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Dec 29, 07: January '07 was the warmest first month on record worldwide ...1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.
. . As 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees F.
. . A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"
. . In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days —-a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.
. . "It's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the U of East Anglia.
. . The Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.
. . Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included. Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates. More remarkably, that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken —-regardless of the date-— either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December.
. . Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.
. . In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007, weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied all-time heat records in 2007.
. . Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens of people.
. . More than 60% of the US was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August.
. . Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.
. . Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million Westerners, were only half full.
. . Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.
. . Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.
. . And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty. The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.
. . Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release chronicling all the records and unusual developments.
. . Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather. "Pretty soon, odd years are going to become the norm."
Dec 29, 07: California is defined by its scenery, but as scientists try to forecast how global warming might affect the nation's most geographically diverse state, they envision a landscape that could look quite different by the end of this century, if not sooner.
. . Where celebrities, surfers and wannabes mingle on Malibu's world-famous beaches, there may be only sea walls defending fading mansions from the encroaching Pacific. In Northern California, tourists could have to drive farther north or to the cool edge of the Pacific to find what is left of the region's signature wine country.
. . Among the earliest and most noticeable casualties is expected to be California's ski season. Snow is expected to fall for a shorter period and melt more quickly. That could shorten the ski season by a month even in wetter areas and perhaps end it in others. Abandoned ski lifts might dangle above snowless trails more suitable for mountain biking even during much of the winter. In the deserts, Joshua trees that once extended their tangled, shaggy arms into the sky by the thousands may have all but disappeared.
. . Because California has myriad microclimates, covering an area a third larger than Italy, predicting what will happen by the end of the century is a challenge.
. . Small mammals, reptiles and colonies of wildflowers in the deserts east of Los Angeles are accustomed to periodic three-year dry spells. But they might not be able to withstand the 10-year drought cycles that could become commonplace as the planet warms. Scientists already are considering relocating Joshua tree seedlings to areas where the plants, a hallmark of the high desert and namesake of a national park, might survive climate change.
. . Because 35 % of the state's water supply is stored annually in the Sierra snowpack, changes to that hydrologic system will lead to far-reaching consequences for California and its ever-growing population.
. . In the central and southern Sierra, the giant sequoias that are among the biggest living things on Earth might be imperiled. "I suspect as things get warmer, we'll start seeing sequoias just die on their feet where their foliage turns brown."
. . Changes in the mountain snowpack could lead to expensive water disputes between cities and farmers. Without consistent water from rivers draining the melting snow, farmers in the Central and Salinas valleys could lose as much as 1/4 of their water supply. Any drastic changes to the state's $30 billion agriculture industry would have national implications, since California's fertile valleys provide half the country's fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables.
. . A sea level rise of 1-2 meters would inundate the airports in San Francisco and Oakland. "If you raise sea level by a foot, you push a cliff back 100 feet. There will be a lot of houses that will fall into the ocean."
March, 07: Researchers in the US published research about their plans to genetically engineer trees to grow faster and contain less lignin --the tough cell-wall compound that makes woody plants so difficult to turn into biofuel. Fast-growing trees could sequester CO2 in their roots, and the rest could be used as fuel. The downside: Altered trees could upset ecosystems, replacing healthy forests with floppy, disease-prone monocultures.
Carnegie Institution climatologist Ken Caldeira said "Everything that doesn't involve revolutionizing our energy system is just fiddling as the Earth burns."
Dec 17, 07: The world's sea levels could rise twice as high this century as UN climate scientists have previously predicted, according to a study. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes a maximum sea level rise of 81cm this century. But researchers say the true maximum could be about twice that: 163cm.
. . They looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago --the last time Earth was this warm. The results join other studies showing that current sea level projections may be very conservative.
. . The researchers say their study is the first robust documentation of how quickly sea levels rose to that level. Rohling and his colleagues found an average sea level rise of 1.6m each century during the interglacial period. Back then, Greenland was 3C to 5C warmer than now --which is similar to the warming period expected in the next 50 to 100 years, Dr Rohling said.
. . Current models of ice sheet activity do not predict rates of change this large. However, they also do not include many of the dynamic processes already being observed by glaciologists, the researchers said.
. . Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, and colleagues plotted global mean surface temperatures against sea level rise, and found that levels could rise by 59% more than current forecasts.
Dec 13, 07: 2007 has been one of the warmest years since 1850, despite the cooling influence of La Nina conditions. Since the end of April, the La Nina event has taken some of the heat out of what could have been an even warmer year.
. . The UK's Hadley Center and U of East Anglia conclude that globally, this year ranks as the seventh warmest. The 11 warmest years in this set have all occurred within the last 13 years. For the northern hemisphere alone, 2007 was the second warmest recorded.
. . 1998 - 0.52C (above the 1961-1990 average)
. . 2005 - 0.48C
. . 2003 - 0.46C
. . 2002 - 0.46C
. . 2004 - 0.43C
. . 2006 - 0.42C
. . 2007 (provisional) - 0.41C
. . 2001 - 0.40C
. . 1997 - 0.36C
. . 1995 - 0.28C
. . A vast swath of the US was warmer than usual this year, leading to severe drought conditions and wildfires in the West and Southeast. Texas, the Lone Star state, stood alone, the only one to record below average temps.
. . Preliminary data by US federal scientists predict the annual average temp for 2007 across the contiguous US at near 54.3 degrees F —-making the year the eighth warmest since records were first kept in 1895. Worldwide, the average temp for the year, expected to be near 58 F, is on pace to be the fifth warmest ever, said the report by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. "The annual temperatures continue to be either near-record or at record levels year in and year out." As the world warms, scientists fear an increase in disease, killer weather and the extinction of vast numbers of species.
. . In the US, the months of March and August were the second warmest in more than 100 years. Six states —-Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida-— had the warmest August month on record.
. . In 113 years of record keeping, all but four states —-Texas, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont-— experienced either above average or significantly above average temps from January through November. Wyoming had its second warmest year; Idaho and Utah had the fourth warmest years on record.
. . North Carolina had the driest year so far. From midsummer into December, more than three-quarters of the Southeast was in drought, the report said. The problem in Texas, Lawrimore said, was too much rain that led to flooding and the wettest summer on record. The cloudy and rainy weather for much of the year contributed to the cooler temperatures for the state, he said.
. . Globally, seven of the eighth warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997.
. . Globally, the greatest warming took place in high altitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere, the NOAA report said, & will update its data in early January to reflect the last few weeks of December.
Dec 13, 07: Raising swine in California generated 0.116149133041726 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of burning 1.3 million gallons of gasoline.
. . The US is balking at capping its greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels, but in California, a law known as AB 32 has done just that. Implementing the policy required that the state do a complete inventory of its GHG emissions from 1990 on, so it could actually determine what the cap should be. That meant calculating the emissions from hundreds of sources from dairy cows to jet fuel to passenger cars.
. . Often, when we think about energy efficiency in a category like homes, we think about its operating efficiency, but it takes a lot of energy (and therefore emissions) to create the house in the first place.
. . Take manufacturing cement [cement is a powder] --the 33rd most polluting activity in California. A company called CalStar announced they got $3.4 million last month from Foundation Capital to commercialize their eco-friendly cement. They are a long way from producing enough cement to fulfill demand, but it's a good step. Then use Serious Materials EcoRock for drywall, and you start to see an ecosystem developing that will allow you to build a green house that generates a lot less greenhouse gases.
Dec 11, 07: Projects that add nutrients to the world's oceans in order to create algal blooms that will absorb more carbon from the atmosphere are scientifically unsound, argues Kristina Gjerde, high seas policy advisor to the World Conservation Union. In this week's Green Room, she calls on delegates at the UN climate conference to halt schemes that could do more harm than good.
Dec 10, 07: Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, former US Vice-President Al Gore urged the US and China to "stop using the others' behavior as an excuse for stalemate" and work together to find a mutually acceptable way of tackling climate change.
Dec 11, 07: Decision-makers in the climate change field have little faith in biofuels as a low-carbon technology, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) says. Unveiled at the UN climate convention meeting in Bali, its survey suggests professionals have more confidence in bicycles than in biofuels.
. . Of 18 technologies suggested by IUCN, the current generation of biofuels came bottom of the list, with only 21% believing in its potential to "lower overall carbon levels in the atmosphere without unacceptable side effects" over the next 25 years.
. . Nearly twice as many were confident in the potential of nuclear energy, while solar power for hot water and solar power for electricity emerged as the most favoured low-carbon technologies. Overall, respondents said increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand could produce more benefits than "clean" energy sources.
Dec 11, 07: Parents who have more than two children should be charged a lifelong climate change tax to offset the effect of their extra greenhouse gas emissions, an Australian medical expert has proposed. [YES!]
. . They should pay 5,000 dollars (4,400 US) a head for each extra child and up to 800 dollars every year thereafter. In contrast, contraceptives and sterilization procedures would be eligible for CO2 credits, suggested Professor Barry Walters.
. . "Every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children should be charged a CO2 tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the CO2 cost generated by a new human being", he wrote.
. . Walters, an obstetrician, made his proposal in a letter in which he criticized the government's payment of a 4,000 dollar "baby bonus" in a bid to boost the birth rate in this sparsely-populated country of 21 million people. Paying parents extra for every baby fuelled more emissions and contributed to global warming, he said, adding that the bonus should be replaced with a "baby levy" in line with the "polluter pays" principle.
. . Professor Garry Egger, director of the New South Wales Center for Health Promotion and Research, agreed. "Population remains crucial to all environmental considerations", he wrote. "The debate (around population control) needs to be reopened as part of a second ecological revolution."
Dec 10, 07: Saying it's "time to make peace with the planet", Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with a call for humanity to rise up against a looming climate crisis and stop waging war on the environment. The US and China will stand accountable before history if they don't take the lead in that global challenge, the former vice president said.
. . "Without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself", Gore said in his acceptance speech. "Now, we and the Earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: 'Mutually assured destruction.' It is time to make peace with the planet."
. . In a speech that quoted Churchill, Gandhi and the Bible, Gore said the world's biggest producers of CO2 and other greenhouse gases --the US and China-- must stop blaming each other for the stalemate over warming. Instead, they should take the lead in solving a problem for which they bear a large responsibility, he said, or be "accountable before history for their failure to act."
. . He drew a parallel between leaders who ignore the climate crisis and those who didn't act as Nazi Germany rearmed before World War II. "Too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: 'They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent'", Gore said.
. . Gore urged world leaders to put a new climate treaty in place by 2010 --two years earlier than planned. Heads of state should meet every three months to negotiate the treaty because global warming must be slowed, he said. "The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions", said Gore. "Either they will ask: 'What were you thinking; why didn't you act? Or they will ask instead: 'How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?'"
Dec 6, 07: The noted Colorado State U hurricane research team predicted on Friday that 13 tropical storms will develop in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, of which seven would strengthen into hurricanes.
Dec 6, 07: The impact of climate change plus deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60% of the Amazon forest by 2030 —-making it impossible to keep global temperatures from reaching catastrophic levels, an environmental group [WWF] said. Several recent studies have suggested similar findings.
. . "It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it's a massive store of CO2."
. . It contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water and about 30% of the world's plant and animal species —-many still undiscovered. Large swaths of forest like the Amazon are also valuable "CO2 sinks". Deforestation pours CO2 into the atmosphere and at the same time kills off CO2-absorbing vegetation.
. . The WWF said logging, livestock expansion and worsening drought are projected to rise in the coming years and could result in the clearing of 55% of the rain forest. If rainfall declines by 10% in the Amazon, as predicted, an additional 4% could be wiped out.
. . Scientists say if global temperatures rise more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels, the risks to the environment and to people will be enormous. It is essentially the 'tipping point' for catastrophic floods and droughts, rising sea levels and heat wave deaths and diseases.
. . "It will be very difficult to keep the temperatures at 3.6 degrees if we don't conserve the Amazon", said Nepstad, who is also a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center.
. . According to the WWF, deforestation in the Amazon could result in 55.5 billion to 96.9 billion tons of CO2 being released into the environment by 2030, representing as much as two years of global CO2 emissions.
Dec 6, 07: Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, researchers say.
. . Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
. . While the usual image of greenhouse gas pollution is a billowing smokestack pushing out CO2, livestock passing wind contribute a surprisingly high percentage of total emissions in some countries. "14% of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep."
. . Researchers say the bacteria also makes the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers. "Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15% more energy out of the feed they are eating", said Klieve.
. . Even farmers who laugh at the idea of environmentally friendly kangaroo farts say that's nothing to joke about, particularly given the devastating drought Australia is suffering.
. . But it will take researchers at least three years to isolate the bacteria, before they can even start to develop a way of transferring it to cattle and sheep.
. . Another group of scientists, meanwhile, has suggested Australians should farm fewer cattle and sheep and just eat more kangaroos. [duh...] The idea is controversial, but about 20% of health conscious Australians are believed to eat the national symbol already.
. . "It's low in fat, it's got high protein levels it's very clean in the sense that basically it's the ultimate free range animal", said Peter Ampt of the U of New South Wales's institute of environmental studies. "It doesn't get drenched, it doesn't get vaccinated, it utilizes food right across the landscape, it moves around to where the food is good, so yes, it's a good food."
. . It might take a while for kangaroos to become popular barbecue fare, but with concern over global warming growing in the world's driest inhabited continent, Australians could soon be ready to try almost anything to cut emissions.
Dec 5, 07: Just a few years ago, the lush coral reefs off Bali island were dying out, bleached by rising temperatures, blasted by dynamite fishing and poisoned by cyanide. Now they are coming back, thanks to an unlikely remedy: electricity.
. . The coral is thriving on dozens of metal structures submerged in the bay and fed by cables that send low-voltage electricity, which conservationists say is reviving it and spurring greater growth.
. . As thousands of delegates, experts and activists debate climate at a conference that opened this week on Bali, the coral restoration project illustrates the creative ways scientists are trying to fight the ill-effects of global warming.
. . The project —-dubbed Bio-Rock-— is the brainchild of scientist Thomas Goreau and the late architect Wolf Hilbertz. The two have set up similar structures in some 20 countries, but the Bali experiment is the most extensive.
. . It has long been known that coral that breaks off the reef can be salvaged and restored if it can somehow be reattached. What Goreau's Bali project has done is to construct metal frames, often in the shape of domes or greenhouses, and submerge them in the bay. When hooked up to a low-voltage energy source on the shore, limestone —-a building block of reefs-— naturally gathers on the metal. Workers then salvage coral that has broken from damaged reefs and affix it to the structure.
. . Goreau and his supporters say the electricity spurs the weakened coral to revival and greater growth.
Dec 3, 07: India and China have already said they won't do anything that curbs their industrial and economic development.
. . Rumor has it the Bush team in Bali could walk out of discussions like they did in 2005 at a United Nations climate change meeting in Montreal. This AP story suggests providing incentives to developing countries, namely India and China, is the only way they'll make changes. Then again, environmental damage costs China $200 billion annually --10% of its GDP-- to clean up pollution. That alone might be incentive enough.
Dec 2, 07: Earth's tropical belt seems to have expanded a couple hundred miles over the past quarter century, which could mean more arid weather for some already dry subtropical regions, new climate research shows.
. . Geographically, the tropical region is a wide swath around Earth's middle stretching from the Tropic of Cancer, just south of Miami, to the Tropic of Capricorn, which cuts Australia almost in half. It's about one-quarter of the globe and generally thought of as hot, steamy and damp, but it also has areas of brutal desert.
. . To meteorologists, however, the tropics region is defined by long-term climate and what's happening in the atmosphere. Recent studies show changes that indicate an expansion of the tropical atmosphere.
. . The newest study shows that by using the weather definition, the tropics are expanding toward Earth's poles more than predicted. And that means more dry weather is moving to the edges of the tropics in places like the U.S. Southwest.
. . Independent teams using four different meteorological measurements found that the tropical atmospheric belt has grown by anywhere between 2 and 4.8 degrees latitude since 1979. That translates to a total north and south expansion of 140 to 330 miles.
. . Climate scientists have long predicted a growing tropical belt toward the end of the 21st century because of man-made global warming. But what has happened in the past quarter century is larger and more puzzling than initially predicted, said Dian Seidel, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Silver Spring, Md. She is the author of the newest study. "They are big changes", she said. "It's a little puzzling."
. . Climate scientists Andrew Weaver of the U of Victoria and Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Seidel's work makes sense and that computer models have consistently been underestimating the ill effects of global warming.
. . "Every time you look at what the world is doing it's always far more dramatic than what climate models predict", Weaver said. Both Weaver and Seidel said the big concern is that dry areas on the edge of the tropics —-such as the U.S. Southwest, parts of the Mediterranean and southern Australia-— could get drier because of this. "You're not expanding the tropical jungles, what you're expanding is the area of desertification", Weaver said.
Nov 30, 07: It was 50 years ago that a young American scientist, Charles David Keeling, began tracking CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere at two of the world's last wildernesses - the South Pole and the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.
. . His very precise measurements produced a remarkable data set, which first sounded alarm bells over the build-up of the gas in the atmosphere. "Without this curve, and Professor Keeling's tireless work, there is no question that our understanding and acceptance of human-induced global warming would be 10-20 years less advanced than it is today", said Dr Manning.
. . When he started his measurements in 1958, CO2 levels were around 315 ppmv (parts per million by volume). By the year 2005, they had risen to about 378 ppmv.
. . "Dave Keeling suffered many sleepless nights, even as late as in the 1990s, being forced again and again to justify continued funding of his program", recalls Dr Manning. "The fact that we are celebrating 50 years now is due purely to his incredible perseverance, courage and optimism."
. . Charles Keeling died in 2005, aged 77. He continued his research into CO2 at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, US, until his final day. His son, Professor Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, continues his work.
Nov 30, 07: By using technology we already have and spending about the same amount as we do now, the US could cut greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter, according to a new report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
. . The report describes CO2-cutting opportunities in every sector of the economy, with nearly half the cuts saving money in the long run. The key, however, is encouraging people to think about the long run. A developer has little incentive to install expensive but durable and efficient appliances; auto manufacturers are content to produce cars with poor gas mileage, and people are content to buy them. Energy utilities aren't rewarded for promoting conservation.
. . McKinsey recommends a mix of solutions: public education campaigns, clean energy investment, tax breaks for green development and bureaucratic streamlining that will let companies install clean technologies without spending years on the paperwork.
Nov 28, 07: Ornamental cherry trees all over the Japanese archipelago have been blossoming unseasonably this fall. With more blossoms appearing earlier this year, there is concern that climate change is affecting a much-loved national symbol of spring.
Nov 28, 07: For a second year in a row, the US has escaped a severe hurricane hit, pushing memories of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans another notch into the past.
. . But for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, the 2007 hurricane season ending on Friday has hardly been benign. The 14 tropical storms that formed in the Atlantic this season killed more than 200 people in Martinique, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Mexico and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
. . Only one weak hurricane struck the US --a far cry from 2005 when a record 28 storms formed, 15 of which strengthened into hurricanes, including Katrina. The 14 storms beat the long-term average of 10 per season while the number of hurricanes, five --or six if you count Tropical Storm Karen which most weather experts expect will be posthumously upgraded-- is about normal. Yet most of the storms were perplexingly short-lived, lasting on average just 2.4 days, the lowest ratio since 1977.
. . Dean, which became a maximum-strength Category 5 hurricane, killed at least 27 people as it roared through the Caribbean in August. Hurricane Felix in September also became a Category 5 storm on the five-step scale of hurricane intensity, killing 102 and leaving another 133 missing in Nicaragua. Dean and Felix were the first two Atlantic hurricanes since records began in 1851 to make landfall in the same season as Category 5 storms. The last storm of the season, Noel, soaked the Dominican Republic and Haiti, killing more than 150 people as rivers broke their banks and surged through towns.
. . Even when no actual storm was swirling somewhere, unusually heavy rainfall characterized the wet season, washing away roads in Jamaica and flooding sugar fields in Cuba. A rain-swollen river burst its banks at the end of October in Mexico, leaving four-fifths of Tabasco state under water and 800,000 homeless.
Nov 26, 07: President George W. Bush welcomed defeated Democratic presidential rival Al Gore to the White House for the first time since 2001, celebrating Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and discussing global warming. They had a 40-minute talk.
. . "It was a private conversation", Gore said repeatedly to a throng of reporters, avoiding giving details. "Of course we talked about global warming, of course, the whole time."
. . Bush stood silently next to Gore during the group photo and the White House declined to comment on their chat. [Something to do with the Bali conference, I betcha.]
Helping the world's poor adapt to more floods, droughts and other changes from a warming planet will cost the richest nations at least $86 billion a year by 2015, an expert panel warned.
Nov 27, 07: Floods, droughts and other climate disasters will rob millions of children of the decent meals and schools they need unless rich nations pony up $86 billion by 2015 to help the poor adapt to global warming, an expert panel warned.
. . The U.S. government needs to cover $40 billion of that spending, which will "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people" to cope with climate-related risks, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Development Program.
. . The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before the world's nations convene in Indonesia to negotiate a new climate treaty. It adds a dire economic perspective to previous U.N. scientific findings that CO2 and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gas" emissions must stabilize by 2015 and then decline.
. . Without the money, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.
. . The development panel says the greatest financial responsibility lies with the U.S. and other rich nations most responsible for the accumulating CO2 and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mainly from man's burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
. . "The countries of the world that are the principal culprits, if you wish, for creating this problem in the first place, need to act strongly to safeguard the future of those that have done nothing to cause this problem but are the most vulnerable", Kjorven said.
. . Developed countries, meanwhile, are failing to meet their targets under the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for cutting greenhouse gases by 2012, the report said. France, Germany, Japan and Britain have reduced their emissions somewhat, it said, but the European Union is falling short of its goal of a 20% cut by 2020.
Nov 26, 07: CO2 emissions from UK homes could be cut by up to 80% by 2050, according to a low CO2 strategy produced by Oxford U. Financial incentives for home owners and tighter energy efficiency standards were among the study's recommendations. The measures would enable households to reduce their energy bills by £425 each year
. . The UK government is introducing legislation that will require CO2 to be cut by 60% from 1990 levels by 2050. In September, the government announced that intended to make every new home built in England "zero CO2" from 2016.
. . In its policy statement, the Department for Communities and Local Government defined zero CO2 as "over a year, net CO2 emissions from all energy use in the home would be zero".
. . It was a move that Dr Boardman supported: "It may be the case that we could do it sooner because the Welsh Assembly are planning to do it by 2011." But she added that 80% of homes people would inhabit in 2050 had already been built, yet ministers had failed to set out clear policies to improve energy efficiency in these properties.
Nov 26, 07: More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study that largely blamed global warming. "Oxfam... says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters.
. . The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report. "This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people. This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people."
. . She added: "Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse."
. . The number of people affected by extreme natural disasters, meanwhile, has surged by almost 70%, from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994, to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004, Oxfam said. Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold.
. . But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, has barely changed.
Nov 21, 07: Jellyfish wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm, with more than 1 million pounds' ($2.06 million) worth of stock massacred in the attack. The jellyfish, covering an area of around 10 square miles, engulfed the Northern Salmon Company's cages off the province's northeastern coast, suffocating 100,000 fish
. . The mauve stinger, noted for its purplish night-time glow, is more commonly found in warmer Mediterranean waters. Russell said the occurrence, when jellyfish "bloom" in such quantities, only happened every decade or so and last week's appearance off the Irish coast was also due to unusual environmental factors including higher-than-normal water temperatures.
Nov 19, 07: Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he is determined to raise Britain's already ambitious targets for cutting CO2 emissions and to push the nation to the forefront of global efforts to tackle climate change.
. . Brown, making his first major environment speech since taking office, also said Britain would encourage allies such as the US to make similar pledges. Britain has already committed to cutting CO2 emissions by 60% of 1990 levels by 2050, tho lawmakers have warned that the country will likely miss a steppingstone target of a 20% reduction by 2010.
. . Brown, who took office in June, said he will ask a committee of advisers to consider whether Britain can meet a 80% cut in emissions by 2050. "The climate change crisis is the product of many generations, but overcoming it must be the great project of this generation", Brown told a meeting. "While the richest countries have caused climate change, it is the poorest who are already suffering its worst effects."
. . Any successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol —-which set targets for industrialized nations to reduce emissions by 2012-— must pledge to hold the rise in global average temperatures to no more than 3.6 degrees F, Brown said. "It is not overdramatic to say that the character and course of the coming century will be set by how we measure up to that challenge", Brown said.
. . Brown said the British government hoped to build one of the world's first CO2 capture facilities —-a process that involves collecting CO2 and pumping it in liquid form into porous rock layers underground.
. . He said he would meet business leaders to discuss phasing out single-use plastic bags and will launch an information service for homeowners offering them tips on recycling and reducing energy consumption.
Nov 19, 07: Climate change will reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, campaigners claim. A report by a coalition of environment and aid agencies calls for urgent action to avert the threat.
. . The Working Group on Climate Change and Development says industrialized countries must cut CO2 emissions massively by mid-century. The coalition calls on the UK government to set an example by championing renewable energy.
. . The report --Up In Smoke? Asia and the Pacific-- says Asia is "effectively on the front line of climate change", as it is home to almost two-thirds of the world's population.
. . The report's author, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation (Nef), said: "If those painfully won improvements in social and economic conditions can be blown away in a few but increasingly frequent and extreme weather events, we have to rethink about how we go about meeting people's basic needs."
. . The coalition's 21 members include ActionAid International, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF. The coalition says Asian countries need to be convinced not to go down the fossil fuel energy route of "get rich quick, stay poor long".
Nov 14, 07: There's growing worry about global warming, but how much of it is the work of that power plant just outside town? And if Congress limits heat-trapping greenhouse gases, will it affect utility and electric bills? And who's the biggest corporate culprit when it comes to climate change?
. . Answers to these questions may be only a couple of computer clicks away. A new interactive online database provides maps, color-coded categories and detailed information about who is putting 10 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually from power plants around the world —-about a fourth of it from the US.
. . The Web site, which includes information from 4,000 utilities and 50,000 plants, shows not only the biggest CO2 emitters, but also the facilities and companies that are most green, releasing little if any CO2.
. . "We're trying to provide complete, balanced information. It's an open site", said David Wheeler, a senior researcher at the Center for Global Development, where he directed the creation of the massive database.
. . Australians produce 11 tons of CO2 for each of its people from their power plants —-the highest anywhere—- compared to 9 tons per person in the US and 2 tons per person in China. The US is home to three of the world's five most CO2-polluting utilities.
. . Each emitter has a color code from green (the cleanest) to blue, yellow, orange and finally red (most polluting). The icons become larger the more CO2 a plant or company produces. A large red icon shows a plant producing a lot of electricity and a lot of CO2. A green one shows little if any CO2, often a nuclear power plant.
Nov 13, 07: Only about a third of the climate-damaging CO2 released into the atmosphere in North America is offset by CO2 removing activities, a government report said. Currently, North America produces more than one-fourth of the CO2 released worldwide by burning fossil fuels and other activities, the U.S. Climate Change Science program said in the report. The report comes as top climate researchers from around the world meet in Spain.
. . According to the new U.S. study, North America released 1,856 million metric tons of CO2 into the air in 2003 —-85% from the US, 9% from Canada and 6% from Mexico. At the same time, growing vegetation and other sources took in about 500 million metric tons of CO2.
. . This is the first net CO2 report for the region. The main source of CO2 absorption is regrowth of forests that were cut for agriculture or timber about 150 years ago. Because this regrowth is relatively new it is taking in CO2 rapidly, but that rate will decline as the forests age, he said.
Nov 11, 07: Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore announced he's joining Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firm to guide investments that help combat global warming.
Nov 9, 07: Seeking to impose order on largely unregulated high-seas climate engineers, the International Maritime Organization will soon announce its plans to regulate oceanic geoengineering projects.
. . Feeding plankton with iron or urea could be a valuable tool for ridding the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, but there's potential for abuse: if engineers don't count the carbon benefits correctly, they could unwittingly release more CO2 than they save. With large-scale projects having potentially regional, if not global, consequences, it'd be nice if someone could make sure they make sense scientifically.
. . From now on, London Convention rules and regulations --those presently existing, and those drafted in the future-- will apply to geoengineering projects that occur on the high seas, or in any way involve its 31 signatory countries.
. . Even if a project happens in non-territorial waters, if it involves one of the 31 countries --a company or research partner is based there, the ship flies under that flag, the materials come from there-- then the project needs to be vetted by relevant national bodies. The national bodies can also defer their regulatory process to that suggested by the Convention.
. . The only way to conduct an ocean geoengineering project without oversight is to place it in waters belonging to a country that didn't sign the Convention, and make sure that everything and everyone involved traces its origins to a non-signatory country.
Nov 9, 07: China Says Poverty is a Bigger Problem Than Global Warming. The world's second leading polluter appears ready to reject binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that developing countries should be allowed to actually raise emissions in order to fight poverty.
Nov 7, 07: Prince Charles has warned that climate change is the biggest challenge facing society. Speaking to business leaders in Cardiff, the prince said he did not think there was a more urgent issue "for any of us".
. . He described the evidence on climate change as "frightening" and "alarming". "Doing nothing is simply not an option --it can't be any more, because of the urgency of the situation", he said. The prince said without urgent changes, the Earth would become uninhabitable.
. . "It must surely be clear by now that the longer we leave it before taking effective action, the more dire the situation will become and the more desperate the measures that will be needed. This really is the most important issue facing us as a society and as a species. This is not about saving the planet. Actually, it's about saving us."
Nov 6, 07: Scientists and economists warned lawmakers of consequences Florida faces from climate change, including more destructive hurricanes and a rising sea level, but they also said the state could be a leader in reducing global warming.
. . Three panels of experts spoke at a symposium held by the House Environmental Resources Council and three related committees. Climate change will figure into comprehensive energy and environmental policy legislation the lawmakers will be considering during the 2008 legislative session,
. . Gov. Charlie Crist has attempted to put Florida in the lead by ordering that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 2000 levels by the year 2017, to 1990 levels by 2025 and 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Nov 6, 07: Prime Minister Gordon Brown has committed the UK to reducing CO2 emissions by 60% before 2050 to help tackle global warming.
. . The Climate Change Bill will make the UK the first country to put CO2 emissions reduction targets into law. An independent committee on climate change will be set up to advise on "five-year CO2 budgets" --part of a new commitment to CO2 reduction.
. . Environmentalists welcomed the move, but said higher targets were needed. The government must strengthen its proposed legislation if it is to be truly effective and deliver the scale of action that scientists are now calling for. While the bill will also enforce reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of between 26% and 32% by 2020, Mr Brown previously said he would consult the new committee to see if bigger reductions were required.
. . Green campaigners have urged the government to go further. A report from think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research, the RSPB and WWF on Monday claimed the government's 60% target did not go far enough. Instead, it claimed Britain could achieve an 80% cut by 2050.
. . Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said Britain needed to set yearly targets, as well as show a commitment to reducing emissions by 80% by the middle of the century. He also called on the government to include international aviation and shipping, which are currently not covered by the Bill.
. . Coal has every element in the periodic table. And depending where in the world you get it from, "coal" can mean 100 different substances. If you sent the sort of coal you might use in a typical Indian plant to a supermodern boiler in Japan, it would shut the place down.
. . A lot of people point to integrated gasification-combined-cycle (IGCC) plants, which gasify coal before burning it, as the holy grail because they get you a cleaner process. It gives you a more concentrated stream of CO2 that you can sequester underground more cheaply. The capital cost is very high, though, and we don't have a lot of experience in designing them.
Nov 5, 07: Moisture has become a luxury in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa where many locals are waking up to nosebleeds in the dry autumn, state media said, as the Himalayan region faces growing threat of global warming.
Nov 5, 07: Most drywall is made from gypsum baked at high temperatures. The cooking process releases substantial amounts of CO2. By contrast, Serious has a formula in which chemicals are placed into a mold and then congeal into drywall. It takes very little energy and thus results in low CO2 emissions.
. . Serious, in fact, hopes to run its first factory, which will be capable of churning out over 400 million square feet of drywall a year, on a 100-kilowatt solar system. The new funding potentially could allow Serious to build two to three plants in the U.S.
. . EcoRock, the name of the eco-friendly drywall coming from Serious, will cost more than standard drywall, but the premium won't be prohibitive, the company has said. Serious makes samples of EcoRock now, but won't get into volume manufacturing for commercial sale until next year. However, it already sells QuietRock, a soundproof drywall.
Nov 3, 07: Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards today called reversing global warming a "great moral test" and said the next president needs to stand up to industries resisting change.
Nov 3, 07: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a national "pollution pricing" plan that would tax companies directly for the greenhouse gases they release. "If you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, tax CO2 at the source, which would mean at the mine head, at the oil well, whatever", Bloomberg told more than 100 other mayors at a climate summit sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
. . Bloomberg suggested a fee of $15 for every ton of greenhouse gas companies emit, with the money used to reduce payroll taxes and finance tax credits for companies that reduce their greenhouse gas pollution.
. . Bloomberg's plan is similar to one already proposed by Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Bloomberg said the voluntary and unenforceable emissions targets favored by President Bush are "like voluntary speed limits —-doomed to fail." He also said another CO2-reduction approach known as cap-and-trade, which many Democratic candidates have endorsed, is a flawed solution and could create bidding wars.
Nov 3, 07: Climate change could be one of the greatest national security challenges ever faced by U.S. policy makers, according to a new joint study by two U.S. think tanks. The report raises the threat of dramatic population migrations, wars over water and resources, and a realignment of power among nations.
. . During the last two decades, climate scientists have underestimated how quickly the Earth is changing —-perhaps to avoid being branded as "alarmists", the study said. But policy planners should count on climate-induced instability in critical parts of the world within 30 years.
. . The report was compiled by a panel of security and climate specialists, sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security.
Nov 3, 07: Climate change is likely to breed new conflicts, but it already is magnifying existing problems, from the desertification of Darfur and competition for water in the Middle East to the disruptive monsoons in Asia which increase the pressure for land, the report said.
. . It examined three scenarios, ranging from the consequences of an expected temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2040, to the catastrophic implications of a 10-degree rise by the end of the century.
. . At the very least, the report said, the U.S. can expect more population migrations, both internally and from across its borders; a proliferation of diseases; greater conflict in weak states, especially in Africa where climates will change most drastically; and a restructuring in global power in line with the accessibility of natural resources.
. . Left unchecked, "the collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate change futures would destabilize virtually every aspect of modern life", said the report, comparing the potential outcome with the Cold War doomsday scenarios of a nuclear holocaust. "Climate change has the potential to be one of the greatest national security challenges that this or any other generation of policy makers is likely to confront", said the report.
. . The report listed 10 implications of climate change that policy makers should consider, including rising tensions between rich and poor nations, the backlash resulting from massive migrations, health problems partly caused by water shortages and crop failures, and concerns over nuclear proliferation as nations increasingly rely on nuclear energy.
. . Last April, a a panel of retired top-ranking military officers issued the alarm that global warming was a "serious security threat" likely to aggravate terrorism and world instability.
. . The Office of the National Intelligence Director said the following month it has begun working on an assessment of the national security implications of climate change.
Nov 1, 07: Former President Bill Clinton told more than 100 mayors that stopping global warming depends on them demonstrating that it makes economic sense. He said his foundation is teaming up with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to save cities money on environmentally friendly supplies by buying in bulk.
. . The Clinton Foundation has previously worked with 40 of the world's largest cities to create a buying pool to bring down prices for green supplies such as hybrid vehicles and more efficient street lights. It's the same approach the foundation used to dramatically cut the price of AIDS drugs in Africa.
. . In addressing a climate summit organized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Clinton announced that the 1,100 cities represented by that organization will become part of the purchasing group.
. . Clinton and many of the mayors present criticized the White House, saying it has done little about global warming and has missed a chance to boost the nascent "green collar" economy —-the jobs created by making the U.S. more sustainable, from the people who install solar panels to scientists who develop new technologies.
. . Wal-Mart has set targets for reducing energy use and packaging waste and selling more environmentally friendly products. Steps include switching to only concentrated liquid laundry detergent that reduces packaging and water use, converting its truck fleet to use less fuel, and asking suppliers to provide data on their greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Seattle's own mayor said it was up to individual cities to take on the principles of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US government has not signed up to. "Our federal government has ignored the problem." Seattle says it has exceeded Kyoto goals itself, cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990 levels.
. . Most of the 110 mayors at the summit are keen to highlight the distance between their policies on climate change and those of the federal government. Democratic and Republican mayors seem to have decided the need to act on global warming is urgent.
Nov 1, 07: Many climate experts are talking about catastrophic wildfires, including the dozen that turned San Diego County into a disaster zone for the past week. They believe such blazes will become a regular part of life in Southern California because global warming is intensifying nature's cycles by lengthening fire seasons and prolonging droughts in parts of the West. The consequences would be more deaths, more houses consumed by flames and more budgets busted by firefighting costs.
. . A projection last year by several academic and government scientists said the failure to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could lead to 55% more large wildfires in California by the end of the century.
. . In addition, a 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters, the publication of the American Geophysical Union, suggests that Santa Ana winds may occur more frequently in November and December as Southern California's climate becomes warmer. In turn, that would heighten the risk of deadly blazes.
. . In the 1960s, wildfires burned roughly 4.5 million acres in the US each year. Since 2000, the average annual total is more than 7 million acres.
. . Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere also promotes plant growth, particularly in places with limited water.
Nov 1, 07: In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of CO2 as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure. A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising CO2 emissions and soothe environmental consciences.
. . Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers calculated how much CO2 was likely to come from the devastating blazes Oct. 19-26. It's a lot: 8.7 million tons.
. . On average, wildfires in the US each year pump 322 million tons of CO2. That's about 5% of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal.
. . But he adds: "It's nothing compared to our fossil fuels burning. There's a real danger here that in the offsetting program you feel you've done your bit", said U of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn't part of the study. "You've got to be a little bit more creative than to think that you're going to solve global warming by planting trees."
. . The paper finds remarkable differences state by state and month by month. August is the worst month for CO2 emissions from fires.
. . The Western continental US is responsible for more than one-third of the country's CO2 from fires. But Alaska is king. Alaskan fires produce twice as much of the greenhouse gas than burning fossil fuels in that state. Alaskan fires make up 27% of the nation's yearly fire-related CO2 emissions.
Oct 31, 07: A coalition of religious leaders urged Congress to ensure that the poor and most vulnerable are protected from the effects of climate change. The appeals comes as lawmakers in the coming months plan to consider legislation that would combat global warming. The representatives from groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals, National Council of Churches and the Union Reform Judaism said Congress should require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
. . The group said it will seek to have 40% of the emissions-related revenues from climate change legislation directed to help such people. The Lieberman-Warner bill calls for a 5% allocation for such purposes.
Oct 29, 07: Dr. William Gray, A meteorologist at Colorado State U, holds that human-caused global warming is "a hoax." Gray has yet to publish his theory in a peer-reviewed journal --where fellow scientists could tear it apart-- but he gets a lot of media attention, as you can imagine.
Oct 29, 07: Environment Secretary Hilary Benn says he is putting forward a tougher, more effective and more transparent bill to help tackle climate change. There will be a new CO2 trading scheme for large and medium-sized firms which will cut more than 4m tons of CO2 a year by 2020. The Bill will make the UK the first country to put CO2 emissions reduction targets into law. He spoke as MPs called for a climate change minister to be appointed.
. . An independent committee on climate change would be set up that would advise on "five year CO2 budgets" --part of a new commitment to CO2 reduction. "This scheme will save four million tons of CO2 a year by 2020 and help to spread responsibility for doing something about climate change right across the economy."
. . Other measures will include, asking the committee on climate change to report on whether the government's target to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 60% by 2050 should be strengthened further.
. . However, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's principal speaker, criticised the government's response to the three month public consultation on the draft Climate Change Bill and its target to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050.
. . She said that target was "woefully inadequate and too distant. It's criminally irresponsible to adopt a target that not only flies in the face of science", she said. Brown is as content as Blair to continue fudging and stalling on cutting on our emissions and so the UK continues to fail on climate change. We need a Climate Change Bill which sets binding emissions reduction targets of at least 6% a year to allow us to achieve cuts in UK greenhouse gas emissions in the region of 90% by 2030."
Oct 29, 07: Britain's Prince Charles has been given permission to build an eco-friendly house that royal watchers say would be perfect for his older son. The London Telegraph said the eco-friendly six-bedroom house would be built on the grounds of the Duchy of Cornwall's Harewood Park Estate near Wales. The 8,500 square foot house will feature a rainwater reservoir, a reed bed sewage system, solar panels, wool insulation and a roof made of salvaged Welsh slate.
. . A spokesman for Prince Charles told the newspaper the home was designed to be rented out, but royal watchers say they believe Prince William will make the estate his country residence once he gets married, the newspaper said.
Oct 29, 07: Rainwater —-it's almost always purer than groundwater. It's abundant. It's free. Based on this reasoning, Tim Bennecker installed 1700-gallon cistern in his front yard in Tacoma, Washington. He plans on using the water to flush his toilets, wash his clothes and irrigate his lawn. The tank cost $1900 and the excavation cost him $3000. This kind of installation may never pay for itself. However, Bennecker said he set out to be a “test bed” to encourage such systems in new homes. Otherwise he could have have opted for more affordable, 500 gallon above-ground cistern.
Nov 1, 07: According to a 2002 article by Lester Brown, aquifers are depleting all over the world -—in China by 2-3 meters per year. In the US, the Ogallala aquifer is shrinking rapidly. In India, aquifers are going down by 3 meters per year, in Mexico by 3.3 meters per year.
. . About 505,000 cubic kilometers of water fall on the earth each year, 398,000 over the oceans. The pure water is stored as ice, as water in lakes, and in aquifers that have taken thousands of years to fill. 97% of water is stored in the oceans; 2% in the ice caps; only 1% is in lakes, groundwater or other useable sources. We draw on surface water (lakes and rivers) subsurface (groundwater through pumping) and a small amount is made (very expensively) through desalination.
. . There is also a growing convern about low levels of antibiotics from agriculture and people disposing of medication down the toilet. Gender-bender hormones from birth control pills, along with phthalates from vinyl, are entering the water system and changing the sex of fish http://www.raysapoint.com/contra.html , lowering the sperm count of men, and doubling the number of annual male breast reduction surgeries.
. . In sub-Saharan Africa, almost no waste water is treated; in Latin America only about 15% is. The price is paid in diarrhea, typhus and cholera.
Oct 26, 07: An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear —-the nation's freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.
. . The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess. The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.
. . It's not just America's problem —-it's global. Australia is in the midst of a 30-year dry spell, and population growth in urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa is straining resources. Asia has 60% of the world's population, but only about 30% of its freshwater.
. . The U.S. used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000, the latest figures available from the U.S. Geological Survey. That includes residential, commercial, agriculture, manufacturing and every other use —-almost 500,000 gallons per person. Higher temperatures mean more water lost to evaporation. And rising seas could push saltwater into underground sources of freshwater.
. . Florida represents perhaps the nation's greatest water irony. A hundred years ago, the state's biggest problem was it had too much water. But decades of dikes, dams and water diversions have turned swamps into cities.
. . Little land is left to store water during wet seasons, and so much of the landscape has been paved over that water can no longer penetrate the ground in some places to recharge aquifers. As a result, the state is forced to flush millions of gallons of excess into the ocean to prevent flooding. Also, the state dumps hundreds of billions of gallons a year of treated wastewater into the Atlantic through pipes —-water that could otherwise be used for irrigation. Florida's environmental chief, Michael Sole, is seeking legislative action to get municipalities to reuse the wastewater.
. . There are more than 1,000 desalination plants in the U.S., many in the Sunbelt, where baby boomers are retiring at a dizzying rate. Florida leads the nation in water reuse by reclaiming some 240 billion gallons annually, but it is not nearly enough, Sole said.
. . The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant is producing about 25 million gallons a day of fresh drinking water, about 10% of that area's demand. The $158 million facility is North America's largest plant of its kind. Miami-Dade County is working with the city of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to remove salt from water in deep brackish wells. Smaller such plants are in operation across the state.
. . Californians use nearly 23 trillion gallons of water a year, much of it coming from Sierra Nevada snowmelt. But climate change is producing less snowpack and causing it to melt prematurely, jeopardizing future supplies. Experts also say the Colorado River, which provides freshwater to seven Western states, will probably provide less water in coming years as global warming shrinks its flow.
. . California, like many other states, is pushing conservation as the cheapest alternative.
Oct 25, 07: The international community must respond more quickly to climate change, species extinction, dwindling supplies of fresh water and other threats to the planet, the U.N. Environment Program warned. The U.N. agency said in a report that nations still fail to recognize the seriousness of environmental threats to the planet.
. . All too often, it has been slow and at a pace and scale that fails to respond to or recognize the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet."
. . Climate change is a global priority that demands political leadership, but there has been "a remarkable lack of urgency" in the response, which the report characterized as "woefully inadequate." The report outlined other global problems, including declining fish stocks and the loss of fertile land through degradation. Human activity has reached an unsustainable level, outstripping available resources, the report said.
. . The British branch of environmental group Friends of the Earth welcomed the report, calling it an "important call for global political leadership in a fast degrading world."
. . The group's campaign director, Mark Childs, said "it is now clearer than ever that we need concerted international political action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the loss of wildlife and ecosystems."
Oct 24, 07: Two chairmen of key committees in the House and Senate criticized the White House for editing testimony from a government expert about the health impacts of global warming and demanded documents involving the testimony he provided to Congress.
. . "I am deeply concerned that important scientific and health information was removed from the ... testimony at the last minute", Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote President Bush.
. . Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, demanded an explanation from the White House's chief science adviser, John Marburger, about the handing of the testimony earlier this week by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She appeared Tuesday before Boxer's committee, which is crafting global warming legislation.
. . "We expect our government researchers and scientists to provide both Congress and the public the full results of their taxpayer-supported work without the filter that those of opposing views might like to impose", Gordon wrote Marburger.
. . When a draft of Gerberding's testimony went to the White House for review, two sections — "Climate Change is a Public Health Concern" and "Climate Change Vulnerability" — and a number of other phrases were removed, cutting the 12-page document in half.
Oct 24, 07: Whenever the world's tropical seas warm several degrees, Earth has experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, according to a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records. And scientists fear it may be about to happen again —-but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years.
. . Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, according to the new study. "We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been", said U of York ecologist Peter Mayhew. Earth is on track to hit that same level of extinction-connected warming in about 100 years, unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, according to top scientists.
. . A second study links high CO2 levels, the chief man-made gas responsible for global warming, to past extinctions.
. . The researchers examined tropical sea temperatures —-the only ones that can be determined from fossil records and go back hundreds of millions of years. They indicate a natural 60 million-year climate cycle that moves from a warmer "greenhouse" to a cooler "icehouse." The Earth is warming from its current colder period.
. . Every time the tropical sea temperatures were about 7 degrees warmer than they are now and stayed that way for millions of enough years, there was a die-off. How fast extinctions happen varies in length.
. . The warmer water had less oxygen and spawned more microbes, which in turn spewed toxic hydrogen sulfide into the air and water, killing species.
. . Ward examined 13 major and minor extinctions in the past and found a common link: rising CO2 levels in the air and falling oxygen levels. Those higher temperatures that coincided with mass extinctions are about the same level forecast for a century from now.
Oct 24, 07: Researchers at New Mexico's two largest universities are painting a grim picture of New Mexico's economic and agricultural future with predictions that climate change will mean less water in the Rio Grande watershed. A wide range of climate models predict warmer weather and a change in precipitation patterns in New Mexico.
. . The researchers said that those changes could lead to a drop in the basin's water supply by as little as a few percent or as much as one-third. That, in turn, could result in direct and indirect losses ranging between $13 million and $115 million by 2030 and from $21 million to more than $300 million by 2080.
. . According to the study, warmer temperatures could create a shift in precipitation patterns, leading to more rain and less snow. Much of the state's surface water comes from snow melt. Warmer temperatures also mean earlier snow melts, and the researchers said that means water that makes it to the state's reservoirs has more time to evaporate before the irrigation season. Hurd and Coonrod said less water means crops will shrink and production will drop, which could irreversibly alter New Mexico's landscape and character.
Oct 23, 07: The leader of Spain's conservative party was blasted yoday for downplaying the threat from climate change at a conference attended by Al Gore, winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of the issue.
. . When asked about climate change at a meeting in Palma de Mallorca, Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy said that it was "a subject we all have to be aware of but we can't make it into a big global problem." Rajoy, who is leading his party in a general election set for March 2008, said he knew "very little" about the subject.
. . Environment Minister Cristina Narbona called Rajoy's statements "eccentric and incredible. I didn't think that there were any right- or left-wing leaders left capable of speaking so dismissively about the climate change threat", she added.
. . Five environmental organizations --Friends of The Earth, Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace, SEO-BirdLife, and WWW Adena-- issued a joint statement condemning Rajoy's words. "For our five organizations, these comments are an insult to those countries and peoples at most risk, who are already suffering directly the dramatic effects of climate change", it read.
Oct 22, 07: The state's attorney general said that he would sue the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to force it to decide whether to let California and 11 other states impose stricter standards on certain vehicle emissions.
. . California wants to implement a 2002 state law that would require automakers to begin making vehicles that emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions by model year 2009. It would cut emissions by about a quarter by the year 2030. But the law can take effect only if the EPA grants the state a waiver under the Clean Air Act.
. . "Unfortunately, the Bush administration has really had their head in the sand", Attorney General Jerry Brown said. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in April warned the EPA he would sue if the agency failed to act on the waiver within six months. That deadline is Oct 23, 07.
Oct 23, 07: The Caribbean tourism industry, the lifeblood for many island economies, needs to brace itself for stronger hurricanes, more frequent droughts and rising sea levels resulting from global warming, scientists said. The Caribbean, where more than half the population lives within a mile of the coast, faces some of the greatest risks from climate change, according to the expert panel at the Caribbean Tourism Organization meeting.
. . Already, rising ocean temperatures have been blamed for killing off coral that sustains significant marine life and fueling monstrous storms. This year was the first on record when two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes —-Felix and Dean, which both gained strength in the Caribbean-— made landfall in the same season.
. . As other regions grow warmer, the tropics might lose their appeal. "We can't move these islands."
Oct 22, 07: Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected. CO2 emissions were 35% higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated.
. . "In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown" of nature's ability to take the chemical out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization. The changes "characterize a CO2 cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing", the researchers report.
. . Kevin Trenberth of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said the "paper raises some very important issues that the public should be aware of: Namely that concentrations of CO2 are increasing at much higher rates than previously expected and this is in spite of the Kyoto Protocol that is designed to hold them down in western countries."
. . Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers U, added: "What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink." He also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."
. . According to the new study, CO2 released from burning fossil fuel and making cement rose from 7.0 billion metric tons per year in 2000 to 8.4 billion metric tons in 2006.
Oct 22, 07: The amount of CO2 being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said. U of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.
. . Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005. Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas. Researchers said the findings were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.
. . They say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions --unable to soak up any more." He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere". Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into CO2 sinks.
Oct 20, 07: Autumn has become too warm to elicit New England's richest colors. Forested hillsides usually riotous with reds, oranges and yellows have shown their colors only grudgingly in recent years, with many trees going straight from the dull green of late summer to the rust-brown of late fall with barely a stop at a brighter hue. Warming climate affects trees in several ways.
. . "It used to be, it was the second week of October when they were at their peak. I would tell my guests to come the second week if you want to see the peak colors. But it's definitely the third or fourth week at this point."
Oct 19, 07: Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change. Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.
. . They include Dhaka in Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta in Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos in Nigeria; Karachi in Pakistan; Bangkok in Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the US, according to studies by the United Nations and others. More than one-tenth of the world's population, or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk.
At Bangkok's watery gates, Buddhist monks cling to a shrinking spit of land around their temple as they wage war against the relentlessly rising sea. During the monsoons at high tide, waves hurdle the breakwater of concrete pillars and the inner rock wall around the temple on a promontory in the Gulf of Thailand. Jutting above the water line just ahead are remnants of a village that has already slipped beneath the sea.
. . Experts say these waters, aided by sinking land, threaten to submerge Thailand's sprawling capital of more than 10 million people within this century. Bangkok is one of 13 of the world's largest 20 cities at risk of being swamped as sea levels rise in coming decades.
. . Smith Dharmasaroja, chair of the government's Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration: "We don't have time to move our capital in the next 15-20 years. We have to protect our heart now, and it's almost too late."
. . The arithmetic gives Bangkok little cause for optimism. The still expanding megapolis rests about 3 1/2 to 5 feet above the nearby gulf, although some areas already lie below sea level. The gulf's waters have been rising by about a tenth of an inch a year, about the same as the world average.
. . But the city, built on clay rather than bedrock, has also been sinking at a far faster pace of up to 4 inches annually as its teeming population and factories pump some 2.5 million cubic tons of cheaply priced water, legally and illegally, out of its aquifers. This compacts the layers of clay and causes the land to sink.
. . Once known as the "Venice of the East", Bangkok was founded 225 years ago on a swampy floodplain along the Chao Phraya River. But beginning in the 1950s, on the advice of international development agencies, most of the canals were filled in to make roads and combat malaria. This fractured the natural drainage system that had helped control Bangkok's annual monsoon season flooding.
. . He urges that work start now on a dike system of more than 100km-— protective walls about 5 meters high, punctured by water gates and with roads on top, not unlike the dikes long used in low-lying Netherlands to ward off the sea. The dikes would run on both banks of the Chao Phraya River.
. . The top of a broken concrete water storage tank protrudes from the muddy sea, which swirls around rows of electricity pylons and telephone polls now stuck offshore. The monastery grounds are less than a tenth of their original size.
Oct 18, 07: A Senate blueprint for tackling global warming would require power plants and vehicles to reduce their greenhouse gases by 70%. A chief sponsor said President Bush's approach of voluntary action will not meet the goal.
. . The proposal by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, was seen as a compromise that could get the 60 votes needed to pass, perhaps next year. "It is the tipping point ... a breakthrough", said Lieberman, who heads the Senate Environmental and Public Works subcommittee that will write the legislation. Warner is the panel's top Republican.
. . Lawmakers already have introduced a half-dozen bills that recommend limits on greenhouse gases; some are more aggressive than the one from Lieberman and Warner. But not one has the strong bipartisan support.
. . The plan would set a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases, principally CO2, from electric power, manufacturing and transportation sources. Its goal to cut annual emissions by 15% in 2020 and 70% by 2050 from 2005 levels. CO2 emissions are rising by about 1% a year.
. . Government-imposed limits would cover about three-fourths of all releases of greenhouse gases. Warner and Lieberman say other parts of the legislation could lead to further emissions cuts from sources such as private homes, which are not covered in the restrictions. Examples include new energy efficiency requirements and possibly more stringent actions that state could have permission to take.
. . The House has begun examining proposed measures to require mandatory caps on CO2 emissions. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has pledged to make legislation addressing climate change a priority.
Oct 18, 07: In the case of global climate change, the Department of Energy lab has crunched 100 trillion bytes of information in its high-performance computers. The results went into the international studies credited by Al Gore for his Nobel Peace Prize.
. . "Basically one third of all the (computer) runs that were done were done at the Oak Ridge lab", said David Erickson, a climate modeling expert who helped brief the former vice president during a multimedia show-and-tell at the lab two years ago.
. . Colleague John Drake said Oak Ridge also helped develop models used at the two other participating computer centers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
. . "The scientific world has been slowly, carefully documenting the evidence for over 20 years about climate change, the forces that cause it and the impact that it has", said Dale, an ecologist who has studied deforestation trends around the globe. "The scientific process is to build upon small pieces of evidence, and the papers build and build on that. So the validation in the scientific world that this is out there is pretty strong", she said.
Oct 18, 07: Global emissions of CO2 from shipping are twice the level of aviation, one of the maritime industry's key bodies has said. A report prepared by Intertanko, which represents the majority of the world's tanker operators, says emissions have risen sharply in the past six years. Some 90,000 ships from tankers to small freighters ply the world's oceans.
. . It says that growth in global trade coupled with ships burning more fuel to deliver freight faster has contributed significantly to the increase. While there are few accurate measures and even fewer restrictions on the amounts of CO2 that ships can emit at present, governments in many parts of the world are considering a clampdown as part of their efforts to tackle global warming.
Oct 17, 07: Two of the UK's leading climate scientists have hit out at the judge who made the controversial ruling last week on Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth.
. . Professor Chris Rapley, head of the Science Museum (and also a Gore science adviser) and Professor John Shepherd from the National Oceanography Centre accuse the judge of misleading the public by ruling that Gore had made "errors".
. . They say the judge's comments themselves were liable to misinterpretation. The trouble, according to the professors, was that the judge referred to "errors" in the film. He put the word "errors" in inverted commas because the points were debatable rather than wrong. But the professors say the judge should have known the error word would be repeated in the media without its inverted commas.
. . They say in general Gore's film presented an exceptionally high standard of scientific accuracy.
Oct 13, 07: Ministers have been accused of inadequate and inconsistent leadership over green issues in a strongly-worded attack by a leading environmentalist. Sir Jonathon Porritt said "soaring" speeches about making the UK a world leader in fighting climate change were not backed up by action. He said green policies in Chancellor Alistair Darling's pre-Budget statement were "crabby incrementalism". The measures have already been criticized by environmental groups.
. . Sir Jonathon --who chairs the government-backed Sustainable Development Commission-- told BBC Radio 4's Today program tougher financial decisions were needed to effect real change. "What we are seeing at the moment is such a woeful falling short of what could be done that we are really nowhere near the pain barrier", he said. "Our biggest worry at the moment is that this leadership is incredibly inconsistent."
Oct 12, 07: Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize today for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.
. . Gore, whose film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth", won an Academy Award earlier this year, had been widely tipped to win the prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee's interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award's foundations.
. . "We face a true planetary emergency", Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
. . Gore plans to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion worldwide about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
. . In its citation, the committee lauded Gore's "strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
. . "It is a question of war and peace", said Egeland, now director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. "We're already seeing the first climate wars, in the Sahel belt of Africa." He said nomads and herders are in conflict with farmers because the changing climate has brought drought and a shortage of fertile lands.
Oct 11, 07: Climate change is likely to increase the number of wildfires fueled by invasive weeds that are spreading throughout the Great Basin, researchers told a U.S. Senate subcommittee.
. . Researchers described a potential increase in the amount of cheatgrass and other invasive weeds that populate the region and have fueled wildfires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the West.
. . Ecologist Jayne Belnap told a meeting of the public lands and forests committee that some climate change models predict average temperature increases of up to 11 degrees by the end of the century, as well as increases in precipitation and CO2 levels. The combination means more cheatgrass and potentially more wildfires. Belnap, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, said such fires deposit nutrients into the soil that encourage the growth of cheatgrass.
. . The fast spreading, highly flammable alien weed has established itself across the West since it arrived from the Central Asian steppe in the 1800s as a stowaway on ships. Carried west in livestock rail cars, cheatgrass produces hundreds of pounds of seed per acre, overwhelming native grasses. It dries out faster than other grasses, leading to larger, more dangerous wildfires.
Oct 11, 07: Recent stats show the average CO2 output per person in the U.S. is 20 tons. Germans have an annual CO2 footprint of 9 tons. A recent conference in Germany pointed to 2 tons per year per person as admirable goal. Well, that means nobody flies or there’s serious alterations in the aviation industry.
Oct 10, 07: With global warming, the world isn't just getting hotter —-it's getting stickier, due to humidity. And people are to blame, according to a study based on computer models. The amount of moisture in the air near Earth's surface rose 2.2% in less than three decades, the researchers report. "This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming." A few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.
. . To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality.
. . He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.
. . It will only feel *worse in the future, Gillett said. Moisture in the air increases by about 6% with every degree C. That would mean a 12 to 24% increase in humidity by the year 2100. "Although it might not be a lethal kind of thing, it's going to increase human discomfort", Willett said.
Oct 10, 07: The number of heat-related deaths in and around New York City will nearly double by 2050 --as high as 95%--- due to global warming, if no efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.
. . By taking steps now to cut emissions, New Yorkers could prevent 300 of these expected deaths annually, Knowlton says. "We can save lives by taking progressive action now to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That's the good news."
. . Knowlton and her colleagues used a computer model to estimate temperature increases in New York City and its environs by 2050 based on two scenarios, one representing rapid population growth and lack of "aggressive" greenhouse regulation, the other based on slower growth and "increased concerns about environmental sustainability."
. . By 2050, heat-related deaths would increase by 95% a year based on the worst-case, high-emissions scenario, a figure reduced to 68% when the researchers accounted for acclimatization to the heat with increased air conditioning, heat alerts and other adaptations. Under the lower emissions projection, deaths would increase by 71%, or 47% with acclimatization.
. . Knowlton and her colleagues found a dramatic variation in expected mortality increases across the region, ranging from 38% to 208%.
. . According to Knowlton, the best and fairest approach to reducing excess heat deaths due to global warming will be to introduce strong regulation of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. "That kind of regulation is going to afford us the strongest prevention in an equitable way."
Oct 10, 07: Prince Charles told U.S. lawmakers in a letter today that the challenges of global warming require a "coordinated response, based on actions across every sector of society."
Oct 9, 07: The US government's winter forecast includes some bad news —-continued dry conditions in an arc sweeping from the Southeast across the Gulf States and into the Southwest. Much of that region is already struggling with drought.
. . Halpert told the 2007-2008 Winter Fuels Outlook Conference that most of the country should have milder than usual weather this winter. Heating degree days —-the measure used in calculating heating costs-— are expected to be about 3% below the average for the winters from 1971 to 2000.
. . Nevertheless, because of rising prices heating bills are likely to go up for homeowners using heating oil. Those depending on natural gas should see more stable costs from a year ago, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
. . Halpert said he expects to be answering more questions about rain and snowfall this winter than about temperatures.
Oct 9, 07: Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert. Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.
. . Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva, said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report synthesizing the data before it is released in November.
. . "What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change. We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time", Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001."
. . The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
. . In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called today for an international system of global emissions trading to be adopted as part of an agreement to flight climate change from 2012 onward. Speaking at a symposium of Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on CO2 output per individual around the world —-suggesting about 2 tons per head-— could the fight to stop global warming be effective. Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany currently has a CO2 output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at around 20 tons per person.
. . Flannery said "The metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our planet."
Oct 8, 07: The steppes of Inner Mongolia are arid even at the best of times, but low rainfall as world temperatures rise is turning these grasslands into sand. Deserts make up about 27.5% of China's total land area today compared to about 17.6% in 1994.
. . "The wild grass reached up to my knees in the past." But there's very little grass now. It hasn't rained here in six years and we have to buy fertilizers and feed for our livestock. We never needed these before."
. . Many homes in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu have been swallowed up by sand. In spring, dust storms dump sand not only on Beijing but also send dust particles as far away as Korea, Japan and even the US. Doctors are seeing the health effects as fine dust inhaled during increasingly frequent dust storms cause respiratory problems, especially for children and the elderly.
. . China's "Green Great Wall", a 700 km barrier of shrubs and trees planted to hold back the advancing desert, has slowed down the desertification but hasn't stopped it completely. Environmentalists say the government needs to do more than just plant trees, it needs to prevent overexploitation of the land which is another cause of the expanding deserts.
Oct 6, 07: The environmental pressure group, FOE (Friends of the Earth), believes CO2 offsetting tactics are a smokescreen to avoid real measures to counter climate change.
. . With CO2 offset tactics, an organization or an individual compensates for the CO2 emissions they are going to make by paying for work which reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by an equivalent amount. However, that CO2 removal takes place over time --twenty years or more with a planted tree-- and many CO2 offset plans do not verifiably produce the outcome the promoters sell.
. . Companies such as Dell, with its Plant A Tree For Me and Plant A Forest initiatives, are big users of CO2 offset plans. "Tree-planting schemes are particularly problematic and should be ruled out of any offset scheme", FOE states. "Large-scale plantations have decreased biodiversity, displaced people and caused social disruption. Doubts have recently been cast on the contribution of trees outside the tropics in reducing CO2 levels and the science is uncertain."
. . Google intends to be CO2-neutral by the end of this year and adds CO2 offsets to the raft of measures it is taking. But such measures don't include ditching the corporate jets its founders and its CEO maintain.
Oct 6, 07: Telecommuting leads to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions even when increased home-based CO2 emissions are taken into account.
Oct 2, 07: Three competing Senate proposals calling for limits on greenhouse gases would have roughly identical success in curbing global warming, but only if other nations also significantly cut heat-trapping emissions, a government analysis says.
. . The Environmental Protection Agency examined the long-term impact of three climate change bills being considered in the Senate, each of which would cap CO2 emissions from cars, industry and power plants with an goal of reducing greenhouse gas releases by 60 to 65% by mid-century.
. . By the end of the century, all three bills would have reduced the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by roughly the same amount —-about 23 to 25 parts per million, said the EPA report, which was sent today to Capitol Hill.
. . Bingaman said the analysis "shows that inaction is the real danger with regards to climate policy" because developing countries such as India and China won't limit emissions unless the US acts first. "The U.S. needs to address the problem of global warming as soon as possible, if we hope to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions around the world", said Bingaman, who issued a statement responding to the EPA report.
. . If the U.S reductions under any of the three bills are accompanied by "aggressive international action" involving all countries —-including rapidly developing nations such China-— CO2 concentrations would be expected to stabilized and be no more than 496 ppm in 2095, according to the EPA.
. . The agency did not examine all the proposals being considered in Congress. Two other Senate bills would call for a more aggressive reduction of CO2 —-at least 80% by mid-century. A revised proposal offered by Lieberman, and joined by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., would require a 70% cut in emissions by 2050.
. . Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, last week suggested another approach: a CO2 tax and a 50-cent a gallon additional gasoline tax to reduce fossil fuel use. Dingell this week is expected to also unveil for discussions a proposal for a cap-and-trade measure as part of broader climate legislation.
Oct 2, 07: Oct 2, 07: Parts of Australia could be 9 degrees F hotter and 80% drier by 2070 if global greenhouse gas emissions are not radically reduced, government data said.
. . The report by the Bureau of Meteorology and the government's main research body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, predicts lower rainfall, longer droughts and more searing hot days for Australia, known by locals as "the sunburned country."
. . Penny Whetton, a climate scientist with the CSIRO, said Australia is already locked in to a 1.8-degree increase in average temperatures by 2030 due to past CO2 emissions, and that the figure could rise as high as 9 degrees by 2070.
. . Rainfall across Australia, already the world's driest inhabited continent, could fall by up to 30% by 2070, with longer periods of drought broken by short bursts of more intense downpours, Whetton said. Under the most extreme scenario, Australia's northern city of Darwin could face as many as 230 days above 95 degrees each year, compared with just 11 under present average temperatures.
. . Southwestern Australia, one of the country's premier wine-growing regions and an agricultural breadbasket, will be hotter and drier in coming decades, with periods of drought increasing by up to 80% by 2070. Meanwhile, rainfall is forecast to increase in the country's tropical north, home to the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, with more severe cyclones and coastal flooding also predicted.
Sept 27, 07: People want their leaders to move boldly to help the environment but give them dismal grades for their actions so far, according to a poll that highlighted rampant pessimism on the issue.
Sept 26, 07: Primate scientist Jane Goodall said the race to grow crops for vehicle fuels is damaging rain forests in Asia, Africa and South America and adding to the emissions blamed for global warming. "We're cutting down forests now to grow sugarcane and palm oil for biofuels and our forests are being hacked into by so many interests that it makes them more and more important to save now", Goodall said on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative.
. . As new oil supplies become harder to find, many countries such as Brazil and Indonesia are racing to grow domestic sources of vehicle fuels, such as ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm nuts. The United Nations' climate program considers the fuels to be low in carbon because growing the crops takes in heat-trapping gas CO2.
. . But critics say demand for the fuels has led companies to cut down and burn forests in order to grow the crops, adding to heat-trapping emissions and leading to erosion and stress on ecosystems. "Biofuel isn't the answer to everything; it depends where it comes from", she said. "All of this means better education on where fuels are coming from are needed."
. . Goodall said the problem is especially bad in the Indonesian rain forest where large amounts of palm nut oil is being made. Growers in Uganda --where her nonprofit group works to conserve Great Apes-- are also looking to buy large parcels of rain forest and cut them down to grow sugar cane, while in Brazil, forest is cleared to grow sugar cane.
. . The Goodall Institute is working with a recently formed group of eight rain forest nations called the Forest Eight, or F8, led by Indonesia. The group wants to create a system where rich countries would pay them not to chop down rain forests and hopes to unveil the plan at climate talks in Bali in December.
. . Scientists from the forested countries are trying to nail down exactly how much CO2 the ecosystems store, but the amount has been estimated to be about double that which is already in the atmosphere, Goodall said.
Sept 26, 07: A series of giant pipes in the oceans to mix surface and deeper water could be an emergency fix for the Earth's damaged climate system, the scientist behind the Gaia theory said. James Lovelock, whose Gaia hypothesis that planet Earth is a living entity has fuelled controversy for three decades, thinks the stakes are so high that radical solutions must be tried --even if they ultimately fail.
. . He proposes vertical pipes 100 to 200 meters long and 10 meters wide be placed in the sea, so that wave motion pumps up water and fertilizes algae on the surface. This algal bloom would push down CO2 levels and also produce dimethyl sulphide, helping to seed sunlight-reflecting clouds.
. . "If we can't heal the planet directly, we may be able to help the planet heal itself", Lovelock, of the U of Oxford, and co-author Chris Rapley, from London's Science Museum, said. The two scientists argued it was unlikely any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for limiting CO2 would restore the planet's status quo.
. . Commenting on Lovelock's idea, Brian Hoskins, professor of meteorology at the U of Reading, said it was scientifically sound but there were huge unknowns. "This is the latest in a line of geo-engineering solutions", he said. "In my opinion, our uncertainties over the likely regional impact of what our greenhouse gas emissions may do is high. The uncertainties over what these solutions may do is an order of magnitude higher."
Sept 25, 07: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper emphasized the US and China when he called for a new international climate agreement that places binding targets on top emitters for curbing global-warming gases.
. . "Let me be clear. Canada believes we need a new international protocol that contains binding targets for all the world's major emitters, including the US and China", the Canadian leader said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it is through such targets that the development and deployment of new clean-energy technology will be stimulated."
. . Canada, which ratified the Kyoto accord, is failing to meet its Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. But the minority Harper government's parliamentary opposition has pushed through a law demanding compliance, and the government now claims its plans will reduce emissions 20% below 2006 levels by 2020.
Sept 25, 07: "Arnie" and "Al", Republican and Democrat, shared the world spotlight to press for climate action, adding a touch of star quality to the staid proceedings of a U.N. summit. The two headliners, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Vice President Al Gore, also highlighted by their presence President Bush's absence from the eight hours of high-level speechmaking.
. . Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni announced at an African Union summit this year that developed countries were "committing aggression" against Africa by causing global warming.
. . "There's not much Africa can do --unless other countries cut their greenhouse emissions, our efforts will be undercut", Akumu says. In the meantime, floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides and other natural disasters are expected to become more frequent, along with the occurrence of diseases such as typhoid, cholera and malaria. Akumu warns that without aid from richer countries in the form of cash to pay for more durable roads and hospitals, Africa will be unable to handle more disasters like this summer's.
Sept 25, 07: A trio of climate change meetings in the US this week will focus attention on how Washington can deliver on its pledge to play a lead role in combating global warming.
. . Harlan Watson, the chief U.S. climate negotiator, said it was time to move beyond talk and try to develop a way forward. "We're getting beyond the conceptual ... level and want to get down to the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves stage", Watson said on Friday at a briefing. "We really want to get away from the dialogue ... and see how we can really construct an architecture for what happens after the first commitment period of Kyoto ends in 2012."
. . In between the U.N. and Washington meetings, the nongovernmental Clinton Global Initiative will convene in New York from Wednesday through Friday. A nonpartisan project of former U.S. President Bill Clinton's foundation, it will discuss climate change with participants from business, academia, entertainment and nongovernmental environmental organizations.
Sept 24, 07: An international group announced plans to erect what it claims will be the highest-altitude, greenhouse gas-monitoring center to date, to be built atop the Sierra Negra volcano in central Mexico.
Sept 24, 07: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore bluntly told a U.N. conference that the planet would be better off if people cared more about global warming and less about O.J. Simpson and Paris Hilton.
. . Gore, the star of the Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth", joined the head of the United Nations and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to speak with one voice to urge quick global action to stem emissions that heat the Earth. But it was Gore, who has become a guru for environmentalists, who stole the show as the UN turned its attention to the global ramifications of climate change and the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions. "We have to overcome the paralysis that has prevented us from acting and focus clearly and unblinkingly on this world crisis, rather than spending time on Anna Nicole Smith and O.J. Simpson and Paris Hilton", Gore said.
. . Schwarzenegger said: "The time has come to stop looking back at the Kyoto Protocol.... The rich nations and the poor nations have different responsibilities, but one responsibility we all have is action."
. . U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined that call to action in his remarks to about 80 world leaders who met to focus on the problem of climate change. "Today let the world know that you are ready to shoulder this responsibility and that you will address this challenge head on", he said.
. . Lo Sze Ping of the environmental group Greenpeace China sounded a similar note but took aim at inertia by some rich countries on setting targets for curbing greenhouse gases. "At the climate negotiations in December, you leaders of the world must therefore agree to nothing short of a ... mandate --not a roadmap leading to nowhere, not a wish list", Lo said.
Sept 22, 07: The Bush administration has made a "significant" shift on global warming, but still falls short on the "much more aggressive" policies needed to head off its damaging impact, the U.N. climate chief said. "It's very clear that we're not on track", Yvo de Boer said.
. . More than 70 presidents and prime ministers and 80 other national representatives are gathering here for Monday's U.N. "climate summit". Monday's one-day session is designed to build political momentum toward progress at December's annual U.N. climate treaty conference, in Bali, Indonesia, which many hope will launch negotiations for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Kyoto, which the U.S. rejects, set first-phase reduction quotas for 36 industrial nations.
. . On Thursday, the Bush administration convenes its own two-day meeting, with 15 other major "greenhouse" gas-emitting nations, to discuss ways to limit emissions.
. . De Boer, head of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat, cited the Washington meeting as another example of what he called "significant political change over the past year" in the Bush administration's position. He also pointed to January's State of the Union address, which de Boer said showed Bush "recognizes that climate change is a global issue that needs a global answer."
. . Asked whether the Bali conference could launch negotiations on a post-2012 treaty regime without a U.S. commitment, de Boer said that didn't "make sense." "It would be very difficult for the big developing countries like China, India, Brazil to comprehend why they should be acting to limit the growth of their emissions in the context of an agreement of which the U.S. is not part."
Sept 22, 07: Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased. Global warming —-through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding-— is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter.
. . It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.
. . Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways. Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians —-the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.
. . Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the one-meter projection. "We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it", said U of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris.
. . All told, one meter of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the U of Arizona. That's an area the size of West Virginia. The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included.
. . The Environmental Protection Agency's calculation projects a land loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land.
. . This past summer's flooding of subways in New York could become far more regular, even an everyday occurrence. New Orleans' Katrina experience and the daily loss of Louisiana wetlands —-which serve as a barrier that weakens hurricanes-— are previews of what's to come there. Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA's director of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in California faces serious salt water flooding problems.
. . "We've had a third of a meter in the last century." The change will be a gradual process, one that is so slow it will be easy to ignore for a while.
Sept 22, 07: A deal by 191 nations to eliminate ozone-depleting substances 10 years ahead of schedule is a "pivotal moment" in the fight against global warming, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird said.
. . Delegates at a U.N. conference in Montreal struck the deal that will phase out production and use of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) for developed countries to 2020 from 2030 and to 2030 from 2040 for developing nations. The UN also hailed the deal, saying it could cut billions of tons in greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Baird said the fact that India, the US and China --major countries not bound by firm Kyoto targets-- had signed the deal was a promising sign ahead of talks designed to produce a climate change accord after 2012.
. . The precise and final savings in terms of greenhouse gas emissions could amount to several billion tons. Under the terms of the deal, all governments agreed to freeze HCFC production by 2013 compared to average production levels in 2009 and 2010. Developed nations agreed to cut production and consumption by 75% by 2010 and by 90% by 2015 on the way to a full phase-out by 2020. Developing nations committed to a 10% cut in production and consumption by 2015, a 35% cut by 2020, a 67.5% reduction by 2025 and a phase-out by 2030.
Sept 21, 07: Birdwatchers are descending on a rural area near this southern Wisconsin community following the sighting of what is believed to be a green-breasted mango, a type of hummingbird commonly seen in parts of Mexico and Central America.
Sept 20, 07: Top scientist Professor Minik Rosing was stunned to hear the news from his native Greenland a few days ago. "The price of potatoes was a headline", says Professor Rosing. "That would have been a hilarious joke in Greenland a few years ago."
. . Higher temperatures are also bringing some benefits to the sub-Arctic south part of the island. "I could buy broccoli in the shops for the first time this year." "There's been an explosion of potatoes", says Lene Holm, a member of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which is overseeing a project studying how climate change is affecting local communities.
. . "There are also many more flowers, like the Alaska Lupin. You can see more green further up the mountains as the glaciers retreat. People are ringing up the national radio station about birds they had never seen here before."
. . Dr Bob Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, told a symposium of scientists and religious leaders in Greenland, which finished this week, that the acceleration of the Arctic ice melt was now "massive". Dr Corell has been monitoring one particular glacier, now flowing into the sea at a rate of 15 km per year --about four times faster than 10 years ago.
. . Ms Hammond points to the greater volumes of halibut being caught off the west coast due to warmer sea temperatures, and the return of cod to some areas.
. . In addition to achieving more self-sufficiency in food products, she wants to develop hydroelectric power, oil and gas exploration, and the mining of Greenland's rich mineral deposits. All of this could become technically easier as the ice melts. Greenland has signed a memorandum of understanding with the US company Alcoa to build a huge aluminium smelter using the country's plentiful water reserves.
. . "All of this can help us to reduce our economic dependence on Denmark", says Ms Hammond, "and could eventually lead to political independence." Denmark currently gives about US$600m a year to Greenland, equivalent to about half its budget.
Sept 20, 07: The New Zealand government said it would gradually introduce emissions trading from next year to tackle climate change. Under the scheme, major industries will be allocated a cap on emissions of greenhouse gases. To exceed the cap, polluters will have to buy credits from others who are below their limits or from those planting forests, which absorb CO2.
. . "Climate change is one of the most important global issues facing us. It affects us all and our way of life", Prime Minister Helen Clark said. "It is important that we put a price on greenhouse gas pollution to encourage businesses and households to become more energy efficient."
. . New Zealand has agreed to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. But Energy Minister David Parker said under current projections, New Zealand would exceed this by 45.5 million tons (50.2 million short tons) of gases blamed for climate change. The trading scheme, covering gases including CO2 and methane, should see this figure fall to 25 million tons by 2012, Parker said.
. . Agriculture accounts for almost half of the country's greenhouse emissions because of methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows and sheep.
. . Parker said the scheme will mean consumers will pay four cents more for a liter of petrol and power bills will be 5% higher. He added the initiative would shave an estimated 0.1% off economic growth.
. . Among the long-term goals, New Zealand aims to generate 90% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and to halve transport emissions by 2040.
Sept 19, 07: An ancient British bog that pumped out high amounts of greenhouse gases during a period of global warming 55 million years ago may offer clues about future climate change, researchers said. An analysis of sediments from the bog suggests that global warming caused methane emissions to rise in the wetlands, which in turn sent temperatures there even higher.
. . Scientists are interested in this period because the Earth warmed fairly quickly as increased amounts of CO2 entered the atmosphere at a pace similar to what is happening today. The researchers looked at molecular fossils that came from bacteria and found that as temperatures rose, the organisms switched to a diet of methane --probably because there was more of it around.
. . The bog became part of a vicious cycle --warmer temperatures caused higher emissions of methane, which drove temperatures even higher.
Sept 18, 07: It is unlikely that the global temperature rise can be kept below the EU's target of 2C, a leading climate scientist says.
Sept 18, 07: The science is clear and the time short, but the political will is lacking to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said today. Ban Ki-moon said he hoped next Monday's "climate summit" here will help galvanize leaders to take action "before it is too late."
. . He said about 80 heads of state and government would be among the 154 participants at Monday's all-day climate discussion. It isn't designed as a negotiation, but to send "a strong political message at the leaders' level for the climate change negotiations in Bali meeting in December."
Sept 17, 07: Faster progress is needed to safeguard the ozone layer, according to one of the scientists who discovered the "ozone hole" over Antarctica. Joe Farman calls for faster phase-out of some ozone-destroying chemicals, and for the destruction of stockpiles. The Montreal Protocol regulating these substances is 20 years old this week.
. . French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said the EU would be pushing for a faster phase-out at this week's ozone treaty meeting. "The schedule for eliminating HCFCs must be pushed up by 10 years --that will be the benchmark for deciding if the negotiations are succesful."
. . HCFCs also contribute to climate change. They are much more potent, molecule for molecule, than CO2; one byproduct of HCFC manufacture, HFC23, is 11,700 times more powerful.
Sept 17, 07: UK: The Lib Dems have backed a radical series of proposals to tackle climate change --including a ban on petrol powered cars by 2040. Environment spokesman Chris Huhne said tackling global warming would need an "enormous economic change". He set out plans to make Britain CO2 neutral by 2050 at the party's annual conference in Brighton. The Lib Dems are trying to regain the initiative after high profile Tory and Labour green announcements.
. . Some of the other key proposals in the Liberal Democrats' Zero CO2 Britain plan are:
. . * Introduce green mortgages to encourage more environmentally friendly homes
. . * Charging lorries to use the UK's roads in order to double rail investment, possibly creating a high speed line running north to south
. . * Boosting spending on flood defences to respond to climate change
. . * Encouraging microgeneration by paying a higher rate to producers who export energy to the National Grid
. . * Creating a climate change levy of £10 on domestic flights
The conference voted to reject a call by MEP Chris Davies to end the party's opposition to nuclear power.
. . This is being challenged by Chris Davies, the party's climate change spokesman in the European Parliament. He said: "I have always been opposed to nuclear power. It is expensive, creates a legacy of radioactive waste and has absorbed public resources that should have been used to develop alternative technologies. But the imperative now is to fight global warming. We cannot ignore the fact that our existing nuclear power stations do not release CO2. CO2 emissions will rise as they come to the end of their lives."
Sept 14, 07: In an effort to slow down the effects of global warming, scientists from Germany, Italy, India and Chile are planning to dump 20 tonnes of non-toxic iron sulfate into the sea. The iron particles --which will be spread around a 1,000 square kilometer area-- should theoretically create conditions for large amounts of phytoplankton, algae and microorganisms to grow and, ideally, help soak up the CO2 that's slowly causing our planet to roast.
. . The process --called carbon sinking-- could potentially restore plankton, improve the quality of the water and, on a very good day, slow climate change. On the other hand, since it's more or less untested, it could also result in nitrous oxide and methane being shot into the atmosphere, making things *worse.
Sept 15, 07: Most historians and scientists delving deep into archives seek accounts of disasters and extreme weather events. But the records can also be used to obtain a more precise temperature range for most months and years that goes beyond such general indicators as tree rings, corals, ice cores or glaciers.
. . Such weather sources include the thrice-daily temperature and pressure measurements by 17th-century Paris physician Louis Morin, a short-lived international meteorological network created by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1653, and 33 "weather diaries" surviving from the 16th century. In Japan, court officers kept records of the dates of cherry blossom festivals, which allow modern scientists to track the weather of the time.
. . "Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze", says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "weatherman" of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery.
. . Pfister found that from 1900 to 1990, there was an average of five months of extreme warmth per decade. In the 1990s, that number jumped to an unprecedented 22 months.
. . Global warming is one of the world's top issues today because of fears of massive hurricanes and flooding. For most of history, though, it was the fate of farms and the fear of famine that encouraged careful weather observation.
. . The Einsiedeln abbots —-princes within the Holy Roman Empire until 1798-— were powerful leaders who ruled over large swaths of central Switzerland's mountainous terrain. Agriculture was the primary source of income for the region and natural disasters such as floods and avalanches posed an omnipresent threat.
Sept 14, 07: The US chief scientist has told the BBC that climate change is now a fact. Professor John Marburger, who advises President Bush, said it was more than 90% certain that greenhouse gas emissions from mankind are to blame.
. . The Earth may become "unliveable" without cuts in CO2 output, he said, but he labelled targets for curbing temperature rise as "arbitrary".
. . His comments come shortly before major meetings on climate change at the UN and the Washington White House. There may still be some members of the White House team who are not completely convinced about climate change - but it is clear that the science advisor to the President and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is not one of them.
. . Professor Marburger said humanity would be in trouble if we did not stop increasing carbon emissions. "The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable", he said.
Sept 12, 07: Climate change is affecting Europe faster than the rest of the world and rising temperatures could transform the Mediterranean into a salty and stagnant sea, Italian experts said. Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.
. . "Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world", said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."
. . The change is also being felt at sea level, with a surface temperature increase of 1 degree every decade, said Vincenzo Ferrara, an Italian government adviser on climate. "The Mediterranean is becoming warmer and saltier" due to increased evaporation, Ferrara told the conference.
. . Even more worrying, a study conducted by ICRAM, Italy's marine research institute, indicates the temperature increases are creeping into the cold depths of the Mediterranean. Measurements conducted last winter off Italy's western coast at a depth of up to 100 meters showed temperatures were about 3.6 degrees above average. Temperature differences between the sea's layers create the currents that allow the Mediterranean's waters to mix and bring up fresh nutrients to feed the algae that form the basic diet of most fish species, according to the study. These temperature rises could wipe out "up to 50% of the species", the study said. The decline in the algae population measured last winter also reduced by 30% the sea's ability to absorb CO2.
Sept 13, 07: Fast-forming Hurricane Humberto surprised the Texas-Louisiana border area today with a powerful punch. It suddenly strengthened into an 137-kph (85mph) hurricane before coming ashore in a transformation forecasters said was the fastest on record. "No tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know someday why this happened."
Sept 13, 07: More wood was removed from forests in 2005 than ever before, one of many troubling environmental signs highlighted on Thursday in the Worldwatch Institute's annual check of the planet's health.
. . The Washington-based think tank's "Vital Signs 2007-2008" report points to global patterns ranging from rising meat consumption to Asian economic growth it says are linked to the broader problem of climate change. "I think climate change is the most urgent challenge we have ever faced", said Erik Assadourian, director of the Vital Signs project. He said of the 44 trends tracked by the report, 28 were "pronouncedly bad" and only six were positive.
. . The trends range from the spread of avian flu to the rise of CO2 emissions to the number of violent conflicts. The growing use of wind power is among the few trends seen as positive.
Some of the points highlighted in the report include:
. . - Meat production hit a record 276 million metric tons (43 kg per person) in 2006.
. . - Meat consumption is one of several factors driving rising soybean demand. Rapid expansion of soybean plantations in South America could displace 22 million hectares (54 million acres) of tropical forest and savanna in the next 20 years.
. . - The rise in global seafood consumption comes as many fish species become scarcer. In 2004, people ate 156 million metric tons of seafood, the equivalent of three times as much seafood per person than in 1950.
Sept 13, 07: The government's climate change research is threatened by spending cuts that will reduce scientists' observations from space and on the ground, a study says. A major problem, the National Research Council said, is the program director's lack of authority to organize spending and research among the 13 different agencies that study the impacts of climate.
. . Nonetheless, the report said, the U.S. Climate Change Research Program has made good progress "in documenting the climate changes of the past few decades and in unraveling the (human) influences on the observed climate changes." In contrast, the report said progress in combining research results and supporting decision making and risk management "has been inadequate."
. . The report noted that the Defense Department has decided to downsize the number of satellites intended to gather weather and climate data, replacing existing satellites as they come to the end of their useful lifetimes beginning in the next couple of years. The reduced system of four satellites will now focus on weather forecasting. Most of the climate instruments needed to collect more precise data over long periods are being eliminated.
. . Instead, the Pentagon and two partners —-the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA-— will rely on European satellites for most of the climate data. "Unfortunately, the recent loss of climate sensors ... places the overall climate program in serious jeopardy", NOAA and NASA scientists told the White House in the Dec. 11 report obtained by the AP.
. . In addition, the new National Research Council report said, surface-based data collection systems are either deteriorating, such as the Geological Survey's streamflow monitoring, or are continually threatened with cutbacks, such as the Agriculture Department's snowpack observing system.
. . The National Academy of Sciences is an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific issues.
Sept 13, 07: Eating too much red meat is not only bad for your health --it is also bad for the planet, according to scientists. Worldwide, agricultural activity accounts for about a fifth of total greenhouse-gas emissions and livestock production has a particularly big impact because of the large amount of methane emitted from belching cattle.
. . Researchers, in the Lancet journal, said worldwide average meat consumption could be realistically reduced by 10%. This would help in the battle against global warming and also reduce health risks associated with excessive consumption of red meat, they said. Global average meat consumption is currently 100 grams per person a day but there is a tenfold variation between high-consuming and low-consuming populations.
Sept 10, 07: Creatures that live at deep-sea vents will not be immune to the effects of climate change, a UK scientist says. It was thought that life at these fiercely hot volcanic fissures was so independent from the world above that the habitat would prove a safe haven. But new work finds that some of the animals are reliant on food sources from sea surface level, which could be affected by a change in climate.
. . The team used a remotely operated submersible to look at shrimps living around a related form of vent ecosystem known as a cold seep. It differs from a volcanic system in that the release of mineral-rich waters is at the same temperature as the surrounding ocean. He discovered that the creatures at this cold seep had a seasonal reproductive cycle. While seasonality in deep-sea creatures that live away from vents is connected to the availability of food sources, the vent's shrimps have access to a plentiful food source all year round.
. . The team found that the larvae were leaving the vents and drifting to neighbouring vents where they completed their metamorphosis. "During that journey, they are feeding on material that is sinking down from the sunlit surface waters --and that food supply varies seasonally depending on where you are in the ocean." The adults were timing their reproduction to coincide with the point when there would be the most food for their offspring during their travels.
. . Other global catastrophes, such as a planetisimal slamming into the Earth, would have a similar effect, he said.
Sept 10, 07: “The 1.5-million-square-mile Brazilian Amazon, larger than the entire nation of India, contains more than 40% of the world’s rain forests, and about a fifth of it already has disappeared, mostly in an “arc of deforestation” along the forest’s southern and eastern edges.
Sept 6, 07: After more than three years of study, the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, harshly faulted the Bush administration for doing little to deal with the far-reaching effects of climate change rapidly taking place in national parks, forests, marine sanctuaries and other federal lands and waters — almost 30% of the US.
. . The GAO said the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce departments have failed to give their resource managers the guidance and tools they need —-computer models, temperature and precipitation data, climate projects and detailed inventories of plant and animal species-— to cope with all the biological and physical effects from the warming. "Without such guidance, their ability to address climate change and effectively manage resources is constrained", the report says.
Sept 6, 07: Wildfires are flaring bigger and hotter in Alaska, the northern Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Bighorn sheep, mountain goats and grizzly bears in Glacier National Park, along with deer and marsh rabbits in the Florida Keys, face a housing crisis.
. . Glacier's alpine meadows are disappearing, sea levels are rising in the Keys and other federal lands are feeling the heat from global warming — and the government is not doing much about it, congressional investigators said.
. . Climate change, however, does have things looking up for heat-loving pests like beetles, grasshoppers and fungi. Spruce bark beetles are chewing their way through 1,560 square miles of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, including 620 square miles of spruce trees in Chugach National Forest. Southern pine beetles are on the march in red spruce forests of the Southeast.
. . Non-native grasses are fast replacing native shrubs in the Mojave Desert, where the grasses also are fueling hotter and longer-lasting wildfires. Even pinyon pines hundreds of years old that have survived droughts before in the Southwest are dying off.
Sept 3, 07: Negotiators from 158 countries reached basic agreement today on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world's biggest polluters to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
. . A weeklong U.N. climate conference concluded that industrialized countries should strive to cut emissions by 25% to 40% of their 1990 levels by 2020. Experts said that target would serve as a loose guide for a major international climate summit to be held in December in Bali, Indonesia.
Sept 3, 07: Greece's huge forest fires have been blamed by some on global warming, but satellite images of smoke plumes drifting as far as Africa prompt the question: are forests a major source of greenhouse gas?
. . Usually it is cars, factories and power stations that are most often mentioned as sources of CO2. Trees, considered the "lungs of the planet", soak the gas up. But what if they burn? "Global emissions from deforestation and the degradation of forests are the second single source after coal", said Stefan Singer of WWF (the World Wildlife Fund).
. . Every year, 13 million hectares of the world's forests disappear --an area the size of Greece-- according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization which says deforestation accounts for 18% of CO2 emissions.
Sept 1, 07: Negotiators from 158 countries reached basic agreement on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world's biggest polluters to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
. . A weeklong U.N. climate conference concluded that industrialized countries should strive to cut emissions by 25% to 40% of their 1990 levels by 2020. Experts said that target would serve as a loose guide for a major international climate summit to be held in December in Bali, Indonesia. "We have reached broad agreement on the main issues", said Leon Charles, a negotiator from Grenada who helped oversee the Vienna talks.
. . Delegates worked into the evening to overcome resistance from several countries —-including Canada, Japan and Russia-— that had held up negotiations because they preferred a more open approach rather than setting emissions targets.
"They need to be guided by the potential calamity", said Angela Anderson, vice president for climate programs at the Washington-based National Environmental Trust. Failing to cut emissions by at least 30% of 1990 levels by 2020 "would condemn millions to disease, water shortages and misery in the developing world", said Red Constantino, an official with Greenpeace International.
. . Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, said some developing countries —-including small island nations most vulnerable to climate change as polar ice caps melt and sea levels rise-— were pressing industrialized nations for even deeper emissions cuts. Their negotiators, he said, were acting out of a sense of urgency and a fear that "they won't have a country to represent" if climate change is not slowed.
Sept 1, 07: Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned.
. . M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires. "Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?"
. . Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece. Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.
. . Sivakumar said that in some regions. the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.
Sept 1, 07: Record rains for the British summer. It looks to have been the wettest since records began, according to Met Office figures.
Aug 30, 07: The US and Europe are working together to tackle global warming, the chief U.S. climate negotiator said, deflecting growing criticism within the EU and the developing world over Washington's perceived go-it-alone stance.
. . Harlan Watson, leading the U.S. delegation to this week's U.N. climate talks in Vienna, said Washington remains deeply committed despite its refusal to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Aug 29, 07: Germany's Merkel presses China on climate, urging China to address climate change, but China says it should still be allowed to grow economically.
Aug 29, 07: Climate change may carry a higher risk of flooding than was previously thought. Researchers say efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect CO2 has on vegetation.
. . Higher atmospheric levels of this greenhouse gas reduce the ability of plants to suck water out of the ground and "breathe" out the excess. Plants expel excess water through tiny pores, or stomata, in their leaves. Their reduced ability to release water back into the atmosphere will result in the ground becoming saturated. Areas with higher predicted rainfall have a greater risk of flooding. But this effect also reduces the severity of droughts.
. . CO2 enters plants through the stomata; water evaporates through the same holes. The higher the level of atmospheric CO2, the more the pores tighten up or open for short periods. As a result, less water passes through the plant and into the air in the form of evaporation. In turn, this means that more water stays on the land, eventually running off into rivers when the soil becomes saturated.
Aug 28, 07: Peatlands across the world are more than just simple marsh land: they are one of the largest carbon stores on earth and play a significant role in the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Not for long, perhaps.
. . In recent years, experts say peat bogs have been stoking global warming through increasing greenhouse gas emissions because of massive deforestation and conversion into agricultural land and palm oil plantations, especially in Southeast Asia which accounts for a huge chunk of the world's marshes.
. . "When you clear land, the easiest way is by burning. But that emits sequestered carbon into the atmosphere", Bostang Radjagukguk, an Indonesian peat expert. "In Indonesia, some 5% of 20 million hectares (49 million acres) of peatland has already been converted into agricultural land."
. . Peat is created by dead plant matter compressed over time in wet conditions preventing decay. Peat can hold about 30 times as much carbon as in forests above ground. The world's peatlands --a rich and fragile ecosystem formed over thousands of years-- are estimated to contain 2 trillion tons of sequestered carbon.
. . When drained, peat starts to decompose on contact with air and CO2 is released, often aggravated by fires that can rage for months and add to a choking smog or haze that is an annual health menace to millions of people in the region.
. . Estimate: about 13 million of 27.1 million hectares of Southeast Asia peatlands have been drained causing severe peat soil degradation. Although degraded peatlands in Southeast Asia cover less than 0.1% of the global land surface, they are responsible for about 2 billion tons of CO2 a year, or close to 8% of global CO2 emissions. "By 2025, peatland emissions will decrease because easily degradable peatlands would have disappeared altogether."
. . Emissions from peat, when drained or burnt, account for some 85% of total emissions from Southeast Asia. Indonesia is home to 60% of the world's threatened peatlands, but its marshes are being destroyed at an unprecedented pace because of massive conversion into pulp wood and palm oil plantations to feed global demand for biofuel.
. . Indonesia has also lost a huge chunk of peat under a project to convert about 1 million hectares of peat swamp forests into rice fields in the mid 90s, dubbed the Mega Rice Project. The project deforested and drained massive amounts of peatland in Central Kalimantan, only to find the acidic soil underneath was unsuitable for rice farming.
. . Today, it's a giant wasteland, a spread of dry black peat releasing enormous amounts of CO2 into the air. The highly combustible material lights up in the dry season, choking the area in thick haze for a couple of months a year. "It releases CO2, methane and a cocktail of other gases, some of them toxic."
Aug 28, 07: Was 1998 the hottest year in US history, as most reporting on climate change has presumed? Or was that record set back in 1934 before "global warming" became a scary household phrase? A corrective tweak to National Aeronautics and Space Administration's formulation shows that the hottest year on record in the US indeed was back during the Dust Bowl days.
. . But does this mean that all the concern about global warming being a relatively recent phenomenon tied to CO2-belching power plants and hulking SUVs is a bunch of Al Gore hooey? Climate change skeptics and their cheering section among conservative bloggers and radio shoutmeisters think so –-even though most scientists say, no, the tweak is not a big deal and overall trends are in the direction of toastier days around the globe.
. . "When researchers checked, they found that the agency had merged two data sets that had been incorrectly assumed to match. When the data were corrected, it resulted in a decrease of 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit in yearly temperatures since 2000 and a smaller decrease in earlier years. That meant that 1998, which had been 0.02 degrees warmer than 1934, was now 0.04 degrees cooler." Put another way, the new figures show that 4 of the 10 warmest years in the US occurred during the 1930s, not more recently.
. . McIntyre called his finding "a micro-change", and others agree. For one, the reranking didn't affect global records, and 1998 remains tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record.
. . The global numbers show that there is no question that the last five to 10 years have been the hottest period of the last century.
. . A main target of criticism over the data shift is James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute at NASA and a frequently quoted expert on climate change. On his website, Dr. Hansen explained the reasons for the change, and he played down its importance.
"How big an error did this flaw cause?... The effect on U.S. average temperature is about 0.15°C beginning in 2000. Does this change have any affect ... on the global warming issue? Certainly not…. What we have here is a case of ... contrarians who present results in ways intended to deceive the public into believing that the changes have greater significance than reality. They aim to make a mountain out of a mole hill."
. . Meanwhile, evidence of global warming continues to mount. Citing a new study by researchers at the U of East Anglia, The Guardian newspaper reports that "some tipping points for climate change could be closer than previously thought. In drawing together research on tipping points, where damage due to climate change occurs irreversibly and at an increasing rate, the researchers concluded that the risks were much greater than those predicted by the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."
Aug 28, 07: "We have met the enemy, and he is us", the comic-strip character Pogo said decades ago. A new analysis of last year's near-record temperatures in the United States suggests he was right.
. . Warming caused by human activity was the biggest factor in the high temperatures recorded in 2006, according to a report by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
. . In January, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that 2006 was the warmest year on record over the 48 contiguous states with an average temperature 2.1 degrees F warmer than normal and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.
. . In May, however, NOAA revised the 2006 ranking to the second warmest year after updated statistics showed the year was actually .08 F cooler than 1998. At the time, the agency said it was not clear how much of the warming was a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change, and how much resulted from the El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that was under way. "We wanted to find out whether it was pure coincidence that the two warmest years on record both coincided with El Nino events" -Martin Hoerling of NOAA.
. . The analysis of past El Nino events in the 20th century found that the result was a slightly colder than normal annual average temperature over the 48 contiguous states. To double check that, the researchers conducted two sets of 50-year computer simulations of U.S. climate, with and without the influence of El Nino. They again found a slight cooling across the nation when El Nino was present.
. . Then they looked at the effect of the increased greenhouse gases. They ran 42 different tests using complex computer models to simulate changes in the atmosphere under various conditions and concluded that the "2006 warmth was primarily due to human influences."
. . While Hoerling's study focused on the US, NOAA also tracks world climate. Worldwide, 2005 was the warmest year on record, topping 1998, according to the agency.
Aug 26, 07: It's the business end of climate change: ensuring that the $20 trillion the world will spend on energy over the next two decades is as environmentally friendly as possible. This week's latest round of talks on global warming, which get under way in Vienna tomorrow, will focus on giving governments and private investors tips and incentives to keep a lid on greenhouse gas emissions. "We need to 'climate-proof' economic growth", Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told reporters.
. . More than 1,000 delegates were gathering in the Austrian capital for discussions on advising nations, corporations, bankers and public institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, on how to make the most of their energy investments. "The war against climate change is not a war against oil. It's a war against emissions", de Boer said.
. . A new report by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change says additional investments of about $210 billion a year will be needed —-mostly in the developing world-— to maintain greenhouse gas emissions at their current levels until 2030. Experts say developing countries will need billions more each year to help them adapt to changes in their climates.
. . The Vienna meeting is part of a flurry of talks leading up to a major international climate summit in Bali, Indonesia, in December. De Boer said participants would "take the temperature" of global climate-control negotiations before two other key sessions that will precede the Bali conference — a Sept. 24 meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York, and a meeting three days later in Washington of the world's 15 biggest polluters, including the U.S., China and India.
. . The U.N. is leading the push to discuss a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The treaty requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming emissions 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. The European Union has set a new goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020 and by another 10% if other nations join in.
Aug 22, 07: Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, floods and hurricanes: global warming means urban planners need to rethink how and where to build cities, water experts warned at a conference in Stockholm this week. Some 2,500 international experts are gathered in the Swedish capital to discuss water issues, with climate change as the main theme.
. . Almost 80% of the world's population lives less than 50 km from a coastline, a jarring fact given that one of the effects of global warming is rising sea levels.
Aug 22, 07: Pinhead-sized fossils buried deep under the ocean show that glaciers did not coat the poles 41 million years ago, a new study shows, disputing earlier research that suggested huge ice sheets covered the Earth's extremities.
. . Any glaciers then --a time when the planet was much warmer-- would only have been in small areas in Antarctica's interior and not in the Northern hemisphere, said Paul Wilson, from Britain's National Oceanography Center, who led the study.
. . Wilson's study contradicts research published in 2005 that suggested ice sheets covered much of both polar regions, despite the higher temperatures. He added that the fossils could provide clues to the future of climate change.
. . Using the world's only ship capable of executing the research operation, Wilson's team drilled deep through sediment layers at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Surinam for the fossils of single-celled animals called foraminifera. It then tested the chemistry of their tiny shells for signs of ice formation.
Aug 22, 07: A federal judge ordered the Bush administration to issue two scientific reports on global warming, siding with environmentalists who sued the White House for failing to produce the documents.
. . U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled that the Bush administration had violated a 1990 law when it failed to meet deadlines for an updated U.S. climate change research plan and impact assessment.
. . Armstrong set a March 1 deadline for the administration to issue the research plan, which is meant to guide federal research on climate change. Federal law calls for an updated plan every three years, she said. The last one was issued in 2003.
. . The government is required to complete a national assessment every four years, the judge ruled. The last one was issued by the Clinton administration in 2000.
Aug 22, 07: Hurricane Dean was the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall since record keeping began in the 1850s, based on its central atmospheric pressure, forecasters said.
Aug 21, 07: The hot, dry summer is making it difficult for plants and animals at Antelope Island State Park, causing some of them not to reproduce. The lack of water has been particularly hard on bison, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, mule deer and coyote that live on the island in Great Salt Lake. The hot weather also affected the flower bloom in the spring. As a result, the main forage for many grazing animals has run out, and some animals are eating shrubs.
Aug 17, 07: Australian scientists want to string a vast array of probes across the oceans of the southern hemisphere to warn of changes in ocean circulation that may affect the global climate. Instruments could be strung across the South Atlantic and through the Indonesian archipelago, as well as in the Southern Ocean where special designs would be necessary.
. . A North Atlantic moored network of scientific instruments already provides measurements of the northern "overturning circulation" conveyor belt of ocean currents, which forms a giant loop from the Gulf of Mexico to Iceland and back.
Aug 16, 07: A bug in NASA's climate data, related to a failure to account for Y2K. NASA has released corrected figures... and a few things have changed. Now, five of the ten warmest years on record all occur before World War II. And the warmest year in the U.S. record books? Not 1998, but 1934.
. . These kinds of revisions don't have great implications for long-term climatic events --evidence for global warming is built on much stronger foundations than these. Further, the change applies only to U.S. data-- not global. And we already knew that the 30s were hot. Overall, the revised data doesn't change much.
Aug 16, 07: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation --also known as the conveyor belt-- was featured in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and the disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow" as a changeable force that could wreak havoc on the climate in Europe and North America if it slowed down.
. . Now scientists are tracking the massive flows of shallow warm and deep cold ocean water that make up the current. They are taking detailed measurements in a line stretching across the Atlantic from the Bahamas to Africa, researchers wrote.
. . No "dramatic changes" so far. Cunningham said climate models suggest that changes caused by humans to the current will be relatively steady, slowing down the conveyor belt during the next 50 years. However, he said, "A lot of paleoclimate evidence suggests that transitions can be rather large and abrupt, maybe 50% changes over a few years, and if that happens we'd see it immediately."
Aug 16, 07: Warmer, drier weather coupled with alterations to the waterways of North America's Great Lakes will likely drive Lake Superior down to record low water levels sometime this year, experts say.
Aug 10, 07: Homes and farmland drowned in increasingly severe floods are affecting some 500 million people a year and straining relief efforts, a senior U.N. official said.
Aug 9, 07: Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported.
. . Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005.
. . To make this kind of prediction, researchers at Britain's Met Office --which deals with meteorology-- made a computer model that takes into account such natural phenomena as the El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean and other fluctuations in ocean circulation and heat content. "There is ... particular interest in the coming decade, which represents a key planning horizon for infrastructure upgrades, insurance, energy policy and business development", Smith and his co-authors noted.
. . The real heat will start after 2009, they said. Until then, the natural forces will offset the expected warming caused by human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, which releases the greenhouse gas CO2.
. . To check their models, the scientists used a series of "hindcasts" --forecasts that look back in time-- going back to 1982, and compared what their models predicted with what actually occurred. Factoring in the natural variability of ocean currents and temperature fluctuations yielded an accurate picture, the researchers found. This differed from other models which mainly considered human-caused climate change.
. . "Over the 100-year timescale, the main change is going to come from greenhouse gases that will dominate natural variability, but in the coming 10 years the natural internal variability is comparable", Smith said.
Aug 7, 07: The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said.
. . The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.
. . There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.
. . Most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping CO2 emissions cause global temperatures to rise.
. . South Asia's worst monsoon flooding in recent memory has affected 30 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, destroying croplands, livestock and property and raising fears of a health crisis in the densely-populated region.
. . Heavy rains also doused southern China in June, with nearly 14 million people affected by floods and landslides that killed 120 people, the WMO said.
. . England and Wales this year had their wettest May and June since records began in 1766, resulting in extensive flooding and more than $6 billion in damage, as well as at least nine deaths. Germany swung from its driest April since country-wide observations started in 1901 to its wettest May on record.
. . Mozambique suffered its worst floods in six years in February, followed by a tropical cyclone the same month, and flooding of the Nile River in June caused damage in Sudan.
. . Uruguay had its worst flooding since 1959 in May.
. . Huge swell waves swamped some 68 islands in the Maldives in May, resulting in severe damage, and the Arabian Sea had its first documented cyclone in June, touching Oman and Iran.
. . Temperature records were broken in southeastern Europe in June and July, and in western and central Russia in May. In many European countries, April was the warmest ever recorded.
. . Argentina and Chile saw unusually cold winter temperatures in July while South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981 in June.
Aug 4, 07: The duration of heatwaves in Western Europe has doubled since 1880, a study has shown. The authors of the research also discovered that the frequency of extremely hot days has nearly tripled in the past century.
. . The study shows that many previous assessments of daily summer temperature change underestimated heatwaves in Western Europe by about 30%. The team found that heatwaves lasted an average of three days now, with some lasting up to 13 days. This compares with an average of about 1.5 days in 1880.
. . In the past, however, thermometers were not kept in modern Stevenson screens. These wooden shelters protect thermometers from direct sunlight and indirect radiation coming from the ground, both of which distort temperature readings.
. . Once the researchers had corrected for these effects, they found a "warm bias" in observations made prior to the introduction of these screens. In other words, temperatures were recorded as being hotter than they really were. This in turn meant the increase in temperature over time appeared to be smaller than it actually was.
Aug 4, 07: Deep enough to hold the combined water in all the other Great Lakes and with a surface area as large as South Carolina, Lake Superior's size has lent it an aura of invulnerability. But the mighty Superior is losing water and getting warmer, worrying those who live near its shores, scientists and companies that rely on the lake for business. The changes to the lake could be signs of climate change, although scientists aren't sure.
. . Superior's level is at its lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips three more inches. Meanwhile, the average water temperature has surged 4.5 degrees since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period.
. . The suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region. Shorelines are dozens of yards wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation.
. . Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since the 1970s and is nearly 6 inches below normal in the Superior watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap —-just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century.
Aug 2, 07: Researchers have found 9,650 square miles of "dead zones", or oxygen-depleted water, in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, the biggest area since tracking of the annual phenomenon began. They say humans are mostly to blame for the dead waters, and that increased planting of corn to make ethanol is adding to the problem.
. . The dead zones, which have been appearing each summer since at least 1970, threaten marine life and over time have altered the gulf's ecology, scientists say.
. . Usually, researchers, who began measuring the dead zones in 1985, find only one large zone each year, just off the Louisiana coast where the Mississippi River empties into the gulf. But this summer, for the first time, a separate zone has developed off Texas. Heavy rains filled the Gulf with fresh water, said DiMarco. The fresh water sits on top of salt water "like oil and water" and prevents it from being oxygenated by air.
Aug 2, 07: Southern Europe has suffered almost as much damage from forest fires this year as in the whole of 2006 and more blazes may hit southern Spain in the days ahead, the European Union said in a statement.
. . The European Commission said figures from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), showed 3,376 sq km (1,303 sq miles) of land had been burned so far in 2007. This compared with a total of 3,585 sq km (1,384 sq miles) for the whole of 2006.
Aug 1, 07: Clouds of pollution over the Indian Ocean appear to cause as much warming as greenhouse gases released by human activity, a study has suggested. US researchers used unmanned aircraft to measure the effects of the "brown clouds" on the surrounding area. They said the tiny particles increased the solar heating of the lower atmosphere by about 50%.
. . The clouds contain a mixture of light absorbing aerosols and light scattering aerosols, which cause the atmosphere to warm and the surface of the Earth to cool. The main sources of the pollutants came from wood burning and fossil fuels, the team added. Aerosols, also known as particulates, cool the land or sea below because they filter out light from the Sun.
. . While this process, known as "global dimming", is fairly well understood, the effect aerosols have on the surrounding atmosphere is still unclear. "We found that atmospheric brown clouds enhanced lower atmospheric solar heating by about 50%.
. . "[The pollution] contributes as much as the recent increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases to regional lower atmospheric warming trends", they suggested. "We propose that the combined warming trend of 0.25 Kelvin per decade may be sufficient to account for the observed retreat of the Himalayan glaciers." Seasonal glacier and snow melt from the mountain range feeds rivers that supplies water to about 40% of the world's population. The United Nations Environment Program (Unep), in its latest Snow and Ice Outlook report, said the ice sheets in the region could retreat by up to 81% by the end of the century.
Aug 1, 07: A top U.N. climate change official voiced doubt today about a global tax on CO2, but said national taxes were possible and laws to cap global warming emissions were better for business.
July 31, 07: A zone of oxygen-depleted water off the Oregon coast, harmful to sea life, has returned for the sixth consecutive year, and scientists say climate change is the reason.
July 31, 07: Creeping vines are increasingly invading Southern forests, choking out trees and altering forest makeups. Scientists say increased levels of CO2 might be to blame.
. . The invasion involves more than kudzu, the woody vine of Japanese origin that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the southeastern US annually in lost cropland and control measures. A survey of two forests in South Carolina over the past two decades has revealed that vines such as grapevines, trumpet vine, poison ivy and Virginia creeper have been infiltrating the areas at increasingly higher rates, especially in newer woodlands.
. . "It appears that as the number of vines increases, the density of small trees decreases at a fairly uniform rate. Several studies suggest that vines like poison ivy benefit more than other plants from higher CO2 levels."
July 31, 07: The whole Permian period, stretching from about 300 million to 250 million years ago, saw gradual warming. This would have slowed down circulation in the ocean, eventually leading to very low levels of oxygen in the water. Massive volcanism near the end of the Permian might have wreaked even further havoc on the environment.
July 29, 07: The number of Atlantic hurricanes in an average season has doubled in the last century due in part to warmer seas and changing wind patterns caused by global warming, according to a study.
. . The new study, published online in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, said the increased numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes in the last 100 years is closely related to a 1.3-degree F rise in sea surface temperatures.
. . Holland and Webster said the improved data from the last half of the century cannot be solely responsible for the increase. "We are led to the confident conclusion that the recent upsurge in the tropical cyclone frequency is due in part to greenhouse warming, and this is most likely the dominant effect."
July 25, 07: Crafting a regional response to climate change will top the agenda at a summit of Asia-Pacifc leaders in September, but they are unlikely to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, an official said.
. . July 25, 07: Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will chair the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney, has placed climate change at the top of the agenda during the Sept. 8-9 summit.
. . Australia —-one of the world's worst polluters per capita-— and the US are the only fully industrialized countries that have refused to accept the goals of an international agreement known as the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse gas emission targets. Instead, Howard has proposed a model in which countries set their own objectives in a range of areas that effect climate change, and review their own progress.
. . New research indicates that hacking the atmosphere --pumping microscopic particles into the stratosphere or clouds to block sunlight and offset global warming caused by greenhouse gases-- is imminently possible. The problem is we could never, ever stop doing it.
. . Climate scientists Damon Matthews of Concordia U and Ken Caldeira of Stanford ran the numbers on atmospheric geo-engineering through a climate simulation and found that while cranking out CO2 at business-as-usual rates we can geo-engineer our way back toward pre-industrial temperatures in short order, reaching 1900 levels in about five years. Not only that, it would be fairly cheap and easy to do.
. . Pumping 20 to 25 liters of aerosols per second to keep enough particles in the stratosphere would cool temperatures, causing the planet's CO2 sinks to suck more CO2 out of the atmosphere.
. . Bring the geo-engineering process to a halt, and those sun-warmed CO2 sinks spit the CO2 right back into the atmosphere. The rebound warming, to temperatures that would have been reached without the geo-engineering, would be 10 to 20 times the pace of today's global warming. The rapid warming, up to 7 degrees F per decade, would wreak havoc on the planet and threaten civilization.
. . To prevent disaster, the geo-engineering process would have to continue as long as CO2 levels were elevated. A quarter of the CO2 that comes out of your car's tailpipe is still in the atmosphere a thousand years later
. . The idea of injecting particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight has hovered just beyond the bounds of scientific respectability since Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko first suggested it in the '70s. That changed last year when Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen published an essay calling for scientists to seriously consider the possibility.
. . Crutzen said that this latest research shows the significant risks involved in counteracting global warming induced by CO2. "Far better to reduce the emissions of CO2", he said.
. . For Caldeira, the danger is not in geo-engineering itself but in the risk that politicians will turn to it to avoid the hard work of transforming our energy and transportation systems. "If somebody is driving an SUV, I would be against deploying geo-engineering. If there is a coal-fired power plant still spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, I would be against geo-engineering."
. . We should think of geo-engineering only as a parachute, said Caldeira. It's something you desperately hope you never need.
July 25, 07: Nevada is among the states with the most dramatic increase in average temperatures the last 30 years, according to a new study that examines the impact of global warming across the country.
. . The average temp in Reno from June through August last year was 75.6 degrees, almost 7 degrees above the 30-year average, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group reported. The gap was the biggest measured nationally. Las Vegas' average temperature last summer was 3.6 degrees above the 30-year average from 1971-2000, while Elko's was 4 degrees above normal.
. . According to the National Climatic Data Center, the 2006 summer and 2006 overall were the second warmest on record for the lower 48 states. And 2007 is on track to be the second warmest year on record globally.
. . Nationally, the average temperature during the summer of 2006 was at least half a degree above the 30-year average at 82% of locations studied.
. . Reno experienced 74 days the temperature hit at least 90 degrees in 2006 —-21 more days than the historical average. The average minimum temperature in Reno last summer — the lowest temperatures recorded on a given day, usually at night —-was 59 degrees. That was almost 10 degrees above the normal minimum temperature recorded from 1971 to 2000, again the biggest difference noted nationally.
. . Warmer nighttime temperatures exacerbate the public health effects of heat waves, since people need cooler nighttime temperatures to recover from excessive heat exposure during the day, the study said.
July 25, 07: The effects of greenhouse gas ozone, which has been increasing near Earth's surface since 1850, could seriously cut into crop yields and spur global warming this century, scientists reported.
. . Ozone in the troposphere --the lowest level of the atmosphere-- damages plants and affects their ability to absorb CO2, another global warming gas whose release into the atmosphere accelerates climate change, the researchers wrote.
. . Plants and soil currently slow down global warming by storing about a quarter of human CO2 emissions, but that could change if near-surface ozone increases, the researchers said. Projections of this rise in ozone "could lead to significant reductions in regional plant production and crop yields", they said.
. . CO2's fertilizing effect can be powerful, Sitch and his colleagues reported, pushing global plant productivity by 88.4 billion tons a year. This figure does not take into account the depressing effect of ozone; with that factored in, the fertilizing power of CO2 is 58.4 billion tons.
. . Ozone has doubled since the mid-19th century due to chemical emissions from vehicles, industrial processes and the burning of forests.
July 24, 07: Up to 500 people are estimated to have died across Hungary last week, partly due to a heatwave gripping central and southeast Europe, Hungarian medical officials said.
July 24, 07: The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said.
A notorious bandit known by many Indians as a local Robin Hood who defended forests against illegal loggers and poachers was shot dead in northern India after 32 years on the run, police said.
July 23, 07: Human activities that spur global warming are largely to blame for changes in rainfall patterns over the last century, climate researchers reported. The report was released as record rains caused deadly flooding in Britain and China.
. . Human-caused climate change has been responsible for higher air temperatures and hotter seas and is widely expected to lead to more droughts, wildfires and floods, but the authors say this is the first study to specifically link it to precipitation changes.
. . The scientists found that humans contributed significantly to these changes, which include more rain and snow in northern regions that include Canada, Russia and Europe, drier conditions in the northern tropics and more rainfall in the southern tropics.
. . So-called anthropogenic climate change has had a "detectable influence" on changes in average precipitation in these areas, and it cannot be explained by normal climate variations, they wrote.
July 18, 07: A proposal to cut CO2 emissions from new cars has been supported by members of two European Parliament committees. Both backed a European Commission plan to get average emissions down to 120g of CO2 per kilometer --but one proposed a different timetable.
. . The industry and internal market committees also floated ideas to encourage people to buy efficient cars. And they backed the idea of targets going beyond 2012 --the commission's proposed deadline for the 120g limit.
July 17, 07: Scientists have discovered the underground remnants of an ancient lake in Sudan's arid Darfur region, offering hope of tapping a precious resource and easing water scarcity, which experts say is the root of much of the unrest.
July 16, 07: Global warming could trigger hurricanes, or tropical cyclones, over the Mediterranean sea, threatening one of the world's most densely populated coastal regions, according to European scientists.
. . Hurricanes currently form out in the tropical Atlantic and rarely reach Europe, but a new study shows a 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in average temperatures could set them off in the enclosed Mediterranean in the future. "This is the first study to detect this possibility."
. . In 2004, Hurricane Catarina formed in the south Atlantic and hit land in southern Brazil. A year later, Hurricane Vince formed next to the Madeira Islands and became the first to make landfall in Spain.
. . "This is a big threat but I think we have time to avoid it, if we cut emissions of greenhouse gases", Gaertner said.
July 13, 07: India has taken the first steps towards developing a national plan on tackling the effects of climate change. Prime Minister Singh chaired a meeting of top government officials and environmental experts which agreed to draft a national policy by October. But the body has not set any targets to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
. . India and China are among the world's largest polluters and are coming under international pressure to agree to mandatory emission cuts. Other countries want them to make the cuts ahead of a key meeting in December.
. . A recent report by environmental experts said India would be among the countries worst affected by climate change.
July 13, 07: China's massive capacity to recycle paper is preventing many forests from being destroyed, a report says.
July 13, 07: The Republican governors of California and Florida gave the Bush administration the cold shoulder as Florida set new limits on greenhouse gas emissions and signed cooperation pacts on climate change with Germany and Britain.
. . Cal Gov. Schwarzenegger suggested U.S. states may leapfrog the federal government, which under Pres Bush has rejected the Kyoto climate change agreement, to sign accords with foreign nations.
. . Calling Florida Gov. Charlie Crist "another great action hero", the star of the Terminator movies lauded Florida's global warming initiatives, which bring the 4th most-populous U.S. state into line with nearly a dozen others in trying to impose sharp reductions on CO2 emissions, auto emissions, and pollution by power companies.
. . "I'm very proud to see another governor join a growing number of states that are not looking to Washington for leadership any more", Schwarzenegger said in a speech to a climate change summit in Miami.
. . The Florida targets call for state utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2017, to 1990 levels by 2025 and by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. The state also aims to adopt California's strict auto emissions standards, which have not been implemented because they require a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
. . Crist said he would be willing to join California and other states in legal action to force federal approval for tougher auto emission standards. The state is also aiming to push electric companies to produce 20% of their power by solar, wind and other renewable resources by 2020.
. . Schwarzenegger hailed the growing consensus among the U.S. states on climate change and said he had proved that "a Republican can in fact protect the environment."
July 12, 07: A new assessment of land and sea level changes in London and the Thames estuary has been made by scientists. Their study --based on tide gauge, GPS, gravity, and satellite measurements-- shows a general pattern of subsidence of 1-2mm a year. With waters rising in the region by about 1mm a year, the combined effect is a 2-3mm a year rise in sea level with respect to the land.
. . The information is critical to the planning of London's sea defences in the face of climate-driven ocean rise. The region is home to 1.3 million people and has a property value put at more than £80bn.
. . The 300km of tidal defences including embankments, walls, gates and barriers will, at some stage, have to be adapted or moved, or new types of defences created that make better use of the natural floodplain. London's key defensive installation, the Thames Barrier at Woolwich, also faces upgrading.
. . The investigation confirms geologic studies that show the Earth's crust is still responding to the loss of the heavy ice sheet which covered much of Britain more than 10,000 years ago --with southeast England, including London, slowly sinking. Some dips relate to water extraction by pumping stations, and it is even possible to see the settlement of land above underground construction projects such as the Jubilee Tube line extension and an electricity tunnel between Battersea and Putney.
. . London itself will rock by 10mm, twice a day, with loading from ocean tides. The seasons also alternately load and unload the ground, making the Earth's crust "breathe" up and down over a longer period.
July 11, 07: The international climate debate needs to embrace a "new way of thinking" to tackle the problem, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged. Too much time was being wasted arguing over "historical responsibilities" for past emissions, Mr Ban said. He called for both industrialized and developing nations to focus on limiting future global greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Mr Ban added that he would convene a climate summit to help reach consensus on a global climate action plan. "I promise that this challenge and what we do about it will define us", he said. "To build on the current momentum, I am going to convene a high-level UN General Assembly debate on 24 September." He said that the outcomes from this meeting would feed into the UN climate negotiation process. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will hold its next meeting in Bali towards the end of the year.
. . "Business as usual is no longer an option --we must reach complete agreement", he told the audience in central London.
July 12, 07: Wilting heat, deadly storms, flash floods, coastal erosion, more days with unhealthy air — those are just some of the effects of rising temperatures on the Northeast, a group of scientists reported. They urged governments and citizens to take steps now to avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming.
. . The Union of Concerned Scientists presented a report detailing the disastrous consequences of climate change on the economy, tourism industry, coastline and agricultural production in nine states. The scientists said the goal of the assessment is to provide policymakers and business leaders with the best available science on which to base climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
July 29, 07: Boston and Atlantic City, N.J., are projected to experience once-a-century flooding every year or two. Coastal flooding and erosion along the eastern seaboard is projected to occur regularly, costing billions. And, in Maine, Long Island Sound and other coastal regions, the lobster industry will be decimated by warmer sea waters, and cod are expected to disappear from those waters by the end of the century.
. . The economic impacts of global warming extend to human health. With more days over 100 degrees, and more unhealthy air days, more people will suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments, and more will require emergency care due to extreme heat, the report says.
. . The allergy season will last longer, and more people will suffer more serious effects. Because many pests thrive in warmer, dirtier air, farmers may be forced to use more pesticides and herbicides to protect their crops.
July 12, 07: New Jersey became the third state behind California and Hawaii to enact a comprehensive global warming law. But, New Jersey is the first state to set global warming targets so far into the future, and the first to require that energy imports adhere to New Jersey's standards. "We've got a real problem when it comes to climate change —-there is a clear and present danger", said Gov. Jon S. Corzine. He said such action is vital on the state level since the federal government has failed to act on global warming.
July 10, 07: The sun's changing energy levels are not to blame for recent global warming and, if anything, solar variations over the past 20 years should have had a cooling effect, scientists said.
. . Their findings add to a growing body of evidence that human activity, not natural causes, lies behind rising average world temperatures, which are expected to reach their second highest level this year since records began in the 1860s.
. . There is little doubt that solar variability has influenced the Earth's climate in the past, and may well have been a factor in the first half of the last century, but British and Swiss researchers said it could not explain recent warming.
. . A dwindling group pins the blame on natural variations in the climate system, or a gradual rise in the sun's energy output.
. . In order to unpick that possible link, Mike Lockwood of Britain's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Claus Froehlich of the World Radiation Center in Davos, Switzerland, studied factors that could have forced climate change in recent decades, including variations in total solar irradiance and cosmic rays. The data was smoothed to take account of the 11-year sunspot cycle, which affects the amount of heat the sun emits but does not impact the Earth's surface air temperature, due to the way the oceans absorb and retain heat.
. . They concluded that the rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen since the late 1980s could not be ascribed to solar variability, whatever mechanism was invoked.
July 9, 07: Rising sea levels triggered by climate change pose an "ominous" threat to some of the world's most productive rice-growing areas, the International Rice Research Institute has warned.
. . The Philippines-based institution is devoting fresh efforts to mitigating the coming threat, but senior climate scientist Reiner Wassman said adequate funding had yet to materialize.
. . "Some of Asia's most important rice-growing areas are located in low-lying deltas, which play a vital role in regional food security and supplying export markets. With Vietnam so dependent on rice grown in and around low-lying river deltas, the implications of a sea-level rise are ominous indeed." Rice is the staple cereal of nearly half the world's 6.6 billion people.
. . Wassman said the impact of global warming on the key cereal would depend on the patterns of change in rice-growing regions. But he warned a threatened rise of between 10 and 85 cm in sea levels over the next century could have "enormous" impacts on some countries, including key rice exporter Vietnam. IRRI is cooperating with Hanoi to assess the impact of sea-level rise scenarios in the Mekong delta, he said.
. . The organization this year launched a project to assess the possible impact of climate change on rice output and find ways of adapting rice-growing to the new realities of global warming. He said higher temperatures could decrease rice yields, and that the organization would initially focus on improving the resilience of rice to heat through research on plant physiology.
. . Aside from the sea-level rise threat to areas such as the Mekong delta, Wassman said more frequent or more intense droughts, cyclones and heat waves posed "incalculable threats to agricultural production."
. . The IRRI was optimistic it would be able to develop new varieties that could cope with higher temps. Scientists are also confident that the resilience of rice production systems to climate extremes, such as floods and droughts, can be improved, he said. However, he warned it was unclear to what extent the impact of higher sea levels could be compensated for, and what the costs and socioeconomic consequences of any such changes would be.
July 9, 07: Food and water shortages fueled in the future by global warming could spur conflicts and even wars over these essential resources, the authors of a new study warn. History suggests the controversial idea might be on track.
. . Changes in climate, such as temperature and rainfall, can significantly alter the availability of crops, livestock and drinking water. Resource shortages could, in turn, prompt people to turn to war to get what they need to survive, several experts have warned.
. . A new study suggests this was the case in the past. The authors reviewed 899 wars fought in China between 1000 and 1911 and found a correlation between the frequency of warfare and records of temperature changes. “It was the oscillations of agricultural production brought by long-term climate change that drove China’s historical war-peace cycles", wrote lead author David Zhang of the U of Hong Kong.
. . Similarly, several top retired American military leaders released a report in April warning of the national security threat posed by global warming, predicting wars over water, refugees displaced by rising sea levels and higher rates of famine and disease.
. . Climate change could possibly improve growing conditions in some areas (particularly higher latitudes), while hurting them in others (especially the tropics).
. . Separately, other scientists have argued that a looming peak in oil production could potentially generate conflict on a global scale as industrialized nations fight over dwindling petroleum supplies in an era of soaring demand. Global oil production will peak sometime between next year and 2018 and then decline, according to a controversial new model developed by a Swedish physicist.
. . Since 1956, when American geophysicist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that U.S. oil reserves would hit a peak within 20 years, experts have debated when the same might occur globally. Some oil companies and consultancy firms such as Cambridge Energy Research Associates speculate that oil will peak sometime after 2020, but a number of oil geologists and executives predict it will happen much sooner.
. . And once production starts declining, there could be major supply problems, analysts say, especially when it comes to transportation-cars, aircraft, trains and boats are today without a ready alternative to petroleum-based liquid fuels.
. . Reaction to the latest prediction is as polarized as the debate has been on this issue for decades.
. . Robelius built his model, which serves as his doctoral dissertation, after analyzing the fields' past production rates and their ultimate recoverable reserves. Then he predicted how production will decline after peaking by incorporating rates of drop-off observed at other fields, ranging from 6% in a best-case scenario to 16% in a worst-case scenario. Finally, he combined his results with estimated forecasts for new field developments from sources such as the deep ocean and oil sands in Canada, but he says that these are unlikely to offset the upcoming declines from the giant fields-and there is little chance that new giant fields will be discovered in the future.
. . Although there are other potential sources of oil, they are not only smaller, but also frequently have low production rates because of geological constraints, said Robelius. In Canada's oil sands, for instance, the oil is so heavy that it must be heated up before it starts to flow, he said, and this is a slow and expensive process.
July 9, 07: Using modern plant-breeding methods to find new diets for cows that make them belch less is a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said. The key is developing new varieties of food that are easier for cattle to digest and also provide a proper balance of fiber, protein and sugar. This could open up plant-based solutions as alternatives to reducing stock as farmers look for ways to cut methane emissions amid warming climates.
. . The average dairy cow belches out about 100 to 200 liters of methane each day, making diet changes a key potential factor in reducing this greenhouse gas. "There is a common misperception about how methane gets into the atmosphere", he said. "It is actually through belching rather than the other end."
. . Agriculture is responsible for about 7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions and a large proportion of two of the most potent gases with 37% of methane and 67% of nitrous oxide.
. . Introducing easier-to-digest legumes that tend to reduce methane emissions is an example of an approach scientists are beginning to explore. Legumes such as clover and alfalfa are commonly used for animal fodder. It also requires farmers to balance cows' legume intake with other food and to develop different species of grass that are also more digestible.
. . Scientists say putting garlic in animal feed may cut flatulence in cattle and sheep.
July 6, 07: New Jersey became the third state in the nation to enact a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction law, requiring the Garden State to significantly cut emissions of global-warming gases.
July 5, 07: Scientists using DNA extracted from ice buried deep below the surface have found evidence that a lush forest once existed in southern Greenland, a finding that sheds light on how climate change affects Earth's frozen areas.
. . The researchers analyzed ice cores 2-3 km below the surface from several locations in southern Greenland and discovered what they believe to be the oldest authenticated DNA ever recorded.
. . Eske Willerslev, a biologist at the U of Copenhagen in Denmark, said scientists know very little about fossils hidden below ice and glaciers --which cover about 10% of the earth's surface-- because usable DNA samples tend to be buried so deep and are difficult to get.
. . Basal ice is soil trapped at the bottom of ice and, because the dirt holds on to biological material, offers a richer source of DNA to study past life and climate change than clean ice near the top.
. . In southern Greenland, they found a wide range of plant and insect life, including pine, spruce and alder tries along with beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths, from 450,000 to 800,000 years ago.
. . Scientists had thought the area was last ice-free about 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial but the study showed southern Greenland was still covered in ice at that time.
July 3, 07: Officials from more than a dozen Asian countries met in Malaysia to outline health problems their populations are facing in relation to a rise in global temps. Officials discussed ways to work together to limit the fallout in a region expected to be hit hard by flooding, drought, heat waves, mosquito-borne diseases and waterborne illnesses.
. . The World Health Organization estimates climate change has already directly or indirectly killed more than 1 million people globally since 2000. More than half of those deaths have occurred in the Asia-Pacific area, the world's most populous region. Those figures do not include deaths linked to urban air pollution, which kills about 800,000 worldwide each year, according to WHO.
. . Singapore saw mean annual temperatures increase 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit between 1978 and 1998, while the number of dengue fever cases jumped 10-fold during the same period.
. . Malaria has recently reached Bhutan and new areas in Papua New Guinea for the first time. In the past, mosquitoes that spread the disease were unable to breed in the cooler climates there, but warmer temperatures have helped vector-borne diseases to flourish.
. . Melting of glaciers in the Himalayas have created about 20 lakes in Nepal that are in danger of overflowing their banks, which could create a torrent of water and debris capable of wiping out villages and farms below.
July 2, 07: The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.
. . The Ipsos Mori poll of 2,032 adults, found 56% believed scientists were still questioning climate change. There was a feeling the problem was exaggerated to make money, it found.
. . Royal Society vice-president Sir David Read said: "People should not be misled by those that exploit the complexity of the issue, seeking to distort the science and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of climate change. The science very clearly points towards the need for us all --nations, businesses and individuals-- to do as much as possible, as soon as possible to avoid the worst consequences of a changing climate."
July 2, 07: Ponds that have provided summertime water in the high arctic for thousands of years are drying up as global warming advances, Canadian researchers say. Falling water levels and changes in chemistry in the ponds first were noticed in the 1990s, and by last July some of the ponds that dot the landscape were dry, according to a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
. . The ponds are habitat for algae and invertebrates such as insect larvae, and waterfowl use them. In the 1980s, they often needed to wear hip waders to make their way to the ponds, they noted, while by 2006 the same areas were dry enough to burn.
July 2, 07: A swath of marshy, wildlife-rich coastal land in Arctic Alaska being eyed for oil drilling is eroding rapidly probably because of the disappearance of sea ice that used to protect it from the ocean waves, according to a study. Land lost to erosion north of Teshekpuk Lake, Arctic Alaska's largest lake, was twice as fast in 1985 to 2005 period than in the previous 30 years.
. . The sea has pushed in half a mile in some places over past decades. "Since beaches are absent or poorly developed along most of the studied coast, there is little, if any, protection against this increased wave energy. As a result, the waves undercut the mud-rich permafrost land, causing it to collapse into the sea."
. . In addition, salty sea water has contaminated formerly freshwater lakes, migratory birds, caribou and other wildlife populations has lost habitat and the sparse human infrastructure along the coastline has been damaged, the study said.
. . Corals stressed by warming conditions may benefit from the passage of a hurricane — as long as it doesn't slam right into them. Bleaching of corals has been a growing problem in recent years with the loss of algae or reduction of pigment in the living corals that occurs when they are stressed by warming water.
. . A team of researchers reports that hurricanes mix the warm surface water and colder deep water enough to lower the temperature as much as 9 degrees F. The researchers concluded that while a direct hit by a hurricane can damage corals, passage of a storm within 250 miles or so can mix and cool the water enough to benefit corals.
July 1, 07: McDonald's is to convert all its UK delivery vehicles to run on biodiesel, using the firm's supply of cooking oil. The fast-food chain has pledged to convert all its 155 vehicles by next year. By using the fuel --made by combining cooking oil and rapeseed oil-- the firm said it would save more than 1,650 tons of CO2 every year.
July 2, 07: Investors around the world are dreaming of the billions the festering CO2-rich bogs could bring in as the world battles global warming. Peat bogs are the new black gold, some say.
. . Science has long known that Indonesia's 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of dense, black tropical peat swamps, formed when trees, roots and leaves rot, are natural carbon stores, explained U of Nottingham peat expert Professor Jack Rieley. "They are 50 to 60% carbon. Peat stores more carbon than all of the planet's vegetation combined", he said.
. . Now the dots have been joined between peatlands and the massive amounts of climate change-related CO2 emissions they release when burnt or drained to plant crops such as palm oil.
. . Peat is a potential gold-mine, said Marcel Silvius, Senior Program Manager of Wetlands International NGO. "This science was not available before", said Silvius, the co-author of a November 2006 report that found Indonesia's peatlands emit two billion tons of CO2 each year --more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Japan or Germany.
. . Years of lucrative deforestation for timber and palm oil plantations has entrenched the practice of burning vast areas of Indonesian land, smothering neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei in annual choking smoke clouds, known as haze.
. . Now, in a sudden reversal, keeping Indonesia's forest cover intact is a hot investment ticket in a warming world, said Silvius. "(The world's peatlands) emit 8% of global CO2 emissions, equal to what all the Annex One (industrialized) countries need to decrease (under the Kyoto Protocol). Tens of billions could be invested to achieve this", said Silvius.
. . Around $30.4 billion of CO2 credits --representing 1.6 billion tons of CO2-- were bought and sold last year in Europe by companies seeking to trade off business-related CO2 emissions for emissions reductions achieved elsewhere.
. . Already, investors are knocking on doors in towns close to peat swamps. Emissions cuts from forest areas such as peatlands are not yet eligible for trade, because they were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol's first, 2008-2012, round. But many predict they will be in six months' time, after the UN climate meeting in Bali hears a report on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED).
. . As home to 60% of the world's threatened tropical peatlands, and among the world's top three CO2 emitters when peat emissions are added in, Indonesia is in the spotlight. "In Uganda, people have been shot at by forest rangers to defend carbon forestry projects."
Here's a residential builder's definition of green:
. . * Minimizes the use of nonrenewable energy, water, and other natural resources.
. . * Provides a house with a healthy indoor environment built in a community with a healthy outdoor environment.
. . * Uses products that reduce harmful effects on the environment.
. . * Controls house size.
. . * Designs appropriately for the climate zone.
. . * Treats a house as a system of interrelated components.
Faucets with replaceable cartridges or ceramic-disk valves are more reliable than those that use old-fashioned rubber washers.
. . Leave surfaces exposed. Drywall and the labor required to install it can get expensive. Think about leaving ceiling beams --and the recessed lighting therein-- exposed in several areas of the house, including the breakfast room and part of the kitchen. Exposed structural elements provide visual interest and give the illusion of more volume and a higher ceiling.
. . Go natural, not synthetic. Select cellulose insulation, which is made out of plant fiber, instead of fiberglass, and Homasote, a recycled newspaper product, as a substitute for drywall in some places. Use linoleum for the kitchen floor rather than vinyl, carpet made of wool and sisal --a natural grasslike fiber-- and wood floors. A metal roof shields the house from harsh sunlight, and since it's not petrochemically produced, is a nontoxic material.
Jun 30, 07: This year is on track to be the second warmest since records began in the 1860s and floods in Pakistan or a heatwave in Greece may herald worse disruptions in store from global warming, experts of the U.N.'s International Meteorological Organization said.
. . It's behind 1998... "It isn't far behind ... it could change, but at the moment this looks unlikely."
. . The 10 warmest years in the past 150 years have all been since 1990. Last year ranked number six according to the IMO. NASA, which uses slightly different data, places 2005 as warmest ahead of 1998.
Jun 29, 07: Los Angeles' driest year in 130 years of record-keeping will go into the books this weekend.
Jun 28, 07: The increasing number of deaths caused by heatwaves as the climate changes will not be offset by fewer deaths in milder winters, US research claims. The study in Occupational and Environmental Medicine said the death rate in 50 US cities rose more sharply in very hot spells than very cold ones.
. . People had already adapted to the cold with central heating, the study said, but remained unused to intense heat. Many more people currently die in cold weather conditions than hot ones. In the UK, for instance, there are 20,000 cold-related deaths each year and 1,000 heat-related.
. . Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health looked at the deaths of more than 6.5 million people in 50 US cities between 1989 and 2000. They found that during two-day cold snaps there was a 1.59% increase in deaths because of the extreme temperatures, but during similar periods of extremely hot weather death rates rose by 5.74%.
. . While all 50 US cities showed similar rises in deaths when temperatures plummeted, more deaths were seen during extreme temperature hikes in cities with usually milder summers and less air conditioning.
Jun 28, 07: As the world warms, states at risk face severe threats to their groundwater, agriculture, and ecosystems, factors that can rapidly undo political and economic gains. This year’s index found a strong correlation between stability and environmental sustainability, a country’s ability to avoid environmental disaster and deterioration. That means that in poorly performing states on the edge, including Bangladesh, Egypt, and Indonesia, the risks of flooding, drought, and deforestation have little chance of being properly managed. And that suggests storms are brewing on the horizon for the world’s most vulnerable."
Jun 28, 07: Desertification represents one of the "greatest environmental challenge of our times" and could set off mass migrations of people fleeing degraded homelands, a United Nations report warned. The report called on governments in arid regions to revise rules on land use to halt overgrazing and unsustainable irrigation practices. It also urged better coordinated policies to address the problem of desertification.
. . The report said about 2 billion people, a third of the Earth's population, are potential victims of desertification, which is defined as land degraded by human activities like farming and grazing. If the problem is left unchecked, some 50 million people could be forced from their homes over the next decade, the report said.
. . The report, the work of more than 200 experts from 25 countries, said policies on preventing desertification are often inconsistent, frequently not implemented at local levels or inadvertently fuel conflict over land, water and other resources.
Jun 25, 07: Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain's armed forces said. Jock Stirrup [ohhhh....], chief of the defense staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning.
. . But he said first analyses showed planners would not have to switch their geographical focus, because the areas most vulnerable to climate change are those where security risks are already high. "Just glance at a map of the areas most likely to be affected and you are struck at once by the fact that they are exactly those parts of the world where we see fragility, instability and weak governance today. "It seems to me rather like pouring petrol onto a burning fire", Stirrup told the Chatham House think-tank in London.
. . British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chaired the first debate on climate change at the U.N. Security Council in April this year. She argued that the potential for climate change to cause wars meant it should be on the council's radar.
. . Stirrup said the unpredictability of the immediate effects of global warming on rainfall patterns and storms meant flashpoints could be advanced by years without warning. He did not identify the problem areas, but Bert Metz of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the meeting they included Central America, the Amazon Basin, large parts of north, central and southern Africa and swathes of Asia.
Jun 25, 07: Desert dust blown onto Rocky Mountain peaks has cut the duration of snow-cover by a month or more, and the same thing is probably happening in the Alps and Himalayas, researchers reported.
. . In a phenomenon likely to spur global warming, the reflective white of snow is replaced by darker dust deposits that absorb the sun's rays, heating up the lower atmosphere, said Tom Painter, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
. . Dust in small doses can help to form snowflakes, but the dust that cuts the length of snow-pack in the Rockies by about 20 to 35 days a year comes in a swirling blanket, spawned by wind storms in desert or drought-stricken areas, Painter and his co-authors wrote.
. . The fact that dust deposits can melt mountain snow by decreasing the ability to reflect sunlight has long been established; what is new, Painter said, is the degree to which this affects snow cover. One month less of snow "is an enormous change", he said. The cause for the diminished snow cover in Colorado's San Juan Mountains is dust carried from the Colorado Plateau, some 300km away.
. . The desert dust-mountain snow system warms up the lower atmosphere in what climate scientists call a positive feedback loop, Painter explained: "The hotter it gets, the less snow cover you have ... and that provides a darker surface that can absorb more solar radiation and that warms things even more."
. . The underlying reason for the increased dust is changes in land use starting in the mid-19th century, Painter said. "About 75% of the Western US has been affected by grazing, by agriculture, by mining." Without natural grasses to stabilize the soil, more of it turned to desert and more dust blew into the mountains.
. . Most climate models predict more drying and warming in the U.S. desert Southwest, causing soil moisture to decrease, which means less vegetation to stabilize the soil and probably more dust emission.
Jun 22, 07: Decades of drought helped trigger Darfur's violence as rival groups fought over scarce water and arable land. Now, experts fear the war and its refugee crisis are making the environment even worse, leaving the land increasingly uninhabitable and intensifying tensions with no end to the drought in sight.
. . Darfur's tragedy could be repeated in much of North Africa and the Middle East, experts fear, because growing populations are straining a very limited water supply. Data show rainfall steadily declining in the region, possibly because of weather changes linked to global warming.
. . "The consciousness of the world on the issue of climate change has to change fast", said Muawia Shaddad of the Sudan Environment Conservation Society. "Darfur is just an early warning."
. . Darfur's ethnic African farmers and tribes of mostly Arab nomads had long been competing for the region's meager water and land resources, experts say. But the severe droughts of the 1980s and meager rainfall since then sharpened the conflict between the two populations. Average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly half since figures were first collected in 1917.
. . In 2003, when the large-scale conflict began, 7.48 inches of rain fell on El Fasher. Meanwhile, Darfur's population has increased sixfold over the past four decades, to 6.5 million.
. . As the desert closed in, Arab nomads drifted farther south, bringing their herds of cattle toward lands that African villagers were farming. Those herds destroyed fields and worsened soil erosion. With land being made unfit for farming, the Africans rebelled when the central government in Khartoum seemed indifferent to their plight.
Jun 22, 07: The British NHS --one of the world's largest public bodies-- has been urged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Each year, the UK's health service spent £400m on energy and emitted about one million tons of CO2, think tank New Economics Foundation said.
. . Its NHS Confederation-commissioned report said 5% of UK road transport emissions were from NHS-related trips. The authors also warned that a more variable climate could see an increase in heat-related deaths and diseases.
. . The report --Taking the Temperature: Towards an NHS Response to Global Warming-- says staff, patients and visitors travelled almost 25 billion passenger miles in 2001, predominately by cars and vans.
. . Waste was also an area for concern: "One in every 100 tons of domestic waste generated in the UK comes from the NHS, with the vast majority going to landfill." It added that the NHS would have to cut its CO2 emissions by at least 600,000 tons if it was to meet the government's target of cutting CO2 by 60% from 1990 levels by 2050.
Jun 22, 07: French engineering company Alstom said it won a development contract with Germany power and gas provider E.on AG to develop a CO2 emissions capture plant in southern Sweden.
. . They will use Alstom's chilled ammonia-based technology and is expected to begin operation in 2008. The companies plan to introduce the technology into other Swedish power plants after technical evaluation.
Jun 22, 07: A new study of the potential sand losses to North Carolina beaches reports that a 1-foot rise in sea level in the next 25 to 75 years (which is at the lower end of the range predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) would cause the coast to move inland by 2,000 to 10,000 feet and could cost an estimated $223 million in lost recreational value by 2080 to beach-goers in that state alone.
. . Predicting exactly how much beaches will shrink is impossible because beach erosion rates are highly variable, even between points that are only a few miles apart. But even with all the uncertainty, scientists say the future of our beloved sandy havens doesn’t look good.
. . In fact, Pilkey says, the building of jetties and sea walls may be doing the most damage for now, because while they preserve a small portion of the shoreline near the structure, they actually result in more coastal erosion further from the structure than would have occurred naturally. The only beaches to survive would likely be the ones that are undeveloped now.
Jun 20, 07: China has overtaken the US as the world's top producer of CO2 emissions —-the biggest man-made contributor to global warming-— based on the latest widely accepted energy consumption data, a Dutch research group says.
. . China overtook the U.S. in emissions of CO2 by 8% in 2006. While China was 2% below the US in 2005, voracious coal consumption and increased cement production caused the numbers to rise rapidly.
. . Other sources of CO2, such as deforestation and the flaring of gas in oil and gas production, are not included in the data. They also do not include methane from fuel production and agriculture and nitrous oxide from industry.
. . Apt and a colleague calculated the share of CO2 now in the atmosphere that can be attributed to each country and determined that the US is responsible for 27%, European nations contributed 20% and China only 8%.
. . "It means the U.S. will have the lion's share of CO2 in the atmosphere for the foreseeable future. In fact, even if China's exponential growth continues, China will not surpass the U.S. in the numbers of CO2 atoms in the atmosphere, that is concentration, until at least 2050, which is too late to start anything."
Jun 20, 07: A lake in southern Chile has mysteriously disappeared, prompting speculation the ground has simply opened up and swallowed it whole. The lake was situated in Patagonia and was fed by water from melting glaciers. It had a surface area of between 4 and 5 hectares.
. . One theory is that the area was hit by an earth tremor that opened a crack in the ground which acted like a drain. Southern Chile has been shaken by thousands of minor earth tremors this year.
Jun 18, 07: Spring in the Arctic is arriving "weeks earlier" than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have reported. Ice in north-east Greenland is melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s, bringing forward the date plants flower and birds lay eggs. The team warned that the observed changes could disrupt the region's ecosystems and food chain, affecting the long-term survival of some species.
. . Observation of 21 species --six plants, 12 arthropods and three birds-- revealed that the organisms had brought forward their flowering, emergence or egg-laying in line with the earlier ice melt. "Over the long term, it is most likely to be the case that species from southern latitudes will be able to establish themselves (in the region) and increase competition for food."
Jun 18, 07: If rising sea levels force the people of the Maldive Islands to seek new homes, who will look after them in a world already turning warier of refugees? The daunting prospect of mass population movements set off by climate change and environmental disasters poses an imminent new challenge that no one has yet figured out how to meet.
. . People displaced by global warming --the Christian Aid agency has predicted there will be one billion by 2050-- could dwarf the nearly 10 million refugees and almost 25 million internally displaced people already fleeing wars and oppression. "It's pretty overwhelming to see what we might be facing in the next 50 years", she said. "And it's starting now."
. . People forced to move by climate change, salination, rising sea levels, deforestation or desertification do not fit the classic definition of refugees --those who leave their homeland to escape persecution or conflict and who need protection. But the world's welcome even for these people is wearing thin, just as UN figures show that an exodus from Iraq has reversed a five-year decline in overall refugee numbers.
. . William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesman in Geneva: "Whatever their motives, migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and as human beings, he added. "We have seen people in the Mediterranean in boats or hanging onto fishing nets for days while states discuss who should rescue them. How will we approach displacement when, say, the Maldives go under? We have to plan for it, but in a way that doesn't lead us all to start jumping out of windows."
Jun 17, 07: : By 2000, overgrazing, deforestation, wind erosion and drought meant nearly 90% of Duolun county was affected by desertification. Since then, 2.63 million trees have been planted, farmers have been forced to switch from wheat to grass production and all grazing has been banned in the worst affected areas.
. . China's anti-desertification campaign has not been without controversy. Exile groups accuse the government of using the environment as an excuse to further assimilate the Mongolian community, which is now outnumbered about five to one in Inner Mongolia thanks to decades of migration by Han Chinese.
Jun 16, 07: Climate change is partly to blame for the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, where droughts have provoked fighting over water sources, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in an editorial.
. . "Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand —-an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers", Ban wrote in The Washington Post. "Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic."
. . Rainfall in Sudan began declining two decades ago, a phenomenon due "to some degree, from man-made global warming." Settled farmers and Arab nomadic herders had gotten along until the drought, he wrote, but as conditions worsened, water and food shortages disrupted the peace and "evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today."
. . Ban said similar ecological problems are behind conflicts in other countries, including Somalia and Ivory Coast.
Jun 16, 07: Arctic plants are able to migrate the distances needed to survive changes to the climate, scientists have suggested. Habitats are expected to shift further north as the planet warms, and plants' inability to move quickly enough has been a cause for concern. But researchers suggest seeds can be carried vast distances by the wind and sea ice. The biggest challenge, they added, was likely to be their ability to establish themselves in the new habitat.
. . Researchers from Norway and France analysed more than 4,000 samples of nine flowering plant species found on the remote Svalbard islands inside the Arctic Circle.
. . It had been assumed that long-distance dispersal of seeds happened rarely and randomly, making the chance of colonization unlikely. Yet, the team said, the study suggested it was more common than previously thought. "Probable dispersal vectors are wind, drift wood and drifting sea ice, birds and mammals."
Jun 15, 07: Scorching heat could spell more dangerous summers for the Mediterranean over the next 100 years, a new analysis finds. A 2003 heat wave took 15,000 lives in France and 3,000 in Italy as temperatures soared over 100 degrees F, but if greenhouse gases continue to build up in the atmosphere at their present rate, temperature rises could dwarf those in Europe during that summer.
. . "Rare events today, like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, become much more common as greenhouse gas concentrations increase.” In Paris, for example, the temperatures during the 2003 heat wave are exceeded more than two dozen times every year in the study’s projections of the future.
. . Reduced precipitation could make the Mediterranean’s hottest days even hotter: as the land surface warms, it gets drier, and dry soil means less moisture in the area in general and less cooling from the evaporation of water.
Jun 15, 07: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore denounced a deal by world leaders on curbing greenhouse gases as "a disgrace disguised as an achievement", saying the agreement struck last week was insufficient.
. . The dedicated climate crusader, whose 2006 global warming documentary won an Oscar, said leaders at last week's G8 summit in Germany had not risen to the challenge to respond to what he calls a "planetary emergency."
. . G8 leaders agreed to pursue "substantial" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, stopping short of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's hopes for concrete numerical commitments on emission reductions, including her key aim to cut gases by 50% by 2050. He praised Merkel for her efforts.
. . "The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps.'"
Jun 14, 07: Thanks to a ruminant stomach and a diet heavy in grass, a single heifer belches up to 300 grams of methane a day (oddly, very little comes from flatulence).
. . Here's what researchers propose. 5 Ways to Cope With a Gassy Cow:
. . 1. New Bacteria: Large kangaroos eat like cows but produce less methane. The Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries in Australia posits that bacteria in marsupials' intestines are key, so giving the organisms to bovines may cut methane production.
. . 2. Gas Capture: California inventor Markus Herrema proposes a special pouch to be worn over a cow's mouth. The bag captures exhaled methane, then microbes inside consume the gasses, growing into a biomass that can be used as a cleaner source of energy.
. . 3. Supplements: Like Beano for bovines, feed additives (such as vegetable oils and fumaric acid) have been shown to cut cows' methane production up to 20%. Chlorinated hydrocarbons could inhibit methane. Downside: They're expensive and can cause cancer.
. . 4. Vaccination: Drugs are being developed to eliminate the methane-producing bacteria inside a cow's gut. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and New Zealand's AgResearch are among those working on a burp vaccine.
. . 5. Taxes: If you can beat 'em, maybe you can tax 'em. In New Zealand, a proposed methane tax was defeated after farmers protested. A more politically palatable solution is proposed in Canada, where ranchers can qualify for CO2 credits.
Current estimates are that there are about 1.3 to 1.5 BILLION cattle in the world. Previous estimates of 60 million bison once roaming the US midwest have been reduced to about 30 million based on studies of the carrying capacity of the great plains.
Jun 14, 07: Small doses of human-spewed nitrogen --emitted by cars, factories and farm chemicals -- can help forests grow more and absorb climate-warming CO2, researchers reported. But a little nitrogen goes a long way and too much can be damaging.
. . One of nitrogen's uses is as a plant fertilizer, and it appears to have this effect in forests in this study. Law stressed that the level of nitrogen that can actually nourish a forest and help it suck up the greenhouse gas CO2 is about 10% of what is annually applied to farmlands.
. . The amount of nitrogen deposited in the forests studied ranged from about 11 pounds to 5 kg to 15 kg per 1 hectare per year. This provided only a small boost to how much CO2 a forest can absorb by its natural processes of photosynthesis and respiration, she said.
. . "One of the things that we've heard in the past from research was that nitrogen deposition can be bad for forests", Law said. "Those (bad) levels we're talking about are very high levels." When these levels are reached, soil becomes more acid and other nutrients like calcium decrease.
. . These data give a complex picture of how CO2 and forests interact. For example, it was already known that logging or other events that can wipe out a whole stand of trees can create periods of from five to 20 years when there is a net release of CO2 into the atmosphere, instead of the CO2 sequestration that occurs later on. This indicates a highly variable forest CO2 cycle that appears to be heavily influenced by human activity.
Jun 12, 07: A southwestern Chinese city renowned as a "furnace" during the summer has opened up its warren of old air raid shelters to help people beat the heat.
Jun 12, 07: Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said the US should join the Group of Eight in a call to cut global warming gas emissions in half by 2050.
. . Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proposed a federal low-CO2 fuel standard patterned on California's ambitious goals.
Jun 11, 07: The UN is stepping up its campaign to conserve the world's genetic resources so crops and animals can adapt to global warming and other challenges, focusing on fish for the first time since fish are increasingly being bred to meet the world's food needs.
. . Fish farming, or aquaculture, has grown enormously in recent years, representing a $70.3 billion market in 2004 alone. Farmed fish are increasingly being consumed as wild fish stocks decline from overfishing, pollution and the effects of climate change.
. . The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization this week is hosting a meeting on preserving the world's genetic resources, a topic which to date has focused on crops and livestock. This year the agency is focusing on fish, and is urging governments to better conserve the world's fish genes since genetic diversity is critical for breeding. Farmed fish now represent about 35% of world fish production —-up from about 3.9% in 1970.
Jun 11, 07: Contrary to the conventional wisdom, scientists have found that logging big dead trees after a wildfire and planting young ones makes future fires worse, at least for the first 10 or 20 years while the young trees create a volatile new source of fuel.
. . The findings by scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State U raise questions about the long-standing practice of salvage logging on national forests at a time when global warming is expected to increase the size and numbers of wildfires and the annual cost of fighting them is running around $1 billion.
. . The data suggested that the large stands of closely packed young trees created by replanting are a much more volatile source of fuel for decades to come than the large dead trees that are cut down and hauled away in salvage logging operations.
. . Greg Aplet, staff scientist for The Wilderness Society, said a recent review of scientific evidence showed that economics —-the value of timber logged after a fire and the jobs that go along with it-— is the only real benefit of salvage logging. "There is no fuel reduction benefit. There is no ecological benefit to salvage logging", he said from Denver.
. . The political battle has waned with Democrats taking control of Congress. A bill to speed up salvage logging on national forests after wildfires died in Congress last year, and has not been reintroduced.
Jun 11, 07: More endangered Hawaiian monk seals are trapped and killed by marine debris during years when the El Nino phenomenon warms tropical Pacific waters, according to U of Hawaii researchers.
Jun 10, 07: Reducing CO2 emissions from the production, operation and disposal of computers is to be the aim of a new government taskforce. Computers and other IT equipment have been blamed for causing as much global warming as the airline industry.
. . The taskforce will oversee the piloting of a "green PC" service in which individual machines use 98% less energy than standard PCs. IT equipment is thought to generate 35m tons of CO2 each year.
. . The Green Shift program will also aim to use 75% fewer resources in the production of PCs. "The new taskforce is the first of its kind in the world and is a sign of how serious the UK is about tackling this issue."
Jun 9, 07: With strategically placed helmets and slogans painted on bare skin, scores of people shed their clothes and rode through this seaside resort on their bicycles Saturday to promote cycling as an environmentally friendly mode of transport. "It is time more motorists stripped off their armor plating and moved around more gently on this earth."
. . More than 200 cyclists in various stages of undress took part in the World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton and Hove. Cyclists met with police chiefs ahead of the seven-mile ride to seek their advice about avoiding problems or formal complaints about the nudity.
. . Similar events took place in the cities of Manchester, York and Southhampton, and were expected in other countries, too. Authorities generally turned a blind eye to one of the world's more outlandish environmental protests.
. . In London, 700 cyclists. "We are seeing an increasing number of stories of melting ice caps and Antarctica crumbling away and no government is doing anything serious about this", said Martin Ireland, one of the riders. "They are paying lip service to the problem, so people have been taking to their bikes, unclothed, to express their feelings about it."
. . In Madrid, about 300 cyclists. In Montreal's central Parc Laurier, hundreds turned out to witness the spectacle as a few dozen cyclists, unhampered by clothers, set off down the streets.
. . Some 100 riders braved the roads of Mexico City.
Jun 8, 07: Hong Kong's winters could vanish within 50 years, with the number of cold days declining virtually to zero due to global warming and urbanization, the head of the city's weather observatory warned.
. . There will be less than one cold day each winter --defined as those with temperatures below 12 degrees C at some point during the day. Between 1961 and 1990, there was an average of 21 days.
Jun 5, 07: The world was slightly warmer than average in the first four months of this year, but 2007 may not turn out to be the hottest on record, Britain's official weather forecaster said.
. . El Nino's lesser-known sister weather phenomenon, La Nina, could bring a cooling touch. La Nina, or the girl, which recurs every few years, is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean around the Equator, which can affect weather around the globe. The better known El Nino, or the boy, is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.
. . Met Office figures show the mean global temperature for the period January to April was almost 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long term average. Data from Britain's leading climatologists also show the spring in Britain was the warmest since records began in 1914. The balmy UK spring follows one of the warmest recorded winters, and a run of record breaking years --the last five years are the warmest on record.
Jun 5, 07: The world marked Environment Day on Tuesday with cheerful events like tree-planting and solar cooking in the heat of Asia, but also gloomier talk in the not-so-frozen north of melting polar caps.
Jun 4, 07: Business leaders from the Energy industry have called for global CO2 markets to help tackle climate change. Speaking ahead of the G8 summit of industrialized nations, they said they wanted a market in which CO2 prices were transparent and consistent. Energy sector leaders are keen that there should be a single price for CO2 emissions throughout the world.
. . They were taking part in a two-day event in Berlin organised by the environmental network Globe International ahead of this week's G8 summit. It was attended by legislators and business leaders from the G8 countries as well as emerging economies such as Mexico, Brazil, China and India.
Jun 2, 07: Germany's Angela Merkel wants to tackle global warming. Britain's Tony Blair seeks help for Africa. President Bush wants to change the subject from Iraq to areas where allied cooperation is possible.
Jun 3, 07: China rejected international pressure to adopt mandatory caps on greenhouse gas production as it unveiled its first national program to help combat global warming. The program offered few new concrete targets for reducing emissions in outlining steps that the Chinese government says it will take to meet a previously announced goal of improving overall energy efficiency in 2010 by 20 percent over 2005's level.
. . "Although we are not committed to quantified emissions reduction, it does not mean we do not want to shoulder our share of responsibilities", said Ma Kai, head of the National Development and Reform Commission.
Jun 3, 07: Prime Minister John Howard ditched his long-standing opposition to a greenhouse gas reduction target for Australia with a pledge to set a national pollution limit next year. But critics said Howard's new stance is nothing more than a ploy to negate the environment as an issue during elections due later this year.
Jun 2, 07: The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.
. . A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The AP, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago.
Jun 2, 07: Global warming is bringing more warmer-climate creatures to Finland, including moths that feast on human blood, according to nature researchers. Insect-watchers are spotting more and more calpe moths in the Nordic country, which used to be considered too cold for the insects from southeast Asia. The journal published what it said were the first pictures showing the moths --calyptra thalictri-- sucking human blood.
. . The species was first sighted in Finland in 2000, but more than 100 of them have been counted since then.
Jun 2, 07: The AP analyzed state-by-state emissions of CO2 from 2003, the latest U.S. Energy Department numbers available. The review shows startling differences in states' contribution to climate change.
. . _Wyoming's coal-fired power plants produce more CO2 in just eight hours than the power generators of more populous Vermont do in a year.
. . _Texas, the leader in emitting this greenhouse gas, cranks out more than the next two biggest producers combined, California and Pennsylvania, which together have twice Texas' population.
. . _In sparsely populated Alaska, the CO2 produced per person by all the flying and driving is six times the per capita amount generated by travelers in New York state.
. . Some coal-burning states note that they are providing electricity to customers beyond their borders, including Californians. Wyoming is the largest exporter of energy to other states. And the massive CO2-spewing and power-gobbling refineries of Texas and Louisiana fuel an oil-hungry nation.
. . On a per-person basis, Wyoming spews more CO2 than any other state or any other country: 276,000 pounds of it per capita a year, thanks to burning coal, which provides nearly all of the state's electrical power. Yet, just next door to the west, Idaho emits the least CO2 per person, less than 23,000 pounds a year. Idaho forbids coal power plants. It relies mostly on non-polluting hydroelectric power from its rivers.
. . Texas, where coal barely edges out cleaner natural gas as the top power source, belches almost 1 1/2 trillion pounds of CO2 yearly. That's more than every *nation in the world except six: (the US), China, Russia, Japan, India and Germany.
. . Of course, Texas is a very populous state. North Dakota isn't, but its power plants crank out 68% more CO2 than New Jersey, which has 13 times North Dakota's residents. And while Californians have cut their per-person CO2 emissions by 11% from 1990 to 2003, Nebraskans have increased their per capita emissions by 16% over the same time frame.
. . Emissions from generating electricity account for the largest chunk of U.S. greenhouse gases, nearly 40%. Transportation emissions are close behind, contributing about one-third of U.S. production of CO2. States with mass transit and cities, such as New York, come out cleaner than those with wide expanses that rely solely on cars, trucks and airplanes, like Alaska. Alaska ranked No. 1 in per-person emissions for transportation, which includes driving, flying, shipping and rail traffic, and stands out as one of the early victims of climate change. Its glaciers are melting, its permafrost thawing, and coastal and island villages will soon be swallowed by the sea.
Jun 1, 07: Bush Rejects Compulsory Emissions Goals, Urges More Talks: The world's top greenhouse gas producers should sit down and figure out a strategy for cutting emissions, the president says.
Jun 1, 07: President George W. Bush is under pressure from European allies to give ground on climate change at next week's meeting of the world's richest countries, but policy experts say prospects for a breakthrough are slim.
May 28, 07: Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by global warming could cost Alaska up to $10 billion over the next few decades, researchers said.
. . Larsen led a study with a team of engineers to calculate how Alaska will cope with the highest temperatures it has experienced in the last 400 years, according to data gathered from ice cores. The temperature is rising in the Arctic regions at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world.
"There is a rough magnitude of between $5 and $10 billion of public infrastructure that's vulnerable to climate change just in Alaska." Permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, covers nearly two-thirds of the massive state but buildings, pipelines, roads and bridges crumble as it melts, he said.
. . An analysis of close to 20 types of public works in Alaska, from schools to municipal buildings, showed flooding and erosion will increase the burden on state finances. Some coastal areas like the Inupiat village of Shishmaref on a narrow Chukchi Sea barrier island are disappearing as sea levels rise, forcing a $100 million relocation plan.
May 29, 07: Sweden aims to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 30% by 2020, more than the European Union goal of 20%: Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren. He told daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that Sweden had pushed in recent EU negotiations for the larger cut.
. . Leaders of the 27-nation bloc in March set a target to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 and by 30% if other big polluters outside the EU agreed to join in.
. . Sweden emitted 67 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2005. Emissions have fallen by about 7% since 1990.
Renewable energy could boom in Britain under planning and energy policy changes announced last week, making it the second most attractive country for investment in clean energy, analysts at Ernst & Young said.
. . Although the blustery British Isles have huge potential for wind, tidal and wave power, earlier this year the country slipped down the consultancy's league table of best places to invest in clean energy because of a lack of investment in the power network which is needed to connect new projects. But last week's energy and planning policy papers have reversed that.
May 29, 07: Climate change is a global problem that requires unity and "multilateral" agreements if it is to be defeated, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
Antibodies are immune system proteins that recognize and help orchestrate an immune attack on bacteria, viruses and parasites. Monoclonal antibodies are specially engineered to attack a certain protein.
May 28, 07: Bound hand and foot, disheveled orangutans caught raiding Borneo's oil palm crops silently await their fate as a small crowd of plantation workers gather to watch. Lacking only hand-cuffs and finger-printing to complete the atmosphere of a criminal bust, such "ape evictions" have become part of life for Asia's endangered red apes.
. . Thousands have strayed into the path of international commerce as Indonesia and Malaysia, their last remaining habitats, race to convert their forests to profitable palm crops. Branded pests for venturing out from their diminishing forest habitats into plantations where they eat young palm shoots, orangutans could be extinct in the wild in ten years time, the United Nations said.
. . Fighting against this grim prediction is the Nyaru Menteng Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) center in Central Kalimantan, which rescues orangutans and returns them to the wild at the cost of US$3,000 per ape. After "forest school", the apes graduate to eventual release.
. . "They will kill the animals if we don't go ... It's cheaper to kill the orangutan than put up a fence or snares." The center has amassed a slew of photographs of the grisly fates of some plantation trespassers: Apes with their hands cut off and slashed to death with machetes, and others with bullets through their foreheads. With dozens captured this year, cages are full, and finding secure land for releases is a constant challenge for the center.
. . "It's not just orangutans --bears, gibbons-- everybody is losing their home. It's not just one species. Those forests have millions of animals in them that are all going to go extinct if we continue."
. . Indonesia and Malaysia together produce 83% of the world's palm oil. Made by crushing fresh fruit, the reddish-brown oil is riding high in the commodities charts, with crude prices up over 15% this year after rising 40% in 2006. Used in cookies, toothpaste, ice cream and breads it is the world's second most popular edible oil after soy. Demand is also soaring for palm oil-derived biofuel, despite objections from critics who slam the "green" alternative to pricey crude oil as "deforestation diesel".
. . Of 6.5 million hectares cultivated in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2004, almost four million hectares was previously forest, environment group Friends of the Earth calculated. For the orangutan, the clearances are a matter of life and death.
. . Orangutans once ranged across Southeast Asia. Now an estimated 7,300 remain on Indonesia's Sumatra island and 50,000 on Borneo island. An estimated 5,000 disappear every year. Indonesian's clearance of almost 1.9 million hectares of forest a year between 2000 and 2005, Asia's worst deforestation rate.
. . Whole forests have been funded by tree-loving celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Coldplay, and more modest packages tailored to typical consumers are proliferating. But some researchers say planting trees —-while a good thing-— is at best a marginal solution to global warming. Still others decry tree planters who continue to jet off to Cannes, drive their SUVs or generally fail to reduce their fuel-hungry lifestyle. To those critics, plantings and other carbon offsets are like the medieval practice of selling indulgences to wash away sins: It may feel good, but it doesn't solve much.
. . "The sale of offset indulgences is a dead-end detour off the path of action required in the face of climate change", says a report by the Transnational Institute's Carbon Trade Watch. The science is sound: Trees take in CO2 as part of photosynthesis and store the carbon. But even conservationists caution it's not as simple as planting a sapling so you can crank up the air conditioning without guilt.
. . Offset groups use averages to estimate how much carbon a given tree or forested acre can capture. For instance, the nonprofit Conservation Fund figures that each tree planted captures less than 1 1/2 tons over 100 years.
. . Researchers suggest forests in the snowy North might actually increase local warming by absorbing sunlight that would otherwise be reflected into space. And dead, decaying trees release some of that captured carbon back into the atmosphere.
. . Maybe most importantly, some researchers say it's simply not possible to plant enough trees to have a significant effect on global warming. Michael MacCracken, chief scientist at the nonpartisan Climate Institute in Washington, said tree-planting has value as a stopgap measure while society attempts to reduce greenhouse gases. But University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver fears tree offsets could steal the focus of a problem that requires technological advances and behavioral changes.
. . "The danger is that you could actually think you're solving a problem", Weaver said. "It makes you feel good. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy, like changing a couple of light bulbs. But the reality is it's not going to have a significant effect."
May 28, 07: A British adventurer is planning to highlight the effects of global warming by becoming the first person to swim at the North Pole and break his own record for the coldest swim.
May 25, 07: Food flown into the UK may be stripped of organic status in a move being considered by the Soil Association. The organization, which certifies which foods are organic, says it is looking at a number of proposals because of concern about greenhouse gas emissions. It will outline a series of options, including an outright ban, in a consultation document next week. Other proposals include labels showing a product's country of origin as well as carbon offsetting schemes.
. . Flying produce into Britain from abroad is the fastest growing form of food transport. Due to growing demands to cut the environmental impact of food distribution, the organization is now considering five options to reduce the carbon footprint of air-freighted food. These include a campaign to partially or fully deny food imported into the UK by air the right to label itself organic and comprehensive labelling showing a product's country of origin as well as the air miles it has travelled.
. . However, the Soil Association says that air transport can help developing countries with poor infrastructure to get their goods to markets. And any decision would have to take into account the impact on farmers in the developing world, it added. A snap survey of the major supermarkets by the BBC's Breakfast program found some organic versions of seasonal fruit and vegetables had been imported from as far away as Thailand and Argentina.
Annually, Portland cement alone pumps roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere when it’s manufactured.
May 25, 07: A warm spring has brought about the early arrival of some UK wildlife, the first results of the Springwatch 2007 survey suggest. Over the past few months, amateur naturalists have logged more than 24,000 first sightings of six key species of plants and animals. The Woodland Trust said it was worried "because the changes are so rapid".
. . Recent weather in the UK has been extremely mild, and records show it has been the warmest spring since the Springwatch survey began.
May 24, 07: Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has said the world should halve emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. It is the first time Japan has set a firm target to replace the present Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.
. . The plan is believed to be less demanding than other proposals from European countries such as the UK. But Mr Abe said it was important to come up with a scheme flexible enough to win over those countries which are among the world's biggest polluters. Mr Abe said he believed those efforts would fail unless the countries which are among the biggest polluters, China, India and the US, could be persuaded to take part.
. . He said that Japan would help by sharing the knowledge that has allowed it to become the most energy efficient country in the world.
May 25, 07: The United States has rejected Germany's bid to get the Group of Eight to agree to tough cuts in climate warming carbon emissions, according to a draft of the communique to be presented to next month's meeting.
May 24, 07: Perched on a windswept ridge amid the fjords and mountains of Ellesmere Island stands the world's northernmost atmospheric research station --a rugged outpost of frontline science with the delicate name of Pearl.
. . Pearl stands for Polar Environment Atmosphere Research Laboratory and the scientists braving the elements here believe that in coming years it should help reveal vital clues about our changing planet.
. . Equipped with as many as 27 different instruments, it's designed to provide the most comprehensive view yet of the state and composition of the Arctic air from ground-level up to the edge of space.
May 23, 07: Climate change could drive many wild relatives of plants such as the potato and the peanut into extinction, threatening a valuable source of genes necessary to help these food crops fight pests and drought, an international research group reported. In recent years, genes found in wild relatives have helped develop new types of domesticated potatoes that can fight devastating potato blight and new varieties of wheat more likely to survive droughts.
. . During the next 50 years, more than 60% of 51 wild peanut species analyzed and 12 percent of 108 wild potato species analyzed could become extinct because of climate change, according to a study by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Surviving species would be confined to much smaller areas, further eroding their capacity to survive, the report said.
. . Farmers and researchers often depend on wild plants to breed new varieties of crops that contain genes for traits such as pest resistance or drought tolerance, and that reliance is expected to increase as climate changes strain the ability of crops to continue to have the same yields as now, the group said.
. . "There is an urgent need to collect and store the seeds of wild relatives in crop diversity collections before they disappear", said Andy Jarvis, an agricultural geographer who led the study. "At the moment, existing collections are conserving only a fraction of the diversity of wild species that are out there."
. . Jarvis said further research is needed to identify which wild relatives are more vulnerable to climate change. Plant species like the peanut are more endangered by global warming, as they grow largely in flat areas and would have to migrate over huge distances to find cooler climates, while plants that live on mountain slopes may only need to gain a little altitude to find more favorable weather, he said.
. . The international organization is an informal association of 64 countries, public and private groups co-sponsored by the World Bank and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. It works toward sustainable food security and researches ways to cut poverty in developing countries through scientific research.
May 23, 07: Hurricanes over the past 5,000 years appear to have been controlled more by El Nino and an African monsoon than warm sea surface temperatures, such as those caused by global warming, researchers said. Some researchers say warmer seas appear to have contributed to more intense hurricanes, while others disagree.
. . Frequent strong hurricanes thrived in the Western Atlantic during times of weak El Ninos, or warming of surface waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and strong West African monsoons even when local seas were cooler than now, the study said. Intense hurricanes made landfall during the latter half of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that occurred approximately from the 14th to mid-19th centuries, he said.
. . Donnelly took core sediment samples from coastal lagoons in Puerto Rico to determine the frequency and strength of hurricanes that hit the Caribbean island over thousands of years. The storms whipped up sand and other coarse grains that were deposited in the lagoons. He compared the deposits with historic paleoclimatology records to determine that the storms hit during periods when El Ninos were weak and when Western African monsoons were strong. Intense hurricanes hit when local sea surface temperatures were warm *or cool.
May 22, 07: Do you think Seattle is the rainiest city in the US? Well, think again. Mobile, Alabama, actually topped a new list of soggiest cities, with more than 5 feet of rainfall annually, according to a study conducted by San Francisco-based WeatherBill, Inc.
. . The Southeast dominated the most rainy list, while the Pacific Northwest never enters the list until Olympia, Washington pops up at number 24. Olympia actually had the most rainy days on average across the three decades (63) of all the cities in the study. Mobile came in second on the latter scale, with 59 average annual rainy days.
. . The study also found that in the past 30 years, the East and Southeast seemed to be getting wetter, while the West got drier. Florida, Louisiana and Alabama were the wettest states, while California, Montana, Nevada and Arizona were the driest (Las Vegas took the top spot for driest city).
May 22, 07: As global warming melts Greenland's ice, it is exposing new mineral resources and opening up shipping routes, executives of Angus & Ross, an exploration and mining company prospecting in the Arctic island, said. Retreating glaciers are already exposing new rock.
. . Black Angel mine in Greenland, whose entrance hangs 600 meters above the sea on a steep cliff, is due to start producing lead and zinc in 2008. Once one of the richest zinc mines in the world, it closed in 1990 leaving several tons of high grade zinc and lead ore underground. "Black Angel's shipping season used to be six months, today it's eight months and it will soon be 12 months."
May 22, 07: The UN has received pledges to plant more than a billion trees in a drive to help fight climate change and poverty, it said. The "Billion Tree" campaign aims to roll back deforestation that is a top contributor to CO2 emissions. Maathai, 66, in 2004 became the first African woman and first "green" activist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
. . Forest cover in Ethiopia stands at around 4% at the last estimate taken in 2000, down from 35% in the early 20th century.
May 22, 07: Climate change could extend the pollen season and encourage more disease-carrying ticks in northern Europe, and allow mosquitoes to thrive in new areas of Africa and Asia, public health officials said.
. . Experts at the World Health Organization's (WHO) annual assembly in Geneva said global warming had already begun to impact on patterns of water-borne and parasitic illness in areas vulnerable to droughts and floods. Respiratory and heart problems may become more marked following heat waves and increased particulate matter such as dust in the air, said Bettina Menne of the WHO's European division. She noted allergy-causing pollen could be released earlier and last longer with warmer temperatures.
. . She cited the movement of ticks, small mites that can spread lyme disease, into northern Europe as an example. Outbreaks of cholera and malaria in the developing world were a result of environmental shifts affecting parasites and water sources, she said.
. . South Asia was described in the session as particularly at risk because of its flood-prone low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, melting Himalayan glaciers, desert areas and large coastal cities, where climate change could facilitate disease transmission and exacerbate malnutrition pressures.
May 21, 07: Utah joined five other states and British Columbia in a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, although details on how they will do it are incomplete. Gov. Jon Huntsman signed the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative and joined other governors in criticizing the federal government for failing. Most of Utah's electricity comes from burning coal.
. . The compact sets goals for reducing emissions, participating in a multistate greenhouse-gas registry and providing market-based incentives for companies that comply. The group —-Utah, California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and New Mexico-— is expected to set benchmarks to reduce emissions by August. By August 2008, it wants to develop a system where companies in the region could trade emission credits.
. . "The more states we bring in, the more we don't make it a political issue", Schwarzenegger said. "We don't have such a thing as Democratic air of Democratic water, or Republican air or Republican water.
. . Huntsman joins Schwarzenegger as the second Republican governor to sign the compact. But it's unclear how much support there is in Utah's pro-business, Republican-controlled Legislature. Lawmakers gather each January for 45 days, making 2009 the most likely year for legislation tied to the pact.
. . Western governors say global warming leads to more wildfires, greater droughts and less snow in ski-dependent tourist areas such as Park City. "We in the West, the nation's most dynamic region, will suffer the most", Huntsman said. "Whatever we do today is certain to be our legacy for future generations."
May 22, 07: In case you missed the news, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a selected posse from the City Council traveled by bus to Debs Park in northeast L.A. last week to announce how they're going to lasso global warming. The gist of the plan is for the city government and its residents to burn a lot less fossil fuels in 2030 than they did in 1990.
. . The best moment of the news conference? . Upon its conclusion, when Villaraigosa climbed into his black GMC Yukon SUV and motored back to his Windsor Square home. The EPA rates it as getting about 17 miles per gallon and producing 10.6 tons of greenhouse gases a year. To put that in perspective, a Toyota Prius puffs out 3.4 tons.
May 22, 07: Seattle has shown the willingness to use the stick, in addition to the carrot. Under Mayor Greg Nickels, the city passed a commercial parking tax last year to give people one more reason not to drive and to help pay for more mass transit.
May 22, 07: The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season will be active with 13 to 17 named storms, seven to 10 of which are expected to become hurricanes. Of the seven to 10 hurricanes forecast, three to five will be major ones of Category 3 or higher with winds over 110 mph the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
. . An average Atlantic hurricane season brings 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes.
. . Weather forecaster AccuWeather.com has predicted 13 or 14 tropical storms or hurricanes would form in the Atlantic this year and six or seven could hit the US, with the Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico oil installations at high risk.
. . The Colorado State U team under forecast pioneer William Gray predicted 17 storms, of which nine would become hurricanes, and London-based Tropical Storm Risk predicted 16.7 storms and 9.2 hurricanes.
. . The Atlantic hurricane season typically peaks between August 1 and late October.
May 21, 07: The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.
. . Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year's exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions. Also, officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered "to show that global warming could go either way."
. . "It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down", said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after 16 years at the museum. He said he left after higher-ups tried to reassign him.
. . Sullivan said that to his knowledge, no one in the Bush administration pressured the Smithsonian, whose $1.1 billion budget is mostly taxpayer-funded. Rather, he said, Smithsonian leaders acted on their own. "The obsession with getting the next allocation and appropriation was so intense that anything that might upset the Congress or the White House was being looked at very carefully", he said.
. . This is not the first time the Smithsonian has been accused of taking politics into consideration.
May 21, 07: Global emissions of the heat-trapping gas CO2 will rise 59% from 2004 to 2030, with much of the growth coming from coal burning in developing countries, the U.S. government forecast.
. . Global CO2 emissions will hit 42.88 billion metric tons in 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its annual International Energy Outlook. The percent of total CO2 emissions from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, will rise from 39% in 2004 to 43% by 2030.
. . By 2010, CO2 output in rapidly growing China, which is rapidly building coal plants and highways, will edge out emissions from the US, by 6.49 billion metric tons to 6.21 billion metric tons.
May 21, 07: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and fellow Republican Gov. Jodi Rell of Connecticut accused the U.S. government of "inaction and denial" on global warming.
. . "It's bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously, but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public's health and welfare", the governors wrote.
. . These two states and 10 others have approved plans for tougher standards than those imposed by the government to limit vehicle emissions. But the states can't put the new standards into practice without a waiver from the
Environmental Protection Agency, which has not yet granted one, 16 months after California first requested it.
. . The governors also criticized Pres Bush for an executive order he issued last week giving federal agencies until the end of 2008 --near the end of Bush's term-- to continue studying what to do about greenhouse gas emissions. "To us, that again sounds like more of the same inaction and denial, and it is unconscionable", they wrote. "It's high time the federal government becomes our partner or gets out of the way."
May 19, 07: Democratic congressional leaders urged President Bush to "reverse course" and strengthen --not weaken-- the U.S. stance on global warming in a declaration by the world's richest countries.
. . Fifteen heads of committees in the House of Representatives cited reports that the Bush administration wants to delete references to specific limits on global warming and the greenhouse gases that spur it from a declaration by the Group of Eight industrialized countries next month.
. . "We are deeply concerned about reports that the US is seeking to weaken a proposed G8 declaration regarding global climate change", they said in a letter to Bush. "We are writing to urge you to reverse course and strengthen the G8 declaration. The US must no longer delay action to address this major threat."
. . The 15 head House committees that deal, at least tangentially, with the effects of global warming. They wrote: "But we need an Executive Branch that engages the rest of the world to solve this problem rather than stubbornly ignoring it."
. . The chief U.S. climate negotiator, Harlan Watson, said that the US will continue to reject emissions targets or plans to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system where allowances for this could be traded, a plan known as cap and trade.
May 19, 07: Imagine the Sunflower State without its sunflowers. That's one of the dire predictions contained in a new report on global warming released by the National Wildlife Federation, which says the Kansas state flower could move north to other states in a few decades.
. . Increasingly warm temperatures also could mean the end of the state tree, the eastern cottonwood, according to "The Gardener's Guide to Global Warming." "Everything being equal, these plants won't thrive and will shift north", said Patty Glick, the report's author and senior global warming specialist for the National Wildlife Federation. "Maybe in 100 years, the Texas bluebonnet will be the Kansas state flower", Patton said.
. . While conditions could change, Glick and other say projected increasing temperatures also could wipe out cool-weather grasses, such as Kentucky bluegrass, and many fescues that cover lawns in the region.
. . Some experts think global warming will cause temperatures in Kansas to rise an average of 5 to 12 degrees in the next several decades. Blair said even if total rainfall doesn't change, computer models show the rain will come less often and will fall in strong downpours when it does come.
. . He is finding that plants with root systems able to reach water deeper in the earth have a better chance of survival. For plants in the wild, that means many perennials have a better chance than annuals such as the sunflower because of their more developed root systems.
May 17, 07: Global warming is likely to greatly increase spending on fighting wildfires and greatly reduce salmon habitat in the Northwest, two new reports suggest.
. . The U of Oregon's Institute for a Sustainable Environment projects that an average wildfire year for Oregon in the 2020s will see 50% more acres of forest burned than during the 20th century. By the 2040s, the increase will be 100%.
. . Thinning forests may reduce the severity of wildfires, but not the frequency, and annual state spending to fight wildfires is likely to increase from the current range of $40 million to $64 million to, in inflation-adjusted dollars, $60 million to $96 million in the 2020s and $80 million to $128 million in the 2040s, they said.
. . In another report, a panel of 11 independent scientists told the Northwest Power Planning Council that temperatures in the Northwest have already gone up nearly 2 degrees F since 1900, which is 50% more than the global average. The increase is expected to continue at a rate of about 1 degree Fahrenheit each decade.
. . The amount of precipitation over the Northwest is expected to remain about the same, but more will fall as rain and less as snow, making for higher winter river flows and warmer water temperatures —-too warm for salmon in some places.
. . The report notes some studies expect more than 40% of rivers in Oregon and Idaho will be too warm for salmon by the year 2090, and 22% in Washington. It would be even worse for bull trout, which demand even colder water.
. . Warmer water makes salmon eggs hatch quicker, producing smaller juvenile fish that are more likely to be eaten by predators. Warmer water favors fish that eat young salmon. Warmer water will also weaken adult salmon as they swim up fish ladders going over the dams, and make them more vulnerable to parasites and diseases. Warmer oceans may mean less food for salmon as they mature.
May 17, 07: Twisting out of the hot sand of the Arabian Peninsula is one of nature's toughest trees. Known for its coarse bark and green canopy that provides rare shade from the sweltering sun, the ghaf tree has been a steadfast survivor in brutal desert.
. . But climate change, groundwater overuse, excessive woodcutting and increased camel grazing are threatening the tree's existence, environmentalists say. The World Wildlife Fund and the Emirates Wildlife Society are launching a campaign to save the ghaf, hoping they can persuade the Persian Gulf country's government to declare it the national tree.
. . The ghaf, which also grows in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, is an essential part of the fragile desert ecosystem, the groups say. Its wood can be used for fuel, its fruit provides food and its flowers and bark are said to have medicinal qualities.
. . It's also a haven for wildlife. Birds build their nests in the tree's large canopies, and desert eagle owls, brown-necked ravens, gazelles and hares use the ghaf for shelter, while gerbils burrow between its roots
The tree has long survived in the harsh desert —-where temperatures soar to more than 122 degrees F-— and can cope with long droughts and poor soil. To extract groundwater stored deep below the surface, the tree's roots stretch as deep as 30 yards into the soil.
. . But environmentalists say several factors are threatening the tree, including rising global temperatures that may be making the desert too hot for the ghaf.
May 16, 07: The ocean, which has absorbed some excess CO2 from the atmosphere for centuries, may be losing that ability, a new report says. The oceans are believed to absorb about one-quarter of human-related CO2 emissions.
. . But researchers say at least one large ocean area —-the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica-— seems to be losing its ability to take up the gas. Their four-year study concluded that an increase in winds over the Southern Ocean is preventing it from absorbing more CO2 and is causing the sea to release some of the gas that it had stored.
. . "This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of 'feedback' will continue and intensify during this century", lead author Corinne Le Quere of the U of East Anglia said. Researcher Corinne Le Quere called the finding very alarming. The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said. "We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so", she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of CO2. "So I find this really quite alarming."
. . The Southern Ocean is one of the world's biggest reservoirs of CO2, known as a CO2 sink. When CO2 is in a sink --whether it's an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up CO2-- it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.
. . The new research indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with CO2 at least since the 1980s. This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for 15% of the global CO2 sink, Le Quere said.
. . When natural CO2 is brought up to the surface by the winds, it is harder for the Southern Ocean to accommodate more human-generated CO2.
. . The winds themselves are caused by two separate human factors. First, the human-spawned ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere over the Southern Ocean has created large changes in temperature throughout the atmosphere, Le Quere said.
. . Second, the uneven nature of global warming has produced higher temperatures in the northern parts of the world than in the south, which has also made the winds accelerate in the Southern Ocean.
. . "Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons (500 billion tons) of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by humans", Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey said.
. . Another sign of warming in the Antarctic was reported by NASA, which found vast areas of snow melted on the southern continent in 2005, in a process that may accelerate invisible melting deep beneath the surface.
May 16, 07: Sixteen cities around the world will get financing to "go green" by renovating buildings they own with technology designed to cut CO2 emissions, former
President Clinton announced.
. . Clinton's foundation has created an arrangement among four energy service companies and five global banking institutions that will result in major environmental upgrades in the cities, which include New York, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Rome.
. . "If all buildings were as efficient as they could be, we'd be saving an enormous amount of energy and significantly reducing CO2 emissions. Also, we'd be saving a ton of money", Clinton said.
. . The planned projects include replacing heating, cooling and lighting systems with energy-efficient networks; making roofs white or reflective to deflect more of the sun's heat; sealing windows and installing new models that let more light in and keep the elements out; and setting up sensors to control more efficient use of lights and air conditioning.
. . The former president said Citi, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS and ABN Amro have each committed $1 billion to finance the upgrades.
. . Clinton announced the partnership, joined by mayors of several of the cities, as part of an international climate summit he is hosting this week in New York City with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It is the second meeting of the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, which was created so mayors and local governments could share strategies for reversing the trends of climate change.
. . Retrofitted buildings could see a 20 to 50% reduction in energy use, Clinton said. Buildings are among a city's worst contributors to emissions totals, accounting for 50% of energy use in newer cities and more than 70% in older urban areas. In New York, for example, electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and steam consumed by buildings make up 79% of the city's total count of heat-trapping gases, a recent study found.
. . Honeywell, Johnson Controls Inc., Siemens and Trane will conduct energy audits of the buildings, complete the makeovers and guarantee the energy savings. If the expected savings are not realized, those companies will pay the difference or make the changes in the buildings, the foundation said.
. . Warren Karlenzig, author of "How Green Is Your City?", applauded the plan and said many of these retrofits have been "crying out to happen. The technology is there; it's just that the financing has been missing."
May 15, 07: The Clinton Foundation and Microsoft Corp announced a partnership to develop new technology tools to help large cities create, track and share strategies to reduce CO2 emissions.
. . The new software and Web applications are part of broader set of programs being introduced by the foundation led by former President Bill Clinton, who is speaking at the C40 climate summit this week for the mayors of the world's largest cities.
. . The software tools aim to create a standardized way for cities all around world to measure their greenhouse gas emissions. With a common standard, cities would be able track the effectiveness of CO2-reduction programs. Urban areas consume 75% of the world's energy and produce 80% of its greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Based on a formula developed by environmental groups, a city using the software would add up various factors like commercial space, residential buildings and transportation usage to gauge how much CO2 a city produces.
May 15, 07: Global climate models are missing a good chunk of plant information that could significantly alter long-term climate change predictions. A new technique for modeling phytoplankton --microscopic plants in the upper layers of the Earth's waters -- could reveal a much more accurate picture.
. . "(Other) modelers have populated their oceans with three or four kinds of plants, said Mick Follows, a researcher in MIT's Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. "We’ve represented a much more diverse community, and allowed it to have interactions that regulate it more naturally."
. . Phytoplankton populations are constantly changing, which makes them difficult to predict. So the MIT researchers developed an algorithm using evolutionary principles to more accurately represent the microscopic plants. A more precise count is important because phytoplankton process CO2.
. . Scientists interviewed for this article said it's too soon to say whether the more accurate phytoplankton count will be good news or bad news for the global climate's future. But climate researchers will have a more accurate picture once they factor the new phytoplankton model into their estimates. Phytoplankton perform two-thirds of all the Earth's photosynthesis.
May 15, 07: Global warming isn't just a matter of melting icebergs and polar bears chasing after them. It's also Lake Chad drying up, the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing, increasing extreme weather, conflict and hungry people throughout Africa.
. . According to a landmark effort to assess the risks of global warming, Africa — by far the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world —-is projected to be among the regions hardest hit by environmental change. "We never used to have malaria in the highlands where I'm from, now we do", said Kenyan lawmaker Mwancha Okioma.
. . The greatest possible risks of climate change in Africa include rising sea-levels, droughts, famine, floods, the spread of diseases, loss of species, increased conflict, and more extreme weather. "Temperature increases (of up to 6 degrees C) will lead to massive ecological disruption, vast changes in water availability and probably devastating effects on agriculture", said Peter Glieck, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland.
. . Many plant species could die. Others will migrate, but can only go so far — either up a mountain or into the ocean toward the cooler, but still warming, higher latitudes in both northern and southern Africa. Animals will likely follow that path. "Basically, they're trying to track their optimum climate", said Guy Midgely from the South African National Biodiversity Institute
. . Because greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere are already high, steps taken now won't have results until 2050, scientists estimate.
May 14, 07: Mayors and business leaders from more than 40 of the world's biggest cities were gathering in New York for a summit devoted to combating climate change and cleaning up the environment.
. . Leaders from Seoul to Sydney and Mumbai to Mexico City are expected at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, billed as helping to reduce cities' greenhouse gas emissions and develop more energy-efficient infrastructure.
. . The event is being organized in conjunction with The Clinton Climate Initiative, part of the foundation set up by former US president Bill Clinton, who is due to address the summit.
. . "It's no longer a matter just of rhetoric. Mayors are 'roll up your sleeves' guys that really have to run a city and do things", she said. "These are mayors with real budgets, real local obligations."
. . Other topics up for discussion include beating congestion, making water systems more efficient, adopting renewable energy sources, increasing recycling levels, reducing waste and improving mass transit systems. Cities are responsible for around 3/4 of the world's energy consumption and are considered critical to reducing CO2 emissions.
May 14, 07: At least one billion people risk fleeing their homes over the next four decades because of conflicts and natural disasters that will worsen with global warming, a relief agency warned today.
. . In a report, British-based Christian Aid said countries worldwide, especially the poorest, are now facing the greatest forced migration ever --one that will dwarf those displaced by World War II.
. . Today there are an estimated 163 million people worldwide who have been displaced by factors like conflict, drought and flooding as well as economic development projects like dams, logging and grain plantations, it said. While the figure is already "staggeringly high", the report warned that "in [the] future, climate change will push it even higher.
. . It said the conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region, which has displaced more than two million people, was not just driven by political forces but also by competition for increasingly scarce water and land to graze animals.
May 14, 07: President Bush responded today to a Supreme Court ruling by ordering federal agencies to find a way to begin regulating vehicle emissions by the time he leaves office. The new rules will "cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles."
. . But the Bush executive order telling several agencies to finish the work by 2008 also said they must take into account the views of the general public, the impact the new rules would have on safety, scientific knowledge, available technology and the cost. Bush's term ends Jan. 20, 2009.
. . Last month, the Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration for its inaction on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, it declared that CO2 and other greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and thus can be regulated by the EPA.
. . The environmental group Environmental Defense said the effort "will fall far short of fixing the climate problem" without mandatory caps on CO2 emissions. "Whether EPA will lead the fight against global warming or lead us to a hotter planet remains to be seen", said Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp. "It's time for this administration to join with the mainstream of American businesses and support a cap on CO2."
And... President Bush today directed his cabinet to complete action by the end of 2008 on his plan to cut U.S. gasoline use by 20% by 2017. "I have directed members of my administration to complete the process by the end of 2008", Bush said.
May 13, 07: Disoriented by erratic weather, birds are changing migration habits and routes to adjust to warmer winters, disappearing feeding grounds and shrinking wetlands, a migration expert says.
. . Failure to adapt risks extinction. Birds face starvation when they arrive too early or too late to find their normal diet of insects, plankton or fish. In the north, some birds have stopped migrating altogether, leaving them at risk when the next cold winter strikes.
. . "Species that adapted to changes over millennia are now being asked to make those adaptations extremely quickly because of the swift rise in temperatures", said Robert Hepworth, executive secretary of the Convention on Migratory Species, a treaty under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Program.
. . The warming is predicted to drive up to 30% of known animal species to extinction, and migrating birds are especially vulnerable. Climate change can strike at each stage of their annual trek, from breeding ground to rest stops to their final destination. Studies cited by the convention say arctic permafrost and tundra where many species breed are melting. Even moderate rises in sea levels can swamp wetlands where birds stop to feed. Deserts are expanding, lengthening the distance between rests.
. . The convention's scientific council says 84% of the 235 species listed its annexes could be affected by changes in water availability, mismatched foods supplies, more frequent storms and competition with alien species intruding into their habitat. The convention came into force in 1983 and is signed by 101 countries that pledged to help preserve the habitat of wild animals.
May 13, 07: Gordon Brown says he wants to see five new "eco towns" created as part of a general increase in house building to meet "pent up" demand for homes.
. . The chancellor, campaigning to succeed Tony Blair, said he wanted the 100,000 homes in "CO2 neutral" communities to be built on old industrial sites. The proposed five "eco towns" could each contain up to 20,000 homes and showed "imagination" in combining the need for homes with helping the environment.
. . Government, business and consumers need to cooperate to reduce climate change, Environment Secretary David Miliband has said. Mr Miliband was speaking at the first Climate Change Citizens' Summit in London, part of a draft Climate Change Bill consultation process. "I hope this summit will encourage people to take action", he said.
. . The draft Climate Change Bill is the first of its kind in the world and will set a framework to cut CO2 emissions. The summit, organized by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), will help shape official policy to help keep people informed and aware of the issue.
May 13, 07: The US is trying to block sections of a draft agreement on climate change prepared for next month's G8 summit. Washington objects to the draft's targets to keep the global temperature rise below 2C this century and halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
. . The draft, prepared by the German G8 Presidency, says action is imperative. With UN talks struggling to move beyond the current Kyoto Protocol targets, the G8 summit is seen as a key opportunity to regain political momentum. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has made climate a priority for the organization, with backing from other leaders including Tony Blair.
. . As well as objecting to mention of targets for global temperature rise and greenhouse gas emissions, Washington is also seeking to remove a section acknowledging that the UN is the "appropriate forum" for agreeing on further action. US officials are also questioning the draft's call for the establishment of a global CO2 market. Many observers believe that such a market can only be effective if there are binding caps on emissions.
. . "I think the real objective (of the US negotiators) is not just to keep the lid on and have nothing happen while Bush is in office, but they are trying to lay landmines under a post-Kyoto agreement after they leave office", commented Philip Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, who has seen the US's proposed amendments.
May 10, 07: Future eastern US summers look much hotter than originally predicted with daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than in recent years by the mid-2080s, a new NASA study says.
. . Previous and widely used global warming computer estimates predict too many rainy days, the study says. Because drier weather is hotter, they underestimate how warm it will be east of the Mississippi River.
. . "Unless we take some strong action to curtail CO2 emissions, it's going to get a lot hotter", said Lynn, now a scientist at Hebrew U of Jerusalem. "It's going to be a lot more dangerous for people who are not in the best of health."
. . For individual cities, the future looks even hotter. In the 2080s, the average summer high will probably be 102 degrees in Jacksonville, 100 degrees in Memphis, 96 degrees in Atlanta, and 91 degrees in Chicago and Washington, according to the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Climate.
. . But every now and then, a summer will be drier than normal and that means even hotter days, Lynn said. So when Lynn's computer models spit out simulated results for July 2085 the forecasted temperatures sizzled past uncomfortable into painful. The study showed a map where the average high in the southeast neared 115 and pushed 100 in the northeast.
. . Many politicians and climate skeptics have criticized computer models as erring on the side of predicting temperatures that are too hot and outcomes that are too apocalyptic with global warming. But Druyan said the problem is most computer models, especially when compared to their predictions of past observations, underestimate how bad global warming is. That's because they see too many rainy days, which tends to cool temperatures off, he said.
. . Trenberth said the link between dryness and heat works, but he is a little troubled by the computer modeling done by Lynn and Druyan and points out that recently the eastern US has been wetter and cooler than expected.
. . A top U.S. climate modeler, Jerry Mahlman, criticized the study as not matching models up correctly and "just sort of whistling in the dark a little bit."
. . Andrew Weaver of the U of Victoria, editor of the journal Climate but not of this study, praised the paper, saying "it makes perfect sense." He said it shows yet another "positive feedback" in global warming, where one aspect of climate change makes something else worse and it works like a loop. "The more we start to understand of the science, the more positive feedbacks we start to find", Weaver said. Weaver said looking at the map of a hotter eastern US he can think of one thing: "I like living in Canada."
May 9, 07: The Chinese authorities have announced that the country is likely to be hit by more adverse weather this year than at any time in the past decade. The reason, they say, is because of global climate change.
. . China is the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, one of the main causes of global warming. Official figures suggest that natural diasters killed more than 2,000 people last year and caused millions of dollars in damage.
. . China's leaders have been reluctant to tackle emissions, worrying that might dent the country's booming economy. Now, though, the results of that inaction are starting to hit home.
May 7, 07: Developing countries called for more money and expertise to help them fight the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, as more than 1,000 diplomats began work today on a new accord to control greenhouse gases.
Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for the hungry, the United Nations concluded.
May 7, 07: To coral reef-driven tourism industries like those of the Cayman Islands, there could be a greater cost in ignoring climate change than fighting it.
. . Ranked among the top 10 scuba diving destinations in the world, the reef system of the western Caribbean territory has lost 50% of its hard corals in the last 10 years in spite of strong environmental laws, scientists say. "It is like working with a sick patient. How well we treat that patient will determine if that patient survives. We could potentially see the end of hard coral reefs in our lifetime."
. . The Caymans tourism industry, which represents about 50% of the colony's gross domestic product. Fifty years later, about 2 million visitors arrive every year, with most either diving or snorkeling on famous sites like the North Wall or Stingray City.
. . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change --has warned that the world must make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a rise in temperatures that could inundate islands and coastlines under rising seas, and kill off the world's temperature-sensitive coral reefs.
. . Another threat in the Caymans comes from cruise ships, which have damaged large areas of living coral with their anchors and chains.
. . Even with a 50% decline in hard corals, Caymans' reefs are still considered among the healthiest in the Atlantic. Scientists say the islands are geographically isolated by surrounding water 2,000 meters deep, which minimizes the impact of pollution from other countries.
May 6, 07: Japan pledged $100 million in grants to the Asian Development Bank on Sunday to combat global warming and promote greener investment in the region and called for a stronger international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
. . The money is part of a new initiative by the government in Tokyo to support sustainable development in response to increasing concern that Asia's breakneck economic growth is destroying the environment. It comes just days after a breakthrough agreement in Thailand set the world's first roadmap for fighting climate change. The $100 milllion in grants is intended to promote renewable energy resources, such as solar power, and encourage environmentally friendly infrastructure. The money is also aimed at attracting greener investment.
. . Japan will also provide up to $2 billion in loans to the Asian Development Bank over the next five years to promote general investment in the region. The bank, which currently spends $1 billion a year on clean energy, has come under criticism for funding coal projects, which are vilified as fanning global warming. The bank says coal is more economical for poor countries.
May 5, 07: European Union and U.S. leaders are hailing what they say is a major step toward bridging their sharp differences on global warming. Academics and critics of
President Bush's policies, however, question whether he really gave any ground.
. . At issue is a little-noticed sentence deep in a joint statement signed during an EU-White House summit Monday. It said senior officials would meet at a climate forum in Europe this year to discuss "market mechanisms, including but not limited to emissions trading." The U.S. ambassador to the EU, C. Boyden Gray, said, "I think it was a concession on our part."
. . Some analysts say officials are exaggerating the significance of the wording because both sides wanted to demonstrate improving relations and to be seen as having made progress in international cooperation on global warming. It is an issue that is gaining political importance on both sides of the Atlantic. "The international community is so exasperated by U.S. intransigence that they will applaud any effort to appear engaged in this issue in the hope that engagement will lead to real participation", said Paul Wapner, director of the Global Environmental Politics program at American U.
. . Henry Jacoby, co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, said the Europeans "tend to attach the greatest significance to the smallest pieces of information out of the US." But he said there are signs of loosening on other U.S. policies, so anything is possible.
. . The world's only mandatory CO2 trading program is in Europe. It was created in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of CO2 that can be emitted from power plants and factories in more than two dozen countries.
May 5, 07: Climate change has already nudged up large swaths of the country by one or more plant-hardiness zones. There are palm trees in Knoxville and subtropical camellias in Pennsylvania.
. . Warmer temperatures help pests as well as plants, and studies have shown that weeds and invasive species receive a greater boost from higher levels of CO2, a heat-trapping gas, than desirable plants do. Poison ivy becomes more toxic, ragweed dumps more pollen, and kudzu, the fast-growing vine that has swallowed whole woodlands in the South, is creeping northward.
. . Already, some states are facing the possibility that the cherished local flora that has helped define their identities —-the Ohio buckeye, the Kansas sunflower or the Mississippi magnolia-— may begin to disappear within their borders and move north. By the end of the century, the climate will no longer be favorable for the official state tree or flower in 28 states, according to “The Gardener’s Guide to Global Warming”, a report released last month by the National Wildlife Federation.
. . By the time of the annual Atlanta Dogwood Festival last month, the pale dogwood blooms had come and gone.
. . In December, the National Arbor Day Foundation released an updated version of the US Department of Agriculture’s Hardiness Zone Map, which shows the lowest winter temperatures in different parts of the country and is used by gardeners to determine which plants can survive in their yards.
. . Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Arbor Day map indicates that many bands of the country are a full zone warmer, and a few spots are two zones warmer, than they were in 1990, when the map was last updated.
. . But critics have taken issue with the department’s decision to use 30 years of temperature data, saying it will result in cooler averages and fail to reflect the warming climate. The 1990 U.S.D.A. map used 13 years of data; the Arbor Day map used 15 years ending in 2004.
. . A 30-year period would include several cycles of multiyear effects like El Niño, with an underlying assumption that climate is stable and varies around a mean. Warming, on the other hand, “is not variability, it’s a long term trend”, Dr. Wake said. “I would say the U.S.D.A. doesn’t want to acknowledge there’s been change.”
. . Frustration from tree planters who needed an accurate guide immediately prompted the Arbor Day Foundation not to wait on the Agriculture Department
. . The Plant Hardiness Zones divide the US and Canada into 11 areas based on a 10 degree Fahrenheit difference in the average annual minimum temperature. (The US falls within Zones 2 through 10). For example, the lowest average temperature in Zone 2 is -50 to -40 degrees F, while the minimum average temperature in zone 10 is +30 to +40 degrees F.
May 4, 07: A variety of drought resistant tomato has been created by Italian scientists. The fruit has been crossbred so it can grow in a quarter of the water that is normally required. The lead researcher said a large-scale trial of the plants had recently been carried out in the Mexican desert with "excellent" results.
May 3, 07: Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches [baseball fields] destroyed every hour, Greenpeace said.
. . "The next generation of Indonesians will not see any forest if no action is taken by the government to deal with the problem", Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Bustar Maitar said.
. . The Guinness World Records had approved a proposal by Greenpeace that Indonesia's forest destruction be included in its 2008 record book to be published in September this year. Indonesia has lost 72% of its intact ancient forests and half of what remains is threatened by commercial logging, forest fires and clearances for palm oil plantations, Greenpeace said.
. . The group urged the Indonesian government to impose a temporary ban on commercial logging in natural forests nationwide, accusing authorities of failing to control lawlessness and corruption in the forestry sector. International demand for timber and paper as well as commodities such as palm oil was driving the destruction of the country's forest, currently covering 120.3 million hectares.
. . Indonesia is the second second-largest palm oil producer after Malaysia and is poised to be the world's biggest producer of the commodity with more than 16 million metric tons this year. Greenpeace said while Indonesia was destroying its forests at a faster pace [%?] than any other country, Brazil destroyed a larger area of forest every year. The group said Indonesia's rate of forest destruction also made the country the third-largest greenhouse polluter after the US and China. Experts say up to 25% of greenhouse gas emissions comes from tropical forest clearance.
. . Indonesia wants rich countries to pay developing nations to preserve their forests and plans to push this proposal at a U.N. conference in Bali on climate change in December.
May 4, 07: Coal is an extremely dirty fuel, and scientists are trying to develop technology to capture the CO2 emissions before they are released into the atmosphere, and store them underground or under the ocean.
. . But critics argue the technology is as yet unproven, the storage vaults could leak and that money spent on developing such measures —-which would prolong the world's reliance on fossil fuels-— would be better spent making solar and wind power viable.
. . Not everyone in the green lobby is opposed to so-called CO2 storage. Such a system could be a stopgap measure to cut emissions while the globe converts to non-CO2 fuels over the next 50 year, said Stephan Singer of the World Wildlife Fund.
May 2, 07: Thailand's capital, Bangkok, will be under water in 20 years because of rising seas from global warming and subsidence, says a top Thai climate expert who warned of a tsunami years before the 2004 disaster. "If nothing is done, Bangkok will be at least 50 centimeters to one meter under water", Smith Dharmasaroja, head of Thailand's National Disaster Warning Center, said.
. . Bangkok, a sprawling city of more than 10 million people and criss-crossed by more than 1,000 canals, is between 1 and 1.5 meters above sea level and is sinking into its soft, loamy soil at an alarming rate, he said. The problem, he says, is two-fold. The city is subsiding at a rate of 10 cm per year, partly due to excessive pumping of underground water. Global warming is causing seas to rise and there is evidence of severe coastal erosion just downstream from Bangkok. To avert disaster, Smith said, the city needs to construct a massive dyke to protect it from rising seas and increasingly violent storms.
. . His comments come as scientists and government officials from around the globe are meeting at a U.N. conference in Bangkok.
May 3, 07: Developing nations that are fast industrializing, such as China and India, have braked their rising greenhouse gas emissions by more than the total cuts demanded of rich nations by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.
. . A draft U.N. report, to be released in Bangkok on Friday after talks between governments and scientists, also shows that policies meant to curb air pollution from factories or cars or to save energy, have had a side-effect of fighting global warming. "Efforts undertaken by developing countries (i.e. Brazil, China, India and Mexico) for reasons other than climate change have reduced their emissions growth over the past 3 decades by approximately 500 million tons of CO2 a year", according to a technical summary. By contrast, France's annual emissions in 2004 were 563 million tons, Australia's 534 million and Spain's 428 million.
. . The data may spur debate about what is a fair share-out of curbs on emissions in any deal to extend and widen Kyoto. China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming by limiting the population to 1.3 billion against a projected 1.6 billion without the policy.
. . And overall, the world's use of energy has become more efficient for the past century. The amount of energy used per dollar of economic output has fallen at about 0.3% a year, according to U.N. data.
May 1, 07: Prince Charles has issued a "mayday" alert to curb greenhouse gas emissions. "This is an emergency we face", he told a climate summit of more than 1,000 business leaders, and added that the time for discussions was over.
. . Delegates attending the event, hosted by the prince, pledged to take action on their companies' CO2 emissions. Organizers hope the commitments will kickstart a concerted effort among the UK business community that will deliver a low-CO2 economy.
. . "The crisis of climate change is far too urgent and discussion simply isn't enough", the Prince of Wales told the May Day Business Summit on Climate Change at St James's Palace. He urged the business leaders to make firm commitments to cut CO2 emissions over the next 12 months.
. . More than 1,000 companies agreed to pledge to work with employees, suppliers and customers to reduce their CO2 footprints. Among the most popular promises was identifying a board-level representative to champion CO2 reductions, and working alongside suppliers to cut emissions.
. . Companies that have signed up to cutting their CO2 emissions will receive support from Business in the Community and the Carbon Trust. Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said that both economic and ethical factors behind the current interest in the issue. "We have this lucky juxtaposition at the moment."
. . Even if there was no consumer interest, certain things would still be done such as reducing energy consumption because there is value for money in doing so. "But consumers have become increasingly concerned about climate change and is looking to business to play its part."
May 1, 07: The world is building new electric-power plants. In the past five years, it has been on a coal-fired binge, bringing new generators online at a rate of better than two per week. That has added some 1 billion tons of new CO2 emissions that humans pump into the atmosphere each year. Coal-fired power now accounts for nearly a third of human-generated global CO2 emissions.
. . So what does the future hold? An acceleration of the buildup, according to a Monitor analysis of power-industry data. Despite Kyoto limits on greenhouse gases, the analysis shows that nations will add enough coal-fired capacity in the next five years to create an extra 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year.
. . Those accelerating the buildup are not the usual suspects. Take China, which is widely blamed for the rapid rise in greenhouse-gas emissions. Indeed, China accounted for two-thirds of the more than 560 coal-fired power units built in 26 nations between 2002 and 2006. The Chinese plants boosted annual world CO2 emissions by 740 million tons. But in the next five years, China is slated to slow its buildup by half, according to industry estimates, adding 333 million tons of new CO2 emissions every year. That's still the largest increase of any nation. But other nations appear intent on catching up.
. . For example, the US is accelerating its buildup dramatically. In the past five years it built 2.7 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity. But in the next five years, it is slated to add 37.7 gigawatts of capacity, enough to produce 247.8 million tons of CO2 per year, according to Platts. That would vault the US to second place –-just ahead of India-– in adding new capacity.
. . Even nations that have pledged to reduce global warming under the Kyoto treat are slated to accelerate their buildup of coal-fired plants. For example, eight EU nations –-Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic-– plan to add nearly 13 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity by 2012. That's up from about 2.5 gigawatts over the past five years.
. . "These numbers show how far in the wrong direction the world is poised to go and indicate a lot of private sector investors still don't get it in terms of global warming", says David Hawkins, climate center director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This rapid building of global-warming machines –-which is what coal-power plants are-– should be a wakeup call to politicians that we're driving ever faster toward the edge of the cliff." But the cliff can be avoided, some researchers say, without having to reduce the world's energy consumption.
. . If CO2 gas could be captured at power plants and then pumped underground and permanently "sequestered" in layers of rock, then coal might continue to be used without damaging the climate, concluded a major report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released last week.
. . In that light, whether or not China decides to build power plants that sequester CO2 underground will be a central question. But none of them is expected to sequester emissions –-and estimates of how many plants China expects to build vary widely. So far, there are 100 power plants with firm construction plans compared to 361 built in the previous five years, according to Platts. But other analysts, pointing to official government reports, say the total may be far higher.
. . Chinese government reports, for instance, tout coal-power plant building far in excess of what Platt's and others have been able to verify – about 170 gigawatts of new coal-power over the past three years, according to China expert Philip Andrews-Speed, director of the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the U of Dundee in Scotland.
. . "If the Chinese are right, then it's a much worse problem than we might think", says Christopher Bergesen, a Platts expert who oversees power-plant data collection. He acknowledges Platts data may be a conservative base line for China. But until China reveals plant-specific data, not just aggregate numbers, he and other researchers can't be sure how fast China is building power plants that spur global warming.
. . A huge factor is whether the EU and the US are able to persuade the Chinese to build plants that capture and sequester CO2. Much depends on the US because China is unlikely to sequester its CO2 if the US does not, analysts say. "The Chinese won't be able to go forward by themselves", says Dr. Andrews-Speed. "They are going to need, EU, Japan, and US together to help them and set a good example."
. . Right now, the US is planning to build more than 150 coal-fired power plants that don't sequester their emissions, according to the US Department of Energy. Platts short list of those most likely to be built in five years lists 64 power plants – which would still vault the US into a virtual tie with India at 38,000 megawatts of new output.
. . If that happens, the US alone would add 250 million tons a year of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere - on top of the billions its power plants already emit. The recent decision by new owners of TXU not to build eight coal-fired power plants gives some reason for hope. But if the US began building plants that stuff the CO2 underground, the picture could change dramatically, experts say. At least five bills now pending in Congress would effectively put a price on CO2, but just two of those push sequestration.
. . "The good news is the politicians have their hands on the steering wheel", Dr. Hawkins says. "If they would just turn the wheel toward sequestration, then we don't have to go over this cliff."
. . The European Union called on developing countries Tuesday to take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gases, saying they must stop blaming richer nations for their own failure to act.
. . While he didn't single out any countries, Van Ierland also called on governments to stop using the inaction of some of the world's biggest polluters as an excuse for not implementing their own policies to cut greenhouse gases. Van Ierland said it was "sad" some countries were resorting to "this rhetoric" when action was in order.
. . For it to be considered valid by the United Nations, the IPCC draft must be unanimously approved by the 120-plus governments that participate, and all changes must be approved by the scientists. While the report does not mandate action like the Kyoto Protocol, it could influence negotiations over future climate pacts.
Apr 29, 07: More than a dozen cities across North Carolina have joined an anti-global warming campaign led by the nation's mayors. By signing the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, the communities pledged to work toward cutting emissions of greenhouse gases to pre-1990 levels. Almost 450 cities have signed on nationally.
. . North Carolina mayors who have signed the initiative say they wanted to fill a void created by the federal government's inaction on the issue.
. . Winston-Salem is taking several steps to comply with the pledge. City officials are considering fuel efficiency and emissions when buying city vehicles, and testing hybrids in the motor pool and bus fleet. They also are placing more emphasis on building bike lanes, greenways and sidewalks.
. . Supporters said the initiative is aimed at getting communities to set their own goals and make progress toward them.
Apr 29, 07: Al Gore condemned Canada's new plan to reduce greenhouse gases, saying it was "a complete and total fraud" because it lacks specifics and gives industry a way to actually increase emissions.
. . Under the initiative announced Thursday, Canada aims to reduce the current level of greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020. But the government acknowledged it would not meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires 35 industrialized countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. The country's emissions are now 30% above 1990 levels.
. . The conservative government's strategy focuses both on reducing emissions of gases blamed for global warming and improving air quality. But the plan failed to spell out what many of its regulations will look like.
. . Gore said the plan did not make clear how Canada would reach its 2020 emissions goal. He also criticized the plan for allowing industries to pollute more if they use emissions-cutting technologies while increasing production. "In my opinion, it is a complete and total fraud", Gore said. "It is designed to mislead the Canadian people."
. . He said "intensity reduction" —-which allow industries to increase their greenhouse gas outputs as they raise production-— was a poll-tested phrase developed by think tanks financed by Exxon Mobil and other large polluters.
. . Canadian Environment Minister John Baird rejected Gore's criticisms. "The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the administration of which the former vice president was a member", Baird said in a statement. Baird also invited Gore to discuss climate change and the government's environmental policies with him.
. . Gore was in Toronto to present his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", at a consumer environmental show. He acknowledged that as an American, he had "no right to interfere" in Canadian decision. However, he said, the rest of the world looks to Canada for moral leadership, and that was why y'day's announcement was so "shocking."
. . Canadian opposition Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Sunday that Gore was right. "Mr. Baird is embarrassing Canada around the world", Dion said. "The world expects Canada will do its share — more than that, that Canada will be a leader and we are failing the world. We are failing Canadians."
Apr 30, 07: The head of the international body that oversees the Kyoto treaty said that Canada's new climate change plan does not guarantee that greenhouse gas emissions will decrease.
. . Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, criticized the Conservative government's plan to reduce emissions, which focuses on reducing the intensity of emissions rather than tough, overall curbs as other Kyoto signatories have done. The country's emissions are now 30% above 1990 levels.
Apr 30, 07: Across the globe, chickens and pigs are doing their bit to curb global warming. But cows and sheep still have some catching up to do. The farm animals produce lots of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than CO2 yet is at the heart of efforts to fight climate change.
. . Methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere and it is relatively simple to capture the gas from animal waste, landfills, coal mines or leaky natural gas pipes. "A fifth of all greenhouse gas-induced global warming has been due to methane since pre-industrial times", said climate scientist Paul Fraser of Australia, where ruminant farm animals belch out vast amounts of the gas.
. . Methane concentrations have increased about 150% [2.5 times what it was] in the air since 1750 and now far exceed the natural range of the past 650,000 years, the U.N.'s climate panel says. And human activities are largely to blame.
. . The panel will focus on ways to curb methane and other greenhouse gas emissions when it releases a major report on mitigating the effects of climate change in Bangkok in early May. "It's been argued that the reductions from methane are potentially cheaper than from CO2", said Bill Hare, climate policy director for Greenpeace and a lead author of the mitigation report.
. . Capturing methane from landfills, mines, or from fossil fuel production or natural gas lines is pretty straight forward and makes economic sense. Methane is a major component of natural gas and can be burned to generate power. Rice paddies and other irrigated crops produce large amounts of methane, as do natural wetlands. Vast amounts of methane are also locked up in deposits under the ice in sub-polar regions, in permafrost or under the sea.
. . Hare said there are lots of options being looked at, such as additives for cattle and sheep to cut the amount of methane in their burps and moving away from intensive livestock feed lots to range-fed animals. "And for example in rice, just changing the timing and when and how you flood rice paddies has great potential to reduce methane emissions."
. . For the moment, the amount of methane in the atmosphere is steady after leveling off around 1999, said Fraser, leader of the Changing Atmosphere Research Group at Australia's government-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
. . This is thought to be because the drying out of tropical wetlands seems to canceling out a rise in emissions from the oil and gas industry. But how long this lasts is anyone's guess. "Most people would agree that some time in the future methane is going to start growing again, just because of the world demand for natural gas, rice and cattle", Fraser said.
. . Under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, a system called the Clean Development Mechanism allows rich countries to keep within their emissions limits by funding projects that soak up greenhouse gases in poor countries, getting CO2 credits in return. This has made huge pig farms in South America and poultry farms in India attractive investments. The waste is put into digesters and the methane extracted and burned to generate electricity or simply flared to create CO2 --not perfect, but a lesser greenhouse gas evil.
. . Only about 50% of all methane emissions are being controlled, namely from landfills, coal mines and the oil and gas industry, said Singer, head of WWF's European Energy and Climate Policy Unit. "What worries me is the increased methane coming out of the stomachs of ruminants, mainly for increased beef consumption within an increasingly wealthy world. The diet of the West has a big impact on the atmosphere."
. . In the US, cattle emit about 5.5 million tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions, the EPA says. In New Zealand, emissions from agriculture comprise about half of all greenhouse gas emissions.
. . But what worries Singer most is a rapid release of methane stored in sub-polar permafrost or in huge methane hydrate deposits under the sea. While this has not happened, some scientists suggest it might occur in a warmer world. "If methane hydrates leak, then we're gone, then it's over."
May 1, 07: California water officials said they expect the water level in the Sierra Nevada mountains snowpack this year will be the lowest in almost 20 years, crimping supplies for hydropower and other water uses and raising concern about 2008.
. . The California Dept of Water Resources will conduct its fifth and final snowpack survey of the winter season. California depends on the snowpack to generate almost one-fifth of its electricity supplies, help irrigate the biggest agricultural economy in the US, fill reservoirs, and support recreation on the state's rivers.
. . River-flows into California's water system, another measure of water health, range from a forecast 67% of normal in the Shasta Lake system in Northern California to a 35% level in the Kern River in the southern half of the state. Reservoir storage levels currently are healthy but dry conditions next year likely will bring mandatory cuts if conservation breaks down.
. . The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has called on its 2.4 million customers to trim water use by 10% or they could face rationing as early as this summer. Dry conditions in Southern California, the worst since 2001-2002, have increased the risk of wildfires, Jones said.
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