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158 countries agree to 'rough' emissions target (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:23
| Associated Press: Negotiators from 158 countries reached a basic agreement yesterday on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world's biggest polluters to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. A weeklong UN climate conference concluded that industrialised countries should strive to cut emissions by 25%-40% of their 1990 levels by 2020. Experts said that target would serve as a loose guide for a major international climate summit to be held in December in Bali, ... |
Getting the goods on green celebs (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:23
| LA Times: NO, it's not easy being green, least of all for Hollywood A-listers living in jaw-dropping decadence. Solar panels on a 50,000-square-foot manse in Malibu just don't scream "Live simply!" Ditto hopping onto a private plane to get to the Live Earth concert. Of course, celebrities don't let their lavish lifestyles stop them from preaching to the rest of us about temperance. Eco-friendly living isn't about great sacrifice, they contend, it's about making small but powerful ... |
Stuck in guzzlers on road to nowhere (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:23
| Sydney Morning Herald: T he Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards took a huge political gamble this week. He told an audience of unionists in Florida that they needed to make a big sacrifice: give up their four-wheel-drives in the interests of combating greenhouse gas emissions. "I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice," Edwards said during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "One of the things they should be asked to do is ... |
Australia: Timber battle stumps rivals (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:23
| Canberra Times: KERMIT the frog made it plain. Being green can be a bit fraught, but so can the alternative. Both the Coalition and Labor are finding it so, thanks to a certain pulp mill in a little corner of Australia's smallest state. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has come up with an ingenious solution to the sticky pulp-mill politics threatening to engulf him quite a way north of Tasmania, in his own leafy Bondi-based electorate. He's simply put off the necessary decision on whether it ... |
Climate change may wash away China's dream (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Telegraph (UK): THE huge industrial zone at the heart of the "Made in China" economic miracle could be inundated by sea water as a result of global warming, scientists say. Meteorologists in Guangdong, the coastal province neighbouring Hong Kong which has led China's manufacturing boom, estimate sea levels could rise by 30 centimetres by 2050. That could lead to more than 1200 square kilometres of the province being flooded, the report by its weather authority said. Worst affected ... |
Australia: Climate TV ads feel heat (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Sydney Morning Herald: THE Howard Government's $23 million climate change campaign will include television advertisements carrying simplistic messages about how householders can tackle global warming. The Government claims to have "developed new ways to make coal clean" and to be "supporting new clean power stations that use geothermal heat". The ads have not yet been booked but the campaign has already hit criticism. Greenpeace is seeking legal advice about whether the ads breach ... |
Global eel population slip-sliding away (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Kyodo News: Japan, Europe, the United States and Canada are experiencing a sharp decline in eel populations due chiefly to overfishing, pollution and destruction of habitats because of river projects. In the face of this, the European Union endorsed a proposal in June for a 60 percent cut in the catch of European eel fry by 2013. Its proposal to restrict their export was also approved by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The EU decision is ... |
Greenhouse emissions cut a quarter by 2020 (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Telegraph (UK): Industrial nations have agreed that cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of at least a quarter are needed by 2020 to slow down global warming, in preliminary talks on a replacement for the Kyoto climate treaty in Vienna. Delegates at the 158-nation meeting, which included the United States, struck a compromise deal noting that a suggested cut of 25-45 per cent on 1990 levels "provides useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions ... |
Ecuador: $350m to leave oil in the ground (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Guardian: Long before you reach the site the jungle changes. Birds and insects fall quiet, streams turn inky and trees become stunted, their leaves blackened and scrunched up, like fists. The trail turns wider and muddier, for vehicles come here, and there is an unfamiliar sound, a sort of whooshing, followed by crackling. And then you see it: fire dancing over the tree tops. The flames seem to lick the canopy in great billowing tongues, as if the Amazon were burning. It is a ... |
Aust, US 'lack credentials' to lead climate change talks (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Reuters: Malaysia says Australia and the United States should not hijack next week's summit of Asia-Pacific leaders to discuss climate change, saying it is not the right forum. Australia has written to leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to put climate change at the top of the agenda at the September 2-9 summit in Sydney. But fellow APEC member Malaysia said Australia and the United States lacked credentials to lead discussions on the ... |
Billions Up in Flames as Oil Firms Burn Gas (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Inter Press Service: Energy producers waste about 40 billion dollars every year by burning off gas released at oil fields, says a new study commissioned by the World Bank. The practice, known as flaring, also hastens climate change by spewing some 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, says the study, billed as the first global survey supported by photos taken from satellites in space. Scientists say carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are mainly responsible for ... |
Cheap coal, dirty air (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| LA Times: Coal is one of the most environmentally destructive substances on Earth. Coal-fired power plants, which produce more than half the nation's electricity, are the biggest source of airborne toxic substances in the U.S. and are responsible for about half the particulate matter polluting our skies. They are also often fingered as the biggest contributors to global warming because of the greenhouse gases they emit. What is less discussed is the horrifying damage wrought by coal even before it ... |
Developed Countries Should Cut Emissions 40% by 2020 (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:24
| Bloomberg: Industrialized nations need to curb emissions by at least 25 percent and as much as 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels to stabilize the world's climate, according to conclusions at a United Nations meeting in Vienna. Nations that set targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol could accept stricter goals after 2012 if they use emissions trading more, a document distributed today at the UN meeting said. ``A greater mitigation potential is at the disposal'' of the world's more ... |
Emissions targets debated as U.N. climate talks draw to a close (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Associated Press: Five industrialized countries – including Japan and Russia, two of the world's biggest polluters – came under fire Friday for blocking a draft agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and counter the most catastrophic effects of global warming. Talks continued in the final hours of a week-long U.N. climate change conference in Vienna in an attempt to get the holdouts – Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and Switzerland – to agree to set a target of cutting emissions by 25-45% ... |
EU and UN Agree Long-Awaited Carbon Market Link (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Reuters: A long-awaited trading link between carbon markets in the European Union and under the UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming should be completed in November, EU and UN officials said on Thursday. The statements calmed market doubts about the timing of the link and sparked sales of EU carbon emissions permits. The European Union plans the switch on Nov. 17-18, barring any technical problems, a European Commission official said. The official said two trial runs on the ... |
Food Demand, Climate Change Strain Soils - Experts (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Reuters: World food demand will surge this century with a leap in population, highlighting a need to protect soils under strain from climate change, experts said on Thursday. About 150 scientists and government experts will meet in Iceland from Aug. 31-Sept. 4 to try to work out how to safeguard soils from over-use and desertification when more food is needed and some farmers are shifting land to biofuels. "Soil and vegetation are being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, ... |
Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Guardian: Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined, the experts said. But in many countries a combination of poor farming practices and deforestation will be ... |
Industrial nations agree step to new climate pact (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Reuters: Industrial nations agreed on Friday to consider stiff 2020 goals for cutting greenhouse gases in a small step towards a new long-term pact to fight climate change. About 1,000 delegates at the Aug 27-31 U.N. talks set greenhouse gas emissions cuts of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels as a non-binding starting point for rich nations' work on a new pact to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. "These conclusions...indicate what industrialized countries must ... |
Industrial nations shy away from stiff 2020 goals (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Reuters: Industrial nations were shying away from fixing stiff 2020 guidelines for greenhouse gases cuts at U.N. talks on Friday in what environmentalists said would be a vote for "dangerous" climate change. A draft text at the U.N. talks dropped a demand that developed nations should be "guided" by a need for steep cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in working out a long-term fight against global warming. "There are a limited ... |
Merkel backs climate deal based on population (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Reuters: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wanted to offer developing countries a compromise climate change pact based on population size, but warned on Friday that negotiations will be tough. Merkel, who helped draw up the Kyoto Protocol on climate change as Germany's environment minister in 1997, made global warming and talks over a deal to succeed the protocol the focus of her three-day visit to Japan. "The question is: at what point can we involve developing countries, ... |
Germany: Merkel makes new proposal on climate change as she revisits site of Kyoto conference (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Associated Press: German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed making per capita emissions of greenhouse gases the basis for future climate change negotiations Friday, a suggestion aimed at persuading developing countries to join efforts to reduce global warming. Merkel made the proposal in a speech at the conference center in Kyoto where, as Germany's environment minister, she took part in work on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that requires developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent from ... |
NASA: Global warming to cause more severe storms in USA (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Associated Press: As the world warms, the USA will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests. While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming. The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be ... |
RI finalizing plans to form `forestry eight` forum on global warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:25
| Antara: The Indonesian government is finalizing plans to establish a forum of counntries possessing rain forests (dubbed "Forestry Eight") in an effort to cope with the global warming problem, a spokesmna said. "Indonesia, as the initiator of the Forestry Eight will hold a meeting on September 27 in conjunction with the United Nations annual meeting," presidential spokesman Dino Pati Djalal said here Friday before attending a closed-door meeting on the matter at the Tampak ... |
Spreading deserts threaten world food supply - UN (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world's surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday. M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires. "Should we worry about land being ... |
Canada: 3 Greenpeace members held in Lake Erie stunt (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Toronto Star: On a breezy Lake Erie yesterday, two young people climbed a rickety scaling ladder up the side of a massive freighter and locked themselves to the conveyer belt device that helps to unload the ship's cargo. A third used mountaineering gear to attach herself to the stern, just above the huge rudder, and hung there for nearly three hours. Others, bouncing in rubber dinghies in metre-high waves, used long-handled rollers to paint white slogans on the rusting hull. It was ... |
A global warning: Gore did it better (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Baltimore Sun: "The United States invariably does the right thing after having exhausted every other alternative." A variation on that Winston Churchill quote triggers the only laugh to be had in The 11th Hour. As the narrator of this sprawling documentary about climate change, Leonardo DiCaprio makes the Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth seem like JFK and Jon Stewart rolled into one. Almost always viewed with darkish sad rags on his body (mourning clothes for Mother Earth?) and an urgent ... |
Canada wind industry grows amid opposition storm (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: Canada's fledgling wind power industry, late off the global starting blocks, has stumbled on growing local resistance to the idea of massive turbines dotting the country's relatively unmarked landscape. Although polls show widespread support for the renewable energy source, a growing number of companies say that support quickly fades among those who must live alongside wind farms, leading to project delays and extra costs. "There are many opportunities for small, anti-wind ... |
Climate change and N. America farms to be studied (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: Iowa State University researchers will join a study of climate change to produce mid-century projections by late next year of the likely regional effects on North American farms from global warming. "There is no question now that the climate is changing on a global scale," said Gene Takle, an Iowa State University professor of geological and atmospheric sciences who will lead a study to project North American climate from 2040 to 2070. Iowa and Illinois are the ... |
Climate change breakthroughs unlikely at APEC, but meeting could shape future agreements (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Associated Press: Breakthroughs on greenhouse gas reductions are unlikely at next week's summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, environmentalist and diplomats said, though high-level discussions could shape future climate change agreements. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is expected to call for major polluters to make "measurable and verifiable contributions to meeting shared global goals," according to a draft declaration on climate change obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace ... |
Dispelling the myth of bipolar glaciation 41 million years ago (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Innovations Report: Large continental ice sheets did not exist in both hemispheres around 41 million years ago during the warmer-than modern conditions of the time. This is the finding of scientists from the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), reported in Nature. The Eocene epoch (55 to 34 million years ago) was the last interval of sustained global warmth in Earth's history, a likely consequence of atmospheric ... |
Germany's Merkel Urges US to Support Climate Deal (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: The United States must support a global deal to cut carbon dioxide emissions and combat climate change as time is running out in the fight against global warming, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. In a speech during her first visit to Japan as chancellor, Merkel said both developing and industrialised economies need to agree on specific targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. "I think America will cooperate -- America must cooperate. If we ... |
Green Groups Seek Freeze on Canada Arctic Pipelines (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: Regulators should slap a moratorium on pipelines in Canada's North because governments and oil companies have not planned for long-term environmental impacts, a green-group representative said Thursday. Several environmental and social activists began submissions Thursday to the regulatory panel probing the C$16.2 billion (US$15.3 billion) Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline on the proposed development's cumulative effects. They said the line's backers, led by Imperial Oil Ltd , ... |
Heat Wave Strains California Power System (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Reuters: The California power grid will be strained again Thursday during what is expected to be the highest electricity demand of the year as scorching temperatures continue, power officials said. Utilities in the state say their systems are largely holding up well under the strain, with only scattered outages. A part of downtown Los Angeles was without power for more than two hours Thursday morning, with power restored around 5:30 a.m. PDT. Carol Tucker of the municipal ... |
In DiCaprio's 'The 11th Hour,' it's do-or-die time for Earth (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Union-Tribune: The facts are in. Flooding in (Katrina was an early sprinkle). If you didn't quite go for "An Inconvenient Truth" – maybe had some twinge of resistance to former candidate Al Gore, or didn't quite trust the snappy seminar packaging – another chance has come to pay attention and to be a better citizen of our groaning world. After all, nobody is nested on the moon. We live the mess we're making. "The 11th Hour" is the new documentary pitch on climate change and ecological ... |
Simple steps could help African farmers cope with climate change, experts say (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Associated: Climate change could worsen Africa's struggle to feed itself, but even simple steps – a cistern to catch rainwater, a solar panel, or hardier seeds for crops – could help the continent's subsistence farms, experts said Friday. About 250 experts, donors and officials were meeting in Oslo this week for the Second Green Africa Revolution Conference, which follows up a 2004 challenge from former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to revolutionize African farming. Africa imports ... |
UN climate talks in Vienna end with broad pledges, wobbly language (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Agence France-Presse: Parties to the UN's Kyoto Protocol wound up troubled talks here Friday with broad pledges but weak language to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) still said they were generally satisfied with the outcome of the week-long talks, which were organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and preceded a major conference the UNFCCC will hold with its 191 member states in Bali, Indonesia in ... |
Australia's Carbon Trading Proposal Isn't Enough, Group Says (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:26
| Bloomberg: Australia's planned emissions trading system by itself will fail to drive the investment in technology needed to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets, according to a group including Rio Tinto Group and a BP Plc unit. The trading system needs to be accompanied by a broader strategy to support low-emissions technologies for climate targets to be met, the group said today in a statement. Anglo American Plc's coal unit, Swiss Reinsurance Co., the world's largest re-insurer, and Westpac ... |
Australia's Qantas plans pollution offset program (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Reuters: Australia's largest airline, Qantas Airways Ltd, said it plans to start a carbon credit program in September to partly offset the pollution emitted by its aircraft. Travellers will be offered a choice when they purchase a ticket to buy carbon credits to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from their trip, Qantas Chief Risk Officer Rob Kella said. "It won't be a mandatory component of the ticket price," Kella told Reuters. Qantas will join a handful of airlines around ... |
Australia: Business heavyweights leaning on Govt over emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Nine companies from the mining, finance, resource and energy sectors have joined forces to urge the Federal Government to develop a low-emissions technology strategy. Companies including BP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Westpac and Mirvac have formed an alliance called the Australian Business and Climate Group. They want the Federal Government to take over research and development into emissions technology from the states and form a national policy. The companies want more ... |
Climate change 'harming food supplies' (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| inthenews.co.uk: Urgent steps must be taken in order to meet the demand for food supply which is under threat from climate change and intensive farming practices, the Soil Association (SA) has said. SA director Patrick Holden said that the "industrialisation" of agriculture has damaged the land in the last 60 years. Practices which he believes have contributed to harm include using fertilisers derived from fossil fuels that erode soil fertility. His comments come as 150 leading ... |
Climate change may delay Ice Age by 500000 years (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Bloomberg: The next Ice Age may be delayed by as much as 500,000 years as a result of climate changes triggered by the burning of fossil fuels, according to a new report. Carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas will affect ocean chemistry and the climate long after the fuels are used, according to the report from researchers at the University of Southampton in England. The impact may delay the onset of the next ice age, said Toby Tyrrell, co-author of the report, in the ... |
DiCaprio's '11th Hour' tells too much, too fast (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Associated Press: There is no doubt that Leonardo DiCaprio's intentions are honorable in trying to inform us about the state of crisis our planet is in with "The 11th Hour," or that his knowledge of the subject matter is secure. DiCaprio, who narrated, co-produced and co-wrote the documentary, created a foundation to make people aware of environmental issues back in 1998, at the height of his "Titanic" superstardom when he could have been dating supermodels. (Oh, wait, he's done ... |
EU pledges help as Greece damps down forest fires (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Reuters: Planes dropped water on smoldering forest fires in Greece on Friday and the European Union promised cash to help the country recover from more than a week of destructive blazes that killed 63 people. Firefighters were tackling fires on two main fronts, and help began to arrive for the thousands made homeless, while the finance ministry said the damage to the overall economy was likely to be small. Prefabricated homes were being delivered at the pace of 40 a day, often hauled up ... |
Mozambique Unveils US$550 Million Bio-Fuels Project (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Reuters: State-owned Mozambican Petroleum Co. (PETROMOC) on Thursday unveiled a US$550 million bio-fuels project aimed at easing an energy crunch in the fast-growing southern African nation. In an interview with Reuters, Eugenio Silva, a senior PETROMOC official, said it would create about 800 jobs and lead to a maximum annual production of 226 million litres of ethanol and bio-diesel seven years after start-up. Sugar cane and jatropha, a drought-resistant shrub, will be planted on ... |
US vehicle emissions drop (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:27
| Reuters: CLIMATE-WARMING carbon emissions from new cars and light trucks in the US fell by 3 per cent in 2005, the first decrease in nearly 20 years, a report has found. "We see some signs of good news here," John DeCicco of Environmental Defence said. High fuel prices and tighter fuel efficiency standards for light trucks had helped lower carbon emissions, the report said. Growth in the amount of driving averaged 2.3 per cent a year from 1990 to 2004, but was less than 0.2 per cent ... |
Faster Climate Change Means Bigger Problems (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Science Daily: The debate about what constitutes "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate" has almost exclusively focused on how much the temperature can be allowed to increase. But we have perhaps just as much reason to be concerned about how quickly these changes take place. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aims to avoid what is called "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." However, there is no guarantee that the level of climate ... |
Australia: PM's climate coup plan (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Sunday Times: PRIME Minister John Howard plans to unveil a radical global blueprint to fight climate change at this week's APEC meeting in Sydney. The move will attempt to make Australia a leader in global-warming policy and replace the Kyoto protocols, according to a senior government source. Mr Howard will ask the leaders of the 20 other APEC nations to consider the plan that would see developing countries like China and India pressured for the first time to reduce their ... |
The New Utopia, Keeping the World As It Is (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Inter Press Service: Utopias have always inspired humankind -- from the defence of enlightenment against religious fanaticism during the Middle Ages, to reconstruction after last century's wars, to the end of colonialism. Those were imperious, even grandiloquent utopias, corresponding to the excesses of the times. A new utopia is a conservative, apparently modest one -- a titanic, nonetheless: keep the world as it is, environmentally speaking. This utopia's deceptively modest demands have been ... |
Top Forest Service lawyer to become timber lobbyist (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Associated Press: The Bush administration's top lawyer for the U.S. Forest Service is leaving to take a job with the nation's leading timber industry lobbying group. Jan W. Poling, associate general counsel for natural resources at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will be the new general counsel for the American Forest and Paper Association, the organization said Friday. She is the second member of the administration to go to the industry group this year. In February, Dave Tenny, deputy ... |
Beyond Wind and Solar, a New Generation of Clean Energy (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Washington Post: Oregon Iron Works has the feel of a World War II-era shipyard, with sparks flying from welders' torches and massive hydraulic presses flattening large sheets of metal. But this factory floor represents the cutting edge of American renewable-energy technology. The plant is assembling a test buoy for Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company that hopes to harness ocean waves off the coast of Oregon to produce electricity for U.S. consumers. And Finavera is not Iron Works' only ... |
Indonesia proposes rainforest nations climate group (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:23
| Agence France-Presse: Indonesia has proposed that eight countries home to some 80 percent of the world's tropical rainforests join diplomatic ranks amid rising climate change concerns, a senior official said Saturday. "This is the initiative of our president, in order that they be able to play an important role in the diplomacy of global warming," the spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told AFP. "It's important for the eight countries to have a joint consensus on their ... |
United States: Key support for state's bid to curb greenhouse gases (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Mercury News: California "appears to have a strong case" in its campaign to secure federal approval to set its own greenhouse-gas controls on vehicles, according to an unreleased report from the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan body known for its credibility on Capitol Hill. California made its request to the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2005, arguing that in the absence of federal controls, the state had to act on its own to protect its natural resources and ... |
Canada: Nations agree on need for action on climate change (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| CanWest News Service: Industrialized countries like Canada must aim for dramatic reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade if the world is to avoid disastrous consequences, according to a consensus reached Friday by nearly 160 countries at a week-long United Nations climate change summit in Vienna. The agreement suggests that, by 2020, developed countries need to slash their output of the pollutants linked to climate change by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels. Otherwise, ... |
Questions raised on Greek forest fire management (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Reuters: Forest fires that have raged in Greece for more than a week and left 63 people dead may have been exacerbated by an administrative decision 10 years ago, forestry experts say. Greece's forests may have been left more vulnerable when in 1997 rural fire management was shifted from the forestry service to the urban-based Fire Service, with no forestry experience, they say. "Forest management is highly complex and if one part of that like fire management is missed out it can ... |
Climate summit ends in discord (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Chicago Tribune: A five-day UN conference on climate change ended Friday in Vienna with significant disagreements remaining about how countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions and daunting estimates about the price tag for combating global warming. Some industrial countries balked at adopting language in the final statement that would have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. They agreed in the end that this target would be a ... |
Indonesia calls for rainforest conservation efforts (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Radio Australia: Indonesia is appealing to eight countries, home to 80 per cent of the world's tropical rainforests, to join diplomatic ranks amid rising climate change concerns. A senior official says the initiative has been put forward by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He says the plan would enable the countries to play an important role in the diplomacy of global warming. The spokesman added that the group would look at how forest conservation can happen in tandem with economic ... |
United States: State looks at logging leftovers as fuel source (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Associated Press: The state Department of Environmental Conservation is studying ways to convert leftover wood from logging into a biomass fuel. The agency has a $64,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service for a 1-year project to evaluate whether there'd be enough potential users in and around the Adirondack Park to make woody biomass a worthwhile energy source. DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis says the state is looking for innovative ways to enhance the economic and environmental health of North ... |
United Kingdom: The most miserable summer on record (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:24
| Cambridge Evening News: IF you thought summer was a damp squib, you would be right. The UK's summer looks set to be the wettest since records began in 1914, the Met Office has announced. Cambridgeshire residents may not have suffered as badly as some, but the county's eighth wettest summer on record ensured plenty of barbecues were rained off. The county was soaked with 229.9mm of rain between June 1 and August 28, which was 58 per cent above average and made our summer the wettest since ... |
Underfed gray whales observed (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:25
| Associated Press: Researchers off Mexico's Pacific Coast have observed what might be a case of global warming's effects in the far north: gray whales returning to calving grounds malnourished. At least 10 percent of gray whales returning to Laguna San Ignacio, one of four main calving and breeding lagoons off Baja California, Mexico, showed signs of being underfed, said Steve Swartz, a National Marine Fisheries Service whale expert based in Silver Spring, Md. Researchers are trying to find out ... |
Between Hungry People and Climate Change, Soils Need Help (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:25
| Environment News Service: To meet the needs of a rapidly growing human population, more food must be produced over the coming 50 years than in the last 10,000 years combined, scientists say. But land degradation and desertification are undercutting the soil's ability to produce more food, causing an environmental crisis that affects one-third of all people on Earth, say experts meeting in Iceland this week to explore solutions. Iceland has suffered acute land degradation problems of its own and has become ... |
Record rains for British summer (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 09:00:26
| BBC: This summer appears to have been the wettest since rainfall records began in 1914, according to provisional data from the UK Meteorological Office. Britain had 358.5mm of rain, just beating the 1956 record of 358.4mm. The main reason for the high rainfall has been the unusually southerly position of the jet stream, a band of strong winds high in the atmosphere. Following earlier floods in central and southern England, five areas of the country are still on flood ... |
What might global warming mean for Washington (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 03:01:46
| Associated Press: From this spot in the geographic center of Washington, you can see many of the major potential effects of global warming. Down below, the Columbia River collects most of the water from Eastern Washington and carries it toward the Pacific Ocean, blocked periodically by giant dams that generate much of the electricity that powers cities and suburbs from Spokane to Puget Sound. The surrounding countryside is arid and sun-baked, devoid of color except where fields are irrigated to produce ... |
More 'megafires' to come, say scientists (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:34
| Independent (UK): Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world, fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism. Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes. Rapidly increasing in number, they are often unquenchable by any human efforts, burning unchecked until they reach coasts or are put out by heavy rainfall. The devastating fires that have ravaged Greece killed at least 63 people and ... |
Power to the People: Run Your House on a Prius (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 09-01-2007 at 06:00:34
| New York Times: WHEN Hurricane Frances ripped through Gainesville, Fla., in 2004, Christopher Swinney, an anesthesiologist, was without electricity for a week. A few weeks ago, Dr. Swinney lost power again, but this time he was ready. He plugged his Toyota Prius into the backup uninterruptible power supply unit in his house and soon the refrigerator was humming and the lights were back on. "It was running everything in the house except the central air-conditioning," Dr. Swinney said. Without ... |
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