The Basic Physics of the Greenhouse Effect.
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THE NEWS
Apr 27, 07: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he intends to use Al Gore's "very powerful political message" on climate change to mobilize international awareness and political support for international action on global warming.
. . Ban said that during a meeting, the former U.S. vice-president, whose climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" recently won two Academy Awards, offered to help the UN tackle the problem.
. . Ban iterated that addressing the global warming problem will be one of his top priorities as secretary-general. "I am going to take an important role in mobilizing political will in close coordination with the European Commission when I attend the G-8 Summit meeting in June", Ban said. "This will be one of the important agenda (items)."
Apr 28, 07: On its way to being stored in the darkest depths of the ocean, CO2 may be consumed and recycled by marine organisms as it enters... the twilight zone.
. . However, this is no science fiction realm. It's a term used by scientists to describe a strange, but real intermediate depth in the seas where CO2 can be trapped, thereby preventing it from sinking deeper where it can do no harm to Earth's climate.
. . “The twilight zone is a critical link between the surface and the deep ocean”, said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, co-author of the new marine twilight zone study. “We’re interested in what happens in the twilight zone, what sinks into it and what actually sinks out of it.”
. . The deep ocean is a critical storage area for CO2, keeping it from re-entering the atmosphere. The CO2-sink cycle starts when marine plants in the sunlit surface layer of the ocean grab CO2 from the air to use in photosynthesis. When the plants die, they sink as so-called “marine snow” to the deep ocean where the CO2 is stored and prevented from re-entering the atmosphere.
. . But the new study finds that not all of this CO2 makes it past the region of the ocean known as the mesopelagic or “the twilight zone” -—roughly 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface where there isn’t enough light for photosynthesis—- which acts as a gateway to the deep ocean below.
. . Animals and bacteria in the twilight zone often consume and further decompose the sinking marine snow, converting the CO2 into dissolved organic and inorganic forms that can find their way back to the surface and then the atmosphere. “Without this long-term storage, there is little influence on atmospheric levels of CO2."
. . They found that only 20% of CO2 in the ocean surface made it past the twilight zone off Hawaii, and only 50% passed through the gateway near Japan. They aren’t sure why these regional differences are found, but they throw a monkey wrench into calculations predicting the impact of the ocean’s role in offsetting the impacts of greenhouse gases.
Apr 28, 07: Temperatures from Belgium to Italy are averaging more than three degrees above the 30-year norm. The office added there was a big chance of a repeat of the European heat wave of 2003 which killed some 35,000 people and which scientists attributed to global warming. Grain crops are showing signs of drought stress.
. . In the Netherlands, the KNMI weather institute said this month had already broken records as the warmest, driest and sunniest April and noted global warming was one of the reasons. They've not had rain since March 22, and April is set to be the driest in at least 100 years. Farmers have started pumping water from canals and rivers to irrigate their crops.
. . Germany has also recorded the highest April average temperature at 12 degrees, and the most hours of sunshine at more than 276, since records began in 1901, according to preliminary estimates by the German Weather Service. The lack of rainfall prompted several German states to issue warnings about the risk of forest fires which have hit neighbors Switzerland and Austria.
. . Drought has hit Hungary's key grain regions and may severely reduce grain and oilseed crops, leading trading firm Agrograin said. "In mid-April, the average temperature was 5-6 degrees Celsius higher than usual."
. . Italy's river Po, which waters the region accounting for one-third of the country's agricultural production, fell on Sunday to 6.53 meters below its normal level at one control point, having fallen 80 cm in a week.
Apr 27, 07: The Canadian government has published its strategy on climate change, which acknowledges that the country will not meet its Kyoto Protocol commitment. Its new target is to cut emissions by 20% between now and 2020. Canada is the first nation to publicly abandon its Kyoto target without leaving the protocol.
. . Environment groups have labelled the strategy a sham, and say that when combined with industrial policies, the country's emissions could rise.
Apr 27, 07: The UK Met Office has released figures showing that this month is likely to be the warmest April since records began. Forecasters say this month is on course to set new records in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The researchers found that spring was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it was 30 years ago.
. . Oak trees have come out into leaf very well, but many ash trees are still quite bare. This could present problems for local food chains. "You may have a situation where an insect relies on a particular plant, and birds or other animals rely on that insect further up the food chain. "If there is a breakdown in the synchrony between them then it could be disastrous", Dr Sparks warned. "We may have a butterfly species, for example, whose caterpillars feed on only a very narrow range of plants. They must maintain synchrony with those plants; if they don't then that species will suffer badly."
Apr 27, 07: Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to help clean China's air and water and combat global warming by phasing out tax breaks and discounts on land and electricity for highly polluting industries. "More work on energy conservation and emissions reduction is urgently required to deal with global climate change", Wen said. "Our country is a major coal producer and consumer, and reducing polluting emissions is a responsibility we should bear."
. . China's coal habit has made it a major contributor to greenhouse gases. It committed itself to cutting 20% of its energy use for every unit of gross domestic product by 2010, but last year it failed to meet the first phase — a 4% reduction. Instead, energy use fell by only 1.2%. Sulfur dioxide and other polluting emissions, meanwhile, are supposed to fall by 10% by 2010, but last year they rose slightly.
. . Wen also said China should work harder to create a system whereby polluters pay for environmental damage they cause, and enterprises investing in clean energy are rewarded. He also called for continued price reforms on natural gas, heating fuel and water to encourage energy conservation, without giving a timeframe for price increases.
. . China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases, but as a developing nation it is exempt from its mandatory cutbacks.
Apr 27, 07: Climate change is affecting the growth of fish, with those living in warmer, shallow waters growing faster and species in cooling deep ocean waters growing slower, according to an Australian study.
. . The research by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found fish were growing faster in waters above a depth of 250 meters and had slower growth rates below 1,000 meters. "With increasing global warming, temperatures at intermediate depths are likely to rise near-globally. This could mean that over the course of time, the decrease in growth rates for the deep-water species could slow or even be reversed", said Thresher.
. . The study found sea temperatures off east Tasmania had risen nearly two degrees C, while a southerly shift in South Pacific winds had strengthened the warm, southerly flowing East Australian Current which runs down Australia's east coast.
. . To gauge the growth rates of fish, the scientists studied the earbones of eight fish species which show similar characteristics to the growth rings used to determine the age of a tree.
Apr 26, 07: Ancient volcanoes may have caused a dramatic warming of the Earth's atmosphere that raised sea temperatures and killed off many marine species, resulting in a "planetary emergency", U.S. and European scientists said.
. . The discovery shows the impact of the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and may shed light on planetary changes wrought by more recent [human] causes of global warming, the scientists reported. The giant prehistoric eruptions, they believe, may have been the catalyst that pushed Greenland and northwest Europe apart to create the North Atlantic Ocean.
. . "There has been evidence in the marine record of this period of global warming, and evidence in the geologic record of the eruptions at roughly the same time, but until now there has been no direct link between the two", Robert Duncan of Oregon State University, who worked on the study, said.
. . They said the volcanoes erupted off the coast of Greenland and in the western British Isles about 55 million years ago, spewing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. That triggered a 222,000-year period of warming that raised sea surface temperatures by 5 degrees C in the tropics and more than 6 degrees C in the Arctic and increased the acidity of the oceans. The resulting "planetary emergency", as scientists have called it, wiped out 30 percent to 50 percent of the planet's deep sea creatures.
. . "The type of volcano eruption described here has not been seen over the past 1,000 years, and therefore volcanoes are unlikely to have contributed significantly to recent climate change", Highwood said.
. . Some more recent volcanoes, such as the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, actually cooled the Earth by adding more sulfate aerosols to the upper atmosphere, which reflected sunlight back into space.
Apr 26, 07: Mars is a very windy place --so windy, in fact, that bright, oxidized martian soil is being scoured away by martian winds and dust devils to reveal darker, sub-surface soil with the end result of making the whole planet warmer. Mars is experiencing its own brand of climate change. The mechanism for the warming is due to the change in brightness, or "albedo" of the martian surface. Is this related to planet earth's greenhouse gas driven climate change? No.
. . Lori Fenton, together with her colleagues at NASA Ames Research Center and the USGS in Flagstaff Arizona, published an article in the journal Nature revealing the phenomenon of the rise in the martian global temperature over the past 20 years. The rise, less than 2 for both surface and air temp, is still significant from a geologic perspective.
Apr 23, 07: The rodent population in six Peruvian regions has ballooned due to unusual weather patterns and the government declared a state of emergency to control the plague, including in the capital city, Lima. The rodents flourish in some areas because of higher-than-normal temps, which favor their reproductive cycle.
. . The rampant rodents have affected nearly 150,000 people and 32,100 acres of land covered by crops, livestock and naturally growing vegetation. The plague has cost the South American country nearly $5 million and could pose a health hazard if the creatures spread disease via the food supply.
Apr 23, 07: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency repeatedly refused to say today how soon he will comply with a Supreme Court ruling and decide whether to regulate CO2, the leading gas linked to global warming.
. . EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, appearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was asked repeatedly to provide a timetable for responding to the April 2 Supreme Court decisions. The court said the Clean Air Act makes clear the agency must regulate CO2 if it's found that it endangers public health.
. . The legal argument has been settled and "now there's is an unmistakable green light to take action now", Sen. Barbara Boxer, the committee's chairman, told Johnson: "There is no excuse for delay."
. . But Johnson called the court's ruling complex and said he did not want to be tied to a specific timetable. "I don't hear in your voice a sense of urgency", Boxer told Johnson.
. . "Why has it been so difficult to convince you that your agency should protect the environment?" Sen. Frank Lautenberg, asked Johnson. "Stop denying the impact of global warming."
. . "What is the most serious environmental hazard that we face", Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked. Johnson again wouldn't be pinned down. "You astonish me", Whitehouse snapped.
. . Two former EPA administrators —-Carol Browner from the Clinton administration, and William Reilly from the first Bush administration-— said it is clear that CO2 should be controlled because of its impact on global warming. "If I were EPA administrator", Reilly said, "I would welcome that authority."
Apr 23, 07: Fossils of a hippopotamus-like creature on an Arctic island show the climate was once like that of Florida, giving clues to risks from modern global warming, a scientist said. Fossil footprints of a pantodont, a plant-eating creature weighing about 400 kg, add to evidence of sequoia-type trees and crocodile-like beasts in the Arctic millions of years ago when greenhouse gas concentrations in the air were high. Many parts of the globe near the equator would have been too hot for modern plants and animals that have adapted to a modern climate, he said.
. . "Where we are now was once a temperate rainforest", he said, at the end of a horizontal mine shaft 5 kms inside a mountain and 300 meters below the surface. He pointed to a row of footprint impressions in the roof of the mine north of Longyearbyen, the main settlement on the barren treeless Norwegian archipelago 1,000 km from the North Pole.
. . Sluijs said forests grew in the Arctic when CO2 was at about 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere because of natural swings in the climate. And he said such concentrations point to risks with surging modern emissions stoked by human use of fossil fuels --greenhouse gas concentrations are at the highest in at least 650,000 years and rising fast.
. . CO2 levels are now at almost 390 per million in the atmosphere, up from 270 before the Industrial Revolution and rising fast. Sluijs said they could reach 1,000 parts per million by 2100 if not held in check.
Apr 23, 07: After two reports predicting a warmer Earth where life is fundamentally changed, a U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next month will issue a third study describing how a united world can avert the worst, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure controls.
. . Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose as little as 3% of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. "Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling in the same direction", said British researcher Rachel Warren, one of the report's authors.
. . For one thing, the governments of such major emitters as the US, China and India will have to join the Kyoto Protocol countries of Europe and Japan in imposing cutbacks in CO2 and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, power plants and other sources. Emissions can be cut below current levels if the world shifts away from CO2-heavy fuels like coal, embraces energy efficiency and significantly reduces deforestation.
. . The third report makes clear the world must quickly embrace a basket of technological options —-both already available and developing-— just to keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees C.
. . The draft notes that significant cuts could come from making buildings more energy-efficient, especially in the developing world, through better insulation, lighting and other steps, and by converting from coal to natural gas, nuclear power and renewable energy such as wind, solar and biofuels.
. . Less significant but also important would be steps to make motor vehicles more fuel-efficient, reduce deforestation, and plant more trees as a CO2 "sink", absorbing CO2. Even capturing methane emitted by livestock and its manure would help, the report says.
. . Over the next century, it says, such technology as hydrogen-powered fuel cells, advanced hybrid and electric vehicles with better batteries, and CO2 sequestration will become more commercially feasible. It says taking "optimal" mitigation measures might by 2030 stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 445 to 534 parts per million, up from an estimated 430 ppm today.
. . It indicates that stabilizing concentrations relatively quickly at 450 ppm —-an unlikely scenario-— might keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees C over preindustrial temperatures, a level scientists think might avert severe damage.
. . Achieving the 445-534 ppm range might cost under 3% of global gross domestic product (GDP) over two decades. That compares favorably to global economic growth that every year has averaged almost 3% since 2000. The damage from unabated climate change, meanwhile, might eventually cost the global economy between 5 and 20% of GDP every year, according to a British government report last year.
. . The UK must show "leadership" on the environment if countries such as China, India and Brazil are to reduce their CO2 emissions, Tony Blair has said. He said businesses, government and the public had to "step up to the mark and do something". Mr Blair's comments came as he met the bosses of eight of Britain's biggest firms, and ahead of a meeting of 13 of the world's biggest countries in June.
. . Environment Secretary David Miliband, also attending a meeting with Mr Blair and business leaders in London, said: "2007 is going to be an absolutely crucial year for the battle against climate change."
Apr 21, 07: One million new trees will join the urban landscape of New York City by the year 2017 to reduce air pollution, cool temperatures and help improve the city's long term sustainability, officials said.
. . The tree program is one of 127 environmental proposals that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was set to outline Sunday in a speech at the Museum of Natural History, timed with the observance of Earth Day. His administration has been working for more than a year on the package of ideas, which is also expected to include a controversial plan to charge motorists extra for driving into certain parts of Manhattan, as a way to cut down on traffic congestion and pollution.
. . Bloomberg, whose second term expires at the end of 2009, has a goal of reducing New York City's CO2 emissions by 30% over the next two decades. He has said that the population is likely to grow by another million in that time —-up from 8.2 million today-— and that the city needs a plan now to deal with the strain on infrastructure and the environment.
. . Today, New York City has 5.2 million trees, or 24% canopy cover. By comparison, Chicago's canopy cover is 11% and the rate for Atlanta is 37%.
Apr 19, 07: The greatest threat facing humanity is climate change, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, and praised a Norwegian initiative to reduce the country's net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
. . Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said that his Labor party would set the world's most ambitious climate goals, and presented a three-point plan during his party's annual congress, which this year focused on climate change.
. . Annan said Norway's plan should set a standard for other nations. "If we do not get the climate under control, if we do not confront the challenges of the environment, then everything else may be washed aside", Annan said at a news conference. "The environment is going to write the manuscript on how we proceed around the world, otherwise it will take away the future of our children", he said.
. . Stoltenberg's three-point plan calls for reducing pollution by 10% more than promised under the Kyoto Agreement by 2012, a 30% emissions cut by 2020, and lowering net emissions to zero by 2050. The last goal would be obtained by using cleaner technology at home, buying CO2 quotas abroad and helping developing countries build clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power.
. . The time is coming, Annan said, when public opinion would embolden governments to take similar steps, because "people are beginning to understand. And when they understand, politicians will have the courage to act."
. . Norway is a key world oil exporter, and has set aside surplus wealth in an investment fund now worth about $300 billion.
Apr 20, 07: Tiny they may be, but fossil diatoms discovered deep under the ocean floor are revealing new details about Antarctica's warmer past.
. . The single-celled algae were pulled up by the Antarctic Geological Drilling (Andrill) Program, which has been operating from the Ross Ice Shelf. Some are new to science; others would normally only be expected in waters with higher temperatures than today. Scientists say the diatoms will help them understand future climate changes. At least 60 marked fluctuations are recorded.
. . The project's researchers have been fascinated by layers thick with diatoms. The presence of some species normally associated with waters much further to the north indicates large areas of the shelf have undergone major retreat, with the ice possibly even withdrawing on to the Antarctic landmass.
Apr 20, 07: For the farmers of Kenya, life is a constant contest for grass and water between their herds and the wild animals that share the land. Now they are waging a new struggle, this time against the international animal welfare lobby.
Apr 20, 07: The world will have to axe greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, more deeply than planned, to have an even chance of curbing global warming in line with European Union goals, researchers said.
. . Even tough long-term curbs foreseen by the EU or California fall short of reductions needed to avert a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise over pre-industrial times, seen by the EU as a threshold for "dangerous change".
. . The EU reckons that there would be dangerous disruptions to the climate such as ever more droughts, heat waves, floods and rising seas beyond a 2 C ceiling. Temperatures already rose by about 0.7 Celsius in the 20th century.
. . An 80% global cut would mean rich nations, responsible for most heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuels burnt by power plants, factories and cars, would have to axe emissions by about 95% below 2000 levels by 2050. "Even the most ambitious proposals for emissions cuts in 2050, such as the UK draft climate bill which sets a cut of 60%, or the California target to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050, fall short", they said.
. . Restraints on emissions consistent with the goal could cost up to 3% of world gross domestic product. [and what if it cost 10% to do nothing?!] And Kalbekken and Rive said that global emissions would have to peak in 2025, with cuts in place by 2010, to achieve an 80% cut by mid-century. Any delays would sharply raise costs.
Apr 20, 07: More than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to new research.
. . New mapping techniques show how much land would be lost and how many people affected by rapid sea level rises that are often triggered by storms and earthquakes, a U.S. Geological Survey-led team determined. E. Lynn Usery, who led the team, said nearly one-quarter of the world's population lives below 30 meters above sea level.
. . The team also found that a 30-meter rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide. A rise of just 3 meters would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost.
. . Sea levels are currently rising about 1 to 2 mm each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe. But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years --a relatively short span-- after the collapse of the continental ice sheets. "It can happen in a short period of time if we look at the historical data."
. . Even though people know low-lying areas like the Netherlands or many parts of Asia are at risk of flooding, many do not realize just how big a risk they are facing. "A 30-meter surge in Florida would leave the whole state covered except for a little plateau area", Usery said.
Apr 20, 07: An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia's major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said. Prime Minister John Howard, who said the six-year drought was so extreme the country's prime farmland could be left without irrigation water this year, has refused to blame the crisis directly on climate change.
. . But scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, which threatens the survival of Australia's prime agricultural zone, was strengthening. "There's no question about the evidence in terms of increased temperature. We have seen this persistent increase in temperature over the last 30 or 50 years. All the projections are that that will continue."
. . Meyer said Australia, with its warm climate, vast deserts and lack of mountains, would be one of the first countries in the world to be hit by the hardships caused by global warming.
. . The Murray-Darling basin in southeastern Australia covers more than one million square km. Containing 72% of Australia's irrigated crops and pastures and much of the nation's grape crop, it is regarded as the country's food basket. Farmers say that unless drenching rains fall within weeks, the drought will devastate grape, citrus, stonefruit and apple production, cripple the wine industry and see food prices soar.
. . As the country debates further water restrictions for major cities, building desalination plants to provide fresh water, and even transplanting farms to the tropical north, the opposition has attacked the government for its previous climate change scepticism.
Apr 20, 07: The UN named former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Olympics chief Jacques Rogge as recipients of environmental awards y'day, and urged more action to stop global warming. "It has taken too long for global leaders, especially in the US, to wake up to this fact and respond, but I have hope", Gore said.
. . Achim Steiner, the U.N. Environment Program chief, criticized some governments for appearing ignorant about the effects of global warming. "I am sometimes intrigued by the level of lack of understanding, and some would almost call it ignorance of public policymakers of what we know today", Steiner told reporters before the ceremony, without naming specific governments.
Apr 18, 07: A Virginia-based national security think tank warned this week that global warning gases pose a "serious threat" to U.S. national security. The report by The CNA Corporation was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals. It predicted worsening terrorism and fights involving the US over dwindling natural resources that will result from a warming of the earth.
. . At the hearing, Gordon Sullivan, a retired general who was the Army's chief of staff from 1991 to 1995, said global climate change "will be a significant threat to our national security and, in a larger sense, to life on earth as we know it to be."
Apr 18, 07: House Republicans made it clear today they won't make things easy for Democrats trying to lay the groundwork for legislation on greenhouse gases and climate change.
. . At the first hearing of a special committee established by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make the case for a bill, Republicans questioned efforts to paint global warming as a national security threat.
. . "Unfortunately, this debate hasn't been characterized by common sense. It's been characterized by extremism", said Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the panel. "While this extremism hasn't done anything to produce effective solutions, it has created a lot of hot air, which hasn't been good for Congress' CO2 footprint."
Apr 18, 07: Democrats who favor mandatory limits on "greenhouse" gases hope to send a bill to President Bush before the 2008 election. Bush favors more research and voluntary measures to slow the gases' growth.
. . The hearing was dominated by worries about global security and U.S. dependence on other countries for oil, rather than the usually cited climate change concerns: melting glaciers, rising sea levels and other threats.
. . Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the new House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "Our ever-rising oil dependence is directly attributable to a backwards-facing energy policy, while looking forward we can see the threat of rising temperatures and the subsequent increasing risk of natural and humanitarian disasters", he said.
. . The hearing coincided this week with first United Nations Security Council debate on climate change, where Britain argued that rising temperatures will spark global conflicts and developing nations countered that the issue wasn't worth the council's time debating.
Apr 18, 07: An Australian scientist called for an end to the age-old tradition of cremation, saying the practice contributed to global warming. Professor Roger Short said people could instead choose to help the environment after death by being buried in a cardboard box under a tree.
. . The decomposing bodies would provide the tree with nutrients, and the tree would convert CO2 into life-giving oxygen for decades, he said. Short said the cremation of the average male in Australia, during which the body is heated to 850 degrees C for 90 minutes, produced more than 50 kg of CO2. And that doesn't include the CO2 cost of fuel, or the cost of the emissions released during the production and burning of the wooden casket.
. . Britain's growing obesity problem is forcing crematoria to build bigger furnaces because of the broader coffins of their expanding clientele, officials said. Standard coffins are typically between 55-65 cm (22-26 inches) wide, but many undertakers now use super-size 40 inch-wide casks to accommodate bigger bodies.
. . About 430,000 people are cremated in Britain each year.
Apr 18, 07: [Is this how we'll hafta live? Kidding... we'd have much bigger boxes!] An Australian scientist emerged after spending nearly two weeks underwater in a steel box, pedaling a stationary bicycle to generate his own electricity and growing algae to convert CO2 into oxygen.
. . Marine biologist Lloyd Godson spent 13 days at the bottom of a lake in the bright yellow capsule he calls the BioSUB to fulfill a lifelong dream and make a point about sustainable living. Godson used a system of solar panels and a pedal-powered generator to create electricity and recharge his laptop, and kept an algae garden to absorb CO2 and release oxygen for breathing. A team of divers delivered food and drinking water to the sub, including fruit, nuts and a homemade lasagna.
Apr 18, 07: During the first U.N. Security Council debate on climate change, Britain argued that global conflicts are ignited over the issue, while developing nations said the topic didn't belong on the council's agenda.
. . British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said that it was a "security imperative" to tackle the issue because it can ignite conflicts and threatens global peace. "The Security Council is the forum to discuss issues that threaten the peace and security of the international community. What makes wars start? Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use", Beckett said. "There are few greater potential threats to our economies too ... but also to peace and security itself."
. . But critics argued that the council —-charged with maintaining international peace and security-— should leave the issue to other U.N. organs. Climate change and energy are issues for the General Assembly, where all 192 U.N. member states are represented, and the Economic and Social Council, not the Security Council, they said.
. . Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said after the debate that the council wasn't going to usurp power from elsewhere in the U.N., but he did say the debate was meant to send a message to other U.N. organs that they need to act. "The Security Council is not going to act. Action rests elsewhere quite properly", he said. "The Security Council is sending a simple warning, which is unless you guys act ... we will face consequences that people have not been thinking about because they will affect people's security."
Apr 18, 07: Global warming could increase a climate phenomenon known as wind shear that inhibits Atlantic hurricanes, a potentially positive result of climate change, according to new research. The study found that climate model simulations show a "robust increase" in wind shear in the tropical Atlantic during the 21st century from global warming.
. . Wind shear, a difference in wind speed or direction at different altitudes, tends to tear apart tropical cyclones, preventing nascent ones from growing and already-formed hurricanes from becoming the monster storms that cause the most damage. In recent years, some scientists have suggested that human-induced greenhouse warming may be increasing the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes by heating up the sea water from which they draw their energy.
. . The increase in wind shear was only seen in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. In the western Pacific, global warming appeared to cause both increased water temperatures and a reduction in wind shear, Soden said.
Apr 16, 07: Roger Pulwarty, one of the federal government's top drought scientists, said states such as Arizona and Colorado, which already fight over the Colorado River basin water, will step up legal skirmishes. They may look to the Great Lakes, but water availability there will shrink, he said.
. . Reduced snow melt supplying water for the Sacramento Valley in California means that by 2020 there won't be enough water "to meet the needs of the community", Pulwarty said. That will step-up the competition for water, he said.
. . On the East Coast, rising sea levels will make storm surge "the No. 1 vulnerability for the metropolitan East Coast", said study lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA. "It's a very real threat and needs to be considered for all coastal development." Rising sea level can harm Florida's biodiversity and be dangerous during hurricanes, the scientists added.
. . A few hours later, retired Gen. Charles F. "Chuck" Wald focused on the same global warming problem. "One of the biggest likely areas of conflict is going to be over water", said Wald, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command. He pointed to the Middle East and Africa.
. . The military report's co-author, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, also pointed to sea-level rise floods as potentially destabilizing South Asia countries of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.
. . Lack of water and food in places already the most volatile will make those regions even more unstable with global warming and "foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies", states the 63-page military report, issued by the CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Va.-based national security think tank.
. . Kristi Ebi, a Virginia epidemiologist on the scientific panel, said reduced water supplies globally will hinder human health. "We're seeing mass migration of people because of things like water resource constraint, and that's certainly a factor in conflict", she added.
. . Peter Glieck, president of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, Calif., think tank, said the national security and domestic infighting over water comes as little surprise. "Water is connected to everything we care about."
. . As water fights erupt between nations and regions and especially between cities and agricultural areas, Stanford scientist Terry Root said there will be one sure loser low on the priority list for water: other species. "The fish will lose out and the birds and everything", she said.
. . Pollution will also worsen with global warming, the scientists said. As places like the Great Lakes draw down on water, the pollution inside will get more concentrated and trapped toxins will come more to the surface, said Stanford scientist Stephen Schneider.
. . And even the air, especially in the Northeast, will become more deadly. More heat means more smog cooked and about a 4 to 5% increase in smog-related deaths, Ebi said. That's thousands of people, she said.
. . The scientists and military leaders held out hope that dramatic cuts in fossil fuel emissions could prevent much of the harm they are predicting. But they said the U.S. government —-and the rest of the world-— has to act now.
Apr 16, 07: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said today the growth of greenhouse gases by less than 1% in 2005 shows the administration's program to address global warming "is delivering real results."
. . The pronouncement by EPA Administrator Dave Johnson brought a quick response from some environmentalists. "Things have come to a pretty sad state of affairs when the EPA tries to spin increased greenhouse gas emissions as a victory", said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental advocacy group.
. . The EPA said its annual greenhouse gas assessment showed that 7.26 billion metric tons of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases were released by U.S. sources in 2005. "The slow growth in emissions from 2004 to 2005 can be attributed mainly to higher energy prices that suppressed demand, low or negative growth in several energy-intensive industries, and weather-related disruptions", the Energy Department said in a separate report on greenhouse gas emissions.
. . In 2005, Hurricane Katrina disrupted oil and natural gas supplies from the Gulf of Mexico, causing gasoline prices to jump briefly well above $3 a gallon and caused havoc in a number of industries that rely heavily on natural gas.
. . Ben Dunham, an attorney for U.S. PIRG, an environmental advocacy group, said most climate scientists believe you need as much as an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
Apr 16, 07: Inuit hunters are falling through thinning ice and dying. Dolphins are being spotted for the first time. There's not enough snow to build igloos for shelter during hunts. As scientists work to establish the impact of global warming, explorers and hunters slogging across northern Canada and the Arctic ice cap on sled and foot are describing the realities they see on the ground.
Apr 16, 07: Global climate change acts as a "threat multiplier" in some of the world's most volatile areas, and raises tensions even in stable regions, 11 former U.S. military leaders warned. They urged immediate planning and international cooperation. "We can't wait until we have absolute certainty", retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former U.S. Army chief of staff, said at a briefing where the report was released. "We know that we never have 100% certainty and ... if we wait, we might wait too long."
. . The military leaders' assessment of the national and international security risks posed by global warming was made public on the eve of the first debate in the
U.N. Security Council on climate change. Their report found climate change is a "threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world."
. . These climate problems factors will make life more difficult in places that are already unstable, including parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states. "The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists", the report said.
. . Beyond this, the US and Europe could be pressured to accept environmental refugees as drought increases and food production declines in parts of Latin America and Africa. The US needs to form strong partnerships with developed and developing countries, including China and India, where emissions and economic power are growing, the report said.
. . "This is an issue that the US alone can't solve", said retired Adm. Joseph Prueher, former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. ambassador to China.
. . Vice Adm. Richard Truly, a former astronaut and NASA administrator, noted the threat of global warming will be different from other threats to stability. "It's not going to be the sudden appearance of something that we can deploy, plan on and deal with", Truly said. "It's going to come upon us very slowly in an incremental fashion ... it's going to be happening essentially everywhere all at the same time ... These are going to be the kind of hard-to-predict stresses that go beyond climate into geopolitics", Truly said.
. . The report, published by the non-partisan CNA Corporation think tank, adds to a chorus of unexpected voices calling for urgent action to curb global warming. mandatory caps on U.S. CO2 emissions, evangelical Christians who called for environmental stewardship, and the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled this month that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants.
Apr 13, 07: Climate change could diminish North American water supplies and trigger disputes between the US and Canada over water reserves already stressed by industry and agriculture, U.N. experts said.
Apr 13, 07: The environmental movement must become "hip and sexy" if it is to succeed, California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, urging campaigners to focus on the positives of cutting CO2 emissions rather than making people feel guilty. He said campaigners on climate change needed to shake off the image of being "tree-huggers" and "fanatics". "Environmentalists were no fun; they were like prohibitionists at a fraternity party."
. . The state --the sixth largest economy in the world-- signed a law last year that set a target of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.
Apr 11, 07: Global warming will damage the hunting cultures of Arctic peoples, thaw polar ice and could release toxic wastes now trapped in permafrost dumps, a U.N. study showed.
. . The report, giving regional details of a global study by the U.N. climate panel issued on April 6 in Brussels, also said Arctic fish stocks and forests could be affected by a rate of warming in the Arctic almost twice the global average.
. . Among problems on land, a melting of permafrost is "likely to have significant implications for infrastructure including houses, buildings, roads, railways and pipelines", it said. A thaw of the permafrost could bring "severe contamination" and "large cleanup costs, even for relatively small spills", it said. The former Soviet Union dumped waste across the Arctic.
. . The report says that the area of permafrost in the northern hemisphere is expected to shrink in mid-century by around 20 to 35%. "The costs of relocating subsiding towns and villages could be high. The price tag for relocating a village like Kivalina in Alaska has been estimated to be $54 million", it said.
. . Northern forests might grow faster but would be exposed to fires and tree-killing insects such as spruce bark beetle that are normally kept in check by the winter frosts.
. . Some species of fish would suffer from warming, such as Arctic char and arctic grayling. But a retreat of Arctic ice could benefit some species, such as cod and herring.
Apr 11, 07: New York City produces nearly 1% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions —-an amount that puts it on par with Ireland and Portugal-— according to a city study. The study was ordered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to assess the city's progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030.
. . The study found that the buildings, subways, buses, cars and decomposition of waste in America's most populous city produced a net emission of 58.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2005. The U.S. total was 7.26 billion metric tons for that year.
. . With 2.7% of the country's population —-8.2 million of 300 million-— the average New York City resident contributes less than a third of the emissions generated by a typical American. This is largely due to the popularity of the city's mass transit system, which cuts down on car emissions, officials said.
. . The operation of the city's hundreds of thousands of buildings —-which consume electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and steam-— contribute 79% of the city's emissions total.
. . The study found that the city's focus on environmentally friendly initiatives —-including alternative fuel vehicles, energy efficient traffic lights and green buildings-— appears to have helped stabilize emissions rates in recent years. Still, emissions were found to have increased by more than 8% between 1995 and 2005, the study found.
Apr 11, 07: Global warming is already having an effect on daily life, but when the Earth gets a few degrees hotter, the current inconvenience could give way to danger and even death. Chicago and Los Angeles will likely to face increasing heat waves. Severe storm surges could hit New York and Boston. And cities that rely on melting snow for water may run into serious shortages.
. . North America will not escape the impact of climate change, and the impact will be felt from Florida and Texas to Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territories, the panel said. "Canada and the US are, despite being strong economies with the financial power to cope, facing many of the same impacts that are projected for the rest of the world", Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.
. . The panel warned that shifts in rainfall patterns, melting glaciers, rising temperatures, increased demand and reduced supplies of water in some places are likely to increase tensions between users —-industry, agriculture and a growing population.
. . "Heavily-utilized water systems of the western U.S. and Canada, such as the Columbia River, that rely on capturing snowmelt runoff, will be especially vulnerable", the report said. A temperature warming of a few degrees by the 2040s is likely to sharply reduce summer flows, at a time of rising demand, it said.
. . By then, the panel estimated that Portland, Oregon, will require over 26 million additional cubic meters of water as a result of climate change and population growth, but the Columbia River's summer supply will have dropped by an estimated 5 million cubic meters.
. . Meanwhile, it said, just over 40% of the water supply to southern California is likely to be vulnerable by the 2020s due to losses of the Sierra Nevada and Colorado River basin snow packs.
. . Near the end of the 21st century, under a strong warming scenario, the New York City area could be hit by increasingly damaging floods from surges. Boston's transportation network may also be at risk from a sea level rise and the increased probability of a powerful storm surge, it said.
. . As for the impact of rising temperatures, the panel said a 25% increase in heat waves is projected for Chicago later this century, while the number of heat-wave days in Los Angeles is projected to increase from the current 12 per year to between 44 and nearly 100.
. . By the mid-21st century, regions in Alaska and Canada's Northwestern Territories are likely to be at "moderate to high risk" due to coastal erosion and thawing of permafrost.
. . North American producers of wood and timber could suffer losses of between $1 billion and $2 billion a year during the 21st century if climate change also sparks changes in diseases, insect attacks and forest fires, the panel said.
Apr 10, 07: Many Latin American farmers will have to abandon traditional crops such as corn, rice, wheat and sugar as their soil becomes increasingly saline, and ranchers will have to find new ways to feed their livestock, scientists said. They warned that governments are doing too little to prepare for the changes.
. . In Europe's Mediterranean region, climate change is expected to sap electric power generation, raise sea levels in coastal regions, reverse tourism trends and leave millions of people with water shortages, scientists said.
. . For Australians and New Zealanders, the warming temperatures will be felt mostly through more extreme weather. "Heat waves and fires are virtually certain to increase in intensity and frequency", said Kevin Hennessy, a lead author on the chapter for Australia and New Zealand. "Floods, landslides, droughts and storm surges are very likely to become more frequent and intense."
Apr 10, 07: Rapid construction of homes and hotels along Spain's shoreline means its beaches stand a greater risk of disappearing as climate change brings higher sea levels and more coastal erosion, officials said.
Apr 10, 07: Planting trees in snowy areas may worsen global warming as their canopies absorb sunlight which would otherwise be reflected by the snow, a study says --the pine forests of Europe, Siberia and Canada may contribute to warming.
. . Scientists have long argued that planting and preserving forests helps reduce global warming because trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to oxygen. Trees also absorb water from the ground, helping to form clouds that shield the earth from sunlight.
. . Computer models produced by the report's authors suggested deforestation in higher latitudes could reduce global warming.
Apr 10, 07: Food shortages, water scarcity, heatwaves, floods and migration of millions of people will occur across Asia as a result of climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. climate panel, said.
. . "What we project is substantial decreases in cereal production in Asia and... there will unfavorable impacts on rain-fed wheat in south and southeast Asia", he told a news conference. There will be risk of hunger and water resource scarcity."
. . Pachauri, also the head of The Energy and Resources Institute, one of India's leading environmental think-tanks, said half a degree C rise in winter temps would reduce wheat yields by 0.45 metric tons per hectare. The average wheat yield in India is currently 2.6 metric tons per hectare.
. . Hundreds of millions of people who rely on glacier melt from the Himalayan Hindukush mountains for water supplies would also be affected, he said, adding that a quarter of a billion people would suffer as a result in China alone. He said the impact in a country like India, where almost 70% of the workforce is dependent on agriculture, would be very serious, with mass migration of rural communities to already overburdened towns and cities. "Given that they are not able to pursue their livelihoods, they clearly would have no choice but to move into the large cities and towns", he said. "That means greater slum populations with inadequate urban infrastructure."
. . Rising sea levels could flood the homes of millions of people living in low-lying areas of Asia such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and China, said the report. Coastal cities like Mumbai and Kolkata are extremely vulnerable, he said, adding that they required better infrastructure such as drainage systems to cope with floods and water supplies as much of their water would become more saline.
Apr 6, 07: China, the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will take part in negotiations on a framework for limiting global warming after 2012. China, which could overtake the United States as the world's biggest carbon emitter within the year, is not part of the U.N. Kyoto Protocol.
. . The daily, Yomiuri Shimbun, said that Beijing would express its intention to take part in talks on setting up a post-Kyoto framework in a joint statement to be issued during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Japan on Wednesday.
. . In addition, Japan would announce that it would assist China with energy-saving technology. Experts have long said that if any post-Kyoto agreement is to succeed, major emitters such as China, India and the United States need to be on board.
. . China is set to unveil its national plan to tackle global warming later this month, and a top climate change official said in March that the plan would include policies for cutting back greenhouse gases but declined to comment on whether it would give an overall national target.
. . Beijing has resisted calls for caps on its rapidly rising emissions, saying rising global temperatures are largely the result of fossil fuel use by industrialized nations and it has the right to seek the same level of prosperity that they enjoy.
Apr 6, 07: Mountaineers are bringing back firsthand accounts of vanishing glaciers, melting ice routes, crumbling rock formations and flood-prone lakes where glaciers once rose.
. . The observations are transforming a growing number of alpine and ice climbers, some of whom have scientific training, into eyewitnesses of global warming. Increasingly, they are deciding not to leave it to scientists to tell the entire story. "I personally have done a bunch of ice climbs around the world that no longer exist," said Yvon Chouinard, a renowned climber. "I mean, I was aghast at the change."
Apr 6, 07: Scientists and diplomats at an international conference in Belgium predicted today that global warming would turn many glaciers to lakes and cause rock avalanches because of frozen ground melting up high. People living in mountain areas can expect more risk of floods by glacial lakes.
. . At Montana's Glacier National Park, glaciers are vanishing like the storied snows of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. In South America, the great ice fields of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile are shrinking; Bolivia hopes to keep its only ski area open by using artificial snow as the Chacaltaya Glacier fades.
. . The glacier from which Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their first ascent of 29,035-foot Mount Everest in 1953 has retreated so much that mountaineers now walk hours longer to reach it. A mile-long lake replaced the glacier at 20,305-foot Island Peak in Nepal's Everest region.
Apr 6, 07: A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" today for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things."
. . Over the past 24 years, Gray, 77, has become known as America's most reliable hurricane forecaster; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.
. . Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor who had feuded with Gray over global warming, said Gray has wrongly "dug (his) heels in" even though there is ample evidence that the world is getting hotter.
Apr 6, 07: the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a list of 10 regions suffering serious damage from global warming, and where it has projects to limit further damage or help people adapt to new conditions.
. . Environmentalists project the temperature of the Amazon River could rise by 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit within 50 years, turning between up to 60% of the rain forest into a dry savanna.
. . In the Bering Sea, warmer winters are leading to the earlier breakup of spring ice and driving salmon stocks closer to the North Pole, disrupting the Arctic ecosystem. Melting ice is also diluting sea water and affecting nutrients for small organisms on which fish feed.
. . In the Valdivian rain forest in Chile and Argentina, the Alerce tree —-which can live for 3,000 years-— is threatened by forest fires and declining rainfall. Melting glaciers mean groundwater in the region will also become more scarce.
. . The Chihuahua Desert straddling the U.S.-Mexican border is suffering from drought and intensive farming and overgrazing. North America's largest desert, the Chihuahua has 3,500 unique plant species, including an array of cactus and yucca, that could be at risk.
. . The WWF listing also said:
. . _Six of seven species of Caribbean turtles are endangered as rising sea levels swamp nesting beaches and feeding grounds.
. . _Some Himalayan glaciers are receding by 33 to 49 feet per year, causing floods now and threatening summer drought in the future.
. . _Glaciers in the Tibetan plateau that feed China's Yangtze river are also shrinking, adding to water flows now but threatening shortages of water, food and electricity to 450 million people as they reach a critical point.
. . _The Bay of Bengal is rising and increasingly violent rainstorms in India could inundate coastal islands, destroy mangrove forests and affect India's Sunderbans, home to the largest wild population of Bengal tigers and to 1 million people.
. . _Scientists predict East African coastal forests and the offshore ecosystem will also be vulnerable to more frequent and intense storms that will damage agriculture, shoreline mangroves and coral reefs.
Apr 6, 07: Lake Superior has been warming even faster than the climate around it since the late 1970s due to reduced ice cover, according to a study by professors at the University of Minnesota.
. . Summer surface temperatures on the famously cold lake have increased about 4.5 degrees F since 1979, compared with about a 2.7-degree increase in the region's annual average air temperature, the researchers found. The lake's "summer season" is now beginning about two weeks earlier than it did 27 years ago. "It's a remarkably rapid rate of change."
. . Austin said the surface temperature increase is not only "a symptom of climate change", but also could reinforce itself. A trend toward warmer winters would mean less winter ice cover, which would allow more solar radiation of the lake and continued warming.
. . If trends continue, it could be routinely ice-free by about 2040, the study found. This would cause water levels to continue to drop because the lake loses more water to evaporation in a winter without ice cover than it does during the summer. In recent months, the lake's level has been lower than at any equivalent time since 1926.
Apr 5, 07: Children will increasingly bear the brunt of global warming, a report said, while another said the climate would continue to heat up in coming decades regardless of efforts to curb emissions of carbon gases. A third report said business was already feeling its effects.
. . The Save the Children charity said up to 175 million children would be affected every year over the next decade by climate-related disasters like droughts, floods and storms. This, it said, was 50 million a year more than in the 10 years to 2005. Children would be hurt disproportionately, and millions more would be killed, forced from their homes or hit by hunger and disease.
. . Business is already starting to feel adverse effects, according to another study on Friday by catastrophe risk modeling firm Risk Management Solutions. It said financial losses from weather-related catastrophes had risen on average by 2% a year since the 1970s, and pointed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Changing climate will mean increasing drought in the Southwest —-a region where water already is in tight supply-— according to a new study. The consensus of the models was that climate in the southwestern US and parts of northern Mexico began a transition to drier conditions late in the 20th century and is continuing the trend in this century, as climate change alters the movement of storms and moisture in the atmosphere.
. . In other reports in this week's issue of Science:
. . • Researchers led by Alan Gange of the University of London reported that as a result of warming temperatures some species of mushrooms and toadstools in southern England have begun to fruit twice a year rather than just once. They found that some species that previously only fruited in October now also fruit in April. In addition, the length of the fruiting period has grown over time and in the last decade alone it has more than doubled, they found.
. . • Deep waters in the North Atlantic some 125,000 years ago were warmer than they are now and may have helped melt the Antarctic ice sheets, according to researchers led by Jean-Claude Duplessy of the Laboratory of Climate and the Environment of Institute Pierre Simon Laplace outside Paris.
. . Deep North Atlantic water flows south and then rises to the surface near Antarctica. The researchers said that current warming climate trends indicate similar conditions to that period could occur in the next couple of centuries.
Apr 5, 07: Climate change threatens to destroy the Great Barrier Reef and other natural wonders of the world if nations fail to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, environmental group WWF said today.
Apr 4, 07: Shifting dust storms on Mars might be contributing to global warming there that is shrinking the planet's southern polar ice caps, scientists say. [BUT: totally diff reason! You may've read the crap that tries to use this to nay-say our warming.]
. . Computer simulations similar to those used to predict weather here on Earth show that the bright, windblown dust and sand particles affects Mars' albedo-the amount of sunlight reflected from the planet's surface. It could also potentially explain how global dust storms are triggered there.
. . Across the past two decades, the model showed the surface temperature of Mars has increased by about 0.65 degrees Celsius. 'That magnitude of change is comparable to what we've estimated for global warming on Earth over the last 100 years', said study participant Paul Geissler of the USGS.
. . The model also found that winds have strengthened over regions with the lowest albedo. The researchers think all these events are related and have proposed a mechanism by which lower albedo drives wind circulation, creating even lower albedo. They think it works like this: In regions where winds blow away dust, the exposed dark ground absorbs sunlight and heats up; some of this heat is transferred into the atmosphere and heats up the air. Just like on Earth, the imbalance in the atmosphere's heat increases wind circulation above those regions. This leads to a positive feedback effect. The wind speeds could ramp up until a threshold is reached, at which point conditions are ripe for a dust storm that swamps the entire planet
. . Scientists had struggled to explain the shrinkage and have blamed it on everything from fluctuations in the Sun's output to natural variations in the planet's orbit and tilt.
. . On earth, CO2 traps infrared radiation which can affect global climate. This a phenomenon is known as the greenhouse effect. Fossil fuel emissions add to the problem. On Mars, it's the red-tinged dust.
Apr 4, 07: New warming reports appear almost daily. Y'day, scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center at the U of Colorado announced that the area of ocean covered by ice last month was the second lowest in recorded history, beaten only by the March 2006 record.
Apr 4, 07: Likely headlines predicting a global warming "catastrophe," "disaster" or "cataclysm" after a U.N. report due on Friday risk sapping public willingness to act by making the problem seem too big to tackle, some experts say. The world's leading climate scientists, meeting in Brussels, are set to warn of more hunger in Africa, rising seas, species extinctions and a melting of Himalayan glaciers.
. . But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), grouping 2,500 scientists, does not use words to sum up the forecasts --unlike some politicians or headline writers who describe it as a "crisis," "terrifying" or "Armageddon."
. . "I'm a bit preoccupied that the media, having contributed to every day making another doomsday news headline, then in six weeks time will declare it hysteria and move on," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program. Still, Steiner said it was clearly right to use words like "catastrophe" to describe effects such as a projected rise in sea levels in coming centuries that could swamp Pacific island states or cities from Shanghai to Buenos Aires.
Apr 4, 07: Global warming is starting to have a significant impact on Australian marine life, driving fish and seabirds south and threatening coral reefs, Australia's premier science organization said.
. . But much more severe impacts could occur in coming decades, affecting sea life, fishing communities and tourism. In particular, warmer oceans, changes in currents, disruption of reproductive cycles and mass migration of species would affect Australia's marine life, particularly in the southeast. Already, nesting sea turtles, yellow-fin tuna, dugongs and stinging jellyfish are examples of marine life moving south as seas warm, said the report by the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
. . Atlantic salmon, which are farmed in Tasmania, face a bleak future. Salmon farming businesses would become largely unviable as the ocean warmed the predicted one to two degrees over the next 30 years, Hobday said. Fisheries and aquaculture are worth more than A$2.5 billion a year.
. . Coral in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's northeast may be hit by more frequent bleaching events, every two or three years compared with five or six years at present. Worse, oceans are becoming more acidic as CO2 levels continue to rise in the atmosphere. This will adversely affect many organisms that use calcium carbonate for their skeletons and shells, including corals and mollusks. "These species have become adapted to a particular set of conditions and the speed at which the ocean is changing is faster than they have experienced."
. . An expected increase in human migration to the Australian coast over the next 10-20 years because of warming temperatures would also add to pressure on the oceans. This would be accompanied by rising sea-levels that would likely lead to greater coastal erosion. "You'll have cliff-side mansions crashing into the ocean," he said, adding that Australia needed to reduce its greenhouse gases and pollution and to better protect coastal areas. [So... drought pushes people to the sea, but then the sea rises & breaks their house...]
Apr 3, 07: EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Australia and the US were hampering efforts to tackle climate change, prompting a rebuke from Prime Minister John Howard, who said 12 EU nations were in danger of missing their Kyoto targets.
. . Howard's conservative government has steadfastly refused to set binding cuts on greenhouse emissions, saying to do so would hurt the economy and position as the world's second largest coal exporter.
Apr 3, 07: The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season will be far more active than usual with nine hurricanes, and the US has an above-average chance of being hit by a major storm, a closely watched forecasting team said.
. . The Colorado State U forecasters led by pioneer researcher William Gray said the June. The season will produce 17 tropical storms. Of the nine hurricanes forecast, five will be major ones of Category 3 or higher with winds over 177 kph (usta be 110 mph). They raised the number of expected storms and hurricanes from the 14 and seven, respectively, that it had predicted in December.
. . If the prediction proves true, 2007 could mark a return to the destructive seasons of 2004, when four strong hurricanes hit Florida, and 2005, the year of Katrina, after a mild 2006 when only 10 storms formed.
. . The forecasters said the disappearance of the El Nino warm-water phenomenon in the eastern Pacific, which dampened Atlantic hurricane activity last year, and warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures lay behind their upgraded forecast. The CSU team said neutral or weak La Nina conditions could be seen in the eastern Pacific this year, similar to what occurred in the 1952, 1964, 1966, 1995 and 2003 seasons, which had well above-average hurricane activity.
. . Last season produced 10 tropical storms, of which five became hurricanes and two turned into intense hurricanes. The long-term averages are for just under 10 storms and six hurricanes per season. "The 2006 season was only the 12th year since 1945 that the US witnessed no hurricane landfalls", Klotzbach said.
. . Gray's 2007 forecast saw a 74% probability of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coast, compared with an average of 52% over the past century. It also said the Caribbean islands faced an above-average risk of a major hurricane hit.
Apr 2, 07: The EU's chief environmental official urged the US and Australia to do more to cut greenhouse gases, saying Monday their cooperation was critical in the fight against global warming.
. . At the start of a five-day U.N. climate change conference, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas criticized the two major holdouts to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for their reluctance to join the 27-nation EU and other rich countries in fighting climate change. "It is absolutely necessary that they move because, otherwise other countries, especially the less developing countries, do not have any reason to move."
. . Dimas also criticized Australia for not applying Kyoto, which requires 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouses gases. Australia is ranked as the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter per capita, largely due to its reliance on coal-fired power stations.
Apr 1, 07: In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. environmental officials have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming. By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate CO2 and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change. The high court ruled that such greenhouse gases from motor vehicles fall within the law's definition of an air pollutant.
. . The ruling in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming. In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate the emissions, saying it lacked the power to do so. Even if it had the power, the EPA said it would be unwise to do it and would impair Bush's ability to negotiate with developing nations to cut emissions.
. . The states and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit hailed the ruling. "As a result of today's landmark ruling, EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming", Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.
. . Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the EPA's decision in 2003 was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law."
. . The court's four most conservative members --Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both Bush appointees, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas-- dissented.
Apr 1, 07: Northern nations such as Russia or Canada may be celebrating better harvests and less icy winters in coming decades even as rising seas, also caused by global warming, are washing away Pacific island states.
Apr 1, 07: The Sydney Opera House's gleaming white-shelled roof was darkened Saturday night along with much of the rest of Australia's largest city, which switched off the lights to register concern about global warming.
Apr 1, 07: Overfishing has cut deeply into the North Sea's cod population in recent decades, and scientists now say this important food fish faces a second challenge —-climate change. North Sea water temperatures have climbed 1 degree F over the past 100 years, and that has shifted currents, carrying a major food source, plankton, away from the cod.
Apr 1, 07: A bloodthirsty parasite is popping up in parts of Sweden where deep winter chills used to make survival difficult, if not impossible. Ticks are spreading north along the Scandinavian country's shorelines, pestering pets and spreading infectious diseases to humans. The pinhead-sized arachnids have even turned up near the Arctic Circle.
. . "It probably has to do with the greenhouse effect", said Thomas Jaenson, professor in medical entomology at Uppsala U. "The fact that we've seen ticks in January indicates that there has been a major change."
. . Sweden's disease control agency doesn't keep records on Lyme disease, but said the potentially deadly tick-borne encephalitis virus, known as TBE, is on the rise.
Mar 29, 07: Australia will suffer more droughts, fires, floods and storms due to global warming and its famous Great Barrier Reef will be devastated by 2030, according to leaked extracts of a UN report.
. . The draft UN's IPCC report warns that temperatures in Australia would rise by 6.7 C before the end of the century. It also predicted rising sea levels would push the coast back 110 meters in some Sydney beachside suburbs, swamping some of the city's most exclusive real estate. It said tropical cyclones would become more common on Australia's east coast, where most of the population lives, while 80% of the Great Barrier Reef would be bleached by 2030.
Mar 29, 07: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won praise today from a man with the power to change lives --the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee-- after a speech urging more action to fight global warming. Mjoes, who joined in a minute-long standing ovation for Gore, said he was attending as a private citizen and not sizing up a candidate on behalf of the secretive five-member committee. He sat near the back in an audience of about 400.
. . Some experts tip Gore as among the favorites to win what many view as the world's top accolade. His successes this year include a double Oscar for his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth".
. . The world's environment ministers will be meeting in December in Bali, Indonesia, to try to launch negotiations on a new climate treaty. The meeting will coincide with the handover of the peace prize in Oslo on December 10. Gore's views are popular in Norway --apart from Mjoes, the audience for the speech included Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
Mar 29, 07: Currently at 380 parts per million, CO2 emissions are predicted to double their preindustrial rates, to about 500 ppm, by 2100. Last time there was that much CO2 in the air, palm trees grew in Antarctica and crocodiles sloshed about in the swamps of a tepid Greenland.
. . Jamais Cascio, a futurist and cofounder of the website worldchanging.com. "If you find yourself in a hole, the first step is to stop digging", he says. "But stopping digging isn't going to get you out of your hole."
. . By some estimates, geoengineering has the added allure of being cheaper than curbing emissions. Economists say that decarbonizing the economy will cost around 2% of the gross domestic product; putting reflective aerosols into the upper atmosphere will cost about one-thousandth of that, says Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford U.
. . But others say the discussion over mitigation seems to have gotten ahead of itself. Why talk about fixing symptoms when we have the technology to address the root cause?
. . History seems to support Mr. McKibben's critique. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1960s and 1970s, which cost more than the estimates for curbing emissions today, are seen in retrospect as absolutely the right thing to have done. That such costs are now viewed as untenable speaks to the shortcomings of the cost-benefit approach that has driven environmental policy for the past 25 years, says Frank Ackerman, director of research and policy program at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts U in Medford, Mass.
. . Simply put, economic analyses can't deal with far-reaching, long-term problems like climate change or geoengineering, he says. There are too many unknowns. "Changing the earth's climate is an experiment we're going to do once", he says. "There are not going to be any do-overs."
. . Others point out that the mere mention of a techno-fix for climate change could have unintended consequences. If people know that someone will bail them out of catastrophe, they're more inclined to engage in risky behavior, says David Keith, director of an energy and environmental systems research group at the U of Calgary. Statistically speaking, those with flood insurance suffer the worst flood damage, he says.
. . Mr. Cascio points out that fail-safe technologies could also drive humanity in the other direction. If people understand that these technologies are a terrible last resort, the specter of their deployment may serve as a deterrent the way mutually assured destruction (theoretically) saved the world from a nuclear holocaust during the cold war. The parallel has to be made clear: "You are consciously trying to alter the complex systems that govern how our planet operates", he says. "Do that the wrong way, and you potentially kill everyone."
. . Because climate change has winners and losers –-one country's breadbasket dries up while another's desert blooms-– unilateral change becomes a sticky prospect. Manipulation –-even if it's viewed as a corrective measure-– will inevitably impinge on another's newfound good fortune. "Even if you're very confident that you can make things better, that doesn't necessarily give you the right to do that if, in fact, you're affecting other people's interests", says Professor Jamieson.
. . Ken Caldeira posits another possibility: "You could imagine some kind of arms race of geoengineering, where one country is trying to cool the planet and another is trying to warm the planet", he says.
Mar 28, 07: The UK government should conserve peat bogs as a way of curbing climate change, the National Trust is urging.
. . British bogs store CO2 equivalent to about 20 years' worth of national industrial emissions, they say. But two centuries of damage in some regions mean bogs are drying out, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The Trust wants the government to reward landowners for looking after peatlands, and allow CO2 credits for good peat conservation.
. . It is estimated that globally, peat stores twice as much as forests, and the UK contains about 15% of the world's peatlands. Healthy peat absorbs and stores CO2; but as it degrades, the carbon is released, ending up in the atmosphere as CO2.
. . In Britain, particularly England, peat has been badly affected by drainage --which has allowed bogs to dry out-- burning, overgrazing and industrial pollution. The higher ambient temperatures seen over the last decade are a new threat. The National Trust believes this may be contributing significant quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere --but says the exact amount is not known.
. . In the Trust's High Peak Estate in England's Peak District, scientists found that 1,350 hectares of degraded bog were releasing 37,000 tons of carbon per year --equivalent, it calculates, to the annual emissions of 18,000 cars. The Trust is advising landowners to protect bogs by blocking gullies to raise water levels, reducing grazing, preventing fires and managing local tourism.
Mar 28, 07: New technology to make ethanol from crops such as grasses and trees instead of corn could ease price spikes of the grain within a decade, a U.S. Energy Department official said. "I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn", U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said.
. . Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up. Corn prices have doubled over the last year as the Bush administration.
. . Sell said the future of biofuels is cellulosic ethanol, made from microbes that break down woody bits of non-food crops into sugars that can be fermented into fuel. Cellulosic, and other new biofuels such as biobutanol, which can be made from petroleum as well as biomass, could begin to feed the commercial fuel market within six to 10 years, he said. They could also be part of a larger program to cut greenhouse gases, he added.
Mar 25, 07: Some climates may disappear from Earth entirely, not just from their current locations, while new climates could develop if the planet continues to warm, a study says. Such changes would endanger some plants and animals while providing new opportunities for others, said John W. Williams, an assistant professor of geography at the U of Wisconsin.
. . Using global change forecasts prepared for the IPCC, researchers led by Williams used computer models to estimate how climates in various parts of the world would be affected. Tropical regions in particular may face unexpected changes, particularly the rain forests in the Amazon and Indonesia, Williams' researchers concluded. This was surprising, since the tropics tend to have little variation in weather. But that also means temperature changes of 3 or 4 degrees in these regions might have more impact than a change of 5 to 8 degrees in a region that is accustomed to regular changes.
. . Species living in tropical areas may be less able to adapt. "The potential consequences and how these new regimes will be populated are poorly known, and the potential for new threats to humans through disease vectors could be a real danger", he said.
Mar 23, 07: China is on course to overtake the US this year as the world's biggest CO2 emitter, estimates based on Chinese energy data show, potentially pressuring Beijing to take more action on climate change.
. . China's emissions rose by some 10% in 2005, a senior U.S. scientist estimated, while Beijing data shows fuel consumption rose more than 9% in 2006. But U.S. individuals were far bigger emitters, at 20 tons per capita against China's 3.2 tons and a world average of 3.7.
. . China gets around 70% of its energy from coal. Last year alone it added around 100 gigawatts of new generators, approaching France's entire capacity, most of them coal-burning.
Mar 22, 07: The impact of global warming on the vast Southern Ocean around Antarctica is starting to pose a threat to ocean currents that distribute heat around the world, Australian scientists say, citing new deep-water data. His findings add to concerns about a "strangling" of the Southern Ocean by greenhouse gases and global warming.
. . Melting ice-sheets and glaciers in Antarctica are releasing fresh water, interfering with the formation of dense "bottom water", which sinks 4-5 km to the ocean floor and helps drive the world's ocean circulation system. A slowdown in the system known as "overturning circulation" would affect the way the ocean, which absorbs 85% of atmospheric heat, carries heat around the globe. "Changes would be felt ... around the globe", said Rintoul, who recently led a multinational team of scientists on an expedition to sample deep-basin water south of Western Australia to the Antarctic.
. . Water dense enough to sink to the ocean floor is formed in polar regions by surface water freezing, which concentrates salt in very cold water beneath the ice. The dense water then sinks. Only a few places around Antarctica and in the northern Atlantic create water dense enough to sink to the ocean floor, making Antarctic "bottom water" crucial to global ocean currents.
. . But the freshening of Antarctic deep water was a sign that the "overturning circulation" system in the world's oceans might be slowing down, Rintoul said, and similar trends are occurring in the North Atlantic. For the so-called Atlantic Conveyor, the surface warm water current meets the Greenland ice sheet then cools and sinks, heading south again and driving the conveyor belt process. But researchers fear increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet risks disrupting the conveyor. If it stops, temperatures in northern Europe would plunge.
. . Australian scientists warned last month that waters surrounding Antarctica were also becoming more acidic as they absorbed more CO2 produced by nations burning fossil fuels. Acidification of the ocean is affecting the ability of plankton --microscopic marine plants, animals and bacteria-- to absorb CO2, reducing the ocean's ability to sink greenhouse gases to the bottom of the sea.
Mar 21, 07: With concern growing about global warming, researchers said they have developed a new system to track CO2 in the atmosphere. Being able to determine where and when this major greenhouse gas increases or decreases should help in projecting future climate change and evaluating efforts to reduce releases. It produces an unbiased, objective statement of CO2 observations, he said, but doesn't favor any particular policy or economic model.
. . Tracking CO2 release and absorption will improve understanding of its impact, he said, noting that one-third of the economy is weather and climate sensitive.
. . The new system, called CarbonTracker, currently samples the air at 20 places in the US and 60 worldwide, with a goal of expanding that to "hundreds, maybe thousands" of sampling points. The system now can report on CO2 emissions each month among U.S. regions. The plan is to be able to measure CO2 regionally to help determine where it is being released, where it is being absorbed --such as by trees and crops-— and where efforts to reduce release are or are not working.
. . In addition, it could provide an early warning of new emissions. There are millions of tons of CO2 held in the arctic permafrost. The arctic is warming faster than other parts of the world and that could result in release. "We need to pick this signal up as soon as it starts to happen."
. . The analysis is not currently in real time, Tans said, adding that there is a lag because of the need to collect the measurements and analyze them. CarbonTracker currently includes data from 2000 to 2005, and 2006 data is being added. In addition, Tans said, the researchers are refining their methods so they can determine the amount of an isotope called carbon-14 in the gas. That will enable them to tell the difference between CO2 generated naturally and that produced by burning fossil fuels.
Mar 21, 07: In congressional testimony today, Gore said, "The best way and the only way to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership. As the world's largest economy and the greatest superpower, we are uniquely situated to tackle a problem of this magnitude", he said.
. . Gore favors a "cap-and-trade" program for the U.S. economy, not just specific sectors such as electricity or manufacturing, which would set an overall limit on warming emissions but allow industry to meet the target by trading pollution allowances.
. . Congress has nearly a dozen bills before it that call for reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Mar 21, 07: Some of the world's leading meteorologists said today they had no doubt that humans were responsible for global warming.
. . Asked if natural warming cycles, as the earth has seen in the past, could be behind climate change, the director general of the Spanish National Meteorological Institute was adamant they were not. "No, because the time scale is different. This phenomenon is happening much more quickly." He also dismissed as over simple other theories some scientists say undermine the idea humans are to blame, such as changes in solar activity, or the theory that CO2 increases are lagging behind temperature rises.
. . "Scientifically it is clear", the head of Brazil's Meteorological Service Antonio Divino Mouro told a news conference. "We've been measuring CO2 concentrations for many years ... and it's proven that these levels are rising and the explanation is that fossil fuels are getting into the atmosphere."
Mar 20, 07: Some experts predict that 2007 could eclipse 1998 and 2005 as the warmest on record.
. . All 20 bears in a Bulgarian conservation park are awake after most skipped a hibernation normally lasting until April. "The bears did not even try to sleep this winter. For the first time, it happened to almost all of them."
. . And the winter migration path of Canadian geese has become shorter in the last 25 years, apparently because of warmer temperatures and changing U.S. farm practices. "Where we used to get banded geese turning up in Florida and Louisiana, now they're not making it much farther south than Ohio."
. . In Kew Gardens west of London, daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops have been opening early. In Britain, some birds such as chiffchaffs and blackcaps no longer bother to migrate.
. . Some farmers may benefit from longer growing seasons, but many worry that early flowering exposes crops to late frosts or pests. Normal insect pollinators such as bees may not be around when the flowers bloom.
Mar 20, 07: Climate change, pollution, over extraction of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze, India's Ganges and Africa's Nile, conservation group WWF said.
. . At the global launch of its report "World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk", the Geneva-based group said many rivers could dry out, affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic life. "If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security", said Ravi Singh, secretary-general of WWF-India.
. . The report, launched ahead of 'World Water Day', also cited the Rio Grande in the US, the Mekong and Indus in Asia, Europe's Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia's Murray-Darling as in need of greater protection.
. . Rivers are the world's main source of fresh water and WWF says about half of the available supply is already being used up. Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains, while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that feed them, the report said.
. . Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, it found. Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means devastating consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political security in Africa's arid Nile basin.
. . The Ganges basin makes up almost a third of India's land area and one in twelve people in the world depend on this river for activities such as fishing and farming, the WWF said. Tributaries flowing into the Ganges are drying up as barrages [dams] divert large amounts of water for irrigation. Water quality is also deteriorating and climate change will have a serious impact as glaciers --which account for 30 to 40 percent of the Ganges water-- retreat.
Mar 20, 07: Early flowers, migrating swallows and sleepless bears are among signs that spring has arrived long ago in the northern hemisphere. Scientists say the biological clocks of animals and plants are running ahead of time, perhaps upset by global warming.
. . Orange trees, olives and peaches are blooming weeks ahead of schedule in Greece, geese are cutting down on migrations in Canada and the United States and bears have been unable to hibernate in Bulgaria. Red Admiral butterflies and swallows --usually a sign of summer after the birds spend the winter in Africa-- have been spotted early in the Netherlands after the warmest Dutch autumn and winter since records starting in 1706.
. . "Springs have been getting earlier for the past 60 years. Plants have been getting incredibly confused, and birds have also been confused to some extent," said Andre Farrar of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Mar 19, 07: A former White House official accused of improperly editing reports on global warming defended his editing changes today, saying they reflected views in a 2001 report by the National Academy of Sciences. House Democrats said the 181 changes made in three climate reports reflected a consistent attempt to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding the science of climate change and undercut the broad conclusions that man-made emissions are warming the earth.
. . Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy" on climate change.
. . The extent of Cooney's editing of government climate reports first surfaced in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, left the White House to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.
. . "My concern is that there was a concerted White House effort to inject uncertainty into the climate debate", said Rep. Henry Waxman.
Mar 17, 07: A consensus on the need to protect the world's environment is emerging among rich and developing nations, but the US remains at odds with other countries on key points, Germany said.
. . Environment ministers of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, and officials from leading developing countries, were meeting to prepare for a June G8 summit where they plan to discuss specific targets for protecting the environment. "On two issues, the US were the only ones who spoke against consensus", German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters. Gabriel said the U.S. remained opposed to a global CO2 emissions trading scheme like the one used in the European Union and rejected the idea that industrialized nations should help achieve a "balance of interests" between developing countries' need for economic growth and environmental protection. "We find this regrettable", Gabriel said, adding "I would have been disappointed... if I'd expected something different."
. . Greenpeace analyst Tobias Muenchmeyer criticized the meeting, saying the ministers "failed to send a signal to their leaders about the urgency of the climate change issue."
Mar 16, 07: Links between the sun's magnetic pulse and Earth's climatic systems point to heavy rainfall later this year and in 2008, which could break Australia's worst drought in 100 years, new scientific research says.
. . The theory is based on correlations between Australian rainfall and 11-year peaks in the sun's magnetic emissions, and switches in the sun's poles, which also occur every 11 years. The last flip occurred in 2001.
. . The link between sunspots, solar magnetic activity and increased rain occurs through interaction by solar activity with Earth's atmosphere to increase cloud formation.
Mar 16, 07: Environment ministers from the G8 have agreed to a study of the economic costs globally of species becoming extinct as a result of climate change.
. . German minister Sigmar Gabriel said the destruction of biodiversity was "not just an issue for birdwatchers." The loss of plant and animal species was an economic disaster fuelling poverty in many areas, he said. He said 150 species were being lost to extinction every day.
. . Ministers from Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa are also attending the two-day talks in the eastern German city of Potsdam.
Mar 16, 07: This *winter was the warmest on record worldwide, the government said, in the latest worrisome report focusing on changing climate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the combined global land and ocean surface temperature from December through February was at its highest since records began in 1880.
. . The next-warmest *winter on record was in 2004, and the third warmest winter was in 1998. The ten warmest *years on record have occurred since 1995. Temps were above average for these months in Europe, Asia, western Africa, southeastern Brazil and the northeast half of the US, with cooler-than-average conditions in parts of Saudi Arabia and the central US.
. . Global temperature on *land surface during the northern hemisphere winter was also the warmest on record, while the *ocean-surface temperature tied for second warmest after the winter of 1997-98.
. . For the *US, meanwhile, the *winter temperature was near average. The season got off to a late start and spring-like temperatures covered most of the eastern half of the country in January, but cold conditions set in in February, which was the third coldest on record.
. . *Winter in the *Northern *Hemisphere this year has been the warmest since records began more than 125 years ago, a US government agency says. Weather experts predict that 2007 could be the hottest *year on record.
Mar 15, 07: Global warming is expected to turn the planet a bit greener by spurring plant growth, but crops and forests may wilt beyond mid-century if temperatures keep rising, according to a draft U.N. report.
. . Scientists have long disputed about how far higher temperatures might help or hamper plants --and farmers-- overall. Plants absorb CO2, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they rot. "Global agricultural production potential is likely to increase with increases in global average temperature up to about 3 Celsius, but above this, it is very likely to decrease."
. . Plants in tropical and dry regions from Africa to Asia are set to suffer from even a small rise in temperatures, threatening more hunger linked to other threats such as desertification, drought and floods.
. . Plants now absorb more CO2 than they release, "but this is likely to peak before mid-century and then tend toward a net CO2 source before 2100" even without accounting for other effects such as deforestation, it said.
Mar 15, 07: When Mount Pinatubo erupted 16 years ago in the Philippines, it cooled the Earth for about a year because the sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere reflected some sunlight. Several leading scientists, from Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen to the late nuclear cold warrior Edward Teller, have proposed doing the same artificially to offset global warming.
. . Using jet engines, cannons or balloons to get sulfates in the air, humans could reduce the solar heat, and only increase current sulfur pollution by a small percentage.
. . Scientists at the Center for Atmospheric Research put the idea into a computer climate model. The results aren't particularly cheap or promising, said NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann. It would take tens of thousands of tons of sulfate to be injected into the air each month, he said. "From a practical point of view, it's completely ridiculous." Both this technique and the solar umbrella while reducing heating, wouldn't reduce CO2.
. . Last fall, the U of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel proposed what he called a "sun shade." It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like objects that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun. "It really is just like turning down the knob by 2% of what's coming from the sun." These nearly flat discs would each weigh less than an ounce and measure about a meter wide with three tab-like "ears" that are controllers sticking out just a few inches.
. . About 800,000 of these would be stacked into each rocket launch. It would take 16 trillion of them —that's million million— so there would be 20 million launches of rockets. The cost: at least $4 trillion over 30 years, probably more.
Mar 15, 07: Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists, a sign of their fears about global warming and the desire for an insurance policy in case things get worse.
. . How crazy? There's the man-made "volcano" that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space "sun shade" made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature. The forest of ugly artificial "trees" that suck CO2 out of the air. And the "Geritol solution" in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean. "Of course it's desperation", said Stanford U professor Stephen Schneider. "It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction.
. . NASA is putting the finishing touches on a report summing up some of these ideas and has spent $75,000 to map out rough details of the sun shade concept. One of the premier climate modeling centers in the US, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has spent the last six weeks running computer simulations of the man-made volcano scenario and will soon turn its attention to the space umbrella idea.
. . And last month, billionaire Richard Branson offered a $25 million prize to the first feasible technology to reduce CO2 levels in the air.
. . Many fear there will be unintended side effects; others worry such schemes might prevent the type of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are the only real way to fight global warming. These approaches are not an alternative to cutting pollution, said U of Calgary professor David Keith, a top geoengineering researcher.
. . Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up CO2 from the atmosphere.
. . The idea of seeding the ocean with iron to beef up a natural plankton and algae system has been tried on a small scale several times since 1990. It has both succeeded and failed. Planktos chief executive officer Russ George said his ship will try it on a larger scale, dumping a slurry of water and red iron dust from a hose into the sea. Plankton used the iron to photosynthesize, extract greenhouse gases from the air, and grow rapidly. It forms a thick green soup of all sorts of CO2-sucking algae, which sea life feast on, and the CO2 drops into the ocean.
. . However, the international climate report also cautioned about "the ecological consequences of large-scale fertilization of the ocean." Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said large-scale ocean seeding could change the crucial temperature difference between the sea surface and deeper waters and have a dramatic effect on marine life.
. . Planktos officials say that for every ton of iron used, 100,000 tons of CO2 will be pulled into the ocean. Eventually, if this first large-scale test works, George hopes to remove 3 billion tons of CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere, half of what's needed. Some scientists say that's overstated.
. . Planktos' efforts are financed by companies and individuals who buy CO2 credits to offset their use of fossil fuels.
Mar 15, 07: Nearly 90 New Hampshire towns have passed resolutions urging Washington to act on climate change, hoping to use the state's powerful role in the presidential race to bring attention to global warming.
. . Eighty-eight towns passed the resolution by early on Wednesday, and another 68 will vote on it this week and a total 183 will take it up by the end of May at annual town meetings --a New England tradition where locals become legislators.
Mar 15, 07: Australia's drought is sending thirsty camels on the rampage, making a cull a necessity, experts say.
Mar 15, 07: In the most populous Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria, the fields are parched, livestock are dying, and farmers face ruin as the worst drought in a century grinds on.
. . Two-thirds of Australia's freshwater flows down the great tropical rivers of the north, compared with less than 5% in the depleted waterways of the south. It is hardly surprising, then, that a government task force this week will begin studying the prospects of encouraging Australia's farmers to bow to the harsh realities of drought and climate change, and head north. Critics, however, warn that the north's own climate peculiarities, lack of infrastructure, and indigenous land claims could make industrial-scale farming a risky venture.
. . Many farmers in the southern states of Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales are battling their seventh consecutive year of drought. The mighty Murray and Darling rivers on which they have relied for decades are exhausted, dwindling to weed-tangled streams.
. . Proponents of the shift say the region's proximity to Asia –-Darwin is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney or Melbourne-– make it profitable to grow specialty vegetables, such as bok choi, for burgeoning Asian markets.
. . Scientists predict a 15% decline in rainfall in the south in coming decades as a result of climate change. The north, in contrast, is likely to get wetter – it appears that industrial pollution from Southeast Asia is intensifying the monsoon season, and increasing rainfall over the region.
. . It is a bird-watcher's paradise, but it started out in the 1950s as an ambitious agricultural enterprise known as the Humpty Doo Rice Project. Despite rich soils and plentiful water, it was a disaster. Magpie geese ate the rice seed, feral buffalo bulldozed the paddies and seasonal rains proved erratic. Within a decade, it was abandoned.
. . "The idea of the north as a potential food bowl for Asia is largely a mirage", says Stuart Blanch, a tropical rivers expert with Australia's division of the World Wide Fund for Nature, a global conservation network. "Although we get a lot of rainfall, it's erratic –-we never know when the monsoon will start. Even during the wet season, it may rain heavily for a week, then we get nothing for two weeks."
. . Much of the soil across the north is of poor quality and the region is a long way away from its main market –-the populated southeast Australia-– making transportation of agricultural produce expensive. Industrial-scale agriculture is also likely to clash with the land claims of Aborigines, who live in isolated communities scattered across the north.
. . Rather than pursuing intensive farming, environmentalists say it would be better to preserve the region's great savanna woodlands in order to lock up vast amounts of CO2 and contribute to Australia's efforts to lower its CO2 emissions.
Mar 13, 07: Oscar-winning Al Gore chose to call his film about global warming An Inconvenient Truth. But for Peru it is more like an alarming reality. Government officials, water experts and environmentalists agree the rapid melting of the spectacular Andean glaciers featured in the film is threatening the long-term economic and human development of what is South America's most "water-stressed" country.
. . Most of the Pacific coast would be desert if it were not for the water flowing down from the Andes. Seventy per cent of the population live along the coast, where less than 2% of the country's water resources are found. In contrast, the Atlantic side of the Andes has 98% of the water and about a quarter of the population.
. . Peru has the largest number of tropical glaciers in the world. These water towers are crucial for slowly releasing water, particularly in the dry season. And Peru desperately needs the water all year round. Apart from the need for drinking water, 80% of the country's power has traditionally come from hydro-electricity. And, the current boom sectors of the economy --agro-exports and mining-- also absorb huge volumes of water.
. . Peru and Bolivia, which together account for more than 90% of the world's tropical glaciers, have lost about a third of the surface area of their glaciers between the 1970s and 2006. It is remarkable how many experts in Peru take seriously the prediction that the time will come this century when a barrel of water will cost more than a barrel of oil.
Mar 13, 07: British Prime Minister Tony Blair put climate change at the top of the international agenda when Britain was head of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in 2005 and it could now become the first nation to limit emissions by statute.
. . EU leaders agreed at a summit last week that the bloc will produce 20% of its power through renewable energy, an increase from the current average figure of around 6%.
. . Britain today became the first country to propose legislation setting binding limits on greenhouse gases as it stepped up its campaign for a new global warming pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. In its draft Climate Change Bill, the government said CO2 emissions had to be cut by at least 60% by 2050, set out five-year carbon budgets to reach the target and created an independent monitoring committee to check annual progress. The draft bill also sets a legally-binding interim target for carbon cuts of 26 to 32% by 2020. Miliband said failure to meet targets could land governments in court.
. . The bill must be approved by both houses of Parliament to become law. A public consultation is planned, and the final bill is to be given to Parliament later this year. The government hopes it will become law by in the first half of next year.
. . The bill outlines "carbon budgets" which cap CO2 levels and creates a new independent body to report to Parliament on the plan's progress. Blair said Britain's target is to force other European nations into action and —perhaps— the Americans, the Chinese and the Indians as well.
. . The draft bill will go to three months of public and parliamentary consultation before becoming law next year, but green campaigners want to raise the 2050 target to 80% and set annual 3% cut targets to ensure compliance. The government rejects annual targets as being too rigid to make allowances for climate variations from year to year.
. . Andrew Pendleton, senior climate policy officer at charity Christian Aid, praised the bill but said: "If the final legislation is not significantly stronger, the process would represent a massive lost opportunity. It is the first step on a long journey."
. . Edward Hanna, senior lecturer in Climate Change at the U of Sheffield was also unimpressed: "(It) doesn't go far enough fast enough to confidently combat the significant threats posed by human-induced global warming. I fear that as we are closing the stable door, the horse has already bolted."
Mar 12, 07: British finance minister Gordon Brown called today for international action to tackle global warming and argue the best way to change people's behavior is through education and incentives, not taxation. With just over a week to go until his annual budget, Brown looks unlikely to sanction any big rises in so-called "green" taxes.
. . Months before he is expected to take over from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brown will set out his thinking in what was billed as a major speech on the environment --an issue that is turning into a battleground for British elections expected in 2009.
. . Brown has called on households to do more to cut greenhouse gases by making homes better insulated and more fuel-efficient. He said people had to "count the carbon as well as the pennies" and that tax breaks could be offered. Standby switches on electrical goods has to go, as do old-fashioned lightbulbs.
. . The draft Climate Change Bill, due out tomorrow, will call for a 60% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050.
. . Over the weekend, the Conservatives launched proposals including taxing frequent fliers and a tax on flights based on the level of carbon emissions. In a speech in London earlier, Mr Cameron said: "Without annual rate-of-change targets, it's too easy for the timetable to slip. "And once it has slipped, it's much harder to make up the difference later."
Mar 11, 07: The World Bank urged governments in the Middle East and North Africa on Sunday to speed up improvements to water resources and said water availability per person in the region was set to drop by half by 2050. The World Bank said in a report that many countries in the area already faced full-blown crises in meeting water demand, and that was likely to worsen without reform. "Cities will come to rely more and more on expensive desalination, and during droughts will have to rely more frequently on emergency supplies brought by tanker or barge."
. . One in three people worldwide live in water-scarce regions. In the Middle East and Africa, leaders have regularly warned water shortages caused by surging populations and climate change could trigger future conflicts.
Mar 11, 07: Rising temperatures fueled by global warming are causing forests of spruce trees to invade Arctic tundra faster than scientists originally thought, evicting and endangering the species that dwell there and only there, a new study concludes.
. . Tundra is land area where tree growth is inhibited by low temperatures and a short growing season. In the Arctic, the tundra is dominated by permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen subsoil. The only vegetation that can grow in such conditions are grasses, mosses and lichens. Forests of spruce trees and shrubs neighbor these tundra areas, and the boundary where they meet is called the treeline.
. . Climate change, meanwhile, has extended the summer warming season and promoted tree growth, causing the treeline to encroach on the tundra. By looking at tree rings, researchers reconstructed a 300-year history of tree density and treeline position. The results show trees can creep up on the tundra faster than previously thought.
. . While in many places, the idea of more trees is a good one, this Arctic takeover endangers species like caribou and sheep that thrive in the tundra, as well as the native people who depend on these species for their survival.
. . Global warming are also playing a role by prodding plants to bloom earlier and produce more pollen. With more allergens produced earlier, allergy season can last longer. Because plants bloom earlier in the year, animals that wait until their usual time to migrate might miss out on all the food.
Mar 11, 07: The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades, hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.
. . At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report.
. . Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.
. . The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials --but some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June.
. . "Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent", the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming. But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects. "Things are happening and happening faster than we expected", said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report.
. . The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems —-change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen-— can be blamed on global warming.
. . But the present is nothing compared to the future. Global warming soon will "affect everyone's life ... it's the poor sectors that will be most affected", Romero Lankao said. And co-author Terry Root of Stanford U said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.
. . The report included these likely results of global warming:
. . _Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
. . _Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.
. . _Europe's small glaciers will disappear with many of the continent's large glaciers shrinking dramatically by 2050. And half of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct by 2100.
. . _By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming's effects.
. . _About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.
. . _Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5% for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels", turning a small health risk into a substantial one.
. . _Polar bears in the wild and other animals will be pushed to extinction.
. . _At first, more food will be grown. For example, soybean and rice yields in Latin America will increase starting in a couple of years. Areas outside the tropics, especially the northern latitudes, will see longer growing seasons and healthier forests.
. . Looking at different impacts on ecosystems, industry and regions, the report sees the most positive benefits in forestry and some improved agriculture and transportation in polar regions. The biggest damage is likely to come in ocean and coastal ecosystems, water resources and coastal settlements. The hardest-hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia, with major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects.
. . This report —considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research— focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposed to the more science-focused report by the same group last month.
. . Many —not all— of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of CO2 and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur."
Mar 9, 07: Global warming is pushing northwards diseases more commonly found in developing countries, posing a risk to the financial and physical health of rich nations, the head of a livestock herders' charity said.
. . Steve Sloan, chief executive of GALVmed, said insect-borne diseases were increasingly moving north, such as the viral infection bluetongue that has hit cattle and sheep in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. If Kenya's Rift Valley Fever also reached Europe, the impact would be immense, he said.
. . Bluetongue, which is not harmful to humans, has been present for several years in Spain and Italy. The disease, transmitted by midges, was first discovered in South Africa and has been spreading north since the late 1990s. Experts say that is due to global warming.
. . Within a month of bluetongue being detected in the southern Netherlands last year, the number of Dutch farms affected by it had doubled to more than 400, despite measures to stop the spread of the virus. "These are economic diseases that should frighten the hell out of Europe's meat business, not to mention the threat they pose to human lives", Sloan said. "Climate change is bringing them to Europe."
Mar 8, 07: Rock scientists from across the world will start next week to put together the first geological map of earth in a bid to better understand the planet.
. . The OneGeology project, bringing together scientists from more than 55 countries, will pool national geological survey information and present it on the Internet for all to see rather like Google Earth already does with satellite images. In doing so, it will not only provide people with access to the first detailed images of the ground beneath their feet but also expose the yawning gaps that exist in knowledge.
. . One aim will be to start to identify deep geological structures that might be used for the safe long-term storage of the main greenhouse gas CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity. Carbon Capture and Storage is one of the key tools in the battle against global warming.
. . One of the troubles is that while the data exists nationally, much is held in formats that are not compatible, so the project will convert the information into the new GeoSciML universal geological language.
Mar 8, 07: Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said today. Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.
. . But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.
. . The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.
. . Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.
. . Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."
Mar 9, 07: Some sports fans may now know as much about global warming as they know about women's swimwear: Sports Illustrated this week tells readers how a warming world is going to change the state of play.
UK government departments failed to meet targets on cutting CO2 emissions, waste and water use last year, a watchdog's annual report says. The assessment of 19 departments by the Sustainable Development Commission found "patchy data and poor performance across most areas" --as it did in 2005. The report said most departments were unlikely to hit the target of cutting carbon emissions by 12.5% from 1990 levels by 2010.
Mar 6, 07: Reclusive spiders living in the Arctic may yield clues to the impact of global warming just like bigger, better-known predators such as polar bears, a researcher said. Any disruptions to tiny Arctic spiders, little studied and living much of their lives under snow, could ripple through the food chain since they prey on insects and are in turn eaten by birds.
. . There are about 70 species of spiders in Greenland alone. Spiders adapted to living in the Arctic, with chill temperatures and little food, can take up to seven years to reach maturity, according to some studies. That compares to one to two years for similar species further south.
. . In the longer term, a melting of snow and ice might allow more southerly spider species to march northwards. "In the first few years, (Arctic) spiders might have better chances but as stable populations come up of new species the situation will completely change."
Mar 6, 07: European Union leaders will seek to make history this week with a new pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but a row over renewable energy threatens to taint the bloc's credentials in fighting climate change.
In Gambia, people use an average of 4.5 liters of water a day. The British use an average of 150 liters a day.
Mar 5, 07: The Bush administration estimates in a report being completed for the UN that U.S. emissions of gases that contribute to global warming will grow in the next decade at a rate nearly equal to that of the past 10 years.
. . The administration's climate policy will result in emissions growing 11% in 2012 from 2002, compared with an 11.6 rate in the past decade, the Times said, citing the Environmental Protection Agency.
. . The report, which is more than a year late, also describes growing risks to water supplies, coasts and ecosystems around the country from anticipated temperature and precipitation changes driven by the buildup of CO2.
Mar 1, 07: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope today that the "active debate" in the U.S. administration and Congress on global warming will spur the US to take a leadership role in combatting climate change. The U.N. chief was addressing a student conference on global warming that brought hundreds of high-schoolers from around the world to the U.N. General Assembly hall.
. . Ban also said that climate change poses as great of a danger to the world as war. "The majority of the U.N.'s work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict", Ban said. "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity — and to our planet — is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming."
. . Ban, who took over as U.N. chief on Jan. 1, said it's critical that the international community come up with a new strategy to deal with global warming after Kyoto expires in 2012. He added that climate change will be a top priority during his five-year term. "In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals —-from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land-— are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict."
Feb 27, 07: The likelihood of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season is growing as a Pacific Ocean El Nino system, which drove storms away from the Gulf Coast in 2006, ended in the past few weeks, meteorologists said.
. . There's a possible formation of a La Nina system in the Pacific. More than normal Atlantic hurricanes are usually seen during La Nina events. Weather Research Center is predicting an average hurricane season in 2007 with seven named storms. Colorado State U's Philip Klotzbach and William Gray said in December they expect the 2007 season to spawn 14 named storms with seven hurricanes.
. . An El Nino is said to exist when surface sea temperatures in the equatorial eastern Pacific run unusually warm. A La Nina occurs when sea surface temperatures in the same area of the Pacific run unusually cool.
Feb 28, 07: Simon Nattaq lost both feet to frostbite when his snowmobile crashed through the ice, made thin by rising Arctic temps. All his gear plunged into the water too, leaving him stranded for two days. He now walks —and still hunts— with prosthetic feet, and believes God kept him alive to warn the world about global warming. The Inuit have warned the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice. Hunting patterns thousands of years old are in jeopardy.
. . Watt-Cloutier will argue before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington on Thursday that the US, as the world's largest emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is violating her people's rights.
. . The shrinking ice cap already is forcing the polar bear, seal and walrus to migrate farther north in search of solid ice. Inuit hunters report painful scenes of stranded walrus and seal pups left to die on floating ice because their mothers are too heavy to share the rafts.
. . Scientists last December discovered the 41-square-mile Ayles Ice Shelf had broken free in just a matter of hours from the coast of Ellesmere Island, 500 miles from the North Pole. The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic, some packed with ancient ice more than 3,000 years old.
. . The Canadian weather service said last winter was the warmest on record there since they began keeping records.
Feb 28, 07: An estimated 3 million fish have suffocated in a reservoir in southern Colombia, where a four-month drought has drastically drained water levels, leaving too little oxygen to sustain dozens of hatcheries.
Feb 28, 07: A number of animal and plant species in Brazil could die out as rising world temps cause more droughts, disease and rainstorms in areas like the Pantanal wetlands and Amazon rainforest, according to studies. "All our efforts to protect our biodiversity could be lost", Environment Minister Marina Silva said. Rising global temperatures could undermine conservation efforts.
. . The broadest study, conducted by Brazilian space agency INPE, found that temperatures in the Amazon could rise as much 8 degrees C this century. Other studies predicted fish species could die out if rising ocean levels flood southern islands and estuaries with salt water. Further inland, the Pantanal wetlands could dry up and turn to savannah as hotter temperatures affect rains.
. . Prime agricultural areas in southern and southeastern Brazil are already suffering more intense downpours. Brazil's human population could also suffer if warmer weather accelerates mosquito breeding cycles, increasing the chances of disease outbreaks like malaria and dengue.
. . And while the south could be pounded by heavier rains, drier weather is likely to hit sensitive northern areas like the humid Amazon and the already drought-stricken northeast.
. . Brazil emits less CO2 than most countries its size partly because of its rainforest cover and partly because nearly half its passenger car fleet runs on sugar-cane ethanol.
Feb 27, 07: The UK has experienced its second warmest winter on record, with a mean temperature of 5.47C.
. . All three winter months saw above average temperatures, and January also recorded its second highest UK-wide temp. The five warmest years on record are the five past years. The warmest winter on record was in 1988-89, when the mean temperature was 5.82C.
. . One of the data series used to compile the UK temperature figures is the Central England Temperature Record (CET) record, which is the world's oldest continuous dataset for temperature, stretching back to January 1659. It was also wetter than average. This matched the sort of conditions that the UK was expected to experience as a result of climate change.
Feb 27, 07: For Jay Austin, who has made a career of studying the Great Lakes, the warming climate around Lake Superior is no mystery. But he was surprised to find the waters of the lake itself warming even more rapidly.
. . Austin, a Duluth professor and a researcher with the U of Minnesota-Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory, has studied decades of data. What he found was water temperatures rising almost twice as fast as air temperatures —-more than 4 degrees for the average surface temperature.
. . The increase is having dramatic effects. "The date of what we call the spring overturn has been getting earlier in the year." It's when you start to develop strong positive stratification: warm water sitting on top of cool water."
. . In two decades, the spring turnover has moved up two weeks from early July to mid-June. Part of that likely is due to a loss of ice cover. Since ice is reflective, when it's not there it makes it easier for the lake to absorb heat. In another 35 to 40 years, Austin said, Lake Superior will have very little ice cover.
. . While that may sound good to people who swim or sail on the lake, it's not so good for plants and animals, including the lake's native whitefish.
. . "Paradoxically, you may well see the lake essentially becoming even more desert-like in the sense that you've reduced the flow of nutrients into the system across that temperature gradient."
Feb 27, 07: Fed up with federal inaction and convinced of the dangers from global warming, five governors from Western states agreed to work together to reduce greenhouse gases.
. . "Thankfully, the country has reached a tipping point on this issue. I wish we had done it 20 years ago", said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who last week signed into law a requirement that utilities generate a quarter of their power from renewable sources such as wind, water and the sun by 2025. "Governors, members of Congress and others are now scrambling to be bold."
. . The twin challenges of global warming and energy were some of the dominant points of discussion over four days at the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association.
. . Others discussed legislation to encourage "clean-coal" technology; the economic growth that would come from industries in windmills, solar panels and the like; and tax incentives to spur more renewable energy.
. . But out West, increasingly common droughts and bad fire seasons added urgency. The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state agreed to develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a market-based program.
. . New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat seeking his party's presidential nomination, said the five-state agreement should spur other states ahead. "You're going to see a domino effect with more and more states taking action."
. . Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who has passionately advocated clean technology for coal — a material that exists in great amounts in his state — said emission targets and trading systems like those promised by the latest state agreement are the best way to spur change. "We need customers to ask —no, demand— if you're going to sell us electricity, it needs to be either wind-driven, solar-driven or zero-emissions coal."
Feb 16, 07: World leaders have reached a new agreement on tackling climate change at a meeting in the US. Delegates agreed that developing countries will have to face targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as rich countries.
. . The BBC reports the informal meeting in Washington of the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue also agreed that a global market should be formed to cap and trade CO2 emissions.
. . Former cabinet minister Stephen Byers MP took part in the forum, joined by influential US senator Joe Lieberman and presidential candidate John McCain. British businessman Sir Richard Branson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, all gave keynote addresses.
. . The forum's closing statement yesterday said man-made climate change was now "beyond doubt".
Feb 26, 07: The Sundarbans nature reserve in Bangladesh's south-west is one of the last untouched places on Earth --and home to the largest population of tigers left in the wild. But the trees in the Sundarbans have suddenly started dying. And not just that: they have started dying in a way nobody has seen before, from the top down.
. . Nobody is sure what the cause is, but the country's leading scientists think the trees are dying because, in recent years, the water has turned from fresh to salty. The Sundarbans is a massive mangrove swamp, and the sea has begun encroaching. What we are seeing may be one of the first casualties of rising sea levels caused by global warming. "Nobody can say for sure whether it is climate change because there haven't been proper in-depth studies", says Professor Ainun Nishat, one of the country's leading environmentalists, and one of those involved in the UN's recent climate change report. "But this is the sort of effect rising sea levels will have on Bangladesh. We are fighting climate change on the front line. But the battle has to be integrated across all countries."
. . Then there were the deaths of thousands of fishermen off Bangladesh last summer. The Bay of Bengal was unusually rough. Usually, the authorities only issue a storm warning to fishermen to stay at home once or twice a year. Last year, four warnings were issued in the space of two months. Every warning meant the fishermen lost valuable days at sea. When the last warning came, they could not afford to stay ashore and went to sea anyway. Officially 1,700 drowned, but many Bangladeshis believe the real number may be closer to 10,000.
. . The weather in Bangladesh is going crazy. Last week, a freak tornado struck. Tornadoes occur regularly in Bangladesh --but usually only in the tornado season, in April. A tornado in February is almost unheard of.
. . Also, there were the strange events of 2004, when the tides in the estuaries of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers stopped ebbing and flowing. The water level just stayed at high tide. The same year, the capital, Dhaka, was hit by floods so severe the ground floors of most buildings were under water, and a catfish was caught in one of the government buildings.
. . And in 2005, the country had no winter at all. Westerners tend to assume the whole of the subcontinent is hot all year round; in fact, Bangladesh, like much of northern India, gets quite cold in winter. Except that it didn't last year. Winter never came - with serious effects on the year's potato crop. This year, too, it has not been as cold as usual.
. . Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The entire country is basically one vast river delta. And this is in the most densely populated country in the world, if you don't count city-states or small islands, home to 147 million people. That leaves a worrying question: what happens to those 147 million people if parts of this already overcrowded country become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels.
. . Farmers in coastal areas who used to grow rice have switched to farming prawns, after the water in their paddy fields got too salty. The country has just developed a new strain of rice that will grow in salty water. For a country where agriculture makes up 21 per cent of GDP - and with 147 million people to feed - rising levels of salinity are a serious threat. Already, Bangladeshi farmers can only produce 8 tons of rice per hectare, compared to 17 tons in China.
. . But it could be more serious than that, Dr Nishat warns. "The direction of the monsoon has changed in the last few years", he says. "The depression that brings the rain used to advance north across Bangladesh. Now it is heading west." That could have devastating implications in the event of a tropical cyclone, he says.
. . Dr Nishat says the change in direction of the monsoon may mean any cyclone spends more time gathering pace over the Bay of Bengal. "The Bay of Bengal is hot. Now we are seeing extremely high rainfalls --more than people can easily cope with, and it damages the crops. In 2004, we saw 352mm [14in] of rainfall in a day."
. . But if the classic scenario is of Bangladesh flooding, there is a risk that climate change may bring drought instead. Already, the north-west of the country faced an unprecedented drought last year, when the monsoon rains failed, and had to resort to pumping ground water for irrigation. The irony was that the north-west was experiencing a drought even as the north-east was suffering its heaviest rainfall ever.
. . "What I'm worried about is the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas. What happens in two to five years when the glaciers are gone?" "Have you considered that London is the same height above sea level as most of Bangladesh? You have the Thames barrier, and we have our dykes. By the time Bangladesh is flooded, you will have lost London."
. . The Larsen shelves were attached to the Antarctic peninsula, one of the fastest-warming regions, with temperatures 2.5C higher than 60 years ago. Since 1974, some 13,500 sq km of ice shelves, which are attached to the mainland but float on the sea, have disintegrated in the Antarctic peninsula. Scientists fear more ice-shelf disintegration could lead to the rapid loss of glaciers and ice sheets from the continental mainland, and a consequent rise in global sea levels.
Let's see what other "hoaxes" the scientific community has tried to con us into believing...
. . - the world is round
. . - the earth circles the sun
. . - millions of tiny "switches" can fit onto a piece of silicon smaller than your thumbnail
What's in it for you to join in the reality denial club?
. . http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/
c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png/
275px-2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
. . Look at that and tell me there isn't an alarmingly sharp rise in
temperature ramping up to the present day. Then go back to your
sand pit and bury your head in it again!
TEN POPULAR MYTHS About Global Climate Change
. . http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html
Feb 26, 07: Scientist Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey said atmospheric concentrations of CO2 had fluctuated between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm) for 650,000 years. Since 1850 they had shot up to over 380 ppm. "We are on an unsustainable path", she said.
Feb 26, 07: Governors from five Western states agreed today to work together to reduce greenhouse gases, saying their region has suffered some of the worst of global warming with recent droughts and bad fire seasons. The agreement —called the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative— builds on earlier efforts by several states.
. . The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state agreed that they would develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a program aimed at helping businesses reach the still-undecided goals.
. . "In the absence of meaningful federal action, it is up to the states to take action to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country", said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.
. . California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said a so-called cap-and-trade program, which lets companies that can't meet their emission reduction targets buy credits from those that reduce CO2, would provide "a powerful framework for developing a national cap-and-trade program. ... This agreement shows the power of states to lead our nation addressing climate change."
. . Texas is one of more than 20 states which, lacking a lead from central government in Washington and spurred by mounting evidence of the threat of global warming, have pressed ahead with their own measures to boost renewable energy use and curb emissions of CO2.
. . It was simply a case of showing that technologies like massive wind turbines and solar roof shingles would do the job with costs that were in line with power generated from fossil fuel, said Jim Marston, of the Texas office of Environmental Defense.
. . Some 20 states, refusing to wait for a change of course in Washington, have already taken a variety of steps to tackle climate change, including setting requirements for renewable energy use ranging from 2.2% of total electricity generation in Wisconsin to 25% in Minnesota.
. . Does that mean the states are the place to press the case for alternative energy? Not entirely, according to Chuck Kutscher of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Kutscher noted that the use of renewable energy, including biofuels and geothermal power, was only part of the solution.
. . Data in a report he edited, "Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.", showed energy efficiency would offset more CO2 emissions than all available renewable energies combined.
. . "Global warming is the most challenging problem our society has ever had to face up to", said Britain's chief scientist David King. "Ice is the canary in the coalmine of global warming."
Feb 24, 07: A 12-bedroom guest house, with beautiful views of the North Sea, a lighthouse and sandy beaches, sounds like prime real estate.
. . But Cliff House is nearly worthless. The offshore wooden barrier that once protected the sand and clay cliffs of this stretch of eastern English coast has broken apart, and the government has decided that with the expected rise in sea levels and storm surges that experts attribute to global warming, some vulnerable coastal areas are no longer worth defending.
. . Hurricane Katrina looked to many like the shape of things to come when it devastated New Orleans in 2005. Venice is building up its defenses. Holland is rethinking its famous seawalls.
. . Britain's own "Stern Review", a sweeping report about climate change, says unless action is taken, rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts could displace 200 million people worldwide by the middle of the century.
. . Ronan Uhel, a top official at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, said the situation in Happisburgh shows that governments and insurance companies have finally started letting the public know that it will have to do more than buy fuel-efficient cars and better light bulbs to fight global warming.
. . Late last year, a new law took effect in England and Wales whereby the government decides whether it makes sense, economically and environmentally, to rebuild barriers. For Happisburgh, 200k northeast of London, the answer was no. "But the rate of erosion there now is phenomenal, in excess of 10 meters a year, because of sea level rise, the collapse of its offshore barrier and the fact that southeastern England is sinking", Dr. David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the U of East Anglia, said. Viner said sea levels are now rising about 3 mm a year in that area, increasing to as much as 10 mm a year because of global warming.
. . Britain is already taking steps such as strengthening a barrier that prevents the River Thames from flooding riverside landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament. Venice is sinking while the Adriatic Sea is rising, sometimes flooding St. Mark's Square, the most visited spot in the fabled city. In 2003, authorities approved a $5.5 billion project dubbed Moses, after the biblical figure who parted the Red Sea, to plant hinged barriers in the seabed just off Venice which can be raised when tides get too high.
. . Low-lying Holland has waged a battle against the ocean for centuries, building a massive network of dikes and windmill-driven pumps. After a devastating 1953 flood killed 1,835 people, it launched the Delta Project, one of the world's largest engineering projects, consisting of storm surge barriers, giant sluices and dams.
. . Now, just as the 50-year project has reached completion, fear of climate change has shifted the theory of disaster control away from blocking floodwaters to managing them. It involves selectively breaching the dikes at key pressure points to ease the destructive force and allow the water to flood unpopulated areas.
[Finally; one negative feedback.] The world's oceans cooled suddenly between 2003 and 2005, losing more than 20% of the global-warming heat they'd absorbed over the previous 50 years.
Temperatures vary hardly at all at the equator during the 1,500-year cycle, and Bruce Weilicki's NASA heat-vent findings seem to indicate why. The warm pool of the Pacific acts like a cooking pot, with its "lid" popping open to emit steam when the water gets too hot.
. . Studies coordinated by Bruce Weilicki, of NASA's Langley Research Center, found that when sea surface temperatures rise above 28 degrees C, Pacific rainfall becomes more efficient. More of the cloud droplets form raindrops, so fewer are left to form high, icy, cirrus clouds that seal in heat. As a result, the area of cirrus clouds is reduced, and far more heat passes out into space. This cools the surface of the warm pool, the world's warmest ocean water.
Feb 22, 07: The Inuit of Arctic Canada and Alaska are bearing the brunt of global warming and their way of life is in peril, an international human rights body will be told next month.
. . Inuit activists hope a hearing on Arctic climate change by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will lead to reduced emissions and will help to protect the culture of the northern native people.
. . The commission, which is an arm of the Organization of American States, rejected Cloutier's request to rule on the rights violations caused specifically by U.S. emissions, deciding instead to hold a general hearing on March 1 to investigate the broad relationship between climate change and human rights. Officials at the Washington-based commission said it will be the body's first such hearing.
. . Climate change "very much connects to rights because no where else in the world do you see ice and snow representing life and mobility like it does for us", Watt-Cloutier, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work on the issue, said from the northeast Canadian territory of Nunavut.
. . The human rights commission has scant powers and can do little more than publicize its findings and propose a resolution to the 35-member OAS.
Feb 21, 07: Imagine a world where Scandinavia produces wines to rival Italy's fabled Chianti region. It could come to just that by the end of the century, experts in Italy warn, if global warming continues unchecked.
. . A study by Florence University linking the effects of rain and temperature to wine production found that increasingly high temperatures and intense rains are likely to threaten the quality of Tuscan wines. Italy's farmers association warned the cultivation of olive trees, which grow in a mild climate, has almost reached the Alps.
. . "This rise in temperatures will continue in the next years, and they will be too high and unfavorable for the quality of wine", because they cause the grapes to over-ripen. The research shows that while warmer temperatures favor wine quality, the rain that comes with them is often bad news.
Feb 20, 07: Scientists are struggling to explain the rare death of 17 loons in New Hampshire, saying warm weather may have confused the threatened species of bird which typically heads to the ocean for winter.
Feb 20, 07: An international grouping of corporate leaders has called on governments to take more action on climate change. The group issued a statement in New York following several years of talks.
. . The Global Roundtable on Climate Change, which includes more than 80 big companies, says politicians need to agree new targets for carbon emissions. Targets should be "scientifically informed", they say, and lead to pricing carbon in a global market as a route to cutting emissions.
. . "Climate change is an urgent problem requiring global action to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases", the statement reads. "Confronting climate change depends, in many ways, on adopting new and sustainable energy strategies that can meet growing global energy needs while allowing for the stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at safe levels."
. . The Global Roundtable, which includes companies such as Air France, the aluminium giant Alcoa, re-insurers Swiss Re and Munich Re as well as energy companies Electricite de France and Centrica, is unequivocal in saying that politicians need to reach a new binding deal beyond the current Kyoto Protocol targets which expire in 2012.
. . "The world's governments should set scientifically informed targets, including an ambitious but achievable interim, mid-century target for global CO2 concentrations, for 'stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system'", the group says.
. . "I am convinced that we can build a global plan of action on climate change in ways that create more economic opportunities than risks", said Alcoa chairman and CEO Alain Belda. "Of course, addressing climate change involves risks and costs. But much greater is the risk of failing to act."
. . The statement was issued a few hours after European environment ministers agreed in principle to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.
Feb 20, 07: The Environmental Protection Agency asked for public comment on a draft report that analyzes the sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over a 15-year period that are linked to global warming.
. . The major finding in the draft report is that overall U.S. emissions during 2005 rose by less than 1% from the prior year to the equivalent of 7,262 million metric tons of CO2. It finds that total U.S. emissions have grown by 16% from 1990 to 2005, while the U.S. economy has jumped by 55%. The inventory report also calculated CO2 emissions that are taken out of the atmosphere by so-called "sinks", such as forests, vegetation and soils that absorb CO2.
. . The final report will be sent to the UN to meet the US annual requirement as a party to an international treaty on climate change. Many lawmakers in the new Democratic-controlled Congress are pushing for legislation to impose specific reductions in total U.S. greenhouse gases.
Feb 19, 07: The average global temperature last month was the highest for any January on record, according to NOAA, climbing to 12.85 degrees C, which is .85 C degrees warmer than the 20th-century average.
. . The global reading, an average of measurements taken over land *and sea, beat out the previous record for a January, set in 2002. Land temperatures especially peaked at a record-high 1.89 C degrees warmer than average. The warm January was at least partly the result of an El Nińo weather pattern that began last September and continued into January, combined with the continuing global warming trend, NOAA reported.
. . The most unusually warm temperatures were measured in the Northern Hemisphere, far from the equator. Large parts of Eastern Europe and Russia experienced temps 4.5 degrees above average, and temperatures more than 2.75 C above average occurred in much of Canada. The snow cover in January in Europe and Asia was the second lowest on record.
. . Hundreds of daily low temperature records were broken during a mid-January cold snap in Arizona and southern California. Snowfall was below average in most of the Rockies, meaning that water supplies could plummet later this year. Drought is already occurring in 25% of the contiguous US, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, at the end of January.
. . Last year was a record warm year in the US. The past nine years are all among the 25 warmest on record for the contiguous US, a streak unprecedented in records dating back to 1896. Scientists say 2007 could be the warmest yet, globally.
Feb 19, 07: Official greenhouse gas figures hugely underestimate Britain's contribution to climate change, a report concludes. Christian Aid says adding in emissions from UK-funded operations in other countries would raise the UK's share of the global total from 2% to about 15%.
. . The Carbon Disclosure Project researchers also found that few companies are fully aware of their own emissions, even those relating directly to activities such as heating their buildings and running vehicles.
Feb 19, 07: The world's largest general scientific society joined the concern over global climate change, calling it a "growing threat to society." It is the first consensus statement of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on climate change. It comes just weeks after the International Panel on Climate Change issued its most recent report on human-induced warming.
. . "The evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now and is a growing threat to society", the AAAS said at its annual meeting. "Scientists are observing the rapid melting of glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, rising sea levels, shifts in species ranges and increased frequency of weather extremes", said John P. Holdren, director of the Woods Hole Research Center and AAAS president.
. . AAAS was founded in 1848. It reports that it serves 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, reaching 10 million individuals. http://www.aaas.org
Feb 19, 07: The world must aim to limit the temperature rise due to global warming to just two degrees Celsius despite the near impossibility of achieving it, World Bank Chief Scientist Robert Watson said.
. . Scientists say that at atmospheric concentrations of 450 parts per million of CO2, temps will rise by two degrees C. At 550 ppm, it will be three degrees or more. Current levels are already over 400 ppm and rising at around two ppm per year.
. . Research from the charity WWF last year showed that a rise of two degrees would put between 90 and 200 million more people at risk from malaria, while over three degrees the figure shoots above 300 million. Likewise, a two degree rise puts up to 50 million people at risk from rising sea levels due to melting ice caps, while at three degrees the figure surges to 180 million people.
. . Last October, former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said acting now to cut CO2 emissions would cost roughly 1% of global economic output, with the cost from delaying rising sharply.
. . Dimitri Zenghelis, an economic advisor to the British government and part of Stern's team, told the conference organized by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research it was already too late to stop at two degrees. "Three degrees we can do. For two degrees it is too late", he said. "But 550 ppm is a nasty place to be."
Feb 17, 07: The delicate interplay between the oceans and atmosphere is changing with catastrophic consequences. Entire marine ecosystems have been wiped out, devastating populations of sea birds and larger marine mammals. These "dead zones" occur where there are disturbances to the nutrient-rich ocean currents, which are driven by coastal winds. Extreme marine suffocations have occurred off the west coast of the US every year for the last five years.
. . The most intense event, which left the ocean floor littered with the carcasses of crabs, happened in 2006. Other coastal countries including Chile, Namibia and South Africa have also been affected. The common factor between all of the areas is that marine currents off the coast rise from the deep ocean.
. . These upwelling zones bring nutrient-rich water up from the deep, triggering plankton blooms that underpin the coastal food chain. Nearly 50% of the world's fisheries are in these areas. The currents are driven by winds that move surface water away from the coast, drawing more up from the deep. But now, observations along the west coast of the US suggest that the upwelling is being disrupted, changing its timing and intensity.
. . In 2005, the upwelling was delayed which meant that the plankton blooms did not occur, leading to a collapse in fish populations. This particularly hit migrating salmon, which pass along the coast in April and May every year." In 2005, they found nothing to eat. By the time upwelling started, they were dead."
. . An even more catastrophic event occurred in 2006 when the amount of upwelling doubled, leading to a huge influx of nutrients and a supercharged plankton bloom. When these sank to the ocean floor, they stripped the water column of oxygen, creating a 3,000 sq km dead zone, where creatures unable to swim away suffocated en masse.
The researchers believe the cause of these events was changes in the intensity of the coastal winds, perhaps brought about by global warming. "What we know from the climate change models is that the land will warm more than the sea."
Feb 16, 06: Greenhouse gases widely blamed for causing global warming have jumped to record highs in the atmosphere, apparently stoked by rising emissions from Asian industry, a researcher said today.
. . "Levels are at a new high", said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute which oversees the Zeppelin measuring station on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard about 1,200 km from the North Pole.
. . Concentrations of CO2, the main greenhouse gas emitted largely by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, had risen to 390 parts per million (ppm) from 388 a year ago.
. . Levels have hit peaks almost every year in recent decades, bolstering theories of warming, and are far above 270 ppm before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.
. . CO2 concentrations peak just before the northern hemisphere spring, when plants start soaking up the gas as they grow. Southern hemisphere seasons have less effect since there are fewer land masses --and plants-- south of the equator.
. . The Zeppelin station is run in cooperation with Stockholm U and is one of the main measuring points along with a mountaintop station in Hawaii. Remoteness from industrial centers helps. Scientists say the concentration of CO2 is at its highest in the atmosphere in at least 650,000 years.
. . On the one hand, plants may grow more in a warmer world, soaking up more CO2. But if the soil gets warmer, dead plants and leaves may rot more in winter, releasing more CO2.
. . Any heating of the oceans may means less absorption of CO2, partly because the greater buoyancy of warmer water inhibits a mixing with deeper levels.
Feb 15, 07: Lasers beamed from space have detected what researchers have long suspected: Giant "blisters" over big sloshing lakes of water underneath Antarctic ice. Fed by a complex network of rivers, the subglacial reservoirs force the overlying ice to rise and fall. The results show that some areas fell by up to 9m over just two years. A feature known as Lake Englehardt took just under three years to empty two cubic km. In the same period, Lake Conway filled with an additional 1.2 cubic km.These lakes, some stretching across hundreds of square km, fill and drain dramatically. About 90% of the world's fresh water is locked in the thick ice cap.
. . Global warming did *not create these big pockets of water --they lie beneath some 2,300 feet of compressed snow and ice, too deep to be affected by temperature changes on the surface [for a few years, anyway]-- but knowing how they behave is important to understanding the impact of climate change on the Antarctic ice sheet.
. . Nearly 150 subglacial lakes have been mapped beneath the vast Antarctic ice sheet, mostly by glaciologists drilling holes through the ice. The new ones were found under the fast-flowing Whillans and Mercer Ice Streams that carry ice from the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the floating Ross Ice Shelf.
. . The satellite detected dips in the surface that moved around as the hidden lakes drained and filled beneath the surface glaciers, which are moving rivers of ice.
. . "The parts that are changing are changing so rapidly that they can't be anything else but (sub-surface) water", she said. "It's such a quick thing." "Quick" can be a relative term when talking about the movement around glaciers, which tend to move very slowly. But one lake that measured around 30 km by 10 km caused a 9 meter change in elevation at the surface when it drained over a period of about 30 months.
. . Understanding how much water flows beneath the ice is critical because it is one of the factors that determine how fast they flow. More water could speed up the flow of ice into the sea, raising sea levels.
Feb 15, 07: A meeting of politicians in Washington has heard US and European leaders state that the climate change debate is over. The informal meeting is an attempt to broker a new global deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But a proposal tabled by the British government was rejected by German delegates as being far too lax.
. . US senator Joe Lieberman forecast that the US Congress will enact a law on cutting emissions by the end of next year, possibly this year. And presidential candidate John McCain, who is co-sponsoring climate legislation with Mr Leiberman, was emphatic on the need for new initiatives. "The debate is over, my friends", he told delegates. "Now the question is: what do we do?
. . Meanwhile, the Canadian parliament moved to force the government to meet its Kyoto Protocol target for reducing emissions. The ruling Conservative party argues that meeting the target, of reducing emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012, is impossible. The parliamentary vote gives the government 60 days to formulate a plan for getting back on track.
. . German chancellor Angela Merkel sent a video message saying she was determined to break through the climate impasse during this year's G8 negotiations, which Germany chairs. The scientific evidence, she said, "leaves no doubt" that climate change is real and human-induced.
. . Britain's Environment Secretary David Miliband said US involvement in global moves to reduce emissions was badly needed.
. . A proposal which Britain took to the meeting was condemned by German representatives as being too weak. Mr Blair proposed a deal aiming to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 3C. This would put the UK at odds with the European Union, which is pursuing a 2C maximum rise.
. . Recent scientific research indicates that 3C could trigger serious disruption in many parts of the Earth, including irreversible drying out of the Amazon rainforest and melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
. . The talks are expected to conclude on Thursday with a consensus recommentation which can be taken to G8 meetings later in the year and to the next UN climate summit in December.
Feb 14, 07: British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the moment was right to come up with new measures to combat global warming and vowed that the world's industrialized countries would push strongly this year for new emissions goals.
. . At a news conference after a meeting in Berlin, Merkel and Blair said they agreed to convene an international meeting on climate change in May to prepare for the Group of Eight summit, June 6-8. The May conference would seek to determine standards to continue from the Kyoto Protocols after 2012 — "what is our emissions goal, what are we striving for", Merkel said.
Feb 14, 07: The Maldives, which have a population of about 300,000 and are a popular vacation destination, rise only about 1 meter from sea level. You can imagine what a .6m rise in water levels would do. In the South Pacific, the Marshall Islands (3 meters above sea level), Tuvalu (6 meters), Kiribati (most land at 1 meter) and Tonga (most land at 1 meter) are in danger, too.
Feb 14, 07: The Helheim Glacier in southeast Greenland is now one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world.
Feb 14, 07: Even a small rise in the world's sea levels, predicted as a result of global warming, could make environmental refugees of some 56 million people in developing countries, a World Bank economist said. If seas rise as little as 1 meter this century, as forecast in some scientific models, one-fourth of the heavily populated Nile Delta in Egypt would be underwater. A sea level rise of 1 meter would turn about 56 million people in 84 developing countries into refugees, Dasgupta said.
. . Coastal Vietnam would also be severely affected, Dasgupta said at a briefing, as would Mauritania, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas and Benin. "Knowing which countries will be most affected could allow better targeting of scarce available resources and could spur vulnerable nations to develop national adaptation plans now and avoid big losses later."
. . She also noted that global average sea levels rose more rapidly from 1993 to 2003 than they did from 1961 through 2003, which was faster than climate models projected. By 2100, Dasgupta said, sea levels are projected to rise 0.5 meter to 1.4 meter above 1990 levels.
. . With every additional 1 meter rise in sea level, consequences for specific areas can be calculated, she said:
. . -- A 2 meter rise would inundate 22 percent of Mexico's wetlands.
. . -- A 3 meter rise would hit 17 percent of Mauritania's gross domestic product.
. . -- A 4 meter rise would submerge 35 percent of Vietnam's urban areas.
. . -- a 5 meter rise would force 16.7 million people in Bangladesh to become refugees.
Even the most extreme scenarios should be considered, she said, because of the possibility that the thick ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica could disintegrate as the world warms. The loss of the Greenland ice sheet alone would raise sea level by nearly 7 meters.
Feb 12, 07: Peru's "White Mountain Range" may soon have to change its name. The ice atop Cordillera Blanca, the largest glacier chain in the tropics, is melting fast because of rising temperatures, and peaks are turning brown. The trend is highlighting fears of global warming and, scientists say, is endangering future water supplies to the arid coast where most Peruvians live.
. . Glaciologists consider the health of the world's glaciers an indicator of global warming and they warn that what is happening in the Andes signals trouble ahead.
. . Quelccaya in southern Peru, the world's largest tropical ice cap, is retreating at about 200 feet a year, up from 20 feet a year in the 1960s. In Peru, home to 70% of Earth's tropical glaciers, the Andes mountains have lost at least 22% of their glacier area since 1970 and the melt is speeding up, according to Peru's National Resources Institute. The Broggi glacier has disappeared altogether. Ice caves once popular with tourists are gone.
. . The melt is causing long-term fears of a water shortage. Glaciers feed the rivers that feed the sprawling cities and shantytowns on Peru's bone-dry Pacific coast. They also serve agriculture and hydroelectric plants that generate 70% of the country's power.
. . Two-thirds of Peru's 27 million people live on the coast, where just 1.8% of the nation's water supply is found. Shantytowns spring up virtually overnight, and providing them with water is extremely costly.
. . "The farmers are completely confused." Farmers growing potatoes, wheat and artichokes depend entirely on the glacier runoff from the Cordillera Blanca during the dry season, and on rainfall during the wet season, and they say this is changing.
Feb 9, 07: Airline tycoon Richard Branson announced on Friday a $25 million prize for the first person to come up with a way of scrubbing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the battle to beat global warming.
. . Branson said he hoped the prize would spur innovative and creative thought to save mankind from self-destruction. "Unless we can devise a way of removing CO2 from the earth's atmosphere we will lose half of all species on earth, all the coral reefs, 100 million people will be displaced, farmlands will become deserts and rain forests wastelands."
. . He's investing heavily in cleaner engines and fuels for his airline.
. . The prize will initially only be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges including Branson, Gore and Tickell as well as U.S. climate scientist James Hansen, Briton James Lovelock (Gaia!!) and Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery.
. . The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion metric tons of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years --with $5 million of the prize being paid at the start and the remaining $20 million at the end. "This is the world's first deliberate attempt at planetary engineering", Flannery said. "We are at the last moment. Once we reach the tipping point it will have been taken out of our hands.
. . He said 200 metric gigatons of CO2 had accumulated in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, raising concentrations by 100 parts per million. The challenge was to find ways of bringing that back down again.
Feb 9, 07: International rules allowing burial of greenhouse gases beneath the seabed enter into force on Saturday in what will be a step toward fighting global warming, if storage costs are cut and leaks can be averted.
. . The new rules will permit industrialists to capture heat-trapping gases from big emitters such as coal-fired power plants or steel mills and entomb them offshore - slowing warming while allowing continued use of fossil fuels. "Storage of CO2 under the seabed will be allowed from February 10, 2007 under amendments to an international agreement governing the dumping of wastes at sea", the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization (IMO) said in a statement.
. . A 2005 U.N. report, however, warned that such storage would only be widely applied if the penalty for emitting CO2 to the atmosphere was $25-$30 a ton --far above current prices in a European Union market. It said carbon burial could be one of the top contributors to slowing warming this century.
. . CO2 is not toxic but can lead to acidification of sea water, making it hard for creatures from shrimp to oysters to build shells. In heavy concentrations above ground it can displace air and so asphyxiate animals and plants.
. . The amendments pave the way for carbon storage in "sub-seabed geological formations" and say gases injected must consist "overwhelmingly" of CO2 with no added waste. Torp said there was uncertainty about what "overwhelmingly" meant --emissions from a coal-fired power plant, for instance, might include some toxic sulphur dioxide.
. . Statoil has injected about nine million tons of CO2 in rocks far below its Sleipner gas field in the past decade, with no signs of leaks. Two other big carbon storage sites are in operation in Canada and Algeria and more are planned.
Feb 8, 07: Emerging economies such as China are justified in holding back on fighting greenhouse gas emissions until richer polluters like the United States do more to solve the problem, former Vice President Al Gore said today.
. . Chinese officials said they would act after industrial countries such as the US and others make changes themselves, Gore said, addressing a conference in Madrid on global warming. "They're right in saying that. But we have to act quickly", said Gore, who was nominated last week for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in drawing attention to global warming.
. . Gore narrated an hourlong slide presentation with graphic evidence of global warming: Antarctic ice shelves cracking and collapsing into the sea, before-and-after shots of glaciers reduced to lakes and small patches of ice, and forecasts of heavily populated land masses such as Florida shrinking drastically if glacial meltdown reaches a worst-case scenario and floods the seas.
. . "Never before has all of civilization been threatened", Gore said. "We have everything we need to save it, with the possible exception of political will. But political will is a renewable resource." [Hint, hint...]
Feb 7, 07: Congress continued to probe allegations today that the Bush administration tried to muzzle government scientists on climate change and suppress scientific research, including a comprehensive report in 2000 on global warming's impact on the US.
. . During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers weighed in with harsh words for an administration that has come under fire in the 110th Congress for its stance on climate change.
. . "One incidence of political tampering with science is too many", said Sen. Daniel Inouye.
. . "For years, we have been frustrated by the lack of recognition and cooperation on the part of the administration on addressing this issue", said Sen. John McCain.
. . At the hearing, several witnesses testified that they had experienced or seen political interference by the Bush administration in climate-change science. Witnesses said press officers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies had manipulated or obstructed media interviews with government scientists. Witnesses also said that important research on global warming had been downplayed, edited or suppressed by a system of "minders" and "gatekeepers."
. . Rick Piltz, the director of the climate science watch program at watchdog group the Government Accountability Project, said the Bush administration effectively quashed official use of the 2000 National Assessment report on global warming in the US.
. . According to Piltz, who worked for White House climate-change programs from 1995 to 2005, the report remains "the most comprehensive, scientifically based assessment of the potential consequences of climate change for the United States." In his written statement, he called the suppression of the report "the central climate science scandal of the (Bush) administration."
. . Tom Knutson, a meteorologist and hurricane expert at NOAA, detailed several instances in which his media interviews were mysteriously canceled or language in his presentations was changed.
. . Other witnesses bemoaned cuts in areas of funding at NOAA and NASA that would reduce the number of satellites and Earth-observing instruments in space by 35% by 2010, making it harder to study climate change and predict natural disasters.
. . The committee hoped to hear from representatives from the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the White House on science issues, but none showed up, leaving William Brennan, acting director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, to defend the administration.
. . "I think this is the most serious dereliction of public responsibility that I've ever seen", Kerry said. "This is a disgrace. You're turning your backs on future generations in this country and potentially inviting a global catastrophe."
Feb 7, 07: Global warming will require more robust monitoring of hurricanes, typhoons and other disasters, mirroring systems in place to watch for tsunamis, a top UN official said.
. . Salvano Briceno, director of the U.N.'s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), said new scientific evidence presented last week in Paris signaled temperature and sea level increases that would "very likely" make natural disasters more frequent and more intense.
. . Better weather tracking and early-warning systems could help mitigate the impact of heat waves, heavy rains, mudslides and drought, Briceno said. "Being prepared and being aware does not mean that we can avoid disaster."
. . More heatwaves and sea level increases could continue for more than 1,000 years, even if greenhouse gas emissions were capped now.
. . Simple measures such a shift in Bangladesh to raise ducks --which can float-- instead of chickens, which drown in floods, could help, he said. Efforts to plant drought-resistant crops in Cuba and India and to reinforce Costa Rican homes with storm-resistant bamboo were also good steps, he said.
Feb 7, 07: Details on the largest climate change since the age of dinosaurs come straight from the horse's mouth, as equine teeth provide clues to how long, how cold and when the big chill was, scientists reported today.
. . Earth's temperature dropped by 8 degrees C over a period of 400,000 years, some 33.5 million years ago, the researchers said. While 400,000 years sounds like a long time, the temp change is so drastic that the impact was striking in animal extinctions. For comparison, rising sea levels, changing ocean currents and more intense storms --could result from an estimated temperature increase of 1.8 to 4 degrees C just this century.
. . Many species went extinct at the transition between the Eocene and Oligocene, based on the fossil record before and after the shift. Fossil research showed that creatures that might be at home in the tropics, like warm-loving crocodilians, roamed what is now Nebraska on the American Great Plains before the temperature transition. After the transition, they were gone. Scientists believe changes in ocean currents were to blame for the shift.
. . The oxygen isotopes told the scientists at what temperature the teeth were formed and carbon isotopes revealed the relative humidity, the U of Florida said.
. . It was the biggest climate change since the end of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
Feb 6, 07: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva blamed wealthy countries for global warming and said they should stop telling Brazil what to do with the Amazon rainforest. "The wealthy countries are very smart, approving protocols, holding big speeches on the need to avoid deforestation but they already deforested everything", Lula said.
. . Lula, a former factory worker, said wealthy countries should switch to non-fossil fuels, such as ethanol or biodiesel --an area where Brazil is a pioneer. Brazil is the world's largest producer of ethanol, which is derived from sugar cane. It will invest 17.4 billion reais ($8.3 billion) in renewable fuels over the next four years.
. . Accelerating demand has encouraged investors to move into traditional coffee growing areas in Minas Gerais state in search of more land to plant sugar cane. "No country is revolutionizing its energy matrix as we are", Lula said. "The so-called carbon credits they invented --so far, we haven't seen a cent of that", he added in reference to compensation for preserving carbon-absorbing forests.
. . Brazil has repeatedly rejected proposals for international control over the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest source of fresh water and biodiversity. Lula said Brazil had reduced deforestation in the Amazon by 52% over the past three years. "There are few countries in the world that have the moral authority to talk about deforestation with Brazil", Lula said.
. . Many analysts say a cyclical downturn in agriculture, not government policies, has slowed deforestation in the Amazon region. Still, an area the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut is destroyed every year in the Amazon as loggers cut timber and farmers follow them to plant soybeans or rice.
Feb 6, 07: China will spend more to research global warming but lacks the money and technology to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening the problem, a government official said.
. . China "lags behind Europe and the US" in the technology needed to clean its coal, which accounts for 69% of its energy output, said Qin Dahe, chief of the China Meteorological Administration. "It takes time to catch up", said Qin, who served as one of China's representatives to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Feb 6, 07: Beijing's temperature hit 55 degrees F on Saturday —-a 30-year high for the date-— prompting an early spring, with frozen lakes melting and trees blooming.
. . Qin said the central government already had set a "very ambitious and arduous goal" of reducing CO2 and other emissions by 4% a year over the next five years. The central government is "very serious about the commitment and has firmly demanded all regions to meet the emissions reduction targets", he said.
. . However, China has no binding international commitments to reduce its emissions and failed to meet similar targets set by the government five years ago.
. . A separate Chinese report released last month said climate change will harm China's ecology and economy in the coming decades, possibly causing large drops in agricultural output.
. . In the latter half of this century, production of wheat, corn and rice in China will drop by as much as 37%, and the country's average temperatures would rise by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 to 80 years, the report said.
. . It also said evaporation rates for some inland rivers would increase by 15%. China already faces a severe water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country. A British environmental expert said y'day that water shortages in China already were reaching "incredible" proportions, with Shanghai particularly vulnerable unless drastic action is taken quickly.
. . Justin Mundy, a government adviser on climate change, pointed to the current low levels of aquifers in Shanghai as a prime example of the problems China faces. Shanghai is going to have to use desalinized water in the next 10 years, then build the infrastructure to import water from Southwest China, he said.
Feb 6, 07: China said it had no plans to radically change its reliance on coal and other dirty fuels, as it insisted the responsibility for global warming rested with developed countries.
. . In the first official Chinese response to a stark UN report issued last week on climate change, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu appeared to take aim at the US as she highlighted the importance of the Kyoto Protocol. "You need to point out that climate changes are the result of the long-term emissions of the developed countries and the high per-capita emissions of the developed countries", Jiang said. "Currently the developed countries should make an example in shouldering the responsibility in reducing their emission in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol."
Feb 6, 07: At least 300,000 people in north-west China are short of drinking water because of unseasonably warm weather, which officials link to climate change. Parts of Shaanxi province face drought after January saw as little as 10% of average rainfall, state media say. Frozen lakes are melting and trees are blossoming in the capital Beijing as it experiences its warmest winter for 30 years.
Feb 6, 07: Dire warnings from top scientists that mankind is to blame for global warming set off alarm bells everywhere --but many of the world's churches have already "gone green" in the race to save the planet. For Christians, Jews and Muslims, the message is the same --mankind has "stewardship" of the earth which it has a duty to protect for future generations.
. . Environmentalists hailed churches for stepping up to the plate with a real sense of urgency. "Caring for the environment is a key part of many religions. Any contribution which highlights and tackles issues such as climate change is very welcome", said Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth.
. . Martin Robra, climate change spokesman for the World Council of Churches grouping 560 million Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican Christians, said the debate "must now shift from denial and delays to responsibility and remedies well within humanity's grasp."
. . A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders this month kicked off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming.
. . Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, drives an eco-friendly car, bangs the green drum and argues "We are consumers of what God has made. We are in communion with it."
. . Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based spiritual head of all Orthodox Churches, is planning to take a ship full of religious leaders to the Arctic Circle this summer to focus on global warming.
. . The Big Green Jewish Website seeks to galvanize British Jews into enviro action. The Greening Synagogues initiative in the United States opts for the practical --programmable thermostats, energy-saving light bulbs.
. . And for Muslims, the issue is just as pressing.
Feb 3, 07: [DMS is a major Gaian climate-control mechanism!] What gives the ocean air that delightful and distinctive smell? Scientists have not known the full story until now. The smell comes from a gas produced by genes recently identified by researchers in ocean-dwelling bacteria. Understanding how the odorous gas is produced could be important because it is implicated in cloud formation over the ocean and helps some animals find food.
. . Scientists had long known that bacteria could be found consuming decay products and producing a gas called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, in places where plankton and marine plants such as seaweed were dying. This pungent gas is what gives ocean air "sort of a fishy, tangy smell", said study author Andrew Johnston of the U of East Anglia.
. . The team took samples of mud from the salt marshes along Britain's coast, and isolated a new strain of bacteria. After sequencing its genes and comparing the genetic structure to other known bacteria, they were able to identify the gene involved in the mechanism that converts the plants' decay products, called DMSP, into DMS.
. . The mechanism responsible "was absolutely not what anyone expected." Scientists had thought that a simple enzyme would be used to break down the DMSP into DMS, but the process turned out to be more complicated as the DMSP proved tougher to breakdown than suspected.
. . This mechanism is neither the only way, nor the primary way, that bacteria break down the estimated 1 billion tons of DMSP in the ocean, Johnston said, but it is important nonetheless as DMS releases over the open ocean influences cloud formation, which can influence Earth's climate.
. . Some seabirds rely on DMS as a homing scent to find food. On one occasion during their field research, Johnston and his team opened a bottle filled with the DMS-producing bacteria only to be bombarded by hungry seabirds.
Feb 2, 07: Sea level, which rose on average by 1.8mm a year in 1961-2003, went up by an average of 3.1mm a year between 1993-2003. [this despite that the former figure *includes the ten years of the letter figure. ergo, 1961-1993 wuda been much lower than the first figure, say 1.5 mm. So lately, the rate of the rise has more than DOUBLED! Will the next ten years double even that?] Much of the increase may be due to the massive acceleration of glacier melt in Greenland.
Britain's Meteorological Office said there was a 60% probability that 2007 would break the heat record there, set by 1998.
Feb 2, 07: The notion that human activity, or the activity of any organism, can affect Earth on a planetary scale is still a hard one for many people to swallow. And it is this kind of disbelief that fuels much of the public skepticism surrounding global warming. A poll conducted last summer by the Pew Research Center found that only 41% of Americans believe the burning of fossil fuels causes global warming.
. . The "most dramatic" title probably goes to the oxygenation of Earth’s early atmosphere by ancient microbes as they began to harness the power of sunlight through photosynthesis. Humans "are having a strong effect on global geochemical cycles, but it does not compare at all to the advent of oxygenic photosynthesis", said Katrina Edwards, a geo-microbiologist at the University of Southern California (USC). “That was a catastrophic environmental change that occurred before 2.2 billion years ago [which] wreaked its full wrath on the Earth system.”
. . Mighty microbes also triggered sudden climatic shifts similar to what humans are doing now. Recent studies suggest that the proliferation of cyanobacteria 2.3 billion years ago led to a sudden ice age and the creation of a “Snowball Earth”. As they carry out photosynthesis, cyanobacteria break apart water and release oxygen as a waste product. Oxygen is one of the most reactive elements around, and its release into the atmosphere in large amounts destroyed methane, a greenhouse gas that absorbed the sun's energy and helped keep our planet warm.
. . Some scientists think the disappearance of this methane blanket plunged the planet into a cold spell so severe that Earth’s equator was covered by a mile-thick layer of ice. Earth might still be frozen today if not for the appearance of new life forms. As organisms evolved, many developed the ability to breathe oxygen. In the process, they exhaled another greenhouse gas, CO2, which eventually thawed out the world.
. . When trees first appeared about 380 million years ago, they also disturbed Earth’s atmospheric equilibrium.
. . Though it might seem as if humans are mere fleas along for a ride on the back of an immense animal called Earth, our intelligence, technology and sheer numbers mean our species packs a punch that can shake the world in wild ways. While we are not the first species to drastically alter our planet, our influence is unique in a number of ways, scientists say. For one thing, humans have developed large-scale industry.
. . “Humans are the most common large animal to ever walk the planet”, said Kirk Johnson, a chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “Population, plus brain power and technology, is a potent combination and the result is that humans are effecting change at very high rates.”
. . Belnap agrees. “I don’t think we’ve fundamentally changed any process. We’ve just cranked up the speed,” she said. “We haven’t introduced anything new. We’ve just changed how fast or slow it happens, and mostly fast.”
. . But no matter how high humans cause the mercury to rise and how much damage we do to the planet, Earth and life will survive, scientists say. It just might no longer be in the form we prefer or the form that allows us to thrive.
. . “What we need to be thinking of as humans causing changes to the Earth system is what the consequences will be to us human beings,” said Edwards, the USC geo-microbiologist. “The Earth could care less. We will be recorded as a minor perturbation in the Earth system. The Earth will go on. The question is: Will we?”
Feb 2, 07: Fleets of supertankers could one day ply the world's oceans laden not with oil but fresh water. By 2100, water scarcity could impact between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people, says a leaked, related U.N. climate study. China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States would face critical water shortages, it says.
. . Maritime experts say shipping water by tanker is one of the least eccentric ideas raised of late to counter acute shortages. Dragging icebergs from the Arctic, ships hauling enormous bags of fresh water, and cloud seeding have all been aired by water authorities in the past.
. . Exporting water by sea was already happening between France and Algeria and Turkey and Israel. He said countries with abundant water supplies like Norway, Russia and New Zealand could also begin to ship water more regularly. Last May, London's Thames Water investigated bringing water supplies by tanker from Scotland and Norway to solve emergency shortages due to drought. At the end of last year, New Zealand firm Adsteam Agency proposed taking water by tanker to Australia when that country was suffering its worst recorded drought. In Australia, a firm called Solar Sailor is developing electric-hybrid supertankers powered by solar sails to carry water
. . Responding to a series of high-profile oil tanker disasters the U.N. International Maritime Organization in 2003 accelerated a time-table to retire single-hulled oil tankers. The final deadline for their elimination is 2015. But such pollution issues wouldn't apply if they were carrying water! Cheap ships.
Feb 5, 07: Unseasonably warm weather may have tricked the world's smelliest plant into blooming in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter, botanists at the Eden Project where the native of Sumatra is housed said.
Feb 1, 07: Surges of cool waters from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean became stronger off Morocco in the 20th century, apparently because of global warming that could affect fish stocks, a study showed.
. . The report said there was evidence of similar upwellings in the Arabian Sea, off California, Peru and Chile, also apparently driven by higher temperatures and shifts in winds tied to greenhouse gases.
. . The upwellings could be commercially important because areas where cooler waters rise near coasts provide about 20% of the world's fish catch even though they cover less than 1% of the world's ocean surface.
. . "These results strongly imply that upwelling may continue to intensify with future increased levels of atmospheric CO2 and global warming", Helen Victoria McGregor of the U of Bremen and co-authors wrote.
Feb 1, 07: Chinese scientists have warned that rising temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Chinese rivers and trigger more droughts, sandstorms and desertification, state media reported. Temps across China were an average 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than usual in January this year, while the temperature on the plateau was 2.7 degrees higher than normal years.
. . "One of the worst results of the rising temperature on the plateau could be an ultimate change in the volume of water flowing into the Yangtze, the Yellow and other rivers that originate in the mountainous region."
. . The U.N. Development Program has warned that melting glaciers, shrinking an average 131.4 square km (50.7 square miles) annually over the last 30 years --an area twice the size of metropolitan Beijing-- according to the China Geological Survey Bureau, could disappear by 2100.
. . Temperatures on the plateau have also nudged record highs this winter and brought sandstorms two months early. Last year's heat waves across the country were also partly attributed to higher-than-average temperatures on the plateau in the winter of 2005-2006. Typhoons, floods and droughts killed 2,704 people and inflicted economic losses of 212 billion yuan ($27.32 billion) in 2006.
. . The warm January could make it easier for worm eggs and bugs to survive the winter, raising the possibility of plant diseases and insect pests in the spring, said Song Lianchun, head of the disaster reduction forecast department at the meteorological administration.
Jan 31, 07: Australia: Average temperatures in Sydney will rise by about 9 degrees C during the next 65 years, with devastating consequences including 1,300 more heat-related deaths per year, according to a government study released today.
. . New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma called the report "frightening reading" and said the federal government "can no longer put its head in the sand on this issue."
. . If current climate trends continue, summer temperatures in Sydney's landlocked suburbs —-which often top 95 degrees F-— could rise by as much as 13 degrees, the CSIRO said. It predicted heat-related deaths of people over 65 will increase to 1,312 by 2050 from the current average of 176 per year. By 2070 Sydney could be in drought for nine out of every 10 years instead of the current average of three, the report said. "Such trends would also increase evaporation, heat waves, extreme winds and fire risk", the report said.
. . Australian power companies issued a report today that said expanding the use of nuclear power and retrofitting coal-fired power stations to capture CO2 is the best way to slow greenhouse emissions.
Jan 31, 07: Many European countries had their warmest January since records began, weather offices said today, bringing Dutch daffodils out early and triggering grassland fires in Hungary. In the Netherlands, January temperatures were the highest since they were first measured in 1706. In Switzerland, where many ski resorts had been short of snow until heavy falls late last week, MeteoSwiss said January was set to be the warmest on record in Swiss cities. Hungary also said January had been its warmest on record, with high temperatures and lack of rain causing fires on grasslands in eastern and southeastern Hungary.
. . The same story was echoed across Europe with Germany's meteorological office DWD saying that January temperature averages of 4.6 degrees Celsius were some five degrees above long-term averages --making January 2007 together with January 1975, the warmest since records began in 1901.
. . In most parts of Austria, the temps were also the warmest since records began. Britain said this month could be the second warmest, with 1916 holding the record.
. . According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2006 was the sixth warmest year since records began, with 1998 the warmest. All the 10 warmest years have been since 1994. Some meteorologists predict that 2007 will be the warmest year on record because of a build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere and the effect of the El Nino event that warms the eastern Pacific.
. . Earlier this month, hurricane-force winds swept across Europe, from Britain via the Netherlands to Poland, killing more than 40 people.
Jan 31, 07: Opposition legislators attacked Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper on today after it emerged that he had once described the Kyoto global warming protocol as "a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations." Harper, who says Canada cannot meet its Kyoto commitments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, made the comments in a 2002 fund-raising letter when he was in opposition. He now heads the minority Conservative government and is under great pressure to show he is serious about tackling climate change.
. . "A real leader would say that he was wrong and say 'I agree that it was wrong and I have changed my mind'", said Stephane Dion, leader of the opposition Liberals. "But the problem is he did not change his mind. He is still a climate change denier", Dion told Parliament.
. . The prime minister comes from the energy-rich western province of Alberta, where emissions are soaring as companies open up vast expanses of oil-rich tar sands. In the letter, Harper said Kyoto would cripple Canada's oil and gas industry. [Tar sands produce an incredable amount of CO2 in their extraction.]
Jan 29, 07: Rising temperatures will leave millions more people hungry [& dead] by 2080 and cause critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States, according to a new global climate report.
. . By the end of the century, climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people as temperatures rise. They said an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding would hit another 7 million homes. "The message is that every region of the earth will have exposure."
. . China, like Australia, will lose significant rainfall in their agricultural areas. The draft contains an entire chapter on Australia --which is in the grip of its worst recorded drought-- warning the country's Great Barrier Reef would become "functionally extinct" because of coral bleaching. Snow would disappear from Australia's southeast alps, while water inflows to the Murray-Darling river basin, the country's main agricultural region, would fall by 10 and 25% by 2050.
. . In Europe, glaciers would disappear from the central Alps, while some Pacific island nations would be hit hard by rising sea levels and more frequent tropical storms.
Jan 30, 07: The National Football League is hoping to tackle the game's heat-trapping gas emissions by planting 3,000 mangroves and other trees native to Florida, but the plan could be more of an incomplete pass than a touchdown when it comes to global warming, experts said.
. . "It's probably a nice thing to do, but planting trees is not a quantitative solution to the real problem", said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. "If you plant a tree (CO2 reductions are) only temporary for the life of the tree", he said. "If you don't emit in the first place, then that permanently reduces CO2." The mangroves could succumb to fire, disease, or be cut down, any of which would release any CO2 sequestered by the trees back into the atmosphere.
Jan 29, 07: Wisconsin lost almost 5% of its cropland from 2000 to 2005, according to a recent study by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development. That's equivalent to 30,000 acres of cropland a year, or nearly two townships.
. . Seven other states, none of them in the Midwest, lost a larger percentage of their cropland during the five-year span, the group said. Those states were: California, Georgia, Vermont, Nevada, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Delaware.
Jan 30, 07: Predicting how clouds will form in a warmer world remains a haze in a U.N. climate report, affecting projected rises in temperatures and sea levels, scientists say. It's has plugged many gaps since a last report in 2001, such as anomalies between temperatures measured by satellites or at the earth's surface or how far tiny, glinting particles of air pollution reflect sunlight back into space.
. . But cloud formation in the 21st century --hard enough for weather forecasters to predict for tomorrow-- is among the remaining puzzles. Warmer air can absorb more moisture, meaning more clouds and so more rain and snow in many regions. But much more cloud cover might also brake warming because more sunlight will bounce off the white tops back into space.
. . More snows could also offset any thaw of the vast Antarctic ice cap and the smaller cap on Greenland. If both melted, world sea levels would be about 65 meters (around 215 ft) higher than today. "In a warmer climate, models suggest that the ice sheets could accumulate more snowfall, tending to lower sea level", the draft says. But it adds that rapid thawing at the fringes has probably outweighed any such trend in recent years. "In the interior of Greenland, the ice has been thickening." Studies show Greenland is losing vast amounts of ice overall.
Jan 29, 07: People in the Australian state of Queensland will soon have to start drinking water containing recycled sewage, the state premier has warned. Premier Peter Beattie said he had scrapped a referendum on the issue, because there was no longer a choice. He also warned other Australian states might eventually have to do the same because of mounting water shortages.
. . Water is already recycled in places like Singapore and the UK, but the idea is still unpopular in Australia. But the country is currently suffering from a severe drought --the worst on record.
Jan 29, 07: 13% of Americans have never heard of global warming even though their country is the world's top source of greenhouse gases, a 46-country survey showed today.
. . The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a "very serious problem" and a further 34 percent rated it a "serious problem."
. . "It has taken extreme and life-threatening weather patterns to finally drive the message home that global warming is happening and is here to stay unless a concerted, global effort is made to reverse it", said Patrick Dodd, the President of ACNielsen Europe.
. . People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming "very serious." In Latin America, 96 percent of respondents said they had heard of global warming and 75 percent rated it "very serious."
Jan 28, 07: For the first time, a drumlin --a mound of sediment and rock-- has been observed mid-formation. The streamlined, elongated hills form underneath ice-sheets as they scrape up material as they move.
. . While many relic drumlins are well known features in once ice-covered areas, this is the first time an active one has been observed. It was found under the ice in Antarctica. The scientists believe it will help shed light on ice-sheet behavior.
. . The Rutford Ice Stream, a 2km thick, fast flowing ice stream, which drains part of the West Antarctic ice sheet into the sea, creating huge floating ice shelves, was the location.
. . The team surveyed the area three times over a period of 13 years, between 1991 and 2004. "We went from this feature not being there, to suddenly, bam, this big mound had risen from the sea-bed.
. . The drumlin, which is still growing, now measures about 10m high, 100m wide and 1km long, and is growing 10 times faster than had been expected. "So the response of the whole ice sheet to changes of sea level or climate could be faster, because the beds of these ice stream can be changed much faster than we have previously thought possible."
Jan 28, 07: UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has told the World Economic Forum a major breakthrough on long-term climate change goals could be close. He told the forum in Davos, Switzerland it was possible because of a "quantum shift" in the attitude of the US. "I believe we are potentially on the verge of a breakthrough", he said. He also pledged to work with other world leaders towards a more "radical" and "comprehensive" successor to the Kyoto protocol.
. . He told the World Economic Forum: "If Britain shut down our emissions entirely, i.e. we closed down the country --not the legacy I want-- the growth in China's emissions would make up the difference in just two years.
. . Trade ministers from around 30 countries have previously agreed during the conference that full-scale global trade talks should resume quickly. Politicians have said it would be "catastrophic" if the talks failed.
Jan 28, 07: Years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro. Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem.
. . There is still plenty of opposition to action on global warming in both the evangelical and business communities, but the tide is clearly turning. "It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions", said Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy. [!] "The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."
. . And a week before the State of the Union address, a dozen evangelicals called action against global warming a "moral imperative" in a joint statement with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control, NASA, Harvard and other institutions.
. . Scientists have been at the vanguard of the climate change issue for decades. As early as 1965 a scientific advisory board to President Johnson warned that increasing atmospheric CO2 could lead to "marked changes in climate" by 2000.
. . In 1988, the UN created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Though assailed by critics as an overly alarmist organization, the panel actually represents a relatively cautious assessment of global warming because it relies on input from hundreds of scientists, including well-known skeptics and industry researchers.
. . Every five or six years since 1990, the IPCC has released an updated assessment of the environmental threat posed by global warming. And every time, a single memorable and increasingly alarming statement has stood out from the thousands of pages of technical discussion. The first report noted that Earth's average temperature had risen by 0.5 to one degree F in the past century, a warming consistent with the global warming predictions but still within the range of natural climate variability. "The observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability", the scientists concluded.
. . But by 1995, that possibility had all but vanished: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate", the second IPCC report concluded. Six years after that: "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." Since then, scientists have accumulated abundant evidence that global warming is upon us.
. . Emboldened by these discoveries, scientists just in the last month have issued some dire warnings. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, originally formed in response to the dangers of nuclear weapons, cited the climate change threat in moving its "doomsday clock" two minutes closer to midnight. And Britain's meteorological agency announced just three days into the year that 2007 has a 60% likelihood of being the warmest year on record, thanks to the combined effects of global warming and El Nino.
. . "You just can't explain the observed changes that we've seen in the last half of the 20th century by invoking natural causes", said Benjamin Santer, a U.S. government scientist who was involved in previous IPCC assessments.
Jan 26, 07: The scientist whom Prime Minister John Howard officially named as Australian of the year today accepted the honor but immediately accused the government of dragging its heels on climate change. Flannery said Howard was a major part of the problem because his government refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. "I've said in the past that Australia has been the worst of the worst in terms of addressing climate change, but I'm hopeful that we'll see ... some movement."
. . Flannery —-whose recent book, "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth", made best-seller lists worldwide-— says the world has just two decades to avert catastrophic climate change. "Hard steps are now required where a decade ago we may have been able to take smaller and easier ones", Flannery said.
. . Nevertheless, Howard softened his stance last year, saying he would consider a system of global carbon trading —-a cornerstone of Kyoto-— if it did not damage Australia's fossil fuel-powered economy. Howard acknowledged global warming was a problem.
Jan 26, 07: Some landowners in the Pacific Northwest are planting new forests of trees to consume greenhouse gases and potentially buffer climate change, in a business called carbon forestry.
. . The Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho recently planted 5,000 acres of new forest along the Clearwater River and is in the process of selling carbon credits from the land. The state of Idaho also is exploring the idea as a way to get more value out of its timber. The trees can be worth money to energy companies and other businesses under increasing pressure to offset the CO2 they emit.
. . There are a number of conditions. Primarily, the trees must be planted on barren land or places where natural disasters, including wildfire, have killed off the forest. The landowner also must agree to keep the land forested for a set number of years. Farmers may also tap into the project by agreeing to no-till or low-till practices just like forests.
. . Landowners are paid a set price for each ton of carbon stored by these newly planted trees or undisturbed fields. The going rate this week on the Chicago Climate Exchange was $3.80 per ton. In Europe, where CO2 emissions are capped by law, the price of carbon has topped $20 a ton.
Jan 26, 07: Senator Frank Wagner is staying warm at his temporary address, even in below-freezing weather and without a traditional power supply or fireplace. The Virginia Beach Republican, a proponent of alternative energy sources, is living for a week outside the Science Museum of Virginia in a solar-powered house designed and built by Virginia Tech students.
. . Using a remote control and a computer, Wagner is testing whether the award-winning home can generate enough electricity from the sun to run everyday home appliances, and still have enough left over to send to Richmond's power grid or charge an electric car. "The house is designed to be self-sufficient, but there's a lot of things that could be adapted into existing houses today", he said.
. . "We call it the non-compromise solar house", said Robert Schubert, associate dean of research for the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. "We want to show that you don't have to huddle around candles and be dressed in all your clothes to be comfortable in a house powered by solar energy", he said.
. . The home was built by 80 Virginia Tech engineering and architecture students and eight faculty members over two and half years.
Jan 26, 07: Winter temperatures are rising steadily across the European Alps but snow volumes have varied wildly, making it harder to assess the risk of avalanches, a Swiss climate expert said.
Jan 25, 07: The caribou population in Canada's vast Northwest Territories is falling rapidly and the increasingly warm climate could slow the animals' chances of recovery, a wildlife specialist said.
. . Herds of barren-ground caribou --which for centuries have been a crucial source of food and furs for local aboriginals-- have dropped by between 40 and 86 percent over the last 10 years. The largest single herd fell from 472,000 animals in 1986 to 128,000 in 2006 and is still declining.
. . Ray Case of the territories' environment and natural resources ministry -- blaming natural factors such as varying climate, insect levels, the amount of food available, and the number of predators -- said the caribou population had traditionally risen and fallen over a 30-year cycle.
. . Warmer winters and easier access for hunters to the ranges that the caribou cover make it harder to say what will happen to the herds in years to come. "That doesn't suggest global warming is driving, but certainly there is concern that things are changing ... we do have some uncertainty about what the future holds."
Jan 24, 07: Climate change, the rise of Asia and the next web revolution will dominate the agenda when the World Economic Forum starts in 5 days in Davos. The five-day talking shop in the Swiss Alps brings together business leaders, politicians and campaigners, among them Bill Gates, Tony Blair and Bono.
. . Participants can expect a daily reminder of what global warming could mean: usually the Davos valley is buried under a meter or two of snow at this time of year, but the mild winter left the hills mostly green.
Jan 24, 07: Rising sea-levels, increased wave height and increased storm surge height must all be considered in the planning of the UK's future nuclear stations. Specialists from the Met Office make the recommendations in a report that assesses the likely risks to the industry from climate change. It was commissioned by the nuclear power company British Energy.
. . All the current stations are on the coast, chosen for remoteness and guaranteed access to cooling water. The study concludes future power plants will need to be further inland and may need added protection.
. . At Sizewell in Suffolk, for example, site of Britain's most modern reactor, the prediction is for the most severe storm surges to be 1.7 meters higher in 2080 than at present. Already the Dungeness plant, which is sited on land only two meters above sea-level, is protected by a massive wall of shingle which needs constant maintenance in the winter. Waves erode so much of it that it needs to be topped up constantly with 600 tons of shingle every *day.
Jan 24, 07: World sea levels will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments manage to slow a projected surge in temperatures this century blamed on greenhouse gases, a draft U.N. climate report says. "Twenty-first century anthropogenic (human) CO2 emissions will contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the timescales required for removal of this gas", the sources quoted the report as saying.
. . Sea levels rose by 17 cm in the 20th century. Rising seas would threaten low-lying Pacific islands, coasts from Bangladesh to Florida and cities from Shanghai to Buenos Aires.
. . In New Delhi, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said he hoped the report would shock governments into action. "I hope this report will shock people, governments into taking more serious action as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work."
. . The Gulf Stream, bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic, was likely to slow, but not enough to offset an overall warming. And there was scant chance of an abrupt shutdown of the ocean current system by 2100.
Jan 24, 07: A return of winter in Romania could damage rare bird populations in the Danube Delta where nesting is beginning early this year due to unusually warm weather, experts warned.
Jan 24, 07: Global warming could exacerbate the world's rich-poor divide and help to radicalize populations and fan terrorism in the countries worst affected, security and climate experts said.
Jan 23, 07: A U.N. climate panel will project wrenching disruptions to nature by 2100 in a report next week blaming human use of fossil fuels more clearly than ever for global warming, scientific sources said.
. . A draft report based on work by 2,500 scientists and due for release on February 2 in Paris, draws on research showing greenhouse gases at their highest levels for 650,000 years, fuelling a warming likely to bring more droughts, floods and rising seas. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have some good news, however, by toning down chances of the biggest temperature and sea level rises projected in the IPCC's previous 2001 study, the sources said. But it will also revise up its lowest projections.
. . The IPCC will say it is at least 90% sure that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are to blame for a warming over the past 50 years. The draft conclusion that the link is "very likely" would mark a strengthening from "likely" in the 2001 report --a probability of 66-90%. They'll meet in Paris from January 29 to review the draft and approve a text.
. . The sources said the new report is likely to foresee a rise in temps of 2 to 4.5 C this century, with about 3 C most likely. The 2001 report said temps could rise by 1.4 to 5.8C by 2100 --but did not say which end of the range was most likely. The IPCC would also narrow the 2001 forecast range of sea level rise of 9-88 cms (3.5-34.7 inches) by 2100.
. . The European Union says any temperature rise above 2C will cause "dangerous" change, for instance with more heatwaves like in Europe in 2003 that killed 35,000 people. "Even the minimum predicted shifts in climate for the 21st century are likely to be significant and disruptive", the U.N. Climate Secretariat says of the 2001 projection of a minimum 1.4C rise. It says the top of the range would be "catastrophic."
. . Temperatures have risen 0.6C since 1900 and the 10 warmest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994. The world has warmed about 5C since the last Ice Age.
. . Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said research in the last decade had expanded from studying surface temperatures to everything from ocean heat content to glacial retreat. "The system is telling us an internally consistent story --you can't explain the observed changes ... in the climate system over the second half of the 20th century by invoking natural causes", he said.
. . The report will feature an "explosion of new data" on observations of current global warming. The full report will be issued in four phases over the year. Look for an "iconic statement" —-a simple but strong and unequivocal summary-— on how global warming is now occurring, said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder.
. . "The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak", said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling." Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."
. . Global warming is "happening now, it's very obvious", said Mahlman, a former director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab who lives in Boulder, Colo. "When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it's pretty much a no-brainer."
. . The February report will have "much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place", Rajendra K. Pachauri told the AP in November. Pachauri, an Indian climatologist, is the head of the international climate change panel.
. . The world's global average temperature has risen about 1.2 degrees F from 1901 to 2005. The two warmest years on record for the world were 2005 and 1998. Last year was the hottest year on record for the US.
. . The report will draw on already published peer-review science. Some recent scientific studies show that temperatures are the hottest in thousands of years, especially during the last 30 years; ice sheets in Greenland in the past couple years have shown a dramatic melting; and sea levels are rising and doing so at a faster rate in the past decade.
. . Also, the second part of the international climate panel's report —-to be released in April-— will for the first time feature a blockbuster chapter on how global warming is already changing health, species, engineering and food production, said NASA scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, author of that chapter.
. . As confident as scientists are about the global warming effects that they've already documented, they are as gloomy about the future and even hotter weather and higher sea level rises. Predictions for the future of global warming in the report are based on 19 computer models, about twice as many as in the past, Solomon said.
. . The future is bleak, scientists said.
Jan 22, 07: The chief executives of 10 major corporations, on the eve of the State of the Union address, urged President Bush to support mandatory reductions in climate-changing pollution and establish reductions targets. "We can and must take prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection", the executives from a broad range of industries said in a letter to the president.
. . The 10 executives, representing major utilities, aluminum and chemical companies and financial institutions, said mandatory reductions are needed and that "the cornerstone of this approach" should be a cap-and-trade system.
. . Essentially such mechanisms would have mandatory limits of greenhouse gas emissions, but would allow companies to trade emission credits to reduce the cost. Companies that can't meet the cap could purchase credits from those that exceed them or in some case from a government auction.
Jan 22, 07: Most glaciers will disappear from the Alps by 2050, scientists told a conference on climate change, basing their bleak outlook on evidence of slow but steady melting of the region's continental ice sheets. Glaciers in western Austria's Alpine province of Tyrol have shrunk by about 3% a year.
Jan 20, 07: Parts of the North Atlantic are setting winter heat records, allowing species ranging from swordfish to jellyfish to thrive beyond their normal ranges in a shift linked by many scientists to global warming.
. . Temperatures in Arctic waters off northern Europe at the tail end of the Gulf Stream, for example, are about 6.7 C (44.06 F), the highest for early January since records began in the 1930s, according to Norway's Institute of Marine Research.
. . The world's oceans are already in a warming trend that could alter fish stocks, perhaps damaging coral reefs that are vital nurseries for tropical species while boosting northern stocks of cod or herring.
. . Norway's Institute of Marine Research said 18 tropical swordfish had been seen off Norway since 1967 and sightings were becoming more frequent. In recent years, salmon have been seen swimming north of the Bering Straits between Russia and Alaska
. . But... in a sign of how higher temperatures might help some fish stocks, a period of warmer waters in the 1920s allowed cod to spawn off Greenland and let a new stock break away from Icelandic waters. In the cooler 1960s, cod were unable to reproduce off Greenland and the stock collapsed.
Jan 18, 07: Joe D'Aleo was a rare voice of dissent this week at the American Meteorological Society's annual meeting in San Antonio. D'Aleo, executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, a group of scientists, doesn't think greenhouse gas emissions are the major cause of global warming and climate change. He claims other factors like solar activity and other natural causes are probably playing a greater role in rising temperatures --a position that gets a mostly chilly reception from this crowd.
. . Several scientists and writers interviewed at the society's conference stressed that most researchers believe there is little scientific debate about the causes of global warming.
. . That does not mean there is a consensus. "There's not a consensus on anything. There are people who say the Earth is not round, there are people who say that the Earth is 6,000 years old. The vast majority of credible scientists from thousands of peer-reviewed papers agree that the strong balance of evidence is that the Earth is warming and the major cause of that is anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions."
. . Tony Socci, a American Meteorological Society senior science fellow said those who denied the connection were either "badly informed as to the scientific center or consensus, or in some cases perhaps [they don't want] to be informed."
Jan 18, 07: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the new Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman, plans a hearing next week on various climate proposals and has said it is her intention to move a bill to the floor.
. . Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) introduced a bill yesterday that would cut CO2 emissions from power plants by 10% from 2006 levels by 2020. “This is the first of five bills to address the No. 1 environmental issue facing this planet: global warming”, Feinstein said.
. . She intends to introduce companion measures that will target emissions from industries besides electric utilities, raise fuel efficiency standards for cars by 10 miles per gallon over the next decade, promote biodiesel and other cleaner-burning fuels, and raise energy-efficiency standards.
. . Feinstein said the broad effort was necessary to limit global temperature increases and therefore avert the most serious consequences of global warming. “I know that coal is in 40 states, and garnering the votes here in the Senate will be very difficult,” she said. Coal is critical because it produces more than half the power used in the United States, despite its reputation as a dirty fuel.
. . As many as 154 new coal plants have been proposed, according to the Energy Department. Most will not be built. Industry officials claim that technology that would siphon and then store CO2 emissions is not ready for widespread use and therefore a federal carbon cap is premature. Electric power plants account for a third of the carbon emitted in the United States. But six utilities are supporting Feinstein’s bill.
. . “Inhofe seems a little like the legendary King Canute, standing at the beach and demanding that the tide stop rolling in,” said O’Donnell of the Clean Air Watch. “Canute’s feet got wet. So will Inhofe’s.”
Jan 18, 07: Winters in Russia are always tough, but rarely like this —-so warm that bears aren't hibernating and so gray that humans are having trouble waking up.
. . Much of the European part of Russia has been gripped by an uncharacteristic warm spell this winter, with temperatures generally well above freezing and little if any snow. Two of the zoo's five bears have come out of hibernation already, weeks ahead of time. Some of the zoo's hedgehogs also are waking up.
. . Humans, meanwhile, are complaining about the seemingly endless days of heavy cloud cover that reduces what little light is available to Russians at this time of year, when the sun clears the horizon for only about seven hours a day.
. . Average temperatures throughout European Russia have mostly been above freezing in December and January, some 11-15 degrees higher than normal.
Jan 18, 07: Indonesia and perhaps Australia risk more droughts because of shifts in Indian Ocean temperatures and stronger monsoons widely linked to global warming, scientists said. Studies of 6,500-year-old fossil corals had helped to reveal unexpected links between monsoons, droughts and periodic cooling of the eastern Indian Ocean known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Most studies of monsoon have focused on the likelihood of more rains in India and other parts of Asia.
. . More droughts could disrupt agriculture, slow an Indonesian drive to end poverty, lead to more wildfires that cause both smog and deforestation, threaten wildlife habitats and disrupt hydropower generation.
. . She said that the Dipole oscillation of the Indian Ocean, reversing usual winds and disrupting ocean temperatures, was similar to the better-known El Nino shifts in the Pacific Ocean. A current El Nino event in the Pacific also tends to draw rainfall eastwards from Indonesia, aggravating droughts.
. . "If the consensus holds true that the Asian monsoon will intensify with climate warming, Indonesia can expect more frequent and longer droughts", Jonathan Overpeck and Julia Cole, both of the University of Arizona, wrote in a separate commentary in Nature.
Jan 17, 07: The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock today moved it two minutes closer to midnight --symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.
Jan 16, 07: An increase in demand for high altitude ski runs will have a serious impact on the number and diversity of Alpine bird species, Italian scientists warn.
. . As winter snowfall at lower levels becomes less reliable, ecologists fear the demand for higher ski slopes will put pressure on the birds' habitat. The team of researchers found a marked decline in bird numbers around ski runs when compared to natural grasslands.
Jan 16, 07: General Electric Co. and power company AES Corp. today said they plan to create a partnership to develop projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US.
Jan 16, 07: President Bush will outline a policy on global warming next week in his State of the Union speech but has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, the White House said.
Jan 16, 07: Economist Sir Nicholas Stern has told MPs he is encouraged by the progress being made around the world to tackle climate change. India and China had to be persuaded to do more but the scientific arguments were gaining ground in the US. And the EU had set more ambitious targets for carbon reduction than expected, he added.
. . Sir Nicholas suggested in a report last year that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%. But taking action now would cost just 1% of the world's gross domestic product every year, his 700-page study said. "Whether it will get far enough, soon enough I don't know."
Jan 16, 07: Environment ministers lack power to lead a fight against global warming at a time when ever more governments portray climate change as one of the biggest threats to the planet, experts say. "Heads of state and government...are in a position to say 'this is the direction in which things should go'", he said.
. . More and more government leaders are making apocalyptic warnings about climate change. "The excessive exploitation of natural resources is upsetting the climate and will endanger mankind, if we don't react right now", French
President Jacques Chirac, for instance, said.
. . In a sign that the environment may be becoming more of an issue with voters, Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper made sweeping changes to his cabinet on January 4 largely to bolster a fight against climate change. Harper picked John Baird to take over from Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, widely criticized for doing too little to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike most nations, the US does not have an environment minister.
Jan 15, 07: Experts are warning that Lake Chad, which was once Africa's third largest inland water body, could shrink to a mere pond in two decades. A recent study by Nasa and the German Aerospace Center blames global warming and human activity for Africa's disappearing water. "America has refused to ratify Kyoto and it is our lakes that are drying up."
. . "Some 27 years ago, when I started fishing on the lake, we used to catch fish as large as a man. But now this is all the fishermen bring in after a whole night of fishing", he says pointing at tiny catfish piled on the ground in Doron Baga's once-famous fish market. His family now farm on rich, dark loamy soil that was once part of the lake.
. . As recently as 1966, Lake Chad, which sits between Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, was a huge expanse of water that the locals fondly referred to as an "ocean". The Central African Republic's Logone and Chari rivers empty into the lake. But reduced rainfall and damming of the rivers means that only half of the water now gets to the lake. The Komadougou-Yobe River in far north-eastern Nigeria which also feeds the lake now flows only during the rainy season. The Sahara Desert in the north is speeding towards the lake.
. . 40 years ago, the lake was 25,000 sq km and the daily fish catch was some 230,000 tons; now it is 500 sq km with a catch of barely 50,000 tons.
Jan 15, 07: Some leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed to put aside their fierce differences over the origin of life and work together to fight global warming. Representatives met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action. "Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today."
Jan 15, 07: The U.S. satellite system that monitors Earth's environment and climate needs an urgent upgrade or scientists will lose much of their ability to predict events like hurricanes, according to a report released by the National Research Council.
. . The report said maintaining current observation and predictive abilities will cost about $3 billion a year from 2010 to 2020 if its recommendations are carried out, but action needs to be taken soon. "This is only about $10 for every American. But it will probably save more money than it costs in the long run."
. . Of pressing concern is the mission that measures sea surface roughness, which enables scientists to measure sea surface winds. This is a crucial tool in forecasting weather events like hurricanes or the El Nino phenomenon.
Jan 12, 07: The keepers of the "Doomsday Clock" plan to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world. The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe.
. . "The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing 'launch-ready' status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks", the release reads.
. . When it was created by the magazine's staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then. It was as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 following U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests, and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 after the superpowers reached agreement on a nuclear arms reductions.
Jan 12, 07: Six U.S. senators, including potential 2008 presidential contenders from both major parties, unveiled legislation today that would force power plants and industry to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gases, seeking to cut emissions to one-third of 2000 levels by 2050.
. . Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and possible 2008 presidential contender, introduced a new version of the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, which he has pursued since 2003 with Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent. The two have been pursuing climate change legislation since 2003, but the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress repeatedly rejected their proposals.
. . Their "cap-and-trade" plan would place a ceiling on emissions of six kinds of greenhouse gases. It would allow emitters from four sectors --electric utilities, transportation, general industry and commercial-- to either reduce emissions outright or buy tradable permits to comply with the rules.
. . The new bill allows regulated emitters to borrow more credits from one another, and creates more "offsets" --forest plantings or other carbon-reducing projects. Those changes are meant to lower compliance costs.
. . Sen. Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Democrat and incoming Energy Committee chairman, also has a bill that would reduce carbon "intensity", or output per unit of U.S. economic growth. According to a U.S. government analysis released this week, Bingaman's proposal would lower emissions by 5%, or 372 million tons, by 2015, and by 14%, or 1.26 billion tons, by 2030.
Jan 11, 07: China is failing to meet new targets on energy efficiency and pollution emissions, officials said. China set the targets in a bid to rein in the environmental costs of the country's rapid economic growth. But only Beijing and five other provinces or municipalities improved efficiency by 4% and cut emissions by 2% in the first six months of 2006. "Nationwide, it is certain that last year's [targets] could not be achieved", official Han Wenke said.
. . The new targets are part of the 2006-10 Five Year Plan, and call for energy consumption per unit of GDP to be cut by 20%, while pollution emissions should fall 10%.
. . But many factories ignore the law and pump toxic waste into rivers and lakes. And with the country still focused on breakneck economic growth, there is little sign that things are going to get better any time soon, our correspondent says. Another senior officials said the situation was worse than ever.
Jan 11, 07: A constellation of microsatellites launched into low Earth orbit earlier this year is proving to be a worthwhile investment, providing more accurate weather forecasting and climatic data than ever gathered before. The six tiny satellites, weighing in at just 155 pounds each, were lofted into orbit April 14.
. . Cosmic will provide complete global coverage, even from polar areas where no data was previously available. Measurements of atmospheric temperature, density, water vapor and pressure are expected to provide new insights and more accurate forecasts for phenomena such as hurricanes and global warming.
. . "What we can say is that the higher sea-surface temperatures of water vapor make for more intense storms, and so this is consistent with the evidence we're seeing", said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at UCAR, during a news conference at the Center for Health and the Global Environment. "And so the environment in which these hurricanes form is changing, and it's changing in ways that provide more fuel for them through the water vapor and the changes in sea-surface temperature."
Jan 11, 07: Swimmers are enjoying winter dips in the Mediterranean, ski resorts from Canada to France have laid off workers and shops are axing winter coat prices at the start of what scientists say may be the warmest year on record.
Jan 10, 07: Europe's unseasonably mild winter is nothing to sneeze at. Or maybe it is. Experts warned Austrian allergy-sufferers that some species of trees are already flowering and about to release pollen —an annual phenomenon that's usually not a problem until well into spring.
. . In the Swiss and Austrian Alps, World Cup ski race organizers canceled training runs to avoid chewing up grassy pistes lean on snow and already damaged by rain and warm conditions.
. . Waiters in Vienna, where the mercury rose to 15.5 degrees C —just edging out Rome's 15 degrees— put tables and chairs back out on the sidewalks. Bulgarians basked in the sun on balmy 17-degree Black Sea beaches.
. . Roses bloomed in eastern France. In the Netherlands, crocuses started sprouting and birds began nesting. And in Sweden, bears were finally hibernating —two months late— after the weather played havoc with their biological clocks.
. . Britain has already experienced its mildest autumn in over 300 years, and 2006 was the country's warmest year on record.
Jan 10, 07: Last year was the warmest on record for the United States, with readings pushed higher than normal by the unusual and unseasonably warm weather during the last half of December.
. . Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center listed the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states last year as 55 degrees F. That's 2.2 degrees warmer than average and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.
. . Worldwide, the agency said, it was the sixth warmest year on record.
Jan 9, 07: The European Union will sabotage its aim of getting developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply if it sets a lower target for itself than it seeks for the rest of the world, Greenpeace said today.
. . The European Commission, in a new set of energy and environmental policy measures, is expected to propose on Wednesday that developed nations cut emissions of gases, blamed for global warming, by 30% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. At the same time, the Commission will propose the 27-nation EU set a target of reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in the period, with the possibility of increasing that goal if the international community agrees to a broader cut.
. . Environmental group Greenpeace said an EU goal of a 20% cut would undermine the chance of a larger target on the world stage.
Jan 8, 07: China's largest lake, holy to Tibetans but suffering from global warming and desertification, may vanish in two centuries even as the government pledges $870 million to stop it shrinking, Xinhua news agency said.
Jan 4, 07: The jet stream, the high-altitude air current that works like a barricade to hold back warm Southern air, is running much farther north than usual over the East Coast.
Jan 4, 07: The coming year is set to be the hottest on record worldwide due to global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, Britain's Meteorological Office said. After 2006, which was forecast last month to be the sixth warmest on record globally, the combination of factors would push average temperatures this year above the record set in 1998. The world's ten warmest years have all occurred in the last 12 years, according to the UN weather agency. There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year, 1998.
. . The highly respected Met Office, which makes a global forecast every January with the University of East Anglia.
. . Backed by Britain, which has pushed the climate crisis high up the world agenda, pressure is building for the G8 summit in Germany in early June to set out a framework for discussions to take global action on climate change beyond Kyoto.
Jan 2, 07: A project that highlights the economic opportunities, as well as the environmental threats, from climate change has been launched for farmers. Farming is responsible for 7% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions and needs to be part of the effort to tackle climate change, the organisers say. A website will offer farmers advice on what measures they can take, such as generating green energy from waste. The project was launched at the Oxford Farming Conference.
Jan 3, 07: Australia appears to be suffering an accelerated Greenhouse effect, with the pace of global warming faster across the country than in other parts of the world, climatologists said.
. . The world's driest inhabited continent, already suffering one of its worst droughts, was waging its own unique climate war, said Australia's Bureau of Meteorology yearly climate report. Half the country was desperate for water and the other half was awash with a year's rainfall for the entire continent.
. . Of Australia's 20 hottest years, 15 have occurred since 1980.
Jan 1, 07: Scientists in Antarctica spent Christmas Day finishing work that may show the effects of global warming —-drilling for clues about how massive ice sheets responded to past temperature changes. The project will be vital to creating a map of how the Earth may react to higher temperatures, scientists say.
. . One hundred scientists from four countries are working on the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program, or ANDRILL. They gather rock core from deep below the Antarctic sea floor, then analyze it. So far, the cores show a dynamic ice sheet that advanced and retreated more than 50 times over 5 million years.
. . Some of the ice shelf's disappearance was probably during times when the planet was 2 to 3 degrees C warmer than it is today —"much like it will be in the next 50 to 100 years", said Tim Naish, a lead scientist on the project.
Jan 1, 07: Researchers studying plants and trees near Yellowstone National Park's thermal vents hope to glean an indication of how rising CO2 emissions could affect vegetation worldwide a century from now. Plants near the vents are exposed to nearly twice as much CO2 as is normal. Plants and trees near the vents get about 30% of their CO2 from the vents.
. . But if CO2 emissions from power plants and cars keep increasing at current rates, the amount of CO2 at the vents now will become the worldwide norm in 100 years.
. . Leaves from plants near the vents, meanwhile, tended to contain less protein. Williams said that means they had less nutritional value for animals that eat those plants. "If you see the same response in the forage species, that is going to have implications for how the large herbivores interact with the vegetation", Williams said. "They'll have to eat more to sustain themselves."
. . The plants nearer the vents also didn't use water as efficiently. "What we're finding is that the plants photosynthesize less effectively in presence of high CO2, which is contrary to what other studies have shown", Williams said. "The little pores in their leaves are opening up more and likely losing more water."
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