Politicians sign new climate pact

The climate debate is over, said US presidential candidate John McCain

Leading international politicians have reached a new agreement on tackling climate change, at a Washington summit.

Delegates agreed that developing countries would also have to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as well as rich countries.

The informal meeting also agreed that a global market should be formed to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions.

The non-binding declaration is seen as vital in influencing a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, correspondents say.

The forum's closing statement said man-made climate change was now "beyond doubt".

"Climate change is a global issue and there is an obligation on us all to take action, in line with our capabilities and historic responsibilities," said the statement from the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

'Tipping point'

The two-day meeting brought together legislators from countries including the Group of Eight rich nations, plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

Climate science: what's new? Hard bargaining for deal Send us your comments

The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin was at the meeting and says that although the declaration carries no formal weight, it indicates a real change in mood.

The legislators agreed that developing countries had to face targets on greenhouse gas emissions, in the same way rich countries do.

They said they wanted a successor to the Kyoto Protocol - which expires in 2012 - in place by 2009.

US senator Joe Lieberman forecast that the US Congress would enact a law on cutting emissions by the end of next year, possibly this year.

And presidential candidate John McCain, who is co-sponsoring climate legislation with Mr Lieberman, was emphatic on the need for new initiatives.

"I am convinced that we have reached the tipping point and that the Congress of the United States will act, with the agreement of the administration," he told the forum.

But Dr John Holdren, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said President George W Bush needed to appreciate that the US economy would not suffer unnecessarily if emission were capped.

"The economic damage from not addressing climate change is much larger than the economic cost of addressing it," he said.

Canada re-opens Kyoto row

Meanwhile, the Canadian parliament moved to force the government to meet its Kyoto Protocol target for reducing emissions.

The ruling Conservative party argues that meeting the target, of reducing emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012, is impossible.

The parliamentary vote gives the government 60 days to formulate a plan for getting back on track.

With United Nations climate negotiations in December failing to agree a timetable for mandating new cuts in emissions when the current Kyoto targets expire in 2012, the British-led Globe set up the Washington meeting in the hope of stimulating progress in a less formal setting.

The UN's panel on climate change said earlier this month that higher global temperatures caused by man-made pollution would melt polar ice, worsen floods and droughts and cause more devastating storms.

source: bbc.co.uk

EU reaches deal on emissions cuts

The EU wants the rest of the developed world to follow its lead

EU environment ministers have agreed in principle to cut greenhouse emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

The ministers, meeting in Brussels, also agreed to seek a 30% cut worldwide if matched by other developed nations.

The proposals, outlined by the European Commission in January, are seen as a key measure to curb climate change.

The EU must still decide how to make cuts, allowing for a possible compromise with member states opposed to mandatory targets.

Hungary and Poland, who joined the EU in 2004, are said to have opposed the cuts.

Finland has also reportedly voiced opposition to the Commission's targets.

But German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said his country was prepared to go further and cut emissions by 40%.

"There will be some countries like Germany that will see a steeper reduction in greenhouse gases," he said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

Struggle for consensus

On Sunday, environment ministers from the UK, Spain and Slovenia urged the 27-member block to endorse the 30% target.

In an article for the BBC News website, they said that failure to act would threaten efforts to persuade nations such as the US and China to agree to cap emissions.

In January, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas urged "the rest of the developed world to follow our lead, match our reductions and accelerate progress towards an international agreement on the global emission reductions".

However, international negotiations on the shape of the framework to replace the current Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, have struggled to reach a consensus.

A number of nations have voiced doubts about the effectiveness of national emission limits.

source: bbc.co.uk

Scientists allege White House pressure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. scientists felt pressured to tailor their writings on global warming to fit the Bush administration's skepticism, in some cases at the behest of an ex-oil industry lobbyist, a congressional committee heard on Tuesday.

"Our investigations found high-quality science struggling to get out," Francesca Grifo of the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

A survey by the group found that 150 climate scientists personally experienced political interference in the past five years, for a total of at least 435 incidents.

"Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," Grifo said.

Rick Piltz, a former U.S. government scientist who said he resigned in 2005 after pressure to soft-pedal findings on global warming, told the committee in prepared testimony that former White House official Phil Cooney took an active role in casting doubt on the consequences of global climate change.

Cooney, who was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute before becoming chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, resigned in 2005 to work for oil giant ExxonMobil.

Documents on global climate change required Cooney's review and approval, Piltz said.

"His edits of program reports, which had been drafted and approved by career science program managers, had the cumulative effect of adding an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about global warming and minimizing its likely consequences," Piltz said.

The hearing was one of two on Tuesday spotlighting global climate change; a Senate forum featured testimony from members of that chamber, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois among Democrats and Republican John McCain of Arizona.

Winter Weather Across the United States

A powerful winter storm swept across the United States on January 15 and January 16, 2007, leaving much of the country under snow and ice. The storm moved from northern Texas, across the Midwest, and into the Northeast. By January 16, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image, the clouds cleared enough to reveal a path of snow across the Midwest. The Intermountain West was also buried in a blanket of white snow, but the Southeast and the East were still covered by a broad band of clouds. More winter weather swamped the Midwest in the days that followed. By January 19, icy roads and other weather-related incidents had claimed 70 lives, reported CNN.

This image of the United States was stitched together from three satellite overpasses. Faint diagonal lines across the image reveal the boundary between each image. The large image provided above has a resolution of one kilometer per pixel.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

An Unlikely Alliance

Environmental Woes: A lignite-fired power plant spews smoke over the German village of Gusdorf

By Samantha Henig

Newsweek

Updated: 11:13 a.m. CT Jan 17, 2007

Jan. 17, 2007 - A group of 28 scientists and evangelical Christians today announced their commitment to working together to address global and environmental climate change--an issue that they say is pressing enough to trump any theological differences between the groups. Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, is one of the scientists leading the collaboration. In an interview with NEWSWEEK’s Samantha Henig, Chivian discussed the origins of this peculiar union, what the two groups have in common, how the evangelical Christian community can help scientists and the spiritual significance of his fruit garden. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Scientists and evangelicals have announced that they are coming together to address global warming and environmental change. What exactly does this collaboration entail?
Eric Chivian: We believe that it was very important for these two groups--scientists and evangelical Christians--to get together and speak with one voice, because the public sees us as disagreeing on a whole variety of issues. And yet it was clear after we began to meet that we really shared a very deep reverence for life and we shared an enormous concern about what was being done to it by human activity. And that was a surprise to us.

What do you have planned?
We are planning to meet with a bipartisan group of members of the Congress this afternoon. I know we’re meeting with Sen. Barbara Boxer and with the staff of Sen. Dick Lugar, and others in both the House and Senate. We are planning a large meeting some time in the near future of our two communities, a large public meeting. This is just the beginning of this dialogue.

Who are the scientists working on this? Are any of them members of the National Association of Evangelicals?
Some in the evangelical group are also scientists. For example, Cal Dewitt is a professor of environmental science at the University of Wisconsin, but he’s also a prominent evangelical. Randy Isaac is a scientist who runs something called the American Scientific Affiliation, which is a group of some 2,000 scientists, most of whom are evangelicals, but are also scientists. So this distinction between scientist and evangelical is not a firm one.

It seems like an unlikely pairing, evangelicals and scientists.
Yes, it does.

continue @ newsweek

Expert Wants to Decertify Global Warming Skeptics

Apparently in the Senate, at least one scientist wants to put a permanent stop to any arguments over Global Warming. The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming.

Global Warming Exposes New Islands in the Arctic

LIVERPOOL LAND, Greenland — Flying over snow-capped peaks and into a thick fog, the helicopter set down on a barren strip of rocks between two glaciers. A dozen bags of supplies, a rifle and a can of cooking gas were tossed out onto the cold ground. Then, with engines whining, the helicopter lifted off, snow and fog swirling in the rotor wash.

When it had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the howling of the Arctic wind.

“It feels a little like the days of the old explorers, doesn’t it?” Dennis Schmitt said.

Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.

Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice.

Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island’s distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north — looks like the end of the peninsula.

Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble.

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks — “lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.

“We are already in a new era of geography,” said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon — of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it — is a real common phenomenon now.”

full story: nytimes.com

Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Oil Company Spent Nearly $16 Million to Fund Skeptic Groups, Create Confusion

WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 3–A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."

source: ucsusa.org