GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS
GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS
from Jan 1, to
GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS
GREENHOUSE WARMING NEWS
from July 1, 06 to year-end
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Jan 1 to July 1, 06
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June 30, 06: An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests.
. . It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said. El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South America and bring dry weather or even drought to Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere in the western Pacific.
. . As for the Pacific food chain near the equator, the slowdown might reduce populations of tiny plants and animals up through the fish that eat them, because of reduced nutrition welling up from the deep. It's the basis of the food chain.
. . The slowdown was detected in shipboard and land-based data going back to the mid-1800s. It matches an effect predicted by computer climate simulations that trace global warming to a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the researchers report. But simulations that consider only natural influences fail to produce the observed slowdown, Vecchi said.
. . So, it appears the slowdown is largely due to the man-made buildup of greenhouse gases, the researchers concluded. And the result lends more credibility to computer models that trace global warming to greenhouse gases, at least for their ability to forecast what will happen in the tropics, Vecchi said.
. . The study focused on what scientists call the Walker circulation, a huge wind pattern that covers almost half the circumference of Earth. The pattern traces a huge loop. Trade winds blow across the Pacific from east to west. The air rises in the western Pacific and then returns eastward at an altitude of a few miles. Then it sinks back to the surface and starts the loop again.
. . The new study is based on barometric pressure readings, since differences in air pressure drive winds near the equator. Results suggest the average wind speed in the Walker circulation has weakened by about 3.5% since the mid-1800s. It has weakened faster since World War II than in the long-term trend since the mid-1800s, Vecchi said. Computer simulations say the circulation might weaken another 10% by 2100.
June 30, 06: Near the end of the last Ice Age, 8,000 years ago, an ice dam on North America's east coast broke, releasing a torrent of fresh water seven times more voluminous than all the Great Lakes combined. It all rushed into the Atlantic Ocean over the course of only a few months.
. . At around the same time, ocean circulation worldwide slowed to a crawl, plunging Europe into a second ice age that lasted centuries. Scientists have long suspected the two events were linked, and now they have the evidence from sediment core samples to prove it.
. . The finding, detailed in the journal Science, provides the first clear evidence that the so-called North American "lake burst" was the trigger that slowed ocean circulation and cooled the climate about 8,200 years ago.
. . The two pieces of evidence showed that as ocean salinity decreased, ocean currents slowed. Normally, ocean currents function like a global conveyer belt, ferrying warm, buoyant water from the southern hemisphere into the far north, where it loses its heat and sinks to the bottom because cold water is denser than warm water. The cold water is then ferried back towards the southern hemisphere along ocean currents on the bottom of the seafloor and the entire cycle repeats.
. . When the lake bursts occurred, the rapid influx of freshwater diluted the seas. Freshwater is more buoyant than seawater and does not sink as quickly. As the ocean became less salty, chilled water in the northern hemisphere took longer to sink, and the entire ocean circulation slowed down. For reasons that are still unclear, ocean salinity and circulation returned to normal after about two hundred years.
. . The ancient lake bursts event could also have implications for future climate change, scientists say. "Our results clearly demonstrate that these sorts of abrupt reorganizations also can occur during periods of warm climate."
. . In the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore mentions the North American lake bursts event and the stalling of the ocean currents. If large parts of Greenland and Antarctica were to melt as some global warming models predict, a similar stalling of the world's ocean currents could occur, Gore said.
June 29, 06: Britain said today it will cut carbon emissions under phase two of the European Emissions Trading Scheme by nearly 3% from the first phase which expires next year, but admitted it will still miss its own targets.
June 29, 06: Images of swamped homes in the U.S. Northeast deepened suspicions over global warming, giving ammunition to scientists and others who say greenhouse gas-spewing cars and factories are fueling extreme weather.
June 27, 06: The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth",
Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy. The former vice president's movie --replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets-- mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press.
. . While some nonscientists could be depressed by the dire disaster-laden warmer world scenario that Gore laid out, one top researcher thought it was too optimistic. Tom Wigley, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, thought the former vice president sugarcoated the problem by saying that with already-available technologies and changes in habit --such as changing light bulbs-- the world could help slow or stop global warming.
. . "They are quite literally afraid to know the truth", Gore said. "Because if you accept the truth of what the scientific community is saying, it gives you a moral imperative to start to rein in the 70 million tons of global warming pollution that human civilization is putting into the atmosphere every day."
June 26, 06: The Supreme Court plunged today into the acrimonious debate over global warming and whether the government should regulate "greenhouse" gases, especially CO2 from cars. The ruling could be one of the court's most important ever on the environment.
. . Spurred by states in a pollution battle with the Bush administration, the court said it would decide whether the EPA is required under the federal clean air law to treat CO2 from automobiles as a pollutant harmful to health. The decision could determine how the nation addresses global warming.
. . A dozen states argued that CO2 and other heat-trapping chemicals from automobile tailpipes should be treated as unhealthy pollutants. They filed a lawsuit in an effort to force the EPA to curtail such emissions just as it does cancer-causing lead and chemicals that produce smog and acid rain.
. . Arguments will be late this year, with a ruling by next June.
June 26, 06: Japan hopes to slash greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming with a plan to pump CO2 into underground storage reservoirs instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, an official said today.
. . The proposal aims to bury 200 million tons of CO2 a year by 2020, cutting the country's emissions by one-sixth, said an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Introduced last month, the plan is still under study. The proposed project would dwarf the similar operations in Norway, Canada and Algeria, each of which pump about 1 million tons a year.
. . By capturing CO2 from factory emissions and pressurizing it into liquid form, scientists can inject it into underground aquifers, gas fields or gaps between rock strata, safely keeping it out of the air.
. . Scientists have been studying the process for years, and an experimental project began in Canada in 2005. In the Canadian project --a joint effort by the U.S.
Department of Energy, the Canadian government and private industry-- CO2 was piped from the Great Plains Synfuels plant in Beulah, N.D., where it is a byproduct of coal gasification, to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada.
. . Tackling CO2 is a top priority for Japan, the world's second-largest economy. The country expels 1.3 billion tons of CO2 a year, making it one of the world's top offenders, despite being a key driver behind to the Kyoto Protocol.
. . Capturing CO2 and injecting it underground is prohibitively expensive, costing up to $52 a ton, Nishio said. Under the new initiative, the ministry aims to halve that cost by 2020.
June 26, 06: The United States --the world's richest and most polluting nation-- has a moral duty to take the lead in tackling catastrophic global warming, instead of denying it is happening, a leading scientist said.
. . Addressing a meeting of international climate scientists and policymakers, John Houghton, a former senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said urgent action was imperative. "If only the U.S. administration could flip from denial to acceptance it could save the world", he said. "If the Americans continue to do nothing then we have a big problem --therefore they must do something."
. . Houghton said developed nations had to take a lead in combating warming because if they did not the developing world --particularly booming economies like China-- would take no action. He said that if it had not been for Kyoto, global carbon emissions would have been at least 30% higher than current levels.
June 23, 06: Global warming, and not natural variations in ocean temperature, provided most of the fuel for last year's unusually strong hurricane season, scientists said this week. The finding raises the risk of active hurricanes seasons in coming years, the researchers said.
. . The 2005 season also featured the most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded (Wilma), the most intense storm in the Gulf of Mexico (Rita) and the most damaging storm on record (Katrina); all three were Category 5 hurricanes at some point.
. . Other studies have linked rising SSTs in the Atlantic to a near doubling in the number of intense Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide, from 10 a year in 1970 to about 18 a year since 1990. During much of the 2005 season, SSTs in the Atlantic where hurricanes typically originate were 1.6 degrees F warmer than the 1901 to 1970 average.
June 23, 06: The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
June 22, 06: The last few decades were the warmest on Earth in the past 400 years, and may well have been warmer than any comparable period since the Middle Ages, U.S. scientists reported today. [...and probably for tens of thousands of years...]
. . In a separate study, climate experts blamed global warming for much of the hurricane-fueling rise in temperatures in the North Atlantic last year.
. . For the years before 900, the scientists said they had very little confidence about what the Earth's mean surface temperatures were. Figuring out global temperatures over the past 150 years is relatively simple, since reliable records exist. But for the years and centuries before that, researchers must read clues left by the growth rings on trees, the retreat of glaciers and even old paintings and diaries that document climate.
. . Such clues are called proxies, and scientists began using them in sophisticated ways in the 1990s to estimate Earth's surface temperature in past eras. The council's report was prompted by a request from the U.S. Congress, spurred by a controversial 1998 report in the journal Nature that used a number of sources, including proxies, to estimate temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 1,000 years.
. . In another report on climate change, a new analysis blamed global warming for about half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005. Natural cycles were only a minor factor.
June 22, 06: The pace of deforestation in Africa has probably been underestimated by satellite imagery, lending new urgency to efforts to save the continent's wild treasures, a scientist said. "The consensus is that Africa is losing about 0.4 to 0.7% of its forests each year but this is likely an underestimate", said Holly Gibbs, a Ph.D. candidate.
. . She said deforestation in Africa has not been properly assessed because satellites have difficulty distinguishing between human-induced changes and seasonal climate changes which can deceptively cloak a stressed forest in a veneer of green. "If you have rain over an open woodland forest, common to parts of Africa, it will 'green up' or sprout flowers. If the satellite takes its image at that time it can have the impression that there is more forest.
. . She also said that part of the problem is that net estimates are usually used. These allow young, regenerating forests and commercial plantations to offset rates of clearing, giving a false impression about the pace at which primary forest is being lost.
. . Conference host Madagascar has lost as much as 90% of its original forest, depriving its unique wildlife --a key tourist attraction-- of crucial habitat.
June 21, 06: Many countries may be grossly underestimating the quantity of greenhouse gases they emit according to a new method of monitoring output, scientists said today.
. . The new "top-down" system measures the actual amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, compared with the traditional "bottom-up" method which estimates what is likely to be produced on the ground.
. . The findings, still the subject of scientific debate, could destabilize the
European Union's fledgling carbon trading system and have implications for the Kyoto treaty. Top-down science suggests that Britain may be reporting only half its actual methane emissions and France only two-thirds. By contrast, Ireland and Finland may be over-reporting the methane coming from their peat bogs.
. . Nisbet said China, which is building a coal-fired power station a week to fuel its booming economy, had good monitoring as had Canada, as well as Kyoto refuseniks the US and Australia.
. . There was virtually no monitoring in South Asia, very little in Africa and the tropical oceans were scantily covered.
June 20, 06: Global emissions of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide will rise 75% from 2003 to 2030, with much of the growth coming from coal burning in developing countries. Global emissions of CO2 will hit 43.7 billion tons in 2030, up from 25 billion tons in 2003, the Energy Information Administration said in its annual forecast.
. . By 2025, global CO2 emissions could hit 40.05 billion tons annually, up 0.03% from the forecast issued last year, said the EIA, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy. Last year's report did not look as far ahead as 2030.
. . Developing countries are growing more quickly than industrialized economies, whose growth "tends to be in less energy-intensive sectors."
. . Coal burning, which is growing in China and India, and to a lesser extent in the United States, could overtake oil as the largest fuel source of CO2 emissions after 2015, the EIA said.
. . The forecast did not include potential effects of CO2 reduction plans, including the international pact known as the Kyoto Protocol, saying the long-term impact of such plans are not yet known.
. . The Kyoto pact, which went into force early last year, requires 35 rich countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to an annual average about 5% below their 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. Countries signed on to the agreement have agreed to set tougher caps in the second phase of the plan, but no timetable has been set for agreeing on the goals.
. . The report said that in four years, CO2 emissions in rapidly developing countries in Asia, such as China and India, will surpass those from North America. In 2003, CO2 emissions of 6.8 billion tons from North America were about 12% higher than those in developing Asia, a far more populous region, according to the EIA. By 2010, that changes. Developing Asian countries will emit about 9.1 billion tons of CO2, surpassing North American emissions by about 21%, according to the EIA.
. . Emissions from North America should average 1.3% growth per year from 2003 to 2030 and hit 9.7 billion tons by 2030, the EIA said. In developing Asian countries, emissions should average 3.6% growth to reach 16 billion tons by 2030, the report said.
. . Total U.S. emissions have risen by 15.8% from 1990 to 2004, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency has said.
June 17, 06: Arctic sea level has been falling by a little over 2mm a year --a movement that sets the region against the global trend of rising waters. A Dutch-UK team made the discovery after analyzing radar altimetry data gathered by Europe's ERS-2 satellite. It is well known that the world's oceans do not share a uniform height; but even so, the scientists are somewhat puzzled by their results.
. . Global sea level is expected to keep on climbing as the Earth's climate warms. Ocean waters are shown to have gone up across the planet by 3.2mm per year for the period 1992 to the present. The recent trend could be linked to changes in the temperature and salinity (saltiness) of Arctic waters.
. . The European Space Agency's (Esa) ERS-2 satellite's Radar Altimeter is constantly throwing down pulses of microwave energy at the land and sea. The time taken for these pulses to bounce back gives a measure of surface height. Only that data gathered over open ocean or water surfaces between cracks in the ice can be used --obviously. The data is also corrected to take account of ocean tides, wave heights, air pressure, and atmospheric effects that might bias the signal.
. . There's a "hole" in the data above 82 degrees; no spacecraft flies above this latitude. This gap was to have been filled by the Cryosat mission, but it was lost on launch last year. A replacement platform, Cryosat-2, will not fly until 2009.
June 17, 06: Carbon that has been locked away for thousands of years could escape into the atmosphere if global warming thaws large patches of frozen ground in Alaska and Siberia as expected, a new study warns.
. . Called permafrost, the frozen ground contains large amounts of carbon-rich grass and animal bones. The new study looked at the effects of global warming on permafrost in Siberia, called "yedoma."
. . Scientists calculate that about 500 gigatons (Gt) of carbon is locked away in yedoma permafrost. One gigaton is equal to one billion tons. The study notes that about another 500 Gt of carbon is locked away in other permafrost areas around the world, and that global warming could have similar effects on these areas as well.
. . The researchers estimate that if global warming continues at its current pace, about 90% of the carbon in yedoma permafrost could be released. Most of it would go into the atmosphere as either carbon dioxide or methane.
. . Scientists estimate that permafrost makes up some 24% of land in the Northern Hemisphere. This vast carbon reservoir, contained in permafrost soil in northeastern Siberia, contains about 75 times more carbon than the amount released into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers said. Cars, power plants and other fossil fuel burners release at least 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
. . The Siberian area is possibly the world's largest, covering nearly 400,000 square miles, with an average depth of 82 feet, and probably holds about 500 billion metric tons of carbon. "It's perhaps double the amount of carbon that we thought."
. . Schuur said this source of atmospheric carbon could create a vicious global warming cycle. It would be an unstoppable contributor to global climate change. "You have anthropogenic (human-generated) carbon that's making things a little bit warmer, and that causes the permafrost to warm up and carbon is then released from the permafrost. It goes into the atmosphere and makes things warmer yet again, so then more permafrost thaws."
June 14, 06: Restrictions on night flights could ease the aviation industry's fast-growing contribution to global warming, a study says.
. . At certain altitudes, aircraft produce contrails --the vapor wake caused when water in the chilly atmosphere is condensed by the plane's hot exhaust. These contrails have a surprisingly big but also complex effect on the climate. Because they are clouds, they trap heat that is emitted by the Earth's surface, creating a "greenhouse effect" that adds to nighttime warming.
. . Yet during daytime, these clouds have a cooling effect because they are white and thus reflect some of the Sun's energy back into space. In certain conditions, contrails can exist for several hours.
. . Night flights account for only 22% of Britain's annual air traffic but contribute between 60 to 80% of the greenhouse effect from contrails, the scientists found.
. . Global emissions of man-made CO2 are between 6.2 billion and 6.9 billion tons per year. Added to this are around 1.5 billion tons from land use.
. . In addition to rescheduling night flights for the daytime, planes could diminish their contribution to global warming by changing their altitude. A study published last year suggests that the regions of "ice-supersaturated" air where contrails form is only about 500 meters thick. The goal would be to fit sensors on aircraft that could inform pilots where this layer lies, thus enabling them to shift altitude accordingly.
June 14, 06: World leaders must not allow concern for energy security to distract them from taking promised action on global warming, top world scientists said. Britain pushed global warming to the top of the agenda during its presidency of the G8 in 2005, eliciting promises of action from some of the world's major polluters.
. . But energy supply worries have increased as Russia briefly turned off gas supplies in December in a dispute with Ukraine, Iraq's insurgency has escalated as has a nuclear row with Iran, factors that boosted oil prices to record levels.
June 12, 06: Al Gore hopes to train 1,000 messengers he hopes will spread out across the country and present a slide show about global warming that captures the essence of his Hollywood documentary and book.
. . Gore said all the profits from his film and the book will be donated to train the messengers. He said the carriers of the message will give the slide show at high schools and rotary clubs in the United States and around the world. He will continue to give the slide show even as the messengers give their versions of it.
June 12, 06: Governors of states in the U.S. West approved proposals over the weekend to add cleaner energy resources to meet the region's growing demand for electricity and they called for reductions in greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
. . The Western Governors Association, which represents 19 states and three U.S.-flag islands in the Pacific, passed measures on Sunday that call for 30,000 new megawatts of clean energy supplies such as solar and geothermal power by 2015, and development of cleaner fuels like ethanol and biodiesel and climate change policies for the West.
. . California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told the governors at their annual meeting in Sedona, Arizona, that they must work harder on the greenhouse problem. "On global warming we still come up short", Schwarzenegger said. "We've made progress in everyone seeing it's a serious problem. But unless we set specific goals and targets with specific ways to measure our performance, a resolution won't mean very much. We're long past the time when it's OK just to talk about these problems", he said.
. . The measure also urged Congress and the Bush administration to fund research on climate change and to support coordinated international research on the issue.
. . "California, in particular, has come to the point where we can look beyond coal and natural gas and focus on real energy solutions such as efficiency, wind, solar and geothermal power", said Bernadette Del Chiaro, spokeswoman for watchdog group Environment California.
. . A bill introduced in April in the California Legislature would make the state the first to order a limit on emissions of heat-trapping gases. The measure aims to cut emissions from power plants, oil refineries, manufacturing industries and other large businesses by 25 percent by 2020. Industries would have to report their emissions levels to the state beginning in 2008 with reductions of gases to begin in 2012.
. . The Western governors also called on the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to work with the states to make the regional power grid more efficient and to expand it to tap renewable energy supplies in remote areas.
. . More than 30 new power plants have come online in the past six years, generating 12,000 megawatts. The California Energy Commission estimates that it will have generation reserves of more than 20% this August, nearly three times what's required.
. . The better story lies on the demand side of the equation, or what the state's governor might call portion control. Since California began aggressively pursuing energy efficiency in the mid-1970s, the state's per-capita electricity usage has remained flat at around 6,500 kilowatt-hours per person. In the rest of the country, consumption has risen from 8,000 to 12,000 kilowatt-hours in the same time frame. In terms of carbon emissions, that's the equivalent of keeping 12 million cars off the road.
. . The state requires that fluorescent bulbs be used in new construction or major remodels in many rooms of the house. Fluorescent lights are more than four times more efficient than incandescents, so if you're remodeling a kitchen, laundry, or bathroom in the Golden State, you have no choice.
. . California has also succeeded by getting utilities involved in conservation. The state's big electric distributors shell out hundreds of millions of dollars every year in rebates to consumers who install more energy-efficient air conditioners, refrigerators, and heating systems. The rebates, budgeted at $2 billion between now and 2008, are intended to save $5 billion in power purchases. "It's the equivalent of avoiding three new power plants."
. . Utilities are also required to get more of their power from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. In 2002, California instituted one of the most extensive renewable programs in the country, requiring 20% of power from such sources by 2010, up from 10% today. The utilities are also being allowed to earn their regulated rate of return on new "smart meters" that collect customer-usage information in real time, allowing the energy providers to recommend ways for them to cut costs.
. . Governor Schwarzenegger, who is campaigning for reelection in November, has jumped on the green bandwagon, earmarking $2.8 billion over 10 years to put small solar systems in place. His "Million Solar Roofs" program, started in January, provides cash to homeowners who install such systems.
. . The state has other initiatives in the works. California Energy Commissioner Arthur H. Rosenfeld, who has been called the father of energy conservation in the state, says his office is now working on regulations that would require all new roofs in the state to be white, because they absorb less heat and cut air-conditioning bills. Regulations presently call for flat roofs to be white. The state is working with roofing manufacturers who have created pigments that mimic the energy-saving nature of white so that the regulations can be extended to sloped roofs and tiles by 2008.
. . Even as the average size of refrigerators has increased, the power they use has fallen 75% [!] to roughly 400 kilowatt-hours per year.
June 8, 06: 20% of fish in the Mediterranean are immigrant species that have moved up from southern seas through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. In the Adriatic, they found 15 species of fish, including puffer fish, that the sea was previously too cold to accommodate. The research was conducted for Italy's National Research Council.
June 8, 06: Climate change is bringing animals out of hibernation prematurely, making them lose weight and causing them stress, Italian scientists said yesterday. Spring-like temperatures too early in the year are waking animals up sooner and putting their feeding and breeding habits out of kilter with the environment.
. . Dormice, whose name comes from the Anglo-Norman word dormeus meaning sleepy one, now hibernate five-and-half weeks less on average than they did 20 years ago. Marmots are also becoming prematurely restless in their burrows and are getting 38 days less slumber than before.
. . The breeding cycles of birds, reptiles, turtles and rodents are also undergoing change. Great tits are laying eggs a week earlier and red kites 10 to 11 days earlier than they were nine years ago. Birds such as sparrows are losing weight as they struggle to adapt to the changes in the environment.
June 7, 06: Britain is to appoint an international envoy on climate, the BBC has learned. John Ashton, a career diplomat and government advisor, will be charged with building new international partnerships to tackle climate change.
. . A science graduate, Mr Ashton has spent most of his career in the diplomatic service and the Foreign Office (FCO). He was an advisor to Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, as Britain prepared to hand the then colony back to China. More recently, Mr Ashton headed the FCO's Environment, Science and Energy department, before leaving to form a totally new scheme called E3G, a "change agency", which has brokered deals on climate and energy between developed and developing countries.
. . But some observers, including Tony Juniper, believe Britain's ability to persuade other countries to curb climate change is compromised by its own rising carbon dioxide emissions.
June 7, 06: In what might signal a turning point in environmental sentiment in America, a new poll of hunters and fishermen finds the majority think the country is on the wrong track with its energy policy and should be a leader in combating global warming.
. . The nationwide poll of 1,031 hunters and anglers was conducted by Responsive Management of Harrisonburg, Virginia for the National Wildlife Federation. In the poll, 76% said global warming is occurring and 73% believe it is impacting or will impact hunting and fishing conditions. A full 78% said the solutions should involve conserving more energy, developing fuel-efficient vehicles and expanding the use of renewable sources.
. . The respondents had voted for President Bush in 2004 by about a 2-to-1 margin, and half of them identified themselves as evangelical Christians.
June 7, 06: China's car efficiency standards are tougher than those of many industrial states -- a somewhat surprising fact that reveals how efforts by developing nations to limit pollution may also help brake global warming.
. . Many poorer nations argue that, for them, development must take precedence over saving the planet. But they also want to tackle pollution that is choking their densely populated cities, and are keen to curb energy waste as oil prices soar.
. . China, the world's most populous nation with 1.3 billion people and a fast-growing economy, faces pressure to curb air pollution as it builds more power plants, adding 500 megawatts of capacity per week, mostly using high-polluting coal.
. . Brazil generates almost all its electricity from hydropower and is building 40 new hydropower stations. Banks in India are seeking ways to lend to businesses to encourage them to cut energy waste.
. . A recent U.N. study showed that countries from Nicaragua to Mongolia had greater than expected potential for windmills. China says its use of renewable energy in 2000 amounted to the equivalent of burning 33 million metric tons of coal.
. . The United States is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, at 24.4% of the world's total and an average 20.1 tons for each citizen. China is second with 12.1% of the world total. Per capita emissions are just 2.7 tons, but growing fast. India's 1.1 billion population accounts for 4.7% of the world total and 1.2 tons per capita.
June 7, 06: Beijing is the driest major city in the world and a report last month said it would face severe water shortages during the 2008 Olympics if current levels of consumption were maintained.
. . On display was a toilet in which 500 liters of water could be recycled for use for up to six months and facilities that use bacteria to break down the waste into gas and clean water.
June 6, 06: Business leaders have met the prime minister at Downing Street to urge tougher action on climate change. Calls from the group --which included Shell, Tesco and Vodafone executives-- for more curbs on carbon dioxide emissions were hailed by Tony Blair. They believe this would encourage innovation that would give British business an edge with new technology.
. . In the past, some lobby groups have argued against stricter targets, saying competitiveness would be damaged. B&Q chief executive Ian Cheshire said the government could, for example, do more to encourage the use of energy efficient houses. "We've called recently for VAT [value-added tax] to be abolished on energy efficient products, so that when B&Q are selling light bulbs, you know we give the customer a real incentive to switch."
June 5, 06: Far from being barren wastelands, the deserts that occupy 1/4 of the earth's land surface could be key sources of food and power, the United Nations said.
. . But these vast open spaces, home to rare and useful plants and animals, are at risk from climate change and human exploitation, the UN's Environment Program said in a report published on World Environment Day.
. . Deserts are prime potential locations for solar power generators that do not pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and plants that can thrive in desert conditions could provide food when water runs short. One such, a plant called Nipa found in the Sonoran desert of western Mexico, produces a grain the size of wheat, but is drought resistant and even thrives on seawater.
. . Rainfall patterns are changing, glaciers that feed important rivers are melting as the planet warms and irreplaceable water from deep desert aquifers is being squandered. Rainfall in Iran's Dashti Kibri desert dropped by 16% a decade between 1976 and 2000. In South Africa's Kalahari and Chile's Atacama deserts it fell by 12 and 8% respectively, the report said. The Rio Grande river in the United States has dwindled to a saline trickle from a freshwater torrent, and South Africa's Orange river is also shrinking.
. . The energy-intensive desalination plants which turn salt water into fresh water in some energy-rich countries in the Middle East are not generally attractive in an era when energy prices are rising rapidly. [And the enormous amount of fuel used to desalinate, will worsen the greenhouse effect, which further evaporates that water, & prevents more from raining!! A viscous circle.]
. . As well as biodiversity, human societies are at risk. The cultures of desert dwellers around the world are threatened by reduced rainfall and over-exploitation, and dwindling resources could generate local wars, the report warned.
. . Pakistan, already one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, is facing even more problems as groundwater levels fall and glaciers retreat. "There will be increased competition for water resources",Warren said. "It is not the most stable region. There will be really nasty implications."
June 4, 06: Drought-plagued China has used an arsenal of rockets, artillery and aircraft to seed clouds and produce enough artificial rain to fill the Yellow River four times over, Xinhua said. Cloud seeding helped put out three major forest fires that raged in north and northeast China for 10 days before they were subdued. And rain was induced in Beijing in early May to help cleanse the capital after a series of sandstorms.
. . In 2,840 flights, from 2001 to 2005, cloud seeding by aircraft brought down 210 billion cubic meters of water over an area making up nearly a third of China's territory, a bureau official said. The scheme employed more than 3,000 people with an arsenal of 7,000 cannon and 4,687 rocket launchers.
Britain and Sweden are on target for reducing global-warming gases, but other countries will have to toughen policies and rely on "carbon trading" to achieve their Kyoto Protocol goals by 2012, says a new U.N. report.
. . In the United States, meanwhile, emissions of so-called greenhouse gases climbed by 16% between 1990 and 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in its latest assessment. The United States, by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, rejects the Kyoto pact on reductions.
. . Against this backdrop of rising emissions and discord over what to do about them, delegates from more than 160 nations on May 26 wrapped up two weeks of semiannual U.N. sessions in Bonn, Germany, on how to confront the threat of climate change.
. . Scientists, meanwhile, are reporting mounting evidence of climate change:
. . _NASA satellite monitoring shows Greenland glaciers dumping water into the sea at twice the rate of 1996. Such melting land ice is helping raise sea levels, along with the expansion of seawater as it warms.
. . _The sea around the South Pacific island of Tonga has risen 4 inches in 13 years, according to the latest Australian measurements.
. . _Warmer water, followed by disease, has killed about one-third of coral reefs at official monitoring sites in the Caribbean since last year.
. . _Globally, the year 2005 was either the warmest or second-warmest since record keeping began in the mid-19th century, according to NASA and the World Meteorological Organization. The warming is accelerating, boosting the mercury every decade by more than 0.2 degrees C, NASA says.
. . Britain, benefiting from a switch from coal power plants to natural gas, projects it will reduce emissions by 19% by 2012, surpassing its Kyoto target of minus 12.5%. Sweden projects a 1% reduction, versus a Kyoto allowance of plus 4%. But such growing economies as Spain and Greece are projected to far overshoot their allowances. Canada, with a targeted reduction of 6%, says it is now emitting 30% more greenhouse gases than in 1990.
. . The Netherlands, which has a 2012 target of minus 6% but currently projects 1% growth instead, will get carbon-trading credits for a Dutch wind-power project in India that has just won U.N. approval.
June 1, 06: Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree F average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic.
. . First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show. The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.
. . Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies appearing in Nature also offer a peek at just how bad conditions can get. "It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head", said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author. "Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean."
. . Millions of years ago, the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago, there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect. Scientists already knew this "thermal event" happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.
. . Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees F, but the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees.
. . What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs. It showed that "there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can throw us to these conditions."
June 1, 06: Florida's governor cautiously entered the debate today over whether rising global temperatures are to blame for an increase in the number of strong hurricanes, meeting with two researchers who say global warming is threatening Florida with a long-term future of more bad storms.
. . Bush met with Peter Webster and Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who published research last year showing an increase in global hurricane intensity, with a doubling of the number of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes since 1970. That increase coincides with a rise of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in ocean surface temperatures, they say.
. . Said Curry: "I think we can say --it's not totally conclusive, but with considerable confidence-- that there is a connection between global warming and increased global hurricane intensity and the increased number of hurricanes in the north Atlantic."
May 30, 06: A giant dust bowl is forming across northern China, converting swathes of arable land to desert and triggering sandstorms whose impact carries across the Pacific, a leading environmentalist said. Lester Brown, of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, said China was far from arresting the problem he attributed to overgrazing and falling water tables in the country whose landmass is already one-third desert. "It represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert anywhere in the world."
. . China, which is plagued by sandstorms every spring, has embarked on a campaign to plant billions of trees and says it is slowing the rate of desertification, but Brown said the problem was far from under control.
. . The number of livestock grazing had mushroomed since China began economic reforms in the late 1970s, and, with little management, the number of sheep and goats jumped to 339 million, compared with about 7 million in the US.
. . The dust from storms originating in China has in the past been traced all the way to the United States and Canada. Sandstorms were this year exacerbated by droughts across northern and western China, that were also contributing to forest fires raging in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang that some 20,000 firefighters were struggling to control.
. . Desertification, which officials at China's State Forestry Administration say is causing direct economic losses of about $6.7 billion a year, was also not helped by poor management of water, Brown said.
. . Chinese experts warn worsening pollution will make the Yangtze unable to sustain life within five years.
May 27, 06: A Nasa satellite mission will be launched this year to study the highest and most mysterious clouds on Earth. Noctilucent, or "night-shining", clouds appear as thin bands in twilight skies, some 80km above the surface. They were first seen in 1885 by a British amateur astronomer.
. . Recent records suggest they have become brighter, more frequent and are being seen at lower latitudes than usual. Scientists cannot say for sure but they suspect human activity may be altering the conditions in the mesosphere that drive the clouds' formation.
. . AIM's three instruments will investigate the recipe needed to make the clouds --cold temperatures, the presence of water vapor, and small dust particles around which the water can condense and freeze out to create ice crystals.
. . Scientists think most of the dust comes not from below but from above --from space. It is extremely hard for dust in the lower atmosphere to be pulled so high, while meteoritic dust is known to be settling onto the planet all the time as rocky space debris falls to Earth.
May 27, 06: A new study comparing the most recent drought in the Southwest United States with other dry periods going back 508 years confirms worries that water shortages will become more common and severe.
. . Agreements to allocate water from the Colorado River were made in 1922, during an historically wet period. More water was allocated than is actually available now, scientists say. The Colorado River supplies drinking water to some 30 million people and irrigates 3.5 million acres of farmland. Among the major population areas it serves: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix and Albuquerque.
May 26, 06: Countries that are signed up to the Kyoto Protocol reaffirmed plans to set new, tougher caps on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, despite skepticism.
. . The conference of some 160 countries in Bonn set no timetable for agreeing on the goals, which would only apply to rich nations, but the talks would take at least two years. The world's biggest polluter, the United States, was absent.
May 26, 06: An expected La Nina wet weather pattern is likely to bring worse than usual floods to Thailand this year, a top disaster official said on Friday after the worst deluge in 60 years.
May 25, 06: London could soon have a network of scientific stations to monitor the great city's CO2 "footprint". The system would deploy instruments to track flows of gases such as carbon dioxide to get an idea of the capital's true contribution to climate change. The proposal comes from researchers at King's College London. The project's data could be used to guide future development decisions, ensuring London's CO2 footprint is kept as small as possible.
. . In the Cub Hill district of the US city, instruments have been mounted on a 45m-high tower. They measure the movement of air and sample its concentration of carbon dioxide. Three years of data show how the CO2 footprint of this heavily treed, residential area varies through the year. In winter months, it is a source of CO2; but in summer months the large numbers of plants in its gardens and park areas actually take enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make Cub Hill a "sink" for CO2. Nonetheless, overall, the Baltimore suburb is a net contributor.
May 25, 06: Rivers of air that move both storms and airplanes around the planet have been creeping poleward over the past 26 years. The migration of these so-called "jet streams" has widened the planet's tropical belt and could expand dry regions around the world in coming decades, a new study reports.
. . "If they move another 2 to 3 degrees poleward in this century, very dry areas such as the Sahara desert could nudge farther towards the pole, perhaps by a few hundred miles."
. . From 1979 to 2005, the troposphere at 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres -—roughly the location of Austin, Texas and Cordoba, Argentina in the Americas—- has warmed by about 1.5 degrees F.
. . The troposphere extends up to about 7.5 miles from the Earth's surface and is the part of the atmosphere in which most weather occurs. The tropical zone is the portion of Earth's surface located between the Tropic of Cancer at 23.5 degrees north latitude and the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.5 degrees south latitude. Jet streams mark the northern and southern boundaries of the tropics.
. . The new results suggest that the tropics have expanded by 2 degrees latitude, or 140 miles, over the past 26 years. The jet streams have shifted about 70 miles toward their respective poles.
May 24, 06: New Orleans, still down and out from last year's assault by Hurricane Katrina, is the U.S. city most likely to be struck by hurricane force winds during the 2006 storm season, a researcher said.
. . The forecast gives New Orleans a nearly 30% chance of being hit by a hurricane and a one in 10 chance the storm will be a Category 3 or stronger, meaning sustained winds of at least 178 km per hour (111 miles per hour), said Chuck Watson of Kinetic Analysis Corp., Savannah, Georgia a risk assessment firm.
. . He also predicted that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will be disrupted for a minimum of a week at a cost of 7-8 million barrels of oil. Up to 25% of U.S. oil production in the Gulf was shut down last year and 20% is still out. Watson gave a one in 10 chance that oil rigs will sustain enough damage to reduce production by 278 million barrels this year, further escalating prices for gasoline.
. . Other top candidates include Mobile, Alabama, with a 22% chance of being buffeted by hurricane-force winds, and the Florida cities of Key West and Pensacola, which both have a 20% chance.
May 24, 06: Naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world. The veteran broadcaster said scientific data clearly showed that climate change was now beyond doubt. Sir David, 80, added that everyone had a responsibility to change their behavior, including being less wasteful and more energy efficient.
. . It is the first time Sir David has voiced his concerns in public about the impacts of global warming. His comments come ahead of a two-part BBC series in which he examines the impacts of global warming on the Earth.
. . "If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something."
May 24, 06: There are a lot of projections about global warming, and almost all of them are scary.
. . Scientists who've studied the issue now almost unanimously agree that the ocean levels will likely rise at least a half a meter by 2100, and possibly more if current temperature trends and energy use continue, according to John Harte, professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at the U.S.-China Symposium on Climate Change taking place at the school this week.
. . The half-meter rise in sea levels, caused by a 3 to 5 degree increase in average global temperature, will lead to the loss of a few small island nations and severe impacts for places like Hong Kong. More intense and longer heat waves will lead to larger death counts than those seen in Europe during the summer in the past few years, Harte predicted. Polar bears will likely die off as their habitat vanishes.
. . "By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro could be no more."
. . Under more dire projections, tropical diseases like malaria could spread to more developed parts of the globe as temperatures climb, he added. Mass extinction of species on par with what happened prehistorically could occur as animals fail to keep pace with climate change.
May 24, 06: Several companies have already committed to building new coal plants over the next 25 years. If technology to sequester the carbon dioxide that comes out of these plants underground isn't developed, these new plants will spew 145 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. That's as much as humanity put into the air through coal between 1750 and 2000, said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We can do it if we store the carbon in geologic formations", he said. "Conventional coal plants cannot effectively capture it."
. . If the sea levels rise 6 meters, possible under some models, everything south of Ft. Meyers in Florida along with the Orlando-Daytona corridor will be underwater, Guzy added.
May 23, 06: Is President Bush likely to see Al Gore's documentary about global warming? "Doubt it", Bush said coolly today. But Bush should watch it, Gore shot back. In fact, the former Democratic vice president offered to come to the White House any time, any day to show Bush either his documentary or a slide show on global warming that he's shown more than 1,000 times around the world.
. . "The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming and he has today again expressed personal doubt that that is true", Gore said. "Why should we set aside the global scientific consensus", Gore said, his voice rising with emotion. "Is it because Exxon Mobil wants us to set it aside? Why should we set aside the conclusion of scientists in the United States, including the National Academy of Sciences, and around the world including the 11 most important national academies of science on the globe and substitute for their view the view of Exxon Mobil. Why?"
May 23, 06: Global warming could be happening faster than scientists had previously thought and weather extremes such as heatwaves could become common, an Australian government report said. The report by the Environment Department said there was a greater risk that global warming could now exceed previous predictions of a 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures by the year 2100. "High temperature extremes, such as the August 2003 heatwave in central Europe that had severe impacts on human health, are becoming more common."
. . The report downgraded the long-term cooling affect of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, and found melting snow and ice would cut the reflectivity of the earth's surface and add to rising temperatures.
. . At the other end of the globe, the report said the Antarctic peninsula was warming strongly, leading to a rapid loss of ice shelves along the coast and speeding up movement of glaciers. By contrast, in the interior of Antarctica there had been an increase in snowfall, leading to an accumulation of ice over the center of the continent.
. . Warmer sea surface temperatures lead to more moisture and heat in the atmosphere, fuelling storms. But a warmer world can also lead to more intense droughts, threatening the livelihoods of millions around the globe.
. . The report said climate change might be making hurricanes and typhoons more destructive, though not necessarily more numerous.
. . Australia's Environment Minister Ian Campbell released the report today while announcing Australia remained on target to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets of 108% of 1990 emissions by 2012 under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. Australia and the United States have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Campbell said Australia contributed just 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
May 20, 06: The United States is emerging from a "bubble of unreality" about the problem of global warming, former Vice President Al Gore said today at the Cannes Film Festival. Gore was there to promote the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", which chronicles his efforts to bring the dangers of climate change to greater attention.
May 20, 06: Former President Bill Clinton said today global warming is a greater threat to the future than terrorism and that the United States and other countries must "get off our butts" and do something about it.
. . Clinton, speaking to the graduating class at University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said the United States must pursue policies that make "more partners and fewer enemies" and use "institutionalized cooperation" before there is catastrophic damage from global warming.
. . "Climate change is more remote than terror but a more profound threat to the future of the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren I hope all of you have", Clinton said. "It's the only thing we face today that has the power to remove the preconditions of civilized society."
May 22, 06: Greenhouse gases are known to spur global warming, but scientists said today that global warming in turn spurs greenhouse gas emissions --which means Earth could get hotter faster than climate models predict. Two scientific teams, one in Europe and another in California, reached the same basic conclusion: when Earth has warmed up in the past, due to the sun's natural cycles, more greenhouse gases have been spewed into the atmosphere. [a viscious cycle! Prob from clathrates & bogs & permafrost.]
. . Current climate models predict temperature increases of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, but Torn's team found that additional carbon dioxide caused by the natural solar cycle could push those estimates higher.
. . Taking this into account could mean temperature increases of 1.6 to 6 degrees C, the scientists said. The higher temperatures are more likely.
. . The European team estimated that global warming in the next century may be 15 percent to 78% higher than current estimates because these predictions fail to take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide emissions.
. . Separately, a group of leading U.S.-based scientists whose research has linked global warming with an increase in hurricane intensity warned today that humans must reduce their contribution by developing cleaner energy and transportation or bear the risk of stronger storms.
May 22, 06: The European Union urged Canada to respect goals for slowing global warming under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol as environmentalists accused Ottawa of seeking to scupper the pact.
Canada, the president of May 15-26 U.N. climate talks in Bonn, has said it cannot meet a legally binding target to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2012 and that it will only take part in an extension if all nations agree. "What I expect is that the Canadians will honor their commitments", EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told reporters in Brussels.
. . "The Canadian government of PM Stephen Harper is trying to sabotage 15 years of international efforts to address climate change", the Climate Action Network, grouping environmentalists, said.
May 22, 06: This year's Atlantic hurricane season will be "above normal". But 2006 will be less active than last year's record-breaking season which saw Hurricane Katrina cause widespread devastation.
. . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) predicts there will be 13-16 named storms, four of which will be "major storms". There will be 13-16 named storms, of which eight to 10 are predicted to become hurricanes --four to six of those hurricanes were predicted to become major storms, reaching category three or above.
May 18, 06: A group of pension funds and institutional investors accused Exxon Mobil Corp. of failing to act on global warming concerns and demanded a meeting with the company's board over the issue.
May 18, 06: Ain't no mountain high enough for climate change, suggests a new model that predicts that by 2100 the peaks of Alaska will have only 64% of the snow pack that existed in the year 2000.
. . The new global climate model simulated snow cover on the world's mountain ranges from 1977 to 2100 and found that by the end of this century, mountains in Europe and the U.S. will lose nearly half of their snow-bound water. The Andes in South America will suffer a similar fate, and snowcapped peaks in New Zealand will vanish completely, the model predicts.The European Alps will have 61% of their 2000 snow pack and Scandinavia will keep 56%.
. . Such declines in winter snow pack means that people who rely on the melting of snow for drinking, irrigation, and farming will greatly suffer, researchers said. Hardest hit will be mountains in temperate zones, where temperatures remain below freezing only at increasingly higher elevations.
May 18, 06: Al Gore brushes aside talk of another run for the U.S. presidency and wages a new campaign to protect the Earth that he says must be won. The former Democratic vice president sounds the alarm as a citizen activist armed with his old slide show turned into a Hollywood movie about the threat of global warming.
. . "My whole objective here is to try to move the country past a tipping point, beyond which politicians in both parties compete with each other for genuinely meaningful solutions ... and to change the minds of the American people to the point where people in both parties demand action", he said. "The habitability of the planet should be lifted out of the political context because so much is at stake."
. . "It's a powerful movie", Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut said afterward. "If enough people see it, it could move Congress."
May 17, 06: China evacuated more than 600,000 people as the strongest typhoon on record to enter the South China Sea in May bore down on the south coast on Wednesday, causing flight and shipping delays around the region.
. . Typhoon Chanchu, packing winds up to 170 kmh (106 mph), was forecast to make landfall northeast of Hong Kong in Guangdong province later after killing 37 people as it swept across the Philippines last weekend.
May 15, 06: A heatwave has killed at least 50 people in Pakistan since the start of May, prompting authorities to warn people to stay out of the midday sun as temperatures cross 50 Celsius (122 F) in the shade. Monsoon rains are due in July. Last winter, the country received 40% less than normal rainfall and up to 25% less snowfall.
May 15, 06: Disease spread by global warming could kill an extra 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the century and turn millions more into refugees unless rich nations take action now, a report said. Christian Aid said rich developed countries had to end their dependence on fossil fuels and set aside large sums of aid to help poorer nations ride out the worst impacts of global warming and switch to energy sources like wind, solar and waves.
. . "Rich countries must take responsibility for having largely created this problem -- and cut CO2 emissions radically", the non-governmental organization said in a report "The Climate of Poverty: facts, fears and hopes."
. . Melting ice caps and glaciers were not only eroding coast lines at a rapid rate but were also raising sea levels and reducing reliable sources of fresh water. At the same time, changing weather patterns were increasing the incidence of floods and droughts, with arid regions becoming drier and wet regions getting wetter. Global warming should allow carriers like mosquitoes to expand their ranges.
. . These changes would increase tensions as key resources like water and fertile land became more scarce, the religious charity said, noting the farmers in northern Kenya were fighting over a diminishing number of waterholes to feed their cattle.
May 15, 06: Millions of people around the world face death and devastation due to floods, famine, drought and violence caused by global warming, according to a report by a charity group. A report to be released today by Christian Aid said 162 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to global warming by the end of the century. It urged the British government to lead the world's richer countries in taking urgent action to curb global warming.
. . Poorer regions, the charity added, should be encouraged to use renewable energy sources. It estimated that every household in Africa could change to clean, renewable energy sources for less money than it would take to pay the region's oil bill for the next decade.
. . Developing technology could even transform the world's most impoverished continent into a net exporter of clean energy, the report said. "This report exposes clearly and starkly the devastating impact that human induced climate change will have on many of the world's poorest people."
May 15, 06: Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports. Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues.
May 12, 06: About 190 nations meet in Germany next week to try to bridge vast policy gaps between the United States and its main allies over how to combat climate change amid growing evidence that the world is warming.
. . Bonn is likely only to be a round of skirmishing on measures to slow warming that could wreak havoc by stoking more droughts, heatwaves, floods, more powerful storms and raise global sea levels by almost a meter by 2100.
. . After the two-day dialogue among all 190 members of the U.N. Climate Convention, backers of Kyoto will meet from May 17-25 for a round of related talks about how to extend cuts in emissions from power plants, factories and cars beyond 2012.
. . Many participants are way over target, such as Spain, Greece and Canada. Still, high oil prices at $73 a barrel are spurring interest in non-polluting energies such as wind or solar power.
. . Canada's green groups this week urged Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, set to lead the Bonn talks, to step down as chair after she said Canada has no chance of meeting Kyoto targets.
May 10, 06: A British artist announced plans to establish a republic on an Arctic island the size of a football grid created by global warming. {connecting ice melted?] Alex Hartley learned of the existence of the island in 2004 during a meeting with scientists about climate change. The office of the Norwegian governor of Svalbard confirmed he had received a letter to that effect but had not yet dealt with it.
May 10, 06: Canada's emissions of greenhouse gases are now 35% above the level it promised to reach under the Kyoto climate change accord and the country would have to ground every train, plane and car to meet its target, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said.
. . Ambrose, a member of the new Conservative government, says Canada has no chance of meeting a Kyoto commitment to cut emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The target was agreed by the previous Liberal government.
. . The most recent data showed Canada's emissions were running 24.4% above 1990 levels. These will rise as oil sands are further developed in the energy-rich western province of Alberta --which is also the main political base of the Conservative government. [It takes a lot of energy --resulting in even more CO2-- to get that thick oil out of those sands.]
. . Greenhouse gas pollution from China and India rose steeply over the last decade, but rich countries, including the United States, remain the world's biggest polluters, a World Bank official said.
. . The countries of the European Monetary Union contribute 10%. But China and India are catching up. China increased carbon dioxide emissions by 33% between 1992 and 2002. "(Greenhouse gas emissions from) China and India are growing very rapidly at the moment, very much because of inefficient investments in energy, in power generation."
May 3, 06: Nine states have sued the administration of President Bush for lenient automotive fuel economy standards that they say worsen an energy crunch and contribute to air pollution and climate change. The lawsuit says that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has failed to meet federal laws requiring government to determine the impact of regulation on fuel conservation and the environment.
. . But the lawsuit, joined by the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, says the move included language that could "create incentives to build larger, less fuel-efficient models" and attempts to pre-empt a California law requiring a reduction of greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions.
May 3, 06: A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is "clear evidence" of climate change caused by human activities. Observations down the years have suggested that the troposphere, the lower atmosphere, is not warming up, despite evidence that temperatures at the Earth's surface are rising. This goes against generally accepted tenets of atmospheric physics, and has been used by "climate sceptics" as proof that there is no real warming.
. . This nagging difference in temperature readings has now been resolved. "This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected", researchers said in the first of 21 assessment reports planned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
. . The findings show clear evidence of human influences on climate.
. . But while temperature readings at the surface showed this increase, readings in the atmosphere taken by satellites and radiosondes --instruments carried by weather balloons-- had shown little or no warming.
. . There are still some questions about the rate of atmospheric warming in the tropics, but overall the issue has been settled, said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center.
. . • Since the 1950s, all data show the Earth's surface and the low and middle atmosphere have warmed, while the upper stratosphere has cooled. Those changes were expected from computer models of the effects of greenhouse warming.
. . • Radiosonde readings for the midtroposphere --the nearest portion of the atmosphere-- show it warming slightly faster than the surface, also an expected finding.
. . • The most recent satellite data also show tropospheric warming, though there is some disagreement among data sets. This may be caused by uncertainties in the observations, flaws in climate models or a combination. The researchers think it is a problem with the data collection.
. . • The observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone.
May 3, 06: Water temperatures in areas where hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean have warmed up over the past century and human activity could be the reason, scientists report.
. . To develop into a hurricane, a tropical storm needs its primary fuel—water—to be at least 26.5 Celsius (80 degrees F). Previous studies suggest that warmer temperatures can fuel stronger storms. Long-term trends show that global ocean surface temperatures have warmed up in the past century, and that this is helping to create stronger hurricanes.
. . A hurricane spawning region in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa has experienced more extreme temperature variation than other areas, according to new computer simulations that tease out the long-term change from other known variations that can last decades.
May 3, 06: The trade winds in the Pacific Ocean are weakening as a result of global warming, according to a new study that indicates changes to the region's biology are possible.
. . Using a combination of real-world observations and computer modeling, researchers conclude that a vast loop of circulating wind over the Pacific Ocean, known as the Walker circulation, has weakened by about 3.5 percent since the mid-1800s. The trade winds are the portion of the Walker circulation that blow across the ocean surface. The researchers predict another 10 percent decrease by the end of the 21st century. [I usta think (reasonably) that winds would INcrease, as the temp difference would increase. As we know now, the poles warmed more, DEcreasing the diff.]
. . "We were able to ask 'What if humans hadn't done anything? Or what if volcanoes erupted? Or if the sun hadn't varied?'" Vecchi said. "Our only way to account for the observed changes is through the impact of human activity, and principally from greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning."
. . To remain energetically balanced, the rate at which the atmosphere absorbs water vapor must be balanced by the rate of rainfall. But as temperatures rise and more water evaporates from the ocean, water vapor in the lower atmosphere increases rapidly. Because of various physical processes, however, the rate of rainfall does not increase as fast.
. . Since the atmosphere is absorbing moisture faster than it can dump it, and because wind is the major transporter of moisture into the atmosphere, air circulation must slow down if the energy balance is to be maintained.
. . A drop in winds could reduce the strength of both surface and subsurface ocean currents and dampen cold water upwelling at the equator. "This could have important effects on ocean ecosystems", Vecchi said. "The ocean currents driven by the trade winds supply vital nutrients to near-surface ocean ecosystems across the equatorial Pacific, which is a major fishing region."
May 2, 06: Kerry Emanuel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in Nature magazine last August that the power dissipated by hurricanes in the North Atlantic has doubled in the last 30 years, possibly because storms have been more intense for longer periods of time.
. . The proportion of hurricanes reaching Category 4 and 5 has nearly doubled in the last 35 years.
. . We have a 10-year window to do something about greenhouse gases", said Prof. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Curry said leading scientists with published research have compelling evidence that human-induced global warming is heating the seas from which hurricanes draw their strength. In the North Atlantic --north of the equator-- that has increased both the number and intensity of hurricanes in the last decade, she said.
. . "They are stunning increases that are way outside the bounds of natural variability", she said.
. . Tropical ocean temperatures have risen about 1 degree F since 1970, said Curry. "This 1 degree is playing havoc with hurricanes. It's a lot of extra energy for these storms."
Apr 27, 2006: It turns out there's something anyone can do right now to make a big impact on global warming, says one climate researcher: Eat more veggies. A new study of how much greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere by the production of food shows that the difference between a meat-based and plant-based diet amounts to the same as driving an SUV versus a small sedan. The calculations are based on data and a basic ecological concept that have been around for decades, but no one had actually done the math.
. . The study is in the current issue of the scientific journal Earth Interactions.
. . The ecological concept has been taught in biology classes for decades: As energy moves up a food web —-from plants to grazing animals to predators-— only about 10% survives each step. In other words, 100 calories worth of beef patty require about 1,000 calories of grain which, in turn, require 10,000 calories of sunlight. So if you choose to cut out the middleman (the cow) and get your 100 calories directly from the grain, you only have to grow one-tenth as much grain.
. . 17% of all fossil fuels went to food production in 2002, he reported. These numbers, plus information on other agricultural greenhouse gas sources, like methane from cows and animal wastes, helped the researchers hone their numbers.
. . Worldwide, the stakes are even higher. The people of China, for instance, are steadily shifting to an animal product diet.
May 2, 06: The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that carbon dioxide, emitted by coal-burning power plants and cars, increased last year, according to the federal climate agency's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, or AGGI. So did nitrous oxide, a byproduct of farming and industry. But methane emissions leveled off and chlorofluorocarbons, artificially-made chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners, declined.
. . The AGGI showed a 1.25% rise in overall greenhouse gases in 2005. The index stood at 1.215 in 2005 compared to a 1990 base of 1.00, reflecting a steady rise in greenhouse gases over the past 15 years.
. . The index is based on the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in 1990, a year chosen because the global Kyoto Protocol that aims to limit emissions of these gases also picked it as a baseline.
. . Global carbon dioxide increased from an average of 376.8 parts per million in 2004 to 378.9 ppm last year. The pre-industrial era level of carbon dioxide, a major influence on global warming, was about 278 ppm.
. . Over the past 50 years, the average temperature on Earth has risen at the fastest rate in recorded history, with the 10 hottest years on record occurring since 1990.
May 1, 06: Three quarters of the UK population would support a new law aimed at combating climate change, according to a survey by Friends of the Earth. Some 1,233 people were asked if they would back a law requiring annual reductions in UK CO2 emissions. While 75% said they would, 5% said they would not, with 19% of respondents saying they did not know.
. . The government recently revealed the UK is unlikely to meet its target of reducing CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010. The Climate Change Program review projects that new and existing policies will deliver a cut of 15-18% by the end of the decade --the government's goal is 20%.
Apr 27, 06: Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants. The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming. The states want the government to require tighter pollution controls on the newest generation of power plants.
Alex Nikolai Steffen (alex@worldchanging.com) runs Worldchanging.com and edited the book Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.
Apr 25, 06: Asking people in the world's wealthiest, most advanced societies to turn their backs on the very forces that drove such abundance is naive at best. Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works. They're primitive inventions designed by people who didn't fully grasp the consequences of their actions.
. . Consider the unmitigated ecological disaster that is the automobile. Every time you turn on the ignition, you're enmeshed in a system whose known outcomes include a polluted atmosphere, oil-slicked seas, and desert wars. As comprehension of the stakes has grown, though, a market has emerged for a more sensible alternative. Today you can drive a Toyota Prius that burns far less gasoline than a conventional car.
. . Fortunately, a growing number of renewable alternatives promise clean, inexhaustible power: wind turbines, solar arrays, wave-power flotillas, small hydroelectric generators, geothermal systems, even bioengineered algae that turn waste into hydrogen. The challenge is to scale up these technologies to deliver power in industrial quantities --exactly the kind of challenge brilliant businesspeople love.
. . The number one US industrial product is waste. Waste is worse than stupid; it's costly, which is why we're seeing businesspeople in every sector getting a jump on the competition by consuming less water, power, and materials. What's true for industry is true at home, too: Think well-insulated houses full of natural light, cars that sip instead of guzzle, appliances that pay for themselves in energy savings.
. . Cities beat suburbs. Manhattanites use less energy than most people in North America. Sprawl eats land and snarls traffic. Building homes close together is a more efficient use of space and infrastructure. It also encourages walking, promotes public transit, and fosters community.
. . Quality is wealth. More is not better. Better is better. You don't need a bigger house; you need a different floor plan. You may pay more for things like long-lasting, energy-efficient LED lightbulbs, but they'll save real money over the long term.
. . Redesigning civilization along these lines would bring a quality of life few of us can imagine. That's because a fully functioning ecology is tantamount to tangible wealth. Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives --and may even extend our stay on Earth.
. . It may seem impossibly far away, but on days when the smog blows off, you can already see it: a society built on radically green design, sustainable energy, and closed-loop cities; a civilization afloat on a cloud of efficient, nontoxic, recyclable technology. That's a future we can live with.
Apr 25, 06: Canada's new Conservative government, which is openly skeptical about the Kyoto climate change protocol, said today it backs a breakaway group of six nations that favor a voluntary approach to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The Conservatives --whose power base is in the energy-rich western province of Alberta-- say Canada cannot meet its Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said she favors the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which groups the United States, Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea. The pact looks at how to develop technologies to reduce emissions rather than having specific reduction targets.
. . The Conservatives --who ousted the Liberals after 12 years in office in the January election-- say they want a made-in-Canada plan to tackling climate change. Earlier this month Ottawa scrapped 15 research programs related to the Kyoto protocol.
. . Environmentalists said the comments by Ambrose about the partnership --which is being heavily promoted by Washington-- show the Canadian government is not serious about tackling climate change. Last week, a group of 90 top environmental experts wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying that unless he moved quickly to tackle global warming, the country's economy and quality of life would increasingly suffer.
Apr 25, 06: Adrian Baltanas's job is to find 850 cubic hectometres of clean water --and he has four years to do it. As director general of Acuamed, a state company set up by Spain's Socialist government, he has to find an alternative to the previous conservative government's plan to divert water from the Ebro river to Spain's parched southeast. Half the water will come from desalination plants, and the rest from recycling waste water and from savings achieved by modernizing irrigation systems.
. . Spain's Mediterranean coast, which stretches from the French border in the northeast to the Strait of Gibraltar in the south, is naturally dry in contrast to the wet, fertile north. It is also the home of much of the population, the destination of many of the country's 50 million tourists and where there is most sunshine for growing fruit and vegetables.
. . The amount of electricity required for the process is falling as technology improves and the Environment Ministry is planning to build a number of extra renewable energy plants to cover what is used in desalination, Baltanas said. [But remember, the minimal amount of energy is still huge. It's physics. It *can't* get cheap!] "Modernization of irrigation will also contribute by reducing the amount of electricity used in pumping."
. . Longer term, he says the days of water-intensive types of agriculture are numbered, while for the fruit and vegetable greenhouses that have spread across the southeastern region of Almeria, water at 30 cents a cubic meter is a marginal cost.
Apr 23, 06: The UK's plant species have experienced dramatic changes over the past 18 years in the conditions under which they grow, according to a new report. Climate change, agricultural practices and man-made habitats have produced challenging environments for Britain's flora. Some species (18%) are thriving under the new conditions; others (16%) are in decline; most (66%) remain unaffected.
. . The deep pink pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) and the bee orchid (Orphrys apifera), usually found in the south of England, have almost doubled in number, and have spread north and west through England.
Apr 23, 06: Summer temperatures in Spain already reach 45 Celsius (113 F) in some parts, but they could rise by another 5 to 7 degrees this century as global warming increases, a climate expert said. Spain and other Mediterranean countries stand to feel the greenhouse effect more than northern Europe. Some rivers will lose between 10 and 25% of their water.
. . As well as being one of the biggest sufferers from global warming, Spain is one of the worst offenders behind climate change if measured by its greenhouse gas emissions and the Kyoto protocol. Their emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in 2005 were 53% above the 1990 base level, a report showed last week. Official data show emissions in 2004 were 48% above 1990.
Apr 22, 06: Microbes that live in the soil eat the soil carbon, and they tend to eat faster when the soil is warmer. Already, global warming is causing microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, thus releasing it into the atmosphere. Global warming feeds back upon itself by making soil microbes work faster, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and thus further accelerating global warming. More than twice as much carbon exists in soil as in the atmosphere or in living plants.
. . The extra carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere also has a modest salutary effect of helping some plants to grow faster, which increases carbon inputs to the soil. However, the current evidence is that these soil carbon storage increases aren't enough to counter the potentially huge carbon releases into the atmosphere that result when permafrost thaws and peatlands dry out.
Apr 22, 06: UK: The developed world has a moral duty to tackle climate change, Chancellor Gordon Brown has said. The comments come as world oil prices reached record levels and UK drivers were warned the cost of petrol could reach its previous high, 96.1p a liter. Speaking after talks in the US, he also warned that rising oil prices may threaten global economic stability.
. . Mr Brown said the climate change issue was an ethical one: "If it is affecting both our habitat and environment and affecting those people who are dependent on that environment the most --and that is poor people in poor countries-- then this has got to be looked at, not just as an economic issue but a social issue. Voluntarism in itself will not be enough."
. . However, Mr Brown insisted that putting up taxes on energy was not the answer. The high fuel prices themselves acted as a catalyst for efficiency, and adding further taxes on top would not be practical, Mr Brown said.
Apr 22, 06: Delegates from six of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters --including the United States-- gathered last week for the first time to figure out how private industry can help curb global warming.
. . The Bush administration is promoting this voluntary effort as a practical way to develop clean-energy technology to tackle climate change. But an environmental expert dismissed it as busy-work that would not be as effective as the requirements imposed by the international Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
. . Initially skeptical, the U.S. administration accepts the reality of global climate change, which has been associated with stronger hurricanes, severe droughts, intense heat waves and the melting of polar ice.
Apr 22, 06: Warmer sea temperatures could worsen the widespread destruction of coral reefs that hit the Caribbean in 2005, scientists fear. In the waters around the U.S. Virgin Islands, as much as 40% of coral died in some reefs last year, and the coral that survived probably isn't healthy enough to survive another hot summer, said Caroline Rogers, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist.
. . Reefs are vital habitat for fish, lobsters and other sea life that feed and breed in the sheltered waters. The reefs also deflect storm waves that might otherwise wash away the beaches that are at the heart of the region's multibillion-dollar tourism industry.
. . Bleached and infested with disease, coral off Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is in poor shape, scientists said in interviews last week. They said further bleaching wouldn't be apparent before summer and it would take some after that before they would know if more coral died. "I've seen some very large colonies —-100-year-old colonies-— in the Virgin Islands that have completely died", he said.
. . The scientists worry that the problem is being overlooked. "People just don't know that much about coral because it's underwater. If 40% of the trees in one of our national parks died, people would take notice", Rogers said.
Apr 20, 06: China, a third of whose landmass is desert, will never completely tame the sandstorms that plague the country every spring due to the sheer size of its sandy regions, officials said.
. . China's efforts to stop the spread of its deserts are reducing the severity of sandstorms like the one that dumped yellow grit as far away as Japan this week, but the problem cannot be entirely controlled, officials said.
. . China has planted thousands of acres of vegetation to stop the spread of deserts in its north and west, and Liu said it has succeeded in reversing the process in some areas. But it will be decades before the effort is complete, said Liu and Yang Weixi, the agency's chief engineer. They also said the worst storms are beyond China's control because they start in Russia or Mongolia.
. . Beijing has approved programs to reclaim land by planting hardy grasses and shrubs on 30% of China's 700,000 square miles of desert, Liu said. But he said that wasn't due to be completed until 2050 and given the millions of square miles of desert in China, "they will continue to be a source of sandstorms." The government also has planted "green belts" of trees to shield Beijing and the neighboring port city Tianjin from dust and sand sweeping down from the northwest.
Apr 19, 06: A "major error" has been discovered in the world's biggest online climate prediction project, backed by the BBC. The fault in a Climateprediction.net model launched in February causes temperatures in past climates to rise quicker than seen in real observations. The program, which runs on users' computers when they are idle, aims to generate forecasts of climate change.
. . The project scientists have now restarted the model but say the data collected so far is still useful. "At some point in the future, we may have done an experiment like this anyway. Running a model without global dimming is exactly the kind of thing we do in modelling centers." The data will be used at a later date to determine the contribution of global dimming to temperature changes in the 20th Century.
. . The problem was picked up by scientists when a handful of the 200,000 people that have downloaded the program reached the end of the simulation.
Apr 19, 06: Unless Canada's new government moves quickly to tackle global warming, the country's economy and quality of life will increasingly suffer in decades to come, 90 top environmental experts told Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an open letter.
. . Harper, whose Conservatives won the January 23 election, is openly unenthusiastic about the Kyoto accord on climate change and says there is no way Canada can meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Gordon McBean, the University of Western Ontario scientist who organized the letter, said Harper has to tackle climate change quickly. [ps: a Canadian "conservative" is left of US liberals! They're an "octave" above us.]
. . "We urge you and your government to develop an effective national strategy to deal with the many important aspects of climate that will affect both Canada and the rest of the world in the near future", said the letter, which was delivered to Harper's office. "There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada's natural ecosystems and on our socioeconomic activities", it added, saying side effects could include more extreme events such as floods and droughts.
. . Under Kyoto, Canada is committed to cutting its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The latest data show emissions are running 24.4% above 1990 levels and these are set to soar as Canada continues to develop the oil-rich tar sands in the western province of Alberta.
. . "In the last five years, we have seen more scientific information come out that leads me to be more concerned than I ever was before", said McBean, who chairs the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. The scientists said Canada had warmed faster than almost any other region on the globe in the last 50 years, particularly in the Arctic, which could be ice free in summer before the end of the century.
Apr 19, 06: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said that dust storms that whipped Beijing and northern China in recent days were a sharp reminder of the severity of the country's environmental problems.
. . Wen told an environmental meeting in Beijing that China needed to intensify efforts to rein in pollution and environmental destruction. "Ecological destruction and environmental pollution are creating massive economic losses and gravely threatening people's lives and health."
. . The storms had enveloped 1/8 of the country over recent days. Two workers died several days ago in ferocious storms. So far this year, the city has recorded 56 days with blue skies --16 fewer than for the same time last year
. . In 2005, the country's sulphur dioxide emissions were 27% higher than 2000 levels, although the government had set a goal of reducing emissions by 10% over that time, he said.
Apr 18, 06: Al Gore has a major campaign under way —-to change policies on global warming. The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has hired longtime political associate Roy Neel to aid in his effort to raise awareness about global warming, a problem Gore calls "a planetary emergency."
. . Gore's movie and book about the issue, both called "An Inconvenient Truth", are set for widespread release in May.
Apr 17, 06: The Danube river broke through flood defenses in southeastern Europe on Monday, driving thousands of people from their homes along its banks in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.
. . Swollen by heavy rain and melting snow from central Europe, the river hit its highest level in 111 years at the weekend, swamping ports and thousands of hectares of farmland. Much of the region is still reeling from floods last year in which scores of people were drowned and houses, farmland and infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of euros/dollars were destroyed.
. . In Serbia's capital Belgrade, 250 km of flood defenses held the Danube at bay as it reached record levels, but officials said there was a danger waterlogged dykes could collapse.
. . The Tisa river also hit a record level, just centimeters below the top of embankments. "A new high wave is expected this Wednesday and there may be new flooding", said Georgi Linkov, civil defense head in Pleven, northern Bulgaria.
Apr 18, 06: Spain's CO2 emissions rose 47.87% between 1990 and 2004, over 2% higher than an earlier calculation, the Environment Ministry said.
Apr 17, 06: Farmhouses in the Canadian Prairie province of Manitoba were sitting like islands in a great lake as the swelling Red River crested and rural residents were forced to travel by boat.
Apr 17, 06: A sand storm struck the Chinese capital, covering homes, streets and cars in brown dust and leaving the skies a murky yellow as it suffers its worst pollution in years. Desertification of the country's west and Mongolian steppes has made the spring sand storms worse in recent years, reaching as far away as South Korea and Japan. It has clogged the air over the Korean peninsula.
. . So far in 2006, Beijing has notched up 13 days of the worst measure of pollution, more than last year's total and the highest in six years. Hospitals have also dealt with a sharp increase in patients with respiratory diseases, and on Monday local newspapers warned residents to wear masks outdoors.
Apr 15, 06: All the fishermen at the small Lake Victoria port of Ggaba, 10 km south of the capital Kampala, say they are seeing smaller and smaller catches.
. . The fall in catches has coincided with the lowest water levels in Lake Victoria for 80 years. Partly, that is blamed on severe drought has gripped much of east Africa for months.
. . Uganda's government has been accused of making things worse. A U.N. report in February said Uganda was seeking relief from a crippling power crisis by letting too much water through two hydropower dams on the Nile out of Lake Victoria. It said the Kampala government was effectively draining Africa's biggest freshwater lake to meet its energy needs, and that the dams had caused 55% of its recent drop.
. . Exporters who fly frozen fish fillets mostly to the European Union, now contend with jetties left high and dry, and refrigerators that regularly click off with power cuts.
Apr 13, 06: The world is likely to suffer a temperature rise of more than 3C, says the government's chief scientist. In a report based on computer predictions, Professor David King said that increase would cause drought and famine and threaten millions of lives. The US refuses to cut emissions and those of India and China are rising.
. . Tony Blair wants a global consensus on stabilising greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for climate change. The government shares the EU's 2C limit. A government report based on computer modelling projects a 3C rise would cause:
. . # a drop worldwide of between 20 and 400 million tons in cereal crops
. . # about 400 million more people at risk of hunger
. . # between 1.2bn and 3bn more people at risk of water stress
Apr 15, 06: The Danube rose to its highest level in more than a century today, but the breaching of a dam in Romania eased pressure on towns and villages struggling to hold back the floods, officials said.
Apr 10, 06: Deadly diseases are attacking coral reefs across the Caribbean Sea after a massive surge of coral bleaching last summer, a two-pronged assault that scientists say is one of the worst threats to the region's fragile undersea gardens.
. . The attack, which is killing centuries-old corals, is the result of unusually hot water across the Caribbean region. Coupled with a recent bleaching event that whitened and weakened coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Caribbean epidemic has biologists fearing for the future of the habitats that serve as spawning grounds, nurseries, tourist attractions and, some believe, alarm systems for the health of the oceans.
. . The unprecedented assault started last summer with some of the highest water temperatures on record in the Caribbean, which caused coral to bleach from Panama to the Virgin Islands. Hot water stresses corals, causing the tiny animals to expel their symbiotic algae, which give corals their bright colors.
. . Scientists believe bleaching weakens corals, leaving them susceptible to disease. In some Caribbean locations, 90% of corals were bleached, according to reef monitors.
. . Coral can recover from bleaching when the water cools and the algae return to their hosts. But last year's bleaching event was followed by a devastating attack of black band disease, white plague and other ailments.
. . The Caribbean contains two of the longest reefs in the world --the Belize reef, which ranks behind only the Great Barrier Reef, and the Florida Keys reef, which stretches beyond the length of the 110-mile island chain.
. . "I'm calling it heat stroke. I'm calling it an underwater nightmare", said marine pathologist James Cervino, a professor at Columbia and Pace universities. "If we don't control atmospheric CO2, we're putting the nail in the coffin right now."
Apr 9, 06: Tornadoes can occur almost anywhere in the world, but the United States is the country with the highest frequency of tornadoes. Each year, there are about 1,200 tornadoes in the United States, causing about 65 fatalities and 1,500 injuries nationwide.
. . As of April 7, there had been 445 so far this year. This is the fastest start for the first three months of the year since 1999, and it is in sharp contrast to last year when only 96 tornadoes had formed by April 3. Yet last year ended with exactly 1,200 twisters, according to NOAA. June was the busiest month in 2005.
. . Expect more: According to NOAA, "Previous years with a busy start have produced high numbers of tornadoes throughout the year." Abnormally warm temperatures and dry conditions during winter kept water temperatures warm in the Gulf of Mexico, the scientists say.
. . Tornadoes form where warm moist air is trapped underneath a layer of cold, dry air. This instability is upset when the warm bottom layer gets pushed up --either by heating near the ground, or by an influx of cold air. As the moist air rises --sometimes 50,000 feet into the air-- it cools, forming clouds and thunderstorms
. . If the conditions are right, the rapidly rising air will spin around a central funnel --at speeds sometimes exceeding 250 mph. A tornado technically is born when this funnel cloud touches down on the ground.
. . Twisters strike predominantly along Tornado Alley --a flat stretch of land from west Texas to North Dakota. The region is ideal for tornadoes, as dry polar air from Canada meets warm moist tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico. Texas gets hit the most, with an average of about 110 tornadoes a year.
. . Violent tornadoes - F4 and above, with winds exceeding 207 mph-- are less than one% of all tornadoes, but account for 70% of tornado-related deaths. Some of these twisters can last more than an hour and travel hundreds of miles.
. . Almost 90% of tornadoes are weak --F0 or F1 with winds below 113 mph-- lasting usually less than 10 minutes and causing less than 5% of tornado-related deaths. The scale will be revised in 2007.
Apr 6, 06: European Union regulators said today they were taking legal action against several EU member states for failing to apply four of the 25-nation bloc's climate change laws.
Apr 6, 06: Scientists have been investigating the effects of a 7m-high wave travelling up the Thames, using computer simulations. The work is crucial to understand how storms cause dangerous flooding around the UK and how scientists maybe able to predict these events.
. . The first model was run over three days and was designed to create a storm surge, a localised hump created by a low pressure system sucking up the sea. The largest storm surges occur when they coincide with a strong, high tide.
. . In the computer model, the scientists used data from a real storm. They then superimposed an artificially high tide and exaggerated the model to create a massive surge that swept down the North Sea and up the Thames.
. . The wave was approximately three times the size of the one that washed into London in 1953, which killed more than 300 people and prompted the construction of the Thames barrier. "This event that we deliberately created would have probably overtopped the barrier and would have overtopped most of the defences all the way up the river." He added a note of caution that the simulation was "very, very extreme" and that the likelihood of it ever happening was incredibly small.
Apr 6, 06: Scientists recently traveled from Tahiti to Alaska, testing the waters of the Pacific Ocean and finding a considerable rise in the ocean's acidity. It's grown more acidic over the past 15 years largely because of the water's intake of carbon dioxide released by humans burning fossil fuels, the researchers said. The study found a decrease of about 0.025 units in pH, which indicates the rise in acidity. The findings are consistent with previous studies done in other oceans.
. . The seas serve as the biggest reservoirs for carbon dioxide belched by burning oil, gas and coal. They absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere each year. Scientists say the oceans will absorb about 90% of carbon dioxide produced by humans during the next millennium.
. . As carbon dioxide levels in oceans climb, marine life suffers. Skeletons of pteropods, free-swimming planktonic mollusks, grow at a slowed pace in waters laden with carbon dioxide. These mollusks serve as an important food source for North Pacific salmon, mackerel, herring and cod.
. . "As humans continue along the path of unintended carbon dioxide sequestration in the surface oceans, the impacts of marine ecosystems will be direct and profound", Fabry said.
Apr 6, 06: NASA satellites that monitor ocean color and temperature have joined a global effort to study the worrisome bleaching of coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the U.S. space agency said. Coral reefs get bleached when water is too warm, which forces out tiny algae that live in the coral and help it to thrive and give it its vivid color, NASA said in a statement. Without these algae, coral can whiten and eventually die.
. . "Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the largest and most complex system of reefs in the world, and like so many of the coral reefs in the world's oceans, it's in trouble", said oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington.
. . NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites offer data about ocean surface temperature and color, available online within three hours of the satellites' pass. Color is linked to the concentration of chlorophyll in ocean plants, and shows changes in the ocean's biological productivity.
Apr 3, 06: The 2006 hurricane season will not be as ferocious as last year when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other storms slammed Florida and Texas, but will still be unusually busy, a noted U.S. forecasting team said. It expected 17 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin during the six-month season, which officially begins on June 1.
. . Nine of the storms will strengthen into hurricanes, with winds of at least 74 mph, reaffirming an early prediction made in December. But they also said there were likely to be fewer major storms making landfall in the United States compared to 2005, when virtually every hurricane record was broken, and also 2004, when Florida was bashed by four consecutive hurricanes.
. . The Colorado State team initially predicted 13 storms for 2005 and raised the forecast in May last year to 15. It wasn't until August 5 --almost halfway through the season-- that Gray increased the prediction to 20 storms. In the event, 2005 saw a record 27 named storms, of which 15 became hurricanes.
. . There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that warmer sea surface temperatures are already causing hurricanes in the Atlantic, and typhoons and cyclones in the Pacific, to become more powerful.
Apr 3, 06: A black streak flowing through the cream-colored marble forming the walls of the Oregon Caves. The graphite line is graphic evidence of dramatic global warming that consumed so much oxygen that it nearly wiped out all life on the planet 247 million years ago, said the natural resources specialist for the Oregon Caves National Monument.
. . "It was the biggest extinction by far of all time", he said. "Geologists and paleontologists all agree on that. ... The extinction that killed the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, that wasn't anything compared to this." The global warming at the end of the Permian period resulted in deadly amounts of carbon dioxide that killed most land animals. Scientists aren't certain what caused the episode some 247 million years ago. They estimate that temperatures ranged in the low 100s year-round for thousands of years.
. . Roth is a geologist by training and a former science teacher who has worked as a natural resource specialist at the monument for 17 years. He said the new evidence suggests that "we had a runaway hothouse effect because of the excess carbon dioxide. There was so much carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere, mostly from methane from the oceans." That carbon dioxide build-up alone would have killed off most oxygen-breathing species, he said.
Apr 3, 06: California stepped up efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. State assembly members introduced a bill that would make California the first state to set a limit on emissions of heat-trapping gases. The bill aims to cut emissions by 25%, or 145 million tons to 1990 levels by 2020.
. . Pavley also wrote a state law ordering the reduction of emissions from cars and light-duty trucks. It also called for mandatory reporting of emissions levels by the largest polluting industries --oil and gas exploration and production, oil refining, electric power, cement manufacturing and solid waste landfills.
. . Another key recommendation would require new electricity in California to come from sources with emissions equivalent to or less than new combined-cycle natural gas-fired plants. All utilities, whether publicly or privately owned, would have to meet state energy efficiency goals.
Mar 31, 06: Tanzania has ordered farmers and herders who have encroached on water catchment areas and game reserves to leave in a drive to protect the drought-weakened environment, Vice-President Ali Muhammed Shein said.
Apr 7, 06: Reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appear to be adding to man-made global warming. Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth's surface.
. . Other studies show that increased water vapor in the atmosphere is reinforcing the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists suggest both trends may push temperatures higher than believed.
. . The decline in Soviet industry and clean air laws in western countries apparently reduced concentrations of aerosols, tiny particles, in the atmosphere. These aerosols may block solar radiation directly, or help clouds to form which in turn constitute a barrier; or both effects may occur.
. . Analysis suggests that "global dimming" and the man-made greenhouse effect may have cancelled each other out until the early 1980s, but now "global brightening" is adding to the impact of human greenhouse emissions.
. . Between the 1950s and 1980s, the amount of solar energy penetrating through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface appeared to be declining, by about 2% per decade. This trend received some publicity under the term "global dimming". "During the solar dimming, we had really no temperature rise. And only when the solar dimming disappeared could we really see what is going on in terms of the greenhouse effect, and that is only starting in the 1980s."
. . The mechanism is that rising levels of what are conventionally called "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide and methane, cause more evaporation of water, which in the atmosphere is itself a greenhouse gas.
He believes this is having more impact than changes to the transmission of solar energy through the atmosphere.
Mar 31, 06: A man stands on a railroad track as a train rumbles closer. "Global warming?" he says. "Some say irreversible consequences are 30 years away. Thirty years. That won't affect me." He steps off the tracks —-just in time. But behind him is a little blonde-haired girl left in front of the roaring train. The screen goes black. A message appears: "There's still time."
. . It's just an ad, part of a campaign from the advocacy group Environmental Defense, which hopes to convince Americans they can do something about global warming, that there's still time.
. . But many scientists are not so sure that the oncoming train of global warming can be avoided. Temperatures are going to rise for decades to come because the chief gas that causes global warming lingers in the atmosphere for about a century.
. . "We certainly aren't going to stop that 18-wheeler that's rolling down the hill. In the short-term, I'm not sure that anyone can stop it", said John Walsh, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. The best we can hope for is to prevent the worst —-world-altering disasters like catastrophic climate change and a drastic rise in sea levels, say 10 leading climate scientists interviewed by The Associated Press. They pull out ominous phrases like "point of no return." The big disasters are believed to be just decades away. Stopping or delaying them would require bold changes by both individuals and government.
. . He and other scientists say it's too late to stop people from feeling the heat. Nearly two dozen computer models now agree that by 2100, the average yearly global temperature will be 3 to 6 degrees F higher than now, according to Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
. . A British conference on "avoiding dangerous climate change" last year concluded that a rise of just 3 degrees would likely lead to some catastrophic events, especially the melting of the Greenland's polar ice. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University put the odds of a massive Greenland melt at 50-50.
. . Dangerous things include: multi-century melts of polar ice sheets and an accompanying major sea level rise, abrupt climate change from a dramatic slowing of the ocean current systems, and the permanent loss of glacier-fed ancient water supplies for China, India and parts of South America.
Despite what scientists say, 70% of Americans believe it's possible to reduce the effects of global warming and 59% think their individual actions can help, according to a poll commissioned by Environmental Defense as part of its public service campaign. Climate scientists find themselves in the delicate position of trying to balance calculations that lead to scientific despair with an optimistic public's hope.
. . "I believe we are past the point of no return", Barnett said. "What does the point of no return mean? To me, it means we've reached a point where we are seeing the impacts of global warming ... The question is: How much worse is it going to get? That is a case in which we can control our destiny —-if we act now."
. . But computer model runs at the atmospheric center's Boulder, Colo., campus show Environmental Defense's train image might be too close to the truth. "It's a train that's going downhill; that is something that people don't understand", Meehl said. "For anything to happen, it's going to have to take the public really being concerned about this problem."
Mar 29, 06: According to Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe, the threat of global climate change is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Yet when Elizabeth KolbeArt, a staff writer for The New Yorker, surveyed the world's leading climate scientists, she discovered an alarming unanimity to their message: The world needs to wake up, and fast.
. . Author of a three-part New Yorker series on climate change last year, Kolbert has collected her work in one slim volume. Published this month, Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change is already being compared favorably to landmark environmental tome Silent Spring.
. . Kolbert: People think, "I won't have to go to Florida anymore. Florida will come to me." People should realize that warmth doesn't mean Florida. It means New York is underwater. It may be that certain places like Siberia are more comfy, but it also means that they have no water. If people say, "Why should I be worried about global warming?" I think the answer is, "Do you like to eat?"
Mar 29, 06: Tony Blair has called for a "technological revolution comparable to the internet" to slow global warming. Speaking in New Zealand, he said it was important to develop machines which produced fewer emissions, while maintaining economic growth. The speech came after the government admitted it was unlikely to meet its target for cutting greenhouse gases.
. . Mr Blair promised to push for an international framework to supersede the Kyoto Protocol when it expires. Downing Street said Mr Blair had identified 2006 as the year to get an international consensus on the goal of stabilising the earth's temperature. In his speech in Auckland, the prime minister said the framework to replace Kyoto --which expires at the end of 2012-- must include China, India and the US.
. . The government wants people to cut their personal emissions and is promising a stricter emissions cap for industry. [Sounds good, right? so far...]
. . Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper accused the government of failing to take the "tough action" on climate change. He said: "Once again, the government has caved in to short-term political pressures and produced a totally inadequate response. This pathetic strategy will not deliver the government's promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2010, and will further undermine the prime minister's reputation on this issue."
. . Shadow Environment Secretary Peter Ainsworth said the review was "a grim admission of failure", adding: "Worse still, it fails to chart a course which will get us back on track. The government's efforts to tackle climate change remain piecemeal, timid and half-hearted."
. . Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "The review is nine months late and a failure. This is much bigger than a sidelined Labor manifesto pledge and a Whitehall turf-war. "The prime minister must call his ministers to account. He must explain to the nation how he will get Britain back on target to reduce climate change."
Mar 24, 06: Miami would be a memory, Bangkok a soggy shadow of its former self and the Maldive Islands would vanish, if melting polar ice keeps fueling a faster-than-expected rise in sea levels, scientists reported.
Mar 24, 06: While the last great thaw was the result of a natural tilt in the Earth's axis towards the Sun, the next one will be caused by humans, some scientists argue, in the March 24 Science.
. . If global warming continues at its current pace, by 2100, Earth could be up to 8 degrees F warmer than it is today. If steps are not taken soon to reduce greenhouse emissions, the Arctic will be as warm as it was 130,000 years ago and similar rises in sea level will occur, according to two new studies.
. . The pace of Arctic melting would also quicken because of pollution-darkened snow, scientists say, which absorbs more sunlight and melts faster than regular snow.
. . The process will become irreversible sometime in the second half of the 21st century, unless steps are taken in the next few decades to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Overpeck said. "We need to start serious measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next decade. If we don't do something soon, we're committed to four-to-six meters of sea level rise in the future."
Mar 24, 06: Power plants in the U.S. Northeast who may face rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions could be allowed to save costs by methods such as planting trees and tapping landfills for methane, according to a draft plan by Northeastern states who have signed the country's first regional greenhouse gas plan.
. . Seven states signed the plan in December 05 to create a cap and trade CO2 emissions market called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The states --New York, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Delaware-- hope to cap emissions from power plants at 1990 levels of about 121 million tons of CO2 through 2014 and then reduce it 10% below that level in 2018.
. . The 2018 target is two years quicker than the RGGI had previously planned. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, backed out of the plan late last year saying it would boost electricity rates.
Mar 24, 06: There is growing evidence of a link between global warming and natural disasters such as droughts and flooding, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said today. The WMO says carbon dioxide accounts for 90 percent of warming over the past decade.
. . But Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the United Nations weather agency, said more research was needed into the links between global warming and extreme conditions like hurricanes. Jarraud told a news briefing: "We know for certain that there is an intensification of the hydrological cycle, which translates into greater risk in some areas of a rain deficit and accentuated problems of drought linked to climate change. In other regions, there is a higher risk of flooding and in others a risk of greater frequency of heat waves."
Mar 23, 06: Britain said its emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, crept up last year in the third consecutive annual increase. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said CO2 emissions rose 0.25% in 2005 to 153 millions tons. "The increase is due mainly to the rise in energy consumption, coupled with a small switch from gas to coal in power stations."
Mar 22, 06: Mass extinctions, more Hurricane Katrina-like disasters, widespread droughts: A majority of climate scientists say these are just a few of the roads ahead if our consumption of oil and coal go unchecked. The British government last month sponsored the publication of a comprehensive study on "dangerous climate change" --available in book form or as a free download-- that provides the scientific backing for the conclusion that fossil-fuel emissions must be cut back "with resolve and urgency now."
Mar 22, 06: London is mustering its flood defences more often as global warming raises sea levels, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, David King. "The Thames Barrier was designed to be used once every two or three years and in that period after it was built in 1980 it was indeed used once every two or three times a year. We're now using it six times a year." The direct cost of a breach in the flood defences would exceed 30 billion pounds ($52.70 billion) directly, King added, not including the "indirect" damage to people's lives.
Mar 17, 06: When marine scientist Ray Berkelmans went diving at Australia's Great Barrier Reef earlier this year, what he discovered shocked him --a graveyard of coral stretching as far as he could see. Australia has just experienced its warmest year on record and abnormally high sea temperatures during summer have caused massive coral bleaching in the Keppels. Sea temperatures touched 84 Fahrenheit, the upper limit for coral. "My estimate is in the vicinity of 95 to 98% of the coral is bleached in the Keppels", said Berkelmans from the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
. . Marine scientists say another global bleaching episode cannot be ruled out, citing major bleaching in the Caribbean in the 2005 northern hemisphere summer, which coincided with one of the 20 warmest years on record in the United States.
We don't know what is ahead in six months for the Indian Ocean reefs as they head into their summer. This might be part of a global pattern where the warm waters continue to get warmer."
. . Other threats to coral reefs --vast ecosystems often called the nurseries of the seas-- include pollution, over-fishing, coastal development and diseases. Corals are vital as spawning grounds for many species of fish, help prevent coastal erosion and also draw tourists.
. . Bleaching is due to higher than average water temperatures, triggered mainly by global warming, scientists say. Higher temperatures force corals to expel algae living in coral polyps which provide food and color, leaving white calcium skeletons. Coral dies in about a month if the waters do not cool. The Keppels had previously bounced back from bleaching once the waters had cooled. But if temperatures remained abnormally high then that would be much more difficult.
. . High temperatures are also a condition for the formation of hurricanes, such as Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005.
Mar 17, 06: In the war on global warming, the southern English town of Woking is tilting at the establishment, but unlike Don Quixote, it is using windmills instead of charging at them. The town of 90,000 has slashed emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from civic buildings by 77% and its success is proving a model for giants like nearby London and other cities from Australia and Canada. "We see ourselves as a pathfinder for others." Woking is even testing self-powered street lights, comprising two arms with energy-generating solar panels and a cylindrical wind turbine as a head. On a dark night, the shapes remind one of the Spanish knight, tilting at his enemies.
. . The United Nations estimates that by 2030, around 4.9 billion people, or 60% of the world's population, will live in cities.
. . Woking's green plan was driven initially by the need to save money, but the town found it was also cutting CO2 emissions. As well as the CHP plant, a large hydrogen fuel cell --the first of its kind in Britain-- provides heat and power to the local leisure center, small-scale CHP units provide heat and light elsewhere and roof-top photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, power sheltered accommodation for pensioners. Fuel bills in the buildings supplied are lower than in the past, and Woking even sells power back to the national grid.
. . Gavron's team want to take this basic model and adapt it to London, where they hope to cut CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050. One third of carbon emissions come from buildings. They plan neighborhood CHP plants and microgeneration systems such as solar, photovoltaic and small wind turbines.
Mar 17, 06: A rise in the world's sea surface temperatures was the primary contributor to the formation of stronger hurricanes since 1970, a new study reports. Most scientists agree that stronger storms are likely to be the norm in future hurricane seasons.
. . In the 1970s, the average number of intense Category 4 and 5 hurricanes occurring globally was about 10 per year. Since 1990, that number has nearly doubled, averaging about 18 a year. Warming temperatures heat up the surface of the oceans, increasing evaporation and putting more water vapor into the atmosphere. This in turn provides added fuel for storms as they travel over open oceans.
. . The researchers used statistical models and techniques from a field of mathematics called information theory to determine factors contributing to hurricane strength from 1970 to 2004 in six of the world's ocean basins, including the North Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
. . They looked at four factors that are known to affect hurricane intensity:
. . * Humidity in the troposphere—the part of the atmosphere stretching from surface of the Earth to about 6 miles up
. . * Wind shear that can throttle storm formation
. . * Rising sea-surface temperatures
. . * Large-scale air circulation patterns known as "zonal stretching deformations"
. . Of these factors, only rising sea surface temperatures was found to influence hurricane intensity in a statistically significant way over a long-term basis. The other factors affected hurricane activity on short time scales only.
. . The new study potentially addresses one major criticism leveled by scientists skeptical of any strong link between sea surface temperatures and hurricane strength. "We were criticized by the seasonal forecasters for not including the other environmental factors, like wind shear, in our analysis", Emanuel said in an email. "[We didn't do so] because on time scales longer than 2-3 years, these do not seem to matter very much. This paper more or less proves this point."
. . Some scientists have explained the rising strength of hurricanes as being part of natural weather cycles in the world's oceans. In the North Atlantic, this cycle is called the Atlantic multi-decadal mode. Every 20 to 40 years, Atlantic Ocean and atmospheric conditions conspire to produce just the right conditions to cause increased storm and hurricane activity. These cycles definitely do influence hurricane intensity, but they can't be the whole story, Curry said.
. . While scientists expect stronger hurricanes based on natural cycles alone, the researchers suspect other contributing factors, since current hurricanes are even stronger than natural cycles predict. "We're not even at the peak of current cycle, we're only halfway up and already we're seeing activity in the North Atlantic that's 50% worse than what we saw during the last peak in 1950", Curry said.
Former Vice President Al Gore's second book about global warming will be published in April with the title "An Inconvenient Truth", his publisher Rodale Books said. The book is tied to a documentary of the same title about Gore's environmental campaigning which was shown at the
Sundance Film Festival. It follows up on Gore's successful 1992 book "Earth in The Balance."
Mar 14, 06: Greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and climate change have reached their highest ever levels in the atmosphere, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
. . A bulletin from the United Nations agency said the gases --the main warming culprit carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide-- "all reached new highs in 2004." WMO officials also indicated that a near record year-on-year rise in CO2 levels for 2005 recorded by U.S. monitors --well above the average for the past 10 years-- would not come as a major surprise.
. . In its first Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, to be an annual publication, the WMO said that in 2004 carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stood at 377.1 parts per million (ppm), 35% higher than in the pre-industrial age before 1750.
. . Methane, generated by intensive farming and landfills as well as the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal and which accounts for around 20% of the greenhouse effect, has risen 155% in the modern age. But its growth is slowing down, the WMO said, while nitrous oxide, which accounts for only 6% of the warming effect, is rising consistently. [Doctor: "Good news! The patient is dying more slowly!"]
. . The average annual increase in absolute amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past decade has been 1.9 ppm, slightly higher than the 1.8 ppm of 2004.
. . Leonard Barrie, chief of atmospheric research at WMO, said the greenhouse gases clearly posed a problem. "Given that the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 50 to 200 years, depending on how you calculate it ... it doesn't take a nuclear scientist to state that we're going to have this problem for a long time", he told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "If we stop now CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, it would take 50 to 100 years before we were starting to see approaches to preindustrial levels."
Mar 12, 06: The Department of Energy and some environmentalists hope that in coming decades oil companies will expand programs that boost the output of aging oilfields by injecting the gas most scientists call the main culprit in global warming. Since the early 1980s, almost as long as U.S. oil output has been waning, companies have been pumping small amounts of CO2 into old Texas oilfields to force to the surface remaining crude that is trapped between complicated rock formations.
. . Depending on the price of oil and CO2, the United States could quadruple its oil reserves to 89 billion barrels, by pumping more of the gas into oilfields, the Department of Energy said. But to get to that prize, the United States would need 350 trillion cubic feet, more than 10 times the amount in natural underground deposits of the gas, said Vello Kuuskraa, president of Advanced Resources International, whose study the DOE quoted. "The great bulk of the CO2 is going to have to come from industrial sources", said Kuuskraa. Currently 80% of CO2 pumped into U.S. oilfields comes from those natural deposits.
. . Taking CO2 from natural sources does nothing to cut emissions of the gas from coal-and-natural-gas-burning power plants, the source of 40% of CO2 emissions. With incentives, CO2 could be captured from power plants helping companies to sell credits in future cap and trade emissions markets.
. . Equipment can capture CO2 at fossil fuel-burning power plants, but the technology, in its infancy, is expensive. Utilities, such as American Electric Power and Cinergy Corp., are building clean-burning coal plants to which the equipment can be added more cheaply than conventional plants. But until the CO2-capturing technology becomes cheaper, or is required by law, they have no plans to add it to their plants.
. . U.S. utilities can't earn credits for reducing emissions as their European counterparts can in an emissions trading scheme set up under the Kyoto Protocol. President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the pact.
. . But in a report last month, Exxon Mobil Corp said carbon capture and storage is an "important option to address global CO2 emissions." BP Plc. and Occidental are considering injecting CO2 from power generation at aging California oilfields. In addition, Royal Dutch Shell Plc. and Norway's state oil company Statoil said last week they are planning the world's biggest scheme to bury CO2 from power plants off Norway. The $1.5 billion plan, due to start after 2010, would be the world's first project to use CO2 offshore.
. . Kuuskraa said producing much of the technically recoverable 89 billion barrels in the United States would make economic sense as long as the oil price remains above $30 a barrel. The price of CO2 itself, currently about $1 per thousand cubic feet, would have to fall to about 75 to 80 cents.
. . Some environmentalists are concerned about the permanence of CO2 burial especially in oilfields which by definition have been drilled repeatedly over the years. They also worry the gas could leak after the fields are fully drained of oil and forgotten about. Kuuskraa said the cost of CO2 means that companies have incentive to properly stop up drilling holes.
Mar 12, 06: Canada is experiencing its warmest winter in recorded history and the federal agency Environment Canada said Monday it may be another sign of global warming. Between December and February, the country was 3.9 degrees Celsius above normal —-the warmest winter season since temperatures were first recorded in 1948. It was especially balmy in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, where temperatures were 6 to 8 degrees Celsius above normal.
. . Several islands off Nova Scotia were inundated by thousands of pregnant seals forced to give birth on shore by unusually mild weather that has prevented the Gulf of St. Lawrence from freezing.
. . Climatogist Bob Whitewood said it smashed the previous record set in 1987 by 0.9 degrees Celsius, and was the kind of season that comes along once every 100 years.
Mar 12, 06: Dr. Daniel Fagre, a federal research scientist based at Glacier National Park in Montana, says that in 1850, the park had 150 glaciers. Today, because of global warming, there are only 27 left, with estimates that all the glaciers in the park will be gone by the year 2030.
. . One proposal to be discussed at the World Heritage and Climate Change meeting in Paris this week is a plan to designate Montana's Glacier National Park as a "world heritage site in danger" due to global warming.
Mar 10, 06: Rising air and water temperatures are altering the environment of the Bering Sea, a new study finds. The Bering Sea covers more than 700,000 square miles and is demarcated from the North Pacific Ocean by the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands. The sea is considered one of the world's most productive fisheries; its northern portions house sea ducks, gray whales, bearded seals and walruses, all of which feed on cold-water critters.
. . But warming temperatures of recent years have caused the environment to change from Arctic to sub-Arctic conditions in the region and have created an inviting haven for animals that were previously confined to the warmer waters of the south. These warmer waters are bad news for animals adapted to cold-water environments, however. These creatures have to move north in search of cooler waters, which in turn is causing problems for people who live off of them.
Mar9, 06: Climate change is likely to significantly affect economies in the Asia-Pacific region, threatening the increasingly industrialized coastal belt and hurting the region's poor, the World Bank said.
. . Rising sea levels, more intense storms and greater extremes of droughts and floods will probably cause greater loss of life and threaten the livelihoods of millions, the Bank said.
. . Countries in the region are partly to blame, the Bank said, because of their dependence on fossil fuels, and they needed to do more to promote energy efficiency to cut the emission of greenhouse gases. They also needed to become better adapted to the coming weather extremes to limit the damage and protect livelihoods.
. . The region's poor will be badly affected because climate change will affect agriculture, forestry and fisheries, industries that underpin the livelihoods of millions of impoverished people in the region.
. . Planning for a future filled with greater uncertainty was crucial, the report said. "A host of actions to adapt and mitigate climate change can be taken which are cost-effective and make economic and environmental sense", it said. These included greater energy efficiency, increased use of renewable energy such as hydropower, water conservation and planting crops that can withstand drought, salinity and higher temperatures.
Mar 8, 06: Exotic species in a little-known "Garden of Eden" in the mountains of New Guinea island are under threat from global warming, New Scientist magazine said. "A paradise world of undiscovered species and tropical glaciers in the mountains of New Guinea is disappearing faster than it can be explored."
. . Temperatures in the highlands of the tropical island were rising far faster than previously thought. Climate records compiled since the 1970s by mission stations, coffee plantations and mining companies "show a real step change, with warming of 0.3C (0.5F) every decade." That rate would make it among the fastest in the world. Scientists say global temperatures rose about 0.6C in the entire 20th century. It was unclear why the rate should be so fast on the island, shared by Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
. . Prentice said glaciers around the 5,030-meter Mount Jaya, the island's highest peak, had been in retreat for a century and estimated that they ended about 300 meters higher than when last fully mapped in the 1970s.
. . Last month, a group of international scientists led by Conservation International said they had found dozens of new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants in the Foja mountains in the west of the island. Among other rare creatures were a tree kangaroo and an egg-laying echidna. Researchers from London's Royal Botanic Gardens Kew said last week they had found a new genus of palm trees on the island.
Mar 6, 06: Evidence that humans are to blame for global warming is rising but governments are doing too little to counter the threat, the head of the United Nations climate panel said. The last IPCC report in 2001 said there was "new and stronger evidence" that gases released by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars were warming the planet. Warming may herald catastrophic climate changes such as more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising sea levels.
. . The IPCC, grouping research by about 2,000 scientists, will present its next report to the United Nations in 2007. The report is the mainstay for environmental policy-making.
Mar 3, 06: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will report soon that only greenhouse gas emissions can explain freak weather patterns. Simultaneous changes in sea ice, glaciers, droughts, floods, ecosystems, ocean acidification and wildlife migration are taking place. The global scientific body had previously said gases such as CO2 were "probably" to blame. Its latest draft report will be sent to world governments next month.
. . A source told the BBC: "The measurements from the natural world on all parts of the globe have been anomalous over the past decade. "If a few were out of kilter, we wouldn't be too worried, because the Earth changes naturally. But the fact that they are virtually all out of kilter makes us very concerned." He said the report would forecast that a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would bring a temperature rise of 2-4.5C, or maybe higher. This is an increase on projections in the last IPCC report, which suggested that the rise could be as little as 1.5C.
. . What really worries the scientists is that we are already seeing major disruptions despite having increased CO2 by just 30%. A recent scientific report commissioned by the UK government warned that the world might already be fixed on a path that would begin melting the Greenland ice cap. That in turn would start raising sea levels throughout the world.
Mar 2, 06: This year's hurricane season could match the record breaking destruction caused by storms in 2005, the United Nations warned. In 2005, an unprecedented 27 tropical storms, 15 of which became full-blown hurricanes, battered Central America and the U.S. Gulf coast, killing more than 3,000 people and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.
. . Most is earmarked for reconstruction rather than prevention. Programs to reinforce buildings and train emergency workers are expensive but Egeland insisted that every dollar spent on prevention can save millions in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Feb 27, 06: Europe's "Little Ice Age" may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study. Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says. The Little Ice Age was a period of some 300 years when Europe experienced a dip in average temperatures.
. . Dr Thomas van Hoof and his colleagues studied pollen grains and leaf remains collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast Netherlands. Monitoring the ups and downs in abundance of cereal pollen (like buckwheat) and tree pollen (like birch and oak) enabled them to estimate changes in land-use between AD 1000 and 1500. Counting stomata (pores) on ancient oak leaves provided van Hoof's team with a measure of the fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide for the same period. This is because leaves absorb carbon dioxide through their stomata, and their density varies as carbon dioxide goes up and down.
. . The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas. This bubonic plague is said to have wiped out over a third of Europe's population.
. . After AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague. The researchers think that this drop could help to explain a cooling in the climate over the following centuries.
From around 1500, Europe appears to have been gripped by a chill lasting some 300 years.
. . There are many theories as to what caused these bitter years, but popular ideas include a decrease in solar activity, an increase in volcanic activity or a change in ocean circulation.
. . Not everyone is convinced, however. Dr Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia, UK, said: "It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen."
Feb 27, 06: The growth rate of U.S. emissions of gases blamed for global warming rose in 2004, as the country burned more fossil fuel for transportation and electricity, according to federal environment regulators. The United States, the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases, released about 7.075 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, according to a draft report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The growth rate was stronger than in each of the previous two years with emissions rising 0.6% in 2003 and 0.7% in 2002. In 2001, when the economy was sluggish, emissions fell 1.6%, EPA said.
. . U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have risen 15.8% from 1990 to 2004, according to the EPA. The EPA follows U.N. methods in assessing greenhouse gas emissions and is the official U.S. tally of greenhouse emissions. In December, the Department of Energy said U.S. emissions of heat-trapping gases rose 2% last year.
Feb 24, 06: The smoldering method of burning waste called slash-and-char -—similar to the process used by ancient Amazonians—- reduces greenhouse gases by capturing carbon from the air and storing it in the ground. It also cuts down methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils.
. . Alternatively, in most parts of the world, farmers use slash-and-burn methods to prepare fields and crops, which release greenhouse gases. Adopting a slash-and-char approach could result in a 12% reduction in carbon emissions by humans, Lehmann said.
. . To curb the archaeological destruction in Brazil and improve agriculture production worldwide, researchers have come up with a modern method of creating this black magic earth. Take some normal soil, add a handful of charcoal, a bunch of leaves and a dollop of cow poop. You've got modern-day terra preta, called bio-char.
. . "Bio-char has these very efficient properties of retaining nutrients. It will retain more carbon in the soil better than any uncharred organic matter", Lehmann said. "The knowledge we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate", said Johannes Lehmann, a biogeochemist at Cornell University.
Feb 20, 06: Climate change that strengthens the El Nino weather patterns could endanger food supplies for more than 20 million people in Africa, a new study warns. A new analysis of 40 years of African crop and livestock records shows a close association between El Ninos and variations in production of corn, sorghum, millet and groundnuts such as peanuts. In southern Africa, crop production could be down by as much as 20% to 50% in strong El Nino years.
Feb 18, 06: Greenhouse gases are being released 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past. Emissions that caused a global warming episode 55 million years ago were released over 10,000 years.
. . Burning fossil fuels is likely to release the same amount over the next three centuries, the scientists claim.
. . Professor James Zachos of the University of California at Santa Cruz studied the period of global warming known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Temperatures shot up by 5C (9F) during this episode, driven by a massive release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. By probing sediments on the ocean floor, Professor Zachos was able to determine that about 4.5 trillion tons of carbon entered the atmosphere over a period of 10,000 years.
. . The fear for climate scientists is that higher temperatures could slow down ocean mixing, reducing the ocean's capacity to absorb CO2. This could cause "positive feedback", with reduced absorption leaving more CO2 in the air, causing more warming. "Records of past climate change show that change starts slowly and then accelerates. The system crosses some sort of threshold."
Feb 18, 06: The entire carbon dioxide emissions created in Europe could be stored underneath the North Sea, if the infrastructure were put in place, a Norwegian company has claimed. Gas and oil firm Statoil said the undersea aquifer beneath its Sleipner platforms in the North Sea, 200 miles off the Norwegian coast, is capable of permanently holding CO2. "There are calculations which say it could handle all of Europe's CO2 emissions for several hundreds of years", Statoil's Senior Vice President for the Environment.
. . The aquifer was developed because the methane gas that passes through the platform is rich in carbon dioxide, most of which has to be removed before the gas could be sold to customers. Rather than simply vent it to the atmosphere, the platform separates it and then injects it back beneath the sea bed into a natural sandstone aquifer --a honeycomb of rock-- about 900m below sea level. In total, around a million tons of carbon dioxide is stored every year. However, although the carbon dioxide has been removed, the methane gas from the platform will ultimately be burnt - producing the greenhouse gas.
. . And Statoil's development of the site was ultimately a business decision, as Norway has a high carbon tax --meaning it would have cost the company more to release the CO2 into the air than remove it for permanent storage.
. . Mr Fraeren explained that if other countries wished to use the North Sea aquifer to store their CO2, there would be major costs involved. "It means pipelines from the CO2 emission points in Europe --with oil and gas plants producing the most volumes-- and these pipelines being drilled to this plant and then pumping it in", he said. "It will be a lot of money, and the money has to come from somewhere."
. . "The Norwegian government has great ambitions regarding capture, use and storage of CO2", said Norwegian Energy Minister Odd Roger Enoksen. "This is challenging, but I think it is necessary to do this." He explained that there is currently a plan to link the Sleipner platforms to a gas power plant on Norway's west coast, with CO2 capture beginning in 2009.
Feb 18, 06: A new study of ancient sediments and fossils indicates tropical Atlantic water ranged from 91 to 107 degrees Fahrenheit between 100 million and 84 million years ago. The atmosphere had more heat-trapping carbon dioxide back then. The same region today is typically 75 to 82 degrees. Hot tubs get very uncomfortable for most people above about 104 degrees.
. . Scientists don't know what might have caused ocean temperatures to get so high. Climate models that consider increases in carbon dioxide can't account for it, Bice said.
Feb 16, 06: Scarce rains are stirring fears of a repeat of 2005's severe drought in France and Spain this year, with water reserves already low and falling, officials said. The water deficit in much of the country was more than 70% at the end of January, she added, up from 50% at the start of the month. After a heatwave in 2003 that killed thousands of people and a dry 2004/2005 winter, France was forced to impose water rationing across the country last year, slapping irrigation curbs on farmers and hosepipe bans on the public.
Feb 9, 06: In the late 20th Century, the northern hemisphere experienced its most widespread warmth for 1,200 years, according to the journal Science. The findings support evidence pointing to unprecedented recent warming of the climate linked to greenhouse emissions. University of East Anglia researchers measured changes in fossil shells, tree rings, ice cores and other past temperature records or "proxies". They also looked at people's diaries from the last 750 years, & analysed instrument measurements of temperature from 1856 onwards to establish the geographic extent of recent warming.
. . Then they compared this data with evidence dating back as far as AD 800. The analysis confirmed periods of significant warmth in the Northern Hemisphere from AD 890 - 1170 (the so-called "Medieval Warm Period") and for much colder periods from 1580 - 1850 (the "Little Ice Age").
. . The UEA team showed that the present warm period is the most widespread temperature anomaly of any kind since the ninth century. "The last 100 years is more striking than either [the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age]. It is a period of widespread warmth affecting nearly all the records that we analyzed from the same time."
. . The records included long life evergreen trees growing in Scandinavia, Siberia and the Rockies which had been cored to reveal the patterns of wide and narrow tree rings over time. Wider rings related to warmer temperatures. The chemical composition of ice from cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheets revealed which years were warmer than others.
. . "As we get more and more evidence in, it is looking as if the current period is the warmest for over 1,000 years."
Feb 7, 06: The world has seven years to take vital decisions and implement measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions or it could be too late, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. Blair said the battle against global warming would only be won if the United States, India and China were part of a framework.
Feb 6, 06: The National Association of Evangelicals said that it has been unable to reach a consensus on global climate change and will not take a stand on the issue, disappointing environmentalists who had hoped that evangelical Christians would prod the Bush administration to soften its position on global warming. Over the past four years, a growing number of evangelical groups have embraced environmental causes, urging Christians to engage in "Creation care" and campaigning against gas-guzzling SUVs.
Feb 2, 06: People played golf this winter in Maine. In shorts. Buttercups have been blooming in Montana. In Ohio, an ice-free Lake Erie allowed an early start to seasonal ferry service. And the sap started running early in Vermont.While January plunged much of Europe and Russia into the deep freeze, it appeared to be remarkably mild across the United States. Federal scientists haven't calculated yet whether it ranks as the warmest January on record nationwide, but "it's certainly going to be right up there."
. . Just how warm was January?
. . _Warmest on record in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Green Bay, Wis., Kansas City, Mo., Riverton, Wyo., and Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. It barely missed tying the record for Iowa.
. . _Second-warmest in Maine and in Milwaukee, Wis.
. . _Third-warmest in Memphis, Tenn., and Detroit.
. . _Fourth-warmest in New York's Central Park (tied with January 1913), in Greensboro, N.C., and Louisville, Ky.
. . _Eighth-warmest in Denver, and the warmest since 1986.
. . _10th warmest in Baltimore.
. . _Warmest since 1950 in Buffalo, N.Y., and Nashville, Tenn.
. . _12th-warmest in New Mexico.
. . Minneapolis and St. Paul had the warmest January in 160 years.
. . Temperatures in Bismarck, N.D., stayed above zero the entire month, a balmy signal not seen since 1875.
Feb 3, 06: Russians have had to shoot three unusually aggressive polar bears so far this year, in what environmental group WWF said was a sign the bears' feeding patterns were being disrupted by global warming.
Feb 3, 06: Around 1,500 seal pups were swept out to sea and drowned by a tidal surge off Canada's east coast this week after a lack of ice cover meant their mothers were forced to give birth on a small island, environment officials said. When seal pups are born, they weigh only about 9 kg and have no blubber, which means they find it hard to float. A resident on the island described how the mother seals had frantically tried to push their tiny pups back on to land as they floundered in the storm-tossed water.
. . Abnormally warm conditions this year mean there is no ice in the strait, so some seals had to give birth on the beaches of Pictou Island. Unusually high tides hit the island this week after a major storm.
. . The lack of ice cover off Eastern Canada could also cause problems for the large harp seal population, which usually gives birth in late March near the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Feb 3, 06: A top British environmentalist said the developing world needed to spend at least $40 billion more every year to fight climate change. "If you look at it in relation to the energy and electricity bills which the developing world is already running, it would be far cheaper if they invest in cleaner technologies", he said.
. . The International Energy Agency says if all the world's governments stick with current policies, global energy needs and carbon emissions will be 50% higher in 2030 than 2005.
. . The Delhi meeting comes ahead of an major UN conference on biodiversity to be held in Brazil in March, which aims to reduce the current rate of loss of species, save forests from loggers and stop deserts advancing.
Feb 2, 06: Britain says it has cut its carbon dioxide emissions while its economy has been growing well, and environmentalists say low-carbon economic growth could be a reality using renewables like wind and waves and energy efficiency.
Feb 2, 06: European Union lawmakers and governments have agreed on rules that would clamp down on environmentally harmful fluorinated gases that are found in a range of products including cars, appliances and shoes. Known as F-gases, they are used in refrigeration and air conditioning and are considered much more potent in warming the earth than the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). The agreement allows countries with stronger rules like Denmark and Austria to keep them, and other countries like Sweden to adopt stronger ones if desired.
. . A related law will prohibit the use of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) 134a, a refrigerant used globally in car air conditioners, from January 2011 in new vehicle models and from January 2017 in all new vehicles in the EU.
. . The fluorinated gases covered by the rules include HFCs, perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), all of which make up two% of EU greenhouse gas emissions now. Most F-gases have a global warming effect thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. SF6, it said, was 23,900 times more potent in its global warming effects than CO2.
Feb 2, 06: A widely reported study last week said 2005 was the warmest on record. But headlines failed to note that the results were not concrete and a new study out this week challenges the findings. Whatever the outcome, scientists say it is all moot: Last year was surprisingly warm and the record will fall soon enough. Their study concludes that the global temperature in 2005 can't be statistically distinguished from the record set in 1998.
. . Hansen iterated his caveat. "I believe that 2005 is the warmest year, because the main source of difference is the Arctic, and I believe it is likely that our estimate there is in the right ballpark even though it is based on some extrapolations", Hansen said. "However, I admit that it could be wrong, in which case 2005 might be slightly cooler than 1998."
. . In both studies, there are margins of error. Much of the analysis involves satellite data that covers just the past three decades or so. Complicating matters, ground-based temperature-monitoring stations are sparse or nonexistent in many parts of the world, particularly in the Arctic. And a key to the results are satellite data that note sea surface temperatures since 1982.
. . The other NOAA data set and analysis technique (which will become the primary method used henceforth) puts 2005 slightly warmer than 1998. It has 2005 at 1.12 degrees above the norm and 1998 at 1.06 degrees above the norm. But the report states that "uncertainties associated with the various factors and methodologies used in data set development make 2005 statistically indistinguishable from 1998."
. . Climatologists are impressed with nature's showing in 2005, because by conventional thinking it should not have been first or second on the all-time list. That's because 1998, the previous hottest year, saw temperatures boosted by a strong El Nino, which was not in place during 2005. "If we had had an El Nino, how warm would it have been? However, it doesn't matter much. I am confident that we will exceed both of these years within the next few years."
Jan 31, 06: A United Nations meeting in Germany this week is set to pave the way for hundreds of projects to curb greenhouse gas emissions in Russia and eastern Europe. Officials meeting on February 2-3 in Bonn will start mapping out rules for the Joint Implementation (JI) scheme, one of three mechanisms devised under the international Kyoto Protocol.
. . JI is designed to offer rich countries low-cost ways to meet Kyoto emissions-reduction goals by earning credits through investment in climate-friendly projects abroad. Under JI, investments must be made in countries with emissions reduction goals under Kyoto. Most projects are expected to focus on Russia and eastern Europe where there is massive scope to cut emissions by improving energy efficiency and industrial processes like power production. "Russia and Ukraine have the biggest potential but they still have to sort out their (domestic) systems for approving projects." Projects include green energy plants like windfarms or overhauls of existing industrial sites to cut pollution and energy use.
. . Eastern Europe is a natural seller of Kyoto credits because the closure of heavy industry since the fall of Communism slashed its emissions and left it well within Kyoto targets.
Jan 30, 06: The world must halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiraling toward destruction, scientists said. Saying that evidence of catastrophic global warming from burning fossil fuels was now incontrovertible, the experts from oceanographers to economists, climatologists and politicians stressed that inaction was unacceptable.
. . "Climate change is worse than was previously thought and we need to act now", Henry Derwent, special climate change adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said. Researcher Rachel Warren from the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, who contributed to the book "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", said carbon dioxide emissions had to peak no later than 2025, and painted a picture of rapidly approaching catastrophe.
. . Global average temperatures were already 0.6 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and a rise of just 0.4C more would see coral reefs wiped out, flooding in the Himalayas and millions more people facing hunger, she said.
. . A rise of 3C --just half of what scientists have warned is possible this century-- would see 400 million people going hungry, entire species being wiped out and killer diseases such as dengue fever reaching pandemic proportions.
. . "To prevent all of this needs global emissions to peak in 2025 and then come down by 2.6% a year", Warren said. "But even then we would probably face a rise of 2 degrees because of the delay built into the climate system. So we have to start to plan to adapt." she added.
Jan 30, 06: Portugal's south risks turning into a desert as temperatures rise, its coasts will erode and droughts will become more frequent, the country's most complete report on the impact of global warming showed. The report concludes that Portugal will be one of the hardest hit by global warming in Europe in coming decades.
. . Last year, Portugal recorded its worst drought since 1931 while this weekend, snow fell in Lisbon for the first time in decades. Last year's forest fires destroyed 325,226 hectares (803,600 acres), the second worst in history.
. . The report covered the impact of global warming in Portugal on water resources, agriculture, fisheries, human health, energy and coastal regions.
. . During this century, maximum summer temperatures will rise between three and seven degrees, with a "major increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves", the report said. Rainfall could decrease between 20 and 40% over the next 100 years, mostly because of increased concentration of rainfall during the winter months, which could cause floods. The report predicts an increase in storms, including the possibility of storm surges of up to one meter at some points along Portugal's coast. That could raise the rate of coastal erosion by between 15 and 25% by the end of the century. Apart from increased risk of forest fires, forests in dry areas such as the central Alentejo region could disappear altogether. Some tree species could migrate from the south to the north and from the interior to the coast, the report said.
. . Consumers worried about heating bills could take some comfort from the report, although they may find themselves instead spending to power their air conditioners.
Jan 30, 06: NASA's top climate scientist said the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture in December calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.
. . In an interview with the newspaper, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that officials at the space agency's headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public", the Times quoted Hansen as saying, adding that the scientist planned to ignore the new restrictions. Without leadership by the United States, he told The Times, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."
. . Hansen said that NASA headquarters officials repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who warned Hansen of "dire consequences" if such statements continued. The officers confirmed the warning to the Times. A NASA spokesman denied any effort to silence Hansen.
Jan 30, 06: More frequent floods and drought, blamed by some scientists on global warming, brought a near 20 percent rise in natural disasters in 2005. Without the earthquake and the tsunami, the death toll in both years was under 20,000, confirming a trend for more frequent, but less lethal disasters.
. . The bad news was that rising urbanization, with people in developing countries often crowding into environmentally dangerous areas around big cities, meant the risk of disasters was growing.
. . In 2005, there were 360 natural disasters, ranging from hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,322 people in New Orleans, to a measles epidemic in Nigeria in which more than 500 died. Floods and droughts made up 237 of the total.
Jan 30, 06: The threat posed by climate change may be greater than previously thought, and global warming is advancing at an unsustainable rate, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a report.
. . The government-commissioned report collates evidence presented at a conference on climate change hosted by Britain's Meteorological Office last year. It says scientists now have "greater clarity and reduced uncertainty" about the impacts of climate change. "It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable", he wrote.
. . Scientists have warned of climatic "tipping points" such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down. In the British report, the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, warned that the huge west Antarctic ice sheet may be starting to disintegrate, an event that could raise sea levels by 5 meters.
Jan 26, 06: Former Vice President Al Gore, often accused of being stiff throughout his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign, was full of anger and passion as he visited the Sundance Film Festival this week. Since "losing" the presidency, the self-described "recovering politician" has found a new mission: saving the planet.
. . He began by making the rounds of college towns on his own as he delivered his PowerPoint lecture on global warning. But now he's got a new ally in Hollywood. With the assistance of filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, Gore's message rings loud and clear in the Sundance documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
. . What Gore wants to do is to convince humankind --especially Americans, who use up most of the resources on this planet-- to rescue Earth from global warming. The movie is a glossy, high-def digital version of his usual presentation. In one scene that uses a giant chart to demonstrate carbon monoxide and global temperatures soaring off the chart in the next 10 years, Gore ascends to the top of the 90-foot graphic on a lift.
. . His second book about global warming will be published in April with the title "An Inconvenient Truth", his publisher Rodale Books said. The book is tied to a documentary of the same title about Gore's environmental campaigning which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. It follows up on Gore's successful 1992 book "Earth in The Balance."
Jan 25, 06: After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes.
That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period. Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood. "The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight."
. . On any given day, about half of Earth is covered by clouds, which reflect more sunlight than land and water. Clouds keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight, but they can also serve as blankets to trap warmth. High thin clouds are better blankets, while low thick clouds make better coolers.
. . Separately, satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8%, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13%. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased.
. . Research shows condensation trails, or contrails from jet airplanes, fuel more high-altitude clouds. But they have not been shown to account for all the observed change.
Jan 24, 06: Japanese scientists have gone back in time to study the earth's climate by drilling more than 3 km into Antarctica's ice sheet. The cores are among the oldest samples yet extracted by scientists and hoped bubbles of gas, such as carbon dioxide, trapped in the core samples will offer clues to past patterns of global climate change.
. . Eight of the 10 warmest years since records began have occurred in the past decade.
. . Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment: "It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change."
. . "We are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind." Kolbert concluded with this shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."
Jan 11, 06: German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30% of the annual methane found in the atmosphere. The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
. . Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in its ability to trap heat. Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tons worldwide are produced annually.
. . The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases. Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants. Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
Jan 9, 06: France and Spain are ringing alarm bells over the climate, fearing a repeat of last year's drought that sparked deadly forest fires, costly crop failures and widespread water rationing in southern Europe. France's environment minister has said three dry years in a row have left the country facing possibly record water shortages this year.
. . The European Environment Agency (EEA) says water shortages and soaring temperatures in southern Europe are becoming the norm, and its climate models suggest much of the continent may start to become drier as deserts advance.
Jan 6, 06: A leading Australian scientist believes the world has just 20 years to turn the tide on global warming and that leaders at a summit in Sydney next week must take concrete steps to tackle the problem.
. . Tim Flannery, a respected Australian scientist and author, says the world's economic powerhouses must take drastic measures over the next two decades before Earth's climate is irreversibly altered. Flannery's projection is based on the period he says it will take —-at current emissions levels-— to pump out enough carbon dioxide to warm the globe by around two degrees, producing "catastrophic" climate change.
. . Flannery said there is "no evidence in the world today" that a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse emissions could work. Only government regulation or "market-based instruments" —-such as carbon taxes, incentives and government subsidies on green energy — would have the necessary impact, he said.
. . Frank Muller, a former adviser to U.S. President Bill Clinton and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, agrees. "We need a price on carbon if its really going to drive investment, whether that's a carbon tax or emissions trading", he said. "You (also) need to address specific barriers to the adoption of existing (energy efficient) technologies."
Jan 5, 06: A rapid rise in global temperature 55 million years ago caused major disruption to ocean currents, new research shows. Scientists found that the disruption took 140,000 years to reverse. The scientists say the phenomenon may be important for understanding the impact of present day climate warming.
. . The time in question was an extraordinary epoch in Earth history --the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when the global average temperature rose by anything between four and seven Celsius in a few *thousand years. It has been cited as the reason for the spread of mammals around the world, and for the evolution of bats.
. . Computer models of modern climate suggest that temperature changes could affect ocean currents, and recent research has found indications that it is happening now in the north Atlantic. But the disruption 55 million years ago took in more than a single ocean; the entire global system appears to have altered course.
. . The reason why temperatures shot up during the PETM are unclear; but carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere appear to have been extremely high, about a thousand times higher than currently. The suspicion is that some kind of feedback mechanism may have been involved.
. . One theory is that an initial warming changed the distribution of heat in the oceans so that deposits of gas hydrates on the sea floor were released, with carbon dioxide and methane rising to the surface and entering the atmosphere, causing further greenhouse warming. The new research provides some support for this theory, as well as demonstrating that abrupt temperature changes can have a long-term impact on ocean currents which are, as the Gulf Stream demonstrates, intimately tied to weather systems.
. . Some researchers have raised concern that release of gas hydrates could contribute to present-day global warming.
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