posted 01-30-2004 07:48 PM               

Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming

By Robert Roy Britt

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.

"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.

In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.

"Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today

The recent trend of a .05 percent per decade increase in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) in watts per meter squared, or the amount of solar energy that falls upon a square meter outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The trend was measured between successive solar minima that occur approximately every 11 years. At the bottom, the timeline of the many different datasets that contributed to this finding, from 1978 to present.

Significant component

Further satellite observations may eventually show the trend to be short-term. But if the change has indeed persisted at the present rate through the 20th Century, "it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.

That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.

Scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists have argued for years whether humans have contributed to global warming, and to what extent. The average surface temperature around the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists say the increase could be part of natural climate cycles. Others argue that greenhouse gases produced by automobiles and industry are largely to blame.

Willson said the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods.

Confounding efforts to determine the Sun's role is the fact that its energy output waxes and wanes every 11 years. This solar cycle, as it is called, reached maximum in the middle of 2000 and achieved a second peak in 2002. It is now ramping down toward a solar minimum that will arrive in about three years.

Connections

Changes in the solar cycle -- and solar output -- are known to cause short-term climate change on Earth. At solar max, Earth's thin upper atmosphere can see a doubling of temperature. It swells, and denser air can puff up to the region of space where the International Space Station orbits, causing increased drag on the ship and forcing more frequent boosts from space shuttles.

connection between longer variations in solar activity and temperatures on Earth.

Examinations of ancient tree rings and other data show temperatures declined starting in the 13th Century, bottomed out at 2 degrees below the long-term average during the 17th Century, and did not climb back to previous levels until the late 19th Century. Separate records of sunspots, auroral activity (the Northern Lights) and terrestrial deposits of certain substances generated in atmospheric reactions triggered by solar output, suggest the Sun was persistently active prior to the onset of this Little Ice Age, as scientists call the event.

Solar activity was lowest during the 17th Century, when Earth was most frigid.

Large-scale ocean and climate variations on Earth can also mask long-term trends and can make it difficult to sort out what is normal, what is unusual, and which effects might or might not result from shifts in solar radiation.

To get above all this, scientists rely on measurements of total solar energy, at all wavelengths, outside Earth's atmosphere. The figure they derive is called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI).

Heating up

The new study shows that the TSI has increased by about 0.1 percent over 24 years. That is not enough to cause notable climate change, Willson and his colleagues say, unless the rate of change were maintained for a century or more.

On time scales as short as several days, the TSI can vary by 0.2 percent due to the number and size of sunspots crossing the face of the Sun. That shift, said to be insignificant to weather, is however equal to the total amount of energy used by humans, globally, for a year, the researchers estimate.

The study analyzed data from six satellites orbiting Earth at different times over the 24 years. Willson ferreted out errors in one of the datasets that had prevented previous studies from discovering the trend.

A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.

He said firm conclusions about whether the present changes involve a long-term trend or a relatively brief aberration should come with continued monitoring into the next solar minimum, expected around 2006.

posted 02-02-2004 06:47 PM               

Study Shows Global Warming Already Impacting Connecticut

Passage Of Connecticut Clean Cars Bill Needed Now, Says Environmental Defense

(2 February 2004 -- Hartford) A new study released today by Environmental Defense details the impacts that uncontrolled global warming is already having on Connecticut and its citizens, and calls for responsible, affordable action now. The study, Bracing for Climate Change in the Constitution State (www.environmentaldefense.org/go/CTclimate) shows temperatures around the state increased noticeably during the 20th century. In addition, the study finds that continued unchecked greenhouse gas pollution would lead to warmer temperatures, worsening Connecticut's air quality and threatening public health and to rising seas that will significantly impact Connecticut's coastal populations, threatening the state's natural environment, commercial fisheries and broader economy.

"A global warming future for Connecticut will mean increased temperatures and higher levels of smog blanketing the state, resulting in increases in asthma attacks and heat-related illnesses. A warmer climate is also more hospitable to vector-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease and West Nile Virus," said Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp. "Sea level rise from global warming will increase the frequency and impact of coastal flooding, eroding the state's beaches and putting portions of I-95, the Northeast Corridor rail line, the Tweed-New Haven Airport, the University of Bridgeport, and coastal populations all at risk."

"This study provides yet additional evidence that global warming is a major threat to Connecticut, our citizens and our environment. We can and must take appropriate steps to reduce the pollution that causes global warming. States like New York are already acting to protect their citizens; the time has come for Connecticut's leader's to act," said Brooke Suter, coordinator, Connecticut Climate Coalition and director, Clean Water Action Connecticut.

"Transportation produces 39% of Connecticut's greenhouse gas pollution, so passing the Connecticut Clean Cars bill will reduce the global warming threat and protect our children's future," said Don Strait, executive director, Connecticut Fund for the Environment. "New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have already adopted the clean cars program, and it's time for Connecticut to step up to the plate and join the rest of the Northeast in taking action to cut greenhouse gas pollution."

State Senator Don Williams (D-Killingly), Senate Co-Chair of the General Assembly's Environment Committee and lead sponsor of the Clean Cars Bill called the study "a powerful reminder that we have an obligation to our citizens and especially our children to deal with the threat from global warming," Williams said. "We will not let the turmoil in Hartford keep us from taking dramatic steps to make Connecticut a healthier place to live and raise a family. The Clean Cars Bill is at the top of our agenda."

###

posted 02-03-2004 10:31 AM               

Earth 'shook off' ancient warming

UK scientists claim they now know how Earth recovered on its own from a sudden episode of severe global warming at the time of the dinosaurs.

Understanding what happened could help experts plan for the future impact of man-made global warming, experts say.

Rock erosion may have leached chemicals into the sea, where they combined with carbon dioxide, causing levels of the greenhouse gas to fall worldwide.

UK scientists report the details of their research in the journal Geology.

About 180 million years ago, temperatures on Earth rapidly shot up by about 5 Celsius.
The cause is thought to have been a sudden release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed. Methane is itself a greenhouse gas but it is short-lived.

However, it is easily oxidised to carbon dioxide (CO2) which lingers in the atmosphere for long periods of time.

Mass extinction

Plants and animals were affected by the sudden rise in atmospheric CO2. Scientists have found evidence of a marine mass extinction during this period that killed off 84% of bivalve shellfish.

Over a period of about 150,000 years, the Earth returned to normal and life continued flourishing. How this happened was a mystery, but now scientists from the Open University in Milton Keynes claim to have a possible answer.

"Our new evidence has shown that this warming caused the weathering of rocks on the Earth's surface to rapidly increase by at least 400%," said Dr Anthony Cohen, who led the research.

"This intense rock-weathering effectively put a brake on global warming through chemical reactions that consumed the atmosphere's extra carbon dioxide."

They discovered that intense rock weathering coincided with warm conditions and high atmospheric CO2.

'Methane burp'

Weathering occurs through the action of rain. Although the researchers did not uncover direct evidence for increased precipitation, they believe there were no limitations on water during the period.

The warm conditions caused by the "methane burp" would have sped up the rate at which weathering occurred. This led to minerals such as calcium and magnesium eroding from rocks and pouring into the sea.

Calcium combined with CO2, for instance, would have caused the precipitation of calcium carbonate. This process of CO2 consumption would have lowered levels of the greenhouse gas on a global scale.

As CO2 levels fell, so did global temperatures.

"Global warming is affecting the climate today, but it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen," Dr Cohen told BBC News Online.

"The reason for doing these studies is that you get the whole history. If you learn what happened then, that can inform how you deal with [the same problem] in future."

Dr Cohen added that there are still vast reserves of carbon - possibly as much as 14,000 gigatons - locked up as methane ice in ocean sediments.

If global temperatures reach a critical point, it is possible they might suddenly be released into the atmosphere causing a similar event to the one that occurred during the Jurassic.

"What we have learned from these rocks is how the Earth can, over a long time, combat global warming. What we need to discover now is why and at what point it goes into combat mode, and precisely how long the conflict takes to resolve," he explained.

Dr Cohen and his colleagues based their results on studies of mudrock rich in organic material and collected near Whitby in North Yorkshire.

posted 02-03-2004 02:06 PM               

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9882

Climate Change Alert

Patrick Doherty spent a decade in the field of international conflict resolution, working in the Middle East, Africa, Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus.

First Paul O’Neill, now Andrew Marshall. Marshall has just blown the lid off another Bush administration can of worms—namely, its unwillingness to acknowledge and address the massive threat posed by global climate change.

Marshall is the founding director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, a quiet but powerful think tank within the Pentagon. In 2001, Marshall was tapped by George W. Bush to lead the Pentagon’s military review that largely defined the scope of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “transformation” agenda. Marshall, whose ONA has served every president since Nixon, introduced the term "revolution in military affairs."

In an article published Jan. 26 in Fortune magazine, Marshall released the findings of an unclassified report—written by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network—entitled "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security."

Global Warming Happens

Until now, the debate over climate change in the United States has focused on whether global warming exists and if so, whether it can be attributed to human activity. In their report, Schwartz and Randall close that debate and raise the stakes. They write that "the IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] documents the threat of gradual climate change," deftly allowing Marshall to implicitly acknowledge that the IPCC findings have sufficiently established what the report calls "the scientifically proven link between CO2 and climate change" as well as the international consensus around climate change itself. But, while fully recognizing the reality of global warming, the report argues that the gradualist view "may be a dangerous act of self-deception." The real threat to national security is from global warming triggering an "abrupt climate change event."

Abrupt climate change is an increasingly probable and, the authors show, a historically precedented event in which global atmospheric warming triggers a rapid modification in global oceanic patterns. The report focuses on the threat receiving the most concern from researchers, which occurs when atmospheric warming releases enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to shut down the "thermohaline conveyor"—currents including the Gulf Stream—that move warm water north from the tropics. That, in turn would send much of the Northern Hemisphere into a deep freeze, disrupting energy, agriculture and fresh water supplies around the world.

This is no abstract hypothetical scenario. The Fortune article cites a presentation made by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute director Robert Gagosian who, at last year's World Economic Forum at Davos, "urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decades."

Thankfully, Marshall did just that. The ONA-commissioned report, using the well-established scenario-planning techniques developed at Shell's planning unit, generated a plausible future scenario in which the thermohaline conveyor collapses in 2010. What follows that oceanic shut-down sounds apocalyptic and yet the authors contend, is quite plausible.

By 2020, average rainfall in Europe drops 30 percent; "megadroughts" affect Southern China and Northern Europe; massive boatlifts of people from the Caribbean attempt to enter the United States and Mexico; China is unable to feed its population due to the combination of droughts and violent monsoons and flooding; Eastern European countries invade a weakened Russia to seek minerals and energy; nuclear India, Pakistan, and China go to war over water, land, and refugees. In all 400 million people could be forced to migrate from uninhabitable regions. In the United States, the East Coast population areas experience severe shortages of freshwater; flooding creates an inland sea in California's Central Valley and disrupts freshwater supplies for Southern California; and energy disruptions are commonplace due to storms, ice and conflict. The authors make the point clear: this is not a prediction, this is a plausible scenario given what we know now.

Overcoming Resistance

While the content of this release raises the alarm, Marshall is sending multiple messages. The timing of the Fortune article, for instance. For a man of Marshall's long legacy of discretion to directly challenge the current administration's line on global warming at the beginning of a presidential election year speaks volumes. That he chose to do so by releasing a report by respected business consultants in Fortune magazine seems to say he wants the business world, Bush's most important constituency, to understand clearly that the status quo is untenable.

This extraordinary act by a senior Defense Department official implies high-level recognition that the Bush administration's resistance to the near global consensus on climate change—a consensus that includes the vast majority of the scientific community, many corporations including General Motors, Alcoa, IBM, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, and all the remaining governments of the OECD—is a threat to national security itself. Indeed, last month in the journal Science, the United Kingdom's Chief Scientific Advisor declared that "climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism." Perhaps inoculating itself from future criticism the report states, "Many scientists would regard this scenario as extreme. . . But history tells us that sometimes the extreme cases do occur, there is evidence that it might be [occurring] and it is DOD's job to consider such scenarios."

And that resistance has been staunch. In the battle over climate change, according to a report from the group Environment2004, the Bush administration has both misrepresented the science and misled the public. According to The New York Times, the Bush administration acted to distort and omit EPA findings on global warming. The group notes that the administration has dismissed the findings of the International Panel on Climate Change set up by the first President Bush and the findings of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences that Bush himself requested. They document how administration has tried to mislead the public by substituting the absolute indicator of total emissions with emissions per unit of GDP, which can go down while total U.S. emissions continue to rise—and then asking emitters (unsuccessfully) to voluntarily commit to reducing emission intensity. And they highlight how the administration has stalled the debate by calling for a research agenda which The New York Times described as a "redundant examination of issues that had largely been settled, bereft of vision, executable goals and timetables—in short, little more than a cover-up for inaction."

It's The Emissions, Stupid

Ultimately, "Abrupt Climate Change" is a report for the Department of Defense. But not entirely. While DoD is primarily concerned with predicting the arrival of and managing the security nightmare caused by abrupt climate change, the report also calls for prevention measures which can only happen through a transformation of the U.S. economy.

"It's important to understand human impacts on the environment—both what's done to accelerate and decelerate (or perhaps even reverse) the tendency toward climate change. Alternative fuels, greenhouse gas emission controls and conservation efforts are worthwhile endeavors."

Only a month ago, Democrats' best chances in the 2004 general elections relied heavily on the undesirable combination of continued failure in Iraq and sustained economic underperformance. That began to change two weeks ago, when the Institute for America's Future brought together coalition of labor and environmental groups called the Apollo Alliance and issued a report describing the core of a new economic engine based on shifting America from suburban sprawl and fossil fuels towards smart growth and renewable energy. (See Democrats' Moon Shot )

Democrats now have a powerful opportunity to reframe the 2004 elections and focus their agenda around an integrated agenda of triage and transformation. Terrorism is still a real threat and Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine and HIV/AIDS must be stabilized and resolved. The larger threat of abrupt climate change, however, means we must comprehensively transform our emissions-ridden economy. Apollo is a good start, but now Marshall's warnings make it clear that America has no time to waste on low emissions reduction targets and wasteful subsidies, much less Bush's stalling and deception. Global emissions markets are the best answer. Research has shown that emissions trading is the leading pathway to eliminating emissions, energy independence and reducing agricultural subsidies that impoverish the developing world-all of which will reduce conditions that fuel terrorism and the medium-term threat of abrupt climate change while building a booming new economic engine for America and the world.

Marshall's sense of patriotic responsibility may just save the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world and usher in a new era of prosperity, sustainability and peace—but only if Democrats reframe the 2004 elections starting now.

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Related links:

International Panel on Climate Change Summary for Policy Makers
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf

Fortune.com "Climate Collapse: the Pentagon’s Weather Nightmare”
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,582584,00.html

Environment 2004: Bush’s Record on Global Warming
http://www.environment2004.org/global_warming.php

posted 02-04-2004 08:51 PM               

The Bush Record - Global Warming

The following material is excerpted from Environment2004's report The Bush Environmental Record: An Unprecedented Assault on our Health and Heritage. A complete version of this report which includes references and annotations may be downloaded in PDF format by clicking here:
http://www.environment2004.org/files/Env2004_BushRPT.pdf

Introduction

Scientists say that unless global warming emissions are reduced, average temperatures could rise another 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States by the end of the century, with far-reaching effects:

Higher temperatures will worsen air pollution.

Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas.

Heat waves will be more frequent and intense.

More droughts and wildfires will occur in some regions, more heavy rains and flooding in others.

Species will disappear from historic ranges, as habitats are lost.

The American public understands that global warming is a pollution problem and that, like other pollution problems that we have licked in the past, global warming is a problem that we can solve with American ingenuity and new technology. Americans also understand that we cannot rely on big polluting industries to clean up voluntarily. Three-quarters of Americans support "mandatory controls on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions," according to the Gallup poll.

But instead of taking action to curb global warming pollution, the Bush Administration suppresses science and distorts economics. Playing to his coal, oil, and auto industry constituents, President Bush rejects the scientific consensus articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a scientific body created by the first President Bush) and the National Academy of Sciences (in a report requested by the current President himself). Instead, the President follows his pollster's advice to exaggerate uncertainties and call for years more study. And even after the electric power industry pledged to increase its carbon pollution even faster than the Department of Energy projected, President Bush calls for total reliance on voluntary industry measures. The White House routinely withholds scientific and economic findings from the public and Congress, even suppressing and censoring reports by its own government agencies.

Most businesses know something needs to be done and expect that something will be done in the future. The Bush administration approach-pretending we can avoid meaningful action for the next decade-only makes business investments more uncertain for American companies. This puts us at a disadvantage relative to our competitors who have already made decisions about how they will respond.

The Bush Record

Letting Polluters off the Hook

Two months after taking office, President Bush retracted a campaign promise to support new laws that would reduce carbon pollution from power plants. Soon thereafter, the Bush Administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol - the global treaty calling for reducing carbon pollution - even though the United States is the single largest source of global warming pollution (one quarter of the world's emissions).

In February 2002, Bush announced his voluntary plan to address global warming. The president's voluntary target, announced last year, is phrased as a reduction in the nation's "emissions intensity "-- the amount of carbon pollution per dollar of economic output. But the administration's target lets total carbon pollution keep increasing every year. In fact, even if the administration's target is met, total U.S. global warming emissions will increase by 14% between 2002 and 2012 -- exactly the same rate at which emissions grew in the 1990s.

In the absence of Administration action, three bipartisan bills have been introduced in Congress that would cap carbon pollution and lead to real reductions. The Administration actively opposes all three bills, and instead endorses power plant legislation that ignores global warming entirely.

How President Bush Misleads the Public

Misrepresenting the Science

In a fashion not previously seen, Bush appointees have politicized science, altered reports by agencies, or simply deleted information from the public record that would have contradicted the Administration's claims and weakened their political goals. By siding with special interests fueling less-accepted science, the Bush Administration continues to misrepresent the certainty of accepted science on this subject.

In June 2003, the White House ordered the EPA to distort the portrayal of global warming science in its State of the Environment Report. Russell Train, former EPA Administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford, wrote in a letter to the New York Times "there was never such White House intrusion into the business of the EPA during my tenure."

In September 2002, a whole chapter on global warming pollution was deleted from the EPA's annual report on air pollution trends.

In 2002 the White House redrafted a State Department climate report (prepared to comply with the 1992 climate treaty signed by the first President Bush) to over-emphasize scientific uncertainties about global warming impacts. President Bush then derided the report that his own White House had cleared as "put out by the bureaucracy."

The Bush administration ignored recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences to guide future research funding. Instead, it repackaged a long-term science research initiative begun by the first President Bush over ten years ago that is based on outdated information. The New York Times described Mr. Bush's plan as a "redundant examination of issues that had largely been settled, bereft of vision, executable goals and timetables - in short, little more than a cover-up for inaction."

While claiming credit for its new global warming science research program, the Administration merely reprogrammed existing funds at current levels.

Misleading the Public

The Bush Administration wants the public to believe it is reducing carbon pollution even though emissions are still growing. So instead of focusing on the total amount of carbon pollution going into the air, the Administration has shifted to a goal of reducing emissions "intensity," the rate of emissions per dollar of national economic product. Under the President's "intensity target," total U.S. carbon emissions will increase 14% in the next 10 years, the same rate at which they grew in the last 10 years.

In the U.S. electricity sector, which is responsible for 42% of U.S. emissions, and 10% of the world's carbon pollution, the Administration claims to have obtained concrete commitments to voluntarily reduce carbon pollution. In fact, that "commitment" is to reduce emissions "intensity" a mere 3-5% by 2012. But real emissions actually will grow faster than projected by the Department of Energy, and the reduction in intensity is nowhere near even the Administration target of 18% by 2012.

While giving lip service to the potential of technology to reduce carbon pollution , the White House perversely opposes incentives for currently available clean technology. President Bush's FY 2003 budget proposed to cut renewable energy programs, such as solar, wind and geothermal, by 36%, and energy efficiency research and development by 28%. While touting his hydrogen plan for its potential results decades from now, the Bush Administration actively opposes meaningful improvements to motor vehicle fuel economy over the next decade, which would reduce dependence on Middle East oil supplies while also reducing a major source of carbon pollution. Fuel economy of 2002-model automobiles fell to a 22-year low of 20.4 miles per gallon; despite great advances in fuel saving technology over the last 20 years.

In an attempt to strengthen support for the Administration's proposed power plant pollution bill that would not address carbon pollution, the Bush Administration has refused to provide Congress with an analysis of the costs and benefits of competing power pollution bills that would reduce carbon pollution.

Relying on an exaggerated DOE study, the White House claims the carbon pollution bill introduced by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, would cost our economy over $100 billion in 2025. The administration suppressed an EPA cost analysis requested by McCain and Lieberman that would have shown negligible economic impact. A leaked copy of EPA's preliminary results found that the bill would cost only $1-2 billion, a mere one-hundredth of 1% of the U.S. economy.

There is a Choice

posted 02-04-2004 09:07 PM               

Candidates on the Issues: Global Warming

By The Associated Press

The Associated Press chooses an issue three times a week and asks the presidential candidates a question about it. Today's question and responses:

GLOBAL WARMING: Should the United States support the Kyoto treaty to limit global warming?

Democrats:

Wesley Clark (news - web sites): "Not only did President Bush (news - web sites) pull out of Kyoto, but he has utterly failed to address the problem of global warming in a serious way at all, choosing instead to deny the science, effectively hiding his head in the sand. We need to re-engage with the international community to address carbon emissions and global warming more broadly. Whether it's rejoining Kyoto or finding other multilateral approaches, we have to address this global problem with global leadership."

Howard Dean (news - web sites): "We must reject the Bush doctrine of isolationism and rejoin the international dialogue on global climate change. A Dean administration will work to re-engage with the international community to deal with the environmental, economic and public health threats of global warming. We must also actively reduce our own emissions and set an example to our neighbors. The technologies for cleaner power plants, factories, and vehicles are present; now we need real accountability — firm and fair standards to level the playing field and give industries the incentives to adopt and improve these technologies."

Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites): "America must be a leader in the world's effort to reduce global warming. While the Kyoto agreement had problems, President Bush made a terrible mistake in simply walking away from Kyoto and our allies. We must work with other nations for an international framework that reduces global warming and maintains America's economic strength at the same time."

Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites): "Some of our most serious environmental challenges — and opportunities — are taking place on an international stage and they require American leadership in the international community. Unlike the Bush administration, I will not abdicate this responsibility and opportunity. I will make sure that the U.S. re-engages in the development of an international climate change strategy to address global warming, and identifies workable responses that provide opportunities for American technology and know-how."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites): "Conserving energy and complying with the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) would promote national security and Mideast peace as well as curb global warming. As president, I will sign the Kyoto climate change treaty because we need it for our children and our grandchildren."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites): "Yes. I attended and supported the work at the international conferences in Buenos Aires and Kyoto. Recently, Senator John McCain and I introduced groundbreaking legislation to help cut greenhouse gas emissions."

Al Sharpton (news - web sites): No response.

Republican:

President Bush: No response.

posted 02-05-2004 12:46 PM               

Global Warming Bigger Threat Than Terrorism-Canada

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Global warming (news - web sites) poses a greater long-term threat to humanity than terrorism because it could force hundreds of millions from their homes and trigger an economic catastrophe, Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said.

"Current preoccupation is with terrorism, but in the long term climate change will outweigh terrorism as an issue for the international community," he told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.

"Terrorism will come and go, it has in the past...and it's very important. But climate change is going to make some very fundamental changes to human existence on the planet."

Anderson said Canada would need to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 60 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. Canada has ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which calls for a 6 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2012.

"The British have decided... that a 60 percent reduction (in greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050 is necessary and we will probably have to be in a similar range," he said.

In 2001, those emissions were 18.5 percent above 1990 levels and energy producers say the costs of fulfilling Kyoto will be prohibitive.

But Anderson said the consequences of doing nothing would be disastrous -- he said the wheat-growing prairies of Canada and the Great Plains of the United States would eventually no longer produce enough food to support the population if nothing were done to fight global warming.

"Terrorism is unlikely to give us the strong possibility of 500 million refugees. Climate change is likely to give us that if it goes unchecked from flooded areas...in countries such as such as Bangladesh," he said.

Canada spent hundreds of millions of dollars on increased security after the Sept. 11 attacks and sent 2,000 troops to Afghanistan (news - web sites) to take part in the U.S. war on terror.

New Prime Minister Paul Martin said on Monday that Canada would stick with Kyoto but the existing government plan on how to cut emissions was not detailed enough.

Anderson said it was "simply wrong" to say that putting the Kyoto accord into effect would cripple the economy.

"There is going to be some cost but I think you could do Kyoto probably five times over with the same cost as the cost of the Canadian dollar increasing by 15 cents last year. That really has an impact...and I don't think that ended our economy," he said.

"We are going to have to have quite radical changes. This is not a minor issue, it's going to have a disruptive effect in some areas. That said, it will also have many positive effects -- health benefits, productivity benefits," he said.

posted 02-05-2004 09:09 PM               

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0205/p21s01-sten.html

DRIER DOWNTOWN: Normal water particles coalesce to form raindrops large enough to fall, but when pollution enters a cloud, drops disperse and can't grow to form rain.

A parking lot effect?

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Spewing from factory stacks and car tail pipes, carbon dioxide is the poster child of "greenhouse gases." Most scientists long ago concluded that CO2 is the single biggest cause of climate change and that cutting its output is the best way to slow global warming.

So why are a tiny but growing number of atmospheric scientists taking a hard look at parking lots? Because, they say, land-use changes have at least as much, and perhaps even greater, impact on climate change than CO2. It's a radical idea that has heated up the scientific community and is prompting a wider look at the forces behind climate change. The effect on public policy could be enormous.

Do massive asphalt and concrete "urban heat islands" like Houston or Atlanta really help ratchet up the global thermostat? What about huge tracts of farmland like those that span the Midwest?

Eugenia Kalnay thinks so. Her research into the impact of land-use changes on global temperature is getting attention from other scientists, even if this debate hasn't exactly leaped into the public arena yet.

Earth's surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree F. in the past century with faster warming in the past two decades, the National Academy of Sciences reports. The 20th century's 10 warmest years all occurred in the last 15 years of the century.

But according to Dr. Kalnay's study, published in the journal Nature last spring, urbanization, agriculture, and other human changes to landscapes in the US - quite aside from CO2 - account for as much as 40 percent of the temperature rise over the past 40 years - much larger than previously believed. That could make it a contender for CO2's crown.

Kalnay, a University of Maryland researcher, was director of environmental modeling at the National Weather Service from 1987 to 1997. She oversaw development of computer models for the now ubiquitous three- to five-day forecasts.

But it is her recent research that struck a chord with the scientific community. Kalnay and coauthor Ming Cai have received a huge amount of both praise and criticism. "We were both taken aback that instead of the paper going quietly, we got hundreds and hundreds of comments and questions," she says.

Now Kalnay's research, joined by the work of a growing number of other scientists, has intensified debate over the relative strength of "climate forcing" factors.

Recent studies show that deforestation in parts of Africa is curbing rainfall in the once-vital Sahel zone bordering the Sahara desert. Changes in forest cover have also been shown to affect rainfall and climate far beyond the Amazon Basin. Still others have shown that planting trees can actually increase the planet's temperature if done in the wrong climate zones.

"Impacts of human-caused land changes on climate are at least as important, and possibly even more important, than those of carbon dioxide," says Roger Pielke Sr., professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. His group voted in 2002 to issue a statement almost unanimously concurring that climate changes are more complex than CO2 changes and include land use. By contrast, the American Geophysical Union issued a statement last month maintaining CO2 as the key factor.

Dr. Pielke and others argue that land-use changes in a region may have significant effects thousands of miles away - not unlike the El Niño effect in which warming zones of the Pacific Ocean force droughts and weather changes worldwide.

That's still theory, of course. Skeptics point out that only 29 percent of the earth's surface is land - and only 1 to 2 percent is urbanized. Another 40 percent of land has been modified by agriculture and deforestation, Pielke says. So can the regional land-use tail really wag the global dog?

Not according to Alan Robock, an editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. He's also seen no uptick in studies of land-use impact on climate in scientific literature he's read.

"Everybody realizes modifying land surface is important locally," says Dr. Robock. "If you're talking globally, though, CO2 is the dominant way humans cause climate change."

Still, the view that human changes to the landscape are a factor driving climate, too, is gaining some traction in powerful corners of the scientific community. A report by the National Academy of Sciences due later this year will examine the warming effects of non-CO2 agents: aerosols, solar variability, and land-use changes.

"The public does not hear too much about this, because all the climate-change treaties have been focused on CO2," says Daniel Jacob, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry who chairs the panel writing the report. "For a long time it's been really hard to communicate these other factors to the policymakers, mainly because it's difficult to find the proper currency for them."

The impact of such change would begin first with global climate modelers, like Robert Dickinson, president of the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Dickinson is working to include more detailed effects from land-surface changes, aerosol, and soot in his climate model. He says one of his graduate students is pursuing a surface-temperature study of China. But like many, he still maintains that CO2 is the dominant force in climate change.

Kalnay's research is providing ammunition for some private groups to argue that global warming is a myth. In an editorial last June, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change argued that Kalnay's work showed that the impact of CO2 was overstated. "The warming of the past century or so was nothing more nor less than the natural recovery of the earth from the global chill of the Little Ice Age," the Tempe, Ariz., nonprofit reported.

Such conclusions irk Peter Frumhoff, global environment program director for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. "Just because new research shows there are other factors to pay attention to [beside CO2, that] doesn't mean there's any less reason to pay attention to greenhouse gases," he says.

Kalnay is undeterred. Having completed her temperature study of the US, she is working on a global analysis of 50 years of temperature data. Already, early results from South America support her conclusions. "Greenhouse gases are undoubtedly very important," she says. "But the second cause for climate change is the way we are using the land surface."

posted 02-09-2004 01:05 AM               

Remember the key term from previous discussions..."Condensation Nuclei".

Are these being injected in abnormal concentrations into our atmosphere?

Why?

posted 02-18-2004 03:49 PM               

Pacific nation's annual swamping revives global warming debate

NADI, Fiji (AFP) - The Pacific atoll nation of Tuvalu will disappear under the waves, giving weight to dark predictions that it will become the first victim of rising global sea levels.

High or "king" tides will sweep onto Tuvalu, just 26 square kilometres (10 square miles) of land scattered over nine atolls, none of which rises more than 4.5 metres (15 feet) above sea level.

"We are not quite sure what will happen but we expect most of the areas will be flooded by the sea for an hour or so," Hilia Vavae of the Tuvalu Meteorological Office told AFP.

Tuvalu has long warned it is at risk from a rise in sea levels caused by global warming. During negotiations on the Kyoto Convention on global warming a decade ago, then prime minister Bikenibeu Paeniu warned "the world's first victims of climate change" would be the 11,500 Tuvaluans.

United Nations (news - web sites) secretary-general Kofi Annan (news - web sites) also referred to Tuvalu, 3,400 kilometres (2,100 miles) north east of Australia, saying there was "trouble in paradise".

Tuvalu tried unsuccessfully to convince Australia and New Zealand to provide a special immigration quota "should the high tides eventually make our home uninhabitable", in the words of former premier Ionatana Ionatana.

Current Prime Minister Saufatu Sopo'aga says his government is thinking of suing Australia and the United States for their carbon emissions.

But science is divided with a recent study showing sea levels are not rising. The theory is that the land is subsiding because of improper land use and population pressure.

Vavae, a meteorologist, says the real problem in working out what is happening is a lack of long-term data. Parts of Funafuti were sinking but there was not enough information to say why.

The 14-nation, Australian-funded South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project installed a sea-level gauge on Funafuti in 1993, operated by Australias National Tidal Facility (NTF).

Two years ago NTF said the gauge showed "no visual evidence of any acceleration in sea level trends".

It suggested that human activities on the islets, such as chopping down coconut trees and paving roads, had contributed to the subsidence.

Vavae said most homes in the capital atoll Funafuti, which consists of 30 islets populated by 4,000 people, would be flooded, along with her office and perhaps the airport.

At 4:40 pm (0440 GMT) Thursday the tide will peak at 3.07 metres (10.1 feet) above mean sea level and on Friday at 5:19 pm (0519 GMT) will reach 3.1 metres (10.2 feet).

Saturday will also see much higher tides and which in recent years have lasted until May, Vavae says.

However, she said local people were not afraid because they know the tide will go out again.

"They do not like the way the main road is blocked by the tides," she said.

Successive high tides have spoilt the fresh water reserves under the atoll and in a bid to beat the sea, people put extra manure into their often-ancient compost pits used to grow the root crop taro.

"It is very hard here," she said.

Tuvalu is the Polynesian or Ellice Island part of the former British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The Micronesian part became Kiribati and both become independence in 1979.

posted 02-18-2004 03:51 PM               

Panel Urges Funds to Study Climate Change

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's program to study climate change is much improved but lacks a commitment to pay for many of the new research proposals, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites) complained Wednesday.

The panel urged that the plan, announced last July, be implemented vigorously.

"Advancing the science called for in the plan will be of vital importance to the nation," said committee chairman Thomas E. Graedel, professor of industrial ecology at Yale University. "There are still ways in which the plan could be improved, but at this point the main challenge is to implement it vigorously."

Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans welcomed the report, saying "development and implementation of the (climate) plan continues the president's commitment to effectively guide research on climate and associated global changes over the next decade."

The government's 10-year Climate Change Science Program is aimed at learning more about natural causes of climate change; to better understand how climate changes affect human, wildlife and plant communities; and to find more exact ways of calculating the risks of global warming.

Assistant Commerce Secretary James Mahoney, who oversees U.S. research on climate change, responded that fundamental work in the research effort is under way.

The plan calls for a series of 21 reports in specific subject areas, such as what can be known from current temperature data, the impact of aerosols such as clouds, soot and chemicals and the uses and limitations of data in making policy forecasts.

All of these studies are in the detailed planning stage, Mahoney said, with the lead agency determined for each one. The reports will be open for peer review and public comment, he added.

Graedel noted the program calls for turning these out in the next four years, a number of them in next two years. "That is a very rapid pace, it will call on the capacity of the (research) community to respond to it," he said.

Graedel said he doesn't see a clear line in the plan between the reports and a way to follow through to the goals of the program.

The new report, "Implementing Climate and Global Change Research," was prepared by the National Research Council (news - web sites), the operating arm of the National Academies.

The panel praised the administration's emphasis on understanding how climate change will affect ecosystems and people, as well as research to help make decisions about how to ease climate change and adapt to its effects.

However, the panel said the program's current budget does not appear capable of supporting all of the activities outlined in the strategic plan.

While some research in the plan has a record of funding by particular government agencies, other areas, such as the study of climate change's effects on ecosystems and humans, are likely to be underfunded, the committee said.

In addition, spending higher than current levels will be needed for the proposed upgrade in global climate observing capabilities and advances in computer models to project future changes in climate.

Mahoney responded that the plan extends over 10 years and funding isn't just a matter of the first year's budget.

Graedel also said an effort needs to be made to be sure the scientific credibility of the research is maintained throughout the process, suggesting a standing advisory committee to review the work.

On Wednesday the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report charging that the administration is ignoring the scientific consensus on global warming in favor of political concerns.

Asked if they had seen any political interference in the climate program, Graedel said the panel did not look for that, but had seen nothing to suggest that was the case.

A member of the Academy committee, Anthony L. Janetos of the John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, noted that the climate program involves high-level members of the administration.

That's a two-edged sword, Janetos said, because it means scientists are dealing with people who can make decisions and provide resources but also creates a challenge in maintaining scientific credibility.

Environmentalists complain the administration focuses too much on natural causes and reopening scientific issues already well studied.

The first draft of the climate research plan, announced in late 2002, drew harsh criticism from the National Academy of Sciences, where experts said it didn't set hard priorities or provide a clear vision and specific timetable for meeting goals.

___

posted 02-18-2004 03:59 PM               

Action needed to save coral reefs

By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff, in Seattle

More than half of the world's coral reefs will be damaged beyond repair by the year 2100 unless action is taken to halt the many threats they now face.

Scientists have issued a report saying that reefs are being assaulted by high temperatures, pollution, overfishing, disease, and soil run-off from land.

The report has been written for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

"These events are unprecedented on centennial and millennial scales," said US coral expert Dr Richard Aronson.

The report is a synthesis document that reviews all current data on coral reef impacts - more than 150 pieces of research.

It was released here in Washington State at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Slow growth

The report's key focus is the damage now being wrought by climate change.

Its authors say human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, blamed for global warming, are endangering reefs in two ways.

The first is to increase the incidence of "bleaching" events, in which warmer waters weaken or kill corals and other reef-building species by causing them to eject the vital algae that live within their tissues.

These elevated water temperatures are also thought to be a factor in the recent increase in coral diseases in the Caribbean.

The second damaging effect of CO2 rises is to change the chemistry of the ocean.

As the gas builds up in the atmosphere, more of it is dissolved into the ocean, lowering concentrations of the carbonate ion, a building block of the calcium carbonate that corals and other organisms use to grow their skeletons and build up reefs.

"We are making the oceans more acidic and we know that corals and many other organisms that secrete the calcium carbonate - limestone - that forms their skeletons grow more slowly under these conditions," said Dr Joan Kleypas, from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and a co-author on the Pew report.

Moving coral

The authors say more than a tenth of the world's coral reefs have been damaged beyond repair. Further destruction had major implications for human communities that lived close to reefs, said Dr Aronson, from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

"Tens of millions of people depend on reefs to provide them with food and to protect tropical shorelines from erosion," he told the Seattle meeting.

"In economic terms, a conservative estimate puts the total annual income from the world's coral reefs at $30bn - a huge amount of money.

"Coral reefs also have great aesthetic value and support a huge biodiversity with some estimates running into the millions of species."

He said one interesting side-effect of the warming waters could be seen in the way elkhorn and staghorn corals, two important and temperature-sensitive species on Caribbean reefs, were now expanding their populations northward along the east coast of the Florida Peninsula.

These species last lived at this location 6000 years ago when the climate was warmer.

Marine parks

But Dr Aronson cautioned that it was simply not possible for all of the world's coral to change latitude in response to global warming. The pace of change witnessed in the past few decades was simply too fast for systems to adapt, he said.

Measures to restrain global warming are urgently needed, the authors say, as are marine reserves to protect reefs from the other threats they face.

The situation is particularly serious in the Indian Ocean, where certain areas could be totally devoid of living coral in 20 years; and the Caribbean, where the amount of reef covered by live coral has shrunk by 80% in the last three decades.

"Coral reefs are striking, complex, and important features of the marine environment," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center.

"If we fail to act, the destruction of these rare and important ecosystems will continue unabated, threatening one of our world's most precious natural resources."

Dr Terry Done, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, commented: "We need to slow the rate of global warming, clean up the watersheds that drain into coral reef waters, stop overfishing and start an ecosystem-based management approach to coral reefs and their fisheries.

"This includes people in the picture. It's easy to say but very hard to do."

posted 02-20-2004 12:27 AM               

US scientists tax Bush on climate

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

President Bush's administration has been accused of suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its own political beliefs.

The charge comes from an American body, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement with more than 60 supporters.

The signatories, who include 12 Nobel Prize winners, say scientific integrity must be restored to policy-making.

The White House called the statement "disappointing" and said decisions were taken on the best available science.

The UCS chairman is Dr Kurt Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University.

Policy implications

He said: "Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government's outstanding scientific personnel.

"Whether the issue is lead paint, clean air or climate change, this behaviour has serious consequences for all Americans."

Dr Gottfried said: "We're not... taking issue with the administration's policies. We're taking issue with the administration's distortion... of the science related to some of its policies."

Russell Train, one of the statement's supporters, headed the Environmental Protection Agency under former Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford.

He said: "Science, to quote President Bush's father, the former president, relies on freedom of inquiry and objectivity.

"But this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration."

Dr Sherwood Rowland, who won a Nobel Prize for his studies of atmospheric ozone, said the consensus of scientific opinion on climate change was being ignored.

Government reports had been censored to remove views out of line with President Bush's policies, he said.

Dr Rowland said: "The public deserves rational decision-making based on the best scientific advice about what is likely to happen, not what political entities might wish to happen."

Scott McClellan, President Bush's spokesman, said: "I can assure you that this is an administration that makes decisions based on the best available science."

'Crude snapshot'

John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said he found the statement "somewhat disappointing".

He said it made "some sweeping generalisations about policy in this administration that are based on a random selection of incidents and issues".

Professor Marburger said: "I don't think the statement makes the case for the sweeping accusations that it makes."

The UCS website describes the organisation as "an independent non-profit alliance of more than 100,000 concerned citizens and scientists".

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3502867.stm

posted 02-20-2004 12:52 AM               

Careful with that planet, Mr President

Diana Liverman spent years as a senior climate adviser in the US. Now back in the UK, she argues for American scientists to be freed from their fear of speaking out on global warming - before it's too late

Thursday February 19, 2004
The Guardian

In 1980, when I left England to do postgraduate work in California, the United States was a world leader in environmental policy supported by a respected and well funded environmental science community. I had few regrets about leaving what seemed at the time to be a narrowly disciplinary, unexciting, irrelevant and rather chauvinistic British research culture.
How things have changed. Almost 25 years later, I'm back in England, attracted by the chance to direct the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, with its focus on the policy challenges of climate change, energy and conservation. It's a relief to be in a country where climate change is seen as a high priority.

To be a scientist working on climate change in the US is to be frustrated by the backlash against environmental science, research budgets cuts and by the American media's general lack of interest in environmental issues.

It's not the American scientists. More than a thousand of them turned out last week to hear the UK government's chief scientist Sir David King, at a meeting in Seattle, challenge the Bush administration to take climate change more seriously. Writing in Science earlier, he argued: "Climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism." He said the US market approach doesn't help. The "market cannot decide that mitigation is necessary, nor can it establish the international framework in which all the actors can take their place".

Colleagues in Seattle are pessimistic his analysis will sway the views of the Bush administration - the leadership has used science selectively, they say, has a narrow view of America's global duties, and its views on global warming are influenced by the fossil fuel lobby.

The US national academy of sciences reports released this week, which I helped write, review the government's plans for climate research. We praise the ambitious proposals for new work, but question the government's assumption that "uncertainties" must be further reduced before it will make decisions about preventing or adapting to climate change. We are also considerably concerned about whether the resources and will are there to implement the plans.

I have been a cheerleader for the importance of social science in understanding the causes, consequences and policy implications of global change and spent years within the US government advisory structure trying to create a space for it. It has been disappointing to see the erosion of some of these programmes, especially at a time when delay means it's not just a question of preventing climate change but looking at how we can adapt to what is already happening.

Recent surveys suggest the average American is far less worried about global warming than the typical Briton. The percentage of Americans concerned about global warming has fallen from 72% in 2000 to 58% in 2003. And while 83% of British respondents disapprove of the US government's position on the Kyoto protocol, only 44% of Americans do - and only 15% of them associate the global warming problem with fossil fuel consumption. Why is this so? My feeling is that it ranges from denial or resentment about being criticised to a sense that adaptation will be relatively easy.

A discussion with a neighbour when I moved from colder Pennsylvania to the deserts of Arizona illustrates the attitude. "How can you say that global warming is a problem when you deliberately move to the sort of warm, dry climate that you are warning will come to the northern United States? It just shows that with enough air conditioning and imported irrigation water you can easily adapt to climate change!" Almost everything in Arizona, from the buildings to health systems and agriculture, is engineered for a hot, dry climate. Even the dairy cows live in air conditioning and are fed on irrigated clover. But you only have to cross the border into Mexico to see what happens when people don't have money and technology to adapt to climate extremes - where summer brings water shortages and mosquito-borne diseases, and where crops and cattle die from increasingly frequent droughts and heat waves.

The controversy that surrounded a serious attempt to examine these issues, the US national assessment on climate change, was a dismaying episode. I was a contributor to this study, which attempted to involve people in trying to understand how climate change might affect different regions in the US and how any damage might be reduced. However, perceived as a legacy of presidential candidate Al Gore, the report became an object of derision in the transition to the Bush administration.

Lobby group the Competitive Enterprise Institute, together with several Republican senators, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the report had been shoddily prepared, using two foreign climate models, poor data, and had not followed proper guidelines. Several scientists were named and forced to take expensive legal advice. Although settled - partly through adding a "health warning" to the report's web page - the legacy of the national assessment haunts US climate science, raising fears that scientists will be subject to lawsuits, and raising the anxiety of those publishing on climate change topics.

Another disturbing new trend is the pressure on the editorial boards of climate journals, the gatekeepers of credible science. When the journal Climate Research published a paper suggesting 20th-century temperatures were not unusually warm, the conclusions were rapidly adopted by sceptics in Washington to argue against evidence of global warming and to force revision of an environmental protection agency report. When it was revealed last year that the American Petroleum Institute had partly funded the authors and that expert review of the paper's methods and assumptions had been flawed, six editors resigned. The editorial board of Climatic Change, of which I am a member, is debating how to respond: unprecedented levels of proof and transparency are being demanded by some reviewers because of the ways in which results may be spun by political interests.

The backlash against environmental science and research that supported international action on climate change also presented me with some personal challenges. On one occasion I was invited to speak to a community group in Arizona and faced a barrage of hostile questions attacking me for promoting global warming as a scare tactic to secure more personal research funding.

Research we conducted on the transboundary San Pedro river, supported by a Montreal-based trilateral environment secretariat, was seen as international meddling with the rights of local property owners and water users. As a result, we even started to underplay global warming in our research projects, focusing instead on the use of past and present climate information in order to rebuild credibility.

It's not all bad. Some American politicians are becoming more concerned with the impacts of climate change on the regions they represent. For example, John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, was behind the Climate Stewardship Act, which proposed a cap on carbon emissions and the creation of a market in which credits for emissions can be bought and sold. The act had broad bipartisan support and was only narrowly defeated.

As someone who took up US citizenship and spent much of my career in the US, I still care deeply about the conditions for scientific research and the environmental policies of my adopted country - as well as the way it is perceived around the world. Right now it looks to many as if the US is discounting the impacts of global warming and trying to derail the Kyoto treaty.

Returning to the UK at a time when researchers are believed and supported by government and the public is heartening - Britain is making an effort to lead the world in CO2 reductions.

But given Britain's self-proclaimed position as a close ally of the US, are we now in a position to influence the US to make climate change a major theme of the G8 summit in June? Let's see if some tough diplomacy can result in something concrete. It really is decision time - and as David King said - we cannot afford to wait.

Further reading

nationalacademies.org/environment
The environmental issues page of the US national academies, publishers of the new report that criticises President Bush's climate change research policy

climatescience.gov
The official US government take on climate change

ipcc.ch
The international take on climate change

unfccc.int/resource/convkp.html
Details of the Kyoto protocol

· Diana Liverman joined Oxford University as the director of the Environmental Change Institute and professor of environmental science in the School of Geography and Environment after more than 20 years as a climate researcher in the USA. She served on several national and international committees including chairing the national research council's (NRC) committee on the human dimensions of global environmental change and acting as a scientific advisor to the Inter-American institute for global change research.

Special report
Climate change

Graphics
CO2 emissions
The world in the 2050s
The greenhouse effect

Interactive
Guide to drilling for oil in the Arctic
Calculate your personal carbon count

Key resources
The Kyoto protocol
Bjorn Lomborg: Are we doing the right thing?

Useful links
UN framework convention on climate change
Greenpeace
Friends of the earth

posted 02-21-2004 11:56 AM               

Great Barrier Reef corals mostly dead by 2050

The brightly-coloured corals that make Australia's Great Barrier Reef one of the world's natural wonders will be largely dead by 2050 because of rising sea temperatures, according to a report released Saturday.

Instead of the rich environment depicted in the recent movie Finding Nemo, the coral reef will be bleached out and replaced by ordinary seaweed, costing the tourism industry billion of dollars, the report into the impact of global warming says.

Authors Hans and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg -- the head of Queensland University's marine studies centre and his economist father -- spent two years examining the effects of rising sea temperature on the reef for Queensland tourism authorities and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

Their 350-page report found no prospect of avoiding the "chilling long-term eventualities" of coral bleaching because greenhouse gases were already warming the seas as part of a process it said would take decades to stop.

"Coral cover will decrease to less than five percent on most reefs by the middle of the century under even the most favourable assumptions," the report said. "This is the only plausible conclusion if sea temperatures continue to rise."

Warmer sea waters make corals suffer thermal stress, eventually making them bleach and die.

The report said this could occur if temperatures increased by as little as one degree centigrade, well below the two to six degrees water temperatures around the reef are expected to rise by over the next century.

"There is no evidence that corals can adapt fast enough to match even the lower projected temperature rise," it found.

Organisms reliant on coral would become rare or even face extinction, the report said.

It said the bleaching would cost the economy up to eight billion dollars (6.24 billion US) and 12,000 jobs by 2020 under the worst-case scenario.

Even under the best case scenario, about 6,000 jobs would be lost and tourists would be forced to visit "Great Barrier Reef theme parks" offshore to view the remaining coral.

The reef covers more than 345,000 square kilometers (133,000 square miles) off Australia's northeast coast, making it the world's largest coral reef.

Consisting of 2,900 interlinked reefs, 900 islands and 1,500 fish species, scientists consider it the world's largest living organism.

Yet the delicate habitat faces numerous environmental threats, including chemical run off from farms, over-fishing, bleaching and the parasitic Crown-of-Thorns starfish, which attacks coral.

The government announced plans in December to reduce farm run off and ban fishing in about a third of the reef in a bid to protect Australia's number one tourist drawcard.

But the report's authors said the government needed to do more, recommending Canberra ratify the Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gases and take the lead in emission reduction.

The WWF said urgent measures must be put in place to minimise reef damage and reduce greenhouse gases.

"The argument for instant action is undeniable," WWF said in a statement. "Major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions must occur now, not in five or ten years time. This is likely to deliver major benefits to our societies both in the near-term and at times beyond 2050."

posted 02-21-2004 12:09 PM               

Really, we just want clarity on the situation.

This is such a complex issue. We need more "definitive" studies before we'll take the risk of changing any of our existing policies.

You wouldn't want to do ANYTHING that would threaten jobs or our econonmy would you?

Well, let me think about that again...you did "elect" George Bush and his policies have resulted in 2.6 million job loses and the largest federal deficit in history.

But back to the science. That's what we want, good science. And we'll happily pay for the best science we can buy.

Spokespeople too.

posted 02-21-2004 12:42 PM               

By Steve Newman - San Francisco Chronicle
SAturday February 21, 2004

Australian Oven

posted 02-21-2004 08:54 PM            

You are certainly prolific in your ability to find relevant information and seem to make the case well, warming /instability is real and will have a significant impact on the Earth it seems and it's people and economy. It looks by your data presented that overall lately temperatures worldwide are continuing to increasingly rise, and glaciers are continuing to melt (though a few appear to grow) some melting at an astronomical rate such as reportedly Glacier National Park.

It also appears to me the data suggests that mankind is having an effect on climate but that just exactly how much of one compared to such things as the alleged increase in sun intensity seems to show, is still not known. Has even a theoretical number been worked out as to the possible percentage effects of mankinds contribution on overall expected warming? And is it really "too late" to do anything about warming as is claimed by those that say we are still going to suffer increases in warming/instability due to past "sins" that take decades to reach their full affects? Does this "hopeless" scenario really have grounds for existing?

What is your best gue