Global Day of Action on Climate Change

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Answers for the deniers

Sunday, January 28, 2007
From Seattle PI (USA).

And so, at last and at least, the words come. The evidence is now so thuddingly inescapable that even George W. Bush -- a man who, when pricked, bleeds oil -- has acknowledged "the serious challenge of global climate change" in his State of the Union address. It is only a rhetorical concession, another excuse to fiddle as the West Antarctic ice-sheet melts but it is also a crux moment in the history of global warming denial.

Today, the small, lingering band of global warming "skeptics" is beached on the farthest shores of the wrong side of history. They are alone, abandoned even by Global Warming Bush and the oil industry.

Yet this is not a time to gloat. It is time to appeal to them to join the fight for survival. Deniers, I am sure some of you were sincere.

Man-made global warming is such a horrifying event, it is natural to want to scramble for scraps of evidence suggesting it can't be true. And there are some small misanthropic parts of the environmentalist movement it is perfectly natural to recoil from. The direct action group Earth First! famously made the vile statement that "the AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population ... If (it) didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent (it)." Maybe you wrongly thought all environmentalists were like this. Maybe that's why you were so eager to disprove our core issue.

I know it's painful to give up on something you have passionately believed. So let's -- for one last time -- go through your arguments.

Deniers' Myth Number One: Scientists are divided on whether man is causing global warming. In 2004, the universally respected journal Science studied 928 randomly selected scientific papers containing the words global climate change. Not one disagreed with the view that global warming is being caused to a significant degree by burning fossil fuels. As Jim Baker, who was head of one of the leading scientific organizations in the U.S., explains, "There is a better scientific consensus on this issue than any other, with the possible exception of Newton's Law of Dynamics."

Deniers' Myth Number Two: The current warming of the world is simply part of the planet's natural cycle. After all, there were no carbon emissions when the last ice age ended -- why should the current warming be due to them?

There is a sliver of truth in this: Natural climate change has not stopped, and it never will. But we have superimposed onto it a great blast of greenhouse gases of our own, with far stronger effect.

To understand this, you only have to grasp some basic 19th-century physics. As Professor Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey explains, "There are natural greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere which trap heat on the planet, keeping the surface temperature 30 degrees warmer than it otherwise would be. Since the start of the industrial revolution, we have released lots more greenhouse gases -- around 1,000 billion tons of them. This has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect, and trapped more heat -- currently 0.6 degrees. The more greenhouse gases we add, the warmer we'll be. It's not rocket science."

Deniers' Myth Number Three: The current warming in the world is all due to changes in the energy output of the sun.

In 1991, the Danish scientists Knud Lassen and Eigil Friis-Christensen found a correlation between temperature changes on Earth from 1850 onwards and sunspot activity, which usually indicate changes in the intensity of solar radiation. As the sun warmed, we warmed.

Other scientists studied this closely, and found out that they were partly right: up to 40 per cent of the planet's warming is indeed due to solar activity. But since 1980, sunspot activity has been declining -- yet temperatures down here have been soaring to the highest levels ever recorded. So while the sun can take some of the flak, the world's scientists agree: The other 60 percent remains with us.

Deniers' Myth Number Four: In the 1970s, scientists were warning about "global cooling" and a looming Ice Age. How can we now trust these warnings of global warming? In fact, in the 1970s two -- literally two -- scientists tentatively suggested that cooling could occur over millennia. To compare that meek, misreported suggestion by two people to the overwhelming scientific consensus from tens of thousands of climatologists is, I am sure you deniers can see now, dishonest.

Denier's Myth Number Five: Global warming is a religion. People have always had an innate psychological need to believe in a looming apocalypse; this is just the latest version.

Precisely the opposite is the truth. Global warming is based on very close empirical observation of the real world, and deductions based on reason. If its conclusions fall into one particular niche in intellectual history, that doesn't change the fact they are true. It is you, the deniers clinging to myths, who resemble the faithful. Far from being Galileos, you have been siding with the fossil fuel Vatican.

Last year, there was an extraordinary exchange on the BBC's Newsnight between the environmentalist George Monbiot and the global warming denier Melanie Phillips. Monbiot pointed out that virtually all the "evidence" Phillips cites stems from people funded by Exxon-Mobil, a Big Oil corporation that has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to promoting denialist myths so they can carry on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "Could it be," Monbiot asked, "that you are an unwitting dupe of Exxon-Mobil?" Phillips replied, "It could be, it could be. I have no idea who funds the people I read and listen to."

No idea. She had lauded Ross McKittrick, funded by Exxon, for debunking environmentalist graphs. She had lauded, as invaluable experts, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, the Cato Institute, the Tech Central Science Foundation and the George C. Marshall Institute -- every one funded by Exxon. She has not yet recanted.

Deniers, the war is over. You still have time to come in from the cold and join the warming world on which the rest of us live. There is no shame in making an honest mistake. But if you have any respect for evidence and for human survival, you must begin today to redeploy all that energy you have spent furiously claiming that the world's climatologists are idiots into arguing for a drastic reduction in the world's carbon emissions. These necessary cuts are still, despite George Bush's measly admission, a less likely prospect than global ecocidal disaster. Join us as we try to reverse those odds and there may be a chance you could be remembered with something other than contempt.

Johann Hari writes for The Independent in Britain.

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TIME: (IPCC Report) Climate Change: Case Closed

I wanted to reference the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that I thought was released on the 2nd February 2007. I thought I couldn't find it but it was staring me in the face all along - The IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is now available for download in PDF format. (Found on the page http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/).

During the search for it I came across these other links about the IPCC and the report:

• IPCC Fourth Assessment Report page on Wikipedia,
  
• IPCC activities page.
  

This report finally crosses the t's and dots the i's on the truth and reality of Climate Change. Before this though, I must say that from what I've been seeing over the last couple months, most articles support that Climate Change is happening and is not going to be very good for us and all flora and fauna on this planet. A few others, but very much the minority, don't support the position. These sites seem to be connected to the US Republican party, or to big oil and gas companies, so I dismiss them pretty quickly (see these George Monbiot/ The Guardian articles:

• The denial industry
  
• Another Species of Denial
  

).

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Friday, Feb. 02, 2007 By BRYAN WALSH
From Time Magazine.

The debate on global warming is over.

That's the ultimate message from the report released in Paris today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body of leading researchers charged with analyzing climate science and producing the final word on what is happening — and will happen — to our planet. IPCC scientists now say that it is "very likely" that global warming is chiefly driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and that dangerous levels of warming and sea rise are on the way.

Those two words — the product of 2,500 scientists, 130 nations and 6 years of work — translates into a certainty of over 90%, up from the 66% to 90% chance the panel reported in its last major climate change assessment in 2001. That might not seem like a big difference, but in science, especially in a field as rapidly developing as climate studies, 90% is as good as it gets. The new report effectively completes a scientific revolution that began at the end of the 19th century, when a Swedish geochemist named Svante Arrhenius first proposed that CO2 released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels could change the planet's climate. "The message of this report is that the time for sitting on the fence is finished," says Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and a former chair of the IPCC. "Now is the time for action."

Action will need to be quick and substantial. The IPCC estimated that should the concentration of carbon dioxide reach twice the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million, temperatures could rise between 3.2 to 7.1 degrees (Fahrenheit) — with a more than 1 in 10 change of far greater warming. Sea levels could rise between 7 and 23 inches. Heat waves and droughts will become more intense and longer-lived. Though the new IPCC assessment doesn't go into the social impacts of climate change, past studies indicate that the changes predicted will have a profound effect on humanity. Even if we were somehow able to end all greenhouse gas emissions today the world would continue to warm, thanks to the gases we've already added to the atmosphere — which now has a higher level of carbon than at any time over the past 650,000 years. "We're already committed to future changes," said Susan Solomon, a U.S. climatologist and co-chair of the new IPCC assessment.

That means that we will have to learn to live with global warming; indeed, considering that British meteorologists say the world's 10 hottest years since 1850 have occurred over the past decade, we're already living with it. The IPCC report will likely continue to shift the focus to the need to adapt to climate change, coupled with further attempts to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments must prepare for a world very different from the one we live in today: one where current coastal settlements could be swamped, where refugee camps could be filled by people fleeing the effects of global warming. "We will have to adapt, and we have a long way to go," says Eileen Clausen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "I think the IPCC report might help push that."

Perhaps the scariest thing about the IPCC report is that it is, by the nature of its composition, probably conservative. The final review, which took place this week in Paris, is painstakingly bureaucratic; the IPCC received 30,000 comments from scientists around the world as the report evolved through numerous drafts. Only the most-solidly backed facts — and often the least controversial ones — survived the winnowing process. The report itself offers a range of different estimates for temperature change and sea level rise, corresponding to different "emissions scenarios" that map out possible human responses over the coming century. The 3.2 to 7.1 degree prediction is a relatively optimistic one, which assumes quick adoption of more energy efficient technologies and a global population that peaks at mid-century. If energy-hungry China and India continue to grow rapidly (China may supplant the U.S. as the world's biggest carbon emitter before 2010) there's no guarantee that will happen.

Many scientists are already criticizing the IPCC report for being too conservative, especially on the question of sea level rise. The new assessment actually predicts a lower rise than what was forecast in the 2001 report, though it doesn't take into account some of the most recent research on rapid glacier melting. (The IPCC set a December 2005 cutoff date for the submission of scientific research to the new assessment.) A paper published in Science yesterday argued that sea levels today are already rising faster than the 2001 IPCC assessment predicted. At the same time, the new report's conclusion that warming will more likely than not increase the intensity of tropical storms is considered too liberal by some climate scientists.

It should be no surprise that arguments and questions still remain — good luck getting 2,500 scientists to agree on what to order for dinner, let alone come to a single conclusion on massively complicated climate science. But it would be a mistake, as skeptics have done, to point to the remaining disputes as evidence that a broad consensus still hasn't been reached on the science behind climate change. The new IPCC assessment is that consensus; as United Nations Environment Programme head Achim Steiner pointed out, "attention now shifts from whether human activity is linked to climate, to what on earth we are going to do about it."

Science has answered the first question; the next will be left to us. At the Paris press conference held to mark the release of the IPCC assessment, one journalist tried to get Solomon to say what the world should do about global warming. She would not take the bait. "It is my personal scientific approach to say that it is not my role to communicate what should be done," she said. "I believe that is a societal choice." Whatever happens over the next century, we can't say we weren't warned.


Read the Time article.
Read the IPCC Report (2nd Feb 2007).

Also see Canada.com story.
And this from France 24.

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Ministers ordered to take the bus

I would like to see these changes happen in Brisbane, all of Australia and all of the world of course. What a better way to improve public transport to the levels it needs to be than to have the people who pay for it and make the decisions about it, catch it! Go you Scots!

MURDO MACLEOD
Sunday 21st January 2007
From Scotsman (Scotland)

GET the bus, minister. Senior politicians and top civil servants will be forced out of their luxury limousines and onto public transport under a Scottish Labour manifesto pledge.

In a bid to appear more environmentally friendly, the party wants to crack down on the use of chauffeured vehicles and taxis by ministers and officials for trips, some of which could be walked in minutes.

It emerged last year that Scottish ministers had been driven the equivalent of 17 times around the world in the previous 12 months, despite urging voters to rely more on public transport.

Their trips generated an estimated 127 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Transport Minister Tavish Scott has used taxpayer-funded cars to make 250-mile round trips to catch flights home to his Shetland constituency for the weekend.

As well as the environmental cost, the Executive spends £575,000 a year on fuel and salaries related to its fleet of 22 cars and has spent almost £1m on new vehicles since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. It also spends an estimated £650,000 a year on taxis.

Ministers regularly use the cars to travel between the Scottish Parliament and the Executive's offices at St Andrew's House, a journey that only takes about eight minutes on foot.

But that is about to change, according to the latest draft of the Scottish Labour policy forum document which will form the basis of the manifesto for the Holyrood elections.

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Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

January 17, 2007.
From US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

(Source site is updated with links to replies from the Wheather Channel and original author).

Posted by Marc Morano 202-224-5762 marc_morano@epw.senate.gov (8:50pm ET)

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

"If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website. [Note: It is also worth taking a look at the comments section at the bottom of Cullen’s blog, very entertaining.] See: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html This latest call to silence skeptics of manmade global warming has been the subject of discussion at the annual American Meteorological Society’s Annual conference in San Antonio Texas this week. See: http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual

"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement," Cullen added. [Note: Hurricanes (Cyclones) in the Southern Hemisphere do rotate clockwise. Also, Cullen and the media have ignored the growing climate skepticism by prominent scientists see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD ]

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2100: A world of wild weather

18 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Kate Ravilious



Think back to the hottest summer you can remember. Now imagine a summer like that every year. For those of us who are still around by the end of the 21st century, this is what we can expect, according to a new index that maps the different ways that climate change will hit different parts of the world. The map reveals how much more frequent extreme climate events, such as heatwaves and floods, will be by 2100 compared with the late 20th century. It is the first to show how global warming will combine with natural variations in the climate to affect our planet.

"We hope it will help policy-makers gain a quick overview of the scientific facts without getting lost in the detail," says Michèle Bättig of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who created the index with colleagues after talking to delegates at the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Canada. The index allows anyone to compare the severity of the predicted effect of climate change on a chunk of the Amazon rainforest, for example, with its effect on a corner of Antarctica.

The results are presented on a global map (see top image), in which the areas experiencing the greatest changes are shown in the darkest shades. Swathes of the tropics and high latitudes are coloured a foreboding brown, signifying the most marked changes.

Perhaps the most startling feature is how few areas remain unscathed. "This reinforces what much of the piecemeal climate science is telling us - that many places will face severe challenges," says Neil Adger of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Norfolk. In the coming decades people in these areas could find it difficult or impossible to adapt to the changed conditions, he adds.

For many parts of the world it seems this trend is already under way. Climate scientists announced last week that 2006 has been the hottest year on record for the US, topping nine years of almost continuous rises. Meanwhile, Europe experienced severe heatwaves in both 2003 and 2006, and for the UK 2006 was the warmest year since records began. Nor does it look as if the mercury is going to stop rising. In an energy technology outlook study published last week, the European Commission warns of stark changes for EU countries over the coming century, including shrinking forests, floods, drought and the drying out of fertile land - unless radical steps are taken to combat climate change.

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Tim Flannery: We can all fight the threat to our rare species

January 15, 2007

Climate change is now worsening the danger to Australian animals, writes Tim Flannery.

AUSTRALIA has the worst record of animal extinction of any continent. Since European colonisation began, about one tenth of our mammals — 23 species in all — have vanished. The victims are a diverse lot, ranging from obscure native rats and mice, to bandicoots, wallabies and the thylacine.

The extinctions began around the 1850s, as the great pastoral expansion pushed far into the inland. It peaked with the plague of foxes and rabbits that overran our land in the early 20th century, and only ceased in the 1950s or 1960s, when Australians had begun to care enough about their unique fauna and flora to institute conservation programs and establish national parks.

All patriotic Australians should look back on that century of extinction with horror, for it speaks of a disregard for our natural wealth that is truly shocking. Yet there are signs that, after 50 years of no species loss, the extinctions are starting again. This time, though, the cause is very different.

I trained as a mammalogist and am still a member of the professional association called the Australian Mammal Society, so receive its annual bulletin. This newsletter normally contains synopses of obscure studies of chromosomes, reproduction, the diets of our mammals, and such like. However, the latest bulletin (October 2006) contains far more disturbing news, for scattered among the more usual articles are contributions showing that no less than five of our unique mammal species have declined so precipitously in the opening years of the 21st century as to be in grave danger of extinction.

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Livestock generate 18 percent of world's greenhouse gases

A new report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that domestic animals are a major source of greenhouse gases, producing 18% of the world's total - even more than transportation. Unless more sustainable techniques such as controlling soil erosion, providing animals with better diets, and using water more efficiently are adopted, the environmental impact of animal production will worsen, as world production of meat and dairy products is expected to double by 2050.

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Chrysler questions climate change

My god number two! The big motor companies in the US are continueing to deny Global Warming. I guess this is the expected behaviour of companies who stand to lose the most. They could have forseen this years ago, like Toyota did with the Prius, but no, they will continue to deny it and hope it goes away. Stuupid gringos. They will loose out even more as people are forced not to buy their big gas guzzlers. They are maintaining their profits now but will loose the lot in only a couple years time. My prediction is that you will see big motor company execs resigning with nice big golden handshakes. I don't think that violence helps anything, though I don't mind releasing some anger to suggest that those execs should be stoned if this comes true.

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Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched a fierce attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their "Chicken Little" attitudes to global warming.

His attack is in sharp contrast to the green image that the US car companies have been trying to promote at this year's Detroit motor show.

Mr Jolissaint was speaking at a private breakfast where the chief economists of the "Big Three" US car firms presented their forecasts for auto industry sales this year.

Most of the audience - which was mainly made up of parts suppliers - seemed to nod in agreement with Mr Jolissaint.

Neither Ford's chief economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, nor General Motors' chief economist Mustafa Mohatarem, who were on the panel with Mr Jolissaint, questioned his assertion.

Uncertain magnitude

Mr Jolissant, a Chrysler veteran who was recently appointed the chief economist for the German-US DaimlerChrysler Group, said that since he started spending more time at the company's corporate headquarters in Stuttgart he had been shocked by the absurdity of European attitudes towards global warming.

In response to a question from the floor, he said that global warming was a far-off risk whose magnitude was uncertain.

He said that from an economic point of view, it would be more rational to spend lots of money on today's other big problems, and only make small and limited changes in policies relating to global warming, such as a slight increase in gasoline or carbon taxes.

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George Monbiot talks about Climate Change and book "Heat"

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What Al Gore Hasn't Told You About Global Warming

This article compares Al Gore's speeches about global warming to George Monbiot's and concludes that it's unfortunate but true that what George proposes to solve Global Warming is going to be tough. George also makes it clear that it will be a jillion times easier if we start making immediate and BIG changes NOW! Leave it any lenght of time and the hardship will increase exponentially.

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George Monbiot's new book Heat picks up where Al Gore left off on global warming, offering real solutions without sugar-coating the large personal sacrifices they will require.

Al Gore is our generation's Paul Revere. Riding hard through the country, he warns us of the impending arrival of climatic disaster. He's proven an astonishingly effective messenger. An Inconvenient Truth may receive an Oscar for Best Documentary. Overflow crowds greet his presentations with standing ovations.

Which, come to think of it, is odd. When has someone ever delivered such an ominous message to such tumultuous applause? (Aside from those who insist we are in the end times and the rapture is near.)

In a recent speech to a standing-room-only audience at the New York University School of Law, Gore declared, "We are moving closer to several 'tipping points' that could -- within as little as 10 years -- make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization." The audience cheered wildly. Presumably audiences are not cheered by the prospect of imminent catastrophe. So what is going on here?

British journalist George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (Doubleday, 2006) has a theory.

"We wish our governments to pretend to act," he writes. "We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it. My fear is that the political parties in most rich nations have already recognized this. They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed. They know that we will grumble about their failure to curb climate change, but that we will not take to the streets. They know that nobody ever rioted for austerity."

Austerity? Hold on. Al Gore and the rest of the U.S. environmental movement never utter the word "austerity." Their word of choice is "opportunity." The prospect of global warming, they maintain, can serve as a much-needed catalyst to spur us to action. A large dose of political will may be required, but we need not anticipate economic pain. We can stop global warming in its tracks, expand our economy and improve our quality of life. We can, in other words, do good and do quite well. A leading environmentalist, for whom I have a great deal of admiration, summed up his position to an interviewer, "I can't stand it when people say, 'Taking action on climate change is going to be extremely difficult.'"


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Exxon Mobil reportedly admits PR problem on global warming

My god, when I saw this headline I thought myself "well about time Exxon Mobil came to their senses. I'm sure this means they will pump lots of money into helping the world solve this problem". Then I saw the words "[they] would just try and explain it [their position against global warming] better".

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LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) has promised investors it will soften its public image in an attempt to rid itself of a reputation as the green campaigners' public enemy number one, the Guardian reports Tuesday.

However, Chairman and Chief Executive Rex Tillerson made clear to a select group of Wall Street fund managers and analysts that the oil company wouldn't be changing its position on global warming, it would just try and explain it better, the newspaper says.

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Alaska natives left out in the cold

While the rest of the world argues about the best way to curb future climate change, says Patricia Cochran in this week's Green Room, native communities within the Arctic Circle are having to draw on their own ancestral strengths to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

A day after Christmas, the Anchorage Daily News ran an article about flooding and erosion in small native villages on the west coast of Alaska with names familiar to no one else except Alaskans.

But this is a very familiar story to us. With thinner sea ice arriving later and leaving earlier in the year, coastal communities are experiencing more intensified storms with larger waves than they have ever experienced.

This threat is being compounded by the loss of permafrost which has kept river banks from eroding too quickly.

The waves are larger because there is no sea ice to diminish their intensity, slamming against the west and northern shores of Alaska, causing severe storm driven coastal erosion.

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The Hidden Life of Paper and Its Impact on the Environment

By LOUISE STORY

MEDIA companies have published numerous articles on global warming and greenhouse emissions in recent years. Now, a couple of large publishers are starting to think about their own impact on the environment.

Time Inc. participated in a study published this year by the Heinz Center that calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced over the entire process of publishing Time and In Style.

Other magazine companies, including the Hearst Corporation, now say they are studying the Heinz report to consider the implications for their magazines, and Rupert Murdoch recently announced that the News Corporation is developing a plan to become entirely carbon neutral, meaning the company will reduce its carbon emissions and try to offset the emissions left over.

“We’ve recognized that these are issues that are important to our readers and, increasingly, important to our advertisers,” said David J. Refkin, the director of sustainable development for the Time Inc. division of Time Warner and a member of the board of the Heinz Center. “We’re starting to see a movement where becoming carbon neutral is something many companies are considering.”

•Large-scale manufacturing is, of course, better known as a source of the greenhouse gases that many scientists say cause global warming. Electric power production represents about 40 percent of emissions in the United States, and private motor vehicle use accounts for about 20 percent, said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University.

Still, the paper industry is not without its impact. Because of its consumption of energy, the industry — which includes magazines, newspapers, catalogs and writing paper — emits the fourth-highest level of carbon dioxide among manufacturers, according to a 2002 study by the Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy. The paper industry follows the chemical, petroleum and coal products, and primary metals industries.

“Few people realize the sheer scale and magnitude of activities it takes to produce millions of copies of a magazine,” said Donald Carli, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, a nonprofit group in New York that is working to help advertisers estimate their ads’ greenhouse emissions. “There’s a hidden life that products have, and one of the challenges of sustainability is to make these lives known.”

The life of a magazine or a newspaper starts with trees being cut down in a forest and ends with the burning or recycling of old magazines or papers. The most harmful part of the process is paper production. Breaking down wood fiber to make paper consumes a lot of energy, which in many cases comes from coal plants.

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The Reality of Nuclear Power

Good evening. My name is David Lochbaum. I have been the Nuclear Safety Engineer for Union of Concerned Scientists for the past three years. Prior to joining UCS, I worked for over 17 years as a nuclear engineer in the nuclear industry. Between 1992 and 1995, I was a consultant to the New York Power Authority working primarily on their FitzPatrick nuclear power plant and some on their Indian Point Unit 3 facility.

I am going to speak a little bit about the history of nuclear power, but will focus more on its future. Many people have stated recently that the nuclear industry is at a crossroads because of electric utility deregulation. I personally do not subscribe to that theory because it implicitly implies either that we are all going in a big circle because we reach a crossroad every three or four months or that we are not moving at all and remain at the first crossroad we reached.

Workers at the Shippingport nuclear power plant outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, flipped a switch in December 1957 to connect the plant's turbine-generator to the electrical grid. This marked the first time that a civilian utility company in the United States supplied electricity to its customers from nuclear power. In the subsequent four decades, nuclear power has generated billions of kilowatts of electricity, several thousand tons of highly radioactive waste, and immeasurable controversy.

Proponents claim that nuclear power is vital if the United States is to have energy independence and to combat global warming. Antinuclear activists claim that nuclear power plants are unacceptably risky and that nuclear waste is the wrong legacy for us to leave future generations.

This debate is what I call the politics of nuclear power. Three years of working inside the DC beltway have taught me one important lesson -- I don't want to work in politics, particularly the politics of nuclear power.

Read the article at Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Canberra to sell uranium to China

Friday, 5 January 2007



Australia will soon be able to export uranium to China, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said.

The two countries signed an agreement earlier this year, which means the exports can begin in 30 days, he said.

Australia has 40% of the world's recoverable uranium, while China needs a huge amount of energy for its large population and rising economy.

Beijing is keen to increase its use of nuclear power, to cut down its dependence on fossil fuels.

Two bilateral nuclear treaties - the Australia-China Nuclear Transfer Agreement and the Nuclear Co-operation Agreement - were signed in April during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Canberra.

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Whither our weather?

By Tim Flannery
January 2, 2007

Article from The Australian Age.

The severity of the drought is reflected in the economic figures, and so dire is the shortfall of production that soon all Australians will be paying more for their food.

It's not just the lack of rain that's the problem, but the lack of flow in our rivers. The great irrigation areas of the Murray-Darling basin that feed most of our nation, and provide most of our exports, are suffering disproportionately.

And if things continue this way much longer, it's not water for crops that will be insufficient, but water for towns.

Think of the worst drought Australia has faced since record-keeping began, then take away three-quarters of the trickle that flowed in the Murray-Darling back then. That's how much water is flowing through Australia's arterial rivers this year.

Thus, many argue, this drought is four times worse than any experienced in the past 200 years and so it is increasingly referred to as the one-in-1000-years drought. But is it really a drought, or the new climate? Much hinges on this distinction.

The climate of south-eastern Australia changed dramatically in prehistory. In the Mallee, in Victoria's north-west, you can still see the sand dunes - stabilised now - testifying to the fact that this vast region used to be a Sahara of shifting sands. Ten thousand years ago the climate changed, allowing the mallee trees to grow. This tells us that the possibility of a climate shift is real enough.

But let's look at evidence that can tell us whether the one-in-1000-years drought is caused by industrial pollution or natural climate variability.

This year, Australian climatologist Neville Nichols and his colleagues solved one of the great mysteries of climatology - one that bears directly on the nature of Australia's big dry.

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