Archive for the ‘Climate Change’ Category

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Stern Review on the economics of climate change

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

– this is a major report on the economics of climate change by the British Government.

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Stern Review final report

The pre-publication edition of the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change is available to be downloaded below either on a chapter-by-chapter basis or in parts covering broader themes. The report is available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

Hardcopies will be available from January at a charge of c. £29.99 + £3.50 postage and packing (quoting ISBN number: 0-521-70080-9). Copies can be ordered from Cambridge University Press via the website http://www.cambridge.org/9780521700801, by fax on +44 (0)1223 315052 or post from the following address: Science Marketing, Freepost, Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2.

More… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, Politics, Politics - The Right Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

GLOBAL WARMING REPORT: Right-Wing Fiction vs. Economic Reality

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

As the scientific consensus on the reality of global warming’s effects have strengthened, global warming deniers have resorted to arguing that, even if it is real, it’s too expensive to mitigate. Some examples:

National Review’s Jason Steorts: “Even if warming is predominately the result of human activity, and even if its harms will outweigh its benefits, the question is whether it will be bad enough to justify the economic castration that significant greenhouse-gas reductions would require.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK): “The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.”

Rush Limbaugh: “Would you get off the global warming stuff, some people are saying. No, I’m not going to get off of it because what’s at stake is the US economy, folks, what’s at stake is our lifestyle. The people that are trying to force this on everybody and take the natural fluctuations of our climate.”

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Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, Politics, Politics - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Senators call on Exxon to stop funding climate change denial lobby

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

In an act of surprising bi-partisanship so close to the mid-term elections, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA) have penned a letter to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson demanding that Exxon, “end any further financial assistance [to groups] whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth.” The Senators singled out the Washington lobby group Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose penchant for promoting junk science on climate change has been stoked over the years by over $2 million oily dollars from ExMo.

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Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, General, Politics, Politics - The Right Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Australia plans major solar plant

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Australia is to build one of the world’s biggest solar power plants as part of a major new strategy by the government to combat climate change. Canberra said it would be contributing A$75m (US$57m) to the A$420m plant due to be built in the state of Victoria.

The government also announced A$50m in funding towards a major project to reduce carbon emissions from coal.

Australia, a leading exporter in coal – has been criticised for failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

The government had argued that the 1997 agreement on greenhouse gas emissions would damage the domestic economy.But the country has been forced to confront the issue of climate change with a prolonged drought – the worst in a century – that is destroying the livelihoods of thousands of farmers.

National grid

On Monday, Prime Minister John Howard announced that the government would be investing A$500m (US$379m) in clean technology.

One of the first projects to get funding is what Finance Minister Peter Costello said aimed to be the “biggest photovoltaic project in the world”.

The plant at Victoria will use mirrored panels to concentrate the sun’s rays and produce power that can go into the national grid, he told Australian radio.

Work is due to get under way in 2008 and reach full capacity by 2013.

The government is also investing in a A$360m pilot project, based at an existing coal-fired power station also in Victoria, which is aimed at capturing and storing carbon emissions.

“This will make a major contribution to emission reduction in Australia and it just shows practical, considered, financially viable, workable technologies which can improve the emissions problem that will help us on our way to reduce global warming,” Mr Costello said.

Original story here… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, Politics, Politics - The Right Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

British wildlife head north as planet warms

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

LONDON (AFP) – Biologists in Britain have discerned a mass migration of fauna over the past 25 years as animals try to outrun global warming by heading for cooler climes in the north.

Studies by the University of York have shown that 80 percent of some 300 monitored species are on the move, abandoning areas they have inhabited for millennia and heading 70 to 100 kilometres (40 to 60 miles) north.

“Our sample is large enough to be sure about the pattern of change,” said Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at the university.

“Eighty percent is a surprisingly large percentage … It’s amazing how strong and already visible is the signature of climate change.”

Animals studied by the university included insects, mammals, vertebrates and invertebrates. Seventy percent of the species found to be on the move were heading to higher ground, up to 150 metres (495 feet) above their normal habitats.

Some scientists predict that average temperatures in Britain will increase by 3.5 degrees Celsius (38.3 degrees Fahrenheit) between now and 2080. Over the past century they have climbed just 0.6 degrees, but the 1990s was the hottest decade on records going back some 400 years.

“Average global temperatures in 2100 will probably be higher than for at least two, and quite probably 10 million or more years,” Shaw said.

More… ➡

research credit to MD – thx

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Apocalypse Now: How Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

– This is a particularly good article and I highly recommend reading it. Â It may be more that a year old but its information is, if anything, even more topical than ever.

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Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world’s top scientists warned last week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow. You don’t believe it? Then, says Geoffrey Lean, read this…

(Originally published on February 6th, 2005)

Last week, 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists – meeting at Tony Blair’s request at the Met Office’s new headquarters at Exeter – issued the most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place, and that time is running out.

Next week the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that tries to control global warming, comes into force after a seven-year delay. But it is clear that the protocol does not go nearly far enough.

The alarms have been going off since the beginning of one of the warmest Januaries on record. First, Dr Rajendra Pachauri – chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – told a UN conference in Mauritius that the pollution which causes global warming has reached “dangerous” levels.

Then the biggest-ever study of climate change, based at Oxford University, reported that it could prove to be twice as catastrophic as the IPCC’s worst predictions. And an international task force – also reporting to Tony Blair, and co-chaired by his close ally, Stephen Byers – concluded that we could reach “the point of no return” in a decade.

Finally, the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out – just before his company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the main causes of the problem – to warn that unless governments take urgent action there “will be a disaster”.

More… ➡

research credit to MD – thx

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Ocean Acidification, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Can “Tipping Points” Accelerate Global Warming?

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

OSLO – Rising temperatures trigger a runaway melt of Greenland’s ice sheet, raising sea levels and drowning Pacific islands and cities from New York to Tokyo.

In Siberia, the permafrost thaws, releasing vast frozen stores of greenhouse gases that send temperatures even higher. In the tropics, the Amazon rainforest starts to die off because of a warmer, drier climate.

Such scenarios may read like the script of a Hollywood disaster movie but many scientists say there are real risks of “tipping points” — sudden, catastrophic changes triggered by human activities blamed for warming the planet.

“Even small risks in the climate need to be considered, just as we try to avert accidents at nuclear power plants,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and an expert in ocean currents.

“I don’t think this is scaremongering. We don’t really understand the system,” he said of risks that the warm Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic might shut down in one possible “tipping point” scenario.

Melting ice in Greenland could send a sudden flow of cool water into the North Atlantic, disrupting the giant current that pulls warm water northwards to create the Gulf Stream.

This might shut down the warm current and could also make parts of Europe and North America sharply colder, despite an overall warming of the climate.

More… ➡

research credit to MD – thx

Posted in Climate Change, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Expect a climatic ‘wild ride,’ study says

Saturday, October 21st, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world — especially the Western United States, the Mediterranean region and Brazil — will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts.

But the prediction of a future of nasty extreme weather also includes fewer freezes and a longer growing season.

In a preview of a major international report on climate change that comes out next year, a study out of the National Center for Atmospheric Research details what nine of the world’s top computer models predict for the lurching of climate at its most extreme.

“It’s going to be a wild ride, especially for specific regions,” said study lead author Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the federally funded academic research center.

Tebaldi pointed to the Western U.S., Mediterranean nations and Brazil as “hot spots” that will get extremes at their worst, according to the computer models.

And some places, such as the Pacific Northwest, are predicted to get a strange double whammy of longer dry spells punctuated by heavier rainfall.

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Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Gravity Measurements Confirm Greenland’s Glaciers Precipitous Meltdown

Friday, October 20th, 2006

– The scary part of this article is towards the end. And I quote:

‘This study and other GRACE studies published by [others] all agree that there is significant mass wastage of Greenland into the ocean,” notes glaciologist Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “None of this has been predicted by numerical models, and therefore all projections of the contribution of Greenland to sea level [rise] are way below reality.“‘

– To get an idea of why this is scary, read about the Thermohaline Circulation here and especially here.  This is definitely an evolving piece of the Perfect Storm.
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Of late, the enormous glaciers that flow down to the sea from the interior of Greenland have been picking up speed. In the last few years, enough ice has come off the northern landmass to sustain the average flow of the Colorado River for six years or fill Lake Mead three times over or cover the state of Maryland in 10 feet of water, assuming it were perfectly flat. And whether it is the glaciers’ weight, speed or volume that is measured, a quickening of the their movement can be detected. In fact, the latest gravity-based measurements show that the glaciers lost roughly 101 gigatons of ice annually between 2003 and 2005, according to a paper published online in Science.

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Posted in Climate Change, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Climate water threat to millions

Friday, October 20th, 2006

-I’ve written about the coming water problems here.

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Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund.

Recent research suggests that by 2050, five times as much land is likely to be under “extreme” drought as now.

Tearfund wants richer states to look at helping poorer ones adjust to drought at next month’s UN climate summit.

This week the UK’s climate minister said he is confident of reaching an deal on adaptation funds at the talks.

There is an “urgent need” for such measures, Ian Pearson told a parliamentary committee.

The Tearfund report, Feeling the Heat, urges donors to ramp up assistance quickly. Other charities are likely to make similar pleas in the run-up to the Nairobi summit, which begins on 6 November.

Citing research by the Oxford academic Norman Myers, Tearfund suggests there will be as many as 200 million climate refugees by 2050.

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Posted in Climate Change, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages | No Comments »

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