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Early 2007 Saw Record-Breaking Extreme Weather: UN |
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By Laura MacInnis
Reuters
Tuesday 07 August 2007
Geneva
- The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in
early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall
in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.
The
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface
temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records
began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for
those months.
There
have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally
heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay,
extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual
snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.
"The
start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme
weather events," Omar Baddour of the agency's World Climate Program
told journalists in Geneva.
While
most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as
heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to
rise, Baddour said it was impossible to say with certainty what the
second half of 2007 will bring.
"It is very difficult to make projections for the rest of the year," he said.
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Gore: Polluters Manipulate Climate Info |
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By Gillian Wong
The Associated Press
Tuesday 07 August 2007
Singapore
- Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global
warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some
of the world's largest carbon polluters, former Vice President Al Gore
said Tuesday.
"There
has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10
million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the
impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community,"
Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little
disagreement."
Gore
likened the campaign to the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco
companies years ago on creating the appearance of scientific debate on
smoking's harmful effects.
"This
is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of
science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called
propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."
After
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the
world's top climate scientists, released a report in February that
warned that the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the
deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the
consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere,"
Gore said.
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Department of Energy Allowing America's Energy to Waste Away |
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Earthjustice
Wednesday 01 August 2007
Groups file suit seeking stronger energy efficiency standards for air conditioners and heat pumps.
New
York, New York - Earthjustice, on behalf of the Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC), and the state of Massachusetts have filed a
lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for failing to
strengthen weak and outdated energy efficiency standards for commercial
heating and cooling equipment. The suit challenges DOE's weak and
outdated standards allowing these products to continue to waste both
energy and money, and generate thousands of needless tons of air
pollution, including greenhouse gases that contribute to global
warming.
"Strong
efficiency performance standards are the antidote to America's ailing
energy system," said David B. Goldstein, Air & Energy director for
NRDC. "Energy efficiency - a technology we have available to us right
now - will help curb global warming, maximize energy savings, and
protect consumers and the environment. Technology, science and the law
demand that we act now to move cleaner and greener products into the
marketplace. The DOE needs take its blinders off and step out of the
way of America's progress."
DOE
adopted the standards for new air conditioners, heat pumps, and similar
products commonly used in offices, schools and other commercial
facilities on March 7. The standards are far weaker than recommended by
experts at the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air
Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), a professional group recognized by
Congress as an authority on energy efficiency.
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The Power in the Carbon Tax |
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By John D. Dingell
The Washington Post
Thursday 02 August 2007
Successful
laws to protect the environment are built on simple concepts. They
discourage harmful behavior - the dumping of sewage or industrial waste
into bodies of water, the destruction of habitat, the emission of toxic
chemicals - by a variety of measures, all of which raise the cost of
engaging in certain behavior. You can't develop land, and profit, if
you're endangering a threatened animal. You have to dispose of chemical
substances responsibly. And so on.
Good
environmental law can also encourage good behavior: the development of
alternative approaches, such as substances that cause less harm, or new
technologies.
We
should keep this in mind when discussing carbon. How do we raise the
cost of emitting carbon, promoting conservation and efficiencies, and
make alternatives more economically viable, thus addressing the problem
of climate change?
Alternative
energy sources - those that are not carbon-based or substantially
improve on (i.e., reduce) carbon emissions relative to the fuels we now
consume - are fairly well known: wind, biofuels (cellulosic ethanol,
biodiesel), solar, waves, geothermal and nuclear.
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Climate Deal Talks Gain Global Support |
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By Edith M. Lederer
The Associated Press
Friday 03 August 2007
Nearly 100 worried countries back negotiations to tackle warming.
United
Nations - Nearly 100 countries speaking at the first U.N. General
Assembly meeting on climate change signaled strong support for
negotiations on a new international deal to tackle global warming.
There
was so much interest among worried nations - many facing drought,
floods and searing heat - that the two-day meeting was extended for an
extra day so that more countries could describe their climate-related
problems, how they are coping, and the help they need.
"We
now have the momentum," General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed
Al Khalifa told delegates at the closing session Thursday evening.
"What we do with this is more important. We need to ensure that we
agree an equitable, fair and ambitious global deal to match the scale
of the challenges ahead."
Clinching
that deal will likely take several years of intense and difficult
negotiations, which are expected to start at a December meeting on the
Indonesian island of Bali. It will focus on a replacement for the Kyoto
protocol, which requires 35 industrial nations to cut their
global-warming emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, when the
accord expires.
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change a top priority since taking
the reins of the U.N. on Jan. 1, urged all countries to reach a
comprehensive agreement by 2009, which would leave time for governments
to ratify the accord so it could take effect in 2013.
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China Blames Climate Change for Extreme Weather |
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By Ben Blanchard
Reuters
Thursday 02 August 2007
Beijing
- China blamed global warming on Wednesday for this year's weather
extremes, which have led to more than 700 deaths from flooding and left
more than seven million with little access to water.
Such
extremes are likely to get worse and more common in the future, said
Song Lianchun, head of the China Meteorological Administration's
Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.
"It
should be said that one of the reasons for the weather extremes this
year has been unusual atmospheric circulation bought about by global
warming," Song told a news conference carried live on the central
government Web site (www.gov.cn).
"These
kind of extremes will become more frequent, and more obvious. This has
already been borne out by the facts," he said. "I think the impact on
our country will definitely be very large."
Some parts of China have had too much rain, and others too little this summer.
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Brazil, Alarmed, Reconsiders Policy on Climate Change |
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By Larry Rohter
The New York Times
Tuesday 31 July 2007
Manaus,
Brazil - Alarmed at recent indications of climate change here in the
Amazon and in other regions of Brazil, the government of President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva has begun showing signs of new flexibility in the
tangled, politically volatile international negotiations to limit
human-caused global warming.
The
factors behind the re-evaluation range from a drought here in the
Amazon rain forest, the world's largest, and the impact that it could
have on agriculture if it recurs, to new phenomena like a hurricane in
the south of Brazil. As a result, environmental advocates, scientists
and some politicians say, Brazilian policy makers and the public they
serve are increasingly seeing climate change not as a distant problem,
but as one that could affect them too.
Brazil
remains suspicious of foreign involvement in its management of the
Amazon, which it views as a domestic matter. But negotiators and others
who monitor international climate talks say Brazil is now willing to
discuss issues that until recently it considered off the table,
including market-based programs to curb the carbon emissions that
result from massive deforestation in the Amazon, in which areas the
size of New Jersey or larger are razed each year.
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"Dead Zone" Returns to Oregon Coast |
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The Associated Press
Monday 30 July 2007
Grants
Pass, Oregon - The return of oxygen-depleted water off the Oregon coast
is a sign of a warming climate, which could have ill effect on
populations of sea creatures, scientists said Monday.
It's the sixth year the water, known as a dead zone, has formed.
"It
does, indeed, appear to be the new normal," said Jane Lubchenco,
professor of marine biology at Oregon State University. "The fact that
we are seeing six in a row now tells us that something pretty
fundamental has changed about conditions off of our coast."
Unlike
the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused by fertilizer
washing down the Mississippi River, the Oregon dead zone is triggered
by northerly winds, which create an ocean-mixing condition called
upwelling.
This
brings low-oxygen waters from deep in the ocean close to shore, and
spreads nitrogen and other nutrients through the water column, kicking
off a population boom of plankton, the tiny plants and animals at the
foundation of the ocean food web.
Normally,
this is good for salmon, giving them lots of food to eat. But when huge
amounts of plankton die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean, where
they decompose, depleting the water of oxygen.
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That's about how much time is left for us to get our act together. |
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