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EU Slams United States, Australia on Climate Change |
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By Jeff Mason
Reuters
Tuesday 03 April 2007
Brussels
- The European Union accused the United States and Australia on Monday
of hampering international efforts to tackle climate change.
"We
expect ... the United States to cooperate closer and not to continue
having a negative attitude in international negotiations," Environment
Commissioner Stavros Dimas told delegates at a United Nations-sponsored
meeting to review a report on the regional effects of rising global
temperatures.
"It
is absolutely necessary that they move because otherwise other
countries, especially the developing countries, do not have any reason
to move," he said.
Efforts
to launch negotiations to extend the UN Kyoto Protocol on climate
change beyond 2012 have floundered as nations resist committing to
targets for cutting greenhouse gases.
The
27-nation EU agreed last month to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by
at least 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, challenging
industrialised and developing countries to go further with a 30 percent
cut which the EU would then match.
But
so far other nations have not responded to that call, a fact which
Dimas blamed largely on US reluctance to cap its own emissions.
President
George W. Bush pulled Washington out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it would
harm the US economy and unfairly excluded developing nations from
emissions targets. He has invested instead in technologies such as
hydrogen and biofuels.
Dimas
acknowledged Washington had its own approach to fighting global warming
but said it "does not help in reaching an international agreement and
does not reduce emissions".
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Seafood Poisoning Rises as Oceans Become Warmer, More Polluted |
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By Michael Casey
The Associated Press
Monday 02 April 2007
Iloilo,
Philippines - Bowls of piping hot barracuda soup were the
much-anticipated treat when the Roa family gathered for a casual and
relaxing Sunday meal.
Within
hours, all six fell deathly ill. So did two dozen others from the same
neighborhood. Some complained of body-wide numbness. Others had
weakness in their legs. Several couldn't speak or even open their
mouths.
"I
was scared. I really thought I was going to die," said Dabby Roa, 21, a
student who suffered numbness in his head, tingling in his hands and
had trouble breathing.
What
Roa and the others suffered that night last August was ciguatera
poisoning, a rarely fatal but growing menace from eating exotic fish.
All had bought portions of the same barracuda from a local vendor.
Experts
estimate that up to 50,000 people worldwide suffer ciguatera poisoning
each year, with more than 90 percent of cases unreported. Scientists
say the risks are getting worse, because of damage that pollution and
global warming are inflicting on the coral reefs where many fish
species feed.
Dozens
of popular fish types, including grouper and barracuda, live near
reefs. They accumulate the toxic chemical in their bodies from eating
smaller fish that graze on the poisonous algae. When oceans are warmed
by the greenhouse effect and fouled by toxic runoff, coral reefs are
damaged and poison algae thrives, scientists say.
"Worldwide,
we have a much bigger problem with toxins from algae in seafood than we
had 20 or 30 years ago," said Donald M. Anderson, director of the
Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts.
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Climate Change: Canada's Cruel Harvest |
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By David Usborne
The Independent UK
Monday 02 April 2007
Pictures
of seal pups drowning in melting polar ice have shocked the world.
Yesterday campaigners reported they have seen survivors clinging to
life. But in a few days' time, the hunters will come and the pups'
brief struggle against so many odds will come to a bloody end.
These
are the wrenching images that will once more ignite worldwide
recriminations and protest as the Canadian government prepares to give
the green light to its annual culling of baby harp seals in spite of
new evidence that the population is doubly at risk this year because of
collapsing ice cover.
The
authorities in Ottawa announced last week a sharp reduction in the
numbers of pups that hunters will be allowed to kill this spring in a
first official acknowledgement of the impact the melting ice is having
on the seal population. Conservationists, however, are demanding that
the harvest be cancelled.
Even
though public uproar, notably in Britain and Europe, over the seal
slaughter is likely to be more intense than ever before, the government
is expected in the next several days to announce a start-date for the
annual culling. The hunter's vessels are tied up but ready to start the
hunt at a moment's notice.
Fisheries
officials in Ottawa have responded to renewed criticism of the massacre
by asserting that the melting of the ice is not presenting as dire a
threat to the harp seal populations as the conservationist claim. Nor
are they willing to accept that the situation this year is necessarily
linked to global warming.
Scientists
with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, which has its
headquarters in Massachusetts, have been issuing increasingly bleak
reports from the areas where the hunt traditionally begins each March,
notably around the Magdalen Islands at the mouth of the St Lawrence
river. The alarm has similarly been sounded by the Human Society of the
United States.
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Legislature Flooded With Bills About Climate Crisis |
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By Mark Martin
The San Francisco Chronicle
Monday 02 April 2007
Poll-driven politicians see need to tackle global warming.
Sacramento - Few issues are hotter in the Capitol this year than global warming.
Lawmakers
have introduced more than 60 bills on the topic, and no wonder. Polls
show widespread support among California voters for tackling climate
change. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez
received rock star-like affection worldwide for their work on landmark
greenhouse gas legislation last year. And there is a seemingly infinite
number of policy directions the state could take to lower carbon
emissions.
"It's
become an apple-pie issue," noted Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic
strategist in California. "It's like being for better schools."
This
year, lawmakers are pushing bills to require diesel-powered school
buses to run on biodiesel fuel instead of regular diesel; change
regulations to make it easier for housing projects to install solar
power; require televisions and computers to be more energy efficient;
create a new bureaucracy to consolidate the disparate agencies that
study climate change issues; and add incentives for gas station owners
to install pumps for alternative fuels.
In
a repeat from last year, there is also an effort to require that half
of all cars sold in California run on alternative fuels by 2020.
A
check of legislation moving through the Capitol shows more than 60
bills have been introduced to deal with climate change. And Assemblyman
Lloyd Levine, the chairman of the Assembly's key energy committee,
noted he had discouraged others from drawing up even more plans when
they approached him "wanting to do something about alternative fuels,
or solar power," he said.
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Court Rebukes Administration in Global Warming Case |
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Reuters
Monday 02 April 2007
Washington - In a defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled
Monday that a U.S. government agency has the power under the clean air law to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
The nation's highest court by a 5-4 vote said the Environmental Protection
Agency "has offered no reasoned explanation" for its refusal to regulate
carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute
to climate change.
The ruling came in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the
Supreme Court in decades. It marked the first high court decision in a case
involving global warming.
Greenhouse gases occur naturally and are also emitted by cars, trucks and factories
into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to the earth's surface like the
glass walls of a greenhouse.
Such emissions have risen steeply over the past century and many scientists
see a connection between this rise and an increase in global average temperatures
and a related increase in extreme weather, wildfires, melting glaciers and other
damage to the environment.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court majority, rejected the administration's
argument that it lacked the power to regulate such emissions. He said the EPA's
decision was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with
law."
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Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms |
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By Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times
Sunday 01 April 2007
The
world's richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to
the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending
billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst
consequences, like drought and rising seas.
But
despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal
with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of
millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the
world's most vulnerable regions - most of them close to the equator and
overwhelmingly poor.
Next
Friday, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a United Nations body that since 1990 has been assessing global
warming, will underline this growing climate divide, according to
scientists involved in writing it - with wealthy nations far from the
equator not only experiencing fewer effects but also better able to
withstand them.
Two-thirds
of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping
greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in
nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European
countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in
windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood
barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically
altered to flourish even in a drought.
In
contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global
emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840
million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and
disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As
the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded
river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island
nations, that are most at risk.
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End of Oil Heralds Climate Pain |
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By David Strahan
BBC News
Thursday 29 March 2007
Many people think that running out of oil, or "peak oil," would be good for the climate. In his new book The Last Oil Shock, David Strahan begs to differ; he suggests it may bring catastrophe.
It
is becoming increasingly clear that global oil production will soon go
into terminal decline, with potentially devastating economic
consequences.
Although
the idea of peak oil has traditionally been ridiculed by the industry,
now even some of the world's most senior oilmen concede the case.
Last
year Thierry Desmarest, chairman of Total, the world's fourth largest
oil company, declared that production would peak by around 2020.
He urged governments to find ways to suppress oil demand growth and put off the witching hour.
Other forecasters are convinced the peak date is even closer.
But many environmentalists continue to resist the idea.
Some
seem to suspect that anybody who argues that oil production is set to
fall must be a closet climate change denier with a secret agenda.
Others,
like Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace, instinctively distrust forecasts of
an imminent peak, but wish fervently that it would come soon.
"Let's
hope that the oil does run out", he told me, "and that the world has to
develop alternatives to oil seriously quickly, and from a climate point
of view that would be an excellent outcome."
Neither position could be more wrong.
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"Surprisingly Rapid Changes" in Antarctic Basin |
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MSNBC News
Thursday 29 March 2007
Amundsen Sea ice shelves thinning, raising fears of sea level rise.
Houston
- A Texas-sized area of Antarctica is thinning and could cause the
world's oceans to rise significantly in the long-term, polar ice
experts said in wrapping up a three-day conference.
"Surprisingly
rapid changes" are occurring in Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment, an
ice drainage system that faces the southern Pacific Ocean, the experts
said in a statement, adding that more study was needed to determine how
fast it was melting and how much it could cause sea levels to rise.
The
warning came Wednesday at the end of a conference of U.S. and European
polar ice experts at the University of Texas in Austin.
The
scientists blamed the melting ice on changing winds around Antarctica
that are causing warmer waters to flow beneath the ice shelves in the
Amundsen Sea. The shelves hold back ice that is grounded on the
continent and known as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Should the shelves
collapse, grounded ice would start flowing into the sea much more
rapidly, raising sea levels.
The
wind change, they said, appeared to be the result of several factors,
including global warming, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and natural
variability.
The
thinning in the two-mile-thick West Antarctic Ice Sheet is being
observed mostly from satellites, but it is not known how much ice has
been lost because data is difficult to obtain in the remote region,
they said.
"The
place where the biggest change is occurring is the Amundsen Sea
Embayment," said Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas
Institute for Geophysics.
"One, it's changing, and two, it can have a big impact," he said in a Webcast with a number of conference participants.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet contains enough grounded ice to raise world sea levels close to 20 feet, the scientists said.
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