Deep in the Himalayas, the disappearance of glaciers is threatening the kingdom of Bhutan. Anjali Nayar trekked through the mountains to see how the country is adapting to a warming world. From Climate Feedback part of Guardian Environment Network.
Indonesia has accelerated ahead of India, Brazil, Japan, Germany and the UK to take bronze medal in the race to become the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. What? It's not a race? Well Indonesia are treating it like one. Illegal logging of 10 million hectares and subsequent burning has propelled Indonesia into third place in the list of the world's carbon emitters.
Indonesia has one-tenth of the world's remaining rainforest, but the world-record speed of destruction is accounting for 80% of the country's green house gas emissions. The dictator that ruled for 32 years didn't help things, but the current president hasn't done much to help either. Legal logging continues as unsustainable levels, with the country eager to profit from plantations that require massive land clearance, destroying natural habitats for endangered species. Indonesia welcomes the idea of being paid to conserve its forest (like Ecuador) through UN's Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, but even that scheme would be unlikely to compensate Indonesia enough to make it worthwhile. And until a better solution is found, the destruction will continue.
Indonesia has accelerated ahead of India, Brazil, Japan, Germany and the UK to take bronze medal in the race to become the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. What? It's not a race? Well Indonesia are treating it like one. Illegal logging of 10 million hectares and subsequent burning has propelled Indonesia into third place in the list of the world's carbon emitters.
Indonesia has one-tenth of the world's remaining rainforest, but the world-record speed of destruction is accounting for 80% of the country's green house gas emissions. The dictator that ruled for 32 years didn't help things, but the current president hasn't done much to help either. Legal logging continues as unsustainable levels, with the country eager to profit from plantations that require massive land clearance, destroying natural habitats for endangered species. Indonesia welcomes the idea of being paid to conserve its forest (like Ecuador) through UN's Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, but even that scheme would be unlikely to compensate Indonesia enough to make it worthwhile. And until a better solution is found, the destruction will continue.
AMSTERDAM — The U.N. climate change chief says reaching a final global warming treaty will be impossible this year, but that the principles of that accord must be determined at a conference in December.
Yvo de Boer says the treaty's details can be filled in over the next year, but the political deal must be struck at the Copenhagen conference and "time is running out."
He says finances are the key to a Copenhagen agreement. He urged European Union leaders at a summit this week to declare how much the bloc will give poor countries to adapt to climate change.
De Boer said in a conference call Wednesday from Bonn, Germany, that poor countries should get at least $10 billion (euro6.7 billion) a year, starting immediately.
The idea that the world is now cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, talk radio, pundit television and more. After a poll was released last week indicating that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, which is down from 77 percent in 2006, Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press decided to check out what the statistics are really saying about global warming or cooling. In a blind test, Borenstein sent accumulated ground temperature data from the past 130 years to four independent statisticians. He disguised the sources (NASA, NOAA and British meteorological data) and didn't tell the statisticians what the numbers represented; he asked them to just look for trends in the data. The experts found no true temperature declines over time; additionally, the last ten years comprise not only the highest data set in the record, but they also have a continued, positive trend.
SYDNEY (AP) — A new report into the effects of climate change on Australia's vast coastline is forcing Aussies to consider the unthinkable: life away from the surf.
Beach culture is key to the nation's identity. Some 80 percent of people live along the coast, so oceanside living is often seen as a virtual birthright. But a government environmental committee warns that thousands of miles (kilometers) of Australia's coastline are under threat from rising sea levels.
The report, issued to parliament late Monday after an 18-month study, suggests officials consider the possibility of banning people from living in vulnerable areas.
" is>Australia's vast coastline is forcing Aussies to consider the unthinkable: life away from the surf.
Beach culture is key to the nation's identity. Some 80 percent of people live along the coast, so oceanside living is often seen as a virtual birthright. But a government environmental committee warns that thousands of miles (kilometers) of Australia's coastline are under threat from rising sea levels.
The report, issued to parliament late Monday after an 18-month study, suggests officials consider the possibility of banning people from living in vulnerable areas.
"The Committee agrees that this is an issue of national importance and that the time to act is now," the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts wrote.
The report makes 47 recommendations on how Australia can better prepare for the effects of climate change. It does not say the government should force people to move inland but proposes an independent group look into whether the government could — and should — do just that.
President Barack Obama warned of increased skepticism on global warming and related legislative initiatives - as more Americans question the threat.
Citing "overwhelming scientific evidence," U.S. President Barack Obama sought to paint a picture of a "marginalized" population of global warming critics ahead of a key congressional push on cap and trade legislation. Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, Obama warned that the opposition will intensify as Congress gets closer to shaping a climate change bill.
"There are going to be those who... make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary," Obama said.
By Jeff Mason
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he saw consensus building in the U.S. Congress on climate change and energy legislation that is considered critical to international talks on a new global warming pact.
Obama, who supports a bill to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, promoted the legislation during a visit to Massachusetts, saying it would transform the U.S. energy system and spur the United States to lead the world on developing technology for "clean" types of fuel.
"Everybody in America should have a stake in legislation that can transform our energy system into one that's far more efficient, far cleaner, and provide energy independence for America," he told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, urging bipartisan support for a new law.
Obama has said he wants the United States to lead the world on climate change, but his focus on healthcare reform has dominated his and lawmakers' legislative focus for several months. A bill is unlikely to reach his desk by the time U.N. talks on an new global warming agreement begin in December.
In a new poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, public belief in the global warming theory and the theoretical dangers it presents continues to wane. The poll results show public opinion continues to shift as global temperatures cool and skeptics find their voice in the public forum.
According to Pew, 58% of Americans said there was solid evidence the earth was warming, a decrease of 14 points since April 2008. Delving deeper into the numbers, only 36% now say that human activity is the reason for global warming, down 11% from the previous poll.
As would be expected, the political leanings of those taking the survey affected their response to the questions. Overall, Republicans saw less evidence of global warming than Democrats. Even among Democrats however the poll showed waning support and a marked decrease in believers. Most notably however, independents saw the sharpest decline in believers taking a dive of 22%.
In response to pressure from environmental groups, Toyota issued a statement on Friday distancing the automaker from the Chamber's opposition to climate change legislation.
"Toyota is a member of a wide array of groups, but none has our full proxy," wrote Toyota executive Josephine Cooper. "Our association with any one of them does not signify that we agree with all of their policies."
Politico reported Friday that Toyota had been "inundated with calls and emails" from Prius owners upset about the firm's Chamber membership.
Chamber president Tom Donohue has complained about the "orchestrated pressure campaign" to get businesses to defect from the uber lobbying group.
NEW DELHI — Denmark urged the European Union, the United States and other rich countries to commit to financing for a new climate change deal, saying Friday that billions of dollars are needed.
The appeal came days after the EU failed to agree on how much it should offer poor nations for their cooperation in trying to cut carbon emissions and how to spread the burden among the group's 27 member states.
Developing countries argue that rich countries produced most of the heat-trapping greenhouse gases on their march to development and should bear the costs of fixing the problem. Wealthy nations say all countries — including growing polluters India and China — have to agree to broad cuts in emissions.
Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard said it was important to make a politically binding deal at a December U.N. conference in Copenhagen.
She said it was "very, very important" for EU leaders to reach agreement at a summit next week.
"But I also would strongly urge other partners — the United States, Japan and others — to come forward with finance," she added.
Rich countries agree they should offer developing nations financial incentives to cut emissions, but differ on the amounts.
Hedegaard, who spoke at an international meeting on technology and climate change in New Delhi, declined to specify an amount, saying only that it would be billions of dollars.
She and other environment officials also stressed the need to generate private funding for environmentally friendly technology.
Just 57 per cent now think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll by the Pew Research Center says.
And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.
The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming.
Only 36 per cent of the 1,500 Americans polled felt that human activities – such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles – are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 per cent only a year ago.
In a move applauded by WWF, the US Department of the Interior has announced the proposed designation of almost 52 million hectares of key polar bear habitat across Alaska. The requirement for the identification of 'critical habitat' was triggered by the listing of polar bears as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act in 2008. "Designation of critical habitat affords important protections to the polar bear, a species imperiled by dramatic changes in its sea ice environment," says Geoff York, senior program officer for Polar Bear Conservation at WWF.
"As sea ice habitat shrinks, it becomes increasingly important to protect areas that are crucial for the bears' survival." The critical habitat proposal announced today identifies habitat in three separate areas or units: barrier island habitat, sea ice habitat and terrestrial denning habitat. The total area proposed for designation would cover almost 52 million hectares (200,541 square miles).
Barrier island habitat includes coastal barrier islands and spits along Alaska's coast, and is used for denning, refuge from human disturbances, access to maternal dens and feeding habitat, as well as travel along the coast. Sea ice habitat is located over the continental shelf, and includes water 300m and less in depth. Terrestrial denning habitat includes lands within 32 km (about 20 miles) of the northern coast of Alaska between the Canadian border and the Kavik River and within 8 km (about 5 miles) between the Kavik River and Barrow.
WWF works around the Arctic with local communities, scientists and governments to enhance polar bear conservation, protect their habitat, and ensure sustainable populations. WWF encourages the Department of the Interior to ensure that the views of local people are incorporated in the designation of critical habitat areas.
The world's top scientific experts on polar bears, the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), recently concluded that the IUCN Red List classification of the polar bear should be upgraded from 'Least Concern' to 'Vulnerable'. That was based on the likelihood of an overall decline in the size of the total population of more than 30% within the next 35 to 50 years.. The principal cause of this decline is climatic warming as it melts away the polar bears' important sea ice habitat.
At the Polar Bear Specialist Group Meeting this summer, the experts concluded that eight polar bear population groups are now in decline, up from five in 2005.
"Polar bears are not land animals - they evolved over thousands of years to be sea ice specialists. They need the ice to hunt for seals, their primary food. Take away the ice and you take away the bears," added York.
In recent years, science has documented a decline in the condition and cub survival rate of some of the most southerly bear populations, and most recently significant increases in polar bear movements and home ranges as animals are forced to migrate longer distances in search of food or habitat.
"The changes we are witnessing in the Arctic do not just raise concerns about the fate of iconic species such as polar bear - our own future is at stake," said York.
"The planet is changing in dangerous ways and the longer we wait to address the climate crisis the costlier it will be. While designation of critical habitat for polar bear is a positive step, it remains critical that the U.S. Senate pass a climate bill this year, moving us closer to reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen this December."
Which country is number one in carbon emissions? Up until very recently, it was the US - now, it is indisputedly China, as shown by this data.
These are the latest figures - up to 2007 - from the respected US Energy Information Administration. This has (literally) every country in the world on it and its emissions going back to 1980 — plus we've put on some handy percentage change data and ranking information.
The curious thing is, we've been here before. Last year we reported that China had overtaken the US in 2006. But if you look at the figures below, the change now appears to have happened in 2007. What's going on?
We asked the EIA and this is what they said:
Each year we review the underlying consumption data for petroleum, natural gas, and coal and the flaring data for natural gas and make any necessary revisions. These, in turn, affect our CO2 emissions estimates. I think that most of the change for China was due to revisions to our coal consumption data. Coal consumption is a calculated value based on production, imports, exports, and stock change and when measured in Btus is also affected by the types of coal consumed (i.e. anthracite, bituminous, and lignite). Data for the most recent year are often preliminary and most subject to revision but data for earlier years are also often revised.
Of course, these aren't all emissions - just consumption of engergy, which accounts for 60% of the total. But they give a good picture of what is going on.
The British government today raised the political stakes on climate change when it published a new map of the world that details the likely effects of a failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The map shows the impact of an average 4C rise in global temperature, which John Beddington, the government's chief scientist, said would be "disastrous". A study by the Met Office last month said that such a 4C rise could come as soon as 2060 without urgent and serious action to reduce emissions.
The map was launched to coincide with the London Science Museum's new Prove it climate change exhibition by David Miliband, foreign secretary and his brother Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary. It comes in advance of key political talks on climate change in December in Copenhagen, where British officials will push for a new global deal to curb emissions.
The Miliband brothers said a new deal needed to be strong enough to limit global temperature rise to 2C, although many involved in the negotiations privately believe this to be impossible. A joint press release from the government and the Met Office released to promote the map says the government is aiming for an agreement that limits climate change "as far as possible to 2C".
The map's release marks a significant shift in political discourse on climate change, with many politicians until recently unwilling to discuss the possibility of a failure to hit the 2C target.
David Miliband warned today that the Copenhagen talks were "the most complicated international negotiations ever attempted". He predicted that unless climate change was slowed there would be "high pressure" on water and food shortages.
Coral makes for an excellent climate change mitigation mascot, considering how much damage its loss will do around the world. Quite simply, coral reefs are on the brink of collapse. Not the scuba-diving type? Well you still have reason to care. Let's talk money. Coral reefs save the world $172 billion a year by acting as natural sea defenses and providing other human welfare benefits. Reefs also earn $30 billion a year for local economies from tourists. If you don't care for such extravagances then consider the 500 million people who depend on the reefs for their food. That's a lot of people who will need to look elsewhere as reefs collapse.
Quite simply: "Climate Change Will Bring Coral Reefs Collapse" isn't so worrying until you realize that we aren't just losing a few acres of coral reef protecting a few dozen clownfish. No: We are at risk of losing truly valuable eco-systems that we won't able to rebuild for free, and who's destruction will cost us greatly if nothing is done.
Environmental campaigners slammed Europe’s governments tonight after latest talks to settle funding levels for climate change broke down without agreement.
The European Commission has put a price of up to £14 billion a year on the EU’s contribution towards the cost poor countries will face meet a global climate change deal.
But talks between EU finance ministers failed to agree figures today.
Swedish finance minister Anders Borg, chairing the talks, said afterwards: “There was a disappointing failure to reach agreement on climate financing today. The lack of conclusion was disappointing - but it doesn’t mean we won’t find a solution.”
EU environment ministers will try next — but all eyes are on an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels at the end of the month to deliver an accord on funding with little over a month before the EU goes to Copenhagen hoping to present a united environmental front to the rest of the world..
Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken said: “Today’s EU fiasco has made the chance of failure in Copenhagen very real.
“Climate funding for developing nations is a make-or-break issue for a global climate agreement. Instead of laying the foundations of a global climate agreement, finance ministers have only brought the catastrophic effects of climate change one step closer.
The world must start a "complete" shift to a low carbon economy by 2014 — or risk making dangerous climate change almost inevitable, a report warned today.
The study for conservation charity WWF showed that waiting until after 2014 to fully develop the clean industries needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy, would leave it too late to halt temperature rises of more than 2C.
With low-carbon industry only able to grow at a certain rate, a delay in taking action will make it almost impossible for countries to roll out the technology in time to cut emissions by the amounts needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
The research by analysts Climate Risk (pdf) also said countries must take action across a range of industries at once, including renewable energy, technology to capture the carbon emissions from fossil fuel power stations, preventing deforestation and improving energy efficiency.
If countries fail to tackle emissions across all sectors, they will end up getting the lowest-cost industries up and running first and not developing other areas until they are affordable.
This would make it impossible to meet targets to reduce emissions, the study warned.
The report, published as representatives of 17 countries meet in the UK for the Major Economies Forum as part of efforts to secure a new global agreement on cutting emissions at UN talks in Copenhagen in December, called for long-term investment strategies to support clean technology.
"Global" and "warming" are perhaps the two most important words used to justify the approaching governmental control of our economy. In reality, global warming is barely occurring: In the 30 years starting in 1977, warming amounted to 0.32 degree Fahrenheit per decade, and in the next hundred years it is estimated to be about half a degree per decade.
So global warming looks like neither the alarmists' serious threat, nor an immediate crisis that requires governmental control of America's economy to reduce it. Nevertheless the government solution to these increases--the Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House earlier this year--is estimated to lower global temperatures only about 0.18 degree Fahrenheit in the next 90 years.
And now comes the new Boxer-Kerry Senate bill, which would require a 20% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020.
As a practical matter, what would such a reduction mean to us and our economy? Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute calculates that a 20% reduction would mean cutting America's greenhouse gas emissions to our 1977 levels, and that would radically change both the U.S. economy and our personal lives.
As Mr. Hayward notes, we had 220 million people in America then; today we have 305 million. In 1977 our economy was produced $7.2 trillion (in 2008 dollars); today it is twice as large, at $14.2 trillion. Back then we had 145 million vehicles on the road; today we have 251 million. America has substantially grown, and our energy needs have grown as well.
Buenos Aires, Argentina – WWF is challenging global leaders to back an ambitious target on stopping forest loss as a major element of efforts to avert the looming climate catastrophe.
In his keynote address at the XIIIth World Forestry Congress on Monday, WWF International’s Forests Director Rodney Taylor urged participants of the Congress, including government leaders, NGOs and businesses, to support a global target of zero net deforestation by 2020.
WWF is proposing a groundbreaking global benchmark for action on forests to avoid dangerous climate change and curb biodiversity loss.
Despite conservation efforts, deforestation continues at an alarming rate – 13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute. It generates almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and halting forest loss has been identified as one of the most cost-effective ways to keep the world out of the danger zone of runaway climate change.
Taylor said that zero net deforestation by 2020 is “a common target – one that sets the scale and urgency with which these threats need to be tackled to maintain the health of the planet.”
Cabinet sign SOS memo to raise awareness of threat of rising sea levels to their country.
The UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned.
Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the "impasse".
He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B".
World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.
'Rising wave'
The United Nations (UN) summit will aim to establish a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto treaty as its targets for reducing emissions only apply to a small number of countries and expire in 2012.
Mr Brown warned that negotiators were not reaching agreement quickly enough and said it was a "profound moment" for the world involving "momentous choice".
Britain's first carbon capture and storage demonstration plant will be built at Hatfield in Yorkshire, thanks to a €180m award from the European Union. The funds, announced today, will be matched by the UK government.
The money has been awarded to Powerfuel Power for a 900MW coal-fired electricity plant that could start operating as soon as 2014. The company will use "pre-combustion" CCS technology, which removes carbon dioxide from the coal before it is burned, and then pipes it to be buried in an offshore gas field 100 miles away. Pre-combustion CCS should trap more CO2 than post-combustion techniques.
Scientists predict that the arctic sea lanes will be free from ice in summer within 20 years. This is good news for the world economy.
According to Fox News, "The data supports the new consensus view — based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition — that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years," said Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, U.K.
If the arctic ice does indeed melt it will result in many positive benefits to the world economy and indirectly to individual consumers. It's not that big a deal.
If there is no arctic ice the Northwest Passage opens up for shipping, at least it will be open in the summer if professor Wadhams is to be believed. This will cut from one to two weeks off the travel time for shipments of material goods traveling between Europe and Asia. Rather than having to round the Cape of Good Hope or weather the Magellan Straits, vessels can sail a more direct and shorter route across the north pole.
Climate change catastrophe can be averted by "greening" consumer behaviour rather than by curbing economic growth and mass consumerism, leaders of some of the world's biggest businesses including Tesco, Coca-Cola and Reckitt Benckiser argued today.
They urged politicians to be braver at the Copenhagen talks on climate change in December, saying voters could be persuaded of the need to act. They were speaking, along with David Cameron and Professor Robert Puttnam, the sociologist and advocate of the importance of social capital, at a conference in London on the role of the consumer and business in combating climate change.
The degree of focus on climate change by the businesspeople would have been impossible five years ago. But some in the audience angrily insisted that they underestimated the need to slow consumerism.
Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, told the conference that combating climate change was now the number one priority of his company, and announced that his multibillion-pound business would be zero-carbon by 2050. "Survival is the issue, not just for our business, but the entire planet," he said.
In yesterday's photo essay of the Solar Decathlon action on the National Mall, I was missing one crucial detail: the contest's winner, which had yet to be announced.
So I'm here bright and early today to bring you the breaking news: Team Germany has just been named overall champion of the 2009 Solar Decathlon. The team was in second place yesterday before the engineering competition, which edged them out over University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Third prize goes to Team California.
The house is basically a two-story cube with a big, square living space inside. The walls and roof are entirely coated with solar-collectors that generate two times the energy the house requires. The interior, an undivided multifunctional space, is kept at a comfortable temperature with various cutting-edge insulation techniques.
The 24-member team mostly composed of architecture students took on the philosophy of trying to "push the envelope with as many new technologies as possible" and relied on the advice on the 2007 to help them clobber the competition.
Advancing deserts in Mongolia, drought in East Africa, wildfires in California, floods in Mexico and the Philippines: All tell the same story. Climate change is real, it is happening now, and it is affecting people all around the world.
Economies will suffer. Fragile nations may become more unstable, threatening security for all. The solution lies in action now for change tomorrow.
Dependence on coal and oil is causing global warming. But there is another vision: sustainable growth based on clean power, energy-efficient buildings, and green cities. The world’s best minds are working overtime to find creative solutions. Engineers are looking to cool our cities with white roofs and green spaces. Entrepreneurs are racing to capitalize on the growing demand for clean energy. Policy specialists are considering the impact of energy subsidies.
A green economy is within our grasp. Scientists know it, the heads of our major corporations know it, leaders such as Governor Schwarzenegger and President Obama know it. I know it. That is why, since my first days in office, I have made climate change a priority.
Their defection opens a rift between companies that fear billions of dollars in higher operating costs and those moving now to tackle the challenges posed by stricter laws against carbon emissions.
Collectively, the climate change legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June could cost $566 billion, or 0.3%, of gross domestic product between 2012 to 2030, if it becomes law, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. See EIA report.
The higher costs from emissions caused by making and burning fuel and generating electricity may not be shared equally by utility firms or other polluters, igniting efforts from a growing list of stakeholders to focus on a newer climate change measure working its way through the U.S. Senate.
I suppose it's possible that those who are committed to drastic and dramatic action on climate change will pretend that most of 2009 didn't happen. The world leaders, scientists and lobbyists from environmental organisations and their evil cousins, the lobbyists for green technology, can all show up in Copenhagen, listen to each other talk, and resolve merrily that global warming should go away. Of course they won't detail how, unless it involves spending money after the politicians leave office.
Since this is what most likely will happen, let's take a look at the opportunity they're missing. Imagine what would happen if they addressed reality from the podium and said something like this:
"Science is a funny thing, even if global warming is not. This year has brought information to us that can call into question some of the courses of action we have espoused, and even some of the premises that have underlain so many of our beliefs and ideals.
"We need to say openly that the science isn't settled--that although the mechanisms by which global warming can be caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not controversial, we are still adjusting our models and cannot honestly say how dramatic global warming will be, especially over the near term.
A controversial film about environmental extremism and global warming, Not Evil Just Wrong, will premier in Kennesaw this Sunday at AMC Theatres Barrett Commons 24. The film begins at 3:00 Sunday afternoon at the AMC Theater and also premiers around the nation that day at thousands of individual house parties and similar screenings.
The Kennesaw premier is sponsored by Georgia Tea Party, Inc., the non-partisan advocacy group based in Cobb County that seeks to educate the public about principles of liberty and constitutionally-limited self-government.
International — Coal and oil companies are using forest offset projects to try and cheat the climate. Our new report Carbon Scam investigates how American Electric Power, BP and Pacificorp - all investors in the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project in Bolivia - are using the forest protection project to try and avoid reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions.
'Carbon Scam' shows how projected carbon savings are close to 90 per cent lower than originally claimed; how overall deforestation rates in Bolivia have actually increased since the project started; and how the promised benefits to local communities have come to nothing.
What is Noel Kempff?
In 1997, the three energy giants made an agreement with the Bolivian government to invest millions of dollars to expand and protect the forest in Noel Kempff national park. In return they would receive carbon credits, to buy and sell on voluntary carbon markets to offset their own CO2 emissions.
Noel Kempff is being used by the industry as the poster child for future sub-national forest offset schemes under REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). REDD is the means by which forest protection will be included in the global climate deal to be negotiated at the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit in December.
Today is Blog Action Day, and this year’s theme is Climate Change – a topic near and dear to our hearts here at Inhabitat. To kick things off, we took a look back over last the past year’s posts and pulled together a list of our top 5 favorite climate change stories to hit the pages of Inhabitat. The following [completely biased] list is in no particular order. It does, however, attempt to focus on solutions to the problem – because we believe that there is hope for our planet if we act now. Check it out and please, comment copiously. We love a good debate!
LONDON, England (CNN) -- It is being billed as the largest-ever social change event on the Web and one which its organizers believe will unite the digital world in a wider conversation about climate change.
The third annual Blog Action Day is bringing together thousands of bloggers to discuss the same issue on the same day.
It doesn't matter who you are, or where you are from, or, for that matter, what you usually blog about. All Blog Action Day wants you to do, for one day, is to write about climate change.
The event is being made possible by change.org -- a social action blog network.
Robin Beck, the day's organizing director, told CNN: "I would say that 99 percent of our bloggers have never written about climate change before. I think there is a lot of power in people who usually don't write about this having conversations about a major issue like climate change."
The scale of involvement in the day has been impressive. So far, over 8,000 blogs have registered in 144 countries and organizers predict that there will be around 15 million readers.
LONDON (Reuters) - Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.
Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, said much of the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years.
The changes will mean the top of the Earth will appear blue rather than white when photographed from space and ships will have a new sea route north of Russia.
Scientists say evidence of melting Arctic ice is one of the clearest signs of global warming and it should send a warning to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December for U.N. talks on a new climate treaty.
"The data supports the new consensus view -- based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition -- that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years," Wadhams said in a statement. "Much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years."
To the naked eye, there was nothing to be seen at a natural gas well in eastern Texas but beige pipes and tanks baking in the sun.
But in the viewfinder of Terry Gosney’s infrared camera, three black plumes of gas gushed through leaks that were otherwise invisible.
“Holy smoke, it’s blowing like mad,” said Mr. Gosney, an environmental field coordinator for EnCana, the Canadian gas producer that operates the year-old well near Franklin, Tex. “It does look nasty.”
Within a few days the leaks had been sealed by workers.
Efforts like EnCana’s save energy and money. Yet they are also a cheap, effective way of blunting climate change that could potentially be replicated thousands of times over, from Wyoming to Siberia, energy experts say. Natural gas consists almost entirely of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas that scientists say accounts for as much as a third of the human contribution to global warming.
The Obama administration is hoping to win new commitments to fight global warming from China and India in back-to-back summits next month, the Guardian has learned, including the first Indian emissions trading scheme.
The US hopes the new commitments will breathe life into the moribund negotiations to seal a global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December, by setting out what action each country will take. But many observers say such bilateral deals also risk seriously weakening any Copenhagen agreement by allowing the idea of a global limit on greenhouse gas emissions to be abandoned.
The US's twin diplomatic push will see Barack Obama meeting China's president Hu Jintao in Beijing on November 16-17 before playing host to India's prime minister Manmohan Singh at the White House on November 24. The visits appear timed to provide a much-needed boost to a proposed law to reduce US emissions now before the Senate, as well as to the Copenhagen talks.
The Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which aims to promote global ecological balance, eliminate material and spiritual poverty and contribute to lasting peace and justice in the world, has announced its 2009 Right Livelihood Award, often described as the "alternative Nobel Prize."
This year the Foundation has honored, among other people, Canadian environmentalist and television personality David Suzuki "for his lifetime advocacy of the socially responsible use of science, and for his massive contribution to raising awareness about the perils of climate change and building public support for policies to address it," and René Ngongo of Greenpeace "for his courage in confronting the forces that are destroying the Congo's rainforests and building political support for their conservation and sustainable use."
Suzuki received an honorary award, which does not include a cash prize. The other three winners -- Ngongo, Australian doctor Catherine Hamlin who works in her adopted country of Ethiopia benefits Africa's poorest women, and nuclear-disarmament activist Alyn Ware of New Zealand -- will receive 50,000 euros ($74,000). The awards ceremony will occur in December in the Swedish parliament.
In a video interview with Greg Bourne of WWF-Australia, Suzuki reflected on the devastating changes in the natural world that have occurred since he was a boy. "The change has been absolutely dramatic in my lifetime. The fish I took for granted as a child are simply not there," he said. (See a collection of videos on the award winners here.)
People often say that's the price of progress, he reflected, but "I don't think it's progress to use up the rightful legacy of future generations."
Barack Obama's efforts to act on climate change could extract "significant costs" on America's GDP and employment, the congressional budget office said today.
In testimony before the Senate's energy committee, the CBO director, Douglas Elmendorf, said that a climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last June would cut US GDP by between one quarter and three quarters of a percent by 2020.
The costs of dealing with climate change would rise further still by 2050 when the bill envisages an 80% cut in US greenhouse gas emissions. America's GDP would be between 1% and 3.5% below where it might have been in a business as usual scenario, Elmendorf said.
"One of the great uncertainties about the costs of reducing carbon emissions is how readily the economy can move towards an economy that reduces its use of energy," he said. "In particular areas, in particular industries there will be significant effects." He added: "The fact that jobs turn up for some people does not mean that there are not significant costs for some people in some industries."
The recent corporate resignations from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have played in the media as a case of enlightened corporate stewardship vs. blinkered old businesses. But there's far more to this story—not least the way that Apple and Nike are putting green political correctness above the long-term interests of their own shareholders.
The Chamber needs "a more progressive stance on this issue" of climate change, declared Apple Vice President Catherine Novelli in a letter of resignation from the business lobby on October 5. Added Nike, announcing its resignation on September 30 from the Chamber board though retaining its membership: "US businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change." Both decisions were ostentatiously leaked to the media.
The first point to understand is the role of Al Gore, who is a member of the Apple board and perhaps the leading supporter of President Obama's cap-and-tax anticarbon legislation. Mr. Gore has also invested in renewable energy technologies that could make him even richer than he already is if new climate rules make renewables more competitive with carbon energy.
Meanwhile, Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook happens to sit on the board of . . . Nike. We're told that Nike CEO Mike Parker didn't discuss the Chamber move with his full board of directors before it was announced, and Nike didn't return our phone call asking for comment. In any case, we doubt it's an accident that Nike and Apple acted against the Chamber at the same time—and just when Democrats are trying to build new momentum for cap and trade in the Senate.
On October 13, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency released a copy of a Bush/Cheney administration’s EPA report on global warming, previously acknowledged to exist, but only just released to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.
The report written in 2007 had restrained and measured language, with minimal detail, suggesting the EPA biologists were weary of how the White House might react. It became well known that the Bush/Cheney team did not want to regulate greenhouse gases.
None-the-less, their EPA 2007 report conclusion was the same as the Obama administration EPA findings in 2009: scientific evidence concluded that curbing C02 emissions was critical to avoid serious consequences to the country on a health, economic, and security level.
“The report demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today," Adora Andy, an EPA spokeswoman, said. "The conclusions reached then by EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered”—as part of the on going national debate.
"Both reach the same conclusion: the public is endangered and regulation is required," said Jason Burnett, a former associate deputy administrator. Burnett resigned from the EPA in June 2008 over the frustration of the Bush administration's inaction on climate change. "Science and the law transcend politics."
The glow of sunlight barely permeates the fog to illuminate this view from Clingman’s Dome. Dead fir trees, the result of aphid infestation due to air pollution, are fast becoming a common part of the landscape. The Smoky Mountains, on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, are at the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. Known for its perennial blanket of smoky-blue mist – a natural effect of oily residues and water vapour from its richly diverse forests – it has become America’s most visited national park, attracting more than 9 million visitors annually. Today, the Great Smoky’s signature blue fog is being replaced by a toxic yellow haze caused by airborne pollutants which are trapped by the mountains
The United Nations climate change conference is set for December 7 through 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretary Yvo DeBoer is already stirring the pot with comments on the lack of will among developed nations to combat global warming. "The time for speeches is over. Our planet is being plundered and pillaged on an unprecedented scale." DeBoer praised actions announced recently by the European Union and China, but said without "more will" on the part of developed nations, the Copenhagen conference is likely to be "half baked."
The European Union has announced a ten year, €53 billion government investment in renewable energy production, including €16 billion for solar power production, €13 billion for clean coal technology, € 9 billion for biofuel development, €7 billion for nuclear power, €6 billion for wind energy, and €2 billion for transmission grid infrastructure. Cogen Europe predicts increasing combined heat and power generation capacity from 97 billion watts to 219 billion watts by 2020.
China has announced plans to double its nuclear power generation goal from 4% to 8% of total installed power capacity by 2020. China's Ministry of Finance and its State Administration of Taxation already implemented a 15 year tax preference policy for the nation's nuclear power industry.
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Preventing the destruction of marine life, from plankton to seagrasses and mangrove forests, could help offset between 3 to 7 percent of current fossil fuel emissions, a U.N. environment report said on Wednesday.
The "Blue Carbon" report found that of all the biological carbon captured in the world, slightly more than half is captured by marine-living organisms.
"Healthy oceans (are a) new key to combating climate change," said the report, which highlighted how marine organisms such as seagrasses naturally absorb greenhouse gases.
Life in seas and estuaries captured and stored up to 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent of almost half of the emissions from the entire global transport system, it said.
NEW YORK — The head of an international airline trade association said Tuesday the industry will reach some ambitious emissions reductions goals, despite severe financial setbacks faced by airlines across the globe.
International Air Transport Association CEO Giovanni Bisignani told reporters that even with fleet expansions over the next 11 years, the industry can be carbon neutral by 2020 through a range of adjustments. This includes everything from putting less water on a flight — making the plane lighter and saving fuel — to buying new fuel-efficient aircraft.
Being carbon neutral means that the airlines offset as much carbon as they produce. That can be achieved by using renewable fuels or purchasing so-called carbon credits.
IATA also aims to improve fuel efficiency by about 1.5 percent annually through 2020 and to reduce by half the airline industry's total carbon emissions by 2050, compared with 2005 levels.
Bisignani also presented the climate change strategy and targets to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a meeting at United Nation headquarters in New York on Monday.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Despite fears of failure facing global climate change negotiations in December, the U.N. climate panel chief said Wednesday it was still possible to agree a pact, including levels of emission cuts by rich nations.
Talks for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 37 rich nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, are deadlocked on the question of cuts to be taken by rich and poorer countries.
Developed nations will also have to come up with billions of dollars in climate aid and green technologies for the poor.
"The wiggle room is there even at the stroke of midnight when the conference is ending," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In an effort to pin down the costs of global climate change, one of the world's largest insurers announced yesterday that its research network is joining with San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography to study the effect of changes in the weather and sea level.
Under the arrangement, Scripps will provide climate research to the Willis Group of London and its clients in the insurance industry, which could use the data to assess their exposure to financial risks from rising sea levels or weather-related catastrophes.
Stephen Bennett, director of business development at Scripps, said in a statement that the partnership showed that “insurers and reinsurers are leading the commercial sector when it comes to considering the impact of climate change on a global scale.”
WASHINGTON — A controversial e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.
The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.
The document specifically cites global warming's effects on air quality, agriculture, forestry, water resources and coastal areas as endangering public welfare.
That finding was rejected by the Bush White House, which strongly opposed using the Clean Air Act to address climate change and stalled on producing a so-called "endangerment finding" that had been ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007.
As a result, the Dec. 5 e-mail sent by the agency to Susan Dudley, who headed the regulatory division at the Office of Management and Budget was never opened, according to Jason Burnett, the former EPA official that wrote it.
The Bush administration, and then EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, also refused to release the document, which is labeled "deliberative, do not distribute" to Democratic lawmakers. The White House instead allowed three senators to review it last summer, when excerpts were released.
Stockholm - David Suzuki of Canada has for many years actively debated the socially responsibility of science, and its relationship with society.
On Tuesday, he was named winner of the honorary 2009 Right Livelihood Award, often known as the 'alternative Nobel prize'.
Born 1936, Suzuki has a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago. Since 1979 he has been anchorman of a science programme on Canadian television that has played a key role in raising awareness about science.
'It is such an important democratic question that the public be informed about natural science because many of the questions about survival today are scientific questions, like biodiversity, like climate change,' Ole von Uexkull, director of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, told the German Press Agency dpa.
UNITED NATIONS/LONDON (Reuters) - Official Washington sounded more upbeat on Monday than it has for weeks in sizing up U.S. President Barack Obama's chances of progress on a climate-change bill in Congress this year.
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer predicted the committee she leads would approve a bill before a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in December while Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he hoped all of Congress would pass a law by then.
Their positive comments contrasted with those of Carol Browner, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who said 10 days ago she did not expect the U.S. Senate to act in time.
COPENHAGEN, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Denmark's top climate policy negotiator has resigned with less than two months to go before the world meets in Copenhagen to agree on a new deal to curb the effects of climate change. Thomas Becker, who has been called the right hand man of Minister for Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard, resigned last week and was replaced by senior diplomat Steffen Smidt, a ministry official said on Monday. The move so close to the Dec. 7-18 meeting coincided with growing worries about whether governments will reach a deal after talks in Bangkok made little progress. Only one more meeting, in Barcelona next month, remains before negotiators come to Denmark. Although the host's chief negotiator can wield influence as a broker behind the scenes, Denmark's own position is tightly tied to European Union policy, and Becker's absence was seen as unlikely to change an outcome which will be decided primarily by the big powers.
The BBC’s change of mind over global warming has upset the journal Nature, whose blog accuses the Beeb of lending credibility to sceptics by admitting that the planet stopped heating up in 1998 and taking seriously the arguments of scientists who believe that cooling will continue for 30 years.
As I reported yesterday, Paul Hudson, BBC News climate change correspondent, published an article entitled “Whatever happened to global warming?” at the end of last week. Hudson hasn’t joined the ranks of sceptics or deniers, but he does say that the planet stopped warming before the turn of the millennium, and reports that some climatologists believe that this is linked to an ocean cooling cycle that will last for decades.
Heresy! Nature’s blog “The Great Beyond” is very cross, accusing Hudson of being “slightly disingenuous” in claiming that the debate over global warming is “hotting up”. But the debate is gathering pace, even if its terms keep shifting as new data become available. So what exactly has Hudson done wrong?
AUSTRALIANS are becoming less concerned about the threat of global warming, pushing environmental issues down the list of threats.Climate change is no longer rated the top foreign policy issue for the Federal Government, a Lowy Institute poll will reveal today.
It was top of the list in 2007 but now is ranked seventh out of 10 policy priorities. Out of 12 possible threats, Australians rated global warming the fourth most critical, the survey found. However a significant majority of Australians, 76 per cent, still saw climate change as a problem.The poll follows comments from Professor Ross Garnaut, author of the federal Government's climate change review, who claims the rancorous debate on an emissions trading scheme (ETS) is one of Australia's worst cases of policy making on a major issue.
``I think this whole process of policy making over the ETS has been one of the worst examples of policy making we have seen on major issues in Australia,'' he told ABC television.
``It is a very difficult issue so I suppose it was never going to be easy. But the way it has broken down is extraordinary.''
The Nobel prize for economics has been awarded to two American academics who have pioneered research into how individuals co-operate and share common resources, and work together within companies.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this lunchtime that Elinor Ostrom, professor of political science at Indiana University, and Oliver Williamson, professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business, will share the 2009 prize.
It said their various work into economic governance beyond the financial markets has played a major role in challenging established thinking.
Ostrom, who is the first female winner of the economics prize, was recognised for her work on how "common property can be successfully managed by user associations".
Ostrom's research has examined how politics, economics and the legal system affect how natural resources are used - and has shown that community-driven projects can be more efficent than privatisation or socialism.
