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Why Americans Are Skeptical of Their Role in Global Warming |
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By Sara Goudarzi
LiveScience
Monday 19 February 2007
San Francisco - While the evidence is clear that human-caused global warming
is occurring and is a threat to many humans and other organisms on the
planet, many Americans have been slow to buy the whole argument.
Yesterday
at its annual meeting here, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the largest science organization in the world, issued a consensus statement
that "global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now
and is a growing threat to society," Earlier this month the
Intergovernmental Panel in Climate Change issued a statement that global warming will "continue for centuries" and is "very likely caused by man."
While
these statement may have changed public opinion in recent weeks, last
year a joint poll between ABC News, Time, Stanford University and Ohio
State University found that only 3 in 10 Americans believed that global
warming is caused by humans. Less than 40 percent of the nation's
public called global warming is an immediate and serious problem.
"Americans
are very much on the same wavelength with the scientific community
about the basics of the issue," Jon Krosnick, professor of
communication and of political science from Stanford University said
during a talk here yesterday. "But they lack certainty" about how bad
the problem really is.
EDITOR'S NOTE: That uncertainty was specifically generated by tens of millions of dollars worth of propaganda on the part of Exxon/Mobil , the American Enterprise Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, the Bush Administration and other corporations (even Big Tobacco) to create doubt in the public mind.
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By Bill McKibben
TomDispatch.com
Tuesday 20 February 2007
This piece, which appears in the March
15, 2007 issue of The New York Review of Books
is posted here with the kind permission of the editors of that magazine.
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest
report in early February, it was greeted with shock: "World Wakes to Climate
Catastrophe," reported an Australian paper. But global warming is by now
a scientific field with a fairly extensive history, and that history helps set
the new findings in context - a context that makes the new report no less terrifying
but much more telling for its unstated political implications.
Although atmospheric scientists had studied the problem for decades, global
warming first emerged as a public issue in 1988 when James Hansen, a NASA scientist,
told Congress that his research, and the work of a handful of other scientists,
indicated that human beings were dangerously heating the planet, particularly
through the use of fossil fuels. This bold announcement set off a scientific
and political furor: many physicists and chemists played down the possibility
of serious harm, and many governments, though feeling pressure to react, did
little to restrain the use of fossil fuel. "More research" was the
mantra everyone adopted, and funding for it flowed freely from governments and
foundations. Under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and governments
set up a curious hybrid, the IPCC, to track and report on the progress of that
research.
From roughly 1988 to 1995, the hypothesis that burning coal and gas and oil
in large quantities was releasing carbon dioxide and other gases that would
trap the sun's radiation on Earth and disastrously heat the planet remained
just that: a hypothesis. Scientists used every means at their disposal to reconstruct
the history of the earth's climate and to track current changes. For example,
they studied the concentration of greenhouse gases in ancient air trapped in
glacial cores, sampled the atmosphere with weather balloons, examined the relative
thickness of tree rings, and observed the frequency of volcanic eruptions. Most
of all, they refined the supercomputer models of the earth's atmosphere in an
effort to predict the future of the world's weather.
By 1995, the central Herculean tasks of both research and synthesis were largely
complete. The report the IPCC issued that year was able to assert that "the
balance of evidence suggests" that human activity was increasing the planet's
temperature and that it would be a serious problem. This was perhaps the most
significant warning our species, as a whole, has yet been given. The report
declared (in the pinched language of international science) that humans had
grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were
now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems - the balance between incoming
and outgoing solar energy. Although huge amounts of impressive scientific research
have continued over the twelve years since then, their findings have essentially
been complementary to the 1995 report - a constant strengthening of the simple
basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel.
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Warmest January Ever Recorded Worldwide in 2007: US Scientists |
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Agence France-Presse
Friday 16 February 2007
New
York - World temperatures in January were the highest ever recorded for
that month of the year, US government scientists said.
"The
combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest for
any January on record," according to scientists from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center
in Asheville, N.C.
The
combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.53 degrees
Fahrenheit (0.85 Celsius) warmer than the 20th-century average of 53.6
degrees F (12 C) for January based on preliminary data, NOAA said.
The figures surpass the previous record set in 2002 at 1.28 F (0.71 C) above average.
Land
surface temperature was a record 3.40 F (1.89 C) warmer than average,
while global ocean surface temperature was the fourth warmest in 128
years, about 0.1 F (0.05 C) cooler than the record established during
the very strong El Nino climate phenomenon in 1998.
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Green Light for Greenhouse Gas Burial at Sea |
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By Alister Doyle
Reuters
Monday 12 February 2007
UN OKs CO2 injection into ocean floor; activists have concerns, however.
Oslo,
Norway - International rules allowing burial of greenhouse gases
beneath the seabed entered into force on Saturday in what will be a
step toward fighting global warming - if storage costs are cut and
leaks can be averted.
The
new rules will permit industrialists to capture heat-trapping gases
from big emitters such as coal-fired power plants or steel mills and
entomb them offshore - slowing warming while allowing continued use of
fossil fuels.
"Storage
of carbon dioxide under the seabed will be allowed from Feb. 10, 2007
under amendments to an international agreement governing the dumping of
wastes at sea," the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization said in
a statement.
The
new rules, agreed upon in November, amend the U.N.'s London Convention
on dumping at sea. Its text had been unclear about whether carbon
dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted mainly by burning fossil
fuels, counted as a pollutant.
Oil Company Likes Rules
The
changes apply to oceans worldwide and could clear the way to more
investment in future subsea carbon storage by governments and
companies, despite criticism by environmentalists that there are few
safeguards against leaks.
"This
removes a lack of clarity and doubt for investors," said Tore Torp,
carbon dioxide storage adviser at Norwegian oil group Statoil, which
opened the world's first commercial storage of carbon dioxide in the
North Sea in 1996.
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Industry CEOs Testify for Emissions Limits |
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By Zachary Coile
The San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday 14 February 2007
They get a mixed reception on Boxer's Senate committee.
Washington
- California Sen. Barbara Boxer enlisted the help of several Fortune
500 company executives Tuesday to argue that mandatory greenhouse gas
limits won't damage the U.S. economy.
Boxer,
who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called
business leaders from PG&E, DuPont and BP America to testify before
Congress about their support for economy-wide emissions limits to fight
global warming.
"All
these companies agree that we need to act now to enact a mandatory
program to address global warming," Boxer said at the hearing.
The
testimony comes at a key moment in the debate over climate change in
Washington, when the fight over whether global warming is real is
waning and the momentum for legislative action is growing.
Congress
is so keenly interested in the topic that there were three separate
climate change hearings Tuesday on Capitol Hill. But lawmakers from
both parties are still conflicted about how to regulate greenhouse
gases without hurting U.S. businesses and consumers.
Boxer
set out to address those concerns by inviting corporate leaders who
back legislative action. The executives at Tuesday's hearing were all
members of U.S. Action on Climate Change, a coalition of 10 companies
and four environmental groups that joined together last month to
announce their strategy to combat global warming.
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Climate Change Heats Up Washington |
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By Tara Lohan
AlterNet.org
Tuesday 13 February 2007
Things are getting hotter in Congress around climate change, but can meaningful legislation be enacted to really turn the tide?
A new commercial
from the Ad Council begins with a pastoral scene. Leaves rustling on a
branch. A gentle breeze. Curving train tracks surrounded by green
grass. The camera stops on a middle-aged man.
"Global
warming," he says, and the camera cuts to a fast-moving locomotive.
"Some say irreversible consequences are 30 years away," he continues as
it suddenly becomes visible that he is standing on the tracks and the
train is barreling down on him. "Thirty years? That won't affect me."
Just as the train is about to reach him he steps out of the way,
revealing a young girl behind him on the tracks.
The commercial directs viewers to fightglobalwarming.com
and then ends with the message "There is still time." That seems to be
what environment groups are hoping to get across to the public - and
their elected officials - that it's not too late to do something about
global warming. Yes, the ball is rolling, climate change is happening,
but it is also a snowball, and the quicker we slow the momentum, the
better.
However,
there are some a big "ifs" involved. We can stop climate change if we
take action and if that action is really meaningful. We are past the
point of gesturing and in need of real action. That is why the 110th
Congress has piqued so many environmental hopes. But will a
Democratic-led legislature be able to bring about the necessary change
- and will any meaningful laws that those houses pass make it through
the final hurdle at the White House?
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Push for New Climate Treaty Intensifies; Hope Seen |
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By Jeremy Lovell
Reuters
Tuesday 13 February 2007
London
- Intensive diplomatic efforts to agree the elements of a framework by
the end of the year for a new global climate change treaty are starting
to make headway, according to a European official close to the
negotiations.
The
tone of the debate has changed in the United States and Australia - key
nations which rejected the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas
emissions - and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it a top
target of her G8 presidency this year.
British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, with only months left in office and keen to
find a positive legacy to offset the damage done by Iraq, is using his
weight to help secure a deal.
He meets Merkel in Germany on Tuesday to discuss tactics.
"We
need to work for agreement by the G8 plus five on the elements of a
post-Kyoto framework including a global stabilisation goal and a cap
and trade system, a framework that includes not just the U.S. but also
India and China," Blair's spokesman said on Monday.
Kyoto
only runs to 2012 and - given that it took two years to negotiate and
eight more to bring into force - there is an urgency to efforts to
extend its life and expand its scope and membership.
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$25 Million Offered in Climate Challenge |
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By Kevin Sullivan
The Washington Post
Saturday 10 February 2007
Tycoon hopes to spur milestone research.
London
- British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, with former vice
president Al Gore at his side, offered a $25 million prize Friday to
anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by
removing at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the
Earth's atmosphere.
Branson,
saying that the "survival of our species" is imperiled by current
environmental trends, said the prize was similar to cash inducements
that led to some of history's most notable achievements in navigation,
exploration and industry. A competition launched in the 17th century,
he said, resulted in the creation of a method to accurately estimate
longitude.
"I
believe in our resourcefulness and in our capacity to invent solutions
to the problems we have ourselves created," said Branson, who has
pledged to invest $3 billion in profits from his transportation
companies, including Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Trains, to
fighting global warming.
"We
are now facing a planetary emergency," said Gore, whose documentary
film, "An Inconvenient Truth," has helped him become one of the world's
leading voices on climate change issues.
The
former vice president will serve as a judge in the contest, known as
the Virgin Earth Challenge. He said he hoped the contest would spur
scientific innovation without distracting from more practical steps
people can take to battle global warming, from using energy-efficient
light bulbs to pressuring politicians to confront "the crisis of our
time."
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