|
|
PAK
Joined: 03 Feb 2006
Posts: 1324
|
 Wed Feb 21, 2007 12:11 am
|
 |
|
I doubt the world's Elite are spending billions of dollars on a sunscreen. The UN continues to ignore the fact that weather modification and manipulation is a reality.
http://www.earthpulse.com/src/subcategory.asp?catid=1&subcatid=7
IT'S NOT ONLY GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS:
WASHINGTON'S NEW WORLD ORDER WEAPONS HAVE THE ABILITY TO TRIGGER CLIMATE CHANGE
by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, author of The Globalization of Poverty, second edition, Common Courage Press, 2000.
The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate.
In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.
While there is no evidence that this deadly technology has been used, surely the United Nations should be addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases…
* * *
Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change. Neither the official delegations nor the environmental action groups participating in the Hague Conference on Climate Change (CO6) (November 2000) have raised the broad issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)" as relevant to an understanding of climate change.
The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists and American business lobbies has centered on Washington's outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.1 The impacts of military technologies on the World's climate are not an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change serves Washington's strategic and defense objectives.
"WEATHER WARFARE"
World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists … are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods."2 Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book "Between Two Ages" that: "Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised... [T]echniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm."
Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, outlines several types of "unconventional weapons" using radio frequencies. He refers to "weather war," indicating that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s."3 These technologies make it "possible to trigger atmospheric disturbances by using Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radar [waves]." 4
A simulation study of future defense "scenarios" commissioned for the US Air
Force calls for:
"US aerospace forces to 'own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications… From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary… In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels. 5
THE HIGH-FREQUENCY ACTIVE AURAL RESEARCH PROGRAM (HAARP)
The High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokoma Alaska --jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy-- is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere". Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich --actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP-- describes HAARP as:
"A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead." 6
Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet." 7
MISLEADING PUBLIC OPINION
HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." 8 Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.9
According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, HAARP is part of a integrated weapons' system, which has potentially devastating environmental consequences:
"It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature. The military implications of combining these projects is alarming. … The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer. 10
In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses:
"HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays… Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out. 11.
More generally, HAARP has the ability of modifying the World's electro-magnetic field. It is part of an arsenal of "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider a "gentler and kinder warfare". 12
WEAPONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World Order under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From military command points in the US, entire national economies could potentially be destabilized through climatic manipulations. More importantly, the latter can be implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal cost and without engaging military personnel and equipment as in a conventional war.
The use of HAARP -- if it were to be applied-- could have potentially devastating impacts on the World's climate. Responding to US economic and strategic interests, it could be used to selectively modify climate in different parts of the World resulting in the destabilization of agricultural and ecological systems.
It is also worth noting that the US Department of Defense has allocated substantial resources to the development of intelligence and monitoring systems on weather changes. NASA and the Department of Defense's National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are working on "imagery for studies of flooding, erosion, land-slide hazards, earthquakes, ecological zones, weather forecasts, and climate change" with data relayed from satellites. 13
POLICY INERTIA OF THE UNITED NATIONS
According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:
"States have… in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the (…) responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." 14
It is also worth recalling that an international Convention ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1997 bans "military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects."15 Both the US and the Soviet Union were signatories to the Convention. The Convention defines "'environmental modification techniques' as referring to any technique for changing--through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes--the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space." 16
Why then did the UN --disregarding the 1977 ENMOD Convention bas well as its own charter-- decide to exclude from its agenda climatic changes resulting from military programs?
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ACKNOWLEDGES IMPACTS OF HAARP
In February 1998, responding to a report of Mrs. Maj Britt Theorin --Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate--, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the HAARP program.17 The Committee's "Motion for Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament:
"Considers HAARP… by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body…; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration… to give evidence to the public hearing …into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program." 18.
The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities", however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense". 19 Brussels was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington.
FULLY OPERATIONAL
While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy.
Agricultural systems in both developed and developing countries are already in crisis as a result of New World Order policies including market deregulation, commodity dumping, etc. Amply documented, IMF and World Bank "economic medicine" imposed on the Third World and the countries of the former Soviet block has largely contributed to the destabilization of domestic agriculture. In turn, the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have supported the interests of a handful of Western agri-biotech conglomerates in their quest to impose genetically modified (GMO) seeds on farmers throughout the World.
It is important to understand the linkage between the economic, strategic and military processes of the New World Order. In the above context, climatic manipulations under the HAARP program (whether accidental or deliberate) would inevitably exacerbate these changes by weakening national economies, destroying infrastructure and potentially triggering the bankruptcy of farmers over vast areas. Surely national governments and the United Nations should address the possible consequences of HAARP and other "non-lethal weapons" on climate change.
NOTES
1. The latter calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent to become effective between 2008 and 2012. See Background of Kyoto Protocol at http://www.globalwarming.net/gw11.html.
2. The Times, London, 23 November 2000.
3. Intelligence Newsletter, December 16, 1999.
4. Ibid.
5 Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ (emphasis added).
6 Nicholas Begich and Jeane Manning, The Military's Pandora's Box, Earthpulse Press, http://www.xyz.net/~nohaarp/earthlight.html. See also the HAARP home page at http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/).
7. See Briarpatch, January, 2000. (emphasis added).
8 Quoted in Begich and Manning, op cit.
9. Air University, op cit.
10. Rosalie Bertell, Background of the HAARP Program, 5 November, 1996, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/weapons.htm
11. Begich and Manning, op cit.
12. Don Herskovitz, Killing Them Softly, Journal of Electronic Defense, August 1993. (emphasis added). According to Herskovitz, "electronic warfare" is defined by the US Department of Defense as "military action involving the use of electromagnetic energy…" The Journal of Electronic Defense at http://www.jedefense.com/ has published a range of articles on the application of electronic and electromagnetic military technologies.
13. Military Space, 6 December, 1999.
14. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York, 1992. See complete text at http://www.unfccc.de/resource/conv/conv_002.html, (emphasis added).
15. See Associated Press, 18 May 1977.
16. Environmental Modification Ban Faithfully Observed, States Parties Declare, UN Chronicle, July, 1984, Vol. 21, p. 27.
17. European Report, 7 February 1998.
18. European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy, Brussels, doc. no. A4-0005/99, 14 January 1999.
19. EU Lacks Jurisdiction to Trace Links Between Environment and Defense,
European Report, 3 February 1999.
© Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, November, 2000.
All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms contact the author at chossudovsky@videotron.ca, fax: 1-514-4256224.
_________________
... we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. Aldous Huxley |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global Warming: Enough to Make You Sick
Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:14 am
|
|
|
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0225-05.htm
Global Warming: Enough to Make You Sick
Rising temperatures are redistributing bacteria, insects and plants, exposing people to diseases they'd never encountered before.
by Jia-Rui Chong
CORDOVA, ALASKA — Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his 25 years working the frigid waters of Prince William Sound.
The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska was way too cold.
But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature had risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise ship passengers who had eaten local oysters were soon coming down with diarrhea, cramping and vomiting — the first cases of Vibrio food poisoning in Alaska that anyone could remember.
"We were slapped from left field," said Aguiar, who shut down his oyster farm that year along with a few others.
As scientists later determined, the culprit was not just the bacterium, but the warming that allowed it to proliferate.
"This was probably the best example to date of how global climate change is changing the importation of infectious diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, acting chief of epidemiology at the Alaska Division of Public Health, who published a study on the outbreak.
The spread of human disease has become one of the most worrisome subplots in the story of global warming. Incremental temperature changes have begun to redraw the distribution of bacteria, insects and plants, exposing new populations to diseases that they have never seen before.
A report from the World Health Organization estimated that in 2000 about 154,000 deaths around the world could be attributed to disease outbreaks and other conditions sparked by climate change.
The temperature change has been small, about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years, but it has been enough to alter disease patterns across the globe.
In Sweden, fewer winter days below 10 degrees and more summer days above 50 degrees have encouraged the northward movement of ticks, which has coincided with an increase in cases of tick-borne encephalitis since the 1980s.
Researchers have found that poison ivy has grown more potent and lush because of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In Africa, mosquitoes have been slowly inching up the slopes around Mt. Kenya, bringing malaria to high villages that had never been exposed before.
"It's going to get very warm," said Andrew Githeko, a vector biologist who heads the Climate and Human Health Research Unit at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu. "That's going to mean a huge difference to malaria."
Githeko, 49, grew up in the central highlands in a tiny village near the town of Karatina, about 5,700 feet above sea level.
His home was different from most of Africa. The air was damp and chilly. On clear days, he could see the glaciers on Mt. Kenya, the second-highest peak in Africa at 17,058 feet.
When he was a child, lowland diseases like malaria were unknown in Karatina. But perhaps 10 years ago, a smattering of cases began to appear.
He had long ago left his home to study the great plagues of Africa — Rift Valley fever, malaria, cholera and others. The appearance of malaria in the highlands, however, was a mystery worth returning home for.
Githeko dispatched a colleague to collect mosquito larvae in puddles and streams around Mt. Kenya, some as high as 6,300 feet. Tests later identified some of the mosquitoes as Anopheles arabiensis, one of the species that carry malaria.
Githeko's findings, published in 2006, marked the highest A. arabiensis breeding site ever recorded in Kenya and was the first published report of malaria infections in the central highlands, he said.
He knew by watching Mt. Kenya's gradually disappearing glaciers that his world was warming, and that lowland diseases would eventually work their way higher. "But we did not expect this to happen so soon," he said.
Githeko's work has been echoed in a small number of studies around the world.
In 1996, health authorities reported a human case of tick-borne encephalitis in the Czech village of Borova Lada, elevation 3,000 feet. Until then, the Ixodes rinicus tick, which carries the disease, had never been seen above 2,600 feet.
The case caught the attention of Milan Daniel, a parasitologist the Institute for Postgraduate Medical Education in Prague who has been studying the movement of ticks in the Czech Republic for half a century.
He scoured the Sumava and Krkonose mountains and found that the ticks had migrated as high as 4,100 feet largely because of milder autumns over the last two decades, according to a series of studies published over the last four years.
From 1961 to 2005, the mean temperature in the Krkonose Mountains had increased about 2 1/2 degrees.
"This shift of the ticks," Daniel said, "is clearly connected with climate changes."
According to a landmark United Nations report released this month, global warming has reached a point where even if greenhouse gas emissions could be held stable, the trend would continue for centuries.
The report painted a grim picture of the future — rising sea levels, more intense storms, widespread drought.
Predicting the future of disease, however, has proven difficult because of myriad factors — many of which have little to do with global warming. Diseases move with people, they follow trade routes, they thrive in places with poor sanitation, they develop resistance to medicines, they can blossom during war or economic breakdowns.
"No one's saying global warming is the whole picture here," said Dr. Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. "But it is playing a role. As climate changes, it's projected to play an even greater role."
In a Beltsville, Md., laboratory filled with bathroom-sized aluminum chambers, U.S. Department of Agriculture weed physiologist Lewis Ziska is peering into the future of one of the key components of global warming — rising carbon dioxide levels.
CO2 levels have been on the rise since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago. Today, they are at their highest point in more than 650,000 years.
In the tightly sealed chambers, Ziska re-created pre-industrial conditions by turning down the concentration of carbon dioxide to 280 parts per million. In another box, he simulated the present with 370 parts per million. In a third box, he pumped up the carbon dioxide to 600 parts per million, the estimate for 2050.
Much of Ziska's work has centered on ragweed, a noxious plant that sets off allergy sufferers, such as Ziska himself. The weeds inside the tanks suck up carbon dioxide. "It's like feeding a hungry teenager," he said.
Collecting yellow pollen in plastic bags fitted around the plants, Ziska found that current conditions produced 131% more pollen than pre-industrial conditions. Future conditions produced 320% more.
"For us weed biologists, this is the worst of times and the best of times," he said.
The impact of global warming has not been all bad. Researchers recently found that rising temperatures have helped reduce some diseases related to cold weather. One British study found that the number of children infected with a cold-like virus known as respiratory syncytial virus has been declining with warming temperatures.
Combining meteorological data and emergency room admission rates from 1981 to 2004, physiologist Gavin Donaldson at University College London found each increase of 1.8 degrees clipped three weeks off the end the virus' winter season.
"A small amount of warming can go a long way, as far as changing disease transmission dynamics," said Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of Global Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Given the gradual pace of warming, there are also some chances to adapt.
After Prince William Sound's Vibrio outbreak in 2004, the state required more oyster testing in some areas. In the last two years, there have been only four cases of Vibrio food poisoning.
Life in Aguiar's remote inlet has largely returned to the way it was before. This winter has been cold. Aguiar, a bear of a man with a riotous beard, huddled inside the houseboat for warmth recently as the temperature outside hovered around 20 degrees. The pale Northern Lights pulsed over the snow-laced Chugach Mountains, and skins of ice grew on the still water.
Come summer, Aguiar will start sending oyster samples to the state. When the temperature hits about 55 degrees, he'll drop his oyster baskets 60 or 100 feet in the water for about 10 days to clear out the bacteria.
It's a solution he can live with in a warming world.
"It's not all evil," he said. "I just don't like to see rapid change." |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Scientists from 63 Countries to Investigate Polar Melting
Tue Feb 27, 2007 8:34 pm
|
|
|
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0227-03.htm
Scientists from 63 Countries to Investigate Polar Melting
by Steve Connor
Thousands of scientists from 63 countries are joining forces to make a detailed study of the Earth's polar regions, where climate change is having a dramatic impact on ice formations that have been stable for millennia.
International Polar Year (IPY), which will actually run over two years, will include research to monitor globally important changes such as the loss of sea ice in the Arctic and of ice shelves and ice sheets in the Antarctic.
"Global warming is the most challenging problem our society has ever had to face up to. Ice is the canary in the coal mine of global warming," Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, said yesterday.
Britain's effort will be spearheaded by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, which is involved in 45 IPY projects, and supported by 65 other British institutions, including 40 universities, research council institutes, government departments, museums and science centres.
"The change of phase from snow and ice to water is the biggest tipping point in the Earth's system and so, although the IPY covers a huge range of science, for me the big issue is climate change and the impact that it's having here," Professor Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said.
"So, over the next two years, I'm looking forward to major progress on key issues, such as 'How are the ice sheets responding?' and the trillion dollar question from the point of view of sea-level rise, 'How much, how quickly?'," he said.
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel in Climate Change said the Arctic was one of the fastest-warming regions of the world and summer sea ice in the northern hemisphere could disappear by the end of the century.
Meanwhile, parts of Antarctica - notably the Antarctic peninsula - have become significantly warmer, leading to the disintegration of ice shelves, large bodies of floating sea ice that are connected to the mainland. The fear is that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which have built up on land over thousands of years, will start to melt, causing global sea levels to rise.
"Parts of the ice sheets are responding to warming rather more quickly than glaciologists had thought," Professor Rapley said. "In parts of the Antarctic, there's been a significant and sustained acceleration. The trouble is we've never seen a major ice sheet collapse before.
"IPY is much more than climate change. It's got everything from astronomy on the high plateaux of the Antarctic, through plate tectonics, to social sciences and the welfare of the northern indigenous peoples," Professor Rapley said.
The Antarctic ice sheet is up to 3 miles thick in places and it holds 90 per cent of the world's fresh water.
It is also crucial to the circulation of the world's ocean currents and therefore to planetary air circulation.
In the Arctic, the problems of melting ice will involve the 4 million people who live in the region. Global warming is already reducing the area of ocean ice by 3 per cent every decade. |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Airborne soot more harmful than thought, CMU researchers say
Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:14 am
|
|
|
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07066/767332-115.stm
Airborne soot more harmful than thought, CMU researchers say
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The tiniest bits of airborne soot from vehicle exhaust, power plants and industries have the potential to affect global climate and take a much bigger toll on human health than previously thought, according to a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
Published last week in the journal Science, their findings show that the microscopic particles, altered by chemical processes in the atmosphere, produce more clouds and are potentially more toxic, and their contributions to unhealthy pollution are larger and spread over a wider area.
The research by professors Allen Robinson and Neil Donahue raises questions about the effectiveness of federal particle regulations that were just tightened in September and concludes that the government needs new ways of measuring and regulating smoke and soot.
"One of our key findings is that this chemical processing leads to more particulate matter in the air, meaning that regulators are likely underestimating how sources such as cars and trucks contribute to pollution," said Dr. Robinson, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering and public policy. "We need to take a holistic approach to regulating these sources that account for all emissions."
He said the government's pollution models overestimate direct emissions from diesel trucks, cars and power plants, but fail to accurately account for the more toxic particulates formed aloft. The Carnegie Mellon research shows that the chemical production of particles in the atmosphere also leads to a spreading of pollution over a wider geographic area.
"We're seeing that urban pollution doesn't stay contained in the cities, but impacts rural and other downwind areas, creating even more complicated issues for regulators," Dr. Robinson said.
Airborne particles or soot have long been the least understood components of the global climate system, but ones that pose a serious health risk because they are breathed deep into the lungs.
Approximately 20,000 Americans die prematurely each year because of particle exposure -- primarily from heart disease -- and almost 70 million live in areas that violate the federal limits.
Each year, soot also causes nearly 300,000 asthma attacks and 2 million lost workdays due to respiratory ailments.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that each ton of soot boosts health costs by $100,000 annually.
The fine airborne particles also play a big role in climate change, the research shows, by forming droplets in clouds that affect how much sun is able to pass through and the amount of moisture that is returned to the planet's surface. That strong influence on cloud formation can alter the global climate.
"The more we understand particulate matter, the more we realize that complexity has been masking our ability to calculate how big a role greenhouse gases have played in inducing global warming," said Dr. Donahue, an associate professor of chemical engineering and chemistry.
"Moreover, the new mechanism we found changes the chemical properties of particles, making them more likely to participate in cloud formation. Therefore, particulate matter may be having a stronger influence on global climate than previously thought." |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'
Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:03 am
|
|
|
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fobserver.guardian.co.uk%2Fuk_news%2Fstory%2F0%2C%2C2031455%2C00.html
Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'
Ben Goldacre and David Adam
Sunday March 11, 2007
A Leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.
He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat. 'I thought they were trying to educate the public about the complexities of climate change,' he said. 'This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit someone who is on the other side of the issue.' He is considering a complaint to Ofcom, the broadcast regulator.
The film, shown on Thursday, was made by Martin Durkin. In 1997, he produced a similar series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which attacked many of the claims of the environmental movement.
Durkin said: 'Carl Wunsch was most certainly not "duped" into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said.'
Channel 4 said: 'We feel it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the scientists featured now has concerns about his contribution, we will look into it in the normal way.' |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Peru's alarming water truth
Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:09 pm
|
|
|
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6412351.stm
Peru's alarming water truth
By James Painter
In Peru
Oscar-winning Al Gore chose to call his film about global warming An Inconvenient Truth. But for Peru it is more like an alarming reality.
Government officials, water experts and environmentalists agree the rapid melting of the spectacular Andean glaciers featured in the film is threatening the long-term economic and human development of what is South America's most "water-stressed" country.
"Global warming for us is not just about the environment," warns Julio Garcia of Peru's National Council on the Environment, Conam.
"It's more about how on earth we can develop Peru in a sustainable way over the coming years."
Peru's water problem lies in part in the peculiar geography of the country.
Most of the Pacific coast would be desert if it were not for the water flowing down from the Andes.
Seventy per cent of the population live along the coast, where less than 2% of the country's water resources are found.
In contrast, the Atlantic side of the Andes has 98% of the water and about a quarter of the population.
"Much of our water supply is on the wrong side of the wall," says Mr Garcia.
Glacial melt
Peru has the largest number of tropical glaciers in the world. These water towers are crucial for slowly releasing water, particularly in the dry season. And Peru desperately needs the water all year round.
Apart from the need for drinking water, 80% of the country's power has traditionally come from hydro-electricity. And, the current boom sectors of the economy - agro-exports and mining - also absorb huge volumes of water.
Lima already has a large deficit between supply and demand and official projections say it's going to get a lot larger in the future.
Juan Carlos Barandiaran
The latest figures on glacial melt are alarming.
Estimates by a team of Peruvian and international scientists say that Peru and Bolivia, which together account for more than 90% of the world's tropical glaciers, have lost about a third of the surface area of their glaciers between the 1970s and 2006.
A lot of attention has been paid to the range known as Cordillera Blanca, home to Peru's largest mountain, Huascaran, at 6,768 metres (22,200ft).
Water coming down from the range feeds an array of economic activities in the Rio Santa valley below it.
This includes a hydro-electric plant providing 5% of Peru's electricity, drinking water for two cities, and commercial and small-scale agriculture.
"Water from glaciers is absolutely critical for the valley in the six or seven months of the dry season," says Gabriela Rosas, a researcher at the national weather institute, Senamhi.
Glacial melt is calculated to provide 10 to 20% of the total annual water run-off in the valley, but it can reach 40% in the dry season.
Ms Rosas is part of a team modelling future water availability in Peru.
The models, based on moderate rises in temperature, predict annual water availability will increase slightly as more of the glaciers melt, but that there will be a dramatic decline after 2050 and possibly as early as 2030.
Seasonal variations will become more intense, with less water available in the dry season.
Low reserves
Lima, Peru's capital, is a particular worry.
It is built on a desert, supports a population of more than eight million, and receives hardly any rainfall.
The city gets most of its water from the Rio Rimac and two other rivers with sources high up in the Andes. The rivers are partly fed by glacial melt, although less than the Rio Santa valley.
"Lima already has a large deficit between supply and demand and official projections say it's going to get a lot larger in the future," says Juan Carlos Barandiaran, former head of projects for the municipal water company, Sedapal.
Demand is set to increase as the city absorbs thousands of new arrivals every year.
"We must have more reserves," says Mr Barandiaran.
The last major drought in 2004 pushed the city's water supplies to the limit. "If we had droughts two years running our current reserves would not support it," he says.
President Alan Garcia's government wants to give water connections to nearly a million more people in Lima, but experts say this will increase demand even more.
The project is known as "Agua para todos" or "Water for all". But, says Sedapal's former president, Carlos Silvestri: "It will be very little water for all."
'Vulnerable'
For several years, Mr Silvestri and other experts have been urging successive governments to build a range of multi-million-dollar infrastructure works, including a second tunnel through the Andes, in order to build up their reserves.
We really are on the edge of an abyss
Carlos Silvestri
Such works have become even more urgent with the prospect of reduced water in the dry season. They could capture and store more water during the wet season.
"We are only city in South America with so few reserves - less than a year's supply. We are very vulnerable," says Mr Silvestri.
He also worries about the increased frequency and intensity of droughts due to El Nino, and Lima's current reliance on just one 60-km (37-mile) tunnel fetching water from the other side of the Andes. And now there's glacial melt.
"We really are on the edge of an abyss," he warns.
Scientists say it is hard to predict in how many years the effect of glacial melt will really bite. But it is remarkable how many experts in Peru take seriously the prediction that the time will come this century when a barrel of water will cost more than a barrel of oil.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6412351.stm |
| |
|
|
mmmmbarium
tagged & banned
Joined: 27 Dec 2005
Posts: 385
Location: Hell on Earth |
|
Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:44 am
|
|
|
Global Warming Replaces 9/11 As Justification To Do Anything
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2007/130307doanything.htm
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Invoking September 11 has officially been succeeded by a new mantra and an excuse for the state to unleash a fresh tyranny no matter how offensive and damaging to individual liberty it may be. Global warming has replaced 9/11 as the justification to do anything!
The bellicose denouncement of global warming skeptics (that is skeptics of the man-made explanation) and their tarring as being akin to holocaust deniers, is beginning to mirror what happened after 9/11, when anyone who criticized Bush's agenda was lambasted as a traitor, a terrorist sympathizer, and completely divorced from the political mainstream.
Simply evoking the menace of global warming has become the government's justification to do anything!
Politicians are professional liars, they make careers out of deceiving people and twisting reality to fit pre-conceived agendas, yet a cascade of otherwise rationally minded people are eager to blindly trust everything they have to say about climate change, no matter how delusional it sounds.
They are also willing to comply with the ridiculous overbearing "solutions" to climate change that will just coincidentally restrict mobility and freedom of travel, regulate personal behavior, empower and expand global government and reinvigorate the surveillance state - everything Big Brother ever wanted - but surely they wouldn't lie to us about global warming to achieve it, would they?
What is more dangerous? A temperature fluctuation that has been mirrored and exceeded ten times in the last thousand years alone without any lasting impact on the eco-system, or an excuse for western governments to tighten the shackles of fascism around our ankles in the name of saving the planet?
Has not recent history alone offered proof in triplicate that governments exploit, hype and engender hysteria about monsters under the bed that the state itself has manufactured? Why should we believe them this time?
If western governments were really concerned about climate change then they would be offering us incentives not punishments for reducing CO2 emissions in the form of tax breaks. But tax breaks aren't a giant cash bonanza for our exalted guardians of Mother Earth, the loving government, who are going to tax the living hell out of us for our own good and for the very survival of mankind, while lining their own pockets.
The Great Global Warming Swindle: A droplet of common sense in an ocean of hysteria. Watch it.
New developments this week conclusively betray the fact that global warming is a creature of Big Brother and it is being used to eliminate whatever shreds of personal liberty we have left.
- Britain's next Bilderberg-appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown says we need a "new world order" to combat climate change.
- The EU has decided to ban conventional light bulbs in every British home by 2009. So-called energy saving bulbs don't actually save much energy and contain toxic waste banned by the EU itself, but let's not start asking any difficult questions about that. Such an absurd mandate is obviously impossible to properly enforce so expect to see a tax on dirty evil light bulbs and regular home inspections by wardens (contracted out to electric companies and meter readers) of the state to check on Winston Smith's compliance with green law.
- Since humans produce carbon dioxide by breathing, surely the sensible thing to do would be to tax the air we breathe? There's actually a discussion of it. The New York Times ran an editorial last week calling on the government to impose a carbon tax on humans for the air we breathe!
Taxing the air we breathe! Can we now not agree that hysterical control freaks have seized the reigns of the global warming debate?
The idea of taxing the air we breathe has for decades been a satirical allegory of government control but now it's becoming a reality, because global warming is the new justification to do anything!
Global warming also acts as a convenient veil for the real environmental crimes that will continue on behalf of the mega corporations and scientific establishment that are in bed with the very government imposing draconian measures on us in the name of the environment. While we are forced to subsidize our own air supply, GM contamination, toxic waste dumping, bizarre cloning mad science, and the destruction of the rain forests will continue apace while we are still being lectured about light bulbs and beer bottles.
There's no time left for a debate they tell us - we don't want to hear about the medieval warm period, we don't want to hear about how temperatures dropped as carbon emissions increased for four decades from the 40's to the 80's, we don't want to hear about how the troposphere shows no build up of greenhouse gases, we don't want to hear about sun activity and its direct correlation with climate change, we don't want to hear about arctic ice samples showing how CO2 lags behind temperature increase - because global warming is our justification to do anything and we are going to do it whether you like it or not! |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global warming story hits critical mass
Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:23 pm
|
|
|
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070313/NEWS/103130045
Global warming story hits critical mass
BY BOB BERWYN
summit daily news
Summit County, CO Colorado
KEYSTONE — Global warming is the hottest story of our time, and it will get even bigger as the full implications of melting ice caps and rising sea levels percolate through the media pipeline and into general public awareness, a panel of journalists said last weekend during the American Bar Association's environmental law conference.
The discussion was focused on how the media has covered the story and whether or not public perception of global warming has changed in recent months and years. Among the questions the panelists tried to answer is why it has taken so long for the story to reach critical mass.
Most of the panelists credited Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," with helping to generate attention. The Democratic takeover in Congress has also advanced public debate, the panelists said. And even though the basic global warming science — heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere — is "third-grade" stuff, according the Wall Street Journal's John Fialka, the issues have been clouded by a massive, industry funded propaganda and disinformation campaign aimed at creating uncertainty.
But now the issue is taking center stage, and journalists must help explain the evolving story in terms that readers can understand, by showing them how the impacts will affect their lives, the panelists agreed.
Widespread impacts
"If the scientists are anywhere near right, we can expect massive dislocations," said Fialka, of the Wall Street Journal's Washington, D.C., bureau. As always, the biggest burden will fall on the poor when sea levels rise and disease vectors grow in developing countries, he said, adding that those impacts will subsequently require the charity of developed industrial countries.
The next section of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, focusing on global warming impacts, is due to be released at a meeting in Belgium next month. A draft version of the report says that, within a few decades, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages, while tens of millions will be flooded out of their homes. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread, pests like fire ants will thrive and by 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos. By 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the IPCC draft report.
"We live in a country where more people care about the death of Anna Nicole Smith than the death of a planet," said moderator Judy Muller, a long-time NPR contributor and associate professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism.
Most of the panelists agreed that there has been a huge change in public perception of the global warming issue just in the past year. After explaining that the story has been reported for several decades, they tried to answer the question of why it has taken so long to catch hold.
The challenge at this point may be explaining the full import of global warming, said ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore, who's been reporting on the issue for more than two years.
Blakemore, who has covered numerous wars over the years, said global warming is the most challenging story he's worked on.
"It's surreal to have pre-eminent scientists tell us very seriously that civilization as we know it is over," Blakemore said. "The scale is unprecedented. It touches every aspect of life."
Cost and consensus
For one thing, it's becoming clear that global warming is going to cost — big-time — across all sectors of the economy.
"All the major stakeholders are going to take a hit — unions, the energy industry, everybody," Fialka said.
"The public debate is lagging way behind scientific consensus, which is as strong as the consensus on the link between smoking and cancer," said author Eugene Linden, who penned a recent book on the issue called "The Winds of Change; Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations."
According to Linden and Blakemore, the global warming issue has been the subject of a massive, industry-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaign aimed at creating the perception that there is still a scientific debate on the basic facts of global warming.
"We have been spun by Exxon and Peabody Coal," Blakemore said, comparing the situation to the long-running effort by tobacco companies to create uncertainty about the health risks of smoking.
Only one of the panelists, Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page editor Sean Paige, took a contrarian view.
Paige, the only panelist who wasn't prepared to jump wholeheartedly on the global warming bandwagon, said a decade of sensationalistic coverage of environmental issues has resulted in a cry-wolf syndrome.
"Maybe the wolf is at the door now," Paige said, referring to global warming. "But the public has tuned out. We (journalists) haven't been skeptical enough of the environmental anxiety industry," he said.
"And nothing focuses the mind like an impending tidal wave of regulation," said Paige, referring to the potential for top-down federal rules to regulate greenhouse gases from a Democractic Congress.
Paige, describing himself as a layered skeptic, said there's still room for a global warming debate.
"What can be done and what will it cost?" Paige asked. Journalists should be asking whether it's really wise at this point to pour massive resources into prevention when the money might be better spent on adaptive measures. Paige said it's not clear that capping greenhouse gas emissions, for example, will make a meaningful difference in curbing the warming trend.
Political context
Paige also said he sees a form of eco-McCarthyism on the rise, with the fixation on "consensus" leading to a muzzling of dissenting voices.
"Let's silence everybody who doesn't agree," Paige said, characterizing the mood as he perceives it and claiming that there are legitimate scientists out there who have valid questions about the state of global warming science. But those voices are not being heard, he said, expressing concern about the potential loss of civil liberties in the rush to find a solution to the problem.
"We had a chance to have a reasonable debate," Linden replied. "Instead we had denial. The Bush administration and a Republican Congress had years and years to frame a response to global warming that doesn't involve government regulation," Linden continued.
But that never happened because the Republican leadership never acknowledged that global warming exists, said panelist Margaret Kriz, who covers energy and the environment for the National Journal.
"The people who set the agenda didn't believe, so for all practical purposes, it didn't exist," Kriz said, singling committee chairs like James Inhofe, who loudly claimed that global warming was a hoax, using his leadership role on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as his pulpit.
Linden said those denialists are now losing credibility by changing their tune.
"They're now saying the climate is changing, but that it's natural," he scoffed. "It's not as if global warming will only hit liberals. It's an equal-opportunity destroyer. And the hardest thing of all will be admitting that those insufferable environmentalists were right," Linden said. |
| |
|
|
PAK
Joined: 03 Feb 2006
Posts: 1324
|
|
Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:04 am
|
|
|
Global Warming Replaces 9/11 As Justification To Do Anything
Stop asking questions and just let us tax the living hell out of you, including the very air you breathe, after all - it's for the environment and we've never lied to you before have we?
Prison Planet | March 13, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
Invoking September 11 has officially been succeeded by a new mantra and an excuse for the state to unleash a fresh tyranny no matter how offensive and damaging to individual liberty it may be. Global warming has replaced 9/11 as the justification to do anything!
The bellicose denouncement of global warming skeptics (that is skeptics of the man-made explanation) and their tarring as being akin to holocaust deniers , is beginning to mirror what happened after 9/11, when anyone who criticized Bush's agenda was lambasted as a traitor, a terrorist sympathizer, and completely divorced from the political mainstream.
Simply evoking the menace of global warming has become the government's justification to do anything!
Politicians are professional liars, they make careers out of deceiving people and twisting reality to fit pre-conceived agendas, yet a cascade of otherwise rationally minded people are eager to blindly trust everything they have to say about climate change, no matter how delusional it sounds.
They are also willing to comply with the ridiculous overbearing "solutions" to climate change that will just coincidentally restrict mobility and freedom of travel, regulate personal behavior, empower and expand global government and reinvigorate the surveillance state - everything Big Brother ever wanted - but surely they wouldn't lie to us about global warming to achieve it, would they?
What is more dangerous? A temperature fluctuation that has been mirrored and exceeded ten times in the last thousand years alone without any lasting impact on the eco-system, or an excuse for western governments to tighten the shackles of fascism around our ankles in the name of saving the planet?
Has not recent history alone offered proof in triplicate that governments exploit, hype and engender hysteria about monsters under the bed that the state itself has manufactured? Why should we believe them this time?
The Internet leader in activist media - Prison Planet.tv . Thousands of special reports, videos, MP3's, interviews, conferences, speeches, events, documentary films, books and more - all for just 15 cents a day! Click here to subscribe! Find out the true story behind government sponsored terror, 7/7, Gladio and 9/11, get Terror Storm!
If western governments were really concerned about climate change then they would be offering us incentives not punishments for reducing CO2 emissions in the form of tax breaks. But tax breaks aren't a giant cash bonanza for our exalted guardians of Mother Earth, the loving government, who are going to tax the living hell out of us for our own good and for the very survival of mankind, while lining their own pockets.
The Great Global Warming Swindle : A droplet of common sense in an ocean of hysteria. Watch it.
New developments this week conclusively betray the fact that global warming is a creature of Big Brother and it is being used to eliminate whatever shreds of personal liberty we have left.
- Britain's next Bilderberg-appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown says we need a "new world order" to combat climate change.
- The EU has decided to ban conventional light bulbs in every British home by 2009. So-called energy saving bulbs don't actually save much energy and contain toxic waste banned by the EU itself , but let's not start asking any difficult questions about that. Such an absurd mandate is obviously impossible to properly enforce so expect to see a tax on dirty evil light bulbs and regular home inspections by wardens (contracted out to electric companies and meter readers) of the state to check on Winston Smith's compliance with green law.
- Since humans produce carbon dioxide by breathing, surely the sensible thing to do would be to tax the air we breathe? There's actually a discussion of it. The New York Times ran an editorial last week calling on the government to impose a carbon tax on humans for the air we breathe!
Taxing the air we breathe! Can we now not agree that hysterical control freaks have seized the reigns of the global warming debate?
The idea of taxing the air we breathe has for decades been a satirical allegory of government control but now it's becoming a reality, because global warming is the new justification to do anything!
Global warming also acts as a convenient veil for the real environmental crimes that will continue on behalf of the mega corporations and scientific establishment that are in bed with the very government imposing draconian measures on us in the name of the environment. While we are forced to subsidize our own air supply, GM contamination, toxic waste dumping, bizarre cloning mad science, and the destruction of the rain forests will continue apace while we are still being lectured about light bulbs and beer bottles.
There's no time left for a debate they tell us - we don't want to hear about the medieval warm period, we don't want to hear about how temperatures dropped as carbon emissions increased for four decades from the 40's to the 80's, we don't want to hear about how the troposphere shows no build up of greenhouse gases, we don't want to hear about sun activity and its direct correlation with climate change, we don't want to hear about arctic ice samples showing how CO2 lags behind temperature increase - because global warming is our justification to do anything and we are going to do it whether you like it or not!
_________________
... we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. Aldous Huxley |
| |
|
|
mmmmbarium
tagged & banned
Joined: 27 Dec 2005
Posts: 385
Location: Hell on Earth |
|
Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:15 am
|
|
|
Now the EU wants to impose speed limits on the Auto Bahn to help fight climate change, while china pollutes away......
Are you starting to see whats happening here?
EU wants to cap speeds on Autobahn
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/03/13/eu-wants-to-cap-speeds-on-autobahn/
Say it ain't so. An EU official has gone on record suggesting that Germans should give up their beloved freedom to speed on stretches of the country's famed Autobahn in deference to the EU's more aggressive climate change policy. Reports from Germany are that the nation's people find the suggestion ludicrous, farcical and a downright threat to their freedom. The popular German slogan "free driving for free citizens" has been ringing out on internet sites collecting reactions to the proposal.
It certainly doesn't sound as if capping the speed limit across the Autobahn is going to happen, but nevertheless a debate has begun about what many consider to be a waste of fuel and needless emissions created by blasts down the Autobahn. While it's tough to argue that most people travelling at triple digit speeds aren't doing it just for fun, instituting a general speed limit based on the argument that energy is needlessly wasted strikes us a slippery slope. Formula 1, on those grounds, is a needless waste of energy, or at least one fans could forego. All motorsports, for that matter, could be targeted with this argument.
It seems to us that the proper way to address unlimited speed on the Autobahn and the extra emissions it creates are to encourage automakers and entrepenuers to develop high-performance sports cars that are also more environmentally friendly. Freedom not only includes the choice to drive fast, but also to do so in an environmentally responsible way if one's available. |
| |
|
|
mmmmbarium
tagged & banned
Joined: 27 Dec 2005
Posts: 385
Location: Hell on Earth |
|
Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:16 am
|
|
|
.. |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Push to Fix Ozone Layer and Slow Global Warming
Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:19 pm
|
|
|
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070315/ZNYT01/703150472/1002/BUSINESS
Push to Fix Ozone Layer and Slow Global Warming
A coalition of industrial and developing countries is pushing for stringent limits on a popular air-conditioner refrigerant.
HONG KONG, March 14 — An unusual coalition of industrial and developing countries began pushing Wednesday for stringent limits on the world’s most popular refrigerant for air-conditioners, as evidence mounts that the refrigerant harms the earth’s ozone layer and contributes to global warming.
The coalition is pitted against China, which has become the world’s leading manufacturer of air-conditioners that use the refrigerant, HCFC-22. Most window air-conditioners and air-conditioning systems in the United States use this refrigerant, as well.
International pressure has grown rapidly this winter for quick action. “We scientifically have proof: if we accelerate the phaseout of HCFC, we are going to make a great contribution to climate change,” said Romina Picolotti, the chief of Argentina’s environmental secretariat.
An accelerated phaseout of the refrigerant could speed up by five years the healing of the ozone layer of the atmosphere. It could also cut emissions of global-warming gases by the equivalent of at least one-sixth of the reductions called for under the Kyoto Protocol.
The United States joined Argentina, Brazil, Iceland, Mauritania and Norway on Wednesday in notifying the Ozone Secretariat of the United Nations Environment Program that they want to negotiate an accelerated phaseout of hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFC’s, at an international conference in Montreal in September.
The conference is tied to the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol, which has reduced emissions of most ozone-depleting gases but left a loophole for HCFC-22 production by developing countries. China has repeatedly said it will honor all current rules of the Montreal Protocol but does not want to add new ones.
Recent studies have shown that steeply rising production of HCFC-22 by China, India and other developing countries has slowed the healing of the ozone layer, which protects humans, animals and vegetation from the sun’s dangerous ultraviolet rays.
A report last week by five American and European scientists found that sharp cutbacks in emissions of ozone-depleting gases since 1987 have been far more effective in combating global warming than the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that was aimed directly at limiting climate change.
HCFC’s and other ozone-depleting gases are extremely powerful warming gases. Gram for gram, the ones used as refrigerants have thousands of times the global-warming effect of carbon dioxide. The ozone-depleting gases are released in far smaller quantities, though, than carbon dioxide, which is emitted when fossil fuels are burned by vehicle engines, power plants and other users.
The report by the European and American experts, published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the Montreal Protocol had proved to be 5.5 times as effective as the Kyoto accord was intended to be in cutting emissions of global-warming gases. The Montreal agreement has been in force much longer and applies to developing and industrial nations alike, while the Kyoto Protocol has binding limits only for industrial nations.
The report has caught the attention of countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans that fear that global warming will lead to a rise in sea levels and a significant loss of their limited land.
“As small island nations, our main concern is that whatever touches the climate has to be dealt with fairly quickly,” said Sateeaved Seebaluck, permanent secretary in the environment ministry of Mauritius, an island nation well east of Africa in the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Seebaluck said that a flurry of news reports about HCFC-22 this winter had been widely e-mailed among specialists and had led to greatly increased international interest in addressing the problem.
The Montreal Protocol currently allows developing countries to keep increasing their production of HCFC-22 until 2016, and then freezes production at that level until 2040, when it is supposed to be halted. But that schedule was devised in the early 1990s, when HCFC-22 was used mainly in industrial nations; developing countries were seen as too poor ever to afford much of the chemical.
The Kyoto Protocol then exempted HCFC-22 and other ozone-depleting substances from production and consumption limits on the grounds that the Montreal agreement had already addressed those matters.
Use of HCFC-22 has soared in the third world with the economic growth of China, India and other countries, along with the sharp drop in air-conditioner costs that has accompanied China’s growing skill in making them cheaply. Mr. Seebaluck said Mauritius’s use of HCFC-22 had risen more than 100-fold in the last six years because of a boom in hotel construction and the rapid expansion of the fishing industry, which uses a lot of refrigeration to preserve freshness.
The use in India and China, far larger markets, has been rising as much as 35 percent a year lately, with specialists predicting that similar growth could last through 2016.
Industrial nations are required to phase out HCFC-22 by 2020, but most are moving faster. The European Union phased it out in 2004. The United States will ban domestic production in 2010 and is considering whether to ban imports then, as well.
China has begun making air-conditioners with more modern refrigerants for the European market. But by continuing to produce HCFC-22 for markets elsewhere, the Chinese have been able to claim hundreds of millions of dollars a year in payments from an obscure United Nations agency.
The payments are to compensate Chinese chemical factories for incinerating a waste gas generated as part of the manufacturing process for HCFC-22. If the Chinese industry switches to modern refrigerants, it would no longer produce the waste gas and so would lose the credits.
India has a large and growing HCFC-22 industry that is also reaping a fortune in credits. But the Indian government has largely stayed on the sidelines in international talks, while China has called for industrial nations to pay even more for the incineration of waste gases from HCFC-22 production; China proposes to spend much of that to develop its renewable-energy industry.
A big problem is that no one has agreed what should replace HCFC-22. The chemicals requiring the fewest changes to air-conditioner designs avoid harm to the ozone layer but are still as potent, gram for gram, in terms of global warming.
Mack McFarland, chief atmospheric scientist at DuPont, which favors an accelerated phaseout of HCFC-22, said the company had developed a chemical that also has little effect on global warming. But the chemical is suitable only for vehicle air-conditioners, not the building air-conditioners that now rely on HCFC-22.
Environmentalists contend that chemical companies and air-conditioner makers are too slow to embrace other refrigerants, like ammonia or carbon dioxide, that may pose technical challenges but could be better for the ozone layer and global warming.
“Industry certainly is somewhat concerned about some of those chemicals because some of them don’t promise a lot of profits,” said Alexander von Bismarck, campaigns director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington advocacy group.
David Doniger, climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that even switching to new commercial refrigerants that are potent global-warming agents could help the environment. Air-conditioners designed for the new refrigerants tend to be more energy-efficient and often do not use as much refrigerant, he said. |
| |
|
|
Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| NY Times article misrepresented Gore statements on sea level
Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:26 pm
|
|
|
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703150012
NY Times article misrepresented Gore statements on sea level, hurricanes; mis-ID'ed global warming skeptic as "rank-and-file scientist"
Summary: In its article on global warming, The New York Times used a false comparison to suggest that Al Gore was incorrect about the rise in sea levels and baselessly suggested that Gore made a false claim about hurricanes. The Times also misidentified Don Easterbrook, calling him a "rank-and-file" scientist, when, in fact, he has expressed skeptical views about global warming that put him at odds with the scientific consensus on the issue.
In a March 13 article, "From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype," New York Times science writer William J. Broad claimed that former Vice President Al Gore's portrayal of the threat of global warming in his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006), has received criticism "not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists." The article began by naming Don J. Easterbrook, "an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University," as one of Gore's critics, whom Broad described as a "rank-and-file scientist ... who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind." In fact, Easterbrook has expressed skeptical views about global warming that put him at odds with the scientific consensus on the issue. In addition, Broad failed to note the connection between two scientists quoted in his article and the oil and gas industry, and he used a false comparison to suggest Gore was incorrect about the rise in sea levels and falsely suggested that Gore endorsed the view that global warming affects hurricane frequency.
Also, Media Matters for America has documented that scientists identified as skeptics in Broad's article -- Richard Lindzen, Bjørn Lomborg, Roy Spencer, and Benny J. Peiser -- all have made statements questioning global warming that have either been debunked or discredited by the scientific community, which Broad did not report. The night before the story appeared in print, it was trumpeted by conservative Internet gossip Matt Drudge on March 12 with the headline: "NY TIMES PLANS HIT ON GORE, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE," although Drudge did not link to the story until it was posted on the Times' website.
Don J. Easterbrook
From the Times' March 13 article, which featured several quotes from Easterbrook and suggested that he is a "middle ground" scientist and not a "skeptic[] of catastrophic warming":
"I don't want to pick on Al Gore," Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data."
[...]
Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook [sic], who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.
But as Grist Magazine's weblog, Gristmill, noted, an October 12, 2006, press release, announcing a talk Easterbrook gave to the Geological Society of America claimed that "Easterbrook predicts that temperatures should cool between 2065 until 2100, and that global temperatures at the end of the century should be less than 1 degree cooler than at present." The release further noted that "Easterbrook challenges the theory that the global warming of the past century was caused by human input of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." This view puts Easterbrook at odds with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released a report in February that found that "[c]ontinued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming," and that the "best estimate" for the "low scenario" of temperature change in the next century is a "likely range" of an increase between "1.1°C to 2.9°C."
Robert M. Carter
Broad also cited Robert M. Carter as asserting that "[n]owhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet. ... Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change." Broad identified Carter simply as "a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia," but he failed to note that Carter is a global warming skeptic with ties to the oil and gas, coal, and timber industries.
Carter identifies himself as a "founding member" of conservative Australian think tank Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). A June 13, 2005, article in the Australian Canberra Times reported that, upon its launch, the "Australian Environment Foundation's registered office and principal place of business is listed as right-wing lobby group, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA)," which according to an August 9, 2003, Inter Press Service report, is funded by "mostly mining, oil, tobacco and energy companies." The IPA's funders reportedly include "Western Mining Corporation, Esso Australia (a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil), the top fifteen electricity companies - BHP, Shell, Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, Clough Engineering (and) Telstra (telecommunications company)."
Paul Reiter
Paul Reiter, director of the Insects and Infectious Diseases Unit at the Institute Pasteur, was identified as a "iologist[]" and "an active skeptic of global warming's effects." The article did not report that [b]Reiter also has extensive connections to the oil and gas industry. For instance, he is listed as a member of the "Science and Economic Advisory Council" to the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. ExxonSecrets.org calculated that the Annapolis Center has received nearly $700,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998, based on ExxonSecrets.org analysis, the site reports, of Exxon Mobil Corp.'s corporate documents and tax filings. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative think tank, also lists Reiter as one of the organization's "CEI Experts." As Media Matters has noted, CEI is a conservative institution largely funded by the energy industry and has received substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry, including more than $2 million from the Exxon Mobil Corp. since 1998. According to the weblog Think Progress, Exxon no longer provides funding to CEI. On March 19, 2006, The Washington Post further reported: "The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says Exxon Mobil Corp. is a 'major donor' largely as a result of its effort to push that position."
Reiter has also been published in Tech Central Station daily, which from 2000 to October 2006, was run by the Republican lobbying firm DCI, and according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), DCI is also a "registered ExxonMobil lobbying firm." UCS further reported that "Tech Central Station contributors on the global warming issue are the familiar spokespeople from ExxonMobil-funded organizations, including Sallie Baliunas, Robert Balling, David Legates, Patrick Michaels, Willie Soon, George Taylor, and others," and additionally has received at least $93,000 in funding from Exxon. According to an October 27, 2006, ABC News report, in a joint letter, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called upon Exxon to cease funding organizations "whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth." In their letter, according to ABC News, "[t]he senators singled out the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, and the Tech Central Station Web site as beneficiaries of Exxon's efforts to sow doubt within the public about the scientific consensus behind global warming." (For full report, please refer to the January 3 UCS press release and click on "Full Report" PDF link.)
More misinformation
In addition to not noting some scientists with skeptical views about global warming, Broad used a false comparison about sea levels to suggest that Gore's claims in his book, An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale Books, May 2006), and in his documentary, are inconsistent with the scientific community. Broad also falsely suggested that Gore was endorsing the view of some researchers that global warming increases the frequency of hurricanes.
Sea levels
The Times article set up a false comparison by stating that the IPCC report, which "estimated that the world's seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches," was in contrast to Gore's claim, "citing no particular time frame" that seas would rise "up to 20 feet." But the article was comparing apples and oranges. In the book, Gore wrote that if the West Antarctic ice shelf "melted or slipped off its island mooring into the sea, it would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet." He added that "the West Antarctic ice shelf is virtually identical in size and mass to the Greenland ice dome, which also would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet if it melted or broke up and slipped into the sea" (Page 190):
The East Antarctic ice shelf is the largest ice mass on the planet and had been thought to be still increasing in size. However, two new studies in 2006 showed first that the overall volumes of ice in East Antarctica now appear to be declining, and that 85 percent of the glaciers there appear to be accelerating their flow toward the sea. Second, it showed that air temperatures measured high above this mass of ice appear to have warmed more rapidly than air temperatures anywhere else in the world. This finding was actually a surprise, and scientists have not yet been able to explain why it is occurring.
East Antarctica is still considered far more stable over long periods of time than the West Antarctic ice shelf, which is propped up against the tops of islands. This peculiar geology is important for two reasons: first, its weight is resting on land and therefore its mass has not displaced seawater as floating ice would. So if it melted or slipped off its island mooring into the sea, it would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet. Second, the ocean flows underneath large sections of this ice shelf, and as the ocean has warmed, scientists have documented significant and alarming structural changes on the underside of the ice shelf.
Interestingly, the West Antarctic ice shelf is virtually identical in size and mass to the Greenland ice dome, which also would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet if it melted or broke up and slipped into the sea.
Gore made the same claim in the film:
GORE: If [the West Antarctic ice shelf] were to go, sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet. They've measured disturbing changes on the underside of the ice sheet. It's considered relatively more stable, however, than another big body of ice that's roughly the same size -- Greenland would also raise sea level almost 20 feet if it went.
The IPCC, however, addressed rising sea levels as they are affected by "[c]ontinued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates." A chart projecting the rise of sea levels in six different scenarios showed that the "the best estimate for the high scenario," which defined the "likely range" of temperature increases over the next century to be from "2.4°C to 6.4°C," resulting in an increase in sea levels between 0.26 m and 0.59 m, which converts to a range of 10.24 to 23.23 inches. The IPCC further claimed that "[c]ontraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100" and that "[i]f a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7 m," which is equivalent to approximately 23 feet. The apple-to-oranges comparison Broad made on sea levels was also noted by Bob Somerby on his weblog, The Daily Howler.
Hurricanes
The Times article claimed that Gore "cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise," then reported that, in fact, "this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States," a fact the article suggests contradicts Gore's claim. From the article:
He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.
But while Gore attributed the claim "that global warming is even leading to an increased frequency of hurricanes" to "some" scientists in his book, he also acknowledged "[t]here is less agreement among scientists about the relationship between the total number of hurricanes each year and global warming." From the book (Page 81):
A growing number of new scientific studies are confirming that warmer water in the top layer of the ocean can drive more convection energy to fuel more powerful hurricanes.
There is less agreement among scientists about the relationship between the total number of hurricanes each year and global warming -- because a multi-decade natural pattern has a powerful influence on hurricane frequency. But there is now a strong, new emerging consensus that global warming is indeed linked to a significant increase in both the duration and intensity of hurricanes.
Brand-new evidence is causing some scientists to assert that global warming is even leading to an increased frequency of hurricanes, overwhelming the variability in frequency long understood to be part of natural deep-current cycles.
In the update to the film Gore said: "There is no scientific consensus linking the absolute number of hurricanes to global warming." From the update:
GORE: In the year that has passed by since the end of filming An Inconvenient Truth, there have been several brand-new scientific studies that have further firmed up the emerging consensus that links stronger hurricanes with higher ocean temperatures, particularly higher temperatures in the top layer, the top 200 feet, where the heat energy drives strength into these ocean-based storms. There is no scientific consensus linking the absolute number of hurricanes to global warming. There's some indication that on a worldwide basis, the number stays fairly steady. But when hurricanes do form out of these delicate and mysterious atmospheric conditions in the oceans, then global warming makes them stronger. And, when they get stronger with more moisture, they become more destructive.
Further, the recent IPCC report appeared to agree with Gore's assessment, concluding that "[b]ased on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs [sea surface temperatures]." [Emphasis in original.]
From the IPCC report:
Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.
From the March 13 New York Times article:
Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president's work may hold "imperfections" and "technical flaws." He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.
"We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore. "On the other hand," Dr. Hansen said, "he has the bottom line right: most storms, at least those driven by the latent heat of vaporization, will tend to be stronger, or have the potential to be stronger, in a warmer climate."
[...]
Some of Mr. Gore's centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe's warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore's message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.
It estimated that the world's seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches -- down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent. |
| |
|
|
 
|
|
 Goto page Previous
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60,
61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 Next
All times are GMT. The time now is Sat May 26, 2012 5:44 pm
|
|
|
|
|
Login
