The Global Warming Archive

Oceans Absorb Less Carbon Dioxide as Marine Systems Change

2009-12-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

From: Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute, More from this Affiliate

The oceans are by far the largest carbon sink in the world. Some 93 percent of carbon dioxide is stored in algae, vegetation, and coral under the sea. But oceans are not able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide

released from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, a recent study suggests that the oceans have absorbed a smaller proportion of fossil-fuel emissions, nearly 10 percent less, since 2000.

The study, published in the current issue of Nature, is the first to quantify the perceived trend that oceans are becoming less efficient carbon sinks. The study team, led by Columbia University oceanographer Samar Khatiwala, measured the amount of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions pumped into the oceans since 1765.

Industrial carbon dioxide emissions have increased dramatically since the 1950s, and oceans have until recently been able to absorb the greater amounts of emissions. Sometime after 2000, however, the rise in emissions and the oceans' carbon uptake decoupled. Oceans continue to absorb more carbon, but the pace appears to have slowed.

The reason is based in part on simple chemistry. Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide have turned waters more acidic, especially nearer to the poles. While carbon dioxide dissolves more readily in cold, dense seawater, these waters are less capable of sequestering the gas as the ocean becomes more acidic. The study revealed that the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica, absorbs about 40 percent of the carbon in oceans.

Article continues: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6323

Global Salmon Study Shows 'Sustainable' Food May Not Be So Sustainable

2009-12-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

From: Science Daily

Popular thinking about how to improve food systems for the better often misses the point, according to the results of a three-year global study of salmon production systems. Rather than pushing for organic or land-based production, or worrying about simple metrics such as "food miles," the study finds that the world can achieve greater environmental

benefits by focusing on improvements to key aspects of production and distribution.

For example, what farmed salmon are fed, how wild salmon are caught and the choice to buy frozen over fresh matters more than organic vs. conventional or wild vs. farmed when considering global scale environmental impacts such as climate change, ozone depletion, loss of critical habitat, and ocean acidification.

he study is the world's first comprehensive global-scale look at a major food commodity from a full life cycle perspective, and the researchers examined everything -- how salmon are caught in the wild, what they're fed when farmed, how they're transported, how they're consumed, and how all of this contributes to both environmental degradation and socioeconomic benefits.

Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091124152803.htm

Ribbon Seal Protection Sought by Activists

2009-09-04T06:41:00.001-07:00

From: Dan Joling, AP via Discovery News

Ribbon seals should be listed as threatened or endangered because global warming is quickly melting sea ice, which the seals depend on for several months each year, two environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed against the federal government in San Francisco Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in December denied a listing under the Endangered Species Act for the seals found off the coasts of Alaska and Russia.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace sued in U.S. District Court, claiming the agency ignored the best science available on global warming.

Article continues

Climate-change technology risks 'catastrophic' outcome

2009-09-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

Risky and unproven climate-changing technologies could have "catastrophic consequences" for the earth and humankind if used irresponsibly, according to a new report.

Yet without drastic further cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, a geoengineering solution may offer the only hope of saving the world from disastrous run-away global warming, experts warned.

A report by the Royal Society, Britain's leading academic institution, looks at the feasibility and potential dangers of technologies designed to cool the earth.

They include artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and spraying sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun's rays into space. The scientists concluded that, although some approaches were possible, they had not yet been properly researched and posed serious potential dangers for the planet.

Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the Royal Society geoengineering working group, said: "It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are heading for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases."

"Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems — yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them."

Article continues: http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/other-uk-business/2009/09/01/climate-change-technology-risks-catastrophic-outcome-report-65233-24585797/

Schwarzenegger to Obama cabinet: Water... please!

2009-09-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

From: Peter Henderson, Reuters

Schwarzenegger to Obama cabinet: Water... please!

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has demanded that President Barack Obama's cabinet rethink federal policy that would divert water from parched farms and cities to threatened fish, his administration said on Wednesday.

California's rivers used to brim with salmon and sturgeon, but a massive system of canals diverted water that fed farms and cities, now suffering through a third year of drought.

Schwarzenegger has gained credibility as an environmentalist for his push to curb greenhouse gases but he argued that federal plans to save fish will worsen a water crisis that has cost farmers more than $700 million and caused mandatory rationing in cities of the most populous state.

Article continues

Abrupt reversal detected in Arctic cooling trend

2009-09-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

The Arctic climate has been warmer over the past decade than during any 10-year period in 2,000 years, according to a study by an international research team that adds powerful new evidence that human-generated greenhouse gases have speeded the pace of the planet's recent warming.

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Kennedy denies affair with Kopechne in new memoir 09.03.09

The report from an international team of climate scientists concludes that climate change in the Arctic has accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, abruptly reversing a long-term worldwide cooling trend.

"The study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate," said Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., a co-author of the report published Thursday in the journal Science.

To deduce the Arctic's decade-by-decade climate trend over the centuries, the leading scientists in the international study analyzed sediment cores in 14 Arctic lakes that revealed the varied growth rates of long-buried plants. They also studied Arctic tree rings to determine their growth rates and ages as well as ice cores from glaciers across the Arctic that showed patterns of relative warm and cold.

Researchers at other institutions, seeking to look for patterns of climate change even further back in time, used astronomical records to study the well-known wobble of the globe as it spins on its axis. They found that the Northern Hemisphere has long been moving away from the sun's warmth. During the summer solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is now a million kilometers - about 621,000 miles - farther away from the sun than it was 2,000 years ago, according to the scientist's computer models.

The result was a global period of relative cold that would have continued, the scientists found. But about 1850, at the beginning of the Industrial Age, the planet's climate began overcoming the cooling trend, and the Arctic climate has warmed decade by decade ever since as greenhouse gas emissions have increased, the scientists say.

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford climate expert and biologist who did not participate in the study, called the seven-year study, involving seven major research institutions in three nations, "a heroic effort."

The study, he said, "shows that nature has been, unfortunately, cooperating with theory and showing us on a long-time scale of millennia that the mainstream view is once again bolstered."

It is clear again, Schneider said, that anthropogenic influences - the increasing emission of greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere - are the prime cause of global warming.

For the rest of the article go to:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/04/MNB219HIRT.DTL&tsp=1

Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat

2009-08-11T13:05:00.002-07:00

From Japan Today

Monday 10th August, 05:38 AM JST

TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories —

The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square kilometers of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada’s far northwest, 2,414 kilometers north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay some 128 kilometers at sea.

“Forty years ago, it was 40 miles (64 kilometers) out,” said Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business.

Global average temperatures rose 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of manmade greenhouse gases, researchers say.

In late July the mercury soared to almost 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in this settlement of 900 Inuvialuit, the name for western Arctic Eskimos.

“The water was really warm,” Gruben said. “The kids were swimming in the ocean.”

As of Thursday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 6.75 million square kilometers after having shrunk an average 106,000 square kilometers a day in July—equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.

The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 4.3 million square kilometers in September.

In its latest analysis, the Colorado-based NSIDC said Arctic atmospheric conditions this summer have been similar to those of the summer of 2007, including a high-pressure ridge that produced clear skies and strong melt in the Beaufort Sea, the arm of the Arctic Ocean off northern Alaska and northwestern Canada.

In July, “we saw acceleration in loss of ice,” the U.S. center’s Walt Meier told The Associated Press. In recent days the pace has slowed, making a record-breaking final minimum “less likely but still possible,” he said.

Scientists say the makeup of the frozen polar sea has shifted significantly the past few years, as thick multiyear ice has given way as the Arctic’s dominant form to thin ice that comes and goes with each winter and summer.

The past few years have “signaled a fundamental change in the character of the ice and the Arctic climate,” Meier said.

Ironically, the summer melts since 2007 appear to have allowed disintegrating but still thick multiyear ice to drift this year into the relatively narrow channels of the Northwest Passage, the east-west water route through Canada’s Arctic islands. Usually impassable channels had been relatively ice-free the past two summers.

“We need some warm temperatures with easterly or southeasterly winds to break up and move this ice to the north,” Mark Schrader, skipper of the sailboat Ocean Watch, e-mailed The Associated Press from the west entrance to the passage.

The steel-hulled sailboat, with scientists joining it at stops along the way, is on a 40,232-kilometer, foundation-financed circumnavigation of the Americas, to view and demonstrate the impact of climate change on the continents’ environments.

Environmentalists worry, for example, that the ice-dependent polar bear will struggle to survive as the Arctic cap melts. Schrader reported seeing only one bear, an animal chased from the Arctic shore of Barrow, Alaska, that “swam close to Ocean Watch on its way out to sea.”

(The rest of the article is available at: http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/vast-expanses-of-arctic-ice-melt-in-summer-heat)

Arctic Ocean may be polluted soup by 2070

2009-08-11T13:05:00.001-07:00

From: Kate Ravilious, NewScientist

WITHIN 60 years the Arctic Ocean could be a stagnant, polluted soup. Without drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of the Arctic's most powerful currents and a key disperser of pollutants, is likely to disappear because of global warming.

The Transpolar Drift is a cold surface current that travels right across the Arctic Ocean from central Siberia to Greenland, and eventually out into the Atlantic. It was first discovered in 1893 by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who tried unsuccessfully to use the current to sail to the North Pole. Together with the Beaufort Gyre, the Transpolar Drift keeps Arctic waters well mixed and ensures that pollution never lingers there for long.

To better understand the dispersal of pollution in the Arctic Ocean, Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway, and his colleagues studied the spread of radioactive substances such as strontium-90 and caesium-137 from nuclear testing, bomb factories and nuclear power-plant accidents. Measurements taken between 1948 and 1999 were plugged into a high-resolution ocean circulation model and combined with a climate model to predict Arctic Ocean circulation until 2080.

Article continues

Flying frogs and the world's oldest mushroom: a decade of Himalayan discovery

2009-08-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

From: Felicity Carus, The Guardian UK

A pretty ultramarine blue flower which changes colour in response to temperature, a flying frog and the world's oldest mushroom preserved in amber are among the 350 new species discovered in the Eastern Himalayas over the past 10 years. But experts warn the new discoveries are under pressure from demand for land and climate change.

A report published today by the WWF, The Eastern Himalayas — Where Worlds Collide, lists 242 new types of plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, two birds and two mammals and 61 new invertebrates. The cache, quality and diversity of species newly discovered between 1998 and 2008 make the mountainous region one of the world's most important biological hotspots.

The WWF is asking the governments of Bhutan, India and Nepal to commit to cooperate on conservation efforts in the geographic region that transcends the borders of the three countries to protect the landscape and the livelihoods of people living in the Eastern Himalayas.

Population growth, deforestation, overgrazing, poaching, the wildlife trade, mining, pollution, and hydropower development have all contributed to the pressures on the fragile ecosystems in the region, the report says. Only 25% of the original habitats in the region remain intact and 163 species that live in the Eastern Himalayas are considered globally threatened.

Article continues

More wildfire, more bad air

2009-08-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

From: Bettina Boxall, LA Times

Harvard University scientists are predicting some forms of air pollution could increase significantly across the West as more of the region's wildlands burn as a result of rising temperatures.

Smoke from wildfires contains two main kinds of carbon particles: black soot, or elemental carbon, and lighter-colored particles, called organic carbon aerosols, which are a mix of chemicals.

"In large quantities, downwind of fires, organic carbon aerosols are hazardous," said senior research fellow Jennifer Logan, who led a study examining rising wildfire rates and the impact on air quality. "The particles irritate lung tissue and the chemicals they carry are toxic. But even at low concentrations, these aerosols may be dangerous. We don't know. There is no known threshold where damage begins."

Article continues

Can national parks be saved from global warming?

2009-08-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

From: Margot Roosevelt, LA Times

The federal government must take decisive action to avoid "a potentially catastrophic loss of animal and plant life," in the national parks, according to a new report that details the effect of global warming on the country's most treasured public lands.

The 53-page report from the National Parks Conservation Assn., a Washington-based advocacy group, contains a litany of concerns related to climate change in the parks, from the bleaching of coral reefs in Florida to the disappearance of high-altitude ponds that nurture yellow-legged frogs in California.

The group, which has offices in California and 10 other states, called on the National Park Service to come up with a detailed plan and funding to adapt to temperature-related ecosystem changes.

"Right now, no national plan exists to manage wildlife throughout their habitat, which often is a patchwork of lands managed by multiple federal agencies, states, tribes, municipalities and private landholders," wrote Tom C. Kiernan, president of the group.

Article continues

How to Get Cancer: Move to the United States

2009-08-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

From: Live Science

he risk of cancer for Hispanics living in Florida is 40 percent higher than for those who live in their native countries, a puzzling new study finds.

The finding holds even after researchers corrected for the increase detection rates in the United States. And access to health care

did not make things better.

"This suggests that changes in their environment and lifestyles make them more prone to develop cancer," said Dr. Paulo S. Pinheiro, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Cancers of the colon and rectum among Cubans and Mexicans who moved to the United States was more than double that in Cuba and Mexico. Lung cancer among Mexican and Puerto Rican women living in Florida was also double the rates in their countries of origin.

Article continues

Alaskan Glaciers REALLY are Shrinking

2009-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

"Fifty years of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research on glacier change shows recent dramatic shrinkage of glaciers in three climatic regions of the United States. These long periods of record provide clues to the climate shifts that may be driving glacier change."

Beginning in 1957, the USGS has taken annual measurements of the South Cascade Glacier in Washington state, and followed shortly thereafter monitoring the Gulkana Glacier on the coast of Alaska and Wolverine Glacier in Alaska's interior.

All three glaciers have shrunk and thinned, the report says, with the mass loss rapidly accelerating over the past 15 years. The South Cascade Glacier has lost nearly 25% of its weight, and the two Alaskan glaciers about 15%.

Between 1987 and 2004 all three glaciers consistently lost more snow and ice each summer as compared to years prior, the report says. Combined with less snowfall the loss has led to the net decline of the glaceirs.
The study raises concerns about diminishing freshwater runoff and the future availability for fresh drinking water in areas that depend on the glaciers for water supply as they continue to shrink - some possibly disappearing entirely. The shrinkage also changes water temperatures, effecting the habitat of fish, insects, and other animals downstream, says USGS scientist Shad O'Neel.

Photo shows the South Cascade Glacier in 1928 (top) and now (bottom).

Article continues: http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/08/07/usgs-report-shows-a-dramatic-decline-in-us-glaciers/

Greenwash: easyJet's carbon claims written on the wind

2009-07-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

EasyJet says its flights have a smaller carbon footprint than a Toyota Prius hybrid car. Let's do the maths…

Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 July 2009 08.00 BST

EasyJet claims its flights have smaller carbon footprints than a Toyota Prius. Photograph: Philippe Hays/Rex Features

You probably weren't watching BBC3 at 4am on Monday morning. Not if you had a job to go to in the morning, anyhow. So you probably missed a nice little programme called Britain's Embarrassing Emissions.

It door-stepped the budget airline easyJet about claims on the company's website that it is greener than a hybrid car. Or, more particularly, that its emissions were less than those of a Toyota Prius. It's greenwash, of course. As, I discovered, are several of its other environmental claims.

The crux of the matter is the company's website, which highlights a graph showing that its emissions "based on one person" are 95.7g/km, whereas those for a Prius are 104g/km. As the programme pointed out, this is not comparing like with like. EasyJet doesn't say so, but its "typical comparison" is very atypical. It assumes that the plane is full and its emissions are shared out among all the passengers, while the Prius is presumed to have only one occupant.

EasyJet may succeed in its aim of completely filling up every flight (though it is not true in my experience). But all British official stats on car emissions reckon on an average of 1.6 passengers in a car. Eastjet presumably didn't follow this convention, because it would show even a full easyJet flight emitting 47% more per passenger-kilometre than an averagely full Prius. And of course a full easyJet flight would emit close to for four times as much per passenger as a full Prius carrying four people.

In the programme, which I'm guessing was filmed recently, the hapless easyJet spokesman appeared to promise to try and get the website changed to reflect reality. Not so far, it hasn't. The greenwash persists. And if the claims are repeated in any of easyJet's advertising perhaps someone fancies contacting the Advertising Standards Authority...

But the environment pages of easyJet's site contain other slippery claims. They repeatedly proclaim that "aviation's carbon dioxide emissions... only account for 1.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions", citing as the source Lord Stern's famous review of the economics of climate change. But the company ignores the next sentence in Stern's text, which says that "the impact of aviation on climate change is greater than these figures suggest because of other gases released by aircraft... for example water vapour". These emissions roughly double the effect, says Stern. So make that 3.2%.

Oddly enough, easyJet's seems seems not to trust its headline claims. Its own report on corporate and social responsibility quotes a figure of 3.5% contained in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1999.

In any event, both Stern and the IPCC report are out of date. Stern's data come from someone else's report in 2005, which in turn cites data for 2002. Since when global aircraft emissions have grown by about 40%. And IPCC scientists now quote a figure for aviation's contribution to global warming of almost 5%.

Whatever aviation's true contribution to global warming, it is not 1.6%.

What else does easyJet offer to reassure its growing number of passengers that it is green to fly? Naturally, since it doesn't fly to the US, the company flags up how flying to Europe is better. So it says in big letters: "Flying from London to Nice produces 10 times fewer CO2 emissions than flying London to Miami."

Leaving aside the ugly English, I am not sure this stands up. Since easyJet doesn't fly to Miami, we can't check the stat on its own carbon calculator. But a couple of others I went to, including Climate Care, show the difference at a bit over eight times.

The comparison is misleading in a more important way, however. If I need to get to Miami, I have little choice other than to fly. Whereas if i need to get to Nice, I can catch a train. It might take a bit longer, but it will save on carbon. Thanks to the nuclear power-running Eurostar and the French railways, my emissions would be, very roughly, one-tenth those of flying. With easyJet or anyone else.

China dust cloud circled globe in 13 days

2009-07-25T11:08:00.001-07:00

China dust cloud circled globe in 13 days

Dust clouds generated by a huge dust storm in China's Taklimakan desert in 2007 made more than one full circle around the globe in just 13 days, a Japanese study using a NASA satellite has found.

When the cloud reached the Pacific Ocean

the second time, it descended and deposited some of its dust into the sea, showing how a natural phenomenon can impact the environment far away.

"Asian dust is usually deposited near the Yellow Sea, around the Japan area, while Sahara dust ends up around the Atlantic Ocean and coast of Africa," said Itsushi Uno of Kyushu University's Research Institute for Applied Mechanics.

Article continues

Ocean current switch due to warming could be slower than feared

2009-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO — The nightmare global warming scenario which provided the plot for a Hollywood blockbuster -- the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe warm shuts down and triggers rapid climate change -- has long worried scientists.

But a study published Thursday in the journal Science found it may not occur as quickly as previously feared.

There is evidence that this current has shut down with some regularity in the past -- and sometimes quite rapidly -- in response to large influxes of fresh water from melting glaciers.

However, it appears as though the current rate of glacial melt is occurring at a more gradual pace which will "give ecosystems more time to adjust to new conditions," said study coauthor Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University.

Article continues

NOAA Reports Record Ocean Surface Temperatures for June

2009-07-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

From: , Global Warming is Real, More from this Affiliate
Published July 21, 2009 07:30 AM

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported findings of preliminary analysis from the agency's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina that shows global ocean surface temperatures for June broke the previous record set in 2005.

The combined average global/land and ocean surface temperature for June was the second warmest on record, 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees F.

Ocean surface temperatures for June '09 were the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degrees C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.

The global land surface temperature for June was 1.26 degrees F above the 20th century average, and the sixth warmest June on record.

Article continues: http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/07/20/noaa-reports-record-ocean-surface-temperatures-f

How Clouds Over the Oceans Affect Our Climate

2009-07-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

How clouds over the ocean affect our climate, and how climate change

may be affecting THEM, is not well known. There is no network of observing stations like on land, and climate models have not been shown to really simulate clouds well. They may be just too fine a detail for models that cover such large scale phenomenon as oceanic circulation. But clouds over the oceans have been thought be important in our understanding of what drives our climate.

In a study published in the July 24 issue of Science, researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego begin to unravel this mystery. Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.
The result of their analysis was a surprising degree of agreement between two multi-decade datasets that were not only independent of each other, but that employed fundamentally different measurement methods. One set consisted of collected visual observations from ships over the last 50 years, and the other was based on data collected from weather satellites.

"The agreement we found between the surface-based observations and the satellite data was almost shocking," said Clement, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami and winner of the American Geophysical Union's 2007 Macelwane Award for her groundbreaking work on climate change. "These are subtle changes that take place over decades. It is extremely encouraging that a satellite passing miles above the earth would document the same thing as sailors looking up at a cloudy sky from the deck of a ship."
Together, the observations and the Hadley Centre model results provide evidence that low-level stratiform clouds, which currently shield the earth from the sun's radiation, may dissipate in warming climates, allowing the oceans to further heat up, which would then cause more cloud dissipation.

"This is somewhat of a vicious cycle potentially exacerbating global warming," said Clement. "But these findings provide a new way of looking at cloud changes. This can help to improve the simulation of clouds in climate models, which will lead to more accurate projections of future climate changes. "

For more information: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/21575

Drax protesters found guilty of obstructing coal train

2009-07-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Climate change protesters face community service after judge rejects justification defence

Martin Wainwright
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 July 2009 16.00 BST

Climate change protesters who ambushed and hijacked a power station coal train failed to convince a jury today that their actions were justified by the "imminent threat" of devastation from global warming.

The 22 men and women, including a senior university lecturer, teachers and film-makers, were convicted - after less than two hours of deliberation - of obstructing the service carrying 42,000 tonnes of coal to Drax in North Yorkshire last June.

Their hopes of repeating the "Kingsnorth Six" judgment last September, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a Kent jury, were dashed by a judge, who refused to admit arguments that the hijack was "necessary and proportionate to prevent the greater crime of carbon pollution".

Although he eventually allowed an unexpectedly large amount of evidence about climate change to be heard, Judge James Spencer refused to let expert witnesses such as Nasa scientist, Prof James Hansen, address the seven women and five men on the jury at Leeds crown court. In a pre-trial ruling he said that to do so would allow the protesters "to hijack the trial process as surely as they hijacked the coal train".

He did however compliment the group, who conducted their own defence, on making an "eloquent, sincere, moving and engaging" case to the court. After the verdicts, he said that sentencing in early September would definitely not include jail terms, but was likely to be community service.

The 22, plus a further five protesters who earlier pleaded guilty and two who are ill but expected to submit guilty pleas in due course, will however face hefty financial penalties. The crown is applying for both its costs and £36,000 compensation for cleaning up coal shovelled on to the tracks during a 16-hour standoff with police.

After the verdict, one of the 22, Dr Louise Hemmerman, 31, said: "The judge declared from day one that climate change was irrelevant to the trial, despite the fact that it was the sole reason for doing what we did."

Another of the group, Jonathan Stevenson, 27, who works for a development charity, said: "This won't be the last case where climate protesters are in court for taking peaceful direct action, and while some judges may think climate change is irrelevant, they won't be able to hold back the tide forever."

Stevenson asked the judge after the verdicts if an order banning the defendants from power stations would apply more widely, to include roads. Judge Spencer replied with a smile: "I would steer clear of demonstrations, all of you, until this case is completely over. Try to find some other activities to do on your holidays."

Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom the defendants had intended to call to the stand to speak about the science of climate change, said: "Civil resistance is not an easy path, but given abdication of responsibility by the government, it is an essential path."

Hansen was arrested last week for his part in a protest over mountaintop coalmining in West Virginia. He has previously said that direct action is necessary because the democratic process is not bringing about policy change fast enough.

The chief crown prosecutor for North Yorkshire, Rob Turnbull, said: "While the CPS [crown prosecution service] respects the rights of individuals to lawfully protest, it takes a serious view of criminal activity which targets those carrying out lawful activities." He defended Judge Spencer's pre-trial ruling on the grounds that no one was in such immediate danger from global warning that hijacking a coal train was "proportionate".

"The judge said that if the power station contributed to global warming, and all that entailed, it was for the government to attend to and not the protesters. He also said that no reasonable jury could conclude that the crime these defendants allegedly committed was either reasonable or proportionate when there were democratic processes available in this country for political change."

The 22 were acquitted of actually stopping the train, after evidence that no one knew which of them had donned fake railwaymen's uniforms and used red flags to bring it to a halt. The ambush stopped the train right on a bridge over the river Aire, whose girders gave protesters the means to clamber up and use 15 shovels to start unloading coal.

Passenger and freight services in the area were disrupted for two days, but Drax generated power normally throughout.

Those convicted were: Theo Bard, 24, Amy Clancy, 24, Brian Farelly, 32, Grainne Gannon, 26, Bryn Hoskins, 24, Jasmin Karalis, 25, Ellen Potts, 33, Bertie Russell, 24, Alison Stratford,26, Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London, Melanie Evans,25, Matthew Fawcette, 34, Robin Gillett, 23, Kristina Jones 22, Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer,23, all of Manchester, Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds, Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport, Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge, Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.

The five who pleaded guilty earlier were: Theo Brown, 22 and Clemmie James, 24, of London, Malcolm Carroll, 53, of Stafford, Thomas Johnstone, 25, of Liverpool and Paul Mellett, 29, of Colerne, Wiltshire. The two have indicated they will plead guilty when well are Caroline Williams, 25, of London and Sam Martingell, 24, of Leeds.

Great Lakes wolves returning to endangered list

2009-07-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

From: AP via MSNBC

The federal government on Monday agreed to put gray wolves

in the western Great Lakes region back on the endangered species list — at least temporarily.

The decision came less than two months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discontinued federal protection for about 4,000 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The agency acknowledged Monday that it erred by not holding a legally required public comment period before taking action.

Under a settlement with five environmental and animal protection groups that had sued the agency earlier this month, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would return Great Lakes wolves to the list while considering its next move.

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Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland

2009-07-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century. They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters

have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.

Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701102900.htm

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Burger chain's climate change whopper

2009-06-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Burger chain's climate change whopper

Tennessee outlets ended up eating humble pie after a local reporter spotted 'rogue' signs outside Burger King outlets

Burger King outlets in Tennessee calls global warming 'baloney'. Photograph: www.memphisflyer.com

Would you like a side order of climate denial with your flame-broiled Triple Whopper? If so, then you need to get yourself over to Tennessee where a number of Burger King franchises in the US state that gave us Al Gore have been displaying "Global Warming is Baloney" signs outside their fast-food restaurants.

Chris Davis, a staff writer for the Memphis Flyer, a local newsweekly, noticed the signs outside two Burger Kings in the city last week and decided to put in a call to one of the restaurants to inquire whether such a view was now official Burger King policy. Here's his transcript of the call…

Davis: Hi, I'm calling from the Flyer about your sign. Does Burger King really think global warming is baloney?
BK: [Hang-up]
Davis: [Calling back]: Your sign out front says global warming is baloney.
BK: I don't see that, sir.
Davis: Well, it does.
BK: I don't see that sir... I change the signs and that sign's been up for a week.
Davis: Well, I have pictures that I took this afternoon…So, there's no question that your sign said it and so did one in Midtown. I want to know if it was on purpose, or if it was a prank someone pulled on you.
BK: Let me get the manager. [several minutes of dead air then the same or very similar voice picks up.]
BK: Who were you holding for?
Davis: A manager, about the sign. I have pictures of the sign and people have called me upset. I just want to know if it's a mistake or not so I can report it.
BK: Let me go outside and look at the sign and I'll call you right back. [exchange of contact info]
[Phone rings, Davis answers]
BK: The sign was put up yesterday.
Davis: And it's not a mistake?
BK: No.
Davis: It reflects the opinion of BK international?
BK: Yes. Would you like to talk to the home office? I can give you a number.
Davis: I've got the number, I've already contacted them. Thanks.

A few days pass before Davis hears back from someone higher up the food chain at Burger King. Last Friday, he finally received an email from Susan Robison, the vice president of corporate communications at the Burger King Corporation:

This statement ["Global Warming is baloney"] does not reflect a Burger King Corp. (BKC) opinion or view. The two restaurants where these signs appeared are independently owned and operated and were not authorized to display this statement. The signs have since been removed. BKC believes in operating as a socially responsible company and is committed to making a positive impact in the communities where it lives and works.

One imagines that someone at Burger King realised that the "global warming is baloney" line didn't exactly chime with the views of John Chidsey, the company's CEO, who believes that climate change is "an overriding issue of importance for the global community, business community and people in general", as he stated in this short interview conducted at this year's World Economic Forum. (How he squares this concern with his company's drive-thru, meat-munching business model is another matter, though.)

Memphis Flyer readers have been contacting the paper since the story first appeared to say that they have noticed other restaurants across Tennessee displaying the same sign. It appears that they are all owned by a company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, as well as a handful of Popeyes and All In One franchises. Some readers have added that the signs are still up at some of the restaurants. Davis says he has requested a response from MIC, but has not yet received one.

I applaud their honesty, though. I think we should know what a restaurant's position is on the key issues of the day before we choose to step across their threshold. Let's go the full hog – I want to know their views on immigration, cap and trade, MPs expenses, schooling, the Middle East's roadmap, Susan Boyle and stem cell research before I even reach the menu board outside. Maybe there's room in the fast-food sector for a politically-themed chain of restaurants? How about we call it Hard To Swallow?

UK carbon offset schemes 'failing to reduce emissions'

2009-06-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Expansion of carbon offsetting and clean development mechanism is locking developing nations into a high-carbon path, report warns

John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 June 2009 17.59 BST

Britain is the world centre of a multibillion dollar "carbon offset" industry which is failing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions, a major report from Friends of the Earth claimed today.

The authors urged governments meeting this week in Bonn for UN climate change talks to drop plans to expand offsetting schemes, which allow rich countries to invest in projects that reduce emissions in poor countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries.

Offsetting is set to expand enormously if the 192 governments meeting in Bonn allow forests, nuclear power and other sources of "clean energy" to count towards emissions reductions as part of a UN climate treaty expected to be agreed in Copenhagen this December..

The problem, said the report, is that offset schemes are delivering much lower greenhouse gas cuts than the science says are needed to avoid catstrophic climate change. Offsetting supports the idea that the cuts can be made in either rich or in poor countries " ... when it is clear that action is needed in both," said the report. "Offsets are a dangerous distraction ... It is almost impossible to prove that offsetting projects would not have happened without the offset finance. Nor is it possible to calculate accurately how much carbon a project is saving," it added.

Offsetting has been promoted heavily by the UK government in Europe and the UN as a painless way of reducing global emissions. The idea has mushroomed in the last five years with the rapid growth of the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM) which attracts investment money to poorer countries in new projects. These are expected to deliver more than half of the EU's planned carbon reductions to 2020.

"The clean development mechanism is supposed to be a way of making the same level of carbon cuts as would otherwise happen, but more cost effectively. At best it shifts a cut in a developed country to one in a developing one. In practice, it does not even do this," said Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth UK.

Moreover, said the report, the CDM is locking in poor countries to a high-carbon path, with some big CDM projects approved for even major fossil fuel power stations. "A large part of CDM revenues are subsidising carbon intensive industries or projects building fossil fuel power stations."

Two previous analyses of the CDM suggested that companies routinely abuse the UN-backed offsetting scheme, wasting billions of pounds.

The UK government has already used offsetting as a way to justify high carbon investments in major projects like the expansion of Heathrow, it said. "Offsetting makes it far more likely that developed countries will continue on a high-carbon path, choosing to buy cheap permits rather than invest in low-carbon infrastructure," said the report's authors.

Nearly 30% of the world's 2,500 CDM projects originate in London, although not all the projects offset UK emissions.

NASA Satellite Detects Red Glow to Map Global Ocean Plant Health

2009-06-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

From: Editor, ENN
Published June 1, 2009 10:28 AM

A study published by NASA uses satellite remote sensing technology to measure the amount of fluorescent red light emitted by ocean phytoplankton and assess how efficiently the microscopic plants are turning sunlight and nutrients into food through photosynthesis. They can also study how changes in the global environment alter these processes, which are at the center of the ocean food web.

Researchers have conducted the first global analysis of the health and productivity of ocean plants, as revealed by a unique signal detected by a NASA satellite. Ocean scientists can now remotely measure the amount of fluorescent red light emitted by ocean phytoplankton and assess how efficiently the microscopic plants are turning sunlight and nutrients into food through photosynthesis. They can also study how changes in the global environment alter these processes, which are at the center of the ocean food web.

"This is the first direct measurement of the health of the phytoplankton in the ocean," said Michael Behrenfeld, a biologist who specializes in marine plants at the Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. "We have an important new tool for observing changes in phytoplankton every week, all over the planet."

The findings were published this month in the journal Biogeosciences and presented at a news briefing on May 28.

The fluorescence data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) gives scientists a tool that enables research to reveal where waters are iron-enriched or iron-limited, and to observe how changes in iron influence plankton. The iron needed for plant growth reaches the sea surface on winds blowing dust from deserts and other arid areas, and from upwelling currents near river plumes and islands.

The new analysis of MODIS data has allowed the research team to detect new regions of the ocean affected by iron deposition and depletion. The Indian Ocean was a particular surprise, as large portions of the ocean were seen to "light up" seasonally with changes in monsoon winds.

Climate change could mean stronger winds pick up more dust and blow it to sea, or less intense winds leaving waters dust-free. Some regions will become drier and others wetter, changing the regions where dusty soils accumulate and get swept up into the air. Phytoplankton will reflect and react to these global changes.

The image shows a data-based map of the "fluorescence yield" of phytoplankton in the oceans during 2004. "Fluorescence yield" is the fraction of absorbed sunlight that is given off by the plants as fluorescence and it changes with the health or stress of the phytoplankton. More fluorescence is emitted when waters are low in key nutrients such as iron. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio.

Interestingly, the regions of highest fluorescence yield are almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. The interactions of Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere oceanic and atmospheric circulations will be important factors in understanding the significance of these new findings.

For more information: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/modis_fluorescence.html

Brazilian beef industry blamed for Amazon deforestation

2009-06-02T10:15:00.001-07:00

From: Merco Press
Published June 1, 2009 09:52 AM

Boots and training shoes are not the first things that spring to mind when you think about the causes of rainforest destruction and climate change, but just because the connection isn’t obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t realm, says Greenpeace in a new report, "Slaughtering the Amazon".

But it's not only shoes. Products as diverse as handbags and ready meals, and companies as big as Tesco, BMW, IKEA and Kraft also rely on Amazon leather. Practically all Western world consumers have some by-product of Amazon destruction in our homes somewhere, whether we like it or not. Effectively, these brands are driving this destruction by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil points out the Greenpeace report.

The report says the cattle industry is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the world as trees are cleared to make way for ranches. And the Brazilian government is also fuelling the process by offering billions of dollars in loans to support the expansion of the cattle industry. President Lula de Silva has pledged to double his country's share of the global beef market by 2018. The report contrasts these investments with Lula da Silva's recent promise to cut deforestation by 72% by the same date and to set up an international fund for protecting the Amazon.

Global Bird Species in Serious Decline

2009-06-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

From: Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute, More from this Affiliate
Published June 2, 2009 06:44 AM

Researchers have known about the speckled brown Sidamo lark for only 40 years. Always a rare sight, the elusive bird may soon vanish from the prairie grasses of Ethiopia forever.

Its habitat already restricted to less than 100 square kilometers, the lark is rapidly losing territory as local residents, the Borana ethnic group, convert grassland into heavily grazed pasture. Unless the Borana are allowed to resume their nomadic ways, within the next few years the Sidamo lark will likely become the first known bird species to vanish from mainland Africa, researchers say.

"We estimate there are fewer than 250 adult individuals left," said Claire Spottiswoode, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. "In the absence of urgent conservation action on the ground, it is only a matter of time before it goes extinct; no other species on the continent seems to face quite such an imminent fate."

The Sidamo lark is among the most endangered birds included on the Red List of Threatened Species, which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated last month for global bird species and for European amphibians and reptiles.

The IUCN Red List, considered the authority on the status of the world's plant and animal species, now includes 1,227 bird species (12 percent of known birds) as threatened with extinction - 192 of them critically endangered.

Habitat loss, climate change, and the spread of invasive species are the main threats to avian biodiversity, the conservation organization said.

"In global terms, things continue to get worse," said Leon Bennun, director of science and policy for BirdLife International, which conducted the updated research. "But there are some real conservation success stories this year to give us hope and point the way forward."
IUCN upgraded three bird species from "critically endangered" to "endangered" due to successful habitat protection strategies. Among the advances, a 2007 survey found that the bright blue Lear's macaw of Brazil had expanded to a population size of 750, after being reduced to only 70 wild individuals in the late 1980s.

The Red List was also updated with a continent-wide assessment of Europe's amphibians and reptiles.

Amphibians are in particular danger. Habitat loss is threatening nearly all of the continent's species, with nearly 60 percent in decline and 23 percent classified as threatened. Pollution, including climate change, and invasive species are leading causes of biodiversity loss as well.

Article continues: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6123

What the future looks like

2009-05-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

As the planet faces the most dangerous century in its 4.5bn-year history, astronomer royal Martin Rees looks into his crystal ball

Martin Rees
The Guardian,

What does the future hold for our small blue planet and its inhabitants? Photograph: Blue Line Pictures/Getty Images

It would be foolhardy to venture technological predictions for 2050. Even more so to predict social and geopolitical changes. The most important advances, the qualitative leaps, are the least predictable. Not even the best scientists predicted the impact of nuclear physics, and everyday consumer items such as the iPhone would have seemed magic back in the 1950s.

But there are some trends that we can predict with confidence. There will, barring a global catastrophe, be far more people on Earth than today. Fifty years ago the world population was below 3 billion. It has more than doubled since then, to 6.7 billion. The percentage growth rate has slowed, but it is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. The excess will almost all be in the developing world where the young hugely outnumber the old.

If population growth were to continue beyond 2050, one can't be other than exceedingly gloomy about the prospects. And the challenge of feeding such a rapidly growing population will be aggravated by climate change.

The world will be warmer than today in 2050; the patterns of rainfall and drought across the world will be different. If we pursue "business as usual",

CO₂ concentration levels will reach twice the pre-industrial level by around 2050. The higher its concentration, the greater the warming - and, more important still, the greater the chance of triggering something grave and irreversible: rising sea levels due to the melting of Greenland's icecap; runaway release of methane in the tundra.

Some technical advances - information technology, for instance - surprise us by their rapidity; others seemingly stagnate. Only 12 years elapsed between the launch of Sputnik and Neil Armstrong's "one small step" on the moon. Many of us then expected a lunar base, even an expedition to Mars, within 30 years. But it's more than 36 years since Jack Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last men on the moon, returned to Earth. Since that time, hundreds of astronauts have been into orbit, but none has ventured further.

The Apollo programme now seems a remote historical episode: young people all over the world learn that America landed men on the moon, just as they learn that the Egyptians built the pyramids; the motivations seem almost as bizarre in the one case as in the other. The race to the moon was an end in itself - a magnificent "stunt", driven by superpower rivalry. Thereafter, the impetus for manned flight was lost. But, of course, we now depend on space in our everyday lives (GPS, weather forecasting and communications). And robotic exploration has burgeoned. Unmanned probes to other planets have beamed back pictures of varied and distinctive worlds.

I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft. Robots and "fabricators" may enable large construction projects, using raw materials that need not come from Earth. But will people follow them? The practical case for sending people into space gets ever-weaker with each advance in robots and miniaturisation. But I'm nonetheless an enthusiast for manned missions - to the moon, to Mars and even beyond - simply as a long-range adventure for (at least a few) humans.

Each mobile phone today has far more computing power than was available to the whole of Nasa in the 1960s. And advances proceed apace. Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have. For 30 years we've been able to buy calculators that can hugely surpass us at arithmetic. IBM's "Deep Blue" beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But not even the most advanced robot can recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as adeptly as a five-year-old child.

Deep Blue didn't work out its strategy like a human player: it exploited its computational speed to explore millions of alternative series of moves and responses before deciding an optimum move. Likewise, machines may make scientific discoveries that have eluded unaided human brains - but by testing out millions of possibilities rather than via a theory or strategy.

But will we continue to push forward the frontiers, enlarging the range of our consensual understanding? Some aspects of reality - a unified theory of physics, or a theory of consciousness - might elude our understanding simply because they're beyond the powers of human brains, just as surely as quantum mechanics would flummox a chimpanzee.

We can with some confidence predict continuing advances in computer power, in IT, in techniques for sequencing and interpreting and modifying the genome. But there could, by 2050, be qualitatively new kinds of change. For instance, one thing that's been unaltered for millennia is human nature and human character. But in this century, mind-enhancing drugs, genetics, and "cyborg" techniques may start to alter human beings themselves.

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps. Another speculation is that the human lifespan could be greatly extended, something that would wreak havoc on all population projections. At the moment this hope leads some to bequeath their bodies to be "frozen" on their death, in the hope of some future resurrection. For my part, I'd still opt to end my days in an English churchyard rather than a Californian refrigerator.

We can make one firm forecast that's important for all "citizen scientists". There will surely be a widening gulf between what science enables us to do, and what applications it's prudent or ethical to pursue.

It's sometimes wrongly imagined that astronomers, contemplating timespans measured in billions, must be serenely unconcerned about next year, next week and tomorrow. But a "cosmic perspective" actually strengthens my own concerns about the here and now.

Ever since Darwin, we've been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this.

Our sun formed 4.5bn years ago, but it's got 6bn more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding universe will continue - perhaps for ever - becoming ever colder, ever emptier. As Woody Allen said, "Eternity is very long, especially towards the end". Any creatures who witness the sun's demise, here on Earth or far beyond, won't be human. They will be entities as different from us as we are from a bug.

But even in this "concertinaed" timeline - extending millions of centuries into the future, as well as into the past - this century is special. It's the first in our planet's history where one species - ours - has Earth's future in its hands, and could jeopardise not only itself, but life's immense potential.

Suppose some aliens had been watching our planet for its entire history. Over nearly all that immense time - 4.5bn years - Earth's appearance would have altered very gradually. But in just a tiny sliver of its history - the last few thousand years - the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signalled the start of agriculture. The pace of change accelerated as human populations rose.

Then there were other changes, even more abrupt. Within the last 50 years - little more than one hundredth of a millionth of the Earth's age - the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise anomalously fast. The planet became an intense emitter of radio waves (TV, cellphone, and radar transmissions.) And something else unprecedented happened: small projectiles launched from the planet escaped the biosphere. Some were propelled into orbits around the Earth; some journeyed to the moon and planets.

If they understood astrophysics, the aliens could confidently predict that the biosphere would face doom in a few billion years when the sun flares up and dies. But could they have predicted this unprecedented spike less than halfway through the Earth's life - these human-induced alterations occupying, overall, less than a millionth of the elapsed lifetime and seemingly occurring with runaway speed?

If they continued to keep watch, what might these hypothetical aliens witness in the next few decades? Will final spasm be followed by silence? Or will the planet itself stabilise? And will some of the objects launched from the Earth spawn new oases of life elsewhere?

The outcome depends on political choices. But those choices can be influenced by effective and idealistic scientists, environmentalists and humanists, guided by the knowledge and technology that the 21st century will offer.

'We know what to do: why don't we do it?'

2009-05-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Africans - and especially African women - will suffer most from climate change. Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai intends to help them

- John Vidal
- The Guardian,

Wangari Maathai has spearheaded the planting of billions of trees across the world and is now leading the fight to save the world's second largest forest, in Congo. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Wangari Maathai's office in fuming, downtown Nairobi is full of citations and mementos, but there is one special photograph. It's of her and Barack Obama planting an olive tree in Uhuru park in the city centre in October 2006. It could be any two celebrities posing for a routine photo call, but there is a strong connection between the spiffy, young American senator on his way to the White House and the flamboyant older woman dressed in canary yellow who had just become the first African woman to win a Nobel prize.

The link between them is known as the "Lift". In 1960, 300 Kenyans were awarded Kennedy scholarships to study at US colleges and universities. One of the first was a 22-year-old economics student called Barack Obama, a Luo from west Kenya who was picked to go to a college in Hawaii. With him was Wangari Maathai, a 20-year-old Kikuyu from the highlands heading for Mount St Scholastica college in Atchison, Kansas. Both stayed in the US for five years and both returned personally transformed to a newly independent Kenya.

It was a heady, liberating time. Obama Sr had just married a Kansan and fathered the boy who is now US president. Maathai returned with a masters and "a determination to work hard, help the poor and watch out for the weak and vulnerable". The spectacular results of the scholarship simply reflect, she adds, the potential of people anywhere to flourish if given the opportunity. In London this week for Prince Charles' climate change meeting with 20 Nobel laureates, Maathai, now nearly 70, cut a lone, if flamboyant, figure: she was the only woman, and with Wole Soyinka, one of only two Africans. Yet, she pointed out, it is women and Africans who must bear the brunt of climate change and pay for the west's profligacy. (About which, she had some interesting points to make. "You must understand that what is happening in the west with the credit crunch has been happening for decades in Africa," she told her audience. "The banks are not regulated. We cannot access money, and only a few people can buy houses. Europe is catching up with Africa. When we were campaigning against African debt we were told that it could not possibly be paid off. Many countries collapsed." As for western democracy, and Britain's parliamentary crisis, "the elites have become predators, self-serving and only turning to people when they need them. We can never all be equal, but we can ensure we do not allow excessive poverty or wealth. Inequality breeds insecurity.")

And while the scientists, academics and politicians talked of technological shifts and the need to bring the best brains in the world to bear on the problem, the former professor of biology at University of Nairobi said bluntly that the answers were known. "We all know what to do. Why don't we do it? The question is, how are we to ensure something is done?"

The reality, Maathai says, is that of the nine billion people expected to be on the planet in 2050, eight billion will be in what are now developing countries. "Climate change is life or death. We could be accused of being alarmist, but if we have faith in science then something very serious is happening. Climate change and global warming is the new global battlefield. It is being presented is as if it is the problem of the developed world. But it's the developed world that has precipitated global warming. There will be a much greater negative impact on Africa because of its geography. But instead of adapting we are scraping the land, removing the vegetation and losing the soil. We are doing things to make it worse.

"Besides, it's in the interests of the rich to help Africa adapt to climate change and preserve its forests. By allowing them to be destroyed a lot of the efforts made in the rich world will be negated and undermined."

Maathai links ecology and culture and argues that the challenge for Africa (the title of her new book) is to look to itself and reclaim not just the land, but its cultures and resources. "If the soil is denuded and the waters are polluted, the air is poisoned and the mineral riches are mined and sold beyond the continent, nothing will be left that we can call our own. Our real work is reclamation - bringing back what is essential so we can move forward. Planting trees, speaking our languages, telling our stories are all part of the same act of conservation. We need to protect our local foods, recall our mother tongues and rediscover our communal character."

Instead, "some Africans are asking themselves whether we are being exposed to a new wave of colonialism," says Maathai. "Yes, there is a grab for resources. We are vulnerable to anyone who wants to exploit us. It's like the 18th-century. Africa finds herself with raw materials but does not have the ability to add the technology. She cannot control the process. So she grinds herself without cash. Africa is paying in raw materials. She pays with her soil. In the past people entered Africa by force. These days they come with similarly lethal packages, but they are camouflaged to persuade Africa's leaders and people to co-operate."

The paymaster these days, she says, is China, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the last decade to extract African oil, minerals, timber and land in return for roads and jobs. "China is really no different from the United States, the Soviet Union and the colonising European nations which facilitated the rise of African strong men and protected them in the post-colonial period, despite knowing of their corruption and cruelty, so they could continue to extract Africa's resources unhindered. If Africa had spent 40 years investing in education, acquiring skills, she would be in a better position now."

Maathai is western and African, local and international, a member of the elite and someone with a rural background, educated both in one of the world's richest and in one of its poorest countries. But her roots are in Ihithe, a village of peasant farmers near Nyeri in the foothills of the Aberdare mountains. The family home, where her sister now lives, nestles in a deep valley. There's a school, the By-Grace cafe, a few hundred houses, sheep on the roadside and tea plantations everywhere.

"Mother lies there," she says. "My relations live there. It's heaven. But people there do not appreciate it because we have a political and economic system that does not allow people to appreciate the beauty of where they live. That's the tragedy of poverty."

The changes that have taken place in Ihithe since the 1950s reflect the linked environmental and social crises now burdening so much of Kenya and the rest of Africa, she adds. "I have seen huge changes. The population has grown enormously. All that area [around Ihithe] was wooded. There were small farms, full of maize, millet and sorghum. The rivers were huge and clean. There was no tea. Today we see tea, tea, tea. Mother never planted tea. Tea has become slave labour. Farming has become the production of a commodity which people cannot process or eat. You cannot process your own tea. Tea without good governance is serfdom and only leads to environmental and social problems."

But above all, she says, there has been deforestation, with the family woodlots grubbed up to plant tea and the hills all around denuded for firewood. Realisation that communities were destroying their own resources led her to start the Green Belt movement. What began as a few women planting trees is now a network of 600 community groups that care for 6,000 tree nurseries. They have together planted at least 30m trees on degraded private and public land, in reserves, and in cities all over Kenya. The movement, which operates in 30 countries, is far more than a tree planting scheme: it has become an unofficial Kenyan agricultural advice service, a community regeneration project, and a job creation plan all in one.

"There is a change taking place. We can hardly keep up with the requests [for help]. The tree is just a symbol for what happens to the environment. The act of planting one is a symbol of revitalising the community. Tree planting is only the entry point into the wider debate about the environment. Everyone should plant a tree," she says.

Since she won the Nobel prize, tree planting has become an essential for all countries wanting to flaunt green credentials. In 2007 she fronted a UN plan to have 1bn trees planted throughout the world. Over 3.1bn have now been planted and the target has been revised to 7bn - one for every person on earth with a few left over - by the end of 2009.

In a tumultuous life as a pro-democracy and environmental activist, Maathai has been arrested many times, imprisoned, beaten, gone on hunger strike, had to barricade herself into her house to keep the police out, stood for president and been elected an MP. Her personal life has been equally stormy. She and her MP husband, who have three children, divorced years ago: he said she was much too strong-minded for a woman and that he was unable to control her. She called the divorce judge "incompetent" and was given six months in prison for contempt.

Now she is trying to protect the Congo forest, the world's second largest stand of trees. If the Congo goes, she says, not only will tens of millions of people lose their livelihoods, but the climatic effects would be catastrophic and be felt as far away as Britain and the US. Britain and Norway have together put up £100m but it means working with some of the most war-ravaged and corrupt countries and companies on earth.

Ten African governments have asked her to their representative in the Congo basin initiative. "I know they want to take advantage of the peace prize and raise the public awareness," she says. "I know there is apprehension. But refusal to take up the challenge [of the Congo forest] would be wrong. I have no illusions. But there is no option." In the end, though, aid is not the answer. "Donors come to be seen as Santa Claus, bringing with them money, materials and input. The people clap and dance in welcome until the tap runs dry. At the same time, donors' money can corrode responsibility. An attitude exists that one does not have to accountable for the use of funds that have originated outside the country. Individuals and governments misunderstand or subvert the donors' intentions."

Her message in London this week has been fierce and urgent. "Nature is still being taken for granted. Yet when it is destroyed, life itself goes. Politicians [everywhere] are putting immediate needs ahead of the long term. We must challenge the decision makers. We must appeal not just to their heads, but to their hearts. I can only see getting worse things if we do nothing."

• The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision, by Wangari Maathai, is published by William Heinemann (RRP £20). To order a copy for £18 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Study Links Stranded Marine Animals to Environmental Toxins

2009-05-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

From: Doug Fraser, Cape Cod Times

In a study, recently published in the journal Environmental Pollution, Eric Montie, a University of South Florida scientist who did most of his research while a doctoral student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found high levels of man-made chemicals in the brains and fluid surrounding the brains of marine mammals.

...

Working with the Cape Cod Stranding Network, Montie went to marine mammal strandings in 2004 and 2005 and retrieved the freshly dead or euthanized carcasses of 10 dolphins and a young gray seal. He used a magnetic resonance imaging machine to capture a detailed picture of their brains, to establish a baseline for future research on how chemicals could be affecting their neurological development.

Montie tested for the presence of 170 chemicals in brain and cerebrospinal fluid he'd collected from the stranded animals. He found exceptionally high levels of both the widely used flame retardant PBDE and a form of PCB.

Yale Study Finds Evidence that Damaged Ecosystems Can Recover Rapidly

2009-05-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

From: Editor, ENN

A recent study by Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reports that if humans commit to the restoration effort, most ecosystems can recover from very major disruption within decades to half-centuries. The study was written by Holly P. Jones and Oswald J. Schmitz and will appear in the June edition of the journal PLoS ONE. According to the study, researchers compiled information from 240 independent studies conducted since 1910 that examined large, human-scale ecosystems recovery following the termination of both human and naturally imposed disruption.

Researchers grouped the data into seven broad aquatic and terrestrial types of ecosystems, and disruptions such as deforestation, hurricane, invasive species, oil spoils, power plant and sea trawling. Most of the studies measured multiple response variables, which researched grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community, and plant community. The researchers evaluated the recovery of each of the variables in terms of the time it took for them to return to their original state as determined by each study's author. The study also assessed whether recovery times were related to the magnitude of the disturbance.

Reportedly, 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 demonstrated a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; 67 demonstrated no recovery for any variable; and 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery.
The average recovery time was 20 years or less, and reportedly did not exceed more than 56 years. It was found that recovery from human disturbances was slower than natural disturbances, such as hurricanes. Recovery following agricultural, logging, and multiple stressors was significantly slower than all of other disturbance types.

The results of the study showed a positive relationship between the degree of disturbance and the recovery time. However, this was entirely determined by the type of ecosystem. For instance, the study states that aquatic system recovered much faster than terrestrial. Researchers noted that aquatic systems may recover more quickly because species and organisms that inhabit them turn over more rapidly. For instance, forests took the longest to recover due to the fact that forest inhabitants take longer to regenerate after logging or clear-cutting.

One potential pitfall of the study is that the uncertainty of the systems original state. The study explains that major disturbances such mass extinction combined with lower level disturbances such as pollution or climate change could create a baseline far removed from the historical natural state.

Jones and Schmitz concluded that "recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for humankind to transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems."

To view the research article by Jones and Schmitz, visit: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005653.

Stingrays suffering from contact with wildlife tourists, study finds

2009-05-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Blood tests show that the animals at 'Stingray City' in the Cayman Islands have weaker immune systems and are in poorer health than those left undisturbed

David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 May 2009 15.00 BST

The Grand Cayman sandbank, dubbed Stingray City, regularly attracts up to 2,500 visitors at a time. Photograph: Cayman Islands Department of Tourism

It features regularly on lists of things people want to do before they die, but swimming with stingray may not be the life-enhancing experience expected – at least not for the animals.

A new study has revealed that stingray at a tourist hotspot in the Cayman Islands are suffering because of all the human attention. The Grand Cayman sandbank, dubbed Stingray City, is regularly swamped with up to 2,500 visitors at a time, most of whom have paid handsomely for the chance to feed, stroke and swim with the creatures.

The study highlights the risks to animals posed by the growing "wildlife tourism" industry. Experts say wild populations of creatures such as dolphins, penguins and sharks are also affected by increased contact with curious people.

The study was one of the first to investigate direct effects on the physiology of animals involved in such tourism. Blood tests showed that the stingrays at Stingray City had weaker immune systems and were in poorer health than animals not disturbed by tourists, perhaps making them more vulnerable to disease and storms.

The experts warn that the "long-term health and survival of tourist stingrays have a significant probability of being affected" and they call for tighter regulation of the industry. Similar crowded tourist sites across the world will be doing similar damage to stingray, they say.

Christina Semeniuk, an ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, who led the research, said: "Our study is the first to definitively show negative physiological impacts that indicate long-term costs to the animals' health."

She added: "The implications of these findings will not only affect the wildlife. Reduced stingray numbers, or injured, unhealthy-looking stingrays can cause the visitor site to become less attractive and may cause a decline in tourist numbers and have an economic impact."

The stingray at the site are regularly injured by boats, the scientists found, while the crowded conditions encourage parasites. The creatures have also come to rely on hand-fed squid, which stingray do not usually eat. "These impacts can have long-term health effects, in terms of reduced longevity and reduced reproductive effort," Semeniuk said. The results will be published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Other studies have looked at the impact of wildlife tourism on grizzly bears, penguins, dolphins, sharks and lizards. "The majority of these studies have looked at changes in the animals' behaviours or their stress responses," Semeniuk said. "Each has suggested that wildlife tourism should be both continually researched and managed."

Vincent Janik of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University said: "It's an important issue, and there doesn't need to be physical contact. Even just watching animals can sometimes bring problems." Studies have shown that dolphins regularly targeted by tourist boats are more likely to be injured and to abandon their young, he said.

Swimming with wild dolphins is banned in many places because of the likely impact on the animals.

Courtney Vail of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said the treatment of captive dolphins was to blame for the way people treated the animals they encountered in the wild. "You get people trying to ride on their backs and holding on to the dorsal fin. They are trying to recreate the Sea World experience with wild dolphins."

Janik said efforts to control wildlife tourism, such as the stingray experience in the Caymans, need to be handled carefully. "If the tourists aren't there then these animals could just be hunted or eaten. The best way is to educate the operators and the customers." Many of the negative effects of wildlife tourism are likely to be restricted to local populations of animals, he said.

Semeniuk said new legislation in the Cayman Islands has recently been introduced to address the impact of tourists on wildlife. New Wildlife Interaction Zones, including the North Sound of Grand Cayman where Stingray City is located, forbid people taking marine life out of the water. Feeding wildlife will also be more strictly regulated.

But not all of the recorded impacts of wildlife tourism on animals are bad. While most wild creatures react as if the humans are predators, some see tourists as beneficial, either because they reduce the risks of predation by others, or because they supply food. This can allow the animals to dedicate more valuable energy supplies to rest and reproduction.

Disturbia

Dolphins: Creatures in Australia targetted by tourists are more likely to abandon their young

Killer whales: Whale watching in Canadian waters is shown to reduce animal feeding time

Penguins: Even minimal human contact is shown to double the heart rate of New Zealand's yellow-eyed penguins

Apes: Mountain gorillas of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are known to be susceptible to human diseases

Emergency Action Taken for Threatened and Endangered Sea Turtles:Six-month Closure Ordered of Gulf of Mexico Fishery

2009-05-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

From: Center for Biological Diversity

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— The National Marine Fisheries Service has ordered a six-month emergency closure of the bottom longline fishery in the Gulf of Mexico to protect imperiled sea turtles from capture and death. During the closure, which will go into effect May 16, the agency will determine whether and how the fishery can operate while ensuring the survival of the turtles over the long term.
The Service is closing the fishery because its data indicate the fishery had captured more than eight times the number of sea turtles it authorized in its 2005 biological opinion. A Federal Register notice that will be published May 1 explains that further bottom longline fishing could jeopardize the existence of loggerhead sea turtles "unless action is taken to reduce the fishery’s impact on this threatened species."
Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and a coalition of other conservation groups — Caribbean Conservation Corporation, Florida Wildlife Federation, Gulf Restoration Network and Sea Turtle Restoration Project — had sued the agency in mid-April to seek protection for these imperiled animals and requested the emergency closure implemented today.
"Today is a great day for all who believe in protecting vulnerable sea turtles from unnecessary and illegal harm and ensuring their continued survival in the wild," said Steve Roady, an attorney with Earthjustice. "We commend NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco for setting a new course for NMFS that relies on sound science to manage our oceans for the great benefit of our nation and local communities."
"This temporary closure gives sea turtles a much-needed reprieve and gives the agency time to make scientifically sound decisions regarding the long-term operation of the fishery," said Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "More sea turtles will now have a chance to make it back to their nesting beaches — and even just look for food — without getting caught up in longlines."
"After years of delay and the death of hundreds of turtles, it's great to know that protections are finally on their way," said Sierra Weaver, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife. "This closure will insure that the fishery can operate without threatening these species with extinction."
Details on Emergency Closure:
1. Following the conservation organizations' lawsuit filed April 15 and renewed action by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to support an emergency closure in mid-April, the Fisheries Service is closing the bottom longline fishery for up to 180 days. 2. The closure will become effective May 16, 2009 (15 days after publication in the Federal Register) to provide two weeks for fishing trips that are now occurring to receive notice and reduce disruption on the fishery for already initiated trips. 3. During this closure, the agency states that it plans to complete a new biological opinion that will evaluate the impact of the fishery and ensure that it is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the sea turtle species captured in it. It will also consider measures that could be used to reduce turtle capture and killing by the fishery, to allow it to reopen at a future date. 4. The Service also states that it is working with the Gulf Council to implement “long-term measures to reduce bycatch of sea turtles in the eastern Gulf of Mexico," which "are needed to provide protection for loggerhead sea turtles" in particular due to the long-term decline in their nesting population in Florida. Such long-term measures, for consideration on a permanent basis, would be implemented after a period of public notice during which all interested citizens would have full opportunity to comment. 5. The Service provides notice that it may renew the closure for a longer period of time if necessary for the agency to fulfill its legal obligations under the Endangered Species Act and the Magnuson Stevens Act to prevent further harm to threatened and endangered sea turtles.
Background
The National Marine Fisheries Service took this action in part because in 2005, it had determined that the Gulf of Mexico fishery could capture up to 114 sea turtles, including 85 loggerheads, during a three-year period without violating the Endangered Species Act. But in recent months the agency released new information that vessels in the Gulf caught nearly 1,000 turtles between July 2006 and December 2008 — more than eight times the number allowed. In February 2009, the Service requested public comment regarding an emergency closure to protect sea turtles in view of the high numbers of unexpected turtle captures but still had not acted as of April 15, 2009 when conservation groups filed suit to compel protective action by the agency. The National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is responsible for ensuring that bottom longline fishing does not pose a threat to sea turtle populations.
Bottom longline fishing is a fishing process that uses hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks along miles of lines laid behind fishing vessels and stretching down to the reef and Gulf floor. The fishing hooks target species like grouper, tilefish, and sharks, but often catch other fish or wildlife, including endangered and threatened sea turtles. Injuries from these hooks affect a sea turtle's ability to feed, swim, avoid predators, and reproduce. Many times the turtles drown or, unable to recover from the extreme physiological stress, die soon after being released from the longlines. A portion of fishing vessels within the reef fish fishery have used bottom longline fishing gear off the west Florida shelf within the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which the Fisheries Service has described as "an important sea turtle foraging habitat."
For more information visit: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2009/sea-turtles-04-29-2009.html

Major Potential CO2 Storage in the North Sea

2009-05-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

From: Jenny Haworth, the Scotsman

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The North Sea could store the carbon dioxide from all Europe's power stations for hundreds of years, the results of major research to be unveiled today will reveal.
Porous rocks beneath the seabed of the North Sea and disused oil and gas fields could provide storage for millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The research, by Edinburgh University, is likely to herald the startof a major new industry for Scotland, using the North Sea to lead the way in efforts to store the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

It will bring the possibility of compressed emissions being transported from power plants across Europe to underground stores beneath the North Sea using the network of pipes already in place for the oil and gas industry one step closer.
It will be the first time it has been shown the porous rocks — known as saline aquifers — beneath the seabed have the potential to store mass quantities of .
"We will be able to conclusively say we can store it in saline aquifers for hundreds of years," a source told The Scotsman.
"This will be a huge opportunity for Scotland. It could create a huge new industry for Scotland."
Professor Stuart Haszeldine, a world expert in carbon capture and storage at Edinburgh University, has been leading the eagerly-awaited research into the potential of the North Sea to store the greenhouse gas.
Article continues: http://news.scotsman.com/environment/North-Sea-has-potential-to.5225500.jp

Southern California Beetle Killing Oaks

2009-05-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

From: ScienceDaily

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Beetle attack

U.S. Forest Service scientists have completed a study on a beetle that was first detected in California in 2004, but has now attacked 67 percent of the oak trees in an area 30 miles east of San Diego.
Their report appears in the current issue of The Pan-Pacific Entomologist and focuses on Agrilus coxalis, a wood-boring beetle so rare it does not even have an accepted common name. Scientists have proposed the Entomological Society of America common names committee call it the goldspotted oak borer.
Land managers and scientists are concerned about further spread of the infestation because oaks are the dominant tree species in the area. Further tree mortality will increase fire danger and decrease wildlife habitat in southern California.
They are also concerned drought and climate change will make more oaks susceptible to an insect that is not native to California. Oak trees have a nearly continuous distribution in the state, reaching from the infestation area north to the Oregon border.
Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090501154147.htm

Damaged Barrier Reef coral makes 'spectacular' recovery

2009-04-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Lucky combination of circumstances means corals have unexpectedly grown back within a year

Coral at the Great Barrier Reef Photograph: HO/REUTERS

Sections of coral reef in Australia's Great Barrier Reef have made a "spectacular" recovery from a devastating bleaching event three years ago, marine scientists say.

In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef — the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.

A "lucky combination" of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery. Abundant corals have reestablished themselves in a single year, say the researchers from the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).

"Three factors were critical," said Dr Guillermo Diaz-Pulido. "The first was exceptionally high regrowth of fragments of surviving coral tissue. The second was an unusual seasonal dieback in the seaweeds, and the third was the presence of a highly competitive coral species, which was able to outgrow the seaweed."

Coral bleaching occurs in higher sea temperatures when the coral lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. The reefs then lose their colour and become more susceptible to death from starvation or disease.

The findings are important as it is extremely rare to see reports of reefs that bounce back from mass coral bleaching or other human impacts in less than a decade or two, the scientists said. The study is published in the online journal PLoS one.

"The exceptional aspect was that corals recovered by rapidly regrowing from surviving tissue," said Dr Sophie Dove, also from CoECRS and The University of Queensland.

"Recovery of corals is usually thought to depend on sexual reproduction and the settlement and growth of new corals arriving from other reefs. This study demonstrates that for fast-growing coral species asexual reproduction is a vital component of reef resilience."

Last year, a major global study found that coral reefs did have the ability to recover after major bleaching events, such as the one caused by the El Niño in 1998.

David Obura, the chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature climate change and coral reefs working group involved with the report, said: "Ten years after the world's biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover – given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there's no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible."

Coral reefs are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world and contain a huge range of biodiversity. The UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says reefs are worth about $30bn annually to the global economy through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.

But the ecosystems are under threat worldwide from overfishing, coastal development and runoff from the land, and in some areas, tourism impacts. Natural disasters such as the earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 have also caused reef loss.

Climate change poses the biggest threat to reefs however, as emissions of carbon dioxide make seawater increasingly acidic.

Last year a study showed that one-fifth of the world's coral reefs have died or been destroyed and the remainder are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says many surviving reefs could be lost over the coming decades as CO₂ emissions continue to increase.

Budget 2009: Darling promises 34% emissions cuts with world's first binding carbon budgets

2009-04-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

Environmentalists warn that emissions targets are out of date

If they can actually do it, the government's pledge to cut global warming emissions by one third in just over a decade should transform the way the UK economy works.

However, critics warned that the cuts would still not be enough to avoid dangerous climate change, and warned that other spending pledges were not nearly enough to meet the target.

Darling has now promised to cut greenhouse gases by 34% by 2020 through so-called carbon budgets, which fix binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions over five-year periods. The 34% target is in line with the advice of the government's independent watchdog, the Committee on Climate Change. "This represents a step change in the UK ambition on climate change," said the budget report.

The budget report said the government "aims" to do this without purchasing controversial carbon credits from cuts made in other countries, but said these "offsets" could be a "fallback option". It also said the target cut would be higher if there was "satisfactory" global agreement on cutting emissions, but stopped short of committing to the higher 42% cut recommended by the CCC in those circumstances.

"These budgets give industry the certainty needed to develop and use low carbon technology – cutting emissions, creating new businesses and jobs," said the chancellor.

Nobody expected the government to reject the emissions targets put forward by its watchdog, which are designed to help reach a promised reduction of 80% by the middle of this century.

However, the formal announcement makes the UK the first country in the world to set legally binding targets.

Environmental campaigners and business groups commended the government on committing itself to firm targets. However, there were immediate warnings that not enough was being done.

Friends of the Earth, the charity which led a mass public campaign for the Climate Change Act which created the targets, said the 34% cut was no longer enough.

"Setting the first ever carbon budgets is a ground-breaking step - but the government has ignored the latest advice from leading climate scientists and set targets that are completely inadequate," said Andy Atkins, the organisation's executive director. "A 42% cut by 2020 is the minimum required if we are to play our part in avoiding dangerous climate change."

There was also widespread criticism that the rest of the budget did not include enough money for renewable energy like wind and tidal power, and energy efficiency for homes and other buildings. The budget also promised up to four "demonstration" projects for carbon capture and storage for coal and gas power plants, and £60m of new spending on research and development of the unproven technology, but critics said these partial capture schemes were not enough if the government goes ahead with plans for up to eight new coal plants.

James Cameron, vice-chairman of Climate Change Capital, a low-carbon investment fund with more than US$1.5bn (£1bn) under management, said: "The idea of a carbon budget is to be applauded and must become a permanent feature of how we direct our economy. But the reality is that creating a low carbon economy requires more than high-level commitment. The scale of investment required is huge, and thus far the commitments to stimulate the economy and reduce emissions have been small gestures, albeit in the right direction. They have identified the correct areas to be targeting with strategic intervention but the orders of magnitude are much too small."

The budget report said a full strategy on how the targets will be met is due this summer, but that the "latest government modelling" showed it was on course to meet the 2020 and two interim targets.

"The strategy will strengthen the long-term policy framework, taking into account recent consultations on heat and energy saving, renewable energy and zero carbon homes," added the report.

Severe Texas Drought Threatens Coastal Wildlife

2009-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

From: Ana Campoy, Wall Street Journal

A severe drought gripping Texas is causing unusually salty conditions along the Gulf Coast, upsetting the region's ecological balance and threatening coastal wildlife including oysters, crabs and whooping cranes, the most endangered crane species.

The drought is one of the driest on record for Texas and is currently the worst in the U.S., which has seen persistent dry weather across several Western states, Florida and even Hawaii, according to academic and government monitors. The scarcity of rain has reduced fresh-water flow from rivers and streams into coastal marshes, estuaries and bays that normally dilute the salt content of water from the Gulf of Mexico.

This spring, the only migrating whooping-crane flock that exists in the wild lost 23 of its 270 members to hunger and disease brought on by the dry weather, said Tom Stehn, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whooping-crane coordinator. That is a big blow to conservation programs that have worked over the past 50 years to slowly increase the number of cranes.

Article continues

New study shows widespread and substantial declines in wildlife in Kenya's Masai Mara

2009-04-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

From: Jeff Haskins/ILRI , Muthoni Njiru/CGIAR

Nairobi, Kenya (22 April 2009)—Populations of major wild grazing animals that are the heart and soul of Kenya's cherished and heavily visited Masai Mara National Reserve—including giraffes, hartebeest, impala, and warthogs—have "decreased substantially" in only 15 years as they compete for survival with a growing concentration of human settlements in the region, according to a new study published today in the May 2009 issue of the British Journal of Zoology.

The study, analysed by researchers at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and led and funded by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), is based on rigorous, monthly monitoring between 1989 and 2003 of seven "ungulate," or hoofed, species in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, which covers some 1500 square kilometers in southwestern Kenya. Scientists found that a total of six species—giraffes, hartebeest, impala, warthogs, topis and waterbuck—declined markedly and persistently throughout the reserve.

The study provides the most detailed evidence to date on declines in the ungulate populations in the Mara and how this phenomenon is linked to the rapid expansion of human populations near the boundaries of the reserve. For example, an analysis of the monthly sample counts indicates that the losses were as high as 95 percent for giraffes, 80 percent for warthogs, 76 percent for hartebeest, and 67 percent for impala. Researchers say the declines they documented are supported by previous studies that have found dramatic drops in the reserve of once abundant wildebeest, gazelles and zebras.

"The situation we documented paints a bleak picture and requires urgent and decisive action if we want to save this treasure from disaster," said Joseph Ogutu, the lead author of the study and a statistical ecologist at ILRI. "Our study offers the best evidence to date that wildlife losses in the reserve are widespread and substantial, and that these trends are likely linked to the steady increase in human settlements on lands adjacent to the reserve."

Researchers found the growing human population has diminished the wild animal population by usurping wildlife grazing territory for crop and livestock production to support their families. Some traditional farming cultures to the west and southwest of the Mara continue to hunt wildlife inside the Mara Reserve, which is illegal, for food and profit.

The Mara National Reserve is located in the northernmost section of the Mara—Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa. The reserve is bounded by Tanzania's Serengeti National Park to the south, Maasai pastoral ranches to the north and east, and crop farming to the west. The area is world-famous for its exceptional wildlife population and an annual migration of nearly two million wildebeest, zebra and other wildlife across the Serengeti and Mara plains.

Ogutu and his colleagues focused much of their attention on the rapid changes occurring in the large territories around the Mara Reserve known as the Mara ranchlands, which are home to the Maasai. Until recently, most Maasai were semi-nomadic herders—known for their warrior culture and colorful red toga-style dress—who co-existed easily with the wildlife in the region.

Article continues

The emissions reductions gospel is failing – we need something more

2009-04-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

NGOs who oppose geo-engineering are running the risk of climatic catastrophe

Peter Read
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 April 2009 14.41 BST

Planting trees for a carbon offset project in Kenya. Growing trees is one way of stocking carbon out of the linked ocean-atmosphere system. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty

Interviewed last week, John Holdren, President Obama's chief scientific adviser, said that drastic measures should not be "off the table" in discussions on how best to tackle climate change and that geo-engineering could not be ruled out. Making clear these were his personal views, he said: "It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

He's right. We don't have that luxury – not only because the Kyoto protocol's first phase, running to 2012, is manifestly failing, but because the emissions reduction approach that it embodies cannot succeed. It is manifestly failing because emissions are going ahead faster than even the worst scenarios considered by the IPCC, which provides scientific assessments to the UN Climate Convention and because many rich countries are on course to fall short of their emissions reductions commitments.

Research since the IPCC's last assessment reveals that the threat of climatic disaster is more serious than previously supposed. Several threats exist but the most imminent is probably a collapse of substantial areas of land-based ice into the oceans, as studies of ancient climates show happened in previous warming phases. This seems likely to be due to the lubrication of Greenland's ice floes by water that accumulates year after year, with warmer summers melting the surface and rivers of melt-water flowing down crevasses to the bedrock, making the underside of the ice increasingly mushy and prone to slip down towards the ocean. Reports from Greenland, of increased frequency of "ice-quakes", suggest that areas of the ice cover have slipped and bumped into other areas that are still stuck. When the last bit gives way there may be an unstoppable rush of ice into the ocean, as with ancient warming phases, raising ocean levels by several metres over a few decades.

"Probably"? "Likely"? "Suggest"? "Maybe"? Yes, all is uncertain and the models are inadequate. But you don't drive full-speed down a twisty lane on a foggy winter's night hoping there's no ice round the next bend. A measure of the threat is the accumulation of warmth from successive summers, which is making the glaciers' undersides increasingly mushy. Even a deeply implausible reduction of emissions to zero in 25 years sees that measure treble over the next half-century with no end in sight.

So something more than emissions reductions is needed. We must take CO2 out of the atmosphere or prevent some of the sun's radiation from reaching the surface. But geo-engineering is usually thought of as shielding the earth from solar radiation by whitening clouds and by putting reflectors in space between earth and sun. The latter seems difficult to reverse and perhaps a very last resort. But whitening clouds can be quickly halted. It involves putting sulphur aerosols into the clouds in amounts that are trivial compared with the effects of either volcanic eruptions or coal burning worldwide. Or injecting saltwater micro-particles into ocean clouds which, whitened, then rain slightly salty water back into the oceans.

Amazing though it may seem, these apparently hopeful options are opposed by NGOs that seem more willing to run the risk of climatic catastrophe than deviate from the emissions reductions gospel. Their concern seems to be that geo-engineering will result in relaxed pressure to reduce emissions, which neglects the reality that more ambitious commitments will obviously go with increased capability to mitigate. They even oppose research, unlike Holdren's "it's got to be looked at".

The British researcher Tim Lenton uses the term geo-engineering to mean any way of cooling the earth that is not emissions reductions (even growing trees, which is included under the Kyoto protocol). His definition puts me – somewhat to my surprise – among the ranks of geo-engineers, as I have long advocated widespread tree-planting programmes, such as those initiated by the Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Muta Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted more than 30m trees across Kenya.

Growing trees is one way of stocking carbon out of the linked ocean-atmosphere system. Others advocate fuelling power stations with energy crops and capturing CO2 from flue gases and piping them into deep saline aquifers. A third option is biochar, current darling of the policy community, which promises not only to store carbon in the soil but to provide rural energy supplies and raise soil productivity as the basis for sustainable rural development. Yet even this win-win-win prospect is rejected by 129 NGOs who have declared "Biochar – a new big threat to people land and ecosystems". I would rather listen to the 1,500 poor subsistence farmers in Kumba, south-west Cameroon, who are already experiencing its benefits and who deny rich-country NGO claims that civil society in the developing world rejects biochar.

• Peter Read is an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Energy Research, Massey University, New Zealand

We must protect communities who face climate change displacement

2009-04-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

'Climigration' requires a new and unique institutional response based in human rights doctrine

Robin Bronen
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 April 2009 09.30 BST

Waves pounding against the sandbagged seawall in Kivalina, Alaska. In 2006, a recently completed $2.5m sea barrier was partly destroyed. The community was evacuated in 2007. Photograph: Mary Sage/AP

In Alaska, climate change is creating an unforeseen humanitarian crisis. Arctic sea ice – which had protected communities from coastal erosion and flooding – is rapidly disappearing and signalling a radical transformation of this northern ecosystem. Scientific observations during the summer of 2007 documented a new record low.

In 2006, the US government completed a $2.5m (£1.7m) seawall to protect the native village of Kivalina, located on an island in the Chukchi Sea. But on the day of the dedication ceremony, a storm surge partly destroyed the newly constructed sea barrier. One year later, the community was evacuated to protect inhabitants from a severe storm.

The situation looks set to get worse. Winter temperatures along the northern Alaskan coast have increased an average of 3.5C (38.3F)since 1975. These warming temperatures are causing the arctic seas to freeze later in autumn and the permafrost – usually permanently frozen subsoil – to thaw. Along the northwestern Alaskan coast, permafrost is the glue that keeps the land intact and habitable.

Approximately 200 indigenous villages that have inhabited the arctic for millennia are located along Alaska's coasts and rivers. Dozens of these communities are now endangered because of accelerating erosion and flooding. Five indigenous communities, located along the Bering and Chukchi Seas, have concluded that relocation is the only durable solution to the climatic events that are threatening their lives.

Government agencies now realise that erosion and flooding control can no longer protect these coastal communities. In 2006, a US government report found that relocation of three communities is required because a catastrophic climatic event could submerge them within 10-15 years. Despite these dire predictions, no community has yet been relocated because of the governance issues that must be addressed to facilitate relocation. The report recognised that no government agency has the authority to relocate communities, no governmental organisation exists that can address the strategic planning needs of relocation, and no funding is specifically designated for relocation.

Since 2006, government officials have organised numerous meetings to address the policy and practical challenges of relocation. One village, Newtok, is in the relocation process. The Newtok Planning Group is the only interdisciplinary governmental workgroup in Alaska focused on relocation. The Newtok Traditional Council is leading the effort.

Next week in Alaska, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference will host a gathering of indigenous peoples from all over the world. The goal is to develop recommendations for the UN Convention on Climate Change meeting in December 2009. One of the topics will be the creation of a human rights regime to protect those forced to relocate because of climate change. "Climigration" is the word that best describes this type of population displacement. Climigration requires a new and unique institutional response based in human rights doctrine. Communities, rather than individuals, will be forced to migrate. Permanent relocation will be mandated because there will be no ability to return home because home will be under water or sinking in thawing permafrost.

Catastrophic random environmental events, such as hurricanes, do not cause climigration. However, these random environmental events, if on-going, may alter ecosystems permanently, cause extensive damage to public infrastructure, repeatedly place people in danger and require communities to relocate. Determining which communities are most likely to encounter displacement will require a complex assessment of a community's ecosystem vulnerability to climate change, as well as the vulnerability of its social, economic and political structures. Permanent relocation must only occur when there are no other durable solutions.

International human rights principles need to be specifically created for climigration to ensure that the social, economic and cultural human rights of individuals and the communities forced to migrate are protected. These principles will ensure that the affected community is a key leader and decision-maker in the relocation process. The principles will also affirm that families and tribes remain together. For indigenous communities, tribal relationships are essential to cultural identity.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that 150 million people may be displaced by climate change by 2050. The United Nations University has developed an international research agenda on climate change and forced migration. The IPCC needs to convene an expert working group to fully develop the human rights framework that will guide nation-states in addressing climigration. The time to act is now.

Robin Bronen is a human rights attorney and a National Science Foundation fellow. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Just what is it with evangelical Christians and global warming?

2009-04-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

A poll this week showed that only 34% of America's white evangelical Protestants accepted there is solid evidence that global warming is real and that it is attributable to humans

Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 April 2009 14.58 BST

Graphic: Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Just what is it with evangelical Christians and global warming? I doubt we're ever going to get a satisfying answer to this long-running question, but it is being raised yet again by the publication yesterday of a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The poll canvassed views on climate change among the "major religious traditions" in the US. Surprise, surprise, it shows that "white evangelical Protestants" were the group with the lowest level – 34% of those surveyed – of acceptance that there is solid evidence that global warming is real and that it is attributable to humans. This compares with 47% of the total US population (still startlingly low), and 58% of those surveyed who "had faith" but who were unaffiliated to any particular religious tradition.

It would have been interesting to have seen the stats for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and any of the other "major religious traditions", but the Pew Forum said that out of the 1,502 American adults it surveyed the sample sizes were too small for the data to be worth reporting. But with 76% of Americans claiming to be Christians, perhaps this isn't much of a surprise.

All religious groups have their charismatic leaders, but US evangelicals – who some claim to number up to 100 million people – probably know better than any other group how to get their message across loud and clear to their followers with their syndicated radio stations, TV channels, megachurches and sophisticated online activism.

Some of these leaders display a particular sort of venom towards the "global warming agenda". Others, however, have appeared in recent years to start speaking up the need to adopt environmentalism – or "creation care", as it is more popularly known – and wrapped up within all this is an acceptance that global warming is a reality and needs tackling.

The division between these stark viewpoints has led to some public bust-ups between leading evangelicals – but the facts remain, as the Pew Forum survey indicates, that many evangelicals have little time for talk of global warming.

Last year, there was even an attempt by some leaders to talk up the need for "creation care", but to dampen concern for global warming. The "We Get It!" campaign's declaration is something to behold:

God created everything. He made us in His own image, and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and watch over His creation. Although separated from God by our sin, we are lovingly restored through Jesus Christ, and take responsibility for being good stewards. Our stewardship of creation must be based on Biblical principles and factual evidence. We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming. With billions suffering in poverty, environmental policies must not further oppress the world's poor by denying them basic needs. Instead, we must help people fulfill their God-given potential as producers and stewards. We will follow our Lord Jesus Christ and honor God as we use and share the principles of His Word to care for the poor and tend His creation.

I have always been intrigued about how Christians square the whole "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion…over every living animal that moveth upon the earth" thing from Genesis 1:28 with "creation care" – something I put to the Bishop of London in an interview a couple of years ago.

But I think the We Get It! declaration makes better sense when you learn that it is backed by the Family Research Council and its spokesperson Tony Perkins (no, not the one in Psycho – I think) who says that "we cannot justify policies that make food and energy more expensive on the grounds that we're fighting against an environmental threat that is at best speculative". (Head over to the "issues" page of the Family Research Council for a sample of its other viewpoints – its views on homosexuality are pretty enlightening.)

Another key supporter of the We Get It! Campaign is the Cornwall Alliance which, since its creation in 2000, has been doing its best to whip up the fires of scepticism about global warming. (It does claim to have supporters from other faiths and denominations, but it is a predominately evangelical organisation.) Again, it's worth reading over its views in detail yourself, but here's a little taster:

Many people mistakenly view humans as principally consumers and polluters rather than producers and stewards. Consequently, they ignore our potential, as bearers of God's image, to add to the earth's abundance… Our position, informed by revelation and confirmed by reason and experience, views human stewardship that unlocks the potential in creation for all the earth's inhabitants as good. Humanity alone of all the created order is capable of developing other resources and can thus enrich creation, so it can properly be said that the human person is the most valuable resource on earth… While some environmental concerns are well founded and serious, others are without foundation or greatly exaggerated… Some unfounded or undue concerns include fears of destructive manmade global warming, overpopulation, and rampant species loss.

It's a popular rebuke made by climate change sceptics that environmentalism displays all the traits of a religion (the words "pot", "kettle" and "black", spring to mind for some reason), but I have to say I'm left perplexed when I even attempt to understand the logic of creation care through the prism of evangelicalism.

Many millions of people hold these views so it would be foolish to ignore this huge constituency, but how do you even go about responding to such beliefs?

Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic

2009-04-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

BBC, UK

An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped.

Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence or rapid change in the region.

Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s.

Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place.

Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean.

The ice bridge has splintered at its thinnest point

European Space Agency satellite pictures had indicated last week that cracks were starting to appear in the bridge. Newly created icebergs were seen to be floating in the sea on the western side of the peninsula, which juts up from the continent towards South America's southern tip.

Professor David Vaughan is a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey who planted a GPS tracker on the ice bridge in January to monitor its movement.

He said the breaking of the bridge had been expected for some weeks; and much of the ice shelf behind is likely to follow.

"We know that [the Wilkins Ice Shelf] has been completely or very stable since the 1930s and then it started to retreat in the late 1990s; but we suspect that it's been stable for a very much longer period than that," he told BBC News.

"The fact that it's retreating and now has lost connection with one of its islands is really a strong indication that the warming on the Antarctic is having an effect on yet another ice shelf."

While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating, it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica.

Over the past 50 years, the peninsula has been one of the fastest warming places on the planet.

Many of its ice shelves have retreated in that time and six of them have collapsed completely (Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf).

Separate research shows that when ice shelves are removed, the glaciers and landed ice behind them start to move towards the ocean more rapidly. It is this ice which can raise sea levels, but by how much is a matter of ongoing scientific debate.

Such acceleration effects were not included by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when it made its latest projections on likely future sea level rise. Its 2007 assessment said ice dynamics were poorly understood.

Thousands of rare Irrawaddy dolphins found along Bangladesh coast

2009-04-04T10:35:00.001-07:00

Population of 6,000 endangered dolphins under threat from climate change and fishing, US conservationists warn

Digg it

Jessica Aldred
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 April 2009 12.51 BST
Article history

New study shows that today 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins are alive and swimming in Bangladesh. Photograph: WCS

Conservationists claim to have found thousands of rare Irrawaddy dolphins on the Bangladesh coast, but warn that the newly discovered population is under threat from climate change and fishing.

Researchers from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said they have found nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins living in the freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest and nearby waters in the Bay of Bengal.

The largest known populations of Irrawaddy dolphins to date have numbered in the low hundreds or less – at least 125 in the Mekong river, 77 in the Malampaya Sound in the Philippines and up to 100 in the Mahakam River, Indonesia.

Until this new Bangladesh population was found, figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated the Sundarbans population to be around 450. WCS says it used rigorous scientific techniques in an area where little marine mammal research has taken place to document the new population.

"The number of animals could be higher – or lower," said Howard Rosenbaum, the director of WCS's ocean giants cetacean programme. "Our best estimate given the science is that there are 6,000. It sounds a lot but the Sundarbans cover a huge area. When you look at the areas that have been surveyed before the populations are low as they are in areas impacted by human development. But this area had never before been surveyed. We're really excited and this finding gives us great hope but this species is still very vulnerable."

The discovery of a new population is an important finding as scientists and conservation groups do not know how many Irrawaddy dolphins remain across south and south-east Asia. The species, related to orcas or killer whales, were listed in 2008 as "vulnerable" on the IUCN's "red list" of endangered species due to declines in known populations.

"This discovery gives us great hope that there is a future for Irrawaddy dolphins," said Brian D Smith, the study's lead author. "Bangladesh clearly serves as an important sanctuary for Irrawaddy dolphins, and conservation in this region should be a top priority."

"With all the news about freshwater environments and the state of the oceans, WCS's discovery that a thriving population of Irrawaddy dolphins exists in Bangladesh gives us hope for protecting this and other endangered species and their important habitats," said Steven E Sanderson, the president and chief executive of the WCS.

The results of the study were announced yesterday at the world's first international conference on marine mammal protected areas in Maui, Hawaii, and published in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.

But the scientists warned that the dolphins are becoming increasingly threatened by accidental entanglement in fishing nets. Declining freshwater supplies also pose a threat – from upstream water diversions such as dams and by rising sea levels caused by climate change that will see the loss of freshwater habitats.

These problems also threaten the Ganges river dolphins, an endangered species that also inhabits the Sundarbans. The recent likely extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji, is a potent reminder of how vulnerable freshwater dolphins are to extinction via the impacts of humans, the organisation said.

The Irrawaddy dolphin grows to some 2-2.5 metres in length (6.5-8ft) and lives in large rivers, estuaries, and freshwater lagoons in south and south-east Asia.

As recently as 1996 they were listed as "data deficient" as not enough was known about the species and its range and habitats.

Since then, the IUCN said, five populations have been listed as critically endangered, and the range of the populations and their numbers have declined as they have been caught as bycatch and faced habitat degradation.

Scientists estimated the numbers of the new Bangladesh population using a technique called distance sampling – taking a boat along plotted grid lines and counting the numbers of animals seen, accounting for how many are above or below the surface and whether the same animal has been counted twice. The team covered 1,000 sq km of water during the survey in 2004.

Mark Simmonds, the international director of science for the UK-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said: "This discovery is an interesting one as it reflects the fact that now the Sundarbans have been more fully surveyed, we have a much better idea of how many animals are there. Irrawaddy dolphins are getting rarer and rarer in that part of the world. To find 6,000 isn't huge – but it's significant – and it does show that when you look for something and survey properly you can get some interesting findings.

"But the most important thing is that mangrove habitat is incredibly threatened, and while it's great to know that they are full of dolphins, we wish they could live somewhere else. Mangroves are threatened by changes in the water passing through them – from extreme weather, sea level rises, changes in salinity and changes to water systems upstream. The Sundarbans system is important and needs better protection."

The WCS has asked Bangladesh authorities to establish a sanctuary for the dolphins in the Sundarbans mangrove forest.

Ainun Nishat, the Bangladesh head of International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the finding was an indication that "ecology in the area is not dead yet".

"There is plenty of food, mainly fish, in the area for the dolphins to eat," said Nishat, who was not involved in the study. "What is now needed is to restrict fishing in the area to protect the dolphins."

Climate change the biggest loser of G20 summit, warn environmental groups

2009-04-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

• G20 stimulus package has 'short-changed the planet'
• Fears that greenhouse emissions will continue to rise

Digg it

Julian Borger and Felicity Carus
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 April 2009 12.14 BST
Article history

G20 members gather for a group portrait. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The $1.1 trillion stimulus package agreed by G20 leaders yesterday risks locking the world into a high-carbon economy in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, environmental groups have warned.

Campaigners agreed that the summit's biggest loser was the fight against climate change, despite a positive response from global financial markets to the announcement of financial aid. At the summit, prime minister Gordon Brown reiterated support for low-carbon economic growth and tackling climate change.

"In mobilising the world's economies to fight back against recession we are resolved to ... promote low-carbon growth and to create the green jobs on which our future prosperity depends," he said. "We are committed to ... working together to seek agreement on a post-2012 climate change regime at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December."

"Once again world leaders have short-changed people and the planet," said Friends of the Earth's executive director Andy Atkins. "The economic system and the global environment are on a devastating collision course – but despite pledging to build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery little has been done to change direction."

British government officials lost the battle to include a commitment to spend a substantial share of the economic stimulus on low-carbon recovery projects. The economist Lord Nicholas Stern has recommended that 20% of fiscal stimulus spending should be on projects to address climate change.

The communique's comments on the low-carbon economy and climate change negotiations were limited to two paragraphs at the end, and made no specific commitments.

It said: "We agreed to make the best possible use of investment funded by fiscal stimulus programmes towards the goal of building a resilient, sustainable, and green recovery. We will make the transition towards clean, innovative, resource efficient, low-carbon technologies and infrastructure ... We reaffirm our commitment to address the threat of irreversible climate change, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and to reach agreement at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009."

Britain's environment secretary, Ed Miliband, said that "the very fact that this was part of the discussions – and the commitment to Copenhagen is part of that too – is a sign of that much-needed commodity, momentum".

But the UN's top climate official called for action, not words. "It's always useful to reiterate the commitment; better to actually do it," said Yvo de Boer. He added: "This is a good example of the major economies of the world coming together and developing a common understanding."

Greenpeace's executive director, John Sauven, said: "Tacking climate change on to the end of the communique as an after thought does not demonstrate anything like the seriousness we needed to see. Hundreds of billions were found for the IMF and World Bank, but for making the transition to a green economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations, talks about talks and agreements to agree."

Diplomatic sources said China led the opposition to green language in the final text.

Mark Malloch Brown, the foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, said there were fears, particularly among emerging economies, that environmental requirements might act as an impediment on trade and the speed of recovery.

"The buzzword 'low-carbon recovery' triggers fears of protectionism being introduced through the back door," said Lord Malloch Brown. The concern is that countries would impose import tarriffs on goods from nations with lower environmental standards. Brown said another problem was that negotiating officials often had narrow responsibilities – trade for example – and were reluctant to work outside of them. "They want to hold the line against what they see as mission creep," he said.

Officials stressed that the objective of the G20 summit was to agree to an economic strategy. But campaigners say that if tough measures to fight global warming are not agreed soon, the consequences will be far worse than the global financial crisis.

David Norman, the World Wildlife Fund's campaigns director, said:

"Any argument that climate change should be moved down the political agenda until the current economic crisis is addressed is incredibly shortsighted. Finance and the climate are inextricably linked, and if we don't address climate change now, we will certainly pay later."

Ice-free Arctic Ocean Possible In 30 Years, Not 90 As Previously Estimated

2009-04-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

From: ScienceDaily

The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles. That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles. So much more open water could be a boon for shipping and for extracting minerals and oil from the seabed, but it raises the question of ecosystem upheaval.

While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 assessed what might happen in the Arctic in the future based on results from more than a dozen global climate models, two researchers reasoned that dramatic declines in the extent of ice at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008 called for a different approach.

Out of the 23 models now available, the new projections are based on the six most suited for assessing sea ice, according to Muyin Wang, a University of Washington climate scientist with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean based at the UW, and James Overland, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

Once the extent of ice at the end of summer drops to 4.6 million square kilometers -- it was actually 4.3 million square kilometers in 2007 and 4.7 million in 2008 -- all six models show rapid sea-ice declines. Averaged together the models point to a nearly ice-free Arctic in 32 years, with some of the models putting the event as early as 11 years from now.

Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402143752.htm

Ninety years of birdwatchers' notes going online

2009-03-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Story Highlights
6 million handwritten note cards could give insight on climate change
Citizen scientists transcribing more than 90 years worth of historical bird data
"This is the longest and most comprehensive legacy data set on bird migration ..."
One-third of the nation's 800 bird species are endangered or in serious decline

By Azadeh Ansari

(CNN) -- More than 100 years ago, J.A. Loring had his eyes on the California sky and his hand on a pen.

"Citizen scientists" jot notes about birds, like this broad-tailed hummingbird, to add to a national database.

His hand-scribbled notes, along with those of 3,000 other "citizen scientists," can be found lining the drawers of green filing cabinets in the basement of a U.S. Geological Survey building in Laurel, Maryland.

These note cards -- 6 million of them, spanning almost a century -- contain a trove of invaluable information that could help unravel the effects of climate change on bird behavior.

"This is the longest and most comprehensive legacy data set on bird migration that we know to exist," said Jessica Zelt, who coordinates the North American Bird Phenology Program at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

The cards include personal observations made by the birders. Their personal information, along with recorded bird data about the abundance, arrival, departure and location of certain species, is all found in these historic records.

Some of the 2-by-5-inch cards date back to the 1880s, when educator Wells W. Cooke founded the North American Bird Phenology Program (BPP), which encouraged amateur ornithologists to record bird sightings around the United States and Canada.

Now, for the first time ever, the paper files are being scanned, transcribed and converted into a digital database for online access.

"These cards, once transcribed, will provide over 90 years of data -- an unprecedented amount of information describing bird distributions, migration time and migration pathways, and how they are changing," Zelt said.

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The collection contains data on about 900 bird species, some of which -- the Guadalupe storm-petrel, Labrador duck, Guadalupe caracara, great auk, Carolina parakeet and passenger pigeon -- have gone extinct.

Maintaining these records since the BPP program ended in 1970 has not been easy.

"The cards have been filed and put away and held everywhere from attics to basements to storage facilities," Zelt said. "A lot of times, they were almost thrown out."

They survived almost four decades after the program ended, thanks to the perseverance of the program's last coordinator, Chan Robbins, a retired wildlife biologist.

"Each time they would get moved and bumped around, boy, I could remember wrapping those things and wrapping string around each little batch so they would not get unsorted," Robbins said.

The BPP program, which is operating on a minimal budget, now has more than 800 online volunteers, ranging from ornithologists to amateur bird watchers to ordinary citizens looking to translate a piece of science history. They have already scanned 200,000 cards and transcribed more than 17,000.

"Anyone can do it. There is a 15-minute training video you can watch after you sign up for the program online," Zelt said. "You don't have to have a background in ornithology, you just have to have an interest."

Bird enthusiast and star volunteer Stella Walsh, a 62-year-old retiree, pecks away at her keyboard for about four hours each day. She has already transcribed more than 2,000 entries from her apartment in Yarmouth, Maine.

"It's a lot more fun fondling feathers, but, the whole point is to learn about the data and be able to do something with it that is going to have an impact," Walsh said.

Climate change already has affected bird populations. Birds use temperature as a cue for many life-cycle decisions. They are also at the mercy of weather patterns that can affect biological processes such as when and where they migrate, and when they breed.

"Warmer temperatures will lead to earlier springs, and local plants and insects will come out earlier. However, if bird arrival dates remain the same, then they are potentially at a disadvantage, as the primary food [insects] for their young may no longer be at its peak," said Sam Droege, an ornithologist at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and competition from invasive species have all reduced North American bird populations.

A recent survey, "The U.S. State of Birds," conducted by government agencies, conservation organizations and citizen volunteers, found that nearly a third of the nation's 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in serious decline.

"You cannot return to the past and collect data on the status of plants and animals," Droege said. "So this data set represents one of the few windows the world has into how a group of animals react to climate change."

Because of the work of thousands of people like J.A. Loring, today's volunteers and scientists can view pieces of ornithological history and identify long-term trends while working toward solutions that could help ensure the birds' survival.

"A single bird seen on a large open flat about half a mile west of town," Loring scribbled on June 5, 1897, upon seeing a northern spotted owl in Donner Summit, California.

"It was very tame and flew from roadside to fence post where it watched me for some time," he wrote.

Britain set to become most populous country in EU

2009-03-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

Soaring population will force millions to flee water shortages in search of refuge - and, according to new figures, Britain will be one of the world's 'lifeboats'. On the eve of a major population conference, Science Editor Robin McKie asks: could the UK cope?

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 22 March 2009
Article history

Britain will become one of the world's major destinations for immigrants as the world heats up and populations continue to soar. Statistics from the United Nations show that, on average, every year more than 174,000 people will be added to the numbers in the UK and that this trend will continue for the next four decades.

By then, only the United States and Canada will be receiving more overseas settlers, says the UN. This increase in British numbers is likely to put considerable strain on the country's transport, energy and housing, experts warned last week.

"The US and Canada will be taking in more people than us every year by 2050 but they are huge countries," said demographer Professor Tom Dyson of the London School of Economics. "Britain, by contrast, is a small nation. We will feel the impact of all these people. There will be no getting out of it. Simply controlling our carbon dioxide emissions will become harder and harder as more and more people arrive on our shores. In addition, housing, water supplies and transport will be strained and will need greatly increased investment."

However, other experts say such increases could also produce benefits for the nation, bringing in immigrants who could provide a vital supply of young workers. These demographers point out that, by 2050, more than a third of the UK population will be aged 60 or over. By then there will be a desperate need for bus drivers, care-workers and others to keep the country running and immigrants could fill this gap.

In addition, there is the issue of humanitarian responsibility. Britain is likely to be one of the few nations to survive the worst effects of climate change while other nations, particularly those in the developing world, have their farmland and fishing grounds destroyed. It could be argued that the UK has a moral duty to provide shelter for as many refugees as our shores can support.

But deciding what numbers the country might support is a highly controversial issue and will be the focus of a conference on sustainable populations which will be held this week in London. Organised by the Optimum Population Trust, the meeting will hear that the United Nation expects that by 2050 the world will be inhabited by around 9.2 billion people, compared to its current level of 6.8 billion. Every day, the equivalent of the population of a large city is added to the numbers of humans, a rise that is now straining the planet's resources to breaking point.

At the same time, Britain's population will rise from its current level of 61 million to 72 million by 2050. The nation will then be the most populous in the European Union, outstripping Germany, whose population will slump from 82 million to 71 million people as its immigration figures plummet.

The idea that Britain could one day support such numbers has been questioned by Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at Edinburgh University. "There are far too many people living in Britain already," he said. "Once our population passed the 20 million level around 1850, it became too numerous. That is the figure at which we could no longer sustain our population from our own resources. We are now three times over the limit and heading for more. We have long passed the line of sustainability. As for the planet, its maximum sustainable population is no more than 3 billion, I would say."

The rise in population indicates that the country is set for some considerable overcrowding. Britain's land area is only two-thirds that of Germany, yet it will soon support the same number of citizens. "This population rise, brought about by rising immigration, will strain our infrastructures - our housing and water supplies - and bring very little advantage to the nation," said Dyson, who will address the conference. "Nor do I think these extra people will be able to help in looking after our older people."

But these points were disputed by Tim Finch, head of immigration for the Institute of Public Policy Research. "A healthy economy sucks in young, educated people and that is what has happened to this country over the past couple of decades. These young immigrants have helped keep the country running as our population has started to get older and they will become more important as the decades go past and that ageing intensifies. The immigration system picks out the best and the brightest of immigrants and they will be of great service to Britain. That is just a fact."

The problem is that discussions of population numbers in the past have been associated with talk of eugenics and with attempts at controlling ethnic populations. As a result, there is little discussion today of the subject or its impact on the environment, a point stressed by James Lovelock, the distinguished environmental scientist. "The subject has become a taboo, a matter of political correctness," he said last week. "And that is dangerous, for the numbers of humans on Earth are going to be crucial to our survival."

Manning added: "We have stopped worrying about population because other issues - acid rain, climate change and others - have occupied our attention and because past fears of global food shortages were proved unfounded. But the subject will not go away. Our planet is now dangerously overpopulated."

Another conference speaker, Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, in London, agreed. "We desperately need to bring down our emissions of greenhouse gases but the truth is we will never get the contribution of each individual down to zero. Only the lack of the individual can bring it to zero, and that is an issue for population control which we need to talk about openly and urgently."

Rapley will tell delegates that the Earth's population is now rising at a rate of around 80 million a year. "That is roughly the same as the number of unwanted pregnancies across the world," he said. "If we can prevent unwanted pregnancies, we can halt this spiral in our numbers."

To do that, contraception will have to become universally available - and political and religious opposition to birth control removed. If that happened, the world's population could be stabilised to around 8 billion by 2050, added Rapley.

But many climatologists believe that by then life on the planet will already have become dangerously unpleasant. Temperature rises will have started to have devastating impacts on farmland, water supplies and sea levels. Humans - increasing both in numbers and dependence on food from devastated landscapes - will then come under increased pressure. The end result will be apocalyptic, said Lovelock. By the end of the century, the world's population will suffer calamitous declines until numbers are reduced to around 1 billion or less. "By 2100, pestilence, war and famine will have dealt with the majority of humans," he said.

One of the few places to survive the worst impacts will be Britain. "Our climate will be one of the least affected by global warming," added Lovelock. "As a result, everyone will want to live here. We will become one of the world's lifeboats. The trouble, of course, will be that, even if we wanted to, we will not be able to pick up everyone. There will be some hard decisions to make."

Many experts predict that disaster will strike long before 2050. Last week, the government's chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington, said the planet faced "a perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages which could strike in less than 20 years. In a speech to the Sustainable Development Commission conference in London, Beddington said that one in three people were already facing water shortages and that by 2030 world water demand would increase by more than 30%; energy demands would increase by 50%. "There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected."

In the long run, however, humanity should benefit, said Lovelock. "If you look at our species over the past million years, there have been a number of major climatic events, some devastating. Between the Ice Ages, sea levels rose by 120 metres and tracts of land were flooded. Yet that period covers the time that early humans emerged and evolved into Homo sapiens

"Often our numbers were brought to catastrophically low levels by climate change and numbers were reduced to only a couple of thousand on a couple of occasions. Every time things got bad, our numbers plummeted and we improved as a species. That is certainly going to happen again over the next 100 years."

The world by numbers

1 million Britain's population in Roman times

6 million Britain's population around the time of the English civil war

47 million Britain's population in 1945

52,000 The number of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere every minute

267 The average number of births every minute worldwide; the average number of deaths per minute is 118

78 million The planet's annual population increase, a number roughly equivalent to the population of Germany

1 million The number of chimpanzees in Africa in 1900. Today, thanks to habitat loss and hunting, numbers have dropped to around 15,000

38.4 The median age in the UK rose from 34.1 years in 1971 to 38.4 in 2003 and is projected to reach 43.3 in 2031. (The median is the age that separates the oldest half of the population from the youngest.)

10 billion The number of chickens eaten by man worldwide every year

500 million The number of ducks eaten every year

1.3 billion The population of China

1.2 billion India's population

500 million The population of the EU

74 million The number of barrels of oil pumped daily across the planet; 15 million tonnes of coal are dug every day

9 Between 2010 and 2050, nine countries will account for half of the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Bangladesh, Tanzania

• Sources: World Clock; Poodwaddle; UN Population Division

Perfect storm of environmental and economic collapse closer than you think

2009-03-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

Green measures have to be at the heart of any financial rescue packages if we are to avoid catastrophe

- Jonathon Porritt
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 March 2009 15.30 GMT

A "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and high-cost energy will hit the global economy before 2030, said the government's chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, last week. Factor in accelerating climate change and this lethal cocktail leads to public unrest, cross-border conflict and mass migration – in other words, an economic and political collapse that will make today's economic recession seem very tame indeed. But though I totally agree with John Beddington's analysis, I think he's got the timing wrong. This "perfect storm" will hit much closer to 2020 than 2030.

It may seem inappropriate – callous even, with unemployment at the two million mark in the UK – to be inviting people to get worked up about some possible economic collapse in the future. But if we are to avoid that ultimate recession, from which there will be no conventional recovery in a normal boom-and-bust cycle, then we have to start thinking about today's recession in a completely different way. Both in terms of our analysis of underlying causes and appropriate remedies.

On the analysis front, people seem blind to the fact that the causes of the economic collapse are exactly the same as those behind today's ecological crisis – and behind accelerating climate change in particular. As Adair Turner's first report as chair of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) demonstrates, the neo-liberal obsession with deregulation has done untold damage to capital markets. But people should understand that the same deregulatory fervour has caused untold damage to the natural environment, all around the world, for the past 20 years or more.

It's exactly the same when one looks at the unholy trinity that has made today's capital markets so spuriously dynamic: mispricing of risk, misallocation of capital, and misalignment of incentives. Catastrophic impacts on markets; catastrophic impacts on the environment.

And then there's the debt issue. Governments have systematically stoked up levels of personal and national debt (including insane asset bubbles in housing, land and property) explicitly to force-feed high levels of economic growth. We will all be paying off those financial debts for decades to come.

On the environment front, as our financial debts have built up, so have our debts to nature – in terms of the unsustainable depletion of natural resources, measured by the loss of topsoil, forests, fresh water and biodiversity. Everybody knows that liquidating capital assets to fuel consumption is crazy but nobody seems to know how to stop it.

There is a simple conclusion here: the self-same abuses of debt-driven "casino capitalism" that have caused the global economy to collapse are what lie behind the impending collapse of the life-support systems on which we all ultimately depend.

As regards appropriate remedies, the link between today's recession and the perfect storm that awaits us in 2020/30 couldn't be clearer: sort out today's calamity by investing in infrastructure and technologies to help avoid tomorrow's infinitely worse calamity. In other words, a massive "green recovery package" along the lines we are now seeing in the US, South Korea and other European countries, focusing on energy efficiency, renewables, smart energy grids, new transportation solutions and so on.

The government is sort of interested in this, with lots of very eloquent words about a new low-carbon industrial strategy. But as the Sustainable Development Commission has pointed out, the percentage of the total recovery-based expenditure devoted in the UK to this kind of "sustainable new deal" to date is derisory. It's about 7% as opposed to 80% in South Korea, for instance. We simply have to ensure that the unsustainable elements in today's recovery package (such as the useless VAT giveaway) do not overwhelm the low-carbon, sustainable elements.

But the commission has gone even further than this by raising the whole issue of economic growth. Is it possible to avoid the "ultimate recession" if all we are doing is trying to get back as fast as possible to the same old "economic growth at all costs"? In a report to be published next week (provocatively entitled Prosperity without growth?), the SDC urges politicians of all parties to get serious about the very real limits to growth we're running up against today – both social and environmental.

Politicians serve us ill by disconnecting their policies for economic recovery from what has to happen very urgently indeed if we are to avoid the horrors of accelerating climate change and the kind of "perfect storm" that the chief scientific adviser is flagging up as inevitable – unless we fundamentally change the rules of the growth game.

• Jonathon Porritt is founder director of Forum for the Future and author of Living Within Our Means: Avoiding the Ultimate Recession. He is also chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission.

Nearly a third of U.S. bird species in trouble

2009-03-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

From: Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly one-third of all U.S. bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, with birds in Hawaii facing a "borderline ecological disaster," scientists reported on Thursday.

The State of the Birds report, issued by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar along with conservation groups and university ornithologists, also noted some successes, including the recovery of the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon and other species after the banning of the chemical DDT.

"When we talk about birds and we talk about wildlife, we're also talking about the economics of this country," Salazar told reporters as the report was released.

Wildlife watching and recreation generate $122 billion annually, the report saidSalazar mentioned revenue from hunting, fishing and bird-watching, but added that President Barack Obama's stimulus package and proposed federal budgets for the remainder of 2009 and 2010 offer more money for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which aims to protect birds and other creatures.

Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52I72C20090320?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

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The Nano, world's cheapest car, to hit Indian roads

2009-03-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

From: Janaki Krishnan, Reuters

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Nano, the world's cheapest car, will hit Indian roads in July, four months after its formal launch on Monday, and demand is expected to far outstrip supply as the price tag of around $2,000 draws legions of new buyers.

Hundreds of thousands are set to queue up to book, including motorbike owners and people who have been using public transport.

But launching six months behind schedule in a subdued market, with production in the first year severely constrained and the threat of further ratings downgrades hanging over the company, it will take over a year to deliver the first 100,000 cars.rence.

"From the drawing board to its commercial launch, the car has overcome several challenges. I hope it will provide safe, affordable four-wheel transportation to families who till now have not been able to own a car," he said.

Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE52M2PA20090323?feedType=RSS&feedName=tec

An army of lobbyists readies for battle on the climate bill

2009-03-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

With carbon cap-and-trade legislation now on Washington's agenda, companies and interest groups have been hiring lobbyists at a feverish pace, by Marianne Lavelle. From Yale Environment 360, part of Guardian Environment Network

Marianne Lavelle. From Yale Environment 360, part of Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk,

Climate action advocates found the sign they had been waiting for in Summary Table 4 of President Obama's budget plan: The administration intends to place a price on carbon dioxide emissions that would cost fossil fuel industries $646 billion through 2019 — creating a new pot of federal money in the process.

That stark row of numbers also gave opponents of climate legislation what they had been waiting for: a call to arms. "The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done," William Kovacs, who heads up regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told The Wall Street Journal.

If the stage is now set for the climate battle to begin, there is no shortage of combatants. A Center for Public Integrity analysis shows that, by the end of last year, more than 770 companies and interest groups had hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change. That's an increase of more than 300 percent in just five years, and means that Washington can now boast more than four climate lobbyists for every member of Congress.

Some of the lobbyists, like those representing the U.S. Chamber, clearly are seeking to derail any federal effort to mandate a reduction in fossil fuel emissions. But others have more subtle agendas — they seek to blunt the costs, or tailor any new climate policy to their narrow agendas. Some just want a slice of that revenue stream. Others hope to shape the rules of the bazaar in the market-based system that the politicians, including Obama, favor for grappling with global warming.

So the growth in lobbyists signals not only a redoubling of efforts by the energy industry and manufacturers — who dominated the scene five years ago — but the addition of a slew of new interests, from the bankers on Wall Street to the officials running public transit on Main Street.

Some longtime climate action advocates welcome the newcomers to the party. They have a kind of Realpolitik rationale: As a practical matter, they believe support will build among the politicians as more interests like agriculture, financiers, builders, and even forward-looking manufacturers and power companies see what they could gain in a carbon-reduction regime.

Perhaps they're right. Maybe the "sum of all lobbies," as U.S. energy policy has been famously described, will this time add up to a positive for the planet. But there's more reason to fear that climate policy will die at the hands of special interests than there is to believe that special interests can bring climate policy to life.

Look at what happened to the climate bill sponsored last year by Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman and Virginia Republican John Warner.

With the legislation being debated last spring just as U.S. gasoline prices made their historic climb to more than $4 a gallon, the Chamber of Commerce and other business opponents focused on how climate policy would make the nation's favored fuels even costlier. The Chamber warned of job losses and economic hardship, with memorable ads featuring energy-starved Americans cooking eggs over candles and jogging to work on auto-free streets.

Proponents of climate legislation were able to summon economic studies — including from the government's own experts — challenging the grim predictions of the Chamber and others. But when push came to shove, the bill garnered only 48 votes, and nine of those came from the infamous "Gang of 10" Democrats who soon revealed they would have voted against the actual bill — all due to their concerns over the price for consumers and business. Remember, Lieberman estimated his bill only would have imposed $17 billion in costs on the fossil fuel industry in the first year. That key line in the Obama budget anticipates first-year climate revenue of $79 billion.

Dealing with blatant opponents is bad enough. But what about wavering climate action supporters? Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, the nation's sixth-largest power producer, says he wants to see a climate bill this year. But he has been quick to criticize the Obama approach, because he says a slower transition is needed to protect consumers of the coal-dependent states in the Midwest and South.

Duke and other members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership — a coalition of businesses and some environmental groups — favor the government giving carbon pollution allowances for free to local electric distribution companies like Duke in the early stages of the program. Rogers has been critical of the Obama approach, which is expected to require polluters to pay for the program through a government auction of all carbon dioxide emissions permits. Proponents of auctioning 100 percent of CO2 permits seek to avoid the pitfalls of the European system, which initially gave away many permits to power producers at no cost, resulting in windfalls for those companies. The U.S. auction would provide revenue for the federal government to fund programs to offset the increased energy costs to families, as well as to invest in development of clean energy.

Yet another position is being staked out by the Edison Electric Institute — a power industry group to which Duke also belongs — which argues that free allowances also should go to the so-called "merchant" generators of power, companies that sprung up due to state deregulation and are now responsible for nearly a third of the power consumed in the United States. The merchants don't serve local populations — as old-style utilities do — but sell their power to the highest bidder in the wholesale market. Local utilities would be required by state regulators to pass the value of free allowances to their ratepayers, but unregulated merchant generators could keep any financial windfall for themselves.

If it sounds like the power business is divided among itself, that's because it is. That's part of the reason that U.S. CAP never could reach agreement on whether to support Warner-Lieberman bill last year. Meanwhile, U.S. CAP's $870,000 in spending on climate lobbying last year paled next to the $9.95 million spent by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a group of 48 coal mining, hauling and burning companies. (Duke, incidentally, is one of several companies that are members of both ACCCE and U.S. CAP. It's hard to tell the players in the game, even with a scorecard.)

ACCCE will undoubtedly be a major player in the battle to pass climate legislation, and the group advocates a cautious approach that some cap-and-trade advocates say would delay serious climate legislation for years. While the group claims to support a federal program to curb CO2 emissions, ACCCE opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill and says it will only back legislation that encourages a "robust utilization of coal." Since there's no technology available today that scrubs the carbon out of emissions from coal-fired power plants, what ACCCE is really seeking is a go-slow approach from Congress while the government invests in developing that technology. Warner-Lieberman, in ACCCE's view, went too far, too fast.

On the other end of the spectrum is the fast-growing renewable energy sector, which is fully devoted to adding the price of carbon pollution to every kilowatt generated from cheap coal competitors. Yet, put renewable energy interests together with the environmental groups — both lobbies have mushroomed in the past five years — and they are still outnumbered 8 to 1 by all other interests lobbying on climate.

Climate action advocates will be counting on winning some of those interests to their side. Cities, counties and public agencies, for instance, see an opportunity to plug into a new federal revenue stream. Growth of mass transit, for example, could help get cars — and their carbon emissions — off the road. But would-be grant recipients want as few strings attached as possible, meaning fewer assurances that the money will actually be invested in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And take agriculture. It is a hotly disputed subject, but some argue farmers could contribute to the climate solution through improved soil and manure handling practices. Projects to retain carbon in the soil or capture methane from manure are costly, but what if farmers could earn "credits" that they could later sell to coal-fired power companies that have trouble reducing their carbon dioxide emissions? Would these so-called "offsets" be enough to offset the agriculture interests' worries over rising fuel costs? Last year, the American Farm Bureau Federation was originally neutral on the Warner-Lieberman bill, then opposed it when offset opportunities were reduced in later amendments.

Shaping a climate policy to satisfy a variety of narrow interests has obvious perils. And the number of parties interested in influencing climate legislation seems to grow by the day. Wall Street banks and other financial players, for example, had virtually no presence on climate change on Capitol Hill five years ago. But by 2008 they had 130 lobbyists — as many as the alternative energy companies. Wall Street interests see themselves as brokers, project developers, financers and consultants in an emissions "permit" market that one federal regulator estimates could reach $2 trillion in value within five years, making carbon the world's most widely traded commodity.

Among the group of financial climate lobbyists last year was now-serial federal bailout recipient American International Group, which aimed to make investments around the globe in carbon-reduction projects. AIG was forced by public outcry to stop lobbying last fall soon after its first infusion of federal dollars, and the company recently withdrew from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. But there are plenty of other potential carbon marketers looking to weigh in on policy, and oversight of their dealings is sure to be a sticking point — complicating or delaying the already difficult task of crafting a program to tackle global warming.

Former Senator Tim Wirth, president of the Ted Turner-funded UN Foundation — which has been working to promote global progress on climate — is worried. Public policy-making, he says, is by its nature incremental. But as climate scientists deliver ever-more urgent warnings about the rapid pace of warming, Wirth is increasingly convinced that radical action is needed.

"The money that will go into complicating this issue and casting doubt on this issue is going to be increasing as rapidly as the science," he says. "There will be more and more interests weighing in on behalf of doing little, or even taking the incremental steps that you'd expect policymakers to take. And it's exceedingly dangerous."

Negotiations for a new global climate treaty, of course, can go forward just as they have for years, without any clear signal of what sort of commitment the United States is willing to make to cut carbon emissions. But there's no chance of a deal that can make a difference to the planet without the U.S. on board. And that's going to take a feat of political leadership that keeps the interest of solving the climate crisis in the forefront, while leaving the special interests behind.

• From Yale Environment 360, part of Guardian Environment Network

Worlds of business and activism collide at carbon trading conference

2009-03-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

'Our climate, not your business' - a graffitied sign at the Carbon Market Insights Conference. Photograph: Bryony Worthington

osted by Bryony Worthington Thursday 19 March 2009 15.34 GMT guardian.co.uk

This week's Carbon Market Insights Conference in Copenhagen has proved emissions trading is not as dull as it sounds. Just look at the debate of the dramatic price falls in the price of carbon, or the ideological splits emerging between the EU and UN's climate negotiators.

It has struck me there are two conferences going on here. There are the traders, brokers and permit sellers for whom this is a trade conference. They are here to win new business. They sponsor high tech stalls, hand out freebies, provide free cocktails and beer and hire fancy nightclubs to throw parties.

But there are also NGO's, think tanks, policy people and government representatives here. They are here to discuss where emissions trading policy might be going in the future.

The contrast between the two groups is quite stark. Men in stripy suits are really completely indifferent to whether this market is really doing anything for the environment. They can make money whatever the market conditions – they just need volatility and fortunately for them this market delivers that quite effectively.

The other group do care about whether this market is delivering, they have studied it in detail and have many ideas for how it can be improved. This is the group I was hoping to find here. They will be faithfully following every bend in the road to this December's Copenhagen climate treaty negotations, doing what they can to improve the chances of a sensible deal being reached. The conversations in the corridors are wide ranging and full of solutions: how to expand the market to include transport emissions, how to increase the targets to be better in line with the science.

A third group of people also made their presence known during the conference. They were a small but noisy group of 20 or 30 student protesters who banged drums and windows, stayed for about an hour, and then left. The only sign of their presence was the graffiti left behind: "Our climate, not your business" (see above).

I am sympathetic to their concerns. This industry has effectively privatised pollution and so far failed to demonstrate it can deliver the scale of change necessary to tackle the problem. But, I am also a pragmatist.

To increase the chances of carbon trading's success the NGOs and media need to act as a conduit for public pressure – distilling some of the complexities into clear messages and helping people to make their voices heard.

I fear this isn't happening, but the combined effect of lots of disparate voices may still succeed in creating political pressure to allow the ideas of the policy experts to flourish. I hope so. It would be nice if some of the men in stripy suits also joined the debate, but perhaps that is expecting too much.

• Bryony Worthington is founder of Sandbag, a not-for-profit organisation seeking to engage civil society in improving emissions trading policy. Sandbag is part of the Guardian's Environment Network.

Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'

2009-03-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 March 2009 18.31 GMT

Climate activists protest at this month’s Guardian Climate Change Summit in Londonover plans for a coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth, Kent Photograph: Alex Sturrock/AFP

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.

He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".

Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.

Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."

He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. "It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."

U.S., China worlds apart on climate change curbs

2009-03-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

From: Miami Herald

WASHINGTON -- China's top climate negotiator's visit to Washington Monday sent a fresh signal that the two countries, which account for about half the world's greenhouse gas emissions, have a long way to go to reach a common agreement on how to cut emissions to prevent serious climate change.

China wants to become a "low-carbon society," but can't say when that will be achieved. And it doesn't want to be held accountable for emissions it produces to make goods for export, said Li Gao, the director of China's climate change office.

Li described China's actions and plans on climate while the head of China's negotiating team met with his American counterpart at the State Department. The meeting was part of the preparations for global negotiations on an agreement to reduce emissions in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

China plays a big role as the world steps up efforts to hold back global warming.

With 1.3 billion people and a large industrial base, China is the world's biggest source of heat-trapping gases from coal, oil and gas, just ahead of the U.S.

Many members of Congress say they will only support mandatory emissions limits at home if China acts too. And other countries are looking to see what the U.S. will do to cut emissions before they make commitments of their own toward an international agreement due in December.

China shouldn't have to take responsibility for the 15 percent to 25 percent of its emissions that result from making products for the rest of the world, said Li, the director of the Department of Climate Change in China's National Development and Reform Commission. He spoke at a briefing sponsored by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a nonpartisan research organization.

"For many developing countries, not only China, we produce the products for the consumers, especially in developed countries," Li said. He argued it wouldn't be fair to hold China accountable because "we are on the lower end of the economic chain of the global economy."

Li also said it would be a "disaster" - and possibly the start of a trade war - for the U.S. to impose tariffs on imports from China or other countries that didn't have mandatory emissions controls. He said the tariffs would be unfair and a violation of trade rules.

Action by China will be critical for any chance for a global solution to global warming. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined the dangers of letting temperature rise beyond 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Many reports in the past two years find the effects of warming are happening faster than predicted.

Last week, international scientists meeting in Copenhagen for a conference on climate change told world leaders recent observations confirmed "the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized."

The report added many changes, such as average global temperature and changes in the ocean, were "already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived" and that "there is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts."

President Barack Obama has said the U.S. would follow scientific advice on the climate and would reap benefits - including new jobs - from a shift to cleaner energy.

Li said China saw shifting away from fossil fuels was in its own long-term interest, "but I cannot tell you what time we can achieve it, because there's not a format in the world," he said. "I think if developed countries can give us an example, if the global economy can structure to a low-carbon type, that will be helpful for the developing countries to learn the experience and follow the trend."

China's plans call for it to reduce energy intensity - the amount of energy needed for each unit of gross domestic product - and to increase renewable energy to 15 percent of total energy supply by 2020. China also intends to expand the use of biogas in rural areas, plant more trees and expand research in clean energy.

The Chinese delegation was in Washington to talk about China's climate policies and its negotiating position for international climate talks, but not to try to reach any agreement with the U.S., Li said.

"We think that climate change is a global challenge," he said, and that it had to be addressed within the United Nations climate framework. Those negotiations are meant to reach an agreement in December, though some experts predict 2010 is more likely.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the meeting was "a beginning, and we'll see where it leads." He added the Chinese were willing "to really engage on the subject of climate change, and we welcome that."

Selfish use of rivers seen threatening political stability

2009-03-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

From: Reuters

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Countries that selfishly use shared rivers threaten political stability at a time when water is scarce and demand is growing, a conservation group warned on Wednesday.

Disputes over shared rivers such as the Tigris and the Euphrates could be resolved if nations put borders aside and viewed the entire river basin as a unit instead, they added.

In the past some states have built dams or siphoned water from rivers for irrigation without consulting neighbors downstream -- stirring political tension.

"The question countries must face is are they interested only in holding all the water themselves and living in a destabilized region, or do they wish to share the water and cooperate?" said Mark Smith, head of the water program of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a body funded by states, and NGOs.

Rivers shared by more than one country provide about 60 percent of the world's fresh water. There are 260 international river basins in the world, covering half of the Earth's surface and home to 40 percent of the world's population.

Traditionally the focus in negotiations over shared rivers has been how to apportion water. Once the water is divided each country tries to optimize water use within its borders, rather than across the shared basin, the IUCN said.

By working jointly countries could reap better economic benefits from rivers and ease political tensions.

Turkey, hosting the triennial World Water Forum in Istanbul, is home to the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, which form a river basin flowing through Syria and Iraq before draining into the Gulf from Iraq. Wrangling over the rivers is longstanding.

Upriver dams built by Turkey, Syria and Iran have caused Iraq water shortages, exacerbated by an infrastructure devastated by war.

"There is a real distinction between the upstream and downstream position. Those upstream hold a lot of power. In Turkey that power is accentuated because Syria and Iraq are very dry countries," said Smith.

Article Continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52H5TR20090319?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

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Growing pollution leads to 'global dimming'- study

2009-03-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

From: WBCSD
Published March

Visibility on clear days has declined in much of the world since the 1970s thanks to a rise in airborne pollutants, scientists said on Thursday.

They described a "global dimming" in particular over south and east Asia, South America, Australia and Africa, while visibility remained relatively stable over North America and improved over Europe, the researchers said.

Aerosols, tiny particles or liquid droplets belched into the air by the burning of fossil fuels and other sources, are responsible for the dimming, the researchers said.

"Aerosols are going up over a lot of the world, especially Asia," Robert Dickinson of the University of Texas, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

Dickinson and two University of Maryland researchers tracked measurements of visibility -- the distance someone can see on clear days -- taken from 1973 to 2007 at 3,250 meteorological stations worldwide.

Aerosols like soot, dust and sulfur dioxide particles all harmed visibility, they said in the journal Science.

The researchers used recent satellite data to confirm that the visibility measurements from the meteorological stations were a good indicator of aerosol concentrations in the air.

The aerosols from burning coal, industrial processes and the burning of tropical forests can influence the climate and be a detriment to health, the researchers said.

Other pollutants such as carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are transparent and do not affect visibility.

The data will help researchers understand long-term changes in air pollution and how these are associated with climate change, said Kaicun Wang of the University of Maryland.

"This study provides basic information for future climate studies," Wang said in a telephone interview.

The scientists blamed increased industrial activity in places like China and India for some of the decreased visibility, while they said air quality regulations in Europe helped improve visibility there since the mid-1980s.

The aerosols can have variable cooling and heating effects on surface temperatures, reflecting light back into space and reducing solar radiation at the Earth's surface or absorbing solar radiation and heating the atmosphere, they added. (Editing by Maggie Fox)

Sourced from the Thomson Reuters Carbon Markets Community - a free, gated online network for carbon market and climate policy professionals.

Monbiot's royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers

2009-03-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Monbiot's shortlist of people who have done most for the denialist cause - in playing card form

With the Heartland Institute's annual jamboree for climate deniers in full swing in New York here's my shortlist of people who have done most for the denialist cause - in playing card form.

Four of clubs
Sammy Wilson
Northern Ireland environment minister

Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy Wilson. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Sammy Wilson's appointment as Northern Ireland environment minister appears to have been conceived as some sort of practical joke. It's no longer very funny. He fills the same role as the former South African health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who claimed that Aids could be treated with beetroot and lemon juice.

Wilson maintains that environmentalism is a "hysterical pseudo-religion". Climate change is natural and "beyond our control", so "resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change rather than King Canute style vainly trying to stop it."

But the minister for hysterical pseudo-religion intends to cling onto his brief come hell or high water.

Six of diamonds
Václav Klaus
President of Czech Republic

President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, one of the Top 10 climate change deniers. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Klaus is the rightwing president of the Czech Republic, criticised by
Vaclav Havel as a promoter of "gangster capitalism". He describes
himself as "the most important 'denier' in the world", though Viscount
Monckton (see below) might take issue with this.

He told the US Congress that "manmade climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world … Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism." Climate change, he says, is caused "not by human behaviour but by various exogenous and endogenous natural processes (such as fluctuating solar activity)".

He describes concern about climate change as a "new wave of dangerous indoctrination of the whole world" and says that "global-warming alarmism is challenging our freedom, and Al Gore is a leader of that movement."

Seven of hearts
Steve Milloy
Fox News columnist

Fox News columnist Steve Milloy. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Steve Milloy writes a weekly "Junk Science" column for Fox News, which he uses, among other topics, to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of secondhand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Fox describes his credentials thus: "Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute".

What it doesn't say is that he has long acted as a paid advocate for the tobacco company Philip Morris, while the fake grassroots group he runs has also received funding from ExxonMobil.

His website has been the main entrepôt for almost every kind of climate change denial that has found its way into the mainstream press. Milloy claims to be campaigning against "faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas", which seems to be a pretty good summary of his own activities.

Eight of spades
Prof Pat Michaels
Cato Institute

Prof Pat Michaels from the Cato Institute. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Michaels played a starring role in Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle and is regularly used by the US media, largely because he is one of the very few deniers who has any relevant scientific credentials.

He maintains that: "When it comes to global warming, apparently the truth is inconvenient. And it's not just Gore's movie that's fiction. It's the rhetoric of the Congress and the chief executive, too."

Something he is less keen to reveal is that, as a leaked memo from an electricity company shows, he has recently been paid at least $100,000 by companies involved in coal-fired power production to make the public case against climate change. In 2007 Michaels withdrew as an expert witness from a court case about climate change, after it became clear that his other sources of funding could be revealed to the public.

Nine of diamonds
Christopher Monckton
Former adviser to Margaret Thatcher

Former adviser to Thatcher Christopher Monckton. Photograph: The Guardian

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, whose academic qualification is a classics degree, maintains that "politicians, scientists and bureaucrats contrived a threat of Biblical floods, droughts, plagues, and extinctions worthier of St John the Divine than of science." He came to public notice with a long paper published on the website of the Sunday Telegraph, accusing the UN of scientific fraud. His paper was filled with sciencey equations and calculations, which were rapidly dismissed as bunkum by real scientists.

He has threatened several of those who have challenged his scientific claims with libel suits, but they have not yet materialised. Though he has never held a seat in the Lords, he maintained in a threatening letter to two US senators that he was "a member of the Upper House of the United Kingdom legislature".

He has also claimed that, among other unlikely feats, he was responsible for winning the Falklands war. His grand statements about climate science and his own credentials have earned him the nickname among some environmentalists of Viscount Monckhausen.

10 of hearts
Sarah Palin
Governor of Alaska

Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

An Alaskan denying climate change is like a Saudi Arabian denying sand. But can she do it? You betcha. The eagle-eyed governor can – or so the satirists claim- see Russia from her house, but apparently not the melting permafrost, shrinking glaciers and disappearing sea ice closer to home.

During her vice-presidential campaign, she embarrassed John McCain by maintaining: "I'm not one though who would attribute it [climate change] to being manmade." She has refused to classify the polar bear as an endangered species on the grounds that the sea ice is here to stay, but is making plans for opening up the Arctic Sea to oil drilling, on the grounds that the ice is due to disappear. Could her ambivalence towards climate change have anything to do with the fact that Alaska is a major oil state? You betcha.

Jack of clubs
James Inhofe
Senator for Oklahoma

US Senator for Oklahoma James Inhofe one of the Top 10 climate change deniers. Photograph: AP/The Guardian

Inhofe is the senior Senator for Oklahoma. He leads the Republican party's Neanderthal tendency and receives more campaign money from fossil fuel companies than from any other sector.

In 2003 he delivered a speech to the Senate called The Science of Climate Change, in which he said: "The claim that global warming is caused by manmade emissions is simply untrue and not based on sound science … With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."

Seeking to characterise environmentalists, he says: "I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie ... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their strategy." He has also compared the US Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo. Terrifyingly, until 2006 Inhofe chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Queen of diamonds
Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail columnist

Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips. Photograph: The Guardian

Mel P (Genuinely Scary Spice) appears to believe that half the scientists on earth are engaged in a series of giant conspiracies. Like Christopher Booker (below), she dismisses not only climate change but also the entire canon of evolutionary science. She also stoutly defends the thesis that MMR injections cause autism.

She claims that "the theory that global warming is all the fault of mankind is a massive scam based on flawed computer modelling, bad science and an anti-western ideology … The majority of well-meaning opinion in the Western world believes a pack of lies and propaganda". She has also maintained that "carbon dioxide forms a relatively small proportion of the atmosphere, most of which consists of water vapour."

If this were the case, we would need gills.

King of diamonds
Christopher Booker
Sunday Telegraph columnist

Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker. Photograph: Rex/The Guardian

Booker writes a column in the Sunday Telegraph. It's filled with so many misleading claims about climate change, evolution, asbestos, speed cameras and the European Union that it would take an encyclopedia to document them.

His most famous contention was made in a column in February 2008. The previous September, he noted, "sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. … Its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000m sq km to just 4m from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13m sq km."

To reinforce this point, he helpfully republished the graph, showing that the ice had indeed expanded between September and January. The Sunday Telegraph continues to employ a man who cannot tell the difference between summer and winter. The prestigious and highly sought Christopher Booker prize for climate change denial was named in his honour.

Ace of spades
David Bellamy
TV presenter

TV presenter David Bellamy. Photograph: The Guardian

Because he was once an environmentalist and a famous broadcaster, David Bellamy is used as the mascot of climate change deniers all over the world. Like most mascots he is cute, furry and apparently incapable of rational thought. He has claimed that global warming is "poppycock", that "the global warmers are telling lies – carbon dioxide is not the driver" and that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980" (the WGMS responded that this was "complete bullshit").

He maintains that "since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming I've not been allowed to make a TV programme." This is odd because he stopped making TV programmes in 1994. He was making public statements in support of mainstream climate science until at least 2000, and his first public statement to the contrary was in 2004. But the conspiracy extends even further. "Have you noticed there is a wind turbine on Teletubbies?", he asked in the Daily Express. "That's subliminal advertising, isn't it?"

Time to change 'climate change'

2009-03-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

What's clear from Copenhagen is that policymakers have fallen behind the scientists: global warming is already catastrophic

- George Monbiot
- guardian.co.uk,

The more we know, the grimmer it gets.

Presentations by climate scientists at this week's conference in Copenhagen show that we might have underplayed the impacts of global warming in three important respects:

• Partly because the estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took no account of meltwater from Greenland's glaciers, the rise in sea levels this century could be twice or three times as great as it forecast, with grave implications for coastal cities, farmland and freshwater reserves.

• Two degrees of warming in the Arctic (which is heating up much more quickly than the rest of the planet) could trigger a massive bacterial response in the soils there. As the permafrost melts, bacteria are able to start breaking down organic material that was previously locked up in ice, producing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane. This could catalyse one of the world's most powerful positive feedback loops: warming causing more warming.

• Four degrees of warming could almost eliminate the Amazon rainforests, with appalling implications for biodiversity and regional weather patterns, and with the result that a massive new pulse of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Trees are basically sticks of wet carbon. As they rot or burn, the carbon oxidises. This is another way in which climate feedbacks appear to have been underestimated in the last IPCC report.

Apart from the sheer animal panic I felt on reading these reports, two things jumped out at me. The first is that governments are relying on IPCC assessments that are years out of date even before they are published, as a result of the IPCC's extremely careful and laborious review and consensus process. This lends its reports great scientific weight, but it also means that the politicians using them as a guide to the cuts in greenhouse gases required are always well behind the curve. There is surely a strong case for the IPCC to publish interim reports every year, consisting of a summary of the latest science and its implications for global policy.

The second is that we have to stop calling it climate change. Using "climate change" to describe events like this, with their devastating implications for global food security, water supplies and human settlements, is like describing a foreign invasion as an unexpected visit, or bombs as unwanted deliveries. It's a ridiculously neutral term for the biggest potential catastrophe humankind has ever encountered.

I think we should call it "climate breakdown". Does anyone out there have a better idea?

Will the recession cut our CO2 emissions?

2009-03-13T09:53:00.001-07:00

Economic activity is slumping, the price of carbon trading credits plunging – but analysts forecast only a negligible slowdown in global warming

- David Adam
- guardian.co.uk,

As the recession bites, the economies of many countries are slumping. But is the consequent fall in demand for energy and goods significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

In Europe, the emissions trading scheme provides a clue. Firms with high levels of pollution must buy carbon credits, the price of which has fallen below €9 from €30 last summer.

Analysts say the price drop reflects a slowing demand for credits as companies scale back production and cut their carbon emissions. But it could also indicate companies have sold large amounts of surplus credits to raise cash.

Frank Convery, professor of environmental policy at University College Dublin, said the big sectors in the trading scheme, such as cement, steel, pulp, paper and glassmaking, were all in sharp decline. "And all that feeds back into emissions."

Sectors of the economy not covered by the scheme, such as agriculture and light industry, are faring little better. "Every single one you look at, the output is heading south," Convery said.

Alex Bowen, an economist with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, who helped to write the 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, said transport would be affected too, as firms sent fewer goods and materials by road, sea and air. "Emissions from transport are likely to be hit quite a lot," he said.

Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change for the third quarter of 2008 showed a 8.5% fall in transport fuel consumption on 2007 levels — though this is more likely to reflect last summer's high prices.

Bowen said emissions from gas burnt in domestic heating, the other major source of UK carbon emissions, were less likely to shrink with the recession.

The actual impact of the recession on emissions will be confirmed only by the publication of national pollution figures, but these are issued infrequently and are usually out of date.

Overall, experts say the impact of the recession on global warming will not be very significant, because, despite policies to cut carbon emissions, the scale of a country's carbon emissions is still tied closely to its gross domestic product (GDP).

Bowen said the rule of thumb used in the Stern review was that a 1% change in GDP brings a 0.9% change in carbon pollution. That means the 2.5% decline in worldwide GDP for 2009 projected by the International Monetary Fund would reduce emissions by 2.25%.

Figures for the past five years suggest carbon emissions have risen by 2.5% each year, which indicates they could still rise by 0.25% this year, despite the economic downturn. The rise will continue to be driven by coal-fuelled economic growth in China and India, Bowen said, but more slowly than before.

Pieter Tans, a scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors CO₂ in the atmosphere, said: "I see no sign of any slowdown of the global trend." Carbon dioxide levels have risen by between 2 and 3 parts per million (ppm) each year over the past decade. Tans said a 6% drop in emissions — equivalent to a near 7% drop in GDP — would reduce that annual growth rate only by 0.24ppm. "This is well within the year-to-year natural variability of the CO₂ increase we have observed over many decades."

Preliminary measurements show the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere reached a new high of 386.6ppm in December 2008.

Keith Allott, head of climate change with WWF, said the recession would be a "painful blip" in emissions figures. "In terms of the global carbon budget we have for this century, it might buy us a year or two," he said. Allott warned the short-term cut in carbon emissions could "flatter to deceive", by suggesting the problem was under control, and should not be allowed to derail investment in clean energy. "We've seen a huge boom and bust in the economy. We can't afford a similar boom and bust in the climate."

There is one positive note for some European countries — the recession may help them meet tough greenhouse gas targets set under the Kyoto protocol. Nations such as Austria, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark and Finland, are way off-track on Kyoto targets andface having to buy millions of credits to cover their shortfalls from 2012.

In Ireland, for example, experts say the recession has cut GDP by 9%, taking it back to 2005 levels. Convery says this has probably reduced annual greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount, from the 70m tonnes recorded in 2006, to close to the 63m tonnes permitted under Kyoto. Ireland alone could therefore save €300m on purchases of carbon credits, Convery said.

California panel urges 'immediate action' to protect against rising sea levels

2009-03-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

From: LA Times

Global warming is projected to cause ocean levels to rise 55 inches or more by the end of the century. Report recommends phased abandonment of coastal areas and moving state infrastructure inland.

By Margot Roosevelt
March 12, 2009

As California officials see it, global warming is happening so there's no time to waste in figuring out what to do.

California's interagency Climate Action Team on Wednesday issued the first of 40 reports on impacts and adaptation, outlining what the state's residents must do to deal with the floods, erosion and other effects expected from rising sea levels.

Hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars of Golden State infrastructure and property would be at risk if ocean levels rose 55 inches by the end of the century, as computer models suggest, according to the report.

The group floated several radical proposals: limit coastal development in areas at risk from sea rise; consider phased abandonment of certain areas; halt federally subsidized insurance for property likely to be inundated; and require coastal structures to be built to adapt to climate change.

"Immediate action is needed," said Linda Adams, secretary for environmental protection. "It will cost significantly less to combat climate change than it will to maintain a business-as-usual approach."

Few topics are likely to be more contentious than coastal development. But along the state's 2,000-mile shoreline the effects would be acute, particularly in San Mateo and Orange counties, where more than 100,000 people would be affected, according to the 99-page state-commissioned report by the Oakland-based Pacific Institute.

Detailed maps of the coastline, published on the institute's website, show that residential neighborhoods in Venice and Marina del Rey could find themselves in a flood zone. Water could cover airports in San Francisco and Oakland, parts of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and large swaths of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

Article Continues: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-global-warming-searise12-2009mar12,0,2741152.story

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Trade Concerns Raised in U.S. Climate Debate

2009-03-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

From: Worldwatch Institute

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and U.S. legislative leaders are discussing the inclusion of tariffs in the country's climate change policy, the Democratic Congressman said yesterday.

Although sparse on details, Brown said he and California Senator Barbara Boxer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, have spoken about trade provisions he described as "border equalization" measures.

"If a U.S. company, say a steel mill in Ohio, if their cost goes up dramatically for cutting carbon, it's one more reason to think they're not going to be competitive.... They lose jobs. [The state] loses manufacturing," Brown said during an event on green jobs hosted by theWorldwatch Institute and Heinrich Böll Foundation. "We need some guarantee that my state will not be overwhelmed by the costs [of a climate change bill]."

Brown is among a group of Democratic senators from industrial states whose coveted votes on climate legislation may be lost due to worries that the policy would cast undue economic hardship on their states.

Brown also raised concern about President Barack Obama's plan to return two-thirds of the profits from emissions credits to taxpayers, which the president has said would help offset the cost of higher energy bills. Such a policy may benefit states that are less reliant on fossil fuel energy sources, but not more-dependent regions, he said. Ohio burns coal for 86 percent of its electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

"The benefit is directed to everyone nationally in a middle-class tax cut. It doesn't strike me as fair," he said. "Those who bear the burden need to get benefits back."

Brown has called for assistance to the working class throughout his Senate term, but the issue has taken on greater urgency with the economic recession. Brown carried his concerns into the climate debate last year when he and a group of 10 senators from coal and automotive industry states opposed U.S. climate legislation. Five senators have since joined the group, after a letter outlining the senators' main concerns was delivered to Senator Boxer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in June.

"The final bill must include enhanced safeguards to ensure a truly equitable and effective global effort that minimizes harm to the U.S. economy and protects American jobs," the letter said [PDF]. "If this mechanism [to protect manufacturing jobs] does not work, or is found to be noncompliant with the World Trade Organization, then the program needs to be modified or suspended."

Companies that represent the steel and utility industries have lobbied for tariffs on goods imported from countries that have less-stringent carbon restrictions - a policy often referred to as a "border adjustment charge" [PDF]. The U.S. Steel Corp. predicts that the United States may lose as many as 1 million jobs in the steel sector to countries such as China and Mexico.

Protectionist measures would likely draw the ire of U.S. trading partners and possibly violate World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, according to Jake Colvin, vice president for global trade issues with the National Foreign Trade Council, a U.S. trade advocacy group.

Yet climate policy may be written in such a way that would circumvent current WTO rules, Colvin suggested during a speech [PDF] to the Global Business Dialogue in January. "International law in this area is relatively unformed, which suggests that there is an advantage to acting sooner rather than later," he said. "The first [climate legislation] proposals are more likely to become the foundation on which WTO rules will be based in the future."

In Europe, critics have voiced economic concerns similar to Brown's. But the combination of a regional cap-and-trade agreement and incentives for renewable energy

industries have led to employment increases in Germany, said Rainer Hinrichs-Rahlwes, vice president of the European Renewable Energy Federation.

Renewable energy produced about 16 percent of Germany's electricity and 260,000 jobs last year, according to Hinrichs-Rahlwes. "Wind is the second largest buyer of steel products," he said during the event yesterday. "It's helped our steel industry remain competitive."

Despite Brown's criticism of proposed climate policies, he noted that climate change is "the great moral issue of our times." He also said that he supports an increase in technology transfer to China.

"We should share as much technology [with China] as we can so their coal-fired plants can be as clean as they can," he said.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service. For permission to reprint Eye on Earth content, please contact Juli Diamond at jdiamond@worldwatch.org.

U.S. seeks to spur renewable energy on public lands

2009-03-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

From: Ayesha Rascoe, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday said it has created a special task force to speed the development of renewable energy projects on federal lands.

"More so than ever, with job losses continuing to mount, we need to steer the country onto a new energy path," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The task force will identify specific zones on public lands where the department can act rapidly to create large-scale production of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy.

"We will assign a high priority to identifying renewable energy zones and completing the permitting and appropriate environmental review of transmission rights-of-way applications that are necessary to deliver renewable energy generation to consumers," Salazar said. "We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the wind of the plains with the places where people live."

Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE52A64Q20090312

As expected, no commercial salmon fishing this year

2009-03-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

By ROBERT DIGITALE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT, Santa Rosa California

Published: Friday, March 13, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 6:32 p.m.

The bleak outlook for salmon fishermen continued Thursday when federal regulators crafted three options for fishing seasons that all would prohibit commercial catches off California.

The Global Warming Archive

Oceans Absorb Less Carbon Dioxide as Marine Systems Change

Global Salmon Study Shows 'Sustainable' Food May Not Be So Sustainable

Ribbon Seal Protection Sought by Activists

Climate-change technology risks 'catastrophic' outcome

Schwarzenegger to Obama cabinet: Water... please!

Schwarzenegger to Obama cabinet: Water... please!

Abrupt reversal detected in Arctic cooling trend

Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat

Arctic Ocean may be polluted soup by 2070

Flying frogs and the world's oldest mushroom: a decade of Himalayan discovery

More wildfire, more bad air

Can national parks be saved from global warming?

How to Get Cancer: Move to the United States

From: Live Science

Alaskan Glaciers REALLY are Shrinking

All three glaciers have shrunk and thinned, the report says, with the mass loss rapidly accelerating over the past 15 years. The South Cascade Glacier has lost nearly 25% of its weight, and the two Alaskan glaciers about 15%.

Greenwash: easyJet's carbon claims written on the wind

China dust cloud circled globe in 13 days

China dust cloud circled globe in 13 days

Ocean current switch due to warming could be slower than feared

NOAA Reports Record Ocean Surface Temperatures for June

How Clouds Over the Oceans Affect Our Climate

Drax protesters found guilty of obstructing coal train

Great Lakes wolves returning to endangered list

Under a settlement with five environmental and animal protection groups that had sued the agency earlier this month, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would return Great Lakes wolves to the list while considering its next move.

Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland

Burger chain's climate change whopper

Burger chain's climate change whopper

UK carbon offset schemes 'failing to reduce emissions'

NASA Satellite Detects Red Glow to Map Global Ocean Plant Health

Brazilian beef industry blamed for Amazon deforestation

Global Bird Species in Serious Decline

What the future looks like

'We know what to do: why don't we do it?'

Study Links Stranded Marine Animals to Environmental Toxins

Yale Study Finds Evidence that Damaged Ecosystems Can Recover Rapidly

Stingrays suffering from contact with wildlife tourists, study finds

Disturbia

Emergency Action Taken for Threatened and Endangered Sea Turtles:Six-month Closure Ordered of Gulf of Mexico Fishery

Major Potential CO2 Storage in the North Sea

Southern California Beetle Killing Oaks

Damaged Barrier Reef coral makes 'spectacular' recovery

Budget 2009: Darling promises 34% emissions cuts with world's first binding carbon budgets

Severe Texas Drought Threatens Coastal Wildlife

New study shows widespread and substantial declines in wildlife in Kenya's Masai Mara

The emissions reductions gospel is failing – we need something more

We must protect communities who face climate change displacement

Just what is it with evangelical Christians and global warming?

Ice bridge ruptures in Antarctic

Thousands of rare Irrawaddy dolphins found along Bangladesh coast

Climate change the biggest loser of G20 summit, warn environmental groups

Ice-free Arctic Ocean Possible In 30 Years, Not 90 As Previously Estimated

Ninety years of birdwatchers' notes going online

Don't Miss

Britain set to become most populous country in EU

The world by numbers

Perfect storm of environmental and economic collapse closer than you think

Nearly a third of U.S. bird species in trouble

The Nano, world's cheapest car, to hit Indian roads

An army of lobbyists readies for battle on the climate bill

Worlds of business and activism collide at carbon trading conference

Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'

U.S., China worlds apart on climate change curbs

Selfish use of rivers seen threatening political stability

Growing pollution leads to 'global dimming'- study

Monbiot's royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers

Four of clubsSammy WilsonNorthern Ireland environment minister

Six of diamondsVáclav KlausPresident of Czech Republic

Seven of heartsSteve MilloyFox News columnist

Eight of spadesProf Pat MichaelsCato Institute

Nine of diamondsChristopher MoncktonFormer adviser to Margaret Thatcher

10 of heartsSarah PalinGovernor of Alaska

Jack of clubsJames InhofeSenator for Oklahoma

Queen of diamondsMelanie PhillipsDaily Mail columnist

King of diamondsChristopher BookerSunday Telegraph columnist

Ace of spadesDavid BellamyTV presenter

Time to change 'climate change'

Will the recession cut our CO2 emissions?

California panel urges 'immediate action' to protect against rising sea levels

Four of clubs
Sammy Wilson
Northern Ireland environment minister

Six of diamonds
Václav Klaus
President of Czech Republic

Seven of hearts
Steve Milloy
Fox News columnist

Eight of spades
Prof Pat Michaels
Cato Institute

Nine of diamonds
Christopher Monckton
Former adviser to Margaret Thatcher

10 of hearts
Sarah Palin
Governor of Alaska

Jack of clubs
James Inhofe
Senator for Oklahoma

Queen of diamonds
Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail columnist

King of diamonds
Christopher Booker
Sunday Telegraph columnist

Ace of spades
David Bellamy
TV presenter