By David Usborne
    The Independent UK

    Friday 19 January 2007

    A leading climatologist on the Weather Channel in the United States has caused a squall in the industry by arguing that any weather forecaster who dares publicly to question the notion that global warming is a manmade phenomenon should be stripped of their professional certification.

    The call was made by Heidi Cullen, host of a weekly global warming programme on the cable network called The Climate Code, and coincides with a stretch of severely off-kilter weather across the US this winter and moves by Democrats to draft strict new legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

    Specifically, Ms Cullen is suggesting that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revokes the "seal of approval" that it normally extends to broadcast forecasters in the US in cases where they have expressed scepticism about man's role in pushing up planetary temperatures.

    "It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather," she wrote in her internet blog. "It's not a political statement ... it's just an incorrect statement."

    By Marc Kaufman
    The Washington Post

    Tuesday 16 January 2007

US Earth programs in peril, panel finds.

    The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded.

    The two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, determined that NASA's earth science budget has declined 30 percent since 2000. It stands to fall further as funding shifts to plans for a manned mission to the moon and Mars. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meanwhile, has experienced enormous cost overruns and schedule delays with its premier weather and climate mission.

    As a result, the panel said, the United States will not have the scientific information it needs in the years ahead to analyze severe storms and changes in Earth's climate unless programs are restored and funding made available.

    "NASA's budget has taken a major hit at the same time that NOAA's program has fallen off the rails," said panel co-chairman Berrien Moore III of the University of New Hampshire. "This combination is very, very disturbing, and it's coming at the very time that we need the information most."

    NOAA officials announced last week that 2006 was the warmest year on record in the United States - part of a highly unusual warming trend over several decades that many scientists attribute to greenhouse gases. Some climate experts think that the atmospheric warming could bring more extreme weather - longer droughts, reduced snowfall and more intense hurricanes such as the ones experienced along the Gulf Coast in 2005.

    The Associated Press

    Thursday 18 January 2007

    Washington - The new speaker of the House of Representatives is ignoring committee selection traditions involving some of Congress' oldest and most powerful members to make sure that global warming tops the Democratic legislative agenda.

    Putting power in the hands of members who are more active on environmental problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is creating a special committee to recommend legislation to cut greenhouse gases. It probably will be chaired by Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, an aide to party House leaders said Wednesday.

    Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles and is one of the House's biggest critics of oil companies and American automakers.

    Pelosi has discussed the proposal with at least two Democratic committee chairmen, Reps. Henry Waxman of Oversight and Government Reform, and Nick Rahall, head of the Natural Resources Committee. Pelosi intends to announce the move this week, said the leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the details remain to be worked out.

    By Steve Connor
    The Independent UK

    Thursday 18 January 2007

    Climate change stands alongside the use of nuclear weapons as one of the greatest threats posed to the future of the world, the Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking has said.

    Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it.

    He was speaking at the Royal Society in London yesterday at a conference organised by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which has decided to move the minute hand of its "Doomsday Clock" forward to five minutes to midnight to reflect the increased dangers faced by the world.

    Scientists devised the clock in 1947 as a way of expressing to the public the risk of nuclear conflagration following the use of the atomic weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War.

    "As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces," Professor Hawking said. "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth.

    Thursday 18 January 2007

    Washington - The climate here has definitely changed.

    Legislation to control global warming that once had a passionate but quixotic ring to it is now serious business. Congressional Democrats are increasingly determined to wrest control of the issue from the White House and impose the mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions that most smokestack industries have long opposed.

    Four major Democratic bills have been announced, with more expected. One of these measures, or a blend of them, stands an excellent chance of passage in this Congress or the next, industry and environmental lobbyists said in interviews.

    Many events have combined to create the new direction - forsythia blooming in lawmakers' gardens in January, polar bears lacking the ice they need to hunt and Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," along with pragmatic executives seeking an idea of future costs and, especially, the arrival of a Democratic-controlled Congress. There was evidence of the changed mood all over Washington this week.

    On Wednesday, leading scientists and evangelical pastors jointly declared their intention to fight the causes of climate change and the public confusion on the subject. Cheryl Johns, a professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary, called that problem "nature deficit disorder."

    By Molly Bentley
    BBC News

    Wednesday 17 January 2007

    Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.

    As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight.

    The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at five minutes to the hour.

    The clock was first featured by the magazine 60 years ago, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan.

    Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight.

    "Perilous Choices"

    The decision to move it came after BAS directors and affiliated scientists held discussions to reassess the idea of doomsday and what posed the most grievous threats to civilisation.

    Growing global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons.