Global Warming Videos & News: Environment Videos // Current

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3 hours ago

Greenpeace gets Badass at Mt Rushmore

In addition to heaps of praise and words of encouragement, we’ve been getting a lot of flak from people who were upset that we would deface a national monument. My response to them is twofold: First, there are already climbing leads established on the rock, which the park employees use to clean the monument. Our climbers used those leads and were extremely cautious not to do any harm to the monument, and in the end they did not do any damage.

Second, all of the sanctimonious claims about our disrespect for what Mount Rushmore represents are completely baseless. We have utmost respect for the accomplishments of the great leaders who built this country, that’s why we chose it as the site for issuing our challenge to President Obama to be a leader on global warming. But Mount Rushmore was built on a mountain stolen from Native Americans. Adding insult to injury, we then carved a bunch of white people’s faces into it. So you gotta ask yourself: What does Mount Rushmore really represent?

For the record, a member of the local Oglala Sioux tribe has published an op-ed praising our action.

And our larger point still stands: If President Obama wants to be considered equal to the pantheon of great American leaders depicted on Mount Rushmore, he needs to start providing real leadership on global warming, the greatest challenge of our time.

The pesident is currently meeting with the rest of the G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy. Yesterday they held a press conference to announce that they were setting a target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But that is not what real leadership looks like – that target had already been endorsed by 109 nations even before the G8 announcement.

Plus, as worthy as this long-term goal is, the truly critical issue is that President Obama and the rest of the world’s leaders still have not laid out an adequate roadmap for how we’re going to get there. In other words, they haven’t set short-term goals that are ambitious enough to get us to the long term goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have clearly stated that the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But the Obama Administration, like Congress, continues to promote short-term emissions reductions targets that fall far short of what science demands.

We can’t continue to put off for tomorrow what science tells us we need to do today. While the 2 degree commitment would appear to recognize the severity of the crisis we're facing, the Obama Administration and the G8 have failed to provide any plan for staying below this critical threshold. Sign our petition now and ask Obama to be a leader on global warming, not just here in America but for the world as well.In addition to heaps of praise and words of encouragement, we’ve been getting a lot of flak from people who were upset that... more

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6 hours ago

New Vid: Obama on Mt. Rushmore? A Call for Global Warming Leadership!

You might have heard about the challenge Greenpeace issued to President Obama on Wednesday with our a banner hang on Mount Rushmore: “America honors leaders, not politicians. Stop global warming.”

We have an amazing video that was shot in the field at the action, and I wanted to share it with you.

<a href="http://gpeace.convio.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=472&s_src=current">TAKE ACTION NOW: Call On Obama for Real Climate Leadership!</a>

President Obama is currently meeting with other world leaders at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. Yesterday they announced a new commitment to keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius – a target already endorsed by 109 nations. While this is certainly a worthy goal, President Obama and the other G8 leaders did not commit to short-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to achieving this long-term target. Having a goal is not good enough — we need a roadmap outlining how we will reach our destination. Given that President Obama and Congress have so far proposed short-term emissions goals that will not keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, the President needs to make a strong and clear commitment to meaningful short-term emissions reductions.

Please <a href="http://gpeace.convio.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=472&s_src=current">sign our petition now</a> calling on President Obama to provide the leadership that will establish both the short-term and the long-term goals science tells us are necessary to stop global warming.

Here in the United States and internationally, leadership is still desperately needed to get the systems in place for averting runaway climate change. We can’t continue to put off to tomorrow what science tells us we need to do today.

In order to adequately tackle global warming, we need President Obama to lead. <a href="http://gpeace.convio.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=472&s_src=current">Take action now and call on him to provide that leadership</a>.

For the Planet,

<img src="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/banners/jessmill-headshot">

Jess Miller
Greenpeace ActivistYou might have heard about the challenge Greenpeace issued to President Obama on Wednesday with our a banner hang on Mount... more

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10 hours ago

How Democrats will destroy our nation in the name of Global Warming

The green movement, driven by a hyper "global citizen" fanaticism, is going to have disastrous results in our nation.

As a point of discussion, I'll point out two articles:
G8 leaders claim historic breakthrough on new deal to tackle global warming
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6670327.ece

And:
Senators attack carbon tax proposals on US imports
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f91e0ff4-6bf2-11de-9320-00144feabdc0.html

In the first, the so-called "leaders" of the G8 agreed "to the goal of keeping the world’s average temperature from rising more than 2C (3.6F)."

This single "goal" reveals an astonishing--nay, SHOCKING--arrogance by these leaders. The presuposition that 8 nations can actually control global temperatures is either indicative of supreme ignorance or complete stupidity. The "science" on this issue is far from complete, and there is a growing chorus of scientists now numbering in the thousands that contest the notion that 1) the globe is continuing to heat (it may instead actually be cooling), and 2) that human impact on any global temperatures is miniscule at best.

But without getting into the "truth" behind global warming, the idea that WE puny humans can control the temperature of the entire planet is simply laughable. We cannot even predict the numbers of hurricanes in the current season, much less the paths of said hurricanes, yet they think they can actually control global temperatures?

The second article demonstrates how the policies they wish to use will negatively impact our nation. They are imposing a massive new tax on United States corporations to penalize them for "carbon emmissions". There is NO doubt--not even among Democrats--that this tax will further hobble our corporations, causing massive job loss and probably drive MORE corporations out of the country, because nations like China have been exempted from these idiotic policies, thus creating an imbalanced and unequal "playing field".

Their proposed solution was to place “border tax adjustments” on the imports from nations that don't impose similar taxes. But whoa, that would be criticized by the WTO. So they are backing down, and instead will just leave the imbalance and "HOPE" that our corporations will survive in spite of the stupid laws.

Folks, your Green Fanatics have hijacked the country and are going to destroy our economy.The green movement, driven by a hyper "global citizen" fanaticism, is going to have disastrous results in our nation.... more

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11 hours ago

Sun-powered device converts CO2 into fuel

Powered only by natural sunlight, an array of nanotubes is able to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour into... more

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11 hours ago

Ban blasts G8 emissions targets

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has criticised leaders of the G8 industrial nations for failing to make deeper commitments to... more

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14 hours ago

Environmentalists unfurl Mt. Rushmore banner

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota - Environmentalists who used National Park Service rock anchors to scale Mount Rushmore and unfurl an... more

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1 day ago

Is There a Link Between Climate Change and Poverty?

Oxfam International released an interesting report yesterday called, “Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and... more

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1 day ago

Greenpeace hangs protest banner on Mt. Rushmore

Greenpeace activists draped an enormous banner next to the carved stone faces of Mount Rushmore today, calling for more-aggressive... more

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1 day ago

Study: Geoengineering Won’t Help Oceans

A new study by a team of Stanford University scientists has concluded that geoengineering measures designed to reduce global warming will do little to reduce CO2 levels and, subsequently, ocean acidification.

CO2 that dissolves in salt water produces carbonic acid that undermines shell formation in crustations and coral. The world’s oceans absorb a quarter of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to an international oceanography research network.

“This century will see the end of coral reefs for the next tens of thousands of years,” said Ken Caldeira, a professor of environmental science at Stanford’s Carnegie Department of Global Ecology and the lead author of the paper.

Earlier this week in Britain, the filmmaker David Attenborough joined marine biologists in calling attention to the situation.

In fact, coral depletion has the potential to be a major economic disaster as well as an ecological catastrophe. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs noted that approximately 100 million people living in coastal areas worldwide depend on coral reef ecosystems for their livelihoods. The problem is that attempts to artificially cool the atmosphere, though necessary to avert more polar melting and the release of methane trapped in sub-arctic tundra, won’t slow the build-up of greenhouse gases.

Geoengineering solutions have received a surge of attention in recent months, even though ideas for mechanically altering the atmosphere trace back to the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some scientists are experimenting with techniques to fertilize oceans so increased plankton growth will absorb excess CO2. Others have studied methods for reflecting sunlight, like seeding white clouds with sea water, launching solar reflectors or painting roofs white, as Energy Secretary Steven Chu famously suggested earlier this year.

Professor Caldeira dismissed most of these approaches as either financially unattainable or, in the case of Secretary Chu’s white roof plan, insufficient. On balance, he said the most technically straightforward and cost-effective approach involves attempts to mimic the effect of large volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

Sulfur-based gases can be introduced inexpensively into the upper atmosphere, where they form sulfate particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth’s surface. As the Foreign Affairs essay notes, the cost would be a fraction of emission reduction efforts that take decades to show results.

“Basically, there was cooling despite an increase in greenhouse gases,” he sad. “The earth didn’t come to an end.” But, Professor Caldeira added, these measures “only make sense in an emergency response context.”A new study by a team of Stanford University scientists has concluded that geoengineering measures designed to reduce global... more

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America Honors Leaders

July 08, 2009 United States — Three Greenpeace climbers have hung a banner on the face of Mount Rushmore to issue a... more

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1 day ago

Nasa satellites reveal extent of Arctic sea ice loss

Study - based on satellite measurements - among first to estimate the thickness of the Arctic ice, rather than surface area.

The Earth is going thin on top. A new study has revealed that the Arctic Ocean's permanent blanket of ice around the North Pole has thinned by more than 40% since 2004.

Scientists said the rapid loss was "remarkable" and could force experts to reassess how quickly the Arctic ice in the summer may disappear completely. They blame the loss on global warming, which has driven temperatures in the Arctic to record highs and summer ice extent to recent lows.

The study, based on satellite measurements, is among the first to estimate the thickness of the Arctic ice, rather than just its surface area.

Ron Kwok, senior research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said: "Even in years when the overall extent of sea ice remains stable or grows slightly, the thickness and volume of the ice cover is continuing to decline, making the ice more vulnerable to continued shrinkage."

The study looked at measurements taken of the Arctic region by the Icesat satellite, launched in 2003.

Overall, the experts found that the ice, typically up to about 3m thick, thinned by 67cm over the last four winters.

Converting to ice volume, the scientists worked out the amount of so-called multiyear ice, which persists through Arctic summers, had decreased in the winter by up to 6,300 cubic kilometres since 2005 – a decline of more than 40%. The research is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.

The Arctic ice cap fluctuates with the seasons, growing in the freezing winter and shrinking over the summer. An important finding of the study is that the majority of Arctic ice no longer survives the summer. In 2003, this multiyear ice made up 62% of the region's total ice volume. By 2008, this was down to 32%. The remaining 68% was "first-year" seasonal ice, which was open water during the summer, so is thinner and more likely to melt away.Study - based on satellite measurements - among first to estimate the thickness of the Arctic ice, rather than surface area.... more