrations of DMS so far recorded from any organism. A layer rich in DMS formed at the sea surface above the reef, where it was picked up by the wind.
. . Gaia-like feedback. The research also raises another intriguing possibility: that coral can use a Gaia-like feedback mechanism to regulate the amount of sunlight they are exposed to. The "Gaia theory" is that life on Earth regulates its environment to keep itself healthy.
. . In lab experiments, Jones and his team showed that corals produce more DMS when the symbiotic algae inside their tissues become stressed by high temperatures or UV radiation. If this DMS seeds more clouds, the coral could have evolved a way to reduce the water temperature or UV exposure. "We've got a long way to go to conclusively demonstrate this, but we've got a lot of ammunition", says Jones.
. . For 20 years, scientists have been hunting for evidence that free-floating marine algae can operate a DMS-dependent feedback mechanism to dampen global warming's effects. Because reefs are a static source of DMS, it might be easier to show an effect, says Jones. "Coral reefs would be a great place to show Gaia in action", he says. "This is the first time that processes going on in coral reefs are being connected to climatic processes."

Feb 7, 05: California is studying power plant emissions in what could be one of the first attempts by a state to regulate heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide linked to global warming. The move is part of California's growing effort to try to control climate changes and reduce the risks of environmental damage to the state's economy, businesses and resources.
. . California air-quality regulators have adopted the nation's first-ever regulations to reduce car emissions linked to global warming, and a new state energy plan pushes for more energy efficiency, conservation and renewable resources like wind and solar power to build up electricity supplies.
. . The major industrial contributors of greenhouse gases are transportation -- about 50% --and electricity production --25 to 30%-- from power plants fired by fossil fuels. California, the nation's most populous state, depends on natural gas, hydroelectricity and nuclear energy to run its power plants, but it also imports coal-fired electricity from big plants in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and other Western states.
. . Plants fueled by coal emit about twice as much carbon dioxide, the leading global warming pollutant, as gas-fired plants.

Feb 06, 05: A new iceberg about twice the size of Dallas broke off an Antarctic ice shelf. The event is the latest in a series of breakups of the Larsen B ice shelf, which until recent years had endured several millennia without such major change.

Feb 5, 05: A proliferation of marine plants and a period of mountain formation could be the reason why an ice age occurred 450 million years ago. A proliferation of marine plants and a period of mountain formation could be the reason why an ice age occurred 450 million years ago. This would solve the puzzle of how temperatures dropped despite the extremely high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at around that time.
. . Matt Saltzman of Ohio State U believes the two processes removed large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere toward the end of the Ordovician period. The Ordovician lasted for about 45 million years before the ice age occurred. Widespread volcanism during this time is thought to have loaded the atmosphere with enough CO2 to make the planet relatively warm, making it hard to explain the precipitous drop in temperature that followed. Land plants had yet to evolve, so they couldn't stash away large amounts of carbon --a process implicated in another ice age more than 100 million years later.

Feb 4, 05: A global warming trend will reduce farm yields and make food supplies scarcer over the next century. "The combination of rising temperatures and falling water tables is likely to lead to a tightening of world grain supplies", said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. "This is already evident with world rice prices, which have risen over 30% in the last year."
. . Last year's grain harvest was 2 billion tons, the most ever and 26 million tons more than was consumed, thanks to unusually good weather. But in the four previous years, demand outstripped supply as crops withered under severe heat in the United States, Europe and India, according to the Agriculture Department.
. . Obviously, rice is a crop particularly vulnerable to water shortages.
. . At the National Academy of Sciences last year, a team of nine scientists concluded that rice yields typically decline by 10% with each 2-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature during the growing season.
. . The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts it will rise by 2 to 10 degrees by 2100. Compounding the problem is that half the world's population lives in countries where water tables are falling and wells are going dry, Brown said. These include the big three grain producers — China, India and the United States — which account for nearly half the world grain harvest. Other countries where underground aquifers are being overpumped include Iran, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Brown calculated that the population in countries where wells are drying up will increase by nearly 3 billion people by 2050. U.S. officials estimate that of the world's 6.4 billion population, 1 billion people in at least 70 nations are hungry. While food production is a factor, the officials say the more common problem is lack of money to buy food, even in the richest of nations.

Feb 3, 05: A top meeting of world experts on climate change headed towards a close with a close look at ways --considered outlandish only a few years ago-- of capturing carbon gases that cause global warming.
. . Several specialists suggested that storing carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, was not only technically feasible but also financially imperative, given the cost of tackling climate shift. Their focus is on power stations that burn oil, gas and coal to generate electricity. The CO2 would be captured in the plant's pipes as the fossil fuel is burned, then pumped out, sometimes over hundreds of kilometers, to underground sedimentary basins and stored.
. . It would not be the miracle cure to global warming. However, it would be a relatively cheap way of easing a dangerous further rise in carbon emissions in the next few decades, especially from China, which has a huge number of coal-fired power stations en route.

Feb 2, 05: Theoretical triggers are the apocalyptic side to global warming, giving the lie to the common perception of it as an incremental threat that will rise predictably, like a straight line on a graph, which means humans would have enough time to respond to the crisis and plants and animals have a better chance of adapting to its effects.
. . But scientists at a conference here on global warming say there is also the risk of sudden, catastrophic, irreversible and uncontrollable climate change that could be triggered in as-yet unknown conditions.
. . One scenario centers on the future of the Gulf Stream, the current that brings warm water to the northeastern Atlantic from the tropics and gives Western Europe a climate that is balmy for its northern latitude. What would happen to this oceanic conveyor belt if cold fresh water were dumped on it from melting polar ice and changed rainfall patterns, the result of warm weather? "I was surprised to find out that it's 70% likely that there will be a shutdown in this circulation over a 200-year timeline."
. . "Over Europe, the shutdown would cause a cooling of perhaps one or two degrees (C, 2-4 F), superposed on (several degrees of) warming. So what you get is a smaller warming in Europe, you don't get an Ice Age out of that."
. . Just as remarkable was this discovery: the shutdown caused such a disruption in global weather patterns that Alaska became a lot warmer in winter. "This is serious news for the permafrost."
. . Scientists at the conference agreed that if temperatures go beyond a threshold, this stored carbon in the soil will be released into the air. And at some point, the sea, which has already absorbed 48% of the carbon dioxide emitted by burning oil, gas and coal, will no longer be able to absorb any more pollution. That means vast amounts of gas will be dumped into the air, amplifying the global warming crisis at a stroke. But carbon storage in such vast and complex mechanisms is a complex and little-understood phenomenon.
. . "The precise point at which the land biosphere will start to provide a positive feedback (i.e. release CO2 into the air instead of storing it) cannot yet be predicted with certainty", says Peter Cox of Britain's Center for Ecology and Hydrology.

Feb 2, 05: A team of UK researchers claims to have new evidence that global warming is melting the ice in Antarctica faster than had previously been thought. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (Bas) say the rise in sea levels around the world caused by the melting may have been under-estimated.
. . It is thought that over 13,000 sq km of sea ice in the Antarctic Peninsula has been lost over the last 50 years. As a result, glaciers flow into the ocean up to six times faster than before. Over the past five years, studies have found that melting Antarctic ice caps contribute at least 15% to the current global sea level rise of 2mm (0.08in) a year.

Feb 2, 05: EXETER, England - Global warming will boost outbreaks of infectious disease, worsen shortages of water and food in vulnerable countries and create an army of climate refugees fleeing uninhabitable regions, a conference here was told.
. . The scale of these impacts --the theme of the second day of the major scientific forum on global warming-- varies according to how quickly fossil fuel pollution is tackled, how fast the world's population grows and how well countries can adapt to climate shift.
. . But a common expectation is that widespread misery is lurking, a few decades down the road. According to a study quoted by Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's top scientific authority on climate change, by 2050 as many as 150 million "environmental refugees" may have fled coastlines vulnerable to rising sea levels, storms or floods, or agricultural land that became too arid to cultivate.
. . In India alone, there could be 30 million people displaced by persistent flooding, while a sixth of Bangladesh could be permanently lost to sea level rise and land subsidence.
. . Already, around 1.4 billion people live in water-stressed areas, a term defined as having less than 1,000 cubic meters (35,000 cubic feet) of water per person per year. Most of them live in southern and southwest Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
. . By the 2050s, water availability in these water-stressed regions --but also in parts of central, north and south America-- may be further crimped because of changed rainfall patterns. Between 700 million and 2.8 billion people in such areas will be affected, depending on population growth and the pace of temperature rise.
. . Between the 1970s --when temperatures first rose significantly-- and the year 2000, climate change cost around 150,000 lives from malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria and floods. That tally will "approximately double" by 2020, mainly because of diarrhoea, which is propagated easily in floods, and hunger, Kovats said.
. . "Above two C, the risks increase very substantially, involving potentially large extinctions or even ecosystem collapses, major increases in hunger and water shortage risks as well as socio-economic damages, particularly in developing countries", said Hare.

Feb 1, 05: Africa's poor millions, already suffering grinding poverty and rampant disease, risk bearing the brunt of the global warming crisis unless urgent action is taken now, a leading Nigerian scientist said.
. . Anthony Nyong from Jos University said if current trends continued temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa could rise by two degrees centigrade by 2050 and rainfall could drop 10% leading to major shortages in already water-stressed countries. "There must be substantial and genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the principal emitters", he said in a paper to a climate change conference.

Feb 1, 05: Britain, arguing that climate change is now unstoppable, urged the United States to sign up to life-saving cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Opening a three-day scientific meeting to assess the threat of global warming, environment minister Margaret Beckett said it was vital Washington become more involved.
. . Outspoken environmental scientist Steve Schneider from Stanford University, California, said he too did not expect Bush --whose term ends in January 2009-- to sign up to Kyoto, but that public pressure would force his successor to take action.
. . Scientists at the meeting said not only were forests running out of the ability to be net absorbers of CO2, but that the capacity of oceans to be so was limited.

Feb 1, 05: A Russian parliamentary deputy has fallen through ice covering the sea outside the city of St. Petersburg and is feared drowned, his political party said. He was riding a snowmobile over the sea when he crashed through the ice. This winter has been unusually warm.

Feb 1, 05: Israeli scientists predict the world's coral reefs could begin to collapse in as little as 30 years. The team's work on corals in the Red Sea suggests a tipping point will be reached in between 30 and 70 years. Studies show the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic as they soak up manmade emissions of carbon dioxide. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers say this will make it difficult for many coral organisms to produce skeletal and other hard parts.
. . The economic consequences for nations that rely on coral could be serious. Coral brings tourists, serves as a nursery for fisheries and buffers small island states against the waves.
. . Ocean scientists generally accept that the pH level measuring acidity and alkalinity has fallen by around 0.1 since the Industrial Revolution. Absorption of CO2 appears to be patchy with some areas worse than others.
. . The oceans currently have a pH of about eight, but experts predict this could drop as far as 7.6, depending on whether CO2 emissions are cut. Professor Erez believes that reefs could begin to crumble if pH drops by 0.3 or 0.4 .
. . Countless species, she said, depend on a relatively stable pH to extract calcium to build their shells or skeleton. These include shellfish, snails, starfish, sea urchins and some sea worms that play an important part in cycling minerals in the ocean mud.
. . She is particularly concerned about the effects of acidification on plankton at the bottom of the fisheries food chain called coccolithophorids. They also play a role in climate change. The algae give off CO2 when they bloom, and thus contribute to climate change. But they also produce dimethyl sulphide when they bloom which helps the formation of clouds which reflect back heat from the Sun. The science here is still in its early stages.

Jan 31, 05: A new look at climate conditions 55 million years ago shows that the Earth is more sensitive to small changes than previously believed. To get some insight into how the Earth's climate might respond to such elevated levels of CO2, Alley and his colleague Daniel Schrag at Harvard University looked back to an earlier period of rapid global warming: the Eocene era, when palm trees grew in Wyoming and crocodiles roamed the Arctic. Unfortunately, there is no way to know exactly what the CO2 levels were then. However, using the fossil record of plant and animal life, scientists have been able to develop a good estimate of climatic conditions at that time.
. . But when that information is plugged into state-of-the-art computer climate models, the temperature changes during the Eocene could not be explained by even the most extreme increases in greenhouse gases alone. "It looks like other factors were at play or that the current climate models underestimate the effects of CO2", Alley said.
. . At the beginning of the Eocene, the warming was dramatic. The Antarctic Ocean warmed 18 degrees F in less than 10,000 years. The leading theory is that this warming was caused when somehow the enormous amount of methane that had been locked up in mud at the bottom of the oceans was released into the atmosphere. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, albeit a short-lived one.
. . This period of extreme warming lasted 50,000 to 200,000 years --too long to be explained solely by methane, the researchers say. The initial warming could have set off a chain reaction of other, still unknown feedbacks.

Jan 29, 05: World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said. "If nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by 2.0 Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060." Few scientists have estimated such an early date for a 2.0C rise, seen by the WWF as a threshold that may spur "dangerous" warming, raising sea levels and causing more floods, storms or droughts and driving some species to extinction.
. . At some point, some scientists fear that rising temperatures could cause a runaway warming, for instance by melting permafrost in Siberia that could in turn release deposits of heat-trapping methane to the atmosphere.
. . "Time is running out to avoid a two degree rise", said Mark New, a climate expert at England's Oxford University. New's study projected that if the globe warmed by 2.0C overall, the Arctic would warm by 3.2 to 6.6C.
. . Another international report last week said that rising temperatures were a ticking time bomb for the climate.

Jan 29, 05: In Peru, endowed with vast Andean ice caps and glaciers, 70% of the power comes from hydroelectric dams catching runoff, but officials fear much of it could be gone within a decade. Meanwhile, new mountainside lakes are bulging from the melt, threatening to break their banks and devastate nearby towns.
. . A hydrological engineer with the water company serving the 2 million people of the La Paz region, said 95% of its supplies come from the mountains, either rain runoff or glacier melt. 3km-high La Paz, a growing city that survives on the water running off the shoulders of these treeless peaks. Chacaltaya, a frozen storehouse of such water, will be gone in seven to eight years.
. . They'll disappear far beyond Bolivia. From Alaska in the north, to Montana's Glacier National Park, to the great ice fields of wild Patagonia at this continent's southern tip, the "rivers of ice" that have marked landscapes from prehistory are liquefying, shrinking, retreating. The government has barely begun to plan for climate change.
. . In the Italian Alps, 10% of the ice melted away in the European heat wave of 2003 and experts fear all will be gone in 20 to 30 years. In east Africa, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are vanishing.
. . Glaciologists find a complex cycle at work: A warming Pacific Ocean has created disruptive El Nino climate periods more frequently and powerfully, reducing precipitation, including snows to replenish glaciers. Less snow also means glaciers that are less white, more gray, absorbing more heat. Newly exposed rock walls then act like an oven to further speed melting.
. . In southeast Alaska, and 1,987 out of 2,000 glaciers are retreating. The glaciers — "water towers of the world" — are the most visible indicators that we are now in the first phase of global warming.

Jan 27, 05: The two Canadian ministers negotiating with car makers over cuts in emissions are split on what to do, with one favoring binding restrictions and the other saying he wants the talks to continue. Ottawa says that by 2010 it wants car makers to cut emissions by 25% from 1995 levels. But major automobile manufacturers say it would be hard to introduce new technologies at such short notice to meet Ottawa's demands and the two sides have yet to reach a deal.
. . Cutting emissions from cars is one way Canada hopes to meet its targets under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which obliges Ottawa to cut output of greenhouse gases by six% from 1990 levels by 2012. Canadian emissions are in fact about 20% above 1990 levels and senior government officials candidly admit the country has no chance of meeting its Kyoto goals.

World scientists gather next week to discuss the climate change crisis threatening the planet amid stark warnings that the time for talking is over and action is urgently needed.

Jan 26, 05: Greenhouse gas emissions could cause global temperatures to rise by up to 19.8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to first results from the world's largest climate modeling experiment. The top end of the predictions, which range from 3.6 -19.8 F, is double estimates produced so far, and could make the world dramatically different in the future. "Our experiment shows that increased levels of greenhouse gases could have a much greater impact on climate than previously thought", said David Stainforth, the project's chief scientist, from Oxford University.
. . By downloading free software from www.climateprediction.net on their personal computers, participants run their own unique version of Britain's Met Office climate model. While their computer is idle, the program runs a climate simulation over days or weeks and automatically reports the results to Oxford University and other collaborating institutions around the world. Together, the volunteers have simulated more than 4 million model years, donated 8,000 years of computer time and exceeded the processing power of the world's largest supercomputers.
. . "... it is entirely possible that even current levels of greenhouse gases, if stable and maintained for a long period of time, could lead to dangerous climate change", Stainforth told reporters. "The danger zone is not something we are going to reach in the middle of this century. We are in it now", said Dr Myles Allen of the Met Office.

Jan 26, 05: Tony Blair is seeking to win US backing for measures to tackle global warming, insisting they did not have to lead to "drastic" cuts in living standards. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, the prime minister insisted that an international consensus was now emerging on climate change.

Jan 24, 05: Global warming is approaching the point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea levels will be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned. The independent report was made by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Center for American Progress in the United States and the Australia Institute. It called on the Group of 8 leading industrial nations to cut carbon emissions, double their research spending on technology and work with India and China to build on the Kyoto Protocol.
. . "An ecological time bomb is ticking away", said Stephen Byers, who was co-chairman of the task force with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "World leaders need to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces." "What we have got to do then is get the Americans as part of the G-8 to engage in international concerted effort to tackle global warming", said Byers. "If they refuse to do that, then other countries will be reluctant to take any steps."
. . According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above the level of 1750 —-the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
. . Beyond such a rise, "the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly", the report said, adding that there would be a danger of "abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change." It warned of "climatic tipping points" such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down
. . The report said a 2-degree Celsius rise in the average temperature could be avoided by keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per million. Current concentrations of 379 parts per million "are likely to rise above 400 parts per million in coming decades and could rise far higher under a business-as-usual scenario", it said.
. . The task force urged G-8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and shift agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels.
. . The world may have little more than a decade to avert catastrophic climate change, politicians and scientists say. Many coral reefs and even the Amazon rainforest could suffer irreversible damage, the report says.
. . other recommendations include:
. . governments remove barriers to and increase investment in renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies and practices by taking steps including the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies.
. . the G8 and other major economies, including from the developing world, form a G8+ Climate Group.
. . The executive secretary of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, said the amplified toll from the December 26 calamity --more than 227,000 dead-- was due in part to the destruction of natural buffers against killer waves.

Jan 20, 05: The amount of fresh water entering the Arctic Ocean from the rivers that feed it is increasing, UK scientists report. They say the increase is caused in part by human activities and is an early sign of climate change. The rise in fresh water entering the Arctic Ocean could change the global distribution of water. It could also affect the balance of the climate system itself and even possibly alter the behaviour of the Gulf Stream.
. . The global hydrological cycle is the exchange of water between the land, the oceans and the atmosphere. The rate of the exchange is expected to increase as the Earth warms. Part of the process is likely to mean more precipitation (hail, rain, sleet and snow) at higher latitudes, and so more water flowing down the rivers. An altered hydrological cycle might conceivably have a profound cooling effect on north-west Europe as well.
. . The American Geophysical Union, publisher of the journal, says: "It could also alter the balance of the climate system itself, such as the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, a kind of conveyor belt. "Cold water flows southward in the Atlantic at great depths to the tropics, where it warms, rises, and returns northward near the surface. "This flow helps keep northern Europe at a temperate climate, whereas the same latitudes in North America are sparsely settled tundra or taiga."
. . They point out that higher emissions of greenhouse gases, caused by human activities, are expected to intensify the hydrological cycle in the Arctic, with higher precipitation there balanced by a reduction in the tropics.
. . They tested the model with four simulations which took into account both human inputs and natural factors. The results showed a steady increase in river discharges, especially since the 1960s, with the annual rate of increase since 1965 8.73 cubic kilometers, far greater than the long-term trend.
. . The team concluded that if there had been no human inputs, the hydrological cycle would have shown no trend at all in the 20th Century. Over the past four decades, they say, human activity played the major role in the increased flows, and it is likely that the upward trend is part of the early stages of an intensified hydrological cycle.

Jan 14, 05: Estonia's warmest winter for two centuries has woken some of its 600 bears several months early from hibernation, wildlife experts said. Temperatures have stayed above freezing, compared with the average temperature of 23 degrees for January.
. . The bears' early reappearance has raised concerns for the survival of this year's cubs. Bears normally give birth to tiny walnut-sized cubs during their winter hibernation and suckle them for months as they grow, before the spring thaw awakens the mother and she leaves her den.

Jan 13, 05: "Global Dimming", a BBC Horizon documentary, will describe research suggesting fossil fuel by-products like sulfur dioxide particles reflect the sun's rays, "dimming" temperatures and almost canceling out the greenhouse effect.
. . The researchers say cutting down on the burning of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate. "When the cooling affect goes away --and it must, because particles like sulfur dioxide are damaging to humans-- global warming will be much stronger."

Jan 13, 05: The amount of land ravaged by droughts has more than doubled over the last 30 years, and the key factor, according to a recent analysis, appears to be the rise in global temperatures. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) studied the widespread drying trends in Europe, Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. They found that the fraction of the Earth experiencing very dry conditions rose from about 10-15% in the early 1970s to about 30% in 2002.
. . The researchers claim that almost half of this drastic change is due to global warming as opposed to a decrease in rainfall or snowfall. In fact, the average global precipitation has increased slightly over the past few decades.

Jan 12, 05: The normally ferocious Russian winter, the bane of invaders from Napoleon to Hitler, has been unusually mild this year with temperatures hitting record seasonal highs.
. . Russia's winter is so warm that a bear in a zoo has woken from her hibernation two months early, while another hasn't gone to sleep at all. Bears in Slovakia are awakening early from hibernation. So are barmaids in Bavaria, unseasonably busy in outdoor beer gardens. Bushes are blooming in Austria, and skiers at snowless Bosnian resorts are chilling out in hotel pools.
. . The utter absence of snow for weeks on end from the Baltics to the Balkans has many Europeans pining for what seems —so far, anyway— like The Winter That Wasn't. "In the year 2100, according to our climate models, there will be 50 fewer days of frost. In practical terms, we won't have winter anymore." Months of mostly dry, sunny weather have brought drought conditions to parts of Portugal, parching farmland and leaving some reservoirs at 15% of capacity. Belgium had its warmest Jan. 10 on record, when the mercury peaked at 57.2 degrees in Brussels. In normally chilly Norway, meteorologists said the first six days of January were the warmest on record since 1938 in Oslo.
. . Birds also seemed to have been tricked into thinking spring has sprung. One species that usually doesn't start singing until late February already was heard in the eastern Beskydy Mountains, and flamingos at a zoo in Jihlava, 75 miles southeast of Prague, were building nests — something they normally don't do until April.

Jan 11, 05: It sounds insignificant alongside the Indian Ocean tsunami, yet an almost imperceptible annual rise in the world's oceans may pose a huge threat to ports, coasts and islands by 2100. [ remember, tsunamis ride on TOP of any sea-level rise.]
. . Leaders of 37 small island states meet in Mauritius this week to discuss an early warning system to protect against tsunamis and a creeping rise in ocean levels, blamed widely on global warming. McCracken and some other experts say that recent evidence of a faster than expected melt of Greenland and Antarctic ice indicate that the rise in sea levels would be in the upper half of a 9 - 88 cm range projected by the U.N.'s climate panel by 2100.
. . Seas rose by 10 - 20 cm in the 20th century, according to the U.N. scientists. Thermal expansion --water gets bigger as it warms-- would be the main cause of rising seas while melting glaciers and ice caps would add volume.
. . The U.N. panel projects that overall temperatures will rise by 1.4 - 16 degrees Celcius by 2100, mainly because of a build-up of carbon dioxide from cars, factories and power plants.
. . McCracken said countries needed to consider whether to build roads parallel to the coast on levies in low-lying areas or further back, with spurs toward the sea. And they needed to stop, for instance, building sewage farms at sea level.

Early Jan, 05: US scientists have discovered a way to make plastics from orange peel, using the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. The team hopes CO2 could one day be collected for making plastics instead of being pumped into the atmosphere. Limonene is a carbon-based compound that makes up about 95% of the oil in orange peel.
. . The researchers used a helper molecule, or catalyst, to get the limonene oxide to react with CO2 and form a new polymer called polylimonene carbonate. This polymer has many of the characteristics of polystyrene, which is used in numerous disposable plastic products.

Jan 4, 05: More tornadoes were reported in Kansas and the nation last year than at any time since records have been kept. Kansas recorded 124 tornadoes last year, breaking the mark of 116 set in 1991. The state also set a record for most tornadoes in a single month: 66 in May. Last year, just the southeast quarter of the state reported 53 tornadoes. That's the annual average for the entire state.
. . There were 1,555 tornadoes recorded in the country through September. Even without figures for the final three months, that breaks the record set in 1998 by more than 130.
. . Better reporting systems contribute to the record, somewhat, tho global warming certainly has an impact.
. . Improvements in technology allow meteorologists to spot rotation in thunderstorms and issue tornado warnings before a funnel forms. Thirty-five people were killed by tornadoes in the nation last year, less than two-thirds the annual average.

Jan 3, 05: A Chilean pork producer is eliminating methane fumes from animal waste and selling the resulting "credits" to Japanese and Canadian utilities, requiring that much less of them as they reduce carbon dioxide emissions at their coal- and oil-burning power plants.
. . It's one of the biggest deals in a potential multibillion-dollar market, a global exchange a Canadian executive calls "absolutely essential" for meeting targets under the Kyoto Protocol. But some warn that abuses may subvert the spirit of that climate treaty.
. . Industrial pork operations usually collect excrement in pits where it decomposes naturally, emitting methane into the open air. But Chilean food producer AgroSuper, spotting the Kyoto opportunity, installed $30 million in technology to handle the waste of 100,000 pigs, covering pits with vast plastic sheets and drawing off the methane, some to flare, some to use in generators to power farm operations
. . Though less prevalent than carbon dioxide, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas, by 20 times.

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