tagged w/ CO2
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There seems little possibility that next month's climate summit in Durban will produce an emissions reduction agreement -- meaning the world will soon lack any binding CO2 targets. Europe may soon find itself alone in the fight against global warming.
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A climate catastrophe descended on the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin early last week. Politicians and diplomats from around the world were attending a conference to discuss how global warming will affect the world. They examined scenarios depicting how millions of people living in coastal areas could escape flooding, what will happen to the fishing and mineral rights of island nations when they no longer exist and how China and Russia will benefit from an ice-free Arctic.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said that it intended to "openly and creatively address" the dangers of climate change. The exercise was designed to help "find new paths of international cooperation."
But the belief that global warming can be halted through international cooperation is elusive. The Kyoto Protocol, the world's only binding climate agreement, will soon expire. The most important means to date of compelling industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions seems likely to become a mere footnote in history.
The current CO2-reduction agreements expire at the end of 2012, and there is enormous resistance to new targets. The environment ministers and negotiators from roughly 200 countries, who will travel to Durban, South Africa at the end of November for the latest global climate conference, are a long way from breathing new life into the Kyoto process.
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is making the bold claim that there is "a strong desire from all sides to see a final political decision made" in Durban. But this decision will probably consist of doing without fixed agreements on CO2 reduction in the future. "The meeting in Durban could become an act of mourning," warns Reimund Schwarze of the Climate Service Center in Hamburg, which analyzes climate policy on behalf of the German government.
Merkel's Optimism Has Faded
When Angela Merkel, then the German Environment Minister, returned from the 1997 UN climate summit in the Japanese imperial city of Kyoto, she was exhausted after long nights of negotiations. But she was also proud. The industrialized nations had pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions for the period from 2008 to 2012 by 5 percent from the 1990 levels. The conference was a "milestone in the history of environmental protection," she said, noting that an "irreversible process" to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases had been initiated.
Although the industrialized countries will achieve the goal set in 1997, Merkel, now Germany's chancellor, has lost almost all the optimism she had at the time. In fact, she now warns that the international negotiations could turn into a "huge disappointment."
To stop global warming, a much faster and greater reduction in CO2 levels would be needed than the Kyoto Protocol has produced to date. But this is nowhere in sight. The reductions in emissions so far are primarily the result of economic crises and the collapse of industry in the former Soviet bloc. Noble rhetoric aside, oil, natural gas and coal have remained the foundation of modern prosperity. Major industrialized nations like Australia and Canada have even increased their emissions.
Little has remained of Merkel's "irreversible process" to protect the climate. In emerging economies like China, which produces consumer goods for the world market, emissions have risen to such a great extent that they now far exceed those of the United States and Europe. Despite the economic crisis, worldwide CO2 emissions resulting from energy consumption reached a new record high of 33 billion tons last year, a 45 percent increase over the 1990 level.
Clean Energy as a 'Dirty Word'
The Kyoto Protocol was never ratified in the United States, and the country remains unwilling to submit to international commitments on energy consumption out of a concern that doing so could cost jobs. "Clean energy has become a dirty word in the United States," a close advisor to US President Barack Obama said during a recent visit to Berlin.
And now other important countries, like Japan, Canada and Russia, are refusing to commit to new binding CO2 targets for the period after 2012, as long as India and China do not cooperate. The emerging powers are calling for decisive action by the industrialized nations before they are willing to do anything, creating a vicious cycle.
"Without new reduction targets, Kyoto is nothing but an empty shell," says environmental economist Schwarze.
In times of financial crisis, many politicians apparently no longer attach very much importance to a threat that will only unleash its full fury after many years. In addition, mistakes and slip-ups have harmed the credibility of climate scientists. In particular, an incorrect prediction about the melting of Himalayan glaciers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given opponents of climate protection new ammunition.
Trying to Buy Time
The Europeans are the only ones still fighting for new binding targets within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. Last week, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and environment ministers from the 27 EU member states agreed to campaign for more negotiations in Durban, but with a transitional period lasting until 2015, even though the CO2 reduction targets are set to expire in 2012. It is an attempt to buy time and to keep the Kyoto Protocol artificially alive, even though it's already clinically dead.
The malaise began in 2009, if not earlier. At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the Europeans, most notably German Chancellor Merkel, failed in their attempt to achieve a comprehensive climate treaty. The United States and three emerging powers, China, India and Brazil, aligned themselves against Europe in Copenhagen and blocked binding targets. None of them were willing to allow foreign countries to tell them how much fossil fuel they could burn in their factories, cars and buildings.
On the surface, the German government is fighting for a new agreement and regularly brings together decision-makers from around the world to save what can still be saved. But preparations to withdraw from the protocol have been underway for some time. Privately, no German negotiator still believes that the Kyoto Protocol can still be saved.
"At best, the EU can go it alone, but it represents only 15 percent of worldwide emissions," says a leading government climate strategist. The "only result would be that after Durban, 27 European parliaments would have to ratify CO2 targets that we already pursue in the EU."
Since the Copenhagen summit, the practical alternative to the binding climate treaty is to maintain an informal list. Each country voluntarily enters its national climate protection goals into this document. There likely would be some sort of mechanism to monitor compliance with these goals. But there would be no consequences whatsoever for countries that fail to meet their own targets. Given this half-hearted approach, it is likely that in the coming decades global warming will exceed the 2 degrees Celsius defined by the UN as the threshold to a dangerously overheated world.
More at the linkThere seems little possibility that next month's climate summit in Durban will... more
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Global warming has often been discussed with regard to its effects for life on land: increased temperatures and heat waves, increased weather extremes, less but more intense rainfall, drought and forest fires.
Water, however, remains less considered. Even discussions of floods or rising sea levels, which focus on water, study mainly their consequences for land inhabitants.
Yet oceans, it is well known, cover three quarters of the earth's surface. And oceans have absorbed about a quarter of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, one of four main greenhouse gases causing global warming. This absorption of CO2 is integrally related to the three major factors impacting the oceans: global warming, ocean acidification and decreasing amounts of oxygen. As a result, the current situation of the oceans is dire. And its impact will be severe not only for marine life but also for all life -- plant, animal and human -- on land.
Ocean Acidification
Carbon dioxide (CO2) exists naturally in the air. But through the use of fossil fuels, in particular coal and oil, the amount of CO2 in the air has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution began.
As the oceans absorb carbon from the air, their chemistry changes. This process is known as ocean acidification, and it has brutal consequences for marine and land life.
Oceanographers estimate that before the use of fossil fuels, the ocean's PH balance, which measures its acidity, had been relatively stable for the past 20 million years. During the last great extinction of marine life, which occurred 55 million years ago, 50 percent of some groups of deep sea animals were wiped out.
But the current levels of carbon being absorbed by the oceans is far higher than the levels being absorbed then.
A United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report released in 2010 on the "Environmental Consquences of Ocean Acidification" and based on studies conducted over the past two decades off the coast of Hawai'i has confirmed that the increased CO2 concentration levels in the ocean mirror the increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Ocean Acidification and Phytoplankton
Already the increased levels of ocean acidification have led to a loss of phytoplankton and of coral reefs. And losses of phytoplankton and of coral reefs have a ripple effect.
First, much marine life relies on them for nourishment. Flounder, haddock, pollock, salmon and shrimp all eat phytoplankton. Humans eat many of these fish. Krill eat phytoplankton and whales eat krill. So a decrease in one threatens the liveilhood of the other.
Second, phytoplankton also absorbs carbon dioxide. Phytoplankton floats along the ocean's surface absorbing CO2 as land plants do in photosynthesis. As the CO2 is absorbed, the plant dies and sinks to the ocean floor, releasing CO2 along the way. Cold water can hold higher levels of CO2 than warmer water, so most of the CO2 released, which turns water acidic, is to be found along the ocean floor. But this acidic water does not stay at the ocean's floor. During an upswell, it rises to the surface and even the shore. Its acidity is deadly for the shells of marine life, such as shrimps, clams and oysters.
If the smallest part of the food chain is affected by ocean acidification, it ripples all the way up the food chain, making the largest part of the food chain vulnerable.
"Since the time before the industrial revolution," says the National Resource Defense Council's Lisa Suatoni, "ocean acidity has increased 30 percent."
And the bad news does not end there: According to oceanographers, the water rising from the ocean's depths holds CO2 that has accumulated over the past decades. Thus, in coming years, the increased levels of CO2 absorbed by the oceans will re-emerge as increased ocean acidification reaching the shores. Higher levels of cean acidification have already led to tremendous problems for the oyster industry. In the summer of 2007 oyster harvests began to plummet in the Pacific Northwest. The situation was extreme. The oyster hatcheries were keen to find the culprit, which turned out to be ocean acidification.
More at the linkGlobal warming has often been discussed with regard to its effects for life on land:... more
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Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports on the staggering floods that have hit Thailand:
Heavy rains in Thailand during September and October have led to extreme flooding that has killed 283 people and caused that nation’s most expensive natural disaster in history. On Tuesday, Thailand’s finance minister put the damage from the floods at $3.9 billion. This makes the floods of 2011 the most expensive disaster in Thai history, surpassing the $1.3 billion price tag of the November 27, 1993 flood, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).
And this is but the latest example of how extreme weather harms global food security (see “Global Food Prices Expected to Climb, Get More Volatile.” As BusinessWeek reported, “Floodwaters have swept across 60 of Thailand’s 77 provinces over the past two months … destroying more than 10 percent of the nation’s rice farms.” Masters notes “Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of rice, so the disaster may put further upward pressure on world food prices, which are already at the highest levels since the late 1970s.”
Eastern Thailand was deluged with 5 feet of rain in September. And there’s more to come:
Some of the highest tides of the month occur this weekend in the capital of Bangkok, and the additional pressure that incoming salt water puts on the flood walls protecting the city is a major concern. A moderate monsoon flow continues over Southeast Asia, and the latest GFS model precipitation forecast foresees an additional 2 – 5 inches of rain over most of Thailand during the next three days.
More at the linkMeteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters reports on the staggering floods that have hit... more
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Massive floods have left 500 people dead across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, officials said Monday, as authorities stepped up efforts to reach victims of the unusually heavy monsoon rains.
In Thailand, where the death toll from the country's worst floods in decades rose to 269, thousands of soldiers fanned out across affected areas as part of a huge aid operation.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who has described the situation as a "serious crisis," said the kingdom had two days before the arrival of the next tropical depression, but insisted the situation was under control.
"It is not necessary to announce disaster zones because we still can handle it," she told reporters, a day after postponing official visits to Singapore and Malaysia to stay and monitor the authorities' response.
She said new flood defences would be built in several locations in the north and east of the capital.
In neighbouring Cambodia, the toll from the country's worst floods in over a decade reached 207, including 83 children, a disaster official there said. Vietnam has reported 24 deaths from flooding in the Mekong Delta.
Vast swathes of rice paddy have been damaged or destroyed in Southeast Asia as a result of the floods.
In Thailand the floods have damaged the homes or livelihoods of millions of people, particularly farmers, across about three quarters of the country's provinces.
Huge efforts are now under way to stop the waters from reaching low-lying Bangkok, home to 12 million people, with prevention measures including sandbags along the Chao Phraya river.
More at the linkMassive floods have left 500 people dead across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam,... more
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Cambodia's worst floods in over a decade have killed 167 people, a disaster official said Wednesday, as efforts intensified to provide aid to tens of thousands of families.
Sixty-eight children were among those who died in nearly two months of flooding caused by heavy rainfall that has also seen the Mekong River overflow, said Keo Vy, spokesman for the National Committee for Disaster Management.
Some 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) of rice paddies have been inundated and more than 23,000 families had to be evacuated to higher ground in provinces across the country, he added.
"The government and the Red Cross are giving the necessary help to those affected," Keo Vy said, adding that aid, including food deliveries, had so far reached 40,000 families.
He estimated that nearly 230,000 families across the impoverished nation had been affected by the unusually severe floods but he indicated the situation was under control.
"As Prime Minister Hun Sen has said, we are not appealing for aid but we welcome any assistance," he said.
International relief organisation Oxfam, which has started handing out hygiene kits in some areas, has urged all relevant agencies in Cambodia "to urgently deliver food, clean water, sanitation supplies and shelters".
In neighbouring Thailand, the worst monsoon floods in decades have left more than 220 people dead.Cambodia's worst floods in over a decade have killed 167 people, a disaster... more
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The headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of “global warming” didn’t set off an instant outcry of angry denial.In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the “greenhouse effect” is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.
What’s going on?
“The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows,” concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.
He and others who track what they call “denialism” find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democrat gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.
The A.P. has published journalist Charles Hanley’s nearly 2000-word essay on U.S. climate denial, “The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?”
The piece is an excellent edition to a growing group that includes, WashPost stunner: “The GOP’s climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion” and National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.”
Here is more:
The basic physics of anthropogenic — manmade — global warming has been clear for more than a century, since researchers proved that carbon dioxide traps heat. Others later showed CO2 was building up in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Weather stations then filled in the rest: Temperatures were rising.“As a physicist, putting CO2 into the air is good enough for me. It’s the physics that convinces me,” said veteran Cambridge University researcher Liz Morris. But she said work must go on to refine climate data and computer climate models, “to convince the deeply reluctant organizers of this world.”
The reluctance to rein in carbon emissions revealed itself early on.
In the 1980s, as scientists studied Greenland’s buried ice for clues to past climate, upgraded their computer models peering into the future, and improved global temperature analyses, the fossil-fuel industries were mobilizing for a campaign to question the science.
By 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen could appear before a U.S. Senate committee and warn that global warming had begun, a dramatic announcement later confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a new, U.N.-sponsored network of hundreds of international scientists.
But when Hansen was called back to testify in 1989, the White House of President George H.W. Bush edited this government scientist’s remarks to water down his conclusions, and Hansen declined to appear.
That was the year U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain’s Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts.
In 1997, two years after the IPCC declared the “balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate,” the world’s nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to try to do something about it. The naysayers were there as well.
“The statement that we’ll have continued warming with an increase in CO2 is opinion, not fact,” oil executive William F. O’Keefe of the Global Climate Coalition insisted to reporters in Kyoto.
The late Bert Bolin, then IPCC chief, despaired.
“I’m not really surprised at the political reaction,” the Swedish climatologist told The Associated Press. “I am surprised at the way some of the scientific findings have been rejected in an unscientific manner.”
In fact, a document emerged years later showing that the industry coalition’s own scientific team had quietly advised it that the basic science of global warming was indisputable.
See “Scientists advising fossil fuel funded anti-climate group concluded in 1995: The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of GHGs such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied”
Kyoto’s final agreement called for limited rollbacks in greenhouse emissions. The United States didn’t even join in that. And by 2000, the CO2 built up in the atmosphere to 369 parts per million — just 4 ppm less than Broecker predicted — compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution.
Global temperatures rose as well, by 0.6 degrees C (1.1 degrees F) in the 20th century. And the mercury just kept rising. The decade 2000-2009 was the warmest on record, and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.
Costal threat prediction
Satellite and other monitoring, meanwhile, found nights were warming faster than days, and winters more than summers, and the upper atmosphere was cooling while the lower atmosphere warmed — all clear signals greenhouse warming was at work, not some other factor.
The impact has been widespread.
An authoritative study this August reported that hundreds of species are retreating toward the poles, egrets showing up in southern England, American robins in Eskimo villages. Some, such as polar bears, have nowhere to go. Eventual large-scale extinctions are feared.
The heat is cutting into wheat yields, nurturing beetles that are destroying northern forests, attracting malarial mosquitoes to higher altitudes.
From the Rockies to the Himalayas, glaciers are shrinking, sending ever more water into the world’s seas. Because of accelerated melt in Greenland and elsewhere, the eight-nation Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program projects ocean levels will rise 90 to 160 centimeters (35 to 63 inches) by 2100, threatening coastlines everywhere.
“We are scared, really and truly,” diplomat Laurence Edwards, from the Pacific’s Marshall Islands, told the AP before the 1997 Kyoto meeting.
Today in these low-lying islands, rising seas have washed away shoreline graveyards, saltwater has invaded wells, and islanders seek aid to build a seawall to shield their capital.
The oceans are turning more acidic, too, from absorbing excess carbon dioxide. Acidifying seas will harm plankton, shellfish and other marine life up the food chain. Biologists fear the world’s coral reefs, home to much ocean life and already damaged from warmer waters, will largely disappear in this century.
Arctic ice cap
The greatest fears may focus on “feedbacks” in the Arctic, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
The Arctic Ocean’s summer ice cap has shrunk by half and is expected to essentially vanish by 2030 or 2040, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Sept. 15. Ashore, meanwhile, the Arctic tundra’s permafrost is thawing and releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
These changes will feed on themselves: Released methane leads to warmer skies, which will release more methane. Ice-free Arctic waters absorb more of the sun’s heat than do reflective ice and snow, and so melt will beget melt. The frozen Arctic is a controller of Northern Hemisphere climate; an unfrozen one could upend age-old weather patterns across continents.
more at the linkThe headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced... more
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"The technology needed to cut the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050 already exists, according to a joint statement by eleven of the world’s largest engineering organisations….
"The statement says that generating electricity from wind, waves and the sun, growing biofuels sustainably, zero emissions transport, low carbon buildings and energy efficiency technologies have all been demonstrated. However they are not being developed for wide-scale use fast enough and there is a desperate need for financial and legislative support from governments around the world if they are to fulfil their potential."
That’s the news release from the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME), one of the 11 signatory groups. The groups explicitly call for a peak in global emissions in 2020 and an intensive effort to train workers for green technology jobs.
Dr Colin Brown, Director of Engineering at the IME, says bluntly:
“While the world’s politicians have been locked in talks with no output, engineers across the globe have been busy developing technologies that can bring down emissions and help create a more stable future for the planet.
“We are now overdue for government commitment, with ambitious, concrete emissions targets that give the right signals to industry, so they can be rolled out on a global scale.”
This is really nothing new. The recent National Academy of Science report calls on nation to “substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions” starting ASAP. I’ll link to more of the literature below.
It’s worth pointing out that a 50% cut in emissions from current levels is typically considered to be what’s needed for stabilization at 450 ppm or around 2°C warming (see also “The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm“). An 85% reduction would be the path for closer to 350 ppm.
More at link..."The technology needed to cut the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 85%... more
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Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 45 % between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010. Increased energy efficiency, nuclear energy and the growing contribution of renewable energy are not compensating for the globally increasing demand for power and transport, which is strongest in developing countries.
This increase took place despite emission reductions in industrialised countries during the same period. Even though different countries show widely variable emission trends, industrialised countries are likely to meet the collective Kyoto target of a 5.2 % reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 as a group, partly thanks to large emission reductions from economies in transition in the early nineties and more recent reductions due to the 2008-2009 recession. These figures were published today in the report "Long-term trend in global CO2 emissions," prepared by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
The report, which is based on recent results from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and latest statistics for energy use and other activities, shows large national differences between industrialised countries. Over the period 1990-2010, in the EU-27 and Russia CO2 emissions decreased by 7% and 28% respectively, while the USA's emissions increased by 5% and the Japanese emissions remained more or less constant. The industrialised countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol (so called 'ratifying Annex 1 countries') and the USA, in 1990 caused about two-thirds of global CO2 emissions. Their share of global emissions has now fallen to less than half the global total.
Continued growth in the developing countries and emerging economies and economic recovery by the industrialised countries are the main reasons for a record breaking 5.8% increase in global CO2 emissions between 2009 and 2010. Most major economies contributed to this increase, led by China, USA, India and EU-27 with increases of 10%, 4%, 9% and 3% respectively. The increase is significant even when compared to 2008, when global CO2 emissions were at their highest before the global financial crisis. It can be noted that in EU-27, CO2 emissions remain lower in absolute terms than they were before the crisis (4.0 billion tonnes in 2010 as compared to 4.2 billion tonnes in 2007).
At present, the USA emits 16.9 tonnes CO2 per capita per year, over twice as much as the EU-27 with 8.1 tonnes. By comparison, Chinese per capita CO2 emissions of 6.8 tonnes are still below the EU-27 average, but now equal those of Italy. It should be noted that the average figures for China and EU-27 hide significant regional differences.
Long term global growth in CO2 emissions continues to be driven by power generation and road transport, both in industrial and developing countries. Globally, they account for about 40% and 15% respectively of the current total and both have consistent long-term annual growth rates of between 2.5% and 5%.
Throughout the Kyoto Protocol period, industrialised countries have made efforts to change their energy sources mix. Between 1990 and 2010 they reduced their dependence on coal (from 25% to 20% of total energy production) and oil (from 38% to 36.5%), and shifted towards natural gas (which increased from 23% to 27 %), nuclear energy (from 8% to 9%) and renewable energy (from 6.5% to 8%). In addition they made progress in energy savings, for example by insulation of buildings, more energy-efficient end-use devices and higher fuel efficiencies.
The report shows that the current efforts to change the mix of energy sources cannot yet compensate for the ever increasing global demand for power and transport. This needs to be considered in future years in all efforts to mitigate the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions, as desired by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Bali Action Plan and the Cancún agreements.Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main cause of global warming... more
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Time to get louder at government about this. Time to win this conversation with truth. CO2 traps heat. One of the main points of this, plus some others I divulge. ;l). Thanks Current for this venue for us to tell it like it is.
This video is dedicated to the indigenous peoples of our world and those experiencing the brunt of the effects of climate change/biodistress. May we find it within us to do what is right for all.Time to get louder at government about this. Time to win this conversation with truth.... more
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Carbon dioxide bubbles in the extreme low acidity zone. The brown landscape below is devoid of the sea urchins, gastropods and worms, found in areas with a normal level of acidity in the Mediterranean Sea. Credit: Kristy J. Kroeker
Stanford researchers have gotten a glimpse into an uncertain future where increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere will lead to higher levels in the ocean as well, leaving the water more acidic and altering underwater ecosystems.
The glimpse comes from waters near Ischia, Italy, where unusual shallow-water volcanic vents in the floor of the Mediterranean Sea bubble carbon dioxide into the water, creating a local underwater neighborhood that may resemble the ocean of the future.
If the results are a prediction of the future, "you are left with a dramatically different ecosystem that is likely going to be less able to deal with stress and is going to have less biomass available to feed organisms higher up the food chain," said Kristy Kroeker, a graduate student in biology at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station.
More at the linkCarbon dioxide bubbles in the extreme low acidity zone. The brown landscape below is... more
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Gore himself is a living example of how global warming alarmism is built on hypocrisy and pseudo-science.
Al Gore is set to launch his 24 Hours of Reality propaganda blitz this evening in a desperate effort to reverse increasing skepticism towards global warming alarmism – but the jig is up – Gore himself is a living example of how climate change hysteria is built on a platform of greed, hypocrisy and faulty pseudo-science.
Polls show that increasing numbers of Americans are not falling for the hocus pocus of man-made global warming, which is unsurprising given that Gore – one of its leading proponents – lives a lifestyle completely at odds with his own dogma.
Gore’s insistence that he is walking the walk, not just talking the talk, doesn’t seem to extend to his own private life in the context of energy conservation and CO2 emissions. While lecturing the world about reducing CO2 emissions and saving energy, Gore’s own mansion uses 20 times the energy of the average American home.
In February 2007, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research revealed that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. These figures were not disputed by Gore.
“If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn’t care,” said the Center’s president, Drew Johnson. “But he tells other people how to live and he’s not following his own rules.”
As the leading luminary of the global warming movement, you would expect Al Gore to live up to the standards he lectures everyone else about, particularly in relation to population control. Gore recently called on women to access “fertility management” (abortion) in order to stabilize global population.
However, Gore has four children of his own, who presumably enjoy the luxury of his $8.8 million seaside mansion in Montecito, California (absent any worries about rising sea levels).
Gore is set to become the first “carbon billionaire,” but he offsets his multiple-times the average power consumption by purchasing carbon credits ….bought largely from his own company, Generation Investment Management.
Aside from Gore’s own hypocritical lifestyle, the science behind man-made global warming is also being increasingly discredited, which is precisely why the former vice-president feels the need to reinforce the myth of anthropogenic climate change, particularly as a mere 24% of Americans think he is an expert on the subject.
“Gore is completely wrong when he tells us that the science of climate change is settled. If his “Climate Reality Project” actually did promote climate realism, he would tell us that the science is in a period of negative discovery — the more we learn, the more we realize we do not understand about this, arguably the most complex science ever tackled. Rather than “remove the doubt,” as Gore says, we need to recognize the doubt,” writes Tom Harris.
But that dogma is being contested by more and more reputable scientists who are finally speaking out in an organized fashion. For example, on August 29, a blockbuster science document was published that totally refutes Gore and Ban — the Interim Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Coauthored by a team of scientists recruited and led by climate experts Dr. Craig Idso, Professor Robert Carter, and Professor Fred Singer, the NIPCC shows that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has ignored or misinterpreted much of the research that challenges the need for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas controls. In other words, the science being relied upon by governments worldwide to create multi-billion dollar climate policies is almost certainly wrong.
Consider extreme weather, the main topic of 24 Hours of Reality. Gore promotes the concept that greenhouse gas-induced global warming is leading to increasingly severe weather. But this defies logic. If the world warms due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures at high latitudes are forecast to rise most, reducing the difference between arctic and tropical temperatures. Since this differential drives weather, we should see weaker midlatitude cyclones in a warmer world, and so less extremes in weather, not more.
Two of the primary pieces of evidence presented in Gore’s Inconvenient Truth polemic have also recently been completely undermined by the facts.
Gore’s emotional appeal in his film that predicates on the ludicrous notion that polar bears are not strong swimmers and will drown because of melting polar ice caps has been vehemently discredited by new figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service which show, “That the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations ‘may now be near historic highs,’” it read.
In addition, catastrophic sea level rises attributed to man-made CO2 emissions, a claim repeatedly invoked by Gore, have also failed to live up to their hype in recent times. Data recorded over the last several years clearly indicates that sea level rises have slowed down and are now flat.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, never mind a 24-hour TV bore-athon, cannot put the global warming myth back together again. Gore’s 24 hours of bullshit will only serve to exemplify the flailing desperation of climate change doomsayers as their dire proclamations are increasingly proven laughable by mother nature herself.
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Links at link.Gore himself is a living example of how global warming alarmism is built on hypocrisy... more
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JR: The disinformers like to say the extreme weather we are seeing today is nothing unusual. They don’t live in Texas, where “No One on the Face of This Earth has Ever Fought Fires in These Extreme Conditions.” Or my hometown area around the Catskill Mountains, where Hurricane Irene was “the most devastating weather event ever to hit the region.” Or around Binghamton, NY, where “An Extreme Rainfall Event Unprecedented in Recorded History Has Hit.”
Rainfall rates observed in southern Fairfax county around 6:00 p.m. on September 8. Some places saw rates between 3 and 4” per hour.
Capital Weather Gang Chief Meteorologist Jason Samenow has the details on one more record-exploding extreme event in this repost.
On Thursday, September 8, Ft. Belvoir received an astounding 7.03” of rain in three hours. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), that amount of rain in that amount of time was an “off the charts above a 1000-year rainfall (based on precip frequency from Quantico).”
Chris Strong, warning coordination meteorologist for the NWS in Sterling, emailed media a note on the frequency of rain return from last week’s event, for locations in Maryland and Virginia. It’s extraordinarily impressive and reproduced in full below…
National Weather Service note:
For our DC and Baltimore media colleagues…Some interesting stats that our hydrologist Jason Elliott passed on to us that you may find useful in your broadcasts/bloggings. Based on precipitation frequency computations, for last week’s rainfall:
Maryland (Wednesday)
* The Bowie IFLOWS gauge recorded 4.57 inches in 3 hours, which is about a 200-year rainfall (based on precip frequency from Glenn Dale).
* For Upper Marlboro and near Ellicott City, Wednesday’s rains were a roughly one in 50-100 year event.
* For Westview (near I-70 and the Baltimore Beltway), Wednesday’s rains were a roughly one in 10-25 year event.
Virginia (Thursday)
* The Kingstowne IFLOWS gauge (near Franconia) in Fairfax County recorded 5.47 inches in 3 hours, which is approximately a 500-year rainfall for that timeframe (based on precip frequency from Vienna & Clarendon).
* The Reston IFLOWS gauge in Fairfax County recorded 6.57 inches in 6 hours, which is also approximately a 500-year rainfall (based on precip frequency from Dulles).
* The Fort Belvoir AWOS (KDAA) reported 7.03 inches in 3 hours, which is off the charts above a 1000-year rainfall (based on precip frequency from Quantico).
For a wide swath in the heavy rain axis thru the DC and Baltimore metro areas, rainfall was at least a one in 10-25 year event.
Of course return period doesn’t mean that we won’t see that kind of rain in those locations for several decades (or centuries). A 1 in 100 year rain means that there is a 1% chance of seeing that amount of rain in any given year. A 0.1% chance is true for a 1 in 1000 year event.
Chris Strong
NWS Baltimore/Washington
More at the linkJR: The disinformers like to say the extreme weather we are seeing today is nothing... more
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Dr. Jeff Masters: An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit the Binghamton, New York area, where 7.49″ fell yesterday. This is the second year in a row Binghamton has recorded a 1-in-100 year rain event; their previous all-time record was set last September, when 4.68″ fell on Sep 30 – Oct. 1, 2010. Records go back to 1890 in the city….
You don’t often see a major city break its all-time 24-hour precipitation record by a 60% margin, according to wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, and he can’t recall ever seeing it happen before.
Before seeing that amazing story, I was all set to lead with the “unprecedented” rains soaking the Washington, DC area:
“I can’t recall flooding like this. This is unprecedented,” [Virginia Department of Transportation spokesman] Morris said.
The unrelenting rains, sometimes falling at four inches an hour….
Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow points me to this post, which has more details on our deluge:
Fort Belvoir, Va., recorded at least (last ob with rain total was 7:55 p.m.) an incredible 8.82” with as much as 7.03” coming during a three-hour stretch during the evening. It has received a stunning 13.52” since Monday.
And let’s not forget Irene’s recent devastating 1-in-100 year deluge, which was “the most devastating weather event ever to hit the region” where I grew up near the Catskill Mountains of New York state. It also set “the greatest single-day rainfall in Vermont’s history” by over an inch.
What’s going on?
Well, a very basic prediction of climate science is that as you warm the planet you get more water vapor in the atmosphere and more rain comes down in extreme deluges. Observations reveal that is already happening, and the recent scientific literature has said that is extremely likely that human emissions are the cause of this increase in precipitation intensity. Climate Progress ran through the recent literature in this February post, “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment.”
In a new report by by the scientific group Climate Communication, “Current Extreme Weather and Climate Change” report, top climatologists scientists spell out how human-caused global warming is loading the dice for the extreme weather seen in the past year. You can listen to a press conference held Wednesday by Jeff Masters and Jerry Meehl and Kevin Trenberth and Richard Somerville here.
Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained the deluge-warming connection in an interview with Climate Progress last year:
I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard is “Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate change.” But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.
More at the linkDr. Jeff Masters: An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit... more
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Taking on controversial claims that clouds are a main driver of temperature changes across the globe, a Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist finds evidence of cherry picking and errors.
By Douglas Fischer
New findings published Tuesday appear to undermine a controversial study - oft-cited by those who downplay the human impacts of climate change - that claimed variations in cloud cover are driving temperature changes across the globe.
You would think, if you have a scientific history of being wrong on so many issues, that you would have a little bit of humility before claiming you've overturned scientific evidence yet again. - Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M University
The latest analysis confirms – as most atmospheric scientists have long held – that the reverse is true: Clouds change in response to temperature changes. There is no evidence clouds can cause meaningful climate change, concluded the report's author, Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. "Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported," he wrote.
Dessler's findings are the third blow in less than a week to the research of University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist Roy Spencer.
On Friday, the editor at the journal that published Spencer's paper resigned, stating that the paper "should ... not have been published."
And on Thursday, a separate study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Benjamin Santer purported to disprove earlier Spencer claims that climate models overstate observed warming and thus are unreliable predictors of the future.
Myriad atmospheric events combine to drive weather and climate. That complexity has long stymied researchers trying to predict the impact that changes to the atmospheric system - notably the addition of billions of tons of greenhouse gases from industrial activity - will have on the Earth's climate.
Spencer, a scientist whose views and findings often put him outside the consensus on climate change, co-authored a report in July that concluded the influence of those many variables are too strong to reliably attribute any climate change to humans.
That paper, published in the two-year-old – and relatively obscure – journal Remote Sensing, explored the interaction between changes in ocean heat, cloud cover and surface temperatures. It found that computer models could not adequately explain changes in temperature observed over the past 10 years but - if certain key assumptions are made and a simple climate model is used - random changes in cloud cover could drive temperature changes enough to account for the observations.
The results, widely cited by those who claim the science on the human influence on climate change remains unsettled, cut against the basic tenets of atmospheric science, Dessler said in an interview.
Data vs. assumptions
But Spencer's key assumptions were wrong, Dessler added. And while Spencer and his co-author, University of Alabama scientist Danny Braswell, claimed to have examined 14 climate models, they presented just the results of the six models showing the biggest mismatch with reality.
"You would think, if you have a scientific history of being wrong on so many issues, that you would have a little bit of humility before claiming you've overturned scientific evidence yet again," Dessler said.
More at the linkTaking on controversial claims that clouds are a main driver of temperature changes... more
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EXTRACTS: "We have tried to have ever more efficient farming, with fewer people, more machines and a greater dependency on pesticides, fertilisers, GM crops and energy, using 10 kilocalories to produce 1 kilocalorie. But that is only possible if there is cheap oil. The system is basically bankrupt." - Hans Herren, Co-Chair of the IAASTD
Dr Herren was dismissive of the concept of "sustainable intensification", the alternative view of food security with food production at its heart, championed by the UK Government-commissioned Foresight report. He described it as "an excuse to sneak in GMOs and to continue with business as usual".
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CropWorld Global 2011: Changing our global approach to farming
Alistair Driver
Farmers Guardian, 1 September 2011
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/arable/cropworld-global-2011-changing-our-global-approach-to-farming/41304.article
SOCIETY has gone 'properly wrong' in the way it produces and consumes food, according to Hans Herren.
Dr Herren, a renowned scientist and international development expert, is on a mission to promote what he insists is a better alternative to the current global 'industrial' food production system, which he describes as 'bankrupt'.
He is a leading advocate of agroecology, a holistic farming model based on organic principles, where food is produced by small family farms using green methods which nourish soils for future generations.
"We have tried to have more efficient farming, with fewer people, more machines and a greater dependency on pesticides, fertilisers, GM crops and energy, using 10 kilocalories to produce one kilocalorie. But that is only possible if there is cheap oil," said Dr Herren.
"The system basically is bankrupt, which is why we need to change it to a more modern, advanced system, which will create energy, rather than consume it, and is not dependent on fossil energy, but more on people and better science."
Dr Herren, originally from Switzerland, co-chaired the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology, (IAASTD), a three-year project involving more than 400 experts from across the world.
Its 2008 report called for a radical overhaul of the way the world produces food to 'better serve the poor and hungry'. It demanded a shift away from the 'focus on production alone' and a greater emphasis on methods which conserve natural resources, backed up by trade and subsidy reforms and investment in science, education and training.
Report findings
Dr Herren described it as 'the mother of all reports on agriculture on a global and human scale', but admitted being disappointed about how little its findings had been implemented globally.
Dr Herren, who spent 27 years in Africa researching pest management and sustainable production, continues to promote agroecology through the US-based Millennium Institute, of which he has been president since 2005.
He said the key to future food security was not to use more inputs to produce more food per hectare, but to rely on techniques backed by 'solid science and agronomy - such as crop rotation with legumes and green manure, a cover crop grown to add nutrients to the soil - 'to enable the land to regenerate'.
But he also claimed it had been shown in experiments and in the field these farming methods can 'double, treble or even quadruple' yields in Africa.
He added: "Agroecology will produce food which is affordable because more people will be working, so they can actually afford it.
"We need to support small-scale and family farms, where more people get employed. We have 1.5 billion people who have no job. We really have to see all this in an inter-linked system."
He refuted the suggestion that, while agroecology may have merits in developing countries, where prevailing yields were relatively low and labour was abundant, it was unrealistic and idealistic to imagine it taking over in developed nations.
Instead, he insisted productivity levels could be maintained in developed countries if agroecology displaced intensive farming.
“It has been shown in the US that organic agriculture actually produces equally good yields as traditional agriculture,” he said. “But when there is drought or a flood, organic produces more as it is more resilient. There is no question we can deliver.”
The catch is that increased crop rotation would require a change in the way food is consumed. “You can’t disassociate consumption from production. In a rotation where you have more legumes someone has to eat those beans.”
He added people in urban-centric nations such as the UK and US would return to the land if agriculture became a ‘better and more rewarding job’ through greater investment, better prices for food and a reappraisal of farmers’ importance. “We need to look up to the farmer and down to the professor,” he said.
Lacking support
Dr Herren blamed the lack of wider support for this model of food security partly on what he claimed was a misconception of what it represented.
“We need to dispel this idea that agroecology is a back-breaking, low-yielding process and that we want to go back to grandfather’s agriculture. Actually, agroecology has a lot of science in it and a lot of knowledge,” he said.EXTRACTS: "We have tried to have ever more efficient farming, with fewer people,... more
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Soaring food prices caused by ethanol production – funded by Gore – are killing poor black people.
Al Gore is now so desperate to “win the conversation,” or in other words ‘silence the dissent’ surrounding global warming that he is now equating those who question ManBearPig with racists who supported spraying black people with water cannons.
Of course, the delicious irony is the fact that the promotion of man-made global warming and the development of biofuels is killing predominantly black people in third world countries as a result of soaring food prices.
“I remember, again going back to my early years in the South, when the Civil Rights revolution was unfolding, there were two things that really made an impression on me,” Gore told Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky. “My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, ‘Whoa! How gross and evil is that?’ My generation asked old people, ‘Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?’ And when they couldn’t really answer that question with integrity, the change really started.”
Gore then went on to talk about how to “win the conversation” on global warming, by comparing skeptics with racists, adding “It is important to get that out there, absolutely.”
Gore wants to make man-made climate change skepticism a thought crime on a par with uttering racist obscenities, once again revealing the hardcore authoritarian tendencies that cloud the entire global warming movement.
Since the skeptics are clearly ‘winning the conversation’, with polls showing a decreasing belief in climate change alarmism, merely insinuating skeptics are akin to holocaust deniers by labeling them “climate deniers” is no longer sufficient for the likes of Gore.
In reality, if you want to point the finger at anyone for encouraging racism, it’s overwhelmingly the global warming alarmists themselves.
Climate change alarmism and implementation of global warming policies is a crime of the highest nature, because it is already having a genocidal impact in countries like Haiti, where the doubling of food prices is resulting in a substantial increase in starvation, poverty and death.
As a National Geographic Report confirmed, “With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies,” by “eating mud,” partly as a consequence of “increasing global demand for biofuels.”
In April 2008, World Bank President Robert Zoellick admitted that biofuels were a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices that have led to poor people dying from starvation as a result of biofuels dominating land that would normally be used to harvest food.
Even man-made global warming advocate George Monbiot admits that promotion of biofuels “is causing starvation in the poor world,” particularly in Swaziland, where the decision to allocate several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production despite the country being in the grip of a famine was labeled “a crime against humanity” by Jean Ziegler, the UN’s special rapporteur.
Not only are biofuels starving millions of people, they are also leading to environmental destruction, by accelerating the growth of dangerous chemicals and pesticides.
Gore was an enthusiastic supporter of biofuel projects even as it became clear they were exacerbating the starvation of millions of predominantly black people in the third world, and yet he has the temerity to label critics of such practices as “racist”. Part of Gore’s $638 million Generation Investment Management funding was ploughed into the production of biofuels, before Gore himself was forced to admit he was wrong to push biofuels years later, after they had helped kill millions of poor black people.
But it’s not just biofuels, a product of global warming alarmism, that are unleashing a genocide against black people in poorer countries, it’s the whole anti-development mantra embraced by climate change activists that is being enforced by supranational organizations like the World Bank and the IMF in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, the evil life-giving gas that plants breathe and humans exhale.
Indeed, poorer countries rejected the 2009 Copenhagen climate agreement precisely because it discriminated against third world nations.
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 29, 2011
more exposing of this scum at link.Soaring food prices caused by ethanol production – funded by Gore – are... more
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Lykke Friis and Troels Lund Poulsen to be investigated thoroughly in fraud case
NOTE: Loose translation from Danish below; obviously text is not exact. Lykke Friis is a Trilateral Commission member and was intimately involved with all things CO2 during the United Nations Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
John Mynderup
Ekstra Bladet
August 25, 2011
http://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/politik/article1607237.ece
Denmark’s public revision expands investigations: Was the Danish parliament Folketinget mislead regarding the the scandal of the CO2-quota-fraud for billions?
The nationally employed corps of accountants Rigsrevisionen/Denmarks public revision fired of a gigantic four-level rocket on Wednesday regarding the scandal of the billion dollar fraud under the Danish Co2-qouta-register. The rocket was fired in an internal note between rigsrevisor (accountant of the kingdom) Henrik Otbo and to the parliament Folketingets statsrevisorer (accountants of the nation).
(The note can be found here http://multimedia.ekstrabladet.dk/archive/00696/A507-11_696292a.pdf)
It is clear from the note – that the Rigsrevisionen (accountants of the kingdom) now intensifies and expands the investigation ofminister for energy and climate Lykke Friis and former taxminister Troels Lund Poulsen – and their respective roles regarding the scandalous danish Co2-qouta-register. Including the issues of the said ministers giving misleading answers to the Danish parliament.
Europol estimates the fraud @ 38 billion danish kroner = around 5.5 billions USD.
Similar cases are being investigated all over Europe – all of them deriving from the danish qouta-registrate under the responsibility of Trilateral Comissionmember Lykke Friis.
During to years from 2007-2009 the Board of Lykke Friis – Energistyrelsen – did not demand any identification from entities tapping into the danish Co2-qouta-system. Denmarks register then grew to be the worlds largest with a total of 1.256 accounts. After the fraud was discovered only 30 accounts remains – the number of valid accounts.
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/24/europe-climate-chief-emissions-trading
This article from last years shows how the last Danish climate minister was committing fraud as well.Lykke Friis and Troels Lund Poulsen to be investigated thoroughly in fraud case... more
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Many public policy gurus and economists will tell you that if we truly want to decarbonize our economy we need to actually put a price on carbon. Just last week I conducted a book launch for Climate Capitalism in Portland with the support of Sustainable Business Oregon, Net Impact and Keen Footwear. The last question I received centered directly on this point. The individual in the audience asked: “Until we price the externality associated with climate change, can we ever get to scale with the low-carbon economy without massive subsidies?”
I would personally argue that without a price on carbon we will eventually de-carbonize our economy. Why? Because there won’t be enough cheap fossil fuels to meet our insatiable appetite for energy. And as fossil fuel prices climb on their way to “extinction” technology advancements will improves the efficiency of low-carbon alternatives like wind, solar, geothermal, algae biofuels, etc. Not only that but many industries are already recognizing the financial business case for energy efficiency, new transportation solutions, localized food production and more.
Besides all of the above, sooner or later our society is going to wake up to the reality that climate change is already wreaking havoc on our economies and societies. As Thomas Friedman recently pointed out in the New York Times:
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
Post Continues: http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/08/put-price-carbon-eu-rescue-again/Many public policy gurus and economists will tell you that if we truly want to... more
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Severe storms hit the Midwest on Saturday and are expected later in the Northeast, where flash flooding killed at least three people in Pittsburgh on Friday.
Heavy rains submerged cars in flood water that was nine feet deep in places in Pittsburgh, authorities said.
A mother and her two daughters died when water engulfed their vehicle in a low-lying section of the city's Washington Boulevard near the Allegheny River.
Kimberly Griffith, 45, and her daughters Brenna, 12, and Mikaela, 8, drowned in the vehicle and were pronounced dead at the scene around 6 p.m., a spokeswoman for the Allegheny County medical examiner's office said.
The water pinned their vehicle to a tree and they were unable to escape, authorities said.
Rescue workers also recovered a body from the river believed to be that of an older woman reported missing during the flood, Raymond DeMichiei, the city's deputy director of emergency management, said.
During the flood, more than a dozen cars were stranded along the road, local media reports said, and paramedics in boats went from car to car to rescue drivers and passengers. Some motorists stood on their vehicles' roofs or clung to trees to avoid the rising water.
Rescue crews used inflatable rafts to reach stranded drivers and 11 were rescued.
PHILADELPHIA SOAKED
The Philadelphia area was also soaked by heavy thunder showers Friday, bringing a record rainfall of 12.95 inches for August, according to NWS meteorologist Lee Robertson.
"Actually, we're on the verge of setting a record for any month," Robertson said. The previous record is from September 1999, set when a hurricane pushed rainfall to 13.07 inches.
As more storms were forecast for the region Sunday, the NWS warned in a flood advisory that nearly half of all flood fatalities are vehicle-related.
"As little as six inches of water will cause you to lose control of your vehicle," the NWS stated.
The Weather Channel forecast more storms from the Great Lakes to the Central Plains into Saturday night.
One man died as storms and a tornado roared across northern Wisconsin Friday night, cutting an 8-mile-wide-swath 65 miles north of Green Bay and taking out power to around 2,000 homes, officials said.
Douglas Brem, 43, was staying in a rented trailer at a recycling center in the path of the storm that caused extensive damage to homes, said Marinette County Coroner George Smith.
Damaging winds and hail were the primary threats for cities from St. Louis to Chicago Saturday, according to weather.com.Severe storms hit the Midwest on Saturday and are expected later in the Northeast,... more
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Ain’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08 buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. If you look closely, you might see them this weekend on the lapels of some of the global warming protesters holding a sit-in outside the White House.
Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)
The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.
But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.
That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.
But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.
Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it. In basketball terms, he’s alone at the top of the key — will he take the 20-foot jumper or pass the ball? It’s a rare, character-defining moment. Obama can’t escape it simply by saying that someone else will burn the oil if we don’t. Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation. That’s why the province’s energy minister told Canada’s Globe and Mail last month that without the Keystone pipeline Alberta would be “landlocked in bitumen,” the technical name for the heavy, gooey tar that is its chief export. Critics may argue otherwise, but Obama’s call is key; without it, that oil will stay in the ground for at least a while longer. Long enough, perhaps, that the planet will come fully to its senses about climate change.
It’s hard to predict what will happen. Earlier this summer Al Gore tossed up his hands in despair: “President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis,” Gore said. “He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks.” Yet it’s hard to give up on the image of the skinny senator from Illinois and the young people who were his most fervent supporters — young people who, according to pollsters, wanted a climate bill by a 5-to-1 margin. That didn’t happen, of course; for now, the Keystone pipeline is the best proxy we have for real presidential commitment to the global warming fight.
More at the linkAin’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08... more
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