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ssallen
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Fri May 13, 2005 9:29 pm
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http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/actions.html
Sore Throat, I came across this while going back thru some
of my old research, I have been trying to tie global warming to
chemtrails for some time. My theory is if chemtrails aren't to erradicate
global warming, which i think they are, then eventually they will certainly bring it on.
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ssallen |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| U.S. Strawberry Industry Threatens Fragile Ozone Layer
Sat May 14, 2005 2:19 am
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http://www.ems.org/nws/2005/05/13/us_strawberry_in
U.S. Strawberry Industry Threatens Fragile Ozone Layer
Washington, DC, May 13, 2005: Environmentalists today blamed the strawberry industry for the United States’ refusal to halt the unnecessary use of a potent ozone-destroying chemical, warning that the protective ozone layer over the northern hemisphere has been severely weakened in recent months. This comes at a time of rising skin cancer rates, with more than 1 million Americans diagnosed each year.
According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a Washington, DC and London-based environmental organization, special interest lobbyists for the strawberry industry are largely responsible for the continued use of the ozone depleting pesticide methyl bromide. The California Strawberry Commission, corporate sponsor of this weekend’s California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard, has consistently lobbied the U.S. government to renege on its international treaty commitment to eliminate the use of methyl bromide.
EIA Senior Campaigner Juge Gregg explained that “The time for the developed world to stop using methyl bromide has come and gone. Yet because of intense pressure from the strawberry lobby, over 4.6 million pounds of methyl bromide will be applied to U.S. strawberries this year. This is over two thirds as much methyl bromide as the rest of the developed world will use for all agricultural purposes combined.”
The strawberry industry’s demands to continue the use of methyl bromide come at a particularly perilous time for the ozone layer. Last week the scientific journal Nature reported that “the biggest ozone losses ever recorded over the Arctic” occurred this year and warned that “the spectre of an Arctic ozone hole looms.” Ozone depleted air created in the Arctic can drift over populated areas in the northern hemisphere and may have profound implications for people living in North America. Increases in ultraviolet radiation due to a thinning ozone layer can cause skin cancer, cataracts, harm the immune system and upset the fragile balance of entire ecosystems. In addition, recent studies suggest that methyl bromide’s effectiveness in destroying the ozone layer may be even greater than originally thought.
“The U.S. is catering to the strawberry lobby at the expense of our health. It is very disconcerting to see the U.S. backtrack on its commitment to protect the ozone layer while the impacts of ozone depletion are hitting so close to home,” said Gregg. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| U.S. dims hopes for G8 progress on global warming
Sat May 14, 2005 4:34 pm
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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=8485917
U.S. dims hopes for G8 progress on global warming
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it is not convinced of the need to move quickly to combat climate change, deepening environmentalists' fears that a summit on the issue in July will make no concrete progress.
President George W.Bush's chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson told BBC radio: "We are still not convinced of the need to move forward quite so quickly."
"There is general agreement that there is a lot known, but also there is a lot to be known."
His declaration came less than two months before a G8 summit which has tackling climate change at the top of its agenda.
Katherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth said the news exposed the bitter row taking place behind closed doors.
"Everybody knows that in private U.S. negotiators are saying they are not convinced of the need for action, but for Harlan Watson to say it publicly today is pretty devastating really," she told Reuters.
Scientists have warned that the world could warm by two degrees Centigrade by the end of the century, raising the specter of more droughts and floods and rising sea levels, putting millions of lives at risk.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has the presidency this year of the Group of Eight rich industrial nations, has said climate change is taking place and being exacerbated by human activities like transport and electricity generation.
He has made it a point of principle that the summit at the Gleneagles golf course in Scotland from July 6-8 should come up with a blueprint for action.
But the United States, which has refused to sign up to the Kyoto protocol on cutting emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, has dug in its heels at every turn.
"The real danger will be a communique that is all hot air with no substance." Pearce said. "It will count as a huge missed opportunity."
Richard Tarasofsky, head of sustainable development at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, said part of the problem was that agreeing on action would automatically expose how big the problem was and how little had so far been done.
"The implications of the adaptation agenda are huge and so to try to foster clear international responses will actually be quite difficult," he said. "It will be quite murky."
To make matters worse -- at least for environmentalists, nuclear power has leaped back onto the agenda as a clean and quick fix.
Bush has announced a major push for nuclear power and even Blair has linked the two.
"There can't be a debate on climate change without a serious consideration of it," he told reporters on Thursday. |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
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Sun May 15, 2005 6:55 am
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Screw Bush and his Coterie of the Deliberately Obtuse. There's now a definite groundswell of energy organizing to work around the arrogant SOB's:
May 14, 2005
Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/n...html?oref=login
SEATTLE, May 13 - Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy.
The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012.
On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition, the latest Republican mayor to join.
Mr. Nickels said that to achieve the 7 percent reduction, Seattle was requiring cruise ships that dock in its bustling port to turn off their diesel engines while resupplying and to rely only on electric power provided by the city, a requirement that has forced some ships to retrofit. And by the end of this year the city's power utility, Seattle City Light, will be the only utility in the country with no net emissions of greenhouse gases, the mayor's office said.
Salt Lake City has become Utah's largest buyer of wind power in order to meet its reduction target. In New York, the Bloomberg administration is trying to reduce emissions from the municipal fleet by buying hybrid electric-gasoline-powered vehicles.
Nathan Mantua, assistant director of the Center for Science in the Earth System at the University of Washington, which estimates the impact of global warming on the Northwest, said the coalition's efforts were laudable, but probably of limited global impact.
"It is clearly a politically significant step in the right direction," Dr. Mantua said. "It may be an environmentally significant step for air quality in the cities that are going to do this, but for the global warming problem it is a baby step."
Mr. Nickels said he decided to act when the Kyoto Protocol took effect in February without the support of the United States, the world's largest producer of heat-trapping gases. On that day, he announced he would try to carry out the agreement himself, at least as far as Seattle was concerned, and called on other mayors to join him.
The coalition is not the first effort by local leaders to take up the initiative on climate change. California, under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is moving to limit carbon dioxide emissions, and Gov. George A. Pataki of New York, also a Republican, has led efforts to reduce power plant emissions in the Northeast. But the coalition is unusual in its open embrace of an international agreement that the Bush administration has spurned, Mayor Nickels's office said, and is significant because cities are huge contributors to the nation's emission of heat-trapping gases.
Michele St. Martin, communications director for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Kyoto Protocol would have resulted in a loss of five million jobs in the United States and could raise energy prices.
Ms. St. Martin said President Bush "favors an aggressive approach" on climate change, "one that fosters economic growth that will lead to new technology and innovation."
But many of the mayors said they were acting precisely out of concern for the economic vitality of their cities. Mr. Nickels, for example, pointed out that the dry winters and the steep decline projected in the glaciers of the Cascade range could affect Seattle's supply of drinking water and hydroelectric power.
The mayor of low-lying New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, a Democrat, said he joined the coalition because a projected rise in sea levels "threatens the very existence of New Orleans."
In Hawaii, the mayor of Maui County, Alan Arakawa, a Republican, said he joined because he was frustrated by the administration's slowness to recognize the scientific consensus that climate change was happening because of human interference.
"I'm hoping it sends a message they really need to start looking at what's really happening in the real world," Mayor Arakawa said..... (continued) |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global Warming Kills Species, Endangers Humans - Scientists
Thu May 19, 2005 10:34 pm
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http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=28732
Global Warming Kills Species, Endangers Humans - Scientists
Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, May 18 (IPS) - Global warming may now be the largest cause of soaring rates of species extinctions, which threaten the global ecosystems that sustain life on Earth, scientists say.
The rapidly warming polar regions are a prime example, said Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist for IUCN-the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The melting ice and permafrost are changing the habitat Arctic species need to survive, Mc Neely told IPS in advance of International Day for Biological Diversity, which falls on May 22.
''Climate change will simply accelerate habitat loss which already is the leading threat to species,'' McNeely said from his office in Gland, Switzerland.
The diversity of life on the planet is in steep decline due to habitat destruction, invasion by non-native species and over-exploitation by humans, and now climate change is the latest and perhaps greatest threat according to David King, the British government's chief scientific adviser.
''The warming could take place so quickly that many species will not be able to adapt quickly enough,'' King wrote in the British journal Birds earlier this month.
The current rate of species loss is estimated to be 1,000 times faster than at any time in history. With the expected changes due to climate change, up to 30 percent of all mammal, bird, and amphibian species are in danger of disappearing by 2050, according to a recent report from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
The assessment is an unprecedented 22-million-dollar study of Earth's life support systems. Since 2001, some 1,350 experts from 95 countries have compiled and analysed all available data on 24 of the planet's vital ecosystems and concluded that 15 are being degraded or used in an unsustainable fashion.
In essence, the assessment finds that life on Earth is unraveling.
The major difference between the lifeless, barren Moon that orbits Earth is the thin skin of life that covers the latter. Biological diversity refers to the amazing variety of living things that make up that skin, which scientists call the biosphere. Between 10 and 100 million multi-celled species make up the biosphere although only 1.5 million have been identified so far.
With so many species, the loss of a few dozen or even hundreds of exotic creatures like the Dodo or Tasmanian Tiger, while lamentable, could scarcely be considered the critical issue of the 21st century.
Yet, that is what the millennium assessment says. Ecosystems that support all life are being degraded because of the loss of biodiversity.
''The living machinery of the Earth has a tendency to move from gradual to catastrophic change with little warning,'' states the study.
Of course some species are more important than others. An ecosystem is like a house of cards: removing some cards -- or in this case, species -- makes the structure weaker but it remains standing. But remove one or two others, and it collapses.
''Everything is connected to everything else,'' said Rod Mast, vice president of the U.S.-based environmental group Conservation International. This interconnectedness is the fundamental principle of ecology.
''Sea turtles are a keystone species. They help keep coral reefs and beds of sea grass healthy,'' Mast said in an interview. ''Their eggs are important food sources for shoreline birds and mammals.''
The extinction of the endangered Leatherback or Kemp's Ridley sea turtles could have wide-ranging and largely unknown impacts on the ocean ecosystem, he said. In fact the status of sea turtles worldwide remains unknown. Mast said he hopes the first global assessment will be completed this year.
Much more is known about forest ecosystems but the full range of services they provide the planet is under appreciated. For example, forests produce oxygen, clean water, prevent erosion and flooding, capture excess carbon dioxide, and provide food and habitat for many species.
Logging all the trees in a forest ends up eliminating many species of plants, animals, birds, and insects. It also results in a loss of those ecosystem services for many years, and in some cases permanently because reduced biodiversity makes it difficult for the forest to recover.
British researchers confirmed this in a study published in the journal Nature last April. The greater the diversity of species on an island, the higher the proportion of endemic species on that island they found. In other words, biodiversity begets biodiversity.
However, more than 15,500 species now face extinction and another 60,000 are threatened, according to IUCN's 2004 Red List of Threatened Species.
By 2050, the world will be a very different place, said Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist at Duke University in the U.S. state of North Carolina.
''Vast areas of the tropics that have lost their forests will have the same damn weeds, bushes and scrawny eucalyptus trees so that you don't know if you're in Africa or the Americas,'' Pimm said.
''Without its natural diversity the world will be a poorer place. It will be boring,'' he added.
Perhaps more important will be the loss of services that the natural world currently provides free of charge.
''Nearby forests provide the clean, untreated drinking water of two the world's great cities, New York City and Rio de Janeiro,'' Pimm said.
Pricing and paying for nature's ''free'' services like soil formation, pollination, and water cleaning is difficult but a crucial step in reducing ''our profligate consumption'' added IUCN's McNeely.
World consumption of natural resources has increased by a factor of 16 while the global population has only increased by a factor of four since 1900, McNeely said.
''Many of us are convinced that this rate of consumption is not sustainable,'' he added.
In addition to significant reductions in consumption is the need for greater equity considering that ''over one billion people are officially listed as obese, while 800 million are under nourished,'' said Pimm. He suggested using economic tools such as higher taxes on the wealthy and financial incentives to support conservation of biodiversity.
''We have to stop doing stupid things like subsidising economically and ecologically damaging activities,'' said Pimm.
''For example the global fish catch is worth about 50 billion dollars at the dock but government subsidies to the fishing industry amount to 100 billion dollars.''
Tax subsidies are also behind much of the clear-cut logging that goes on in the Amazon rainforest and in many other forests, Pimm said.
Over-exploitation of the local environment has led to the extinction of a number of cultures, said McNeely.
''Although descended from cultures that managed their resources sustainably, it does not appear that we have learned the lessons from our ancestors very well,'' he said. (END/2005)
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
IUCN - The World Conservation Union
Conservation International
IUCN's 2004 Red List of Threatened Species |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| To track global warming, watch the water flow
Thu May 19, 2005 10:40 pm
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p16s03-sten.html
To track global warming, watch the water flow
By Robert C. Cowen
Say "climate change" and people tend to think global warming. But we also should think about water, specifically, the cycle of precipitation, evaporation, and river flow that is a key climate component. A little decline here, a little boost there, can have direct effects on how we live our lives.
In the Arabian Sea, for example, fishermen now enjoy richer fishing thanks to declining snow cover in Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. The links work this way: Less snow means more summer heating of the land, intensifying air pressure differences between land and sea, which in turn drive the seasonal monsoon winds. Stronger winds stir the Arabian Sea more vigorously, bringing more nutrients into its higher, sunlit levels. Microscopic plants and animals (fish food) flourish. Fisheries burgeon.
Arctic inhabitants aren't so fortunate. An intensified water cycle is increasing moisture in the American and Eurasian northlands. Rivers fed by stronger precipitation are pouring more freshwater into the Arctic Ocean. It caps the upward flow of fish food. This is bad for fisheries.
Changes in the water cycle itself may be subtle and often poorly understood. Yet their effects can sometimes be dramatic. Joaquim Goes at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and several colleagues studied satellite images of the western Arabian Sea and found sea-color changes due to seasonal blooms of phytoplankton (microscopic plants). In fact, the blooms have increased more than 350 percent in seven years, the research team reported in Science last month.
These robust phytoplankton blooms can enhance fisheries, Dr. Goes says. But too much phytoplankton can deplete the water's oxygen supply. That can kill fish and encourage bacteria that release nitrous oxide, a gas with 310 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.
Arctic water-cycle changes also have global implications. Peili Wu, Richard Wood, and Peter Stott at Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research studied these changes by comparing computer simulations with actual river-flow data. Their conclusion, published in Geophysical Research Letters in January, indicated that we are seeing the beginning of an intensified water cycle. Dr. Wu calls the team's findings "evidence that changes in the global water cycle predicted to follow global warming are already happening."
That cycle is expected to remain in balance. Increased Arctic precipitation is balanced by decreased precipitation in the tropics. There may be large-scale shifts in ocean circulations and movement of water vapor through the atmosphere. That may involve a net movement of water from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere.
One particular concern is the effect of more freshwater from the Arctic on the North Atlantic. This could alter the large-scale currents, including the Gulf Stream. "It is clear that further and more rapid warming will increase the vulnerability of this [North Atlantic] circulation system, possibly leading to a permanent circulation change in the climate system," warned Thomas Stocker and Christoph Raible of the University of Bern, Switzerland, in a comment on the Hadley study published last month in Nature.
Public concern about water has concentrated on maintaining clean-water supplies for human use. That's too self-centered. The way water moves around our planet has fundamental environmental implications. We never will understand where climate change is headed without taking account of precipitation, evaporation, and river flow. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| In U.S., fight against global warming finally reaching a boi
Fri May 20, 2005 11:01 pm
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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/11693984.htm
In U.S., fight against global warming finally reaching a boil
By Fred Krupp
Future generations may debate what finally moved America to confront global warming. Was it NASA's ``smoking gun'' evidence of a warming planet? Was it 132 mayors pledging to cap global warming pollution? Or was it leadership from senators like Joe Lieberman and John McCain, or the increasingly urgent calls by the faith community to uphold our moral responsibility to our children?
Whatever the cause, America has reached a tipping point. Just days apart, three of the country's most powerful companies, General Electric, Xerox and the utility Exelon, announced they will cap their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. GE, seeing a business advantage, will double its investment to bring new technologies to market.
This growing momentum is inspiring, but industry cannot go it alone. GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt, like other CEOs, has called on government to eliminate the biggest impediment to investment -- uncertainty -- by establishing a national policy to address global warming using market mechanisms.
Fortunately, Congress has an answer -- if it has the courage to move forward with it. The Climate Stewardship Act, introduced in the Senate by Lieberman, D-Conn., and McCain, R-Ariz., and in the House by Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., and Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., contains the essential elements of a serious policy.
Only a fixed, nationwide cap on carbon emissions will begin to slow warming. And only a market-based effort will engage our economy in the solution. The Climate Stewardship Act does both.
The measure would reduce global-warming pollution to 2000 levels by 2010. Modeled on the successful U.S. acid rain program, it lets companies find the most cost-effective means to meet the cap, including trading credits with other companies.
Tackling global warming will require major shifts in the way energy is produced. McCain has proposed short-term subsidies for new technologies. He would fund some deployment of nuclear power, energy efficiency, renewable energy like new biofuels and ways to use coal that capture the carbon. I share the conviction that we must examine every low-carbon option.
On nuclear power, I continue to be concerned that crucial questions -- safety, non-proliferation and waste -- have not been answered.
The international commitment on global warming has opened a huge market for green technologies. No other country has as much economic power to tackle this challenge, but uncertainties in U.S. policy have had a paralyzing effect.
Will the Senate free America to lead the world? Let's hope 2005 will be remembered as the year America finally took up the challenge of global warming.
FRED KRUPP is president of Environmental Defense. He wrote this article for Knight Ridder. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global warming to boost world hunger, UN
Sat May 28, 2005 5:15 pm
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http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1378435.htm
Global warming to boost world hunger, UN
Philip Pullella
Reuters
Friday, 27 May 2005
There will be less suitable land to grow wheat and other cereals in sub-Saharan Africa as the planet warms, says a new UN report (Image: iStockphoto)
Climate change is likely to significantly diminish food production in many countries and greatly increase the number of hungry people, according to a UN report.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that food distribution systems and their infrastructure would be disrupted and that the severest impact would likely be in sub-Saharan Africa.
"There is strong evidence that global climate is changing and that the social and economic costs of slowing down global warming and of responding to its impacts will be considerable," says the report by FAO's Committee on World Food Security.
Many scientists fear rising temperatures, blamed mainly on heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, will melt ice caps, raise sea levels by almost a metre by the end of this century and bring more floods, droughts and storms.
Global warming would increase the amount of land classified as being either arid or insufficiently moist in the developing world, the report says.
In Africa the amount of this type of harsh land could increase by as much as 90 million hectares by 2008.
Changes in temperature, rainfall, as well as an increase in the number of so-called "extreme weather events" such as floods, will bring with them potentially devastating effects, many scientists say.
FAO says scientific studies show that global warming would lead to an 11% decrease in rain-fed land in developing countries and in turn a serious decline in cereal production.
"Sixty-five developing countries, representing more than half of the developing world's total population in 1995, will lose about 280 million tons of potential cereal production as a result of climate change," FAO says.
The effect of climate change on agriculture could increase the number of people at risk of hunger, particularly in countries already saddled with low economic growth and high malnourishment levels.
"In some 40 poor, developing countries, with a combined population of 2 billion ... production losses due to climate change may drastically increase the number of undernourished people, severely hindering progress in combating poverty and food insecurity," the report says.
The world suffered 600 floods in the past two and a half years, which claimed the lives of about 19,000 people and caused US$25 billion in damages, excluding December's devastating tsunami in southeast Asia that killed more than 180,000. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global warming junk
Sun May 29, 2005 6:29 pm
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Global warming junk
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Please inform Bill Steigerwald ("Too few global skeptics," May 8 and TribLIVE.com) that the U.S. Department of Defense has declared global warming to be a greater threat to this nation's security than terrorism.
According to the 2004 Pentagon study, the question is not if abrupt climate change will happen, but when. The 2005 Millennium Report, published by 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries and 22 national science academies from around the world, concluded that fossil fuel burning is the leading culprit in potentially catastrophic climate change.
Steigerwald's suggestion that readers find truth at his recommended Web sites is laughable. JunkScience.com is maintained by Steven Milloy, who has spent much of his career as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry trying to debunk the "myths" of smoking. He is not a scientist.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (cei.org) is a corporate think tank partially funded by some of America's worst polluters. It and other such groups have tried to label as "junk" the peer-reviewed research of hundreds of scientists on global warming, pesticides, logging and other issues affecting public and environmental health.
These groups serve well the agenda of the Bush administration, which (as with intelligence) creates its own "science" when independent academics don't give it what it wants.
Chris J. Magoc
Erie |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Revealed: The real cost of air travel
Sun May 29, 2005 7:27 pm
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=642009
Revealed: The real cost of air travel
By Michael McCarthy, Marie Woolf and Michael Harrison
28 May 2005
It might be cheap, but it's going to cost the earth. The cut-price airline ticket is fuelling a boom that will make countering global warming impossible.
The tens of thousands of Britons jetting off on cheap flights this weekend have been given graphic reminders by leading green groups that the huge surge in mass air travel is becoming one of the biggest causes of climate change.
Unless the boom in cheap flights is halted, say Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, Britain and other countries will simply not be able to meet targets for cutting back on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are causing the atmosphere to warm, with potentially disastrous consequences. In spelling out what is for most people - and for many politicians - a very uncomfortable truth, they are echoing the warnings of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.
The scientists of the former and the MPs of the latter have set out in detail how the soaring growth in CO2 emissions from aircraft that the cheap flights bonanza is promoting will do terrible damage to the atmosphere and make a nonsense of global warming targets, such as Britain's stated aim of cutting CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.
British emissions of C02 from aircraft, expressed in millions of tons of carbon, shot up from 4.6 million tons in 1990 to 8.8 million tons in 2000. But based on predicted air passenger transport growth figures - from 180 million passengers per year today to 476 million passengers per year by 2030 - they are expected to rise to 17.7 million tons in 2030.
Aircraft emissions that go directly into the stratosphere have more than twice the global warming effect of emissions from cars and power stations at ground level and, based on the Government's own calculations, the effect of the 2030 emissions will be equivalent to 44.3 million tons of carbon - 45 per cent of Britain's expected emissions total at that date.
That growth alone, the environmental audit committee says, will make Britain's 60 per cent CO2 reduction target "meaningless and unachievable". The clash of interests cannot be ducked any more, say the green groups. "The convenience we enjoy in covering huge distances in a short time is one of the fast-growing threats to life on earth," said Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth.
"Aviation is an increasing source of climate-changing pollution and we must take steps to curb it now. Planes pump out eight times more carbon dioxide per passenger mile than a train. A return flight to Australia will release as much carbon dioxide as all the heating, light and cooking for a house for a year."
Blake Lee-Harwood, campaigns director for Greenpeace, said: "The simple fact is the boom in cheap air travel cannot be reconciled with the survival of those things we most value about the planet, and will ultimately kill millions of people.
"The only way to stop the problem is to reduce our flying. We just have to accept public transport and highly efficient cars are the only kinds of routine transport we can sensibly use, and air travel is just for special occasions. We may not like that hard truth but we don't have a choice." The green groups feel the only solution is to cut back on demand by forcing prices up, especially as commercial aviation has long benefited from a very easy tax regime. In other words, people will have to be "priced off planes" and the cheap flights bonanza will have to end.
Bizarrely, the Government is facing in two directions at once. In the 2003 energy White Paper, it committed itself to tackling climate change and announced its 60 per cent CO2 target. But in the aviation White Paper later that year, it promised to facilitate the expected mass increase in air traffic, if necessary by providing several new runways to cope with increased demand
There is no sign of the two positions being reconciled by Tony Blair. Yesterday, it appeared the leaders of the G8 group of nations, set to put climate change at the top of the agenda at this summer's G8 meeting in Scotland which Tony Blair will chair, are also flunking the issue. A leaked draft of a climate change communiqué showed they were promising more research into the effects of aircraft emissions, but shying away from any commitment to raise ticket prices.
One of the leading advocates of an emissions trading scheme for airlines is among a group of UK business leaders who wrote to Tony Blair yesterday calling for a "step change" in efforts to tackle climate change. Mike Clasper, the chief executive of BAA, has been the aviation industry's most outspoken supporter of the idea of forcing airlines to pay for excessive carbon emissions, even though it could be financially damaging to many of his customers. Mr Clasper and 12 other senior businessmen say companies are deterred from investing in low carbon technologies because of the lack of long-term government policies and concern that their international competitiveness will be harmed.
Other signatories to the letter include the chairman of HSBC bank, Sir John Bond, the chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, Sir Stuart Hampson and the chief executive of Scottish Power, Ian Russell.
The facts about flying
* Air travel produces 19 times the greenhouse gas emissions of trains; and 190 times that of a ship.
* Aviation could contribute 15 per cent of greenhouse gases each year if unchecked.
* Greenhouse gas emissions caused by UK air travel have doubled in the past 13 years, from 20.1m tons in 1990 to 39.5m tons in 2004.
* During the same period emissions from UK cars rose by 8m tons, to 67.8m tons.
* One return flight to Florida produces the equivalent CO2 of a year's average motoring.
* Emissions at altitude have 2.7 times the environmental impact of those on the ground.
* Air travel is growing at UK airports at an average of 4.25 per cent. In 1970, 32 million flew from UK airports; in 2002, 189 million. By 2030 some 500 million passengers may pass through UK airports.
* Cargo transportation is growing by 7 per cent a year. In 1970, 580,000 tons of freight were moved by plane; in 2002, 2.2 million tons. It is forecast to reach 5 million tons in 2010.
* 50 per cent of the UK population flew at least once in 2001.
* Flying 1kg of asparagus from California to the UK uses 900 times more energy than the home-grown equivalent. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
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| Permafrost May Be Shrinking Arctic Lakes
Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:50 pm
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/06/03/national/a174612D17.DTL
Permafrost May Be Shrinking Arctic Lakes
- By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, June 4, 2005
(06-04) 07:02 PDT Anchorage, Alaska (AP) --
Arctic lakes are shrinking, and melting permafrost brought on by higher temperatures may be the reason, according to a research paper.
California, Alaska and New York researchers compared satellite images spanning 30 years of more than 10,000 large lakes over 200,000 square miles in Siberia. They concluded that lakes where permafrost remains frozen are growing.
But where permafrost has thinned or completely melted, lakes are shrinking or disappearing, a change that could affect habitat for migratory birds.
The research is outlined in a paper, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes," published in the journal "Science" on Friday.
Permafrost is ground that remains below freezing temperature all year. It may contain ice, but with or without it, the ground remains impermeable.
As temperatures rise, ice and snow melt and put more water into Arctic lakes. Larry Smith, an associate geography professor at UCLA, said researchers expected to measure more, larger lakes, not fewer.
"We were expecting to see more of the same," he said.
They now believe additional lake surface brought on by melting is just the first part of the process. In the southern parts of the Siberia study area, the permafrost itself is believed to be melting.
Researchers mapped four zones of varying amounts of permafrost. As they looked south, where permafrost thinned or disappeared, lakes were shrinking. That indicates melt water is seeping into soil as permafrost decreases, Smith said.
Larry Hinzman, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher, found a similar phenomenon at tundra ponds on Seward Peninsula near Council in western Alaska. Surface pond area there decreased over the last 50 years.
"This is the first paper that demonstrates that the changes we are seeing in Alaskan lakes in response to a warming climate is also occurring in Siberia," Hinzman said.
The latest study was aimed at quantifying the Alaska observations on a larger basis, Smith said.
Small, shallow tundra lakes that rest on permafrost are "ephemeral," coming and going with variations in weather, Smith said. Researchers instead studied lakes of 40 hectares or about 100 acres, Smith said.
The study compared satellite digital images from 1973 to images from 1997-98. Researchers entered images into computers and "co-registered" them with modern data by manually picking control features — structures that can be confidently identified in both photos, Smith said.
The number of 100-acre lakes fell from 10,882 to 9,712, a decline of 1,170 or 11 percent. The scientists said 125 disappeared, replaced by vegetation.
Other lakes shrank. The overall loss of lake surface area was approximately 6 percent, researchers said.
Lakes grew in northern areas of the study, where permafrost remained intact.
Varying effects on lakes is not a conflict but different phases of the process, Smith said.
"We're proposing that it's all part of a continuum," Smith said.
In regions where permafrost has thinned or disappeared, surface soils also become drier as permafrost degrades, Hinzman said.
"The changing lakes are a consistent, measurable indication of the overall changes to hydrology in the Arctic," Hinzman said. "The loss of surface water will inevitably impact local ecosystems, which will have a cascading effect.
Changes could include loss of migratory bird habitat. Huge numbers of migratory waterfowl fly north for breeding.
Changes could affect subsistence hunting activities and local and regional atmospheric conditions, causing more localized wind and more frequent and more severe wildfires, Hinzman said.
Researchers would like to expand their study and will seek funding for lake work in Alaska, Canada and eastern Russia, Smith said.
The other co-authors of the study were Yongwei Sheng, an assistant professor of environmental science and forestry at State University of New York, and Glen MacDonald, chairman of UCLA's geography department.
The study was paid for by the National Science Foundation.
Arctic warming has been documented in both Alaska and Siberia. John Walsh, president's professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center, said spring temperatures at Nome near Hinzman's research at Council have risen 4.3 degrees since 1950. At locations in Interior Alaska and northern Siberia, the spring warming has been closer to 6 degrees, he said.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/06/03/national/a174612D17.DTL
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/03/MNGTHD2V0T1.DTL
Siberia's Arctic lakes drying up -- permafrost apparently melting
- Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times
Friday, June 3, 2005
An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia, probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper published today in the journal Science.
Comparing satellite images captured in the early 1970s with those from recent years, U.S. scientists determined that the number of large lakes in a 200,000-square-mile region of Siberia diminished by about 11 percent -- from 10,882 to 9,712.
About 125 of the 1,170 shrunken lakes disappeared altogether, and most are now considerably smaller than the study's baseline of 40 hectares, or roughly 99 acres, the researchers found.
If Arctic temperatures continue to rise, the scientists warned, many of the lakes that are now ubiquitous in high northern latitudes may eventually disappear.
"An 11 percent decline may not sound like much, but in the time-scale in which landscapes naturally change, this is extraordinarily fast," said the paper's lead author, Laurence Smith, an associate geology professor at UCLA.
While the researchers did not determine the cause of the losses, they found that the location of disappearing lakes in areas of Siberia where permafrost, formerly frozen as solid as concrete, is now known to be softening. They believe the lakes are receding because the water is seeping into the increasingly mushy ground.
Average Arctic temperatures have risen at nearly twice the rate of overall global temperatures in recent decades, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a comprehensive evaluation of warming in the region conducted by eight nations and six organizations of indigenous people. In Alaska and western Canada, temperatures have increased by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years, according to the assessment, which was concluded last year.
Although the regions experiencing the changes are not home to high numbers of humans, the loss of surface water is expected to affect freshwater supplies for native people in the Arctic. It is also predicted to have more immediate and profound effects on Arctic ecosystems, notably the lake habitat many migratory birds rely upon, said Smith and his colleagues.
"If you were to lose the Arctic lakes, that would be hugely important for waterfowl," said Glen MacDonald, also at UCLA. "If permafrost continues to melt, it could also affect everything from oil platforms to landing strips. In west Siberia, there is not much geology there aside from the permafrost and peat lands. If the permafrost goes away, the lakes are going to go away."
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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/03/MNGTHD2V0T1.DTL |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Schwarzenegger parts company with delusional White House
Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:57 pm
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http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2778825
Schwarzenegger parts company with delusional White House
Arnold goes green
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has deviated once again from the Bush playbook, this time acknowledging that the science confirming global warming is real and vowing to cut California's greenhouse gas emissions.
Apparently, the California governor can see clearly now, even if the White House can't. The Bush administration, by contrast, has attacked research that cites human activity as a cause of global warming, arguing either that the science is not yet conclusive or that the economy cannot afford mandatory measures to reduce greenhouse gases, or both.
Greenhouse gases got their name because they trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise and altering weather. Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and other such gases are products of burning oil and coal in factories, electric power generating plants and cars and trucks.
States, including California, are taking steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions because the federal Environmental Protection Agency, under Bush, is asleep at the switch.
The Golden State already has moved to go beyond federal standards to reduce emissions from cars and trucks. A group of states in the Northeast is working to place a ceiling on total greenhouse gas emissions, then allow companies that cut more than their share to sell their excess capacity to other businesses. A similar "cap and trade" scheme has cut sulphur dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
Given the chronic problems that Utahns along the Wasatch Front face with air pollution from automobiles, particularly high ozone levels, the state should consider similar independent action. Otherwise, by mid-century, the people in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties won't be able to breathe.
Schwarzenegger this week set broad goals for greenhouse gas reductions, saying that by 2010, California would reduce emissions to 2000 levels (about 11 percent). By 2020, the state would cut emissions to 1990 levels (about 25 percent), and by 2050, the goal would be emissions that were 80 percent of 1990 levels.
The governator was rightly criticized for setting sweeping goals without offering specific ways to reach them, beyond pressing utilities to provide 20 percent of their electric power from renewable sources and pushing harder for more homeowners to install solar panels to generate power.
But setting the right goals is a start. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Climate change: Uncharted waters?
Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:54 am
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4061871.stm
Climate change: Uncharted waters?
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
As part of Planet Under Pressure , a BBC News series looking at some of the biggest environmental problems facing humanity, Alex Kirby explores the implications of climate change.
Climate change is our biggest environmental challenge, says the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair. His chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, calls it a far greater global threat than international terrorism.
There is wide though not unanimous agreement from scientists that they are right.
It is certainly possible that warming temperatures could take the Earth into uncharted waters, even though nobody can say exactly how fast it may happen and who will be most affected.
Life on Earth exists only because of the natural greenhouse effect, the ability of the atmosphere to retain enough heat for species to thrive (and no more).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a consortium of several thousand independent scientists, says rising levels of industrial pollution are unnaturally enhancing this effect, with increasing amounts of heat trapped near the Earth instead of escaping into space.
The main culprits, it says, are the burning of fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas - and changes in land use.
The chief greenhouse gas from human activities is carbon dioxide (CO2).
Before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were about 270-280 parts per million (ppm).
They now stand at almost 380ppm, and have been rising at about 1.5ppm annually.
Rising temperatures
The consequence of increasing CO2 and other pollutant levels, the IPCC says, will be higher average global temperatures, meaning unpredictable weather, rising sea levels, and perhaps runaway heating as the whole climate system slips out of gear.
The IPCC predicts that if we go on as we are, by 2100 global sea levels will probably have risen by 9 to 88cm and average temperatures will be between 1.5 and 5.5C higher than now.
That may not sound very much - but the last Ice Age was only 4-5C colder than today.
The sceptics are unmoved. Some say the human influence on the climate is negligible, and that isolating one small variable, CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels, in an immensely complex natural system is meaningless.
Others insist the IPCC's measurements are flawed and its predictions unreliable. Yet others believe a warmer world would be better for most of us.
They are entirely right to argue that there are still many uncertainties about the climate and any influence we may have on it.
Sobering facts
But many who were once sceptics now accept that enhanced climate change is happening, and that we have to respond - not necessarily by trying to reduce its extent but by adapting to its effects.
Part of the problem is that climate change is now part of the stuff of science fiction, with Hollywood and some campaign groups alike feeding scare stories that owe little, if anything, to scientific fact.
But the facts are sobering enough. We know that average global surface temperatures have risen by 0.6C in the last 140 years.
All of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 1990, including each year since 1997.
The possibilities are sobering too.
Many water-scarce regions now will probably become thirstier.
Some countries may be able to produce bigger harvests, but in others yields will drop. Sea level rise may make many coastal areas uninhabitable.
Weather patterns may change, producing more heat waves, droughts, floods and violent storms.
Aid agencies are warning that these combined effects could seriously jeopardise attempts to lift the world's poorest people out of poverty.
Furthermore, there is also the possibility of "positive feedbacks"- for example, higher temperatures may release more methane from the Arctic tundra and CO2 from peat bogs, which will themselves speed up the warming process.
Then there is the inertia of the atmosphere and the oceans.
Delayed effect
If somehow we could halt all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the heating would continue for decades or centuries.
What we do today may literally determine how long the Greenland icecap survives - even though, at fastest, it will still take a good few centuries to disappear.
And wildlife, less equipped to adapt than humans, could be hit hard. One estimate suggests hundreds of thousands of species may be at risk of extinction by 2050 because of climate change.
Creating worldwide consensus on this global problem is difficult, not least because of the economic cost of cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol, which commits rich countries to reducing emissions, is a small but necessary start on building an international system for tackling climate change, its proponents believe.
But the country responsible for about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, the US, has refused to sign up to it.
The protocol does not require developing countries to cut their emissions, although fast-industrialising countries like China will soon be significant contributors as those in poor nations increasingly demand rich world lifestyles.
For them, emissions cuts could have significant social costs in slowing the growth that feeds economic development, creates jobs and helps lift the poor out of poverty.
A prudent look at the evidence, preliminary though it is, suggests we shall be wise to err on the side of caution.
Dr Geoff Jenkins, of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said recently: "Over the last few decades there's been much more evidence for the human influence on climate.
"We've reached the point where it's only by including human activity that we can explain what's happening."
And what's happening now could lead to a world beyond our experience.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4061871.stm |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| PAPER: BUSH OFFICIAL EDITED 'GLOBAL WARMING' EVIDENCE
Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:03 am
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http://www.drudgereport.com/flash1nyt.htm
PAPER: BUSH OFFICIAL EDITED 'GLOBAL WARMING' EVIDENCE
Tue Jun 07 2005 19:07:22 ET
A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against curbs 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.
The NEW YORK TIMES is planning a Wednesday splash on the development, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
NYT reporter Andrew Revkin is urgently filing the report.
"In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2003, the official, Philip Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved."
Developing...
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| World scientists say humans causing global warming
Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:10 am
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07196492.htm
World scientists say humans causing global warming
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) - Scientists, including from the United States and China, threw down the gauntlet to world leaders on Tuesday saying mankind was the major source of global warming and urging action, one month ahead of a G8 summit.
As leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations prepare to meet in Scotland -- with climate change and Africa at the top of the agenda -- a statement by the national science academies of 11 countries said: "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities.
"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action," said the statement from the science academies of the G8 nations as well as China, India and Brazil.
While most scientists agree the burning of fossil fuels for transport and to generate electricity is a major contributor to potentially catastrophic climate change, the United States under President George W. Bush is unconvinced.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tackling global warming, with its rising sea levels, increases in droughts and floods and threats to the lives of millions of the world's poorest people, a key goal of his 2005 presidency of the G8.
"It is clear that world leaders, including the G8, can no longer use uncertainty about aspects of climate change as an excuse for not taking urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions," said Lord May, head of Britain's Royal Society national science academy.
He called U.S. policy "misguided" and noted that crucial to the international acceptance of the statement was the fact that leading scientists from three of the world's biggest developing world emitters China, India and Brazil had also signed it.
SILENCE ON TARGETS
Blair has called for global action to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and insisted on a programme of action to emerge from the G8 summit at Gleneagles, some 65 km (40 miles) from Edinburgh, on July 6-8.
But a leaked draft last month of the climate change declaration due from the summit was silent on the science and contained neither targets nor timetables.
The national science academies likewise avoided talk of targets, calling instead for "cost-effective steps" to cut greenhouse gas emissions and noting that any delays would increase the problems and therefore the costs.
But they also noted the potentially devastating impact of global warming on the poorest nations which lacked the money or infrastructure to cope with anticipated crop failures and water shortages, and called for international action to help.
Environment group Friends of the Earth welcomed the increased pressure the science statement would put on the G8 leaders but lamented the lack of concrete goals.
"G8 countries must accept their historic responsibility in creating the problem, and show genuine leadership through annual reductions in emissions," campaigner Catherine Pearce said.
"It is crucial that the entire world -- including the United States -- recognises that there is a window of opportunity to avert potentially catastrophic climate change. Emissions must peak and decline within the next decade. The world must act now before it is too late," she added. |
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