[SustainableTompkins] Links To Crucial Global warming Articles

Tue May 22 16:09:01 PDT 2007

>From Climate Crisis Coalition and truthout today. Some of these also appeared in today's Common Dreams posting.

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U.S. Aims to Stop G8's Tough Push on Global Warming. By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters, May 22, 2007. "The United States is battling to stop next month's Group of Eight summit in Germany from pushing for urgent talks on a new deal to fight global warming after the Kyoto Protocol lapses in 2012. In a leaked draft of the final communiqué for the June 6 to 8 summit, Washington wants references taken out to the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a UN conference in Bali in December to open talks on a new global deal. According to the draft, the United States supports the deletion of the following: We firmly agree that resolute and concerted international action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and sustain our common basis of living... To this end we will, in the face of the U.N. Climate Change Conference at the end of this year, send a clear message on the further development of the international regime to combat climate change... Instead, the United States wants the final G8 statement to say: Addressing climate change is a long-term issue that will require global participation and a diversity of approaches to take into account differing circumstances. Most references in the draft, dated April, 2007, to targets and timetables to cut climate-warming carbon emissions have met with objections from Washington. It objects to efforts by G8 president Germany to get rich nations to agree to cut energy consumption by 20 per cent by 2020 and raise energy efficiency in transport and power generation by the same amount over the same period. It also objects to a call for actions to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius this century and to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050."

Global Carbon Emissions in Overdrive. By Peter N. Spotts, The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2007. "Global emissions of carbon dioxide are growing at a faster clip than the highest rates used in recent key UN reports. CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the 1990s, according to the Global Carbon Project, which is a data clearinghouse set up in 2001 as a cooperative effort among UN-related groups and other scientific organizations. But from 2000 to 2004, CO2 emissions rates almost tripled to 3 percent a year - higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). See Global Carbon Project Policy Brief.

Smithsonian Toned Down Exhibit on Arctic. By Brett Zongker, The Associated Press, May 21, 2007. "The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum. Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year's exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Also, officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered 'to show that global warming could go either way,' Sullivan said. 'It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down,' said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after 16 years at the museum. He said he left after higher-ups tried to reassign him... Sullivan said that to his knowledge, no one in the Bush administration pressured the Smithsonian, whose $1.1 billion budget is mostly taxpayer-funded. Rather, he said, Smithsonian leaders acted on their own. The obsession with getting the next allocation and appropriation was so intense that anything that might upset the Congress or the White House was being looked at very carefully, he said."

New Legislation Would Bring Wind Power to 'Grinding Halt'. By Carl Levesque, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), May 21, 2007. "Legislation just introduced and slated to move quickly in the U.S. House of Representatives would bring new wind energy development in the U.S. to a grinding halt, AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher warned on May 18. Introduced this week by Congressman Nick Rahall (D. WV), and scheduled for action in early June at the House Resources Committee which he chairs, H.R. 2337 would burden wind power with sweeping new requirements that have never applied to other energy sectors, Swisher said, noting: The bill would direct the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) to review every existing and planned wind project, a mandate far beyond the agency's resources and capabilities, and criminalize operation of wind energy facilities not formally certified by USFWS... Under the legislation, landowners and farmers with wind turbines on their property would be subject to invasive inspection requirements... Landowners and farmers could face jail time or a $50,000 penalty for putting a wind turbine, regardless of whether it is for personal use or of a commercial scale, on their property without certification by the USFWS director... A National Academy of Sciences report released earlier this month concludes that wind turbines caused less than 0.003% of human-cause bird mortality -- one thousand times lower than bird mortality associated with house cats. Last November the National Audubon Society, pointing to the link between global warming and the birds and other wildlife that scientists assert it will kill, said it 'strongly supports' properly sited wind power as a clean energy source... AWEA is asking its members to contact their respective Representative and urge him or her to oppose the anti-wind provisions of H.R. 2337 [use theses links: Action Alert; AWEA].

Early Arrival of Butterflies Demonstrates Impact of Climate Change. By Michael McCarthy, The London Independent, May 22, 2007. "For several years biologists have been watching warming temperatures affect living organisms, with leaves opening, birds nesting and insects emerging earlier. But what has happened in 2007 with butterflies has been quite exceptional. Of our 59 resident and regular migrant species, 37 have now appeared, and of these, all except one (the orange tip) have emerged earlier than they would have done a decade ago, according to the wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation. More remarkably still, 11 of them have broken all records for early emergence, some by scarcely-believable margins... April 2007 was the culminating month of the hottest 12 months, taken together, ever recorded in Britain, with a provisional mean temperature of 10.4C. April itself was the hottest April since records began in 1659, and it followed the second-warmest winter since records began in the UK, and the warmest-ever autumn. Spring, at least in southern Britain, has in effect been a full month early this year, and many wild flowers, such as foxgloves, are also appearing far in advance of normal. The early season has created severe problems for exhibitors at the Chelsea Flower Show, which opened yesterday, as flowers have been coming into bloom far ahead of the show dates, and have had to be held back artificially." Lark May Sing Its Last Across Much of UK. Reuters, May 22, 2007. "Climate change threatens range of British species. Experts call for drive to protect habitats."

Wild Peanuts, Potatoes Threatened by Climate Change, Study Says. By Alex Morales, Bloomberg News, May 22, 2007. "Wild relatives of peanuts and potatoes are increasingly at risk of extinction as a result of climate change, depriving their cultivated versions of a valuable gene pool, researchers said. Over the next five decades, 61 percent of wild peanut species and 12 percent of wild potatoes may become extinct as the Earth becomes warmer and weather patterns change, according to a Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research study... The loss of wild species poses a risk to cultivated crops, the researchers said. When pests, disease and unfavorable climatic conditions strike crops, farmers are able to dip into the more robust gene pool of wild plants in order to find traits that will help the domesticated variety to survive, they said. Domesticated plants tend to have a narrower genetic variation than wild ones, because they have been selected by farmers for specific traits such as taste and appearance. In recent years, wild variants have helped cultivators develop new potato breeds in order to overcome potato blight and new peanuts that can survive a pest known as the root knot nematode and a disease called early leaf spot, according to the study." 

Ocean's Biggest Mammals Increasingly Prey to Climate Change. EarthTimes.org, May 22, 2007. "Whales, dolphins and porpoises face increasing threats from climate change, according to a new report published by environmental group WWF and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). The report says that changes in sea temperature, the freshening of sea water due to melting ice and increased rainfall, the loss of polar habitats and the decline in krill - tiny marine animals that many whales rely on for food - all pose a risk to the creatures' survival. 'Whales, dolphins and porpoises have some capacity to adapt to their changing environment,' said Mark Simmonds, international director of science at WCDS. 'But the climate is now changing at such a fast pace that it is unclear to what extent whales and dolphins will be able to adjust, and we believe many populations to be very vulnerable to predicted changes.' The report [was released] a week before the International Whaling Commission is scheduled to hold its 59th meeting in Anchorage, Alaska." See report: The Impact of Climate Change on Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (PDF 16 pages).

International Biodiversity Day 2007. UNEP, May 22, 2007. "To coincide with International Biodiversity Day 2007, The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC) has re-launched its climate change webpages with brand new material and links to relevant resources. UNEP-WCMC aims to put authoritative knowledge on biodiversity and climate change at the heart of decision-making, enabling better links between the climate and biodiversity policy worlds. There is an urgent need for accessible information on the likely impacts of climate change on biodiversity. As measures to address climate change and to cope with its effects are increasingly deployed, it is also critical to analyse their possible benefits and risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services." Biodiversity-Day Action in Vietnam. Biodiversity-Day.info. "Biodiversity Action Day & Symposium on Biodiversity and Climate Change, Vietnam, May 19 - 23, 2007... Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected. No region of the planet will be spared. Especially the densely populated river deltas and coastal areas in Asia will be hit hard and poor people's livelihood assets will be at risk. Climate change also poses one of the major threats to the planet's biological diversity. In Vietnam alone, around 700 species are threatened and this number will increase as Vietnam's ecosystems diminish." 

Book Review: Al Gore's 'The Assault on Reason'. By Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, May 22, 2007. "This book shows a fiery, throw-caution-to-the winds Al Gore, who has decided to lay it all on the line with a blistering assessment of the Bush administration... And yet for all its sharply voiced opinions, The Assault on Reason turns out to be less a partisan, election-cycle harangue than a fiercely argued brief about the current Bush White House that is grounded in copiously footnoted citations from newspaper articles, Congressional testimony and commission reports ? a brief that is as powerful in making its points about the implications of this administration's policies as the author's 2006 book, An Inconvenient Truth, was in making its points about the fallout of global warming. This volume moves beyond its criticisms of the Bush administration to diagnose the ailing condition of America as a participatory democracy ? low voter turnout, rampant voter cynicism, an often ill-informed electorate, political campaigns dominated by 30-second television ads, and an increasingly conglomerate-controlled media landscape ? and it does so not with the calculated, sound-bite-conscious tone of many political-platform-type books, but with the sort of wonky ardor that made both the book and movie versions of An Inconvenient Truth so bluntly effective."`

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Many of the stories we post are sent in by our readers to tstokes at kyotoandbeyond.org. Opinions presented in our selections do not necessarily represent positions taken by CCC.

Scorching Summer Forecast in USA

<A href="http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052207EB.shtml">http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052207EB.shtml</A>

As Memorial Day weekend beckons, federal climate scientists predict drought will 

intensify in much of the West this summer and persist in the fire-scorched 

Southeast despite recent rain.

Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet

<A href="http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052207EC.shtml">http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052207EC.shtml</A>

What Ray Anderson calls his "conversion experience" occurred in the summer of 

1994, when he was asked to give the sales force at Interface, the carpet tile 

company he founded, some talking points about the company's approach to the 

environment.

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