Each year, scientists at NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyze global temperature data. The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year since global instrumental temperature records began 130 years ago. Worldwide, the mean temperature was 0.57°C (1.03°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period. And January 2000 to December 2009 came out as the warmest decade on record.
BONN, Germany -- The United Nations says formal negotiations on an international treaty to control global warming will resume in Bonn in April, four months after the failed climate change summit in Copenhagen.
U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Tuesday the negotiating schedule is being intensified in order to secure a global climate deal at the end of the year. After the Bonn meeting April 9-11, more talks are scheduled there for May 31-June 11.
The next world climate summit is to take place in Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10.
De Boer, who will resign July 1, said that since Copenhagen 100 countries have submitted individual emission cut targets. He said he saw commitment by governments "to move negotiations forward toward success in Cancun."
Whatever your thoughts about global warming, you have to feel a little sorry for Phil Jones.
First, the formerly private e-mails of the former director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England were hacked, leading to the so-called climategate scandal. And now, media everywhere are putting words in Jones's mouth, words that are the exact opposite of those he actually spoke.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Jones said he is "100-per-cent confident the climate has warmed," and "there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
One day later, the United Kingdom's Daily Mail newspaper's headline read: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."
The fair and balanced FOX-News.comfollowed that up with a story saying that Jones "dropped a bombshell" in admitting "there has been no global warming over the past 15 years." Similar statements have now been repeated in media and blogs from around the world.
Now, how does "global warming" become "no global warming?" As the Center for Environmental Journalism explains, it's easy: When the media either don't, or choose not to, understand the concept of statistical significance.
Jones was asked specifically whether he agreed "that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming." He replied: "Yes, but only just. I calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. The trend (0.12 C) is positive, but not significant at the 95-per-cent significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level."
A survey of more than 1,000 Americans suggests that we have increasing doubts about the nature of global climate change and the urgency of acting on the science.
Even the group identified as the most "alarmed" among those surveyed - those convinced that global warming is happening, is caused by humans and is a serious and urgent threat - has AP photo India shrunk from 18 to 10 percent of the total, according to the survey conducted by Yale and George Mason universities.
Groups described as "concerned," "cautious," and "disengaged" also declined as a percentage of the total surveyed. Only those described as "doubtful" and "dismissive" have grown as percentages of the whole - to 29 percent, from less than 20 percent in a 2008 survey.
The study's authors attribute the shift to "gloomy unemployment numbers, public frustration with Washington, attacks on climate science and mobilized opposition to national climate legislation."
But despite our increasing doubts, a strong majority of Americans - in six categories from the "alarmed" to the "dismissive" - still support the allocation of more money for clean energy research, tax rebates for people who make their homes and cars more energy efficient, and they back regulation of carbon dioxide emissions as atmospheric pollutants.
"The fact that five of the six Americas support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant is bound to be of interest to the president, Congress, and the EPA," said Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. "Some business groups and other special interests as opposing EPA regulation, but most of the American people appear to be for it."
Scientists who believe global sea levels are going to rise even more than now predicted have scored a victory with the retraction of a less-alarming report from a scientific publication.
That's bad news for the global warming deniers and Climategate believers.
Here's what happened: Several scientists published a 2009 study in Nature Geoscience, predicting sea levels would go up 7cm and 82cm by 2100.
However, the authors recently retracted their findings, saying other scientists had pointed out a few mistakes with their methodology.
And who could that have been? Try Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Their prediction in another study in 2009: Sea levels would rise between 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.
On the high level, that's more than twice the rise predicted by the now-retracted paper.
To read the details, here's the report from Rahmstorf and Vermeer. It talks about the errors made by the authors of the now-retracted report in Nature Geoscience.
The authors of the retracted paper pointed to Rahmstoorf and Vermeer as the reason behind the retraction.
BEIJING (Reuters) - President Hu Jintao said on Tuesday China was committed to fighting climate change, both at home and in cooperation with the rest of the world, but stopped short of offering any new policies.
Britain, Sweden and other countries have accused China of obstructing December's Copenhagen climate summit, which ended with a non-binding accord that set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius but was scant on details.
Chinese officials have said their country would never accept outside checks of its plans to slow greenhouse gas emissions and could only make a promise of "increasing transparency."
Hu told a study meeting attended by senior politicians, including Premier Wen Jiabao, that China took the problem seriously, state television reported.
"We must fully recognize the importance, urgency and difficulty of dealing with climate change," the report paraphrased Hu as saying. "We must make it an important strategy for our socio-economic development."
The government says some areas of the country are already seeing the effects of climate change, with higher temperatures and reduced rainfall in some parts and stronger storms in others.
China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.
This "carbon intensity" goal would let China's greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, but more slowly than economic growth.
Hu said energy saving, emission cuts and environmental awareness must be inculcated into not only every government worker but Chinese society as a whole, state television said.
WASHINGTON %u2014 Facing wide criticism over their recent finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public welfare, top Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday that any regulation of such gases would be phased in gradually and would not impose expensive new rules on most American businesses.
The E.P.A.%u2019s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wrote in a letter to eight coal-state Democrats who have sought a moratorium on regulation that only the biggest sources of greenhouse gases would be subjected to limits before 2013. Smaller ones would not be regulated before 2016, she said.
%u201CI share your goals of ensuring economic recovery at this critical time and of addressing greenhouse gas emissions in sensible ways that are consistent with the call for comprehensive energy and climate legislation,%u201D Ms. Jackson wrote.
The eight Democratic senators, led by John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said hugely significant decisions about energy, the economy and the environment should be made by elected representatives, not by federal bureaucrats.
The senators, who earlier questioned broad cap-and-trade legislation pushed by the Obama administration, join a number of Republican lawmakers, industry groups and officials from Texas, Alabama and Virginia in challenging the proposed E.P.A. regulations of industrial sources. Senate Republicans are going a step further, seeking to prevent the agency from taking any action to limit greenhouse gases, which are tied to global warming.
Ms. Jackson warned that if the Republicans thwarted the agency%u2019s efforts to address climate change, it would kill the deal negotiated last year to limit carbon pollution from cars and light trucks and would have a chilling effect on the government%u2019s scientific studies of global warming.
%u201CIt also would be viewed by many as a vote to move the United States to a position behind that of China on the issue of climate change, and more in line with the position of Saudi Arabia,%u201D Ms. Jackson wrote.
The group led by Mr. Rockefeller asked Ms. Jackson to suspend any E.P.A. regulations of stationary sources %u2014 including coal-burning power plants and large industrial facilities %u2014 while Congress considers comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. The House passed a major climate and energy bill last summer that would have overridden some of the agency%u2019s regulatory authority. The Senate, however, has not acted on the issue and there is considerable doubt that it will do so this year.
%u201CE.P.A. actions in this area would have enormous implications, and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a federal environmental agency,%u201D Mr. Rockefeller said.
The Democrats who joined Mr. Rockefeller are Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Begich of Alaska, Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Max Baucus of Montana.
Manufacturers, oil companies and business coalitions also filed petitions objecting to the proposed rules.
Environmental advocates said the E.P.A. was justified in declaring carbon dioxide and gases that contribute to global warming to be dangerous pollutants under the Clean Air Act and was moving cautiously to regulate them.
%u201CThese answers from Lisa Jackson hopefully will reassure the authors of the letter that the E.P.A. is proceeding in a very measured way and doing what is achievable and affordable to curb global warming pollution and focusing as they should on the biggest sources like power plants and not small businesses,%u201D said David Doniger, climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Business (30 of 47) � A version of this article appeared in print on February 23, 2010, on page A19 of the New York edition.
WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Climate change is melting the floating ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula, giving scientists a preview of what could happen if other ice shelves around the southern continent disappear, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Monday.
The ice has retreated so far from the land mass that Charcot Island, which has long been connected to the peninsula by an ice bridge, emerged as a real island again last year, a USGS scientist said.
"This is the first time since people have been observing the area, since the 1800s, that that ice shelf has not hitched together Charcot Island and the peninsula," scientist Jane Ferrigno said in a telephone interview.
The Antarctic Peninsula extends further northward than the rest of the roughly circular ice-covered continent, and it is warmer than the rest of Antarctica. But even in the peninsula's coldest, southern part, ice shelves are vanishing.
Research by the USGS was the first to show that every ice front on the southern section of the peninsula has been retreating from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes since 1990.
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. said it wants to reach a legally binding climate-change agreement at a summit in Mexico in December, a sign President Barack Obama hasn’t given up the fight for a global accord to limit greenhouse gases.
The pact should cover “all major economies,” and include elements from the non-binding Copenhagen Accord made in December, the State Department said in a letter released today by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.
With China and India resisting mandatory curbs on their emissions and legislation in the U.S. outlining domestic commitments stalled in the Senate, Obama is attempting to keep the talks alive. A two-year push for a treaty ended in December with a voluntary deal that wasn’t accepted by all of the 193 nations present.
“Mexico is an ambitious time frame, but a year later it’s very possible,” Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said today in a telephone interview.
The fight against global warming has been beset in recent months by the failure of the UNFCCC to secure a treaty in Copenhagen and the resignation last week of its chief diplomat, Yvo de Boer. Impediments to a legally binding deal include the lack of a U.S. domestic law and a reluctance of India and China to adopt mandatory emissions targets.
Here's a recent headline that caused a few double takes in Washington, D.C.: "Global warming hearing postponed because of snow."
Yes, nothing gives an unearned boost to global warming skeptics like back-to-back snowstorms variously nicknamed "snow-pocalypse" and "snow-mageddon," among other less-charitable labels in the nation's capital.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic of global warming and warm friend of his state's oil and gas industries, recently mocked Al Gore, climate activist and former vice president. Inhofe posted photos on his Facebook page of his family building an igloo near the Capitol with a sign that read "Al Gore's new home." Har, har.
But, contrary to popular belief, a robust snowfall does not mean global warming is a myth.
In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.
A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.
That's simple science even for me, a guy whose scientific education pretty much ended with the old "Watch Mr. Wizard" TV show and a subscription to Popular Mechanics.
Yet, confusion about that simple science is one of the reasons why experts and activists increasingly prefer the term "climate change" as less confusing and politically loaded than "global warming." Still, confusion and politics persist. Fox News host Sean Hannity cheerfully asserted that the storm "would seem to contradict Al Gore's hysterical global warming theories." His fellow Fox host Glenn Beck agreed, mocking the very idea that "warming" could lead to more snow.
Sure, it's laughable if you believe in the very unscientific theory of simple observational research, which means you base your views about global warming on your own weather.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates took on climate change during his TED speech Friday. He told those gathered at the conference that "What we're going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system... So we need energy miracles."
To cut CO2 emissions to zero and stop climate change -- a problem that he said is bigger than creating new vaccines -- Gates urged researchers to find clean sources of energy. CNN reports:
Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050. He suggested that researchers spend the next 20 years inventing and perfecting clean-energy technologies, and then the next 20 years implementing them.
The world's energy portfolio should not include coal or natural gas, he said, and must include carbon capture and storage technology as well as nuclear, wind and both solar photovoltaics and solar thermal power.
Prof Peter Liss, acting director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), said sceptics were endangering the lives of generations to come by making unsupported claims.
"The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence."
Prof Liss spoke after the Norwich-based UEA launched an independent review of the CRU~s work.
An international furore erupted up after staff emails were stolen and posted onto the internet last year.
Climate sceptics believe they show data has been manipulated in favour of the case for man-made climate change - a claim strongly denied.
Prof Liss said: "This is not just some intellectual argument between people who think they know the answer, we are talking about the future of the globe.
"If you're on the climate sceptics side, you have to have really good evidence for your case because if you're wrong then the consequences for all of us and all our children and whoever comes after is hugely influenced.
LONG BEACH, California — Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has broken from philanthropic work fighting poverty and disease to take on another threat to the world's poor -- climate change.
"Energy and climate are extremely important to these people," Gates told Friday a TED Conference audience packed with influential figures including the founders of Google and climate champion Al Gore.
"The climate getting worse means many years that crops won't grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and certainly unrest."
Gates said he is backing development of "terrapower" reactors that could be fueled by nuclear waste from disposal facilities or generated by today's power plants.
He broke down variables in a carbon-dioxide-culprit formula, homing in on a conclusion that the answer to the problem is a source of energy that produces no carbon.
"The formula is a very straight forward one," Gates said. "More carbon dioxide equals temperature increase equals negative effects like collapsed ecosystems. We have to get to zero."
To dramatize his point, Gates pulled out a large jar of fireflies in playful flashback to when he unleashed mosquitoes on a TED audience a year earlier while discussing battling malaria.
"They won't bite," Gates joked of the fireflies. "As a matter of fact, they might not even leave this jar."
Gates touted terrapower as more reliable than wind or solar, cleaner than burning coal or natural gas, and safer than current nuclear plants.
"With the right materials approach it could work," Gates said. "Because you burn 99 percent of the waste, it is kind of like a candle."
Nuclear waste fed into a terrapower reactor would potentially burn for decades before being exhausted.
"Today we are always refueling the reactor so lot of controls and lots of things that can go wrong," Gates said. "That is not good. With this, you have a piece of fuel, think of it like a log, that burns for 60 years and it is done."
Ban unveils new high-level advisory group to spur action on climate change
12 February 2010 %u2013 The leaders of the United Kingdom and Ethiopia will head up a new high-level group launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today, intended to mobilize financing swiftly to help developing countries combat climate change.
The Copenhagen Accord reached at December's United Nations conference in the Danish capital aims to jump-start immediate action on climate change and guide negotiations on long-term action, with developing countries to be given $30 billion until 2012 and then $100 billion a year until 2020.
It also includes an agreement to working towards curbing global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius and efforts to reduce or limit emissions.
%u201CThere will be an even balance between developing and developed countries%u201D in the new Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, chaired by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr. Ban announced in New York today.
The body's other members, who will be appointed for 10 months, include President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, senior ministers and officials from central banks and experts on finance and development, according to a statement issued by his spokesperson.
It will be tasked with creating practical proposals to boost both short- and long-term financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries, the Secretary-General said during a press conference, where he was joined via video-link from London and Addis Ababa by Mr. Brown and Mr. Zenawi.
%u201CLet me emphasize the importance of rapid action,%u201D Mr. Ban told reporters.
%u201CDeveloping countries need to move as quickly as possible toward a future of low-emissions growth and prosperity,%u201D he stressed, noting that millions of people in Africa and around the world are suffering from climate change's effects.
Additionally, the Secretary-General emphasized that assisting with adaptation efforts is a %u201Cmoral imperative,%u201D as well as %u201Ca smart investment in a safer, more sustainable world for all.%u201D
The new group is expected to issue its final recommendations before the next conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Mexico later this year.
Last week, the UNFCCC announced that by the 31 January deadline specified in the Copenhagen Accord, some of the world's biggest emitters of carbon dioxide %u2013 including the United States and China %u2013 have formally submitted their national targets to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020.
It said that it had received specific pledges from 55 countries that together account for 78 per cent of global emissions from energy use.
%u201CThis represents an important invigoration of the UN climate change talks under the two tracks of Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. The commitment to confront climate change at the highest level is beyond doubt,%u201D Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, said in a statement.
The pledges to the Accord are purely voluntary and there are no enforcement provisions for the signing countries.
%u201CGreater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge. But I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion,%u201D said Mr. de Boer.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that to stave off the worst effects of climate change, industrialized countries must slash emissions by 25 to 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and that global emissions must be halved by 2050.
News Tracker: past stories on this issue
UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon set up a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change.
The panel, to be led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, aimed "to mobilize the resources for climate change pledged at the recent climate change conference in Copenhagen," Ban told reporters.
The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, "will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term (public and private) financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries," he added.
The UN boss said the group would specifically seek to marshal new and innovative resources to reach a 100-billion-dollar target by 2020 to fund "adaptation, mitigation, technology development and transfer, and capacity building in developing countries, with priority for the most vulnerable."
The panel was set to include heads of state and government, top officials from ministries and central banks as well as experts on public finance, development and related issues.
Ban said the composition of the panel would be announced shortly and revealed that he planned to ask Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to join.
The secretary-general, who was linked by video conference with Brown and Meles, said he expected the panel to deliver a preliminary report at the May-June meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which provides a planetary arena for tackling climate change.
"Finance for adaptation and mitigation and transfer of technology are of central significance for developing countries in general and the poor and vulnerable countries in particular," the Ethiopian premier said from Addis Ababa.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón made international headlines recently with his comments regarding climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he called upon developing and developed countries alike to act multilaterally rather than continue endlessly debating over how to tackle the problem.
Calderón expressed the need for "building bridges" instead of walking away, once again, from a forum with resolutions on paper that fail to materialise as actual policies – much less realities.
Calderón's position regarding climate change is coherent with his administration's current strategy touting Mexico as one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, as well as the venue of the UN framework convention on climate change this autumn. (By the way, the meeting is set to take place in the environmental disaster area that is Cancún, a project that converted an island into an artificial beach packed with human parking lots back in 1974).
But before allowing Calderón to crown himself International Advocate of Environmental Concerns, let's do a reality check. If as he says, climate change is a problem that "we are all obliged to attend to", he should start at home, where the "economic costs associated with trying to tackle climate change" are not the only concern.
While megadiverse Mexico is home to approximately 10% of the planet's species, soon, all that fauna will have no place to live. This is because according to Greenpeace, Mexico takes fifth place in world deforestation – which is also, incidentally, a key factor in climate change.
The cross-country ski race I've been training for, set for today high in the Green Mountains: cancelled, lack of snow.
Meanwhile, across the continent, backhoes and helicopters are moving snow down British Columbia's Cypress Mountain in an attempt to cover the Olympic ski courses, and technicians are burying cooling pipes beneath the moguls to keep them from melting. Some climate-conscious jokers put out a video pushing the sport of "bobwheeling" for future snow-challenged Olympiads.
And apparently there was some snowfall in the greater Washington area last week.
When you're trying to launch snowboarding tricks on dry ground and simultaneously shutting down the U.S. government because the snowbanks are casting shadows on the Washington Monument, something odd is going on. This isn't a good old-fashioned winter for the District of Columbia, not unless you're remembering the last ice age. And it doesn't disprove global warming, despite Sen. Jim De Mint's cheerful tweet: "It's going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries 'uncle.' "
I have a challenge for you: try to come up with a company that better exemplifies the archetype of the nefarious, greed-driven, monolithic corporation than Exxon. Besides Haliburton. You have until the end of this blog post to do so. But it's a tall order: Exxon is behind one of the most infamous environmental catastrophes of our time, it makes more gross income than most nations' entire GDPs, and it does business with nations with unstable governments that are often hostile to the US. Worst of all, it has done everything in its power to push a misinformation campaign designed to discredit both climate science and international efforts to keep the earth's temperatures from rising to dangerous levels. And according to recent reports, its still up to its old tricks.
ExxonMobil: Still the Biggest Force Behind Climate Denial
A report in the Independent outlines how the oil giant is still funneling money through various conservative think tanks and organizations in order to propagate the myth that the science behind human-caused climate change is "unsettled." Even though it has repeatedly stated that it would stop doing so. Hell, we even fell for it when they said so (see Exxon turns off the disinformation tap).
We won't fall for it again. We won't fall for it when Exxon publicly calls for a carbon tax, saying it's the best way for them to anticipate costs--knowing full well that such a tax is entirely, 100% impossible politically in the US. Because Exxon has only one, singular goal--and just like that ol' stereotype of the Evil Corporation--it will do anything necessary to continue to turn profits. Even if it means intentionally misleading the public. I know this is starting to sound a bit too much like a Greenpeace press release, but I've had it.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 9 (UPI) -- Harvard University scientists say they've determined invasive plants could become more prevalent and destructive as climate change continues.
The scientists, led by Assistant Professor Charles Davis, said they analyzed more than 150 years of data and discovered non-native plants, especially invasive species, appear to thrive during times of climate change because they're better able to adjust the timing of annual activities, such as flowering and fruiting.
"These results demonstrate for the first time that climate change likely plays a direct role in promoting non-native species success," Davis said. "Secondly, they highlight the importance of flowering time as a trait that may facilitate the success of non-native species."
Davis and his colleagues said they analyzed a dataset that began with Henry David Thoreau's cataloging of plants around Walden Pond during the 1850s. Since then, the mean annual temperature in the vicinity of Concord, Mass., has increased by 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, causing some plants to shift their flowering time by as much as three weeks in response to ever-earlier spring thaws, the scientists said.
An avalanche of evidence is amassing that Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a serious health hazard.
To reproductive problems, behavioral problems, and increased risk of cancer, add asthma. A new study in Environmental Health Perspectives found that mice exposed in utero to concentrations of BPA comparable to what a human fetus could encounter were significantly more likely to have asthma.
The evidence is frighteningly suggestive, given that asthma rates have skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. Nearly 10 percent of all American children suffer from the disease, up from 8.7 percent just 8 years ago.
The response of the FDA has been to shift from calling BPA a substance of "negligible concern" to one of "some concern" and to call for further study.
But study isn't what's lacking. What's lacking is federal action, and these shifts in bureaucratic language don't help consumers.
Many items — from baby bottles to Campbell's Soup to medical tubing — contain BPA, which isn't even required to be labeled. Consumers can't be expected to do all the work on their own.
Yet the FDA claims that it can't ban BPA without action from Congress allowing it to do so. Sick children? No brainer. Congress should let the regulators regulate.
Photo credit: Michael Jastremski
Climate scientists who worked on the UN panel on global warming have hit out at "sloppy" colleagues from other disciplines who introduced a mistake about melting glaciers into the landmark 2007 report.
The experts, who worked on the section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that considered the physical science of global warming, say the error by "social and biological scientists" has unfairly maligned their work. Some said that Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chair, should resign, though others supported him.
The IPCC report combined the output from three independent working groups, which separately considered the science, impacts and human response to climate change, and published their findings several months apart.
Scientists, like most people, don't particularly like giving bad news. If a scientist is lucky enough to work in a field like astronomy or quantum mechanics she rarely has to talk about anything that would affect the GDP. She gets to describe super novae happening billions of light years away, and you get to imagine it like a fire cracker in space. So pity the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, because they have much more difficult working conditions.
A must-see debate is happening over at the New York Time's Dot Earth, between an anonymous user with the monicker "Wmar" and Andrew Revkin, the author of the blog. Wmar is a man-made climate change skeptic, and Mr. Revkin is a highly experienced journalist. The debate is especially refreshing because both parties are being so darn polite about it. There are a few snide, completely unhelpful remarks from others, but the main contenders are both sincere. That's important, because when people are being polite it's easier to understand what they're saying, and (especially important) what they mean.
Wmar does not believe that we humans are causing global warming. He does not deny that it is happening, or that there is hard data demonstrating that the globe is warming. As his own evidence he uses links to a website called CO2science.org, which has charts and graphs of its own and the names of scientists from all over the world who are referenced, but never quoted. On the other side is Mr. Revkin and the IPCC. An impasse, huh? It would only seem so.
At this point human caused climate change deniers are banking that if people see scientists in disagreement on the issue they'll take the safe route and wait until greater consensus has been established, or forget the problem altogether. If it were a duel at high noon, and the IPCC had 75 scientific studies, and CO2science.org had 802 scientific studies, we'd be measuring the IPCC for a casket. Fortunately for the IPCC, none of CO2's studies are loaded. CO2 is just a blog using other scientists' data; but it uses the numbers without the researchers' analysis.
Spiders' webs are good at catching dew
Flickr/k2pi
Better techniques for collecting water from the air could be possible with the discovery of why spiders' webs are so effective at catching the morning dew.
Chinese researchers studying the silk of the spider Uloborus walckenaerius found that dry spider silk has a "necklace-like" structure of fibres connecting "puffs" of tiny, randomly arranged fibres.
When water condenses onto these puffs, they form tightly-packed knots, rougher than the smooth 'joint' fibres that connect them. When a water droplet condenses, it slides along the smooth joint to its nearest knot where it coalesces with others to form a larger drop.
To test whether this structure was responsible for the effective water-catching, the scientists created artificial silk using nylon fibres coated in a polymer solution that forms knots in a similar way. They say their findings could lead to new materials for collecting water from air.
Spider silk expert Brent Opell, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States, calls the scientists' ability to reproduce the properties of the silk "impressive".
Link to full paper in Nature[1.11MB]
The melting of ice in the Arctic could result in economic costs of between $2.4 trillion (£1.54tn) and $24 trillion by 2050, according to a major new study that predicts that the loss of "the planet's air conditioner" will accelerate the rate of global warming and lead to an increase in losses associated with heat waves, rising sea levels and other climate change effects.
The study, which was commissioned by the Pew Environment Group, was presented to G7 finance ministers gathering for a two-day meeting on Canada's Baffin Island late last week.
Reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists, the study found that average temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than in any other region. It warned that the resulting loss of Arctic sea ice and the melting of frozen permafrost had the potential to accelerate global warming by reducing the amount of heat reflected by the ice and increasing emissions of methane.
Researchers then calculated how these warming effects equated to carbon emissions and used methodologies for assessing the social cost of carbon to work out the likely economic impact of climate change in the Arctic.
"Putting a dollar figure on the Arctic's climate services allows us to better understand both the region's immense importance and the enormous price we will pay if the ice is lost," said Dr Eban Goodstein, co-author of the report and an economist who directs the Bard Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College in New York. "At the mid-range of our estimates, the cumulative cost of the melting Arctic in the next 40 years is equivalent to the annual gross domestic products of Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom combined."
The report calculates that this year alone, the warming effects of Arctic melting could have an impact equivalent to emitting three billion metric tons of CO2. "That's equal to 40 per cent of all US industrial emissions this year or bringing on line more than 500 large coal-burning power plants," said Dr Eugenie Euskirchen, co-author of the report and a scientist from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology.
Scott Highleyman, international Arctic director for the Pew Environment Group, called on G7 finance ministers to commission a full economic analysis of the "global climate services" provided by the Arctic.
The report comes as climate scientists continue to face the fallout from the so-called Climategate affair, with a new survey by the BBC showing that the number of people who accept that temperatures are rising primarily as a result of human activity has fallen since emails from the University of East Anglia purportedly showing scientists attempting to resist freedom of information requests were stolen.
The survey of 1,000 people found that a quarter did not believe in global warming - a rise of eight per cent since a similar poll last year. Meanwhile, a third of those who did accept that temperatures are rising felt the pace and scale of climate change was being exaggerated.
Yet despite an unseasonably cold winter in Europe and the US, scientists have found that climate change is impacting the Arctic faster than expected, with a separate study involving more than 370 scientists from 27 countries showing on Friday that sea ice is retreating at a more rapid rate than previous models had predicted.
The scientist at the centre of "climategate" says he contemplated killing himself after leaked e-mails were seized on by sceptics.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Professor Phil Jones also said he had been provoked into sending the e-mails.
It was claimed the e-mails, leaked after a University of East Anglia server was hacked into, showed climate data was being manipulated.
Prof Jones, 57, said he had received death threats over the incident.
He told the newspaper: "I did think about it, yes. About suicide. I thought about it several times, but I think I've got past that stage now."
He agreed it became his "David Kelly moment" - a reference to the scientist who killed himself in the aftermath of the "sexed up" Iraq intelligence dossier claims.
Internet leak
Professor Jones, 57, also said he received death threats in the aftermath of the scandal.
"People said I should go kill myself. They said they knew where I lived."
The row erupted last December when hundreds of messages between scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents.
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) - The Commerce Department said on Monday that it plans to create an agency under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that will provide businesses and community leaders with the latest data on climate change.
"Working closely with federal, regional, academic and other state and local government and private sector partners, the new NOAA Climate Service will build on our success transforming science into useable climate services," Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator and undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, said in a statement.
The agency will create a single point of entry for local governments and businesses in agriculture, energy, transportation and other sectors seeking climate services such as air quality data and inundation maps. It will be a comprehensive source of science and services much like the National Weather Service has been for weather information.
Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, will serve as transitional director of the agency. His post will be complemented by six new NOAA regional climate services directors.
No new funds are required to establish the agency, since funds will be re-organized to integrate NOAA's climate services. However, new funds will be needed so the agency to meet continued demands for climate data. Congress will have to approve the changes in the budget, but is not required to pass legislation for the creation of the new federal entity.
The Nobel-prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change faces new challenges following a call for an investigation of its conduct and for its chairman to resign amid continuing criticism of the scientific basis of its reports.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called on Thursday for the independent investigation and for Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Geneva-based panel, to resign.
The panel has so far declined to make Dr. Pachauri available for an interview, and officials didn't return phone calls or emails over the weekend seeking further comment. Republicans previously had pushed for him to resign in the fall.
The IPCC, whose vast reports on climate science influence policy makers and undergird global action against global warming, defends its work, saying that its reports "are as solid as careful science can make them," and that it is required to include some literature that hasn't been peer-reviewed and therefore requires "additional care and professional judgment" to evaluate.
Dr. Barrasso said that "new scandals" emerge "every day" about the "so-called 'facts'" in the panel's reports. "The integrity of the data and the integrity of the science have been compromised.…The scientific data behind these policies must be independently verified," he said.
While evidence of global warming is voluminous and the notion of global warming has gained wide scientific acceptance, the credibility of the panel has been challenged by continuing allegations that its seminal 2007 climate-change study is plagued with unsubstantiated predictions about the danger posed by global warming.
The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.
Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
"Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Locke said Monday at a news conference.
Lubchenco added, "Climate change is real, it's happening now." She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.
NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
