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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
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G8 scientists tell Bush: Act now - or else...
 Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:54 pm
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=645071
G8 scientists tell Bush: Act now - or else...
An unprecedented warning as global warming worsens
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
08 June 2005
An unprecedented joint statement issued by the leading scientific academies of the world has called on the G8 governments to take urgent action to avert a global catastrophe caused by climate change.
The national academies of science for all the G8 countries, along with those of Brazil, India and China, have warned that governments must no longer procrastinate on what is widely seen as the greatest danger facing humanity. The statement, which has taken months to finalise, is all the more important as it is signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences, which has warned George Bush about the dangers of ignoring the threat posed by global warming.
It was released on the day that Tony Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, where the American President was expected to reaffirm his opposition to joining the Kyoto treat to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Over dinner at the White House last night, Mr Blair appeared to make little progress on one of his main priorities for Britain's year chairing the G8 - a new international effort to combat climate change. The Prime Minister is trying to draw the US, China and India into the discussion, but there is little sign that the Bush administration will accept the growing scientific evidence about the problem.
Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's national academy of sciences, lambasted President Bush yesterday for ignoring his own scientists by withdrawing from the Kyoto treaty. "The current US policy on climate change is misguided. The Bush administration has consistently refused to accept advice of the US National Academy of Sciences ... Getting the US on board is critical because of the sheer amount of greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for," Lord May said.
Between 1990 and 2002, the carbon dioxide emissions of the US increased by 13 per cent, which on their own were greater than the combined cut in emissions that will be achieved if all Kyoto countries hit their targets, he said.
"President Bush has an opportunity at Gleneagles to signal that his administration will no longer ignore the scientific evidence and act to cut emissions," Lord May said. "The G8 summit is an unprecedented moment in human history. Our leaders face a stark choice - act now to tackle climate change or let future generations face the price of their inaction.
"Never before have we faced such a global threat. And if we do not begin effective action now it will be much harder to stop the runaway train as it continues to gather momentum," he added.
The joint statement by the national science academies of the 11 countries does not mention Kyoto but it does refer repeatedly to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change that spawned the 1995 protocol to limit future greenhouse gas emissions, which the US has signed up to.
Climate change is real, global warming is occurring and there is strong evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are implicated in a potentially catastrophic increase in global temperatures, the statement says. "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate."
Human activities are causing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise to a point not reached for at least 420,000 years. Meanwhile average global temperatures rose by 0.6C in the 20th century and are projected to increase by between 1.4C and 5.8C by 2100.
"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions," the statement says.
In a veiled reference to President Bush's reluctance to accept climate change by claiming that the science is unclear, the academies emphasise that action is needed now to reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases.
"A lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous anthropogenic [man-made] interference with the climate system," the statement says.
"We urge all nations... to take prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts and ensure that the issue is included in all relevant national and international strategies."
The national academies warn that even if greenhouse gas emissions can be stabilised at existing levels, the climate would continue to change as it slowly responds to the extra carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. "Further changes in climate are therefore unavoidable. Nations must prepare for them," the statement says.
CO2 on the increase
1958: A US scientist, Charles Keeling, begins measuring the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) on an extinct volcano in Hawaii. It stands at 315 parts per million (ppm).
1968: The US spacecraft 'Apollo 8' takes the first pictures of Earth from a distance, beautiful but fragile - which help start modern environmentalism. The C02 level has reached 323ppm.
1972: The UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm - the moment when the world first recognises environmental threats to the Earth as a whole. CO2 now at 327ppm.
1988: The world wakes up to the danger of climate change, with an outspoken warning from scientists, and a speech by Margaret Thatcher. CO2 level stands at 351ppm.
1992: The Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro sees more than 100 countries sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the first global warming treaty. CO2 now at 356ppm.
1995: The Kyoto protocol to the UN's climate treaty is signed in Japan, binding countries, including the US, to make cuts in their CO2 emissions. The CO2 level has now reached 360ppm.
2000: Obvious that the 1990s were the hottest decade in the global temperature record, with 1998 the hottest year in the northern hemisphere for 1,000 years. CO2 is 369ppm.
2001: George Bush withdraws the US, the world's biggest CO2 emitter, from Kyoto, alleging it will damage America's economy - jeopardising the whole process. CO2 level now at 371ppm.
2003: First two weeks of August are the hottest period ever recorded in western Europe: 35,000 people die. New record high temperature for Britain. CO2 now at 375ppm.
2004: After much dithering, Russia ratifies Kyoto, enabling the protocol to enter into force despite the desertion of the United States. But that doesn't stop the CO2 level rising to 377ppm. |
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Et in Arcadia ego
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 2166
Location: The Void |
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Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:49 am
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html
Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush
White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
Article continues
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.
Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.
"Potus [president of the United States] rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you [the Global Climate Coalition]," says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.
The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon "among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions".
But in evidence to the UK House of Lords science and technology committee in 2003, Exxon's head of public affairs, Nick Thomas, said: "I think we can say categorically we have not campaigned with the United States government or any other government to take any sort of position over Kyoto."
Exxon, officially the US's most valuable company valued at $379bn (£206bn) earlier this year, is seen in the papers to share the White House's unwavering scepticism of international efforts to address climate change.
The documents, which reflect unanimity between the company and the US administration on the need for more global warming science and the unacceptable costs of Kyoto, state that Exxon believes that joining Kyoto "would be unjustifiably drastic and premature".
This line has been taken consistently by President Bush, and was expected to be continued in yesterday's talks with Tony Blair who has said that climate change is "the most pressing issue facing mankind".
"President Bush tells Mr Blair he's concerned about climate change, but these documents reveal the alarming truth, that policy in this White House is being written by the world's most powerful oil company. This administration's climate policy is a menace to humanity," said Stephen Tindale, Greenpeace's executive director in London last night.
"The prime minister needs to tell Mr Bush he's calling in some favours. Only by securing mandatory cuts in US emissions can Blair live up to his rhetoric," said Mr Tindale.
In other meetings documented in the papers, Ms Dobriansky meets Don Pearlman, an international anti-Kyoto lobbyist who has been a paid adviser to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments, both of which have followed the US line against Kyoto.
The purpose of the meeting with Mr Pearlman, who also represents the secretive anti-Kyoto Climate Council, which the administration says "works against most US government efforts to address climate change", is said to be to "solicit [his] views as part of our dialogue with friends and allies".
ExxonMobil, which was yesterday contacted by the Guardian in the US but did not return calls, is spending millions of pounds on an advertising campaign aimed at influencing politicians, opinion formers and business leaders in the UK and other pro-Kyoto countries in the weeks before the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.
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"If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution." |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:38 am
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quote:
Originally posted by Et in Arcadia ego
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html
Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush
White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.....
Yep.
I've pulled together this week's follow-up on this disgusting situation and will post it below to add to the above submission by Et in Arcadia ego.
Thanks.
Last edited by Deborah on Sun Jun 12, 2005 5:02 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
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Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:45 am
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Wednesday 6/8/05
NOTE: These articles are listed, to the best of my knowledge, in the order in which they were published in today's online media.
6/8/05
Bush aide softened greenhouse gas links to global warming
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?hp&ex=1118289600&en
(NOTE: Accompanying graphic "Editor in the White House" saved as .jpg)
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.
The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.
A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."
In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."
Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.
But critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.
In a memorandum sent last week to the top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Mr. Piltz said the White House editing and other actions threatened to taint the government's $1.8 billion-a-year effort to clarify the causes and consequences of climate change.
"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Mr. Piltz wrote. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."
A senior Environmental Protection Agency scientist who works on climate questions said the White House environmental council, where Mr. Cooney works, had offered valuable suggestions on reports from time to time. But the scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because all agency employees are forbidden to speak with reporters without clearance, said the kinds of changes made by Mr. Cooney had damaged morale. "I have colleagues in other agencies who express the same view, that it has somewhat of a chilling effect and has created a sense of frustration," he said.
Efforts by the Bush administration to highlight uncertainties in science pointing to human-caused warming have put the United States at odds with other nations and with scientific groups at home.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who met with President Bush at the White House yesterday, has been trying to persuade him to intensify United States efforts to curb greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush has called only for voluntary measures to slow growth in emissions through 2012.
Yesterday, saying their goal was to influence that meeting, the scientific academies of 11 countries, including those of the United States and Britain, released a joint letter saying, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."
The American Petroleum Institute, where Mr. Cooney worked before going to the White House, has long taken a sharply different view. Starting with the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty in 1997, it has promoted the idea that lingering uncertainties in climate science justify delaying restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases.
On learning of the White House revisions, representatives of some environmental groups said the effort to amplify uncertainties in the science was clearly intended to delay consideration of curbs on the gases, which remain an unavoidable byproduct of burning oil and coal.
"They've got three more years, and the only way to control this issue and do nothing about it is to muddy the science," said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a private group that has enlisted businesses in programs cutting emissions.
Mr. Cooney's alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet" originally read, "Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, "Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change."
A document showing a similar pattern of changes is the 2003 "Strategic Plan for the United States Climate Change Science Program," a thick report describing the reorganization of government climate research that was requested by Mr. Bush in his first speech on the issue, in June 2001. The document was reviewed by an expert panel assembled in 2003 by the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists largely endorsed the administration's research plan, but they warned that the administration's procedures for vetting reports on climate could result in excessive political interference with science.
Another political appointee who has played an influential role in adjusting language in government reports on climate science is Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the chief climate negotiator for the State Department, who has a doctorate in solid-state physics but has not done climate research.
In an Oct. 4, 2002 memo to James R. Mahoney, the head of the United States Climate Change Science Program and an appointee of Mr. Bush, Mr. Watson "strongly" recommended cutting boxes of text referring to the findings of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews research on human-caused climate change.
The boxes, he wrote, "do not include an appropriate recognition of the underlying uncertainties and the tentative nature of a number of the assertions."
While those changes were made nearly two years ago, recent statements by Dr. Watson indicate that the admnistration's position has not changed.
"We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly," he told the BBC in London last month. "There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known." END |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:50 am
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Continued...
6/8/05
Blair calls for U.S. action on climate change
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/11843791.htm
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday he was hopeful of a deal on tackling climate change and lifting Africa out of poverty following talks in Washington on his G8 priorities.
But with only four weeks before the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, Blair acknowledged that tough negotiations still lay ahead.
"We have begun a discussion which I hope will end up with a plan for action at the G8 summit," Blair told the House of Commons, where he was questioned by lawmakers over his discussions with U.S. President George W. Bush.
Blair is optimistic of a deal on debt relief for the world's poorest countries after Bush edged closer to Britain's position. But prospects of an agreement on climate change remained remote and Blair won no substantive concessions on the issue.
"The brutal truth is, without America in a process of dialogue and action in the international community, we are not going to make progress on it," Blair told lawmakers, vowing to continue the dialogue with the White House.
"I will be doing my very best to persuade the United States and other countries that it is important that we take action on this issue."
Blair has conceded he has no chance of persuading Bush - who questions scientists' view that manmade pollutants are responsible for increasing temperatures - to back the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. At their joint news conference Tuesday, Bush defended his position, saying America was at the forefront of climate research and the development of technology to reduce emissions.
Nevertheless Blair said he believed G8 leaders could agree on an "action plan ... which will include specific measures that help us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
"It's important, in addition, that we have some form of continuing process that locks in, not just the U.S., but those emerging countries, China and India in particular, without whom it is very difficult to see how we are going to make progress," he added.
Blair is confident of a deal on 100 percent debt relief for some of the world's poorest countries following the Washington talks.
The Bush administration had long argued that the money used to cancel debt should come out of future aid - a position charity groups describe as "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
Bush made an important concession, however, and acknowledged extra money was needed to replenish the funds of the World Bank and African Development Bank, which distribute much of the aid.
The leaders provided scant details of the proposal and tough negotiations are likely to take place when G8 finance ministers gather in London on Friday. Disagreements remain over what countries should be eligible for debt relief, under what conditions and how much new money will be made available. Blair's official spokesman said the debt relief plan would benefit 25 of the poorest countries.
There was no sign, however, that Bush would back Britain's ambitious plan to double international aid to the developing world to US$100 billion a year. He promised US$674 million (euro550 million) for famine relief in Africa, a commitment Blair described Tuesday as only a small step toward the extra money needed by the continent.
Blair told the Commons he was trying to put together a "comprehensive plan that deals with aid, debt, trade, peacekeeping and peace enforcement and conflict resolution, the main killer diseases but also governance and action against corruption." END
6/8/05
White House downplays climate report edits
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050608/ap_on_go_pr_wh/climate_reports_1;_ylt=AgeFoXY
The White House said Wednesday that changes in government reports on global warming by a former oil industry lobbyist were part of a normal review and did not violate a pledge to rely on sound science.
"The facts point out that our reports are based on the best scientific knowledge and they're based on the inputs of scientists," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Documents provided to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistleblowers, showed that a White House official who once headed the oil industry's lobbying on climate change edited administration reports on the topic in 2002 and 2003.
The official, Philip Cooney, is chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney, a lawyer without a background in science, worked earlier for the American Petroleum Institute where he headed its climate issues program.
His changes in several federal reports tended to emphasize the uncertainty of climate science and the environmental impact of climate change, according to a summary of the documents provided by the advocacy group.
Cooney's involvement in editing the reports were first disclosed Wednesday by the New York Times, based on documents from the group.
The organization is representing a whistleblower, Rick Piltz, who resigned in March from the government office that coordinates federal climate change programs.
In an interview Wednesday, Piltz disputed White House assertions that Cooney was just one of many participants on the climate reports. He said Cooney "played a central role, including having final review and signoff authority."
Piltz contended that many of Cooney's changes were aimed "at creating an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty" about climate change and its impact, contrary to the views of professionals.
Cooney was not made available for comment Wednesday. The Council on Environmental Quality referred questions to the White House.
McClellan, the White House spokesman, rejected suggestions that Cooney had "watered down" the reports.
"The reports are based on the best available science," said McClellan. He said more than a dozen agencies, including the White House science and technology office, were involved in preparing the documents.
One concerned an October 2002 draft of "Our Changing Planet," an annual summary to Congress of government climate research. A separate document was part of a draft to a 2002 document that outlined a 10-year strategic plan for U.S. climate change policy.
The Environmental Protection Agency also worked on the documents, The agency's recently sworn-in chief, Steve Johnson, said Wednesday he was unfamiliar with the specifics of Cooney's role. Johnson said he viewed the issue as one of communications and "differences of opinion" rather than a conflict with the use of sound science.
"People both within EPA and across the administration help us make sure we're communicating, again staying true to the science, making sure that we are communicating in an effective and appropriate way," Johnson said.
He addressed the issue during a meeting with a small group of reporters. END |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:54 am
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Continued...
6/8/05 (late evening)
Blair: U.S. set for new climate change treaty
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=631882005
Key points
-- Prime Minister in talks to sign Bush up to a global warming action plan at G8
-- PM's grand plan for Gleneagles Declaration branded 'window dressing'
-- White House confirms that Bush iss willing to work with Blair's new deal
Key quote
"We still have a situation whereby all the major developed countries have agreed to the Kyoto Treaty except for the US. America ... must be faced down by Blair so it plays a full part" - Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland
Story in full
TONY Blair is negotiating a "Gleneagles Declaration" on climate change that would sign the United States up to a new world plan of action on global warming.
The statement would accept that the US will never sign the Kyoto Treaty, which commits signatories to reducing greenhouse gases. Instead, it would recognise US efforts to fight global warming in its own way, with extensive investment in new fuel technology.
Environmentalists last night dismissed the move as mere "window dressing", while opposition politicians warned the Prime Minister not to use the G8 summit at Gleneagles to "paper over the cracks" on climate change.
After his dinner with George Bush, the US president, on Tuesday, Mr Blair said it was no longer productive to chastise Washington for saying no to the Kyoto Treaty.
But the Prime Minister is confident his ambitions set out for Gleneagles can still be realised by a new deal which British diplomats are in the final stages of negotiating.
This would broker a truce on the environment by acknowledging that Europe and the US are fighting climate change in their own ways. While Europe prefers to tax greenhouse gasses and trade economic growth for environmental targets, the US would spend a far greater share of its national wealth on new technologies.
In the Commons yesterday, Mr Blair said the Americans "come at this issue as much from the point of view of energy security and supply, as much as climate change. But there is an action plan that I believe we can agree at the G8".
He said he was working on "some form of continuing process that locks in not just the US but those emerging countries, China and India in particular, without whom it is very difficult to see how we are going to make progress".
Mr Blair's official spokesman said the Kyoto Treaty had its "limitations" - specifically because it placed no constraints on emerging global powers.
"The important thing is that we draw the emerging nations such as India and China into the debate on the issue," he said. "Kyoto did not do that, so what we need is a new consensus based on new technology that can address the problem."
The White House confirmed that Mr Bush was willing to work with Mr Blair's new deal - on the understanding that his administration's rejection of Kyoto would not change.
"The president is acting in a number of ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to work in partnership with others around the world to invest in new, cleaner technologies," a spokesman said.
However, Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, dismissed the latest development.
"So far, all that we have seen, and that includes leaked documents obtained by The Scotsman, is very much another case of window dressing," he said.
"The policy seems to be to get the US to agree to anything in which the British government can then claim to have made progress at Gleneagles and the G8 summit.
"We still have a situation whereby all the major developed countries have agreed to the Kyoto Treaty except for the US. America ... must be faced down by Blair so it plays a full part. Otherwise, countries like China will not sign up."
Greenpeace said: "Blair may as well have not bothered to cross the Atlantic. He calls climate change the gravest problem this planet faces, but the response from George Bush is worse than pathetic.
"The Prime Minister has argued with grand rhetoric on climate change, but President Bush is simply unwilling to deliver."
Colin Breed, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, said it would be unacceptable for Mr Blair to paper over the cracks on Kyoto with a Gleneagles document that put a spin on what the US was doing anyway.
"Committing to spend a certain amount on technology would be a pretty meaningless declaration unless the Americans pledge to use this new technology for specific targets on greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "Unless the Bush administration sets down targets to actually use it, such advances are pretty irrelevant."
The Kyoto Treaty was ratified by 140 countries but rejected unanimously by the US Senate - so President Bush has no authority to sign the treaty even if he was minded to.
The US has 4 per cent of the world's population but is responsible for 25 per cent of all emissions. Its defenders counter that it generates 30 per cent of the world's wealth, and is investing much of that in solving environmental problems.
It is committed to an 18 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over ten years and is spending $5.2 billion (£2.8 billion) this year in a series of research programmes to look for alternatives to fossil fuels - as much for money-saving reasons as environmental ones.
And the United Nations says the US has increased its forests by 9.5 million acres since 1990 - four times as fast as Europe.
Mr Blair's intention that US investment will count in lieu of its Kyoto obligations is also likely to apply to China, which is researching fuel alternatives. END |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:59 am
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Continued...
A late-breaking (6/9 early A.M.) commentary from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board:
6/9/05
Climate Change: Spinning global science
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/227683_warmed.asp
When it comes to global warming, scientific ignorance is bliss: No worries about devastating storms, droughts and dying species, just pleasant forecasts for warm summers. White House officials are happy to spread that joy.
The New York Times yesterday reported details of how a former oil industry lobbyist with no scientific training repeatedly edited documents on climate change to make the administration's head-in-the-sand posture appear legitimate.
Documents given to The Times by the Government Accountability Project public interest group show that Philip Cooney, White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff, repeatedly softened scientific conclusions about climate change, overstated uncertainties and even removed important concerns. In one censoring, Cooney simply crossed out sentences about the possible effects of global warming on polar regions' mountain snowpacks, glaciers and spring runoff. Many scientists have similar concerns about the effects on the Pacific Northwest environment and hydroelectric power.
We like to take an optimistic view, so we'd like to be able to predict the administration will learn to stop spinning science. But the Bush team will always prefer "let's pretend" to science about global warming and, probably, other vital subjects where the world's gains in knowledge are outstripping U.S. progress.
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Adding this tonight:
6/10/05
Editor of Climate Reports Resigns
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/politics/11cooney.long.html?
Philip A. Cooney, the chief of staff to President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, resigned yesterday, White House officials said.
Mr. Cooney’s resignation came two days after documents revealed that he had repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between building greenhouse-gas emissions and rising temperatures.
Mr. Cooney has no scientific training.
Dana Perino, a deputy White House press secretary, said Mr. Cooney “had long been considering his options following four years of service in the administration.”
Ms. Perino said the decision was unrelated to revelations about the documents. Mr. Cooney did not return e-mails messages or phone messages left at his home. Ms. Perino noted that the documents in question dated from 2003.
“He had accumulated many weeks of leave and had decided to resign and take the summer off to spend the time with his family,” Ms. Perino said.
Before moving to the White House in 2001, Mr. Cooney, 45, was a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobby for the oil industry, and held the position of “climate team leader,” in which he fought restrictions on greenhouse gases.
The documents, first described on Wednesday in The New York Times , stirred reactions ranging from defenses of Mr. Cooney by oil lobbyists to strident criticism by environmental groups and satire from Jon Stewart on his comedy-news program “The Daily Show.”
Most scientists and scientific groups, including the National Academy of Sciences in a letter released this week, have said the relationship between greenhouse-gas emissions and warming is clear enough to justify prompt actions by countries to curb emissions.
Philip Clapp, the president of the National Environmental Trust, an environmental group in Washington, said the problem with White House treatment of the climate issue was broader than just one person.
“His resignation is less surprising than the fact that the lead oil industry lobbyist on global warming should have been given this kind of power over climate science and scientists,” Mr. Clapp said.
Myron Ebell, who for years has fought restrictions on greenhouse gases on behalf of groups with industry ties, said Mr. Cooney’s actions were part of the normal adjustments to language in government documents to mesh them with policy goals.
“The idea that only scientists are able to deal with that is ridiculous,” said Mr. Ebell, who currently directs climate policy for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Citizens have to be able to deal with these things and decipher them, too.”
He added, “This is a news story because the White House is so secretive, not because he did anything wrong.” END |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| The debate's over: Globe is warming
Mon Jun 13, 2005 3:16 pm
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-06-12-global-warming-cover_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
The debate's over: Globe is warming
The Larsen B ice shelf, on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, has shattered and separated from the continent as a result of warming.
National Snow and Ice Data Center
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Don't look now, but the ground has shifted on global warming. After decades of debate over whether the planet is heating and, if so, whose fault it is, divergent groups are joining hands with little fanfare to deal with a problem they say people can no longer avoid.
General Electric is the latest big corporate convert; politicians at the state and national level are looking for solutions; and religious groups are taking philosophical and financial stands to slow the progression of climate change.
They agree that the problem is real. A recent study led by James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirms that, because of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases, Earth is trapping more energy from the sun than it is releasing back into space.
The U.N. International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global temperatures will rise 2 to 10 degrees by 2100. A "middle of the road" projection is for an average 5-degree increase by the end of the century, says Caspar Amman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
What the various factions don't necessarily agree on is what to do about it. The heart of the discussion is "really about how to deal with climate change, not whether it's happening," says energy technology expert James Dooley of the Battelle Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md. "What are my company's options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Are there new business opportunities associated with addressing climate change? Those are the questions many businesses are asking today."
The players
GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt recently announced that his company, which reports $135 billion in annual revenue, will spend $1.5 billion a year to research conservation, pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. Joining him for the announcement were executives from such mainline corporations as American Electric Power, Boeing and Cinergy.
Religious groups, such as the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals and National Council of Churches, have joined with scientists to call for action on climate change under the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. "Global warming is a universal moral challenge," the partnership's statement says.
And high-profile politicians from both parties are getting into the act. For example, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a reduction of more than 80% over the next five decades in his state's emission of greenhouse gases that heat in the atmosphere.
To be sure, many companies — most notably oil industry leader ExxonMobil — still express skepticism about the effects of global warming. And the Bush administration has supported research and voluntary initiatives but has pulled back from a multi-nation pact on environmental constraints.
The administration was on the defensive last week when The New York Times reported that a staff lawyer has been softening scientific assessments of global warming. White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended such action as a routine part of a multi-agency review process.
Nonetheless, the tides of change appear to be moving on.
"As big companies fall off the 'I don't believe in climate change' bandwagon, people will start to take this more seriously," says environmental scientist Don Kennedy, editor in chief of the journal Science. Companies aren't changing because of a sudden love for the environment, Kennedy says, but because they see change as an opportunity to protect their investments.
"On the business side, it just looks like climate change is not going away," says Kevin Leahy of Cinergy, a Cincinnati-based utility that reports $4.7 billion in annual revenue and provides electricity, mostly generated from coal, to 1.5 million customers. Most firms see global warming as a problem whose risks have to be managed, he says.
Power companies want to know what sort of carbon constraints they face — carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas — so they can plan long term and avoid being hit with dramatic emission limits or penalties in the future, he says.
Science and solutions
Climate scientists say this acceptance comes none too soon. "All the time we should have been moving forward ... has been wasted by arguing if the problem even exists," says Michael Mann of the University of Virginia.
The IPCC estimates that rainfall will increase up to 20% in wet regions, causing floods, while decreasing 20% in arid areas, causing droughts. The Environmental Protection Agency says melting glaciers and warmer ocean waters will likely cause an average 2-foot rise in sea level on all U.S. coasts by 2100.
Carbon dioxide is the byproduct of burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or oil. There are now about 1 trillion tons of carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. By the end of the century, atmos-pheric carbon projections range from 1.2 trillion tons if stringent corrective steps are taken to 2.8 trillion tons if little is done.
Moving ahead with solutions looks like the hardest part of the equation for the United States. The Bush administration's stance has frustrated advocates of a more aggressive response.
Bush explained in a 2001 speech why he opposed joining the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement to curb greenhouse gases: "The (Kyoto) targets themselves were arbitrary and not based upon science. For America, complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases."
Instead, the administration "harnesses the power of markets and technological innovation, maintains economic growth, and encourages global participation," former Energy Department head Spencer Abraham wrote last year in Science. He pointed to tax incentive programs, climate research and technologies such as "FutureGen," the Energy Department's 10-year,$1 billion attempt at creating a coal-fired power plant that emits no greenhouse gases.
Other administration efforts:
• The $1.7 billion hydrogen fuel-cell car initiative announced two years ago in Bush's State of the Union address.
• A $49 million carbon "sequestration" initiative with 65 projects to see whether carbon dioxide can be stripped from emissions.
• Participation in the international ITER program to develop nuclear fusion as an energy source.
The administration has encouraged voluntary efforts. Fourteen trade groups representing industrial, energy, transportation and forest companies have signed up for a program aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 18% by 2012.
So why isn't this enough to assuage critics?
Rick Piltz, a science policy expert who resigned in protest from the administration's Climate Change Science Program in March, says the reliance on voluntary measures and long-term technology breakthroughs is a roadblock against simple conservation steps that could curb emissions now. Piltz provided the edited documents that were the subject of last week's story in The New York Times.
Commonly cited examples of the conservation steps Piltz mentions:
• Incentives for emission controls on the oldest and least efficient power plants.
• More stringent mileage and tailpipe requirements on vehicles.
• Expanded tax credits for more efficient air conditioners, hybrid cars and appliances.
Political leaders will support such measures only if the benefits come at a low cost to the economy, says William Reilly, co-chair of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy and former head of the EPA under President George H.W. Bush. "But there is a lot going on, and I think we will be seeing some movement on this."
Away from the political arena, other irons are in the fire:
• More people are advocating nuclear power. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore told a congressional panel in April that "nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse gas-emitting energy source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand."
• Immelt called for the United States to adopt an emissions-trading plan for greenhouse gases. Taking a cue from the EPA's policy of having companies buy and sell permits to release sulfur dioxide, which is responsible for acid rain, economists suggest that such a scheme would limit carbon dioxide by making emissions economically less feasible. In Congress, the Climate Stewardship Act proposed by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., would commit the country to such a plan.
No 'silver bullet' solution
Pressure for reforms may come most strongly from "socially responsible" investors. "We make bottom-line arguments to companies to make decisions in the interests of their shareholders," says John Wilson of Christian Brothers Investment Services, which manages $3.5 billion in investor funds. The firm advises 1,000 Catholic institutions, such as churches, schools and hospitals.
A Christian Brothers resolution in May asked ExxonMobil "to explain the scientific basis for its ongoing denial of the broad scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change." The resolution garnered 10.3% of shareholders' votes, representing 665 million shares worth more than $36 billion, despite the opposition of management.
"The future of energy is plainly moving away from fossil fuels and we want the companies (that) we invest in to explain how they plan to adjust," Wilson says.
Dooley, of the Battelle Institute, says: "We need a whole series of 'home runs' and maybe even a couple of 'grand slams' to successfully address this problem. More efficient refrigerators, better and cheaper solar cells, hybrid automobiles, fuel cells, power plants that capture and store their (carbon dioxide) deep below the surface and nuclear power. They all have important roles to play."
"No one seriously talks about trying to address climate change with one technology," Dooley says. "Everyone understands that there isn't a 'silver bullet' out there waiting to be discovered." |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global Warming:The US Contribution in Figures
Tue Jun 14, 2005 5:13 am
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0613-02.htm
Global Warming:The US Contribution in Figures
The United States constitutes 4 per cent of the world population
It is responsible for a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions - an average of 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is released by each US citizen every year - the highest of any country in the world, and more than China, India and Japan combined
Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually - consuming more than 850 million trees
There are more than 200 million cars and light trucks on american roads
According to the Federal Department of Transportation, they use over 200 million gallons of petrol a day
Motor vehicles account for 56 per cent of all air pollution in The United States
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002 concluded that people living in the most heavily polluted metropolitan areas have a 12 per cent increased risk of dying of lung cancer than people in the least polluted areas
32 of the 50 busiest US airports currently have plans to expand operations
Every year US industries release at least 2.4 billion pounds of chemicals into the atmosphere
Despite having just 2 per cent of known oil reserves, the US consumes 25 per cent of the world's oil production
16 per cent of world oil production goes into american cars alone.
Approximately 160 million people living in 32 US states live in regions with smog and soot levels considered dangerous to health
The new clear air interstate rule aims to cut sulphur dioxide by 73 per cent and nitrogen oxide by 61 per cent in the next 10 years
Around 50 million new cars roll off US assembly lines each year
More than 1.5 million gallons of oil were spilled into US waters in 2000 alone
Only 1 per cent of American travel is on public transport, an eighth of that in the UK and an eighteenth of that in Japan
As much as 5.99 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted per American per year, compared with 0.31 tons per Indian or 0.05 tons per Bangladeshi.
The US had 16 major oil spills between 1976 and 1989, whereas France suffered six and the UK five
The average American produces 864kg of municipal waste per year, almost three times the quantity of rubbish produced annually by an Italian
Last edited by Sore Throat on Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Asia's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate
Tue Jun 14, 2005 5:26 am
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8018284/site/newsweek/
Beware of Falling Ice
Asia's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating a host of environmental problems from flooding to disease.[/b]
By Craig Simons
Newsweek International
June 6 issue - The Chinese ask river gods for protection against floods. Each year tens of millions of Indian Hindus make pilgrimages to the Ganges to seek spiritual cleansing. In impoverished villages from Nepal to Bangladesh, waterways are the lifeblood of society, relied on for everything from drinking water to industry to burial. The veneration that Asians hold for rivers was on Chu Duo's mind as he fiddled with his instruments—a bevy of thermometers, barometers, solar-radiation meters, rainfall gauges—in a small, flat field near Lhasa's Jokhang Temple, Tibet's holiest Buddhist monastery. For the past five years, Chu, a 36-year-old meteorologist at the Tibet Institute of Plateau Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences in Lhasa, has been trying to measure changes in the local climate. He found that temperatures have risen more than 1 degree Celsius since the 1960s, while rainfall has increased. The results aren't out of line with what climate scientists have been finding for other parts of the world. But for the three fifths of the world's people who live in Asia, the prognosis is especially dire.
The 2.5 million-square-kilometer Tibetan Plateau, which stretches from Kazakhstan in the northwest to India in the south, is the main source of Asia's big rivers—the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Indus and Ganges. For hundreds of thousands of years, more than 46,000 glaciers on the plateau have provided a steady flow of water to the lowlands. Each winter the glaciers have grown as snow has piled onto them. In May and June they begin to retreat as some of the ice and snow melt. Until recently, they've stayed pretty much the same size. [b]But during the last several decades, glaciologists have recorded more melting in the summer than gets replaced in the winter. According to Yao Tandong, the director of China's Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, glaciers on the plateau have retreated an average 7 percent during the past 40 years, and the rate at which they are melting is increasing. For glaciologists, the change has been abrupt: "By nature, glaciers are slow movers," says Yao. "The glacial retreat has happened very suddenly."
Because the glaciers are melting faster than usual, more water is pouring out of the mountains and into the rivers. According to Yao, annual glacial runoff on the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas is now equal to the total yearly discharge of the Yellow River, roughly 20 percent more than 40 years ago. Some of that water is making its way into Asia's rivers, increasing floods and spreading waterborne diseases. More of it is pouring into valleys, enlarging old lakes and creating new ones. This glacial melting is expected to continue at least at the present rate for many decades. In the process, it will transform Asia, creating a host of new environmental problems.
The increased melting has already begun to change the region's geography. One lake in northern Tibet, Fuqilin Lake, has risen 20 centimeters a year since 1997, spreading over local pastures and towns, and forcing residents to move to higher ground. Occasionally the lakes break their embankments, emptying tons of water into rivers and even dry valleys and causing devastating flash floods. In Nepal, a series of landslides and flash floods killed more than 350 people and left some 10,000 families homeless in 2003.
The struggle to contain rapid increases in water flow will occupy Asia for decades to come. Glacial runoff has already contributed to massive floods in India, China and Bangladesh. Flooding along the Yangtze River in 2002 caused billions of dollars of damage and killed at least 1,000. Last year, floods in India killed more than 1,000 and left millions homeless, while Bangladesh suffered its worst floods in 15 years, with high water spreading deadly diseases including diarrhea and cholera. Because glacial runoff peaks during monsoon season in India and Southeast Asia, "it is very complex to separate the two," says Joseph Gergan, a glaciologist at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in northern India. But some experts say that glaciers, as opposed to rainfall, are responsible for as much as 70 percent of the flow of some of Asia's largest rivers during the late summer, up from some 60 percent in the 1960s.
Another problem is that as glaciers and permafrost melt, rivers wash away more loose topsoil. In China the problem of river silting is particularly acute. China has the largest number of large dams in the world—148 on the Yangtze River basin alone—and as mud and debris backs up behind them, the dams require expensive dredging that doesn't always work. Opponents of the Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, point to a recent U.S. study that found silt buildup in U.S. dams amounts to 2 cubic kilometers each year. Because the Yangtze carries the fifth-largest sediment discharge of any river in the world, silt trapped behind the dam could render the river impassable for large ships.
In the longer term, the problem will reverse. Yao predicts that 60 percent of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau will be gone by the end of the century and that the average volume of most Asian rivers will begin to fall in 2050. The flow of several Ganges tributaries fed by shrinking glaciers in southeastern Tibet has already declined by 40 percent, says Shen Yongping, the author of a recent WWF report on glacial melting. The problem will be more acute in inland rivers, which do not feed into larger rivers or reach the sea but eventually dry up as water is siphoned out. In China's northwestern Xinjiang province, Shen says, 60 percent of the Kumarik River originates in glacial runoff, and many other rivers in the province are also primarily glacial. "People are moving to parts of Xinjiang where there is increased flow that they can use for agriculture and industry," he says. "But in 10 or 20 years the flow will begin to abate. Once the rivers decrease and finally disappear, the oases will dry up and there will be no more cities."
Reduced flows will also have a severe impact on China's heavily populated northeast. China's per capita water resources are about one quarter of the world average, and in northern China that ratio drops to one twentieth. Most of the rivers in eastern and northern China are so polluted that making them fit for drinking is prohibitively expensive. Water tables around major urban areas, including Beijing, are dropping, forcing the cities to transport water from elsewhere.
So far Asian governments have been slow to react. In Nepal and the tiny Buddhist nation of Bhutan, a recent United Nations Environmental Program project located 44 new or growing glacial lakes threatening nearby villages. In China scientists are using satellites to track rising lake volumes and will evacuate villagers if a glacial flash flood seems imminent. Beijing has invested $24 billion to build a reservoir in Xinjiang province to prevent flooding and to control rampant water use. But with glaciers melting over an area as large as one fourth of the United States, Yao says, those efforts will yield limited benefits and, regardless, won't slow climate change. "Officials," he says, "don't really take a long-term view."
Environmental groups appear ready to push the issue. The U.N.'s annual environmental report, issued in February, highlighted glacial melting, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—a group established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations—has made glacial retreat a top issue. Former U.S. vice president Al Gore is expected to visit a glacial monitoring station near Lhasa this summer to raise awareness. Yao believes that while there "is probably no way to stop the glacial melting, there are ways to slow it down." That would require a global effort to reduce carbon emissions dramatically, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon. For Asia, Yao thinks, it's probably better to prepare for the consequences.
Last edited by Sore Throat on Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| G-8 bows to U.S. on climate change
Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:29 pm
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/17/MNGRIDA5H21.DTL
G-8 bows to U.S. on climate change
Action plan weaker after Bush team exerts pressure
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
Friday, June 17, 2005
Washington -- Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change.
Under U.S. pressure, negotiators agreed in the past month to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is scheduled to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight's annual meeting in Scotland.
The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecessary. Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.
Last week, the New York Times reported that a senior White House official had altered government documents to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding the science on global warming. That official, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chief of Staff Phillip Cooney, left the administration Friday to take a public relations job with oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp., a leading opponent of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The wording of the international document, titled "Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development," will help determine what, if any, action the G-8 countries will take as a group to combat global warming. Every member nation except the United States has pledged to bring its greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2012 as part of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who currently heads the G-8 -- is trying to coax the United States into adopting stricter climate controls.
In preparation for the summit, negotiators are trying to work out the wording of statements on climate change and other issues that leaders of all eight nations are willing to endorse. The language is not final, but the documents show that a number of deletions have been made at U.S. insistence.
Although the new statement by G-8 leaders may not dramatically alter the other nations' policies on global warming, what it says could mark a shift for the United States. U.S. officials pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that highlight some problems tied to global warming, warn of more frequent droughts and floods, and endorse the Kyoto Protocol.
One deleted section, for example, initially cited "increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems." It added: "Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable. Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans."
Instead, U.S. negotiators substituted a sentence that reads, "Climate change is a serious long term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe."
"It's very important to view (the deletions) in context," said James Connaughton, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality. "The overall context is one of strong consensus about a shared commitment to practical action, as well as defined management strategies."
But environmentalists criticized the administration for trying to water down the international coalition's initiative. Some are urging the seven other G-8 members -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia -- to adopt their own global warming plan rather than accept a milder statement that they say would provide the Bush administration with political cover.
"The U.S. will just not budge," said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wildlife Fund's U.S. climate change program. "We'd rather not have a deal than have a deal that lets George Bush off the hook."
Bush's top science adviser, John Marburger, said he is frustrated with such charges, because the administration is seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through technological advances and other voluntary measures.
"From the beginning, this administration has acknowledged the Earth is getting warmer and we're going to have to take responsibility for our emissions," he said. Critics claim the White House believes "climate change is not happening, which is not true."
Several officials involved in the talks said none of the document's wording is fixed, and it could change before the leaders adopt a final version for the summit. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| New US Move to Spoil Climate Accord
Sun Jun 19, 2005 11:16 pm
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061905X.shtml
New US Move to Spoil Climate Accord
By Mark Townsend
The Observer UK
Sunday 19 June 2005
Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.
These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change.
The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change and show that the US position has hardened during the G8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial United Nations commitment to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.
The documents show that Washington officials:
Removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a 'serious threat to human health and to ecosystems';
Deleted any suggestion that global warming has already started;
Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change.
Among the sentences removed was the following: 'Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans.'
Another section erased by the White House adds: 'Our world is warming. Climate change is a serious threat that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. And we know that ... mankind's activities are contributing to this warming. This is an issue we must address urgently.' The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has dismissed the leaking of draft communiques on the grounds that 'there is everything to play for at Gleneagles.' However, there is no doubt that many UK officials have become exasperated by the Bush administration's refusal to accept the basic principle that climate change is happening now and is due to man's activities.
Earlier this month, the senior science academies of the G8 nations, including the US National Academy of Science, issued a statement saying that evidence of climate change was clear enough to compel their leaders to take action. 'There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring,' they said.
It is now clear that this advice has been completely ignored by Bush and his advisers. 'Every year, it (local air pollution) causes millions of premature deaths, and suffering to millions more through respiratory disease,' reads another statement removed by Washington.
Washington also appears to be unsympathetic towards the plight of Africa, the other priority singled out by Blair for the G8 Summit in Gleneagles.
The documents reveal how the Bush administration has pulled out of financial pledges to fund a network of regional climate centres throughout Africa which were designed to monitor the unfolding impact of global warming.
'Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Arctic are particularly vulnerable to climate variability and are starting to experience the impacts,' reads another excerpt rejected by the US.
Other crucial schemes ditched by the US include the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up to help developing states develop economically while controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the documents, the American government has reneged on plans to 'ensure that the CDM executive board is adequately funded by the end of 2005.' |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
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| Global Warming Gains Higher Profile in Senate
Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:35 pm
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-climate19jun19,0,2289475.story?coll=la-home-nation
Global Warming Gains Higher Profile in SenateThree plans proposed fall short of the Kyoto pact but still could draw opposition from the Bush administration and the House.
By Miguel Bustillo
Times Staff Writer
June 19, 2005
WASHINGTON — For the first time since President Bush rejected the international Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, momentum is building in the Senate to begin addressing global warming.
However, skirmishes over competing proposals and continuing opposition from the House of Representatives and the Bush administration may prevent any plan from passing Congress this year.
The fate of the burgeoning effort to tackle global warming appears to hinge on whether Republican Sen. Pete V. Domenici decides to cosponsor a relatively modest cap on greenhouse gas emissions proposed by his fellow New Mexican, Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman.
A joint statement by science academies from 11 nations, including the U.S., this month helped convince Domenici that there was now a consensus among scientists that human releases of heat-trapping gases threaten to increase temperatures and alter climate patterns, aides said.
Still, Domenici, the GOP point man on the Senate's version of the sweeping energy bill now under consideration in Congress, is concerned that adding global warming limits to the legislation as an amendment may sink the bill. He is also concerned that it would alienate fellow Republicans, including the president, who are opposed to mandatory caps on greenhouse gases.
On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney met with Domenici to share the White House's concerns, said Alex Flint, Domenici's top energy staffer, who emphasized that Domenici was still considering how to proceed.
"Sen. Domenici is now convinced that climate change is occurring and that we need to do something about it," Flint told reporters Friday.
"He is concerned, however, about creating a fissure in the Republican caucus and [with] the Bush administration," Flint said.
If Domenici champions the legislation, supporters contend enough Republicans would follow suit to secure at least 50 votes in the Senate. If he does not, the Senate may still have sufficient votes to pass it. But it may lack sufficient backing to survive House-Senate negotiations over the final version of the energy bill.
House Republicans have declared opposition to any mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases, as has the White House, which argues that such limits would drive up energy prices and cost thousands of Americans their jobs.
"Energy intensive industries are going to move to other countries, and Americans are going to lose their jobs" if strict limits on greenhouse gases are enacted in the U.S., said Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "But these industries are going to keep operating, and their greenhouse gases are going to continue to go into the atmosphere."
Pressure to develop a stronger national response to global warming is mounting in Washington as more business leaders support reducing greenhouse gases, scientists affirm the link between human activities and warming temperatures, and most of the developed world begins cutting emissions under the Kyoto pact.
But none of the three alternatives emerging as possible amendments to the Senate version of the energy bill has the full support of Republicans, Democrats, business groups or environmentalists.
All proposals are less stringent than the Kyoto pact, which would have required the U.S. to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases to about 7% below 1990 levels by 2012.
The Bingaman amendment, which is attracting the most interest, would slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases but would not begin to reduce them until 2020 at the earliest.
A federal study showed that the proposal, based on the recommendations of a panel of business leaders, academics and environmentalists called the National Commission on Energy Policy, would not damage the American economy.
But it is being criticized by the administration as a carbon tax in disguise, because it contains a "safety valve" that would eventually allow emitters to buy their way out of the requirements for $7 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions. And some Democrats dismiss it as too weak.
"There is a consensus in the scientific community that we need to be doing something on global warming," Bingaman said. "There is a consensus among the public. Sooner or later, the politicians are going to have to react."
Another alternative is a revised version of the bipartisan global warming legislation by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) that garnered 43 votes last year. It would establish a tighter cap than Bingaman's proposal, aiming to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. But it is still about half as strict as the Kyoto requirement.
It is losing support among environmentalists and some former backers, including California Sen. Barbara Boxer, because it now contains potential subsidies for nuclear power.
Despite the defections, McCain and Lieberman indicated last week that they were not willing to budge on its language and would rather lose on principle than further weaken a proposal they feel had been watered down. They criticized Bingaman's proposal as inadequate and said they could not support it.
"You have to have an immediate effort to reduce greenhouse gases," McCain said.
"Anything else is a fig leaf and a joke."
A third potential amendment by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has emerged as the favored choice of some oil companies and other industries likely to be hit by regulations. But it is being criticized as an ambiguous set of taxpayer-funded subsidies to develop clean energy sources that doesn't require mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.
"The Senate debate is probably symbolic, but it will be looked upon by some states so it is not without impact," said Steve Miller, president of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a lobbying coalition funded by industries in coal-producing states that supported Hagel's amendment.
"The real debate in the Senate is between those who want to force technology by making it mandatory before it is ready and those who want to provide incentives to develop the technology."
Despite the splintering of support, some lawmakers said the emergence of several Senate proposals showed movement on the issue, even if the plans fell short of the large-scale changes that climate scientists said were needed to avoid disaster.
"To me it's a sign of great progress," Lieberman said of the multiple amendments.
"Now everybody's admitting there is a problem, but they are offering nonsolutions to it." |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Climate change plan has setback in U.S. energy bill
Tue Jun 21, 2005 6:13 pm
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/21/AR2005062100592_pf.html
Climate change plan has setback in U.S. energy bill
By Chris Baltimore and Tom Doggett
Reuters
Tuesday, June 21, 2005; 1:08 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key Republican refused to back a plan by Senate Democrats to slow U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, casting doubt on whether the Senate can muster enough votes on Tuesday to approve a climate change measure.
As part of its debate of a broad bill to increase domestic energy supplies, the Senate is expected to consider proposals to reduce U.S. industries' emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.
Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Republican chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said last week he might co-sponsor Democrat Jeff Bingaman's plan to slow the growth of U.S. carbon emissions with an emissions trading program beginning in 2010.
But late Monday night, Domenici announced in a brief statement that he would not support the measure.
"This is just too tough to do quickly," Domenici said. "I expect we will have a series of hearings and I hope we can reach some sort of accommodation on all aspects of a climate proposal. But that will take time."
Bingaman said he was disappointed, but will still try to add the plan to fight global warming to the energy bill. He described it as "low-cost insurance to protect our nation's economy and environment" from global warming.
His approach aims to slow the increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by linking them to U.S. economic growth.
Domenici refused to break ranks with the White House on climate change, after meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney last week and fellow Republican lawmakers on Monday.
The Bush administration opposes any form of mandatory carbon dioxide limits, preferring voluntary measures by utilities, manufacturing plants and other emitters. President Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto treaty to fight global warming, citing its economic cost.
In addition to Bingaman's plan, the Senate will consider a stricter option from Republican John McCain and Democrat Joseph Lieberman that would require an outright cut in U.S. carbon dioxide output to 2000 levels by 2010.
The Senate debate on climate change proposals comes as the Bush administration prepares to attend a Group of Eight meeting early next month. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will lead the meeting, said he wants to launch an action plan for rich nations to fight global warming.
OFFSHORE OIL SURVEY
Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Senate refused to strip from the bill language calling for a federal inventory of oil and natural gas in waters off states where drilling is now banned. An attempt by Florida's Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez to drop the measure failed on a vote of 44-52.
Critics said the survey could eventually lead to opening those waters to energy exploration, hurting tourism which is a crucial part of Florida's economy.
"I'm seriously considering voting against the (entire) bill," Nelson, a Democrat, told reporters afterward. He criticized Senate Republican leaders for promising to keep the inventory in a final energy package negotiated with the House.
Survey supporters said the government must know how much oil and gas lies within 200 miles of the U.S. shoreline.
"When the country may have to draw on (offshore) resources, either in an emergency or because of our economic necessity, we most certainly would like to know what's there so we make a good decision," said Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
The Senate was also expected to consider a Democratic proposal to help lower gasoline prices by requiring the government to suspend adding crude to the nation's emergency oil stockpile when crude prices are too high.
The Senate is on track to approve a broad energy package this week with some $14 billion in tax incentives over ten years to encourage more domestic production of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and alternative energy.
The Senate measure would have to be reconciled with a much different energy bill approved by the U.S. House in April. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global warming to wreck Med "paradise"
Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:06 pm
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L01100221.htm
Global warming to wreck Med "paradise"
By Robin Pomeroy
ROME, July 1 (Reuters) - Global climate change will bring hotter, drier summers to the Mediterranean and hit two of the region's biggest earners, agriculture and tourism, according to a study released by environmental group WWF on Friday.
The study forecast what would happen if the world's average temperature increased by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the period 2031-2060 -- a situation many scientists believe probable due to the greenhouse effect.
"Unless something is done to tackle global warming, the Mediterranean will not be the same place that people have enjoyed in the past," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's climate change programme.
"That paradise will no longer be paradise. It will be hotter, it will have significant agricultural problems and will not be a place people will want to come to on holiday," she told Reuters.
The biggest impact on the weather would be to increase the number of extremely hot days and decrease rainfall in the summer, resulting in increased risk of forest fires, lower crop yields and a drop in tourism, WWF said.
Heatwaves in the region would not just put off tourists from visiting in midsummer, but warmer summers in northern Europe would also reduce the attraction for many holidaymakers of travelling south as they now do.
"We expect that warmer northern European summers would encourage northern Europeans to take domestic holidays," the WWF report said.
Farmers, too, will have to adapt to the warmer climate as in most cases crop yields will be reduced by hotter, drier summers.
The presence of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air will increase certain yields in parts of the region, but this will be more than offset by less rainfall and water for irrigation, the report said.
Global warming is caused by certain gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat. The most important man-made greenhouse gas is CO2 which is a by-product of combustion.
Southern Mediterranean countries have experienced a string of hot summers in recent years, with a heatwave scorching parts of Spain and Italy at the end of last month.
"The models are showing that it's just going to get worse," said Morgan, adding that some regions, such as inland Spain and Turkey, could see average temperatures rise by 5 degrees Celsius in the coming years.
"What we're seeing now is a precursor of stronger impacts in the future. Take today as a warning that we need to act now." |
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