--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thorsten Arndt <arndt@...>
To: Michael Neuman <mtneuman@...>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:41:59 +0100
Subject: Energy & Climate News (7 January 2005)
Message-ID:
<LYRIS-20603-20204-2005.01.07-16.44.28--mtneuman#juno.com@...
>


HEADLINES
+++++++++
- Legal action threat over CO trading limits
- 21 EU nations ready to make Kyoto emissions cuts
- Industry starts trading CO2 pollution permits amid controversy
- Utilities brace for climate change pressures but still plan new coal
plants
- Researchers challenge carbon absorption effects of managed forests
- CO 2 trading targets too generous, say environmentalists
- CO2 trading threatens to suffocate UK industry
- Emissions position may cost U.S. jobs, conservationists say
- New Limits on Pollution Herald Change in Europe
- A Role For US Firms In Energy Cleanup
+++++++++


Legal action threat over CO trading limits
--------------------------------------------------
Financial Times, 7 January 2005 - Legal action could be taken against the
European Commission if it fails to approve raising the limit on the UK's
industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12485


21 EU nations ready to make Kyoto emissions cuts
--------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, 6 January 2005 - The European Union head office said it
approved a further five national emissions trading plans Thursday, as the
EU began participating in the Kyoto climate change pact this month.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12492


Industry starts trading CO2 pollution permits amid controversy
--------------------------------------------------
EurActiv.com, 6 January 2005 - Large industrial plants have started to
trade CO2 pollution allowances as part of an EU scheme to encourage
businesses to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The system has been
criticised by both green groups and businesses.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12482


Utilities brace for climate change pressures but still plan new coal
plants
--------------------------------------------------
Greenwire, 6 January 2005 - Bracing for pressure to act on global
warming, power companies are nonetheless planning major new investments
in coal-fired plants, according to a new survey.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12489


Researchers challenge carbon absorption effects of managed forests
--------------------------------------------------
Greenwire, 5 January 2005 - Managed forests may not soak up carbon as
previously thought, casting doubt over the ability of "carbon sinks" to
mitigate power plant and auto emissions, scientists said.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12459


CO 2 trading targets too generous, say environmentalists
--------------------------------------------------
The Guardian, 5 January 2005 - The European Union is at the centre of a
new row between governments, industry and environmental campaigners over
its ambitious new CO 2 emissions trading scheme, which came into effect
on January 1. It is designed to help the 25 members meet their commitment
to an 8% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 under the Kyoto
protocol.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12435


CO2 trading threatens to suffocate UK industry
--------------------------------------------------
The Times, 3 January 2005 - Manufacturers will face extra costs of £1.8
billion from the soaring price of energy this year, with £600 million of
that due to the latest anti-pollution initiative -emissions trading
-which came into force at the weekend.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12409


Emissions position may cost U.S. jobs, conservationists say
--------------------------------------------------
Duluth News-Tribune, 2 January 2005 - When some U.S. political leaders
fight against laws that would cut greenhouse gases, they say new
regulations would cost jobs and hurt the economy.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12396


New Limits on Pollution Herald Change in Europe
--------------------------------------------------
The New York Times, 1 January 2005 - For Peter Koster, the beginning of
2005 merits more than one glass of Champagne. Mr. Koster, the chief
executive and founder of the European Climate Exchange, says he sees new
rules on pollution as the dawn of a ''new era for European business.''
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12400


A Role For US Firms In Energy Cleanup
--------------------------------------------------
The Boston Globe, 30 December 2004 - While the Bush administration was
working to stall the global warming talks in Buenos Aires this month,
US-based companies have been taking the lead in developing and utilizing
technologies to reduce greenhouse gases.
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=12394


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Earth's permafrost starts to squelch
Source: Copyright 2004, BBC
Date: December 28, 2004
Byline: Molly Bentley

In parts of Fairbanks, Alaska, houses and buildings lean at odd
angles.

Some slump as if sliding downhill. Windows and doors inch closer and
closer to the ground.

It is an architectural landscape that is becoming more familiar as
the world's ice-rich permafrost gives way to thaw.

Water replaces ice and the ground subsides, taking the structures on
top along with it.

Alaska is not the only region in a slump. The permafrost melt is
accelerating throughout the world's cold regions, scientists reported
at the recent Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in
San Francisco.

In addition to northern Alaska, the permafrost zone includes most
other Arctic land, such as northern Canada and much of Siberia, as
well as the higher reaches of mountainous regions such as the Alps
and Tibet. All report permafrost thaw.

"It's a very, very widespread problem," said Frederick Nelson, a
geographer at the University of Delaware, US.

Scientists attribute the thaw to climate warming. As the air
temperature warms, so does the frozen ground beneath it.

Data quest

The observations reiterate the recent findings of the Arctic Climate
Impact Assessment report, which attributed the northern polar
region's summer sea-ice loss and permafrost thaw to dramatic warming
over the past half-century.

Thawing permafrost can cause buildings and roads to droop, and
pipelines to crack.

Natural features are also affected. Scientists reported an increased
frequency in landslides in the soil-based permafrost of Canada, and
an increased instability and slope failures in mountainous regions,
such as the Alps, where ice is locked in bedrock.

With the exception of Russia and its long history of permafrost
monitoring, global records are insufficient - often too brief or
scattered - to determine the precise extent of ice loss, said Dr
Nelson.

However, monitoring programmes that are now much larger in scope,
such as the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTNP),
indicate a warming trend throughout the permafrost zone.

Boreholes in Svalbard, Norway, for example, indicate that ground
temperatures rose 0.4C over the past decade, four times faster than
they did in the previous century, according to Charles Harris, a
geologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, and a coordinator of
Permafrost and Climate in Europe (Pace), which is contributing data
to the GTNP.

"What took a century to be achieved in the 20th Century will be
achieved in 25 years in the 21st Century, if this trend continues,"
he said.

Slip and slide

In Ellesmere Island, Canada, a combination of warmer temperatures and
sunny days has triggered an increasing frequency of detachment
events, or landslides, over the past 25 years, compared with the
previous 75, according to Antoni Lewkowicz, professor of geography at
the University of Ottawa.

EARTH'S FROZEN GROUND
Permafrost is permanent year-round frozen ground
Soils many cm below surface never rise above 0C
Only top few cm thaw in summer - "active layer"
Many regions have been like this for 1,000s of years
Major thaw changes water distribution in ecosystem
Sequestered carbon released; buildings destabilised

A detachment event occurs on a slope when the bottom of the active
layer - the layer of thawing and freezing ground above permafrost -
becomes slick with melted ice, causing it to slide off from the
permafrost below.

But in this case, the amount of temperature increase is not so
important as the rate of increase, Dr Lewkowicz found.

Meltwater from ice that warms slowly drains away. When ice warms
quickly, water pools, creating a frictionless surface between the
active layer and the permafrost. Like a stroll across a sloping icy
sidewalk, a fall is almost certain.

"We have records from this particular site for about 10 or 12 years,"
said Dr Lewkowicz. "The years when active layer detachments have
taken place have been times when we've had this rapid thaw down at
the bottom of the active layer."

The slides may cut a wide swath hundreds of metres across, but extend
only 50 or 60cm deep.

"They're almost skin-like landslides, moving across the permafrost,"
said Dr Harris.

The exposed permafrost, warmed by the air, now produces a new active
layer.

Sink to source

In steep mountainous regions, permafrost thaw can lead to slope
failure and rock falls.

In these areas, the permafrost ice is in hard rock. Where rocks are
jointed, the ice serves as a kind of cement holding them together.

When it melts, the rock loses its strength and falls. A dramatic
example of this occurred during the European heatwave of 2003 when a
huge block of the Matterhorn broke off suddenly, leaving Alpine
climbers stranded.

"It's not just the general warming trend we need to worry about,"
said Dr Harris, "but these extreme seasonal events as well."

Dr Nelson says that with human-built structures, proper engineering
and land use can mitigate permafrost loss.

Tingun Zhang, a researcher at the US National Snow and Ice Data
Center in Boulder, Colorado, reported at the AGU on the particular
challenge slumping ground presents to the construction of the Qinghai-
Xizang railroad across Tibet, perhaps the most ambitious permafrost-
zone project since the Trans-Alaskan pipeline.

Nearly half the railroad will lie across permafrost, and temperatures
in the region are expected to rise during this century.

Engineers are using a simple - and long established - trick of
cooling the permafrost with crushed rock. Rocks minimise heat intake
in summer and promote heat loss in winter.

It is the first time a large-scale project is using the crushed-rock
method as its primary solution, according to Dr Zhang.

But not all outcomes of permafrost thaw have precedent, or an
immediate solution. One considerable variable is the possible release
into the air of organic carbon stored in the permafrost.

In the drier areas, most of the emissions would be in the form of
carbon dioxide (CO2). But in the wetter areas, it would be methane, a
more effective greenhouse gas.

Scientists do not know exactly how much carbon is sequestered in the
permafrost regions, but estimates show it could be up to a quarter of
the sequestered carbon on Earth, 14% of it in the Arctic, alone.

"Will the Arctic be a carbon sink, or convert to a carbon source?"
posed Dr Nelson. "It's a big unknown."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4120755.stm

Senator Inhofe and novelist Michael Crichton need to see that
climate change is happening in many regions of the world, and
globally.

----
1. Arctic, Antarctic, glaciers and more:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/

2.
Earlier snowmelt runoff, higher dewpoints in the Upper Midwest:
http://www.mnforsustain.org/climate_change.htm

3.
Global Land Air Temperature 10 yr moving averages (1890-curr):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles

4.
Climate change in other regions:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/
----


Comment #9 by Pat Neuman — 10 Jan 2005, at:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=97

P&C discussion forum:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate

Pat N

I saw the last half of this program on public TV last night. It first
aired in June 2004.  It's worth watching.  It shows that shrubs are
taking over the tundra, reducing the albedo from snow cover.

Program:  Scientific American Frontiers
"Hot Times in Alaska"

Alaska is warming up. It's now a few degrees warmer than it was a
century and a half ago, and the trend seems to be accelerating.
Already the landscape is changing dramatically — permafrost is
thawing, glaciers are melting, forests are succumbing to drought and
insect attack. Alan Alda meets Alaskan scientists who are working to
find out if these are the first signs of global warming and what the
future may hold.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1404/index.html

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-05e.html

- Drought's Growing Reach: NCAR Study Points To Global Warming

This depiction of linear trends in the Palmer Drought Severity Index
from 1948 to 2002 shows drying (reds and pinks) across much of
Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa and moistening (green) across parts
of the United States, Argentina, Scandinavia, and western Australia.
Illustration courtesy Aiguo Dai and the American Meteorological
Society.
Boulder CO (SPX) Jan 11, 2005
The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more
than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new
analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR).
Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada,
western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global
temperatures appear to be a major factor, says NCAR's Aiguo Dai, lead
author of the study.

Dai will present the new findings on January 12 at the American
Meteorological Society's annual meeting in San Diego. The work also
appears in the December issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology in a
paper also authored by NCAR's Kevin Trenberth and Taotao Qian.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's
primary sponsor.

Dai and colleagues found that the fraction of global land
experiencing very dry conditions (defined as -3 or less on the Palmer
Drought Severity Index) rose from about 10-15% in the early 1970s to
about 30% by 2002. Almost half of that change is due to rising
temperatures rather than decreases in rainfall or snowfall, according
to Dai.

"Global climate model predict increased drying over most land areas
during their warm season, as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases increase," says Dai. "Our analyses suggest that this drying may
have already begun."

Even as drought has expanded across Earth's land areas, the amount of
water vapor in the air has increased over the past few decades. The
average global precipitation has also risen slightly.

However, as Dai notes, "surface air temperatures over global land
area have increased sharply since the 1970s." The large warming
increases the tendency for moisture to evaporate from land areas.

Together, the overall area experiencing either very dry or very wet
conditions could occupy a greater fraction of Earth's land areas in a
warmer world, Dai says.

Though most of the Northern Hemisphere has shown a drying in recent
decades, the United States has bucked that trend, becoming wetter
overall during the last 50 years, says Dai. The moistening is
especially notable between the Rocky Mountains and Mississippi River.

Other parts of the world showing a moistening trend include Argentina
and parts of western Australia. These trends are related more to
increased precipitation than to temperature, says Dai.

"Droughts and floods are extreme climate events that are likely to
change more rapidly than the average climate," says Dai.

"Because they are among the world's costliest natural disasters and
affect a very large number of people each year, it is important to
monitor them and perhaps predict their variability."

To see how soil moisture has evolved over the last few decades, Dai
and colleagues produced a unique global-scale analysis using the
Palmer index, which for decades has been the most widely used
yardstick of U.S. drought. The index is a measure of near-surface
moisture conditions and is correlated with soil moisture content.

Since the Palmer index is not routinely calculated in most of the
world, Dai and colleagues used long-term records of temperature and
precipitation from a variety of sources to derive the index for the
period 1870-2002.

The results were consistent with those from a historical simulation
of global land surface conditions, produced by a comprehensive
computer model developed by scientists at NCAR, NASA, Georgia
University of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, and the
University of Arizona.

By factoring out rainfall and snowfall, Dai and colleagues estimated
how much of the global trend in soil moisture was due solely to
rising temperatures through the extra evaporation they produce.

"The warming-induced drying has occurred over most land areas since
the 1970s," says Dai, "with the largest effects in northern mid and
high latitudes."

In contrast, rainfall deficits alone were the main factor behind
expansion of dry soils in Africa's Sahel and East Asia. These are
regions where El Nino, a more frequent visitor since the 1970s, tends
to inhibit precipitation.

SCIENCE: Photos prove that glaciers are dwindling

NED ROZELL
ALASKA SCIENCE
(Published: January 9, 2005)
http://www.adn.com/life/story/6001027p-5895569c.html

SAN FRANCISCO -- People picked up their newspapers on thousands of
doorsteps in this city recently and saw two pictures of Glacier Bay
on the front page, under the headline "Alaska's retreating glaciers
seen as evidence Earth is warming."

One photo provided by glaciologist Bruce Molnia showed Muir Glacier
in 1941. Molnia compared it to a photo he took in 2004 that shows
Muir Glacier's retreat out of the picture in 60 years.

About 15 national reporters attended a press conference on the
disappearing glaciers and other changes in Alaska's landscape at the
American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco, which
this year attracted more than 11,000 scientists. Joining Molnia as a
speaker were Matt Nolan of UAF's Water and Environmental Research
Center and Ken Tape of the Geophysical Institute. Nolan showed his
photos of shrinking McCall Glacier in the Brooks Range and Tape
showed photos of how the Arctic has gotten shrubbier from the 1940s
to the present.

Reporters scribbled notes as they looked at the images, which show
how quickly the North has warmed in the last century, especially the
last 50 years.

"When you put pictures in front of somebody, you don't have to say
anything," said Molnia, who works for USGS in Reston, Va., but has a
home in Fairbanks. Molnia spent the summer of 2004 traveling to
Glacier Bay and Kenai Fjords, trying to find the exact spots where
earlier photographers captured glaciers on film. Sometimes finding
the cairns (rock piles) of glaciologists who took photographs from
the spots decades earlier, Molnia snapped new photos, including the
color one of Muir and Riggs glaciers that appeared on the front page
of the Dec. 17, 2004, San Francisco Chronicle and accompanied a story
about Alaska's melting glaciers by David Perlman.

Nolan showed his comparison of McCall Glacier, featuring a photo
taken by glaciologist Austin Post in 1958 along with a photo Nolan
snapped with his pocket-size digital camera in 2003.

"All the glaciers in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are
retreating from their most extended positions thousands of years ago,
and the only scientific explanation is climate change," said Nolan,
as quoted by Perlman in the Chronicle article.

Tape took the laser pointer and displayed several pairs of photos of
Alaska's North Slope that show the encroachment of shrubs. A
government photographer took the huge-negative, Ansel-Adams style
black and white originals in the 1940s, and Tape duplicated them with
a digital camera in recent years. He explained how shrubs make the
North Slope warmer by absorbing more sunlight and how shrubs along
riverbanks have restricted river channels and perhaps attracted more
moose north over the Brooks Range. The changes he has detailed along
with Matt Sturm and Charles Racine of the Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratory have all happened in about 60 years, "a blink
of an eye in geological time," Tape said.

The use of photographs to document change in the North is a technique
more scientists are using, enough that it merited a poster session on
the subject at the conference. Molnia said his future work includes
revisiting about 100 of the places in Denali National Park that
mountaineer and photographer Brad Washburn photographed in the 1930s
and 1940s to compare changes from then until now. Molnia tried to
duplicate them in the summer of 2004, but the air was too smoky.
Along with documenting changes in Alaska Range glaciers, Molnia will
also benefit from changes in technology since Washburn climbed the
peaks.

"Brad used 60-pound cameras for his work," Molnia said. "We'll do a
lot of our stuff with digital cameras."

Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute,
University of Alaska Fairbanks. He can be reached by e-mail at
nrozell@g....

Shrinking glaciers evidence of global warming/Differences seen by
looking at photos from 100 years ago

Friday, December 17, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Glaciers throughout Alaska are shrinking more and more rapidly, and
scientists comparing old photos taken up to a century ago with digital
images made during climbing expeditions today say the pictures
provide the most dramatic evidence yet that global warming is real.

And it's not only the glaciers reflecting the climate change.
Everywhere on the treeless tundra north of the jagged slopes of
Alaska's Brooks Range, explosive bursts of vegetation -- willows,
alders, birch and many shrubs -- are thriving where permafrost once
kept the tundra surface frozen in winter.

Two geophysicists and a government geologist who spend much of their
working lives exploring changes in the Arctic displayed dozens of
photographs from the thousands in their files Thursday at the annual
meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"You don't need science to prove the point," said Matt Nolan of the
University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "This evidence is visual, and it's
real.

"All the glaciers in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are
retreating from their most extended positions thousands of years ago,
and the only scientific explanation for their retreat is a change in
climate. There's no doubt at all, and the loss of glacial volume is
accelerating."

Bruce Molnia, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has
gathered more than 200 glacier photos taken from the 1890s to the
late 1970s and has visited more than 1,000 Alaskan glaciers in the
past four years to photograph them from precisely the same locations
and pointing in the same directions as the older ones.

Where masses of ice were once surging down wide mountain passes into
the sea, or were hanging from high and perilously steep faces, the
surfaces in Molnia's images now stand bare. What remains from many of
the retreating glaciers are stretches of open water or broad, snow-
free layers of sediment.

"And as the glaciers disappear," Molnia said, "you get the amazing
appearance of vegetation."

As certain as the scientists are that global warming is responsible
for Alaska's changing landscape, they hesitated to blame it all on the
increasing levels of greenhouse gases from industry that have marked
the past century and have resulted in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, now
ratified by 126 nations but which the Bush administration has
rejected.

"The rapid melting of the glaciers, the increasing vegetation in the
high Arctic and the invasions of insects where insects were once
unknown are all happening," Molnia said, "and I would not question
that a significant component of the change is due to the heat-
trapping greenhouse effect -- certainly a human-caused issue -- but I
wouldn't say it's all caused by global industries."

The increasing pace of change is clear in the glaciers he has
explored, Molnia said. Many photos he has recovered from the 1890s,
the 1940s and the 1970s show how fast the glaciers have been
retreating; in a few cases, however, where warming temperatures have
increased precipitation at higher altitudes, some glaciers actually
advanced, he said.

Geophysicist Ken Tape, of the University of Washington, has been
exploring the Brooks Range in the far north of Alaska as well as the
wide stretches of treeless tundra between the mountains and the
Beaufort Sea along the state's north coast.

The growth of shrubs across the tundra has increased by 40 percent in
less than 60 years, Tape said, "and that perturbation is certainly
due to the changing climate."

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/c/a/2004/12/17/MNGARADH401.DTL

For more photos of glaciers and other evidence of global warming,
please see: http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/index.html

Global temperatures in 2004 were 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the long-term (1880-2003)
average**, ranking 2004 the fourth warmest year on record. The warmest year on
record is 1998, having an anomaly of 0.63°C (1.13°F), followed by 2002 and 2003
both having an anomaly of 0.56°C (1.01°F). Land temperatures in 2004 were 0.83°C
(1.50°F) above average, ranking fourth in the period of record while ocean
temperatures were third warmest with 0.42°C (0.76°F) above the 1880-2003 mean.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2004/ann/global.html#Gtemp

NOAA NCDC plot: 1880-2004:
Annual Global Surface Mean Temperature Anamolies at:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2004/ann/glob_jan-dec_pg.gif

Pat N

My comment to www.realclimate.org ...
[Re: Gavin's "Is Climate Modelling Science?"  12 Jan 2005]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Comment by Pat Neuman Jan 13, 2005

The last paragraph of Gavin's "Is Climate Modelling Science?"
posted on 12 Jan 2005 is repeated below:

[So, in summary, the model results are compared to data, and if there is a
mismatch, both the data and the models are re-examined. Sometimes the models can
be improved, sometimes the data was mis-interpreted. Every time this happens and
we get improved matches between them, we have a little more confidence in their
projections for the future, and we go out and look for better tests. That is in
fact pretty close to the textbook definition of science.]

From reading the paragraph,  I conclude that prediction of climate using climate
models is similar to prediction of river flood levels using hydrologic models. 
Operational hydrologic modeling requires precipitation, temperatures and other
meteorological data for input.  Calibration of hydrologic models is limited by
the length of the historical river data.  Accurate prediction of river stages
and flows is accomplished by hydrologists that understand how the models work
and what the limitations are likely to be.  The hydrologist uses the latest
operational data to update the model states to best represent true hydrologic
conditions within each river basin.  There are likely to be timing and volume
errors in the modeling and predictions. With carefully made evaluations and
adjustments of the latest observations, the model is honed to give the best
prediction.  It's better not to make the model unecessarily complex, otherwise
adjusting model states for observations becomes cumbersome with a possible loss
in predictive capability.  Data and model states must be scrutinized, and the
hydrologists needs to consider possible changes in the river basin
characteristics through time, which add complexity to calibration, modeling and
prediction.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=100

The Audubon Advisory
Audubon's Twice-Monthly Legislative Update
JANUARY 14, 2005
(Vol. 2005, Issue 1)

IN THIS ISSUE:

109th Congress Legislative Lookout
109th CONGRESS CONVENES

Get ready, Auduboners! The 109th Congress has convened, and with it comes
unprecedented challenges in the fight to protect birds, other wildlife and our
nation's natural treasures -- places that are special to all of us. Moments
after last year's election results were official, powerful special interests
were champing at the bit for the start of the new Congress. After all, this is
the year they think they will get it all: drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and weakening of some of our long-standing environmental
protections, such as the Endangered Species Act. Without a doubt, every single
vote on Audubon's priority issues - from restoring and protecting our great
natural heritage, to securing funding for vital conservation programs, and
preserving key natural resource protections -- will come down to the wire, and
your lawmaker will play a critical role in the fight and may even cast the
deciding vote!

That's why we'll be counting on you -- this year more than ever -- to help
protect birds, other wildlife and our nation's natural treasures -- places that
are special to all of us. Audubon remains committed to providing you with the
tools you'll need to be as successful and effective as possible, and we'll
deliver them to you right here, every other week, in the Audubon Advisory. We'll
provide you with information and insider reports on conservation issues pending
in the House, Senate, and governmental agencies. We'll give you links so you can
easily identify and contact your lawmakers on these critical conservation
issues. We'll alert you to late-breaking news, let you know when critical issues
are up for a vote, or are in danger of being ignored. We'll let you know how
your lawmakers are positioned on those issues, and let you know what you can do
to help win them over! Here is quick summary of some of the major issues we'll
be working on this year, and once again, we'll need your help if we're going to
win. So read on, stay tuned, stay involved and this year, please encourage your
family and friends to get involved as well. We can't succeed without you!

PROTECTING THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE: For over 20 years, Audubon has
been a leading voice in protecting the Arctic Refuge. The new Congress and
changes in the Administration in 2005 will demand nothing less. Just days into
the 109th Congress, the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
from oil and gas drilling has heated up! Right now, pro-drilling proponents are
trying to attach drilling revenues to the FY06 budget resolution - the
Congressional blueprint that sets overall funding levels for government agencies
for the upcoming fiscal year. As an Audubon Advisory reader, you know this is
nothing more than a back door; underhanded way to avoid a fair and open debate
on an issue that is considered one of the most controversial issues Congress
will tackle this year. As their sneaky tactics are being employed, the
pro-drilling special interests are also working tirelessly to win over Members
of Congress by overwhelming them with less than accurate claims! Make no
mistake, for the pro-drillers this is about short-term financial gains. For
those against drilling, it's about protecting America's last great frontier,
protecting an environmentally sensitive and biologically productive area for
birds and wildlife that call it home. And it's about allowing a National
Wildlife Refuge to do what it was created to do: be a haven for birds and
wildlife. Click on this link now to learn more and to instantly communicate with
your lawmakers on this issue today: www.protectthearctic.com

SAVING THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is in the
crosshairs of a well-coordinated attack by special interests and their
congressional allies seeking to weaken the ESA. You read that correctly - weaken
the nation's 30-plus year old law aimed at protecting birds and other wildlife
on the brink of extinction. Two anti-ESA bills were introduced in the 108th
Congress, one focusing on reform of critical habitat and another aiming to add
layers of bureaucratic review of scientific decisions. Both bills were stealth
attacks on the ESA being pushed under the guise of "reform" of a "broken" law
that proponents claim is not achieving the goal of recovering species threatened
with extinction. And both bills will undoubtedly be back in the 109th Congress.
Audubon will work with our partners in wildlife conservation to defend the ESA
against these legislative attacks with the goal of keeping the law strong and
fully intact. Once again, we'll need your help to win. So stay tuned - much more
to follow!

MAINTAINING PROTECTIONS FOR CLEAN WATER: Clean water is vital to America. It is
essential for community drinking water, agriculture, fishing and swimming,
wildlife and a strong economy. Clean water is a legacy we all hope to deliver to
our children and grandchildren for their future enjoyment and health. Despite
the 30 plus years of the Clean Water Act successes, long considered one of the
most successful environmental laws in the country, enormous water quality
challenges still remain. Even though these water quality challenges remain there
are efforts to undermine the Act, such as weakening its programs designed to
clean up the most polluted waterways, reducing funding for critical water
quality programs, and removing protections for important wetlands. Our lawmakers
need to do more to protect our precious waters that we all - people, birds and
other wildlife - rely on for survival. Audubon and our partners in conservation
will work tirelessly with Members of Congress, as well as federal governmental
agencies, to protect America's water resources from attacks on the Clean Water
Act. We'll keep you posted!

DOING MORE FOR MIGRATORY SONGBIRDS: In 2000, the U.S Congress passed, and
President Clinton signed into law, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation
Act (NMBCA)- our nation's first law aimed directly at protecting songbirds by
helping to restore and to conserve their wintering habitat, ensuring the keep
coming back to our backyards in the spring. Now, it's time for Congress to
reauthorize the five-year program, and outline how the program will function in
the future. Audubon seeks to enhance and expand the NMBCA so that more funding
is available for more programs, so more people and more countries can
participate in this program aimed at saving Neotropical migrants, including some
of the most endangered birds in North America such as the Kirtland's Warbler,
Hermit Thrush, Black-capped Vireo, and Kentucky Warbler. This will undoubtedly
be one of our top priorities in 2005, and one we will need your support to pass.
Stay tuned!

GET CONGRESS MOVING ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Our planet is getting hotter. Records
show that the 1990s was the warmest decade in more than a century, with 1998
boasting the highest average global temperatures ever recorded. 2002 followed as
a close second, and 2001 a close third. These steady increases in temperatures
can have a devastating impact on the environment, causing greater air pollution,
more droughts and crop failures, more wildfires, heavier rains and flooding,
more intense heat waves and killer storms, rising sea levels, melting tundra and
widespread loss of bird and other wildlife habitat. The good news is we know
what is causing the increased greenhouse gas levels, and what's more is we have
the technologies to reduce it. The bad news is these technologies - which are
readily available and far from cost prohibitive - are not being advocated and
encouraged. From new approaches to transportation, to energy efficient
structures and machinery to carbon sequestration in forests and wetlands, we
must improve the incentives for expanded use. Fortunately, a good number of our
Senators and Representatives want to change this and are determined to pass
legislation to change our nation's present course, since every year Congress
does not take action, the problems grow harder to solve. We'll keep you informed
on measures introduced in the House and Senate to address global climate change,
and count on your help to encourage your lawmakers to push those bills that
achieve real reductions in greenhouse gases, through the legislative process.
We'll keep you posted on any and all developments!

NO MORE CUTBACKS FOR NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGES: Without a doubt the closest
thing America has to bird heaven is our National Wildlife Refuge System. Over
530 national wildlife refuges that span 50 states, host more than 700 bird
species, and are the primary habitat for about 250 threatened and endangered
species. These refuges are critical for protecting the majority of our country's
threatened and endangered bird and wildlife populations. Yet, in spite of their
important role, they are in dire need of care, and many are facing incompatible
activities on and near refuge lands, such as inadequate water supplies, and
invasive species. Moreover, the Refuge system is suffering from insufficient
budgets for operations, maintenance and new land acquisition. Last year,
Congress actually reduced funding for our Refuge system, and we need to ensure
they do not do so again! Audubon and our conservation partners are committed to
protecting refuges and the National Wildlife Refuge system. We'll continue to
work with the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE) toward
increased funding for refuge operations and maintenance, and will again work
with Audubon chapters and state offices to identify and pursue Land and Water
Conservation Fund priorities within the Refuge System. Audubon also will
continue our efforts to secure funds to remove invasive species from priority
bird habitat areas within the Refuge System. We'll focus on supporting chapter
and state efforts to defend local refuges from threats, including the Audubon
North Carolina effort to protect Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge from the
threat of a proposed landing field for Navy jets. We will need your help to be
successful through all of this! Stay tuned!

TACKLING THE GROWING PROBLEM OF INVASIVE SPECIES: Invasive, non-native species
-- like the northern snakehead fish -- that choke out, devour and destroy native
wildlife and their habitat have infested more than 100 million acres of the
American landscape and have caused $130 billion worth of damage to the American
economy every year. The problem is spreading and multiplying fast. Each year in
America, more than 14 million acres are lost to invasive weeds -- an area equal
to a strip of land seven miles wide stretching from coast to coast. Invasive
weeds and non-native animals also present one of the most critical threats to
the nation's declining bird populations. More than one-third of all imperiled
bird species in America are threatened. Invasive trees and weeds like
bufflegrass and salt cedar are destroying habitat needed by critically imperiled
birds such as Costa's Hummingbird, Curve-billed Thrasher, Seaside Sparrow, and
the Elf Owl. In the coming months, Audubon's Public Policy office will launch an
effort to control and contain invasive species "Hot Spots." Audubon will focus
on those areas where the threat is significant and growing, where the nation's
most valuable bird and wildlife habitat is at risk, and where America's most
imperiled bird populations are declining. This is an overwhelming threat for
birds, and we're going to need your help to move legislative forward. We'll keep
you posted!

RESTORING AMERICA'S SPECIAL PLACES: Many of our nation's most unique natural
resources are in jeopardy. These diverse and ecologically sensitive ecosystems
are literally losing critical ground every day! Pollution, development, invasive
species - just to name a few -- are destroying these habitats that are not only
critical for the survival of endangered and threatened species, but the public's
health as well. Congress can help by passing legislation that will restore and
protect these special places - habitats that are known the world over, like the
one-of-a-kind Everglades, the mighty Mississippi River, America's unique and
diverse wetlands along the Louisiana coast, the historic and ecologically
significant Rio Grande, and the majestic Long Island Sound. These truly unique
habitats belong to all Americans, not just those who live nearby. Throughout the
year, we'll provide you with information on restoration and protection measures
for these crucial ecosystems and we'll count on your help to see that your
lawmakers support them. More to follow!

ADDRESSING POPULATION & THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT: Human population growth is the
most pressing environmental problem facing the U.S. and the world. Population
expansion over the last 50 years has exacerbated many environmental problems,
including air and water pollution, loss of birds, other wildlife and their
habitat, fisheries depletion, and climate change acceleration. These are global
problems that transcend national boundaries. The U.S. Congress can help. Each
and every year, the U.S. Congress dedicates funding to international family
planning programs, which provide education and voluntary health care services,
train health workers and supply contraceptive commodities. International family
planning improves the ability of people to manage their lives and their natural
resources in a more sustainable fashion, which in turn helps protect birds,
other wildlife and our environment. Last year, Congress increased its funding
for international family planning by a modest amount. This year, we'll be back
to fighting for an even bigger increase. For more information on Audubon's
commitment to making the connection between population and the global
environment, click on this link now: http://www.audubonpopulation.org

STATE ISSUES: Audubon's state offices and local Chapters are addressing many
issues that affect local bird conservation. Many times these issues have, as
part of their solution, a national component. This can be federal funding,
permits, agency reports or even in some instances how and agency conducts its
business. You can visit your local Audubon web sites to see some of these and we
will be asking some of you to help on some of these issues during the year as
well.

WE'LL ALSO BE WORKING to stop any effort to weaken long-standing environmental
and public health protections, including the Clean Air Act. We'll be encouraging
Congress to fund Audubon's Land & Water Conservation Fund site priorities,
pushing Congress to keep its commitment to the beauty and health of our public
lands by expanding these dwindling natural habitats - particularly those
important for America's declining avian species. We'll be monitoring legislation
and regulations impacting our National Forests, including recent rule changes
for Forest Service NEPA compliance and planning for wildlife populations. We
will make every attempt to ensure our forests stay healthy to support birds and
other wildlife. Audubon will continue to make protection of Alaska's public
lands a priority, and you can count on Audubon to continue in its effort to
increase our nation's commitment to local protection of species and critical
habitat through the State Wildlife Grants program.

It's undoubtedly going to be a very challenging year, and one where we'll need
your support more than ever if we're going to succeed. We hope you'll keep
reading and keep participating! Thank you once again for your on-going support!

Audubon Advisory
Audubon Public Policy Division
1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
1-800-659-2622
audubonaction@...

SCIENCE: Photos prove that glaciers are dwindling

NED ROZELL
ALASKA SCIENCE

(Published: January 9, 2005)
SAN FRANCISCO -- People picked up their newspapers on thousands of
doorsteps in this city recently and saw two pictures of Glacier Bay on
the front page, under the headline "Alaska's retreating glaciers seen as
evidence Earth is warming."

One photo provided by glaciologist Bruce Molnia showed Muir Glacier in
1941. Molnia compared it to a photo he took in 2004 that shows Muir
Glacier's retreat out of the picture in 60 years.

About 15 national reporters attended a press conference on the
disappearing glaciers and other changes in Alaska's landscape at the
American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco, which this
year attracted more than 11,000 scientists. Joining Molnia as a speaker
were Matt Nolan of UAF's Water and Environmental Research Center and Ken
Tape of the Geophysical Institute. Nolan showed his photos of shrinking
McCall Glacier in the Brooks Range and Tape showed photos of how the
Arctic has gotten shrubbier from the 1940s to the present.

Reporters scribbled notes as they looked at the images, which show how
quickly the North has warmed in the last century, especially the last 50
years.

"When you put pictures in front of somebody, you don't have to say
anything," said Molnia, who works for USGS in Reston, Va., but has a home
in Fairbanks. Molnia spent the summer of 2004 traveling to Glacier Bay
and Kenai Fjords, trying to find the exact spots where earlier
photographers captured glaciers on film. Sometimes finding the cairns
(rock piles) of glaciologists who took photographs from the spots decades
earlier, Molnia snapped new photos, including the color one of Muir and
Riggs glaciers that appeared on the front page of the Dec. 17, 2004, San
Francisco Chronicle and accompanied a story about Alaska's melting
glaciers by David Perlman.

Nolan showed his comparison of McCall Glacier, featuring a photo taken by
glaciologist Austin Post in 1958 along with a photo Nolan snapped with
his pocket-size digital camera in 2003.

"All the glaciers in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are retreating
from their most extended positions thousands of years ago, and the only
scientific explanation is climate change," said Nolan, as quoted by
Perlman in the Chronicle article.

Tape took the laser pointer and displayed several pairs of photos of
Alaska's North Slope that show the encroachment of shrubs. A government
photographer took the huge-negative, Ansel-Adams style black and white
originals in the 1940s, and Tape duplicated them with a digital camera in
recent years. He explained how shrubs make the North Slope warmer by
absorbing more sunlight and how shrubs along riverbanks have restricted
river channels and perhaps attracted more moose north over the Brooks
Range. The changes he has detailed along with Matt Sturm and Charles
Racine of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory have all
happened in about 60 years, "a blink of an eye in geological time," Tape
said.

The use of photographs to document change in the North is a technique
more scientists are using, enough that it merited a poster session on the
subject at the conference. Molnia said his future work includes
revisiting about 100 of the places in Denali National Park that
mountaineer and photographer Brad Washburn photographed in the 1930s and
1940s to compare changes from then until now. Molnia tried to duplicate
them in the summer of 2004, but the air was too smoky. Along with
documenting changes in Alaska Range glaciers, Molnia will also benefit
from changes in technology since Washburn climbed the peaks.

"Brad used 60-pound cameras for his work," Molnia said. "We'll do a lot
of our stuff with digital cameras."

Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute, University
of Alaska Fairbanks. He can be reached by e-mail at
nrozell@....

Original Article and Photo's:
http://www.adn.com/life/story/6001027p-5895569c.html
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1731.html


"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html

At: http://www.realclimate.org/

"The global cooling myth"
ends with:

"This episode shows the scientific press in a very
good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any
such process in the popular press, then and now."
----

Why has there been a lack of 'process' in the popular press,
then and now? ... especially in the U.S." ???

... I think U.S. government agency administrators,
directors and managers are reluctant to make waves.

Is it correct to assume that some readers will not reply to my
question of Why..., out of fear that their response could threaten
their personal rewards, status or livelihood?

Pat N
----

[Response: In the post, I was contrasting scientific peer review with
the processes of the popular press. The latter doesn't appear to have
anything resembling peer review, so wacky stuff is more likely to get
published. Also, their audiences are less likely to notice
contradications and omissions -
William]
----

I think the distortion of science is greater in global climate change
articles because there is no government agency taking responsiblity
for providing essential information and education for the media and
public, in the U.S. The media and weather-climate TV broadcasters have
no authority to go to for advise. It's therefore not surprising that
their stuff is more "wacky" than other sciences that have focal points
in government to help in sorting fact from fiction. The lack of a
responsible government agency on global climate change explains the
reasons why contrasts between scientific peer review and the processes
of the popular press are greatest with the climate change issues.
www.realclimate.org is supposed to be focused toward climate science,
otherwise I think it would have been defined as realscience.org, right?

Pat N
----

--- In Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles@yahoogroups.com,
Tim Jones <deforest@a...> wrote:
>   RealClimate
> <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94#more-94>
> 14 Jan 2005
>
> The global cooling myth
>
>   Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't
> believe global warming predictions now, because
> in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age
> and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will
> mentioned it in his column (see Will-full
> ignorance)
> <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=90> and
> the egregious Crichton manages to say "in the
> 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice
> age was coming" (see Michael Crichton's State of
> Confusion )
> <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74>. You
> can find it in various other places too [here,
> mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used
> by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics,
> because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn't
> stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups
> though.
>
> I should clarify that I'm talking about
> predictions in the scientific press. There were
> some regrettable things published in the popular
> press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic
> did better)
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nat-geog-1976-11.html>.
> But we're only responsible for the scienti press.
> If you want to look at an analysis of various
> papers that mention the subject, then try
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/>.
>
> Where does the myth come from? Naturally enough,
> there is a kernel of truth behind it all.
> Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the
> 40's to the 70's (although that needs to be
> qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature
> datasets were only just beginning to be assembled
> then). But people were well aware that
> extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake
> (Mason, 1976)
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/mason.1976.html>.
> Secondly, it was becoming clear that ice ages
> followed a regular pattern and that interglacials
> (such as we are now in) were much shorter that
> the full glacial periods in between. Somehow this
> seems to have morphed (perhaps more in the
> popular mind than elsewhere) into the idea that
> the next ice age was predicatable and imminent.
> Thirdly, there were concerns about the relative
> magnitudes of aerosol forcing (cooling) and CO2
> forcing (warming), although this latter strand
> seems to have been short lived.
>
> The state of the science at the time (say, the
> mid 1970's), based on reading the papers is, in
> summary: "...we do not have a good quantitative
> understanding of our climate machine and what
> determines its course. Without the fundamental
> understanding, it does not seem possible to
> predict climate..." (which is taken directly from
> NAS, 1975)
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html>.
> In a bit more detail, people were aware of
> various forcing mechanisms - the ice age cycle;
> CO2 warming; aerosol cooling - but didn't know
> which would be dominant in the near future. By
> the end of the 1970's, though, it had become
> clear that CO2 warming would probably be
> dominant; that conclusion has subsequently
> strengthened.
>
> George Will asserts that Science magazine (Dec.
> 10, 1976) warned about "extensive Northern
> Hemisphere glaciation.". The quote is from Hays
> et al
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/#his1976>.
> But the quote is taken grossly out of context.
> Here, in full, is the small section dealing with
> prediction:
>
> <<<<Future climate. Having presented evidence
> that major changes in past climate were
> associated with variations in the geometry of the
> earth's orbit, we should be able to predict the
> trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be
> qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to
> the natural component of future climatic trends -
> and not to anthropogenic effects such as those
> due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they
> describe only the long-term trends, because they
> are linked to orbital variations with periods of
> 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at
> higher frequencies are not predicted.
>
> One approach to forecasting the natural long-term
> climate trend is to estimate the time constants
> of response necessary to explain the observed
> phase relationships between orbital variation and
> climatic change, and then to use those time
> constants in the exponential-response model. When
> such a model is applied to Vernekar's (39)
> astronomical projections, the results indicate
> that the long-term trend over the next 20,000
> years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere
> glaciation and cooler climate (80). >>>>
>
> The point about timescales is worth noticing:
> predicting an ice age (even in the absence of
> human forcing) is almost impossible within a
> timescale that you could call "imminent" (perhaps
> a century: comparable to the scales typically
> used in global warming projections) because ice
> ages are slow, when caused by orbital forcing
> type mechanisms.
>
> Will also quotes "a full-blown 10,000-year ice
> age" (Science, March 1, 1975). The quote is
> accurate, but the source isn't. The piece isn't
> from "Science"; its from "Science News". There is
> a major difference: Science is (jointly with
> Nature) the most prestigous journal for natural
> science; Science News is not a peer-reviewed
> journal at all, though it is still respectable.
> In this case, its process went a bit wrong: the
> desire for a good story overwhelmed its reading
> of the NAS report which was presumably too boring
> to present directly.
>
> The Hays paper above is the most notable example
> of the "ice age" strand. Indeed, its a very
> important paper in the history of climate,
> linking observed cycles in ocean sediment cores
> to orbital forcing periodicities. Of the other
> strand, aerosol cooling, Rasool and Schneider,
> Science, July 1971, p 138, "Atmospheric Carbon
> Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases
> on Global Climate"
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/#rs1971>
> is the best exemplar. This contains the quote
> that quadrupling aerosols could decrease the mean
> surface temperature (of Earth) by as much as 3.5
> degrees K. If sustained over a period of several
> years, such a temperature decrease could be
> sufficient to trigger an ice age!. But even this
> paper qualifies its predictions (whether or not
> aerosols would so increase was unknown) and
> speculates that nuclear power may have largely
> replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy
> production (thereby, presumably, removing the
> aerosol problem). There are, incidentally, other
> scientific problems with the paper: notably that
> the model used was only suitable for small
> perturbations but the results are for rather
> large perturbations; and that the estimate of CO2
> sensitivity was too low by a factor of about 3.
>
> Probably the best summary of the time was the
> 1975 NAS/NRC report
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html>.
> This is a serious sober assessment of what was
> known at the time, and their conclusion was that
> they didn't know enough to make predictions. From
> the "Summary of principal conclusions and
> recommendations", we find that they said we
> should:
>  1.   Establish National climatic research program
>  2.  	 Establish Climatic data analysis
> program, and new facilities, and studies of
> impact of climate on man
>  3.  	 Develope Climatic index monitoring program
>  4.  	 Establish Climatic modelling and
> applications program, and exploration of possible
> future climates using coupled GCMs
>  5.  	 Adoption and development of
> International climatic research program
>  6.  	 Development of International Palaeoclimatic data network
>
>   Which is to say, they recommended more research,
> not action. Which was entirely appropriate to the
> state of the science at the time. In the last 30
> years, of course, enormous progress has been made
> in the field of climate science.
>
> Most of this post has been about the science of
> 30 years ago. From the point of view of todays
> science, and with extra data available:
>  1.   The cooling trend from the 40's
> to the 70's now looks more like a slight
> interruption of an upward trend
> (e.g.
>
<http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/graphics/nhshglob.jpg>).
> It turns out that the northern hemisphere cooling
> was larger than the southern (consistent with the
> nowadays accepted interpreation that the cooling
> was largely caused by sulphate aerosols); at
> first, only NH records were available.
>  2.  	 Sulphate aerosols have not
> increased as much as once feared (partly through
> efforts to combat acid rain); CO2 forcing is
> greater. Indeed IPCC projections of future
> temperature inceases went up from the 1995 SAR to
> the 2001 TAR because estimates of future sulphate
> aerosol levels were lowered (SPM)
> <http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/008.htm>.
>  3.  	 Interpretations of future
> changes in the earths orbit have changed
> somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger,
> Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the
> current interglacial, based purely on natural
> forcing, would last for an exceptionally long
> time: perhaps 50,000 years.
>
>   Finally, its clear that there were concerns,
> perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of
> scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of
> the time present a clear consensus that future
> climate change could not be predicted with the
> knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer
> review and editing process involved in scientific
> publication was sufficient to provide a sober
> view. This episode shows the scientific press in
> a very good light; and a clear contrast to the
> lack of any such process in the popular press,
> then and now.
>
> Further Reading:
>
> Imbrie & Imbrie "Ice Ages: solving the mystery"
> (1979) is an interesting general book on the
> discovery of the ice ages and their mechanisms;
> chapter 16 deals with "The coming ice age".
>
> Spencer Weart's History of Global Warming
> <http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html>
> has a chapter on Past Cycles:
> Ice Age Speculations. <http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm>
>
> An analysis of various papers that mention the subject is at
> <http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/>
>
>   21 Comments  »
>  1.
> Why has there been a lack of 'process' in the popular press,
>   then and now? ... especially in the U.S.
>
> I think U.S. government agency administrators,
> directors and managers are reluctant to make
> waves.
>
>   Comment by Pat Neuman - 14 Jan 2005 @ 6:10 am
>  2.
> There was a recent Horizon programme on
> television in the UK. It concerned a phenomenon
> labelled "global dimming". Some of the precursors
> of this are mentioned in the article above.
> However, more work has been done recently and
> it's potentially scary stuff. Around the world,
> the amount of sunlight reaching the earth has
> dropped by between 10% and a staggering 22%,
> since the 1950s. The results of research into
> measuring the effect have largely been ignored by
> the scientific community until recently.
>
> Global dimming has, apparently been lessening the
> effects of global warming. The scary thing is
> that our attempts to clean up the microscopic
> particles that we emit in burning fossil fuels
> (for health reasons) could drastically cut down
> the global dimming effect, allowing global
> warming to race off. Some estimates suggest that
> the point of no return is only 25 years away.
>
> I've been trying to find scientific articles on
> the subject, but recent ones have eluded me so
> far. Here is a link to the transcript of the
> programme:
> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml>
>
> [Response: The horizon programme perhaps
> overestimates the degree of knowledge on this
> subject. "Global dimming" is not well known and
> somewhat mysterious. The figures I have seen are
> more like 2-3%/decade, with a probable reversal
> more recently, rather than the 22% you quote.
> this might help - William]
> <http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~liepert/papers/liepert_GRL2002.pdf>
>
>   Comment by Tony Weddle - 14 Jan 2005 @ 6:19 am
>  3.
> While I am a scientist, I am not a climatologist
> so I thought I'd ask what the mainstream opinion
> is of the "Global Dimming" phenomenon. It was the
> subject of last night's Horizon on BBC 2, and
> while that isn't my normal source for matters
> scientific, it was an issue I'd forgotten about
> and that interested me. Are there any suitable
> reviews that might allow me to bring myself up to
> speed a bit more (yes I can search for them on
> SciFinder etc, but with little/no knowledge of
> the field, it can be hard to see the wood for the
> trees, no pun intended)?
>
> I am well aware of the cooling effect of
> atmospheric particulates etc (if I remember
> correctly isn't it properly called albedo?) due
> to their more effective reflection/scattering of
> incident radiation. I am also aware of how this
> may well mean that climatological models may well
> be predicting lower global warming change than in
> actually occuring, i.e. the warming problem is
> more serious than it appears.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>   Comment by Louis - 14 Jan 2005 @ 8:53 am
>  4.
> William,
>
> The programme was talking of 22% in five decades,
> not per decade. There have been articles as far
> back as the 70s concerning global dimming but
> it's only very recently, apparently, that all of
> the probable causes (e.g. the microscopic
> particles causing smaller water droplets in
> clouds, enhancing the mirror effect, as well as
> contrails) have been understood. It's an
> horrendous scenario but I'd like to see more
> research done, before falling on my sword.
>
> [Response: ...and 2-3%/decade, with a recent
> reversal, isn't 22%. The Liepert paper I linked
> to (you did read it didn't you?) says 4% over 3
> decades (*not* per decade): 1961-90. Stanhill and
> Cohen quote 3% between 1958 and 1992. So the 22%
> figure seems too large. You speak of articles
> from the 70's on global dimming, but don't say
> which ones you mean. Its helpful to be specific -
> William]
>
>   Comment by Tony Weddle - 14 Jan 2005 @ 9:39 am
>  5.
> Interesting -- I just (last night) emailed
> contrib@R..., offering to become
> involved here, and mentioned the conclusion of
> the Loutre and Berger paper, that orbital forcing
> parameters will next be conducive to widespread
> polar ice accumulation in about 60,000 years.
>
> For many of us, these geological time-scale
> climate changes do not seem very significant. It
> is my feeling that there is a valuable context to
> be gained by keeping these time scales in mind.
>
> Back in 1990 I had a private correspondence with
> Stephen Schneider on this subject. I asked if it
> was plausibly justifiable to state that Earth,
> for at least the last 100 million years, has
> never been cooler than it was 20,000 years ago.
> His response was unqualified: "The Earth has not
> been demonstrably colder than 20K BP except
> perhaps for the Permian."
>
> So for this extended period in the evolution of
> life on this planet, we are only very recently
> plunging, arguably at an accelerating rate, into
> previously not experienced degrees of cooling and
> also probably into new extremes of rapid climate
> variability. The ecosystems of our planet have
> surely been under unprecedented stress by these
> processes. In fact, arguably, the emergence of
> sentient hominids may largely be a result of the
> stresses of climate fluctuations following the
> last interglacial which ended about 114,000 years
> ago. (*see footnotes)
>
> I am old enough (Ph.D. 1978 in Atmospheric
> Science, Colorado State U.), to remember the
> discussions going on about climate cooling at the
> time. The backdrop of the discussions was the
> seeming inevitibility that "sooner or later" our
> planet would present us with another potential 8
> or 10 degree cooling. Our current interglacial
> had already extended beyond the length of most
> others during the past 400,000 years. So,
> presuming humanity survives the next 60,000
> years, what are we to make of this threat? How
> much anthropogenic warming would be needed to
> avert it?
>
> Back in 1990 Stephen Schneider's response to this
> was: "I am unconcerned about 10,000 year cooling
> trends (which we'd likely avert with carefully
> selected CFC-like greenhouse gases in 1000 years,
> I suspect.)" My reaction to that, then and now,
> is: So we are potentially faced with a time when
> we would hope to *deliberately* induce greenhouse
> warming? Perhaps, then, the largely uncontrolled
> experiment we are currently conducting with our
> planet's climate system, will prove to be a very
> useful exercise.
>
> -- Peter J. Wetzel, Research Meteorologist, NASA
> Goddard Space Flight Center, specializing in
> parameterization of land-atmosphere interactions
> for Global Climate, Regional Mesoscale, and Local
> Cloud-Resolving numerical prediction models.
>
> (* footnote 1: This perspective makes one wonder
> -- having emerged from this crucible of rapid
> (sometimes catastrophic?) climate fluctuations,
> should we now be fearful of them?)
>
> (* footnote 2: Climate Science is not
> black-and-white, not Right-or-wrong. Nor are its
> critics. One of my concerns about this web site
> is that it seems to occasionally lapse into
> rebuttals of prominent non-scientists' statements
> (such as Crichton's book) with an attitude of
> "everything they say is wrong", or with an intent
> only to rebut, and not to find any kernel of
> value or truth. As much as Crichton's book
> presents wildly biased perspectives on Climate
> and environmental science, I have to thank him
> for two things -- first for simply raising
> awareness, and second, for arguing the often
> missed point that mankind has not inherited a
> stable, "preservable" environment. It was wildly
> changing when we arrived, and wild changes will
> always be the true nature of "wilderness". In my
> humble opinion, this is a valuable perspective
> which the view of geological and evolutionary
> time scale climate changes can provide for us.)
>
> [Response: it would be odd to worry about cooling
> in 10,000 years time, when we have warming over
> the coming century to worry about first. As for
> the "not stable environment" bit, I think thats
> wrong: the holocene (last 10 kyr) *has* been
> fairly stable, and the rise of civilisation is
> sometimes attributed to that - William]
>
>   Comment by Peter J. Wetzel - 14 Jan 2005 @ 12:17 pm
>  6.
>   The programme was talking of 22% in five decades, not per decade
>
>   I think the 22% was the reduction measured in
> Israel. Different locations (in the NH) were
> reported to have recorded different reductions
> ranging from 10% to 30%. But it was implied in
> the programme that the Southern Hemisphere, quite
> reasonably, was less.
>
>   Perhaps averaging it out over the globe explains
> the discrepancies between your figures.
>
>   Comment by John Finn - 14 Jan 2005 @ 2:23 pm
>  7.
> Wow - great article and comments.
>
> Am I that far off to say that the average reader
> who agrees with George Will is likely use their
> own experience of local weather as a guide to
> Global Warming?
>
> There has been a pattern for awhile where record
> high temperatures are recorded in Alaska on the
> same day that record cold is recorded farther to
> the more populous South and East. To many people
> this is simply the ebb and flow of the weather
> and discrediting of any notions of warming. To me
> it is evidence of warm air displacing cold air in
> the polar regions. Between us is a curious
> difference that suggests our approach is more of
> a determinent than the information itself.
>
>   Comment by Thor Olson - 14 Jan 2005 @ 4:05 pm
>  8.
> Regarding Peter Wetzel's footnote 2 (in #5),
> certainly one can say that frantic propaganda
> like Crichton's is a sign that the awareness of
> human-caused climate disruption is permeating
> into parts of society that don't like its
> implications. Crichton is just the most prominent
> of a number of libertarian SF writers who dislike
> the current climate science consensus because it
> fundamentally conflicts with their world view. I
> won't try for a complete definition of this world
> view (read Ayn Rand for that), but in this
> context it results in desperate objections to the
> concept of an environment that might bite back
> when over-stressed by the net effects of human
> personal choices (or at least the current ones
> being made by these folks). Another reason
> they're offended by the consensus is because they
> view themselves as part of a scientific
> intelligentsia.
>
> But even if climate scientists should see
> Crichton's book as a sign of progress or even as
> a back-handed compliment, I don't see how that
> should change the approach taken by this site.
> Peter pointed to nothing in the Crichton article
> that was not accurate. Given the vast propaganda
> machine seeking to refute the implications of
> human-caused climate disruption, it's essential
> to have a site that can provide up-to-the-minute
> science-based responses to the distortions that
> the machine constantly places in the popular
> media. In an ideal world, reporters and political
> leaders would read the scientific journals
> themselves, talk to climate scientists and draw
> the proper conclusions, but considerable
> experience with both has shown that not to be the
> case. Something more is needed, and this site
> helps fill that need.
>
> Really, words fail me when I try to describe how
> valuable this site has already become despite its
> very brief existence. Keep up the good work!
>
>   Comment by Steve Bloom - 14 Jan 2005 @ 4:23 pm
>  9.
> Regarding Wetzel's comments about avoiding a
> glaciation, I think it's pretty much settled that
> we have the technical capacity to do that. We
> also have the technical capacity to avoid rapid
> global warming. Perhaps the optimum strategy
> would be to tune the planet for a slight cooling
> from the present state, to reduce sea level
> slightly and thereby preserve coastal heritage
> and protect coastal and island populations. It's
> certainly something that in a better ordered
> civilization we could certainly consider, and if
> desired, implement. Nothing prevents our doing so
> from a technological perspective.
>
> Why does this suggestion sound vaguely ludicrous?
>
> The problem is, all too evidently, that the world
> community does not have mechanisms for acting
> coherently and rationally on these matters. So
> instead of fine tuning the system, we seem intent
> on bashing at it harder and harder until the
> parts break.
>
>   Also, I don't see being forged in a crucible as
> being an especially good argument for going back
> into one.
>
> All that said, I appreciate Wetzel's comments.
> It's very refreshing to see well-informed
> skepticism amid all the ghastly noise.
>
>   I agree with him that this site as a whole
> shouldn't be perceived as having a policy
> position, not should it present some sort of
> false impression of unanimity on those matters
> that are still in serious dispute.
>
>   Comment by Michael Tobis - 14 Jan 2005 @ 9:15 pm
>  10.
> Having read Imbrie & Imbrie 1979 (cited by you),
> it seemed obvious that whether a new Ice Age was
> coming soon was a research topic going forward.
> At the time, it seemed quite reasonable to think
> that the present interglacial might be similar to
> the Eemian in terms of duration and so therefore
> could end relatively soon.
>
> Later research I saw, especially Berger and
> Loutre 2000 (cited by you), indicated (quote)
>
> "The small amplitude of future insolation
> variations is exceptional. One of the few past
> analogues occurred at about 400,000 years before
> the present, overlapping part of MIS-11. Then and
> now, very low eccentricity values coincided with
> the minima of the 400,000-year eccentricity
> cycle. Eccentricity will reach almost zero within
> the next 25,000 years, damping variations of the
> precession considerably."
>
>   So, it was interesting to see that the latest
> and deepest ice core from Antarctica, Eight
> Glacial Cycles from an Antarctic Ice core
> <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/pdf/nature02599.pdf>
> seemed to demonstrate that Berger & Loutres were
> right and furthermore that we could probably
> expect another 15,000 years of interglacial
> climate even without anthropogenic forcing.
>
> So, this research question, established mainly in
> the 1970's, is being answered.
>
> It's an interesting rhetorical trick that
> Crichton, Will, et.al. are using. They are
> pointing out a false "false alarm" to buttress
> their "arguments", such as they are.
>
> Nice post.
>
>   Comment by dave - 14 Jan 2005 @ 10:00 pm
>  11.
> Again, I truly appreciate this site.
>
>   Taking issue Michael Tobis' last para:
>
> I agree with him that this site as a whole
> shouldn't be perceived as having a policy
> position, not should it present some sort of
> false impression of unanimity on those matters
> that are still in serious dispute.
>
>   is, perhaps not surprisingly, Pielke - he raises
> an interesting point. I don't always agree with
> him, and I disagree with his basic stand, but he
> seems to disagree with the trajectory this site
> is taking already:
>
> Whether intended or not, the site has clearly
> aligned itself squarely with one political
> position on climate change. And by trumpeting
> certainty and consensus, and attacking claims to
> the contrary, it has fallen squarely into the
> uncertainty trap.
>
>   which directly disagrees with #9 (perhaps on purpose?).
>
> As the 'global cooling' is used by ideologues
> with a policial axe to grind, I wonder what the
> thought behind posting this article could have
> been...
>
> Best,
>
> D
>
> [Response: I realise you are only quoting, but
> this bears repeating - We are not taking a
> political position. That some people have taken a
> poltical stand that involves ignoring
> well-understood science is not our fault.
> Correcting their errors does not ipso facto imply
> contradicting their politics. - gavin]
>
>   Comment by Dano - 14 Jan 2005 @ 10:44 pm
>  12.
> In his bibliography (page 599) Crichton writes
> that Lowell Ponte's The Cooling is "The most
> highly praised of the books from the 1970s that
> warned of an impending ice age." Isn't it just
> about the only book? Does anyone know of others?
>
>   Comment by Jim Norton - 14 Jan 2005 @ 11:48 pm
>  13.
> I don't think the scientists who are posting
> informative articles on this site are taking a
> political stand. They are just pointing out
> obvious falsehoods, distortions made about the
> current scientific results. This does not obviate
> in any way the fact that there are important
> uncertainties about many things.
>
> Things do get fuzzy. A "consensus" about many issues does not exist.
>
> But, as far as I can see, the "attacks" by vested
> interests are not even able to make legitimate
> points (e.g. uncertainty about the effects of
> clouds or aerosols in climate models). What is
> the reason for this? Well, these people have no
> interest in the science, they are only interested
> in their political agenda. Period.
>
> Leave it to people who comment, like me, to point
> out on occasion the political agendas. Still, I'd
> rather stay with the science and I think the
> people who post new articles here are doing the
> same thing.
>
>   Importantly, what tends to happen is that a new
> provocation by some dimwit leads to a new
> informative article about the state of the
> science in that area.
>
>   Comment by dave - 14 Jan 2005 @ 11:51 pm
>  14.
> Regarding "global dimming", here are links to two related news stories:
>
> Why the Sun seems to be 'dimming'
> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm>
>
> Dim Sun
> <http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/09/22/keen-dimming/>
>
> Comment by Ken - 15 Jan 2005 @ 12:18 am
>  15.
> To William, who responded to my #5: Perhaps it
> would be odd to not worry, and be accused of
> myopia. On your other point, yes, the Holocene
> had been a period of remarkably stable climate. I
> distinguish between the harsh climate regime in
> which homo sapiens would have been forced to
> acquire the skills of intellect and compassion
> for adaptation (~50,000 to ~20,000 years ago),
> and the benign climate regime which allowed these
> skills to flower into advanced civilization.
>
> To Steve Bloom who commented in #8 that nothing I
> said refuted the RealClimate posts about
> Crichton. I fully subscribe to these posts. They
> reflect my views. But the posts do criticize
> Crichton for making deliberate omissions, or for
> selective "cherry picking". I gently return the
> criticism by considering a point which Crichton
> raised, which was ignored here.
>
> To Michael Tobis' #9: I have an irrational
> knee-jerk reaction against deliberate human
> intervention on climate. Perhaps we can
> accomplish it, but what side-effects might we be
> oblivious of? I arrived on the meterological
> scene at a time when cloud seeding was being
> touted as a panacea, able to suppress everything
> from hail to hurricanes. I witnessed that
> optimism quickly shrivel in the face of
> experimental and theoretical advances. As a
> result, I'm vigilantly skeptical of the
> unexpected consequences of deliberately tampering
> with the climate system.
>
> You rightly respond to my weakest point: Having
> emerged from a chaotic and harsh environment,
> mankind surely sees no need to descend back into
> such a quagmire, given the hope that s/he can
> (even partially) control climate outcomes. But I
> argue simply that we have no need for apocalyptic
> pessimism about our current uncontrolled climate
> experiment. As a species, we have demonstrated
> that we possess the tools to cope.
>
> To Dano, #11: Roger Pielke, Jr.'s remarks
> actually reflected my initial reaction to this
> site. But on further reading (I first encountered
> this site only yesterday), I now perceive a
> serious intent to remain objective regardless of
> the consequences. [Roger, Jr., I suspect you are
> reading this -- perhaps you have heard my name,
> as I have been a long-time acquaintance of your
> Dad, and fellow land-atmosphere interaction
> modeller. (Roger Pielke Sr. is a significant
> student of the influence of land-use change on
> observed climate change, among many other notable
> accomplishments)].
>
> My hopes for this site are high. Clever
> wordsmiths and litigators thrive on setting traps
> with rhetorical bait which they perceive to be
> luring the "unsuspecting" scientist into
> revealing "weakness" in their position. I firmly
> believe that the inherent common sense of the
> common man sees through these ploys. They
> understand that the litigious wordsmiths have
> opted for political advantage at the risk of
> compromising integrity of logic and reason. But
> the dedicated scientist will choose to take this
> bait with eyes wide open, in the interest of
> preserving the scientific integrity of their
> hard-earned, reproducible results.
>
>   Comment by Peter J. Wetzel - 15 Jan 2005 @ 1:17 am
>  16.
> The problem with invoking current injections of
> greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as
> protection against an ice age starting in 60K
> years, is that by then the greenhouse gases we
> inject today will be gone. They will be mixed
> back into the huge reservoir of the deep ocean,
> or even absorbed into the lithosphere at the deep
> ocean rifts.
>
>   To be perfectly logical then we should only burn
> fossil fuels when we need them in about 10-100 K
> years.
>
> It is interesting that Schneider suggested adding
> CFCs to the atmosphere when needed to prevent an
> ice age. Perfluorinated compounds are much better
> and much more stable. A perfect illustration of
> the laws of unintended consequences was the
> introduction of perfluorinated solvents for
> industrial cleaning to replace CFCs. These
> compounds have huge greenhouse potentials and
> very, very long atmospheric lifetimes. They were,
> therefore, taken off the market a few years later
> and themselves replaced with compounds that had
> much shorter atmospheric lifetimes.
>
> On a lighter note, when everyone was worrying
> about the year 2K problem, someone wag noted that
> worrying about the coming ice age was the year
> 10K problem.
>
>   Comment by Eli Rabett - 15 Jan 2005 @ 1:51 am
>  17.
> Good take on the global cooling myth......Thank
> you for taking the time to post it.
>
> Here is a link to probably the most comprehensive
> list of global dimming research papers on the
> Internet......at least the best list I could
> find; for anyone that would be interested further
> in global dimming.
>
> Research Programs......Global Dimming Bibliography
> <http://www.greenhouse.crc.org.au/crc/research/c2_bibliog.htm>
>
> and Radiative Forcing of Climate Change:
> Expanding the Concept and Addressing
> Uncertainties (2005)
>   Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC)
>
> Index <http://books.nap.edu/books/0309095069/html/index.html>
>
> I had wrote a major novella but I scrubbed it and
> above is what I decide to post...
>
> [Thanks for your comment, the GD bibliography
> looks good. I'm afraid I edited your text down a
> bit further, bunnies are a bit out of our area -
> William]
>
>   Comment by Sonya - 15 Jan 2005 @ 6:26 am
>  18.
> About global dimming,
>
> As you may know, we have some satellites flowing
> around out of the atmosphere, which measure short
> waves (SW reflection) and heat (LW emission) from
> below.
>
>   For the 20N-20S tropics part of the globe, the
> measurements (see:
>
<http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/csrl/publications/pub_exchange/Wielicki_et_al_2002.pd\
f>

> , confirmed for the 30N-30S (sub)tropics in
> <http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2002/2002_ChenCarlsonD.pdf>
> ) are as follows:
>
> SW reflection: 1985-1991 no change in light reflection.
>   1992 sharp increase of 9 W/m2, due to the
> eruption of the Pinatubo. Reduced to -2 W/m2 in
> 1994.
>   1994-2001 constantly around -2 W/m2.
>
> LW emission: slowly increasing since 1985 to +2
> W/m2 in 2001, with a trough in 1992 (Pinatubo)
> and a peak in 1998 (El Niño).
>
>   For the 30N-30S area, the trend is -0.8
> W/m2/decade for SW reflection and +3.7
> W/m2/decade in the last decade.
>   In the same period, there was a loss of cloud
> cover, both in the tropics and sub tropics (and
> even up to 60N-60S).
>
> Thus that more sunlight is reflected due to
> (sulphate) aerosols, as the theory behind global
> dimming says, is proven false.
>
> If there is global dimming at the surface, the
> only explanation possible is that more sunlight
> is retained in the atmosphere. Which is (only)
> possible with (dark brown and black) soot
> aerosols. Although even that is questionable, as
> the surface temperature in the (sub)tropics
> increased with near 0.1 K/decade.
>
> Anyway, if soot aerosols are to blame, then a
> reduction of them would have a cooling effect,
> not a warming effect...
>
> See also the trends of earthshine, which parralel
> the global dimming trends (but should be opposite
> to them) at:
> <http://www.bbso.njit.edu/science_may28.html>
>
> Comment by Ferdinand Engelbeen - 15 Jan 2005 @ 11:22 am
>  19.
> The problem is, all too evidently, that the world
> community does not have mechanisms for acting
> coherently and rationally on these matters. So
> instead of fine tuning the system, we seem intent
> on bashing at it harder and harder until the
> parts break.
>
> I have to agree with Peter Wetzel on this. You
> cannot tune a system you do not understand. We
> find ourselves in the current situation largely
> because of our own ignorance. I don't believe it
> is a good idea to try and correct the problem by
> resorting to yet more ignorance. We are not
> talking about fine-tuning the climate system, but
> of altering the weather and that is a dicey
> proposition at best.
>
>   Comment by David Ball - 15 Jan 2005 @ 12:29 pm
>  20.
> We are not talking about fine-tuning the climate
> system, but of altering the weather and that is a
> dicey proposition at best.
>
> Eh? By "altering the weather," do you mean trying
> to control global climate change, or something
> else? Explain, please.
>
>   Comment by Aaron - 15 Jan 2005 @ 1:44 pm
>  21.
> While it's definitively *NOT* true that you can't
> tune a system you don't fully understand (as
> evidenced countless times daily in hospitals and
> clinics), I appreciate the resistance to
> deliberately fiddling with climate. On the other
> hand, that horse is already out of the barn and
> its too late to be closing the doors.
>
>   Human activity is already exerting a significant
> influence on climate, and any effort to control
> that influence must ultimately have some sort of
> implicit or explicit goal. The only way to stop
> tuning the climate in the foreseeable future is
> to have the planet's population get much smaller.
> Some would argue that humans have been
> substantially influencing the global environment
> for millenia. (see
> <http://www.sindadel.com/jackie/page3.html>) but
> there's emerging agreement that it has been the
> case for at least a couple of centuries
> (<http://geology.about.com/library/weekly/aa080402a.htm>)
>
>   The question is whether we should and can exert
> any control over this human influence. Even the
> modest Kyoto accord is in a sense climate tuning.
>
>   The only clear line is between having a climate
> policy and having none. We will never return to
> the geophysical history the world would have had
> if humanity had not emerged. The only question is
> whether on one hand we continue to do climate
> modification blindly or on the other whether we
> plan our influence using the best available
> information.
>
>   Comment by Michael Tobis - 15 Jan 2005 @ 4:50 pm
> --
> <http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>
--- End forwarded message ---

Why the Sun seems to be 'dimming'
By David Sington

We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who
have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements.

They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar
energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling.

Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a
far greater threat to society than previously thought.

The effect was first spotted by Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist
working in Israel.

Cloud changes

Comparing Israeli sunlight records from the 1950s with current ones, Dr
Stanhill was astonished to find a large fall in solar radiation.

"There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed
me." Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found
the same story almost everywhere he looked.

Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the
former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.

Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the
decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the
1950s and the 1990s.

Dr Stanhill called it "global dimming", but his research, published in
2001, met a sceptical response from other scientists.

It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian
scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar
radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of
global dimming.

	 My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on
the Asian monsoon ... We are talking about billions of people
Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan
Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution.

Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking
fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide - the principal
greenhouse gas responsible for global warming - but also tiny airborne
particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants.

This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing
it reaching the surface. But the pollution also changes the optical
properties of clouds.

Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted
clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds.

Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they
would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space.

Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the
full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's
rainfall.

There are suggestions that dimming was behind the droughts in sub-Saharan
Africa which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1970s and 80s.

There are disturbing hints the same thing may be happening today in Asia,
home to half the world's population.

"My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on
the Asian monsoon," says Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan, professor of
climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San
Diego. "We are talking about billions of people."

Alarming energy

But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may
have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse
effect.

They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's
atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide we have placed there.

What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in
a temperature rise of just 0.6 degree Celsius.

This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is
less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during
the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of six
degrees Celsius.

But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a
strong cooling effect from dimming - in effect two of our pollutants have
been cancelling each other out.

This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the
greenhouse effect than previously thought.

If so, then this is bad news, according to Dr Peter Cox, one of the
world's leading climate modellers.

As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming
decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is
at last being brought under control.

"We're going to be in a situation unless we act where the cooling
pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up.

"That means we'll get reducing cooling and increased heating at the same
time and that's a problem for us," says Dr Cox.

Even the most pessimistic forecasts of global warming may now have to be
drastically revised upwards.

That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on
the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and
rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.

That is unless we act urgently to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases.

You can see more on this report on Thursday's Horizon, BBC Two, at 9.00pm
GMT.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm

Published: 2005/01/13 14:10:30 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm


"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/message/4
86

Temperatures rising in Alps, less snow

PARIS (AFP) Jan 14, 2005
Temperatures in the French Alps have risen between one and three degrees
Celsius (two and five degrees Fahrenheit) in the past 40 years and there
has been less snow in recent years, a report by France's national weather
service said on Friday.
Temperatures in the Alps are also rising faster than in the rest of the
country.

While in the rest of France the temperature has risen by one degree
Celsius in the past century, in the Alps above 1,800 metres altitude
(5,900 feet) it had gone up by between one and three degrees during the
winter period, the report said.

The fluctuations were particularly marked at the beginning and end of the
winter and the rises especially evident from the 1980s and 1990s onwards,
the report said.

"The French Alps therefore appear extremely susceptible to the warming of
the atmosphere during the winter period," Meteo-France said.

The climate report, which covered the years between 1958 and the present
day, revealed that "the most recent years were in the main deficient" as
far as snowfalls were concerned.

The Alps are home to a vast skiing industry and resorts have in recent
years expressed concern about falling quantities of snow.

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050114201949.6y0szcwj.html




"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/message/4
86

Excerpts and comment (complete article follows).

Excerpt:
"Journalists have frequently come under fire in recent years for drawing the
public's attention to the damage caused to human health and the natural
environment by practices ranging from the heavy use of chemical fertilisers to
uncontrolled carbon emissions. But such coverage, where it is based on either
sound scientific knowledge or reasonable speculation, has played an essential
role in sensitising both the community and its decision-makers to key areas in
which action is needed."

Comment:
i.e. '---' when based on accurate science can play "an essential role in
sensitising both the community and its decision-makers to key areas in which
action is needed."

Excerpt:
"The ability to predict natural disasters, and cope with their human
consequences, is one field in which this task is more than fully justified. The
more that journalists and other science communicators in developing countries
can be equipped with the professional skills to do so effectively, the better
placed society will be to address such disasters as they occur with, as widely
predicted, increasing frequency.

Comment:
Not just "in developing countries",  ... even in Amerca ...

"The more that journalists and other science communicators" ...  even in America
... "can be equipped with the professional skills to do so effectively, the
better placed society will be to address such disasters as they occur with, as
widely predicted, increasing frequency."


http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=143&\
language=1

Tsunami disaster: a failure in science communication

17 January 2005

At the heart of the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunamis lies a
failure to communicate scientific information adequately to either
decision-makers or the community. Important lessons are to be learnt about the
need for professional skills.

For several years, fishermen in Nallavadu, a coastal village in the eastern
India state of Tamil Nadu, have benefited from a small telecommunications centre
linked to the Internet, set up by the M. S. Swaminathan Research Centre in
Chennai. The main purpose of this facility, widely cited as a successful example
of the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to rural
development, has been to provide access to satellite data of weather patterns in
the Bay of Bengal.

The Internet connection has already been credited with providing the fishermen
with valuable information about anticipated storms that has saved several lives.
But the warning that arrived on the morning of 26 December came by a different
route. The son of one of the fishermen was in Singapore, watching a news item
about the earthquake that had just occurred off the coast of Indonesia. Worried
about the potential impact on his family of giant waves that were reported to be
spreading across the Indian Ocean, he telephoned his sister in Nallavadu, who
told him that water was already beginning to seep into her home.

He told her to leave immediately, and to urge others to do so. The villagers
broke into the telecommunications centre. Using the public alert system set up
for weather forecasts, they told the 500 families in the village that they had
to leave immediately. The result of the warning was that although 150 houses and
200 boats were destroyed, not one of more than 3,500 villagers lost their lives.

The incident is a small but powerful reminder of the vital role that modern
communications technology can play in mitigating the impact of natural
disasters. Other examples include the way that mobile phones became an essential
component of large numbers of rescue efforts, indeed were often the only
available form of long-distance communication following the destruction of
conventional telephone lines by the tsunami. And, with the hindsight of
experience, there are already several national and international schemes being
promoted to establish sophisticated detection systems to provide an early
warning of similar threats in the future.

The role of science communication

Behind all this, however, is the large, unpalatable truth that many thousands of
lives could have been saved if adequate measures had been taken, even using
existing detection and communications technology, to ensure that news of the
impending tsunami was spread rapidly to those living in coastal regions around
the Indian Ocean. Indeed the whole disaster could be described as the world's
biggest failure of science communication.

As soon as seismologists from as far away as Australia or California had
detected the earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, for example, it was clear to
many of them that one result was likely to be a massive tsunami, as had happened
in such situations in the past. It was also clear that a human tragedy was
threatening. But without direct channels of communication, either to senior
policy-makers, or to local decision-makers and the communities under threat,
there was no way that this information could be spread to the tens of thousands
whose lives it might have saved if it had reached them in time.

As plans for new early warning systems develop, therefore, it is essential that
they do not focus only on the technology; in some ways that is the easy part,
given the detection systems that have already been developed, for example, for
monitoring clandestine nuclear tests. Equally important is ensuring that
sufficient attention is paid to the social dimension of the communication
networks needed to transmit information to where it is most needed.

Professional skills

This in turn means there is a need to develop the professional skills of all
those who can contribute to the process. And it is vital, for example, to ensure
that future plans include opportunities for developing and making use of the
skills that journalists in general — and science journalists in particular — can
play in drawing attention to imminent threats to life and safety.

For the task of the science journalist is not merely to report on what emerges
from research laboratories. Equally important is the need to identify and make
comprehensible the potential impact of such information on the lives of readers,
listeners or viewers. Any report on research using human stem cells, for
example, would be expected both to describe the potential medical applications
of the work, and also to refer to the ethical concerns that it is likely to
raise.

In disaster-related areas of science, such as geophysics or climatology, the
need is equally great both to communicate information about new understanding of
phenomena to the communities that are likely to be most affected, and to explore
the implications of this information for these communities.

Think of the difference, for example, if local newspapers around the Indian
Ocean had carried prominent articles about the nature of tsunamis and the
threats they present to individuals living in earthquake zones. Particularly if
these had highlighted both early warning signals — such as beaches draining
rapidly and unaccountably — as well as sensible precautionary measures, such as
building solid, two-storey, houses.

More realistically, perhaps, think of the number of lives that might have been
saved if those working for local radio and television stations had been more
attuned to that nature of tsunami threats, and the need for immediate action. As
the villagers of Nallavadu showed, once information is in the right hands,
prompt action can be taken; professional communicators share with government
officials the responsibility of getting it there.

The need for accuracy

Of course, the power of communication also brings with it important
responsibilities. One is to ensure the accuracy of the information that is being
communicated. Scare stories about impending disasters that fail to materialise
can, if badly handled, do as much harm as good, and reduce the credibility of
future warnings.

Part of the task of developing professional communication skills in this area,
therefore, is to demonstrate ways of checking the validity of information,
scientific or otherwise. Here the Internet has an important role to play. Much
has been made of the way in which the World Wide Web is democratising knowledge
by making it readily available to all (or at least all those with access to a
computer). More challenging — but equally feasible with the right knowledge and
skills — is using the web to ratify scientific information to ensure that it is
robust and being used responsibly.

Journalists have frequently come under fire in recent years for drawing the
public's attention to the damage caused to human health and the natural
environment by practices ranging from the heavy use of chemical fertilisers to
uncontrolled carbon emissions. But such coverage, where it is based on either
sound scientific knowledge or reasonable speculation, has played an essential
role in sensitising both the community and its decision-makers to key areas in
which action is needed.

The ability to predict natural disasters, and cope with their human
consequences, is one field in which this task is more than fully justified. The
more that journalists and other science communicators in developing countries
can be equipped with the professional skills to do so effectively, the better
placed society will be to address such disasters as they occur with, as widely
predicted, increasing frequency.

http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=143&\
language=1

By Carl Pope
13 Jan 2005
In December 2004, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope distributed
this response to the essay "The Death of Environmentalism." Get the
backstory here.


There Is Something Different About Global Warming


You may have recently received a memorandum entitled "The Death of
Environmentalism" by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.

I was one of the twenty-five people interviewed for this piece. While I
personally was treated fairly, I am still deeply disappointed and angered
by it. I share the thesis that some fundamental changes are needed in the
way environmentalists approach the challenge of global warming. But I
believe that their paper, because it is unfair, unclear and divisive, has
actually muddied the water and made the task of figuring out a
comprehensive and effective set of strategies more difficult.

Points of Agreement

Summed up, Shellenberger and Nordhaus (S&N) argue three relatively
established points:

a) We are making inadequate progress on global warming.

b) We have inadequately mobilized public concerns and values to create
political pressure. As a result decision makers have not been forced to
confront the need for fundamental changes in the way our society uses
carbon (and other greenhouse gasses).

c) This inadequacy is related to a common set of failings and weaknesses
which afflict progressive social movements in general, by contrast with
the reinvigorated and more strategically integrated efforts of the hard
right.

I agree with these three points; indeed, it is hard to find anyone who
doesn't agree with them. These concerns are widely and broadly shared
among both environmental advocates and funders. The results of the
election undoubtedly reinforced this consensus. There is nothing
particularly new or striking, or controversial, about these points.

Where We Diverge

But Shellenberger and Nordhaus frame these three points within a very
troublesome and divisive set of conclusions about the broader
environmental movement. These conclusions do not flow from their
interviews. They are not documented or justified in their paper. My fear
is that these conclusions are so fundamentally flawed that they may
distract us from the real work at hand -- to craft a set of
understandings and approaches that will move us forward towards global
warming solutions.

What They Overlook

Environmentalism is a broad, diverse and robust movement. It has provided
some of the deepest and most questioning analysis of our ethical
relationship to other species of our era. It deploys a wide variety of
advocacy paradigms -- policy based interest group analysis is one, but
there are also placed-based, values-driven and rights-rooted traditions
and models to draw upon.

Environmentalists have found it difficult to mobilize public support
around global warming issues -- even in times and places when public
outrage over issues like mercury poisoning or clear-cutting has been
boiling over. There is something different about global warming.

Environmentalism is part of a broader progressive movement, which the
right has invested enormously in undercutting for the past thirty years.
As part of that broader movement, we do have some work to do -- but dying
does not seem a particularly helpful form of that work.

Their Argument

Their overall thrust, unfortunately, is summarized by the title of their
paper, "The Death of Environmentalism." The arguments are internally
contradictory, but the logic runs something like this:

i) The leadership of the environmental movement, overall, are a bunch of
narrowly focused and politically blinded policy wonks -- individually
smart but collectively stupid.

ii) This blindness is the result of the very definition of
environmentalism. "The environmental community's belief that their power
derives from defining themselves as defenders of "the environment" has
prevented us from winning major legislation on global warming at the
national level."

iii) The environmental movement is in denial about the challenges it is
facing. "In the face of perhaps the greatest calamity in modern history,
environmental leaders are sanguine that selling technical solutions like
florescent light bulbs, more efficient appliances, and hybrid cars will
be sufficient to muster the necessary political strength to overcome the
alliance of neoconservative ideologues and industry interests in
Washington, D.C."

iv) The history of both Kyoto and CAFE standards reveals a consistent
failure on the part of the environmental movement to comprehend that
effective strategies to decarbonize the economy must take into account
the priorities and needs of other players -- the American auto industry,
auto workers, labor in general, and the broader progressive community.

v) The environmental movement is incapable of responding to the challenge
because its leaders are mired in the successes of the 1970's. "It was
then, at the height of the movement's success, that the seeds of failure
were planted. The environmental community's success created a strong
confidence -- and in some cases bald arrogance -- that the environmental
protection frame was enough to succeed at a policy level."

vi) As a result, we must consider junking the institutional framework of
the environmental movement. "We need to take a hard look at the
institutions the movement has built over the last 30 years. Are existing
environmental institutions up to the task of imagining the post-global
warming world? Or do we now need a set of new institutions founded around
a more expansive vision and set of values?"

vii) The existing leadership is bankrupt and incapable of responding to
the challenges of the twenty-first century. They should step aside to
allow a new generation of leaders to take over. "Most of the movement's
leading thinkers, funders and advocates do not question their most basic
assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we
should be doing."

viii) Indeed, the environmental movement itself should pass from the
scene. It's time has come and gone. "We have become convinced that modern
environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated
concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can
live."

Do Shellenberger and Nordhaus Make Their Case?

This second set of arguments makes a very large set of claims, indeed.
Given that they wrote their piece in a few months after only 25
interviews, it may not be surprising that Shellenberger and Nordhaus
failed to adequately buttress such a far-reaching set of assertions. It
is not clear what possessed them to try to build such an ambitious
premise on such a flimsy foundation. Boldness and hubris are closely
related.

Their case is not only flimsy, it is internally contradictory and
misleading. I still think it is important to address their arguments
because, unchallenged, they may distract us from a set of very real
challenges which require extending and rethinking our approach to global
warming advocacy, not junking modern environmentalism.

Who Are Environmentalists?

S&N assert, "the environment is a category that reinforces the notions
that a) the environment is a separate "thing" and b) human beings are
separate from and superior to the "natural world". The two major ethical
streams in modern environmentalism are deep ecology and environmental
justice. Neither accepts either of these notions. Who were they thinking
of when they made these statements? They offer not a single quote to
suggest that anyone they interviewed believes that human beings are
"separate from and superior to the natural world." Not one.

It would be hard to think of a social movement struggling harder to free
itself from these two "notions" than environmentalism. But it is
environmentalism whose death they advocate.

In other places, S&N appear to define the environmental movement as the
25 people they interviewed. When they urge that "environmentalists need
to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even religion, not to
better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure
out who we are and who we need to be," they utterly ignore such leaders
as Wendell Berry, Paul Shepherd, Thomas Barry, Terry Tempest Williams,
and Barry Leopold. They interviewed 25 policy people, and then complain
that they got only policy expertise from their interviews.
Environmentalism has both poets and wonks; you don't go to your
legislative counsel for a sonnet, nor to your troubadour for a reply
brief.

Is the Definition the Problem?

S&N complain that "Most environmentalists don't think of 'the
environment' as a mental category at all -- they think of it as a real
"thing" to be protected and defended. They think of themselves,
literally, as representatives and defenders of this thing."

So?

Without being too precious, the environment is a real thing. There is a
global carbon cycle, human interventions are a small if meaningful part
of the evolutionary process, homo sapiens depend upon a complex web of
both geochemical and biological processes. Natural processes --
eutrophication, competition, speciation, nutrient cycling, sequestration
-- continue around us according to their own dynamics. We influence, but
do not control, the climate. Of course our understanding of these
phenomena proceeds through mental constructs which are not the phenomena
themselves -- we've known that since Kant.

But I don't think that the definition of what constitutes an
environmental problem is the arbitrary and troublesome source of weakness
that S&N suggest. They have erected, and then blown aside, a straw man.
For example, they assert that "the environmental movement's failure to
craft inspiring and powerful proposals to deal with global warming is
directly related to the movement's reductive logic about the supposedly
root causes (e.g., "too much carbon in the atmosphere") of any given
environmental problem."

This charge does not explain why this same inadequate definition of what
constitutes environmentalism has proven potent when applied to wilderness
preservation, mercury in our waterways, or sewage in our basements.
Environmentalism has failed with regard to global warming precisely in
contrast to its success in mobilizing public passions on these other
problems. This strongly suggests that we need to look not at what these
problems have in common -- the movement's definitions of the environment
-- but what is unique or different about global warming.

Are Environmental Leaders Clueless and Naive?

S&N argue that environmentalists are living in lotus land about how they
are faring. In addition to the claim that our movement believes that
better light bulbs will solve the global warming problem, they maintain
that "environmentalists are particularly upbeat about the direction of
public opinion thanks in large part to the polling they conduct that
shows wide support for their proposals. Yet America is a vastly more
right-wing country than it was three decades ago. The domination of
American politics by the far-right is a central obstacle to achieving
action on global warming. Yet almost none of the environmentalists we
interviewed thought to mention it."

I spend a great deal of my time with environmental leaders. I know of
none that I would describe as "sanguine" that technical solutions will
solve the problem of global warming. I have participated in dozens of
debates about the meaning of public opinion polls, none of which were
particularly "upbeat." I can testify that environmental leaders like
those S&N interviewed think about the power and success of the right
almost obsessively. I seriously doubt that S&N asked any one of their
interviewees if they thought this was a problem and got the answer, "No,
nothing to worry about."

A Flawed Argument From History

S&N then make an argument from history, saying that there have been no
epoch making big wins in recent decades like those of the late 60's and
early 70's. They specifically criticize environmentalists for a series of
strategic and movement building failures, narrating the history of global
warming advocacy since the 1980's. But again they fail to show why if the
problem is environmentalism, labor and social justice movements have also
done very poorly since 1980.

On the specifics of global warming, their historical narrative is sadly
incomplete and riddled with inaccuracies and internal inconsistencies. I
and the Sierra Club have been part of the CAFE battle longer than any of
the sources S&N cite in their history. But in our interview they never
asked me any questions about the history of the environmental movement's
engagement with either the auto companies or the UAW on fuel efficiency.
As a result, they got the story almost entirely wrong.

For example, the Sierra Club has consistently understood CAFE as a
program which needed to be used to preserve and enhance the US auto
industry, the very point they attack environmentalists for ignoring. As
early as the Carter Administration the Sierra Club sought an alliance
with the UAW on domestic content legislation to free the union up to
become again an advocate for change among the domestic manufacturers.
Environmentalists have also continuously and intensely explored ways to
make the program work for both the unions and the domestic manufacturers
by offering tax credits or other mechanisms to finance the necessary
catch-up by Detroit.

The authors claim that in the 1990's, "having gathered 59 votes -- one
short of what's needed to stop a filibuster -- Senator Richard Bryan
nearly passed legislation to raise fuel economy standards in 1990. But
one year later, when Bryan had a very good shot at getting the 60 votes
he needed, the environmental movement cut a deal with the automakers. In
exchange for the auto industry's opposition to drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, environmentalists agreed to drop their support
for the Bryan bill."

This is rubbish. This statement appears to be based on a quote in Keith
Bradsher's book drawn in turn from an earlier work by Jack Doyle. The
reality is that Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, to get an omnibus
energy bill which included drilling the Arctic beyond a Senate filibuster
and into conference with the House, included a 37 mpg CAFE standard as
part of that bill. Auto companies opposed the bill, making it clear that
the CAFE proposal would not survive conference with the House.
Environmental groups opposed it because it was clear that drilling the
Arctic would survive such a conference and would end up on the
President's desk to be signed. Senator Bryan, far from being abandoned by
environmentalists, was one of the first Senators to sign up for the
filibuster against the Johnston-Wallop bill.

Johnston offered repeated carrots in exchange for drilling the Arctic;
there was never any evidence that he had the capacity or intention to
deliver on any of them; environmentalists, wisely in my view, rejected
them all.

Not only is this rubbish, it is dangerous rubbish. Because already, two
weeks after the 2004 election, there are discussions that once again
environmentalists should abandon their battle to protect the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in exchange for some forward progress on
reducing carbon emissions.

What none of these discussions acknowledge is this: It is the carbon
lobby that wants to drill the refuge. It is the carbon lobby that does
not want to reduce carbon emissions. If the oil industry, the Bush
Administration and the state of Alaska have the votes to drill the
Arctic, they will do so -- they have no reason to give environmentalists
something in exchange.

If environmentalists had the votes to do something to reduce carbon
emissions, they should do so. They wouldn't need to trade the Arctic, and
they shouldn't. This is not a market where one party owns the Arctic and
can sell it in exchange for more fuel efficient trucks. The policy logic
of drilling the Arctic and the policy logic of reducing carbon emissions
are diametrically opposed. So this is not a rational public policy debate
about how to craft a better energy policy by combining different
priorities.

This is a power struggle about which way to go -- more carbon or less.

Are We Mired In the Past?

The authors assert repeatedly, but never document, that the environmental
movement is still approaching things as it learned to do in the early
1970's. All that the authors offer to buttress this crucial claim is the
following:

"By failing to question their most basic assumptions about the problem
and the solution, environmental leaders are like generals fighting the
last war -- in particular the war they fought and won for basic
environmental protections more than 30 years ago. It was then that the
community's political strategy became defined around using science to
define the problem as "environmental" and crafting technical policy
proposals as solutions.

"The greatest achievements to reduce global warming are today happening
in Europe.....

"Environmentalists are learning all the wrong lessons from Europe. We
closely scrutinize the policies without giving much thought to the
politics that made the policies possible."

We do need to examine the European experience. But when we do, we find
the same definition of global warming as an environmental problem, and
the same technical policy solutions. What is different is the politics of
carbon. European nations have been carbon importers for much longer than
the U.S., and most have nationalized those industries so that they are no
longer independent political actors.

Should We Junk Our Institutions?

Here's where shoddy research is so damaging.

S&N assert there is a void needing to be filled. "If, for example,
environmentalists don't consider the high cost of health care, R&D tax
credits, and the overall competitiveness of the American auto industry to
be "environmental issues," then who will think creatively about a
proposal that works for industry, workers, communities and the
environment? If framing proposals around narrow technical solutions is an
ingrained habit of the environmental movement, then who will craft
proposals framed around vision and values?"

Good questions -- IF. But the full record, as I mention above, shows that
environmental groups have incorporated competitiveness into their
thinking for 26 years. They continue to do so. In the summer of 2002 the
Sierra Club joined the Steelworkers in calling for federal action to
relieve steel companies of their legacy pension and health costs. This
action, which the authors call unthinkable, was fairly routine for us.
Contrary to the author's stated assumption, no one in the environmental
movement was critical of the Club for taking this stance. In fact, we got
a lot of praise.

The perception that the movement is overly obsessed with technical
solutions appears to be an artifact of S&N having focused their
interviews on the movement's technicians. Again, to make such a claim
about leaders like Randy Hayes or Dave Foreman is absurd -- but neither
of them was interviewed. The author's entire edifice thus rests on sand.
The tide is still coming in and out, and the environmental movement,
leaders and institutions both, are still growing and changing like the
ecosystem they are.

Is the Problem Generational?

The authors start out with an almost ritualized obeisance to earlier
generations of environmentalists:

"Those of us who are children of the environmental movement must never
forget that we are standing on the shoulders of all those who came before
us. The clean water we drink, the clean air we breathe, and the protected
wilderness we treasure are all, in no small part, thanks to them. The two
of us have worked for most of the country's leading environmental
organizations as staff or consultants. We hold a sincere and abiding
respect for our parents and elders in the environmental community. They
have worked hard and accomplished a great deal. For that we are deeply
grateful."

They then move on to an almost equally ritualized sacrifice.

"Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders and advocates do not
question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand
for, and what it is that we should be doing."

An anthropologist would be thrilled to find patricide still servings its
ritual purpose.

Having framed the basic issues as generational, they spend the rest of
the paper savaging their "parents and elders." (It's not clear who
delegated the two of them to speak for the children in this
generationally divided family they have hypothesized.)

Yet there's simply no evidence in the paper that there are any consistent
differences on the crucial issues between different generations within
the environmental movement. I freely grant that there are, and should be,
different generational leadership styles, different understandings of how
to advance environmental change, different political strategies. But
there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever in the S&N paper that on the
key issues they raise the differences are generational. Do younger
environmental ethicists see issues differently than their predecessors?
Is there less interest in the technical issues of carbon trading among
younger economists within the environmental movement? Do older
environmental justice advocates fail to see the need to be more
inclusive?

S&N have taken the normal, important, and inevitable segmentation within
the environmental movement, and pretended that it can be explained as a
matter of generational succession -- without an iota of evidence.

The End of Environmentalism?

Perhaps the most self-serving and damaging paragraph in the paper is the
following:

"At the same time, we believe that the best way to honor their
achievements is to acknowledge that modern environmentalism is no longer
capable of dealing with the world's most serious ecological crisis."

I say self serving because, given that the chosen audience of the paper
was the funders, it will be hard for many readers to avoid the suspicion
that the not so hidden message was "fund us instead."

And I say damaging because by mingling the issue of the need for deeper
and more effective global warming strategies with an ill-thought out
assault on environmentalism, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are likely to
create defensiveness, not receptivity; resistance, not movement;
back-lash, not progress.

Do They Offer a Better Way?

If the paper offered a clear and constructive path forward, the internal
contradictions of the analysis would matter less. They would be offering
a better reasoned "what" instead of merely suggesting themselves as
"who." Instead, they have offered a hodge podge. They are clear, as
others have been, that focusing just on tactics is not enough, that we
need to engage people as moral beings and tap into their deepest values.
They join the chorus which has pointed out that alliances need to be
based on true mutuality, and that environmentalists and progressives need
to follow the example of the hard right in doing long range thinking and
work. These are all very useful, if not strikingly new concepts. But in
their zeal to deconstruct the concept of modern environmentalism, and to
proclaim their readiness to offer a better way forward, Shellenberger and
Nordhaus failed to provide their own answers to some very basic and
troublesome questions.

They do not seem to have sorted out whether they think we should abandon
or embrace the "tell the world how many of its problems are due to global
warming frame" or what role technological optimism should play in our
efforts and communications strategies. They do not touch the thorny
question of how they stand on the long dialogue among social change
theorists about whether incremental behavioral change leads to newer and
eventually larger changes in thinking, which then enables new behavioral
change or whether it is essential to first create new mental maps which
enable behavioral change.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus defend their failure to come up with a new
vision by saying it would be premature and presumptuous:

"We resisted the exhortations from early reviewers of this report to say
more about what we think must now be done because we believe that the
most important next steps will emerge from teams, not individuals. Over
the coming months we will be meeting with existing and emerging teams of
practitioners and funders to develop a common vision and strategy for
moving forward."

Unfortunately, by failing to offer their own ideas for scrutiny they
rendered their report nihilistic -- able to destroy but not create.

An Alternative View

Shellenberger and Nordhaus do make one extremely compelling point:

"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the 1990s is that, in the end, the
environmental community had still not come up with an inspiring vision,
much less a legislative proposal, that a majority of Americans could get
excited about."

And buried in their paper's misguided deconstruction of environmentalism
are some extremely useful clues they picked up from their interviews
about where we might go:

1) Environmental advocacy has been dramatically less effective dealing
with global warming than with clean air, clean water, wilderness or
wildlife. That suggests that part of the problem is not a generic feature
of environmentalism, but some specific differences between global warming
and these other problems. Such differences are not difficult to identify.
The environmental challenges which gave rise to the reforms of the early
1970's, on which the progress of the next 30 years rests, had tangible,
local, and immediate consequences for the public. Lake Erie was dying
under the boats of fishermen, the Cuyahoga River could be seen to burn by
Clevelanders, New Yorkers had to change their shirt in the middle of the
day, and children in Los Angeles could not go out and play hundreds of
days a year.

The problems that environmentalism has failed to get a grasp on, or
develop a deep public commitment and attention to, by contrast, are
intangible, global and future oriented. Global warming, habitat
fragmentation, and the loading of global ecosystems with persistent but
toxic and disruptive industrial chemicals are simply harder for an
opportunistic, reactive primate species to understand as threats.

2) Environmental advocacy has been less potent in the 1990's than in
previous decades. So has advocacy for the broader progressive community
agenda -- for justice. We have made some progress on the individualistic
side of the progressive ledger -- public tolerance for racial diversity
has increased, the gay and lesbian community has made dramatic strides.

But on questions of justice progressives have been losing. The labor
movement, advocates for health care reform, tax justice advocates have
all fared as badly as or worse than environmentalists. So whatever ails
environmentalism ails these other movements as well.

The landscape on which politics has played out has changed radically.
Faced with what one commentator called America's first
"anti-enlightenment President" sound science alone will not carry the
day. We ARE in a culture war, and rational collective self interest IS an
inadequate approach.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus are thus, it seems to me, correct when they
say that environmentalism is falling short because it shares with the
rest of the progressive movement a set of increasingly outmoded
organizing, advocacy and political approaches. It is strategically
disadvantaged when confronted with value based, longer range, and more
carefully framed hard-right advocacy. But this is a case for modernizing
the left, not for killing environmentalism.

3) One element of the left's weakness is its emphasis on technical policy
analysis, not values. This weakness goes right back to the technocratic
emphasis of the Progressive Movement, and of early conservationists. This
approach -- interest group politics -- was codified in the 1920's by
Walter Lippman and refined after World War II by writers like John
Kenneth Galbraith.

Interest group politics assumed that American political parties were
loose coalitions, and that the congressional and presidential branches of
each party were competing for power. Interest groups could thus recruit
support from individual policy makers regardless of their ostensible
partisan ties. As American politics, if not the American constitution,
has been moved by the right in an ever more parliamentary, party-driven
direction, interest group policy advocacy becomes increasingly impotent.

Some Solutions

But working backward from this last weakness, it is important to
remember, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus do not, that policy-based
interest group advocacy is only ONE of the major organizing frameworks
the modern environmental movement has employed.

Much of environmental advocacy has been place based, not policy driven,
and involved creating a community vision of the desired state of a
landscape, and then creating institutions charged with achieving that set
of goals. (The National Park System and the Wilderness Act on the one
hand, and such institutions as the California Coastal Commission on the
other are prototypes.)

Other environmental advocacy has been values driven, with certain "wrong"
industrial practices or technologies banned or eliminated. (Most of the
current work around genetic engineering is a good example of this, as was
the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980's.) And some of the most successful
environmental work has aimed to create new forms of rights, so that
citizens could assume more control over a wide range of decisions
impacting them. (The National Environmental Policy Act, citizens suits
provisions, the right-to-know movement, California's Prop 65)

These other forms of environmental advocacy are full of promise for
global warming.

A striking example of one strategy to transform the global warming debate
using a different, but entirely familiar form of environmental advocacy,
would be to apply the well established values frame of the "polluter
pays" principle.

From this perspective, at its heart, the global warming debate is not
complicated. It is simply very difficult because it is about who is going
to pay.

Kyoto is an attempt to start down the road that everyone knows will have
a very large bill, without ever deciding who will pay for the bill. Which
is why, in my view, Kyoto has gone nowhere in the U.S. Confronted with a
potential liability, as long as I think I won¹t have to pay the bill,
I'll hire my lawyer. That's what the US carbon lobby has done. They know
carbon is a liability. They don't want to pay the bill.

This understanding that global warming is mainly a problem about who is
going to pay -- which in turn depends on who we assume owned the sky to
begin with -- has been articulated on the left by Peter Barnes and on the
right by Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago School of
Law -- normally one of environmentalism's major opponents.

But if we frame global warming as pollution, and assert that the polluter
should pay, then suddenly this otherwise completely abstruse, overly
technical problem becomes much easier for the public to understand.

We can then get people to recognize that you shouldn¹t be electrifying
villages in India by hanging copper wires between them. You should be
electrifying them with methane generators and windmills -- and the
polluters, the emitters of carbon, ought to be paying for them.

We know that if we lay this necessity on the table, the other side will
respond with their own values frame -- one focused on accommodation, not
prevention. Here S&N seem to miss the point completely. They again fall
back on their lament that the problem is the definition of the
environment:

"What do we worry about when we worry about global warming? Is it the
refugee crisis that will be caused when Caribbean nations are flooded? If
so, shouldn't our focus be on building bigger sea walls and disaster
preparedness? Is it the food shortages that will result from reduced
agricultural production? If so, shouldn't our focus be on increasing food
production? Is it the potential collapse of the Gulf Stream, which could
freeze upper North America and northern Europe and trigger, as a recent
Pentagon scenario suggests, world war?

"Most environmental leaders would scoff at such framings of the problem
and retort, 'Disaster preparedness is not an environmental problem.'"

In fact, in refusing to accept accommodation as a proper response,
environmentalists have been doing exactly what S&N advocate -- organizing
around values. In rejecting accommodation, environmentalists are choosing
prevention over compensation, prudence over risk. Environmentalists have
repeatedly pointed out that the right's choice of "accommodation" instead
of "prevention" as a response to atmospheric greenhouse gas overload is
futile -- not because it is not environmental, but because it won't work.
We simply won't build a sea wall around Florida, much less around the
Gangetic Delta in Bangla Desh -- and a sea wall won't stop a hurricane,
or save coral reefs.

There is a deep values conflict between the modern hard right on the one
hand, and traditional conservatives and environmentalism on the other. It
has to do with the conflict between prudence/prevention vs.
risk/retaliation. Environmentalists have been pretty consistent in taking
the side of traditionalism -- prudence, the precautionary principle,
prevention -- against the hard libertarian right. We need to do this more
explicitly around global warming.

But again, environmental discourse gives us tools we can use effectively
to move the public conversation on global warming -- even though they are
not the tools of interest-group lobbying.

Following this one line of possible alternative reasoning, how do we
frame global warming as pollution? More particularly, how do we frame
burning fossil fuel as pollution, because that is how the ordinary person
will encounter this issue? Here's where it's not enough to think of
global warming as a policy, or even a political problem. It's a
conceptual problem. And it's a conceptual problem that environmentalism
dealt with before, when it encountered the early view that "the smell of
pollution is the smell of money."

As long as we view developing oil, coal and gas as development, as a form
of economic advancement, it will be very hard, simultaneously, to say
that we should charge people lots of money for doing so -- it feels like
a punishment for success.

That's yet another reason why conventional interest group advocacy won't
work on this issue -- it's more than the new power of the right. Neither
moderate Republicans nor Democrats have been able to shake themselves
loose of the regional power of the carbon lobby. No one,
environmentalists or some broader group that S&N might imagine, will be
able to solve the problem of global warming by persuading members of the
House and Senate that there are good alternatives, and that if we do the
right things we can get rid of oil and coal and still have a good economy
with lots and lots of stuff to consume. That case has been made aptly and
effectively, in DC (and elsewhere).

What the environmental community must grapple with is, "How do you deal
with the reality that not everyone in Washington thinks a world without
oil and coal is a good thing?" America's leaders think that, overall,
producing fossil fuels is a form of progress. And they have ample
incentives to keep on thinking that way. That's why, in my view there is
no elite solution. You can't bring the world's leaders together to solve
this problem. The world's leaders are the problem.

We need to start talking about our current pattern of consuming ever more
carbon as a public health problem not an economic solution. A hundred
years ago open sewers were common. Today, if we were to see an
overflowing open sewer, and someone said make it twice as wide to handle
all the new sewage, we would not think that was a good thing (and a mayor
who proposed that would be in trouble).

We won't make progress as long as we conceptualize fossil fuel
consumption as a good thing (along the recent lines laid out by the World
Bank) instead of presenting fossil fuel consumption as our century's open
sewer. But once we start thinking about fossil fuel consumption in this
way, we need to recognize that the political problem gets bigger before
it get smaller. We have to deal with the reality that there are win-win
solutions for the economy as a whole, but not for Exxon -- (or the
Saudis.) We should acknowledge that it's not a win-win for Exxon. (There
can be win-wins for General Motors.) The conversation we are having
should be about an entirely different energy future, one which will mean
a dramatic reconfiguration of the world's wealth. Now how will we get
that done?

Fully exploiting the potential of the pollution frame is, again, only one
potential course for reframing the issue of global warming.

Another is to take advantage of place-based environmentalism. One of the
major global warming issues is that there are a huge number of coal fired
power plants being proposed in the US -- about 112 gigawatts. If approved
and built, these will have operating lifetimes in excess of 60 years.
Their carbon dioxide emissions alone will drastically impair the US's
ability to cut its emissions. They will also preempt the market for wind
and solar. So if they are built, we are cooked.

But they must be built somewhere. Wherever they are built there are place
based advocacy tools to resist, which have been used quite successfully,
say, in Colorado, as part of an integrated campaign to encourage wind and
solar. So here is another example of reshaping an existing advocacy
approach from the traditions of the environmental movement to make
effective forward progress on global warming.

Again, I would say we did something much like that in the late 60's or
70's with pollution, in the 80's with nuclear power, and have been having
surprising success doing it in the last decade with genetically modified
foods.

Global warming is a more abstract, distant problem; the economic
transformation required is bigger; it needs deeper, more robust, more
sustained collaborations; it needs to be harnessed to a broader vision of
a new economic order. There is more than enough hard work to go around.
We ought not to get distracted by conversations about "the death of
environmentalism"; we should avoid allowing ourselves to be divided by
glib generalizations about generational divides; we should above all be
creative, not destructive.

Confusion With the Apollo Alliance

Because I am one of the co-chairs of the Apollo Alliance, and because S&N
referred so heavily to the Alliance, I went to the trouble of checking
with the other leaders of Apollo to see what their involvement in this
piece had been. Their response makes it very clear that Shellenberger and
Nordhaus were speaking only for themselves, and that the Apollo Alliance
as a whole had not even seen this document before it was distributed:

Another unfortunate aspect of the paper was that it left the impression
that the Apollo Alliance sanctioned the substance, criticism or tone of
the analysis. In fact, Alliance partners such as my fellow Alliance
co-chair Leo Gerard (Steelworkers), as well as key partners Robert
Borosage (Institute of America's Future), Dan Carol (CTSG), Joel Rogers
(Center on Wisconsin Strategy), as well as Alliance Executive Director
Bracken Hendricks did not see a copy of the paper until it was released
for EGA, nor were they aware of its existence before its release.

Of particular concern to Alliance partners is the suggestion in the
paper, real or implied, that the Apollo Alliance's model green jobs
investment plan released last year, was, in any way, a complete
"solution" to the climate change challenge we face. The Apollo vision is
animated by the strength of environmental values and the vitality of a
popular movement that is one of the great hopes for re-tooling the
nation's policies to create clean energy jobs, a sustainable economy, and
a safer world.

Most disturbingly, to me and the Apollo team, was that the paper was not
in the spirit of our project, which has been seeking for the last two
years to evangelize and create innovative new alliances and partnerships
for tomorrow -- not practice the "push-off" politics of the past.

These at-times painstaking efforts have sought to balance the passions of
many, many stakeholders; and so it was disappointing to me and the Apollo
team to see the passions of a few, however well meant, to raise their
voices over others. It is not how we operate, and it's surely not how we
will succeed together.

Sincerely,

Carl Pope
Executive Director
Sierra Club

http://madison.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/21216

------------------------------------------------------------
Bears Waking Up to Global Warming
Why Isn't the Government?
------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 17 January 2005
by Michael T. Neuman

Summary: Look what we've done now. Even the bears in some countries are
waking up to global warming! It's too bad our governmental
representatives in Madison and Washington are still sleeping. By the time
they wake up to the reality of global warming and legislate some action,
it will be too late. Grrrrrrr.

In the first comprehensive assessment of global warming's likely
consequences for North American wildlife comes a warning of major shifts
in the ranges and the restructuring of entire plant and animal
communities and the disappearance of some forest types in the United
States.

The winter of 2005 has been the Baltic country of Estonia's warmest
winter in centuries, causing bears to wake up in the country several
months early from hibernation, wildlife experts from Estonia's State
Forest Service report.

Text:  A study released in December by the National Wildlife Federation
and The Wildlife Society, "Global Climate Change and Wildlife in North
America", concludes: "there is sufficient evidence to indicate that many
species are already responding to warming, and that animals and plants
are already exhibiting discernible range changes consistent with changing
temperatures."

The report is co-written by scientists in the Institute of Arctic Biology
at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Marine Biological Laboratory
at Woods Hole, Mass., Stanford University's Institute for International
Studies, Ducks Unlimited's Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research
in Canada and the National Wildlife Federation. The report details the
disruption of essential ecological processes, displacement and
disappearance of coastal wetlands species, the loss of coastal marshes
and the disruption of alpine and Arctic ecosystems, and direct threats to
many species, including polar bears, migratory songbirds and waterfowl
and alpine amphibians.

"Global warming presents a profound threat to wildlife as we know it in
this country," says Douglas B. Inkley, National Wildlife Federation
Senior Science Advisor and chair of the eight-person review committee of
The Wildlife Society that wrote the report. "Decades of conservation
progress and our responsibility to assure a wildlife legacy for future
generations rest upon our determination to overcome this threat", he
said.

"We're concerned about the effects of global warming on wildlife in North
America, and this assessment verifies that some species already are
responding to climate change," added Tom Franklin, the society's acting
executive director.

The earth's climate is constantly changing, the authors point out. But
hundreds of studies in the last 20 years show that human activity has
contributed to global warming during the last century.

The effect of rising temperatures has fallen unequally across North
America. Nights have warmed more than days, while land surfaces have
heated up more than ocean surfaces. Winters have warmed more than
summers, the report notes, and temperatures and precipitation in northern
latitudes have grown more than in the tropics.

There are too many variables to predict exactly what may happen in the
next 100 years, the report says, but models by the leading climate
research centers in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States
suggest warming will increase from two to 10 times more in the 21st
century than it did in the 20th.

Glaciers in the prairie pothole region, which the study calls the "duck
factory of North America,'' left millions of small ponds that are used by
breeding waterfowl. Extensive drought has affected the wetlands and the
reproductive rates of ducks, the report said.

"Most scenarios and models predicted significant declines in wetlands and
thus declines in the abundance of breeding ducks in this region by the
2080s,'' according to the study.

Migratory birds, especially waterfowl, are vulnerable to changes now
occurring, the report notes, because prairie and coastal wetlands are
endangered. Projected declines in duck breeding because of climate change
range from 10 to 69 percent.

A recent study cited in the report found that the Great Lakes could see a
57 percent decline in migratory songbirds because of a warming climate.
Some species would be replaced by those from the south, but the end
result would be a nearly 30 percent decline in neotropical songbirds in
the Northland.

The report represents the culmination of a two-year review by a
professional panel looking into hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific
reports examining the wildlife implications of global warming. "The
evidence marshaled in this report is a message to every American who
cares about wildlife to awaken to global warming's threat and to rally to
the cause to confront it" claimed Larry J. Schweiger, President of the
National Wildlife Federation, in releasing the report.

The report predicts the ranges of habitats and wildlife will generally
move northward as temperatures increase; however, "the ability of plants
and animals to shift to new ranges in response to climate change will be
limited by several factors, including migratory pathways, pollinator
availability and the concurrent movement of forage and prey", states the
report.

"One of our concerns is that many plant and animal populations may not be
able to make the shift as their ranges move northward because migratory
corridors may already be closed off by urban sprawl, cities and
agriculture," Inkley stated. The effects of global warming on populations
and range distributions of wildlife are expected to be species specific
according to the report, and changes in the timing and length of seasons
due to global warming "may cause closely interacting species to become
out of phase, disrupting essential ecological processes such as
pollination, seed dispersal and insect control by birds".

"We face the prospect that the world of wildlife that we now know and
many of the places we've invested decades of work in conserving as
refuges and habitats for wildlife will cease to exist as we know them,
unless we can change this forecast," Inkley added. "The case of a
pollinator bird being able to make the range shift while the plant it
pollinates cannot may be replicated in innumerable interdependent
relationships, leaving us a world of wildlife diminished beyond our
current capacity of prediction. Wildlife refuges and other areas
protected for their wildlife values may simply no longer support much of
the wildlife that is currently there as wildlife ranges shift in response
to climate change."

Based on the report, the Wildlife Society will consider adopting formal
policy recommendations at its March meeting. Draft recommendations
include such measures as a reduction of carbon-dioxide and other
greenhouse-gas emissions and for state and federal wildlife agencies to
consider climate change in developing long-range wildlife management
plans.

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=40801
http://www.montanaforum.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article
&sid=1454
http://www.nwf.org/nwfwebadmin/binaryVault/Wildlife_Society_Report2.pdf

Meanwhile, it has been found that plant communities in the Midwest and
elsewhere in the United States are changing in response to the warming
climate of the last several decades. Cornell and University of Wisconsin
scientists have found lilacs are blooming about four days earlier lately
than they did in 1965.

David Wolfe, a plant ecology professor at Cornell, and Mark Schwartz,
associate professor of geography at UW-Milwaukee, whose research will be
published in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of
Biometeorology, point to climate change and the increase in greenhouse
gases as the probably cause.

"It's not just the weather data telling us there is a warming trend going
on. We are now seeing the living world responding to the climate change
as well," Wolfe said.

The Cornell study is consistent with other examinations involving the
biological impact of rising temperatures. Harvard University scientists
have reported finding evidence of earlier flowering in specimens at the
Arnold Arboretum in Boston, while botanists at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C. found the city's Japanese cherry trees
are blooming about a week earlier than they were 30 years ago. Wolfe
cautioned that the warming trend has many implications -- and not all
good -- and suggested that it could favor some invasive species and alter
important interactions between plants and pollinators, insect pests,
diseases and weeds. "If the interdependence and synchrony between animals
and plants are disrupted, the very survival of some species could be
threatened," he said, adding that climate change could affect plant and
bird migration patterns, animals' hibernation patterns, reproductive
cycles, woodland composition, plant pathogens and the availability of
plant
  food for insects and animals.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=21286&ntpid=2

In "Keeping Records: A Family Tradition of Science and Sensitivity"
(March 2003), Nina Leopold Bradley, daughter of famous biologist Aldo
Leopold (author of "The Sand Country Almanac"), reported that she and
Carl Leopold compared Aldo Leopold's data from 1936-1947 to data
collected at the Sand County Farm from 1976-1998, and published the
scientific paper, "Phrenological changes reflect climate change in
Wisconsin", in saying their statistical analysis of 55 spring events
revealed that 18 of the events occurred up to two weeks earlier in 1998
than in the 1930s and 1940s (1.2 days per decade), and therefore
"appeared to be responding to increases in temperature".

"Our data also showed that timing of 20 of the events showed no
statistically significant change, therefore suggesting that some species
are changing their life cycles in response to climate change while others
are not", Bradley reports.

Bradley cites a study by Terry Root, et. al (2003), the finds that "in
response to global warming, some species are moving north in the northern
hemisphere and some are moving south in the southern hemisphere; and they
are moving up in elevation, and that "morphological traits in species
have changed in response to global warming: egg sizes and body sizes have
changed; there have also been genetic changes in several insect species."


"If the climatic warming trend continues over the coming decades",
Bradley states, "stress to biological systems will surely result. Some
plant and animal species may be able to adjust their life histories in
response to the changing climate. Many species, however, are evidently
not able to respond. It is apparent that climate change is already
disrupting ecological communities", she said.

http://www.conbio.org/SCB/Publications/Newsletter/Archives/2003-5-May/10-
2_006.cfm
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v421/n691
8/abs/nature01333_r.html&dynoptions=doi1094659265

Finally, the winter of 2005 has reportedly been the Baltic country of
Estonia's warmest winter in at least two centuries, causing some of its
600 bears to wake up several months early from hibernation, according to
wildlife experts. "It has been very warm and wet and many flooded rivers
have forced bears out of their dens and out of hibernation," Kalev
Manniste, a senior official at the Baltic country's State Forest Service,
was quoted as saying by Reuters News Service reporter David Mardiste.

Local reports say that across the country bears are moving about the
forests at a time when they normally sleep and would not be seen for
another two to three months, including she-bears with very small cubs.

She-bears normally give birth to tiny walnut-sized cubs during their
winter hibernation and suckle them for months as they grow, before the
spring thaw awakens the mother and she leaves her den.

Local media and hunters writing on Internet sites say that across the
country bears are moving about the forests at a time when they normally
sleep and would not be seen for another two to three months.

Neighboring Russia's normally ferocious winter has also reportedly been
mild. The Interfax news agency reported this week that a bear in a zoo
awoke from hibernation two months early, while another did not go to
sleep at all.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/29019/story.htm

On February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol agreement on climate change will
become effective, establishing binding greenhouse gas emission limits
(caps - millions of tons of greenhouse gases per year) on the 30
industrialized countries that ratified the agreement. Of the thirty-two
industrialized countries the agreement was initially designed to cover,
only the U.S. and Australia failed to ratify it.

President Bush withdrew the U.S. from the 128-nation Kyoto protocol in
early 2001, despite the Office of the President's having signed the
agreement in 1997.

A report recently released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration
finds that the U.S. has done virtually nothing to reduce greenhouse gases
since the day the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated (and signed by Vice
President Gore) in 1997. Total U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions are
now 13.4 percent higher than they were in 1990 based on the latest
figures available (6,935.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
equivalent (MMTCDE) in 2003 vs. 6,115.2 MMTCDE in 1990).

Since greenhouse gases are cumulative in the atmosphere over time (carbon
dioxide has a life of 50 - 200 years in the atmosphere), and each year's
emissions are compounded with earlier emissions and succeeding emissions;
this importance of beginning to reduce emissions as soon as possible and
to the fullest extent possible cannot be overemphasized.

There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists that timely
actions to slow the continuing buildup of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere (from fuel burning in automobiles, power plant emissions,
industrial emissions, other transportation emissions) is imperative if
significant reductions to the threats of global warming are to be
realized.

The impacts of global warming on the human environment are expected to be
profoundly negative and could be upon us sooner than at first predicted,
due to positive feedbacks in the climate system that amplify smaller
warming effects into more pronounced ones.

Delegates to last December's United Nations Conference in Rio de Janeiro
spent the majority of their time trying to convince the U.S. government
to agree to tighter environmental targets for the U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions, since the U.S. is the leading emitter of greenhouse gases to
the atmosphere. However, the Bush administration held firm in
representing the United State's opposition to mandatory emissions
controls over greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S., in favor of a
voluntary approach for another 10 years while studies the administration
has not even begun yet are completed.

According to Pat Neuman, a federal National Weather Service (NWS)
employee who has been punished by the Bush administration's National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) a number of times since
2001 with several weeks of leave without pay and reassignment for
attempting to get the NWS to account for global warming in its flood
forecasting methodologies for the Midwest and the Great Plains states,
the federal and state governments should be telling the people of the
United States just what has been going on with the climate before it's
too late to change things. In a post Neuman made to an international
Paleontology and Climate listserv group, he said "it is essential that
there be one voice in predicting global
climate change", and that "that voice must be the government of the
people". "We currently have no one voice on global climate change
prediction", he said, saying that "one voice is critical in the issuance
of tornado, hurricane and flood warnings" and that "many differing
opinions and no single official prediction confuses the public, resulting
in insufficient preparedness activities and little or no preventative
actions". In the U.S., he claimed, "the government (NOAA and NWS offices
throughout the U.S.) should insure that the public and media have enough
information for acquiring enough knowledge about global warming and
regional climate change to help in their decisions to take action to help
slow the rate of global warming and prepare for the consequences. That is
not happening, thus no serious actions are being taken by the public to
reduce emissions and make decisions to best prepare themselves for the
global warming consequences that are just ahead.

Instead of clarifying the picture, the Bush administration, through its
NWS and NOAA and the mass media, has muddied the water on the whole issue
of global warming and its most predominant cause (human's burning fossil
fuels).

Instead of allowing the truth to be told, the administration has misled
the public into believing the jury is still out on global warming, and
the ever building "dangerous levels" of greenhouse gases accumulating in
the atmosphere, primarily due to too much oil, natural gas and coal
burning.

The Bush administration doesn't buy the dire predictions of the
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor the U.S.'s own
scientific establishment, and despite the decades of study that global
climate change has already received, they say we need at least 10 more
years of research before they will even consider caps on greenhouse gas
emissions from U.S. industries and sectors.

The IPCC - which includes hundreds of scientists selected from all over
the world - published a landmark three-volume report on global climate
change: "IPCC Third Assessment Report - Climate Change 2001". Three years
in preparation, the document was and is considered the most comprehensive
scientific assessment of global warming and is considered "the standard
scientific reference for all those concerned with the environmental and
social consequences of climate change, including students and researchers
in ecology, biology, hydrology, environmental science, economics, social
science, natural resource management, public health, food security, and
natural hazards, and policymakers and managers in governmental, industry,
and other organizations responsible for resources likely to be affected
by climate change."

It determined four years ago that "there is new and stronger evidence
that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable
to human activities", and that "the severity of the adverse impacts will
be larger for greater cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases and
associated changes in climate increase", and that "reducing emissions of
greenhouse gases to stabilize their atmospheric concentrations would
delay and reduce damages caused by climate change".

In its 2001 "Summary for Policymakers" the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) predicted the globe's average temperature will
increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by
the year 2100 unless mitigative steps are taken keep the buildup of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere down by limiting fossil fuel burning
and maintain the world's forest systems which sequester carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.

The IPCC predicted in 2001 that, unless meaningful measure were taken in
a timely manner, that surface temperatures will increase by 1.4 to 5.8
degrees C by the year 2100 (2.5 to 10.6 degrees F), on average,
throughout the world.

It stated that "recent regional changes in climate, particularly
increases in temperature, have already affected hydrological systems and
terrestrial and marine ecosystems in many parts of the world", and that
"the observed changes in these systems are coherent across diverse
localities and/or regions and are consistent in direction with the
expected effects of regional changes in temperature". It said that "the
probability that the observed changes in the expected direction (with no
reference to magnitude) could occur by chance alone is negligible".

It said the "overall, climate change is projected to increase threats to
human health, particularly in lower income populations, predominantly
within tropical/subtropical countries", adding that climate change can
affect human health directly (e.g., reduced cold stress in temperate
countries but increased heat stress, loss of life in floods and storms)
and indirectly through changes in the ranges of disease vectors (e.g.,
mosquitoes), water-borne pathogens, water quality, air quality, and food
availability and quality.

It also stated that "populations that inhabit small islands and/or
low-lying coastal areas are at particular risk of severe social and
economic effects from sea-level rise and storm surges", and that he
impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing
countries and the poor persons within all countries, and thereby
exacerbate inequities in health status and access to adequate food, clean
water, and other resources.

Furthermore, it said that "climate change will exacerbate water shortages
in many water-scarce areas of the world", and that "the impacts of
climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and
the poor persons within all countries, and thereby exacerbate inequities
in health status and access to adequate food, clean water, and other
resources".

It acknowledged that "the rising socio-economic costs related to weather
damage and to regional variations in climate suggest increasing
vulnerability to climate change", and that "preliminary indications
suggest that some social and economic systems have been affected by
recent increases in floods and droughts, with increases in economic
losses for catastrophic weather events".

Finally, it predicted that "ecological productivity and biodiversity will
be altered by climate change and sea level rise, with an increased risk
of extinction of some vulnerable species", and that "significant
disruptions of ecosystems from disturbances such as fire, drought, pest
infestation, invasion of species, storms, and coral bleaching events are
expected to increase", and that "the stresses caused by climate change,
when added to other stresses on ecological systems, threaten substantial
damage to or complete loss of some unique systems and extinction of some
endangered species".
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/pdf/spm.pdf

The Bush administration refused to believe any of this, publicly at
least.

It is also ignoring grave dangers reported by researchers such as Harvard
Medical School's Center for Health and Global Environment, which released
a report April 29, 2004 "Inside the Greenhouse: The Impacts of CO2 and
Climate Change on Public Health in the Inner City" which predicts
millions of poor and minority children in America's cities likely will
suffer even higher rates of asthma as the result of global warming along
with unhealthy urban air masses caused by the burning of fossil fuel by
cars, trucks, buses, other motorized sources, and from coal-fired power
plants in the future.

All Americans living in our cities are at increased risk of respiratory
disease due to greater concentrations of air pollution, soot and ozone in
urban environments, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director,
American Public Health Association. "But it's our children who are at
greatest risk. And those who are disproportionately at risk are
low-income, minority children who already suffer from an epidemic of
asthma, the most common chronic disease in children. This is a public
health issue and it is a health disparities issue. Low-income communities
receive less treatment for environmental disease because they have less
access to health care, yet are often at much greater risk from their
environment, he said.

The impacts of air pollution can also be compounded by extreme weather
events, whose intensity and frequency is increasing as climate changes.
These include more heatwaves, drought-driven fires, floods and the
impacts of warming are exacerbated by “the heat island
effect” generated in concrete cities with inadequate green space.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/message/4
86

The Bush administration has also not responded to findings of a
conference held by the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) on June 16, 2004, at which climate experts from around the
country concluded that "there is in fact no cause for doubt [of global
warming]: The world is significantly warmer today than it was a century
ago--and it's getting warmer". Without action now, they warned, "the
impact could be devastating".

One of the conference experts, Harvard geochemistry Professor Daniel
Schrag, likened the situation to the Titanic after it hit the iceberg:
"So if you're standing at the back of the Titanic, you're thinking, 'Oh,
I'm going up, we can't be sinking'".

"We are performing an experiment at a planetary scale that hasn't been
done for millions of years," Schrag said. "This should not be a partisan
issue," he added. "We cannot wait for a catastrophe to appear before we
act because by then it would be too late. The next few decades will
determine our path for the next century."
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2004/0616climate.shtml

In a follow up study by 11 major university scientists from the Midwest,
"Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region", published in
April 2003 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and released at the State
Capital in Madison and at other locations in the Midwest, the Midwest
scientists predicted that by the end of the century, temperature in the
region will warm by 5 to 12 degrees F in winter, and by 5 to 20 degrees
in summer. Extreme heat is predicted to be much more common, with the
number of hot days projected to increase in the Great Lakes region
through 2100 with many years experiencing 40 or more days exceeding 90
degrees F by the last few decades of the century. Of great concern for
human health is the projected increase in days reaching 104 degrees F or
more. For example, the annual heat-related death rate of 19 per year in
Toronto alone could increase 10- to 40-fold, the report stated. By the
end of this century, assuming minimal or no actions are taken to
  reduce greenhouse gas emissions and using the very latest climate
prediction models, the Midwest scientists predicted temperatures in
Wisconsin will rise 6-11 degrees F in winter and 8-18 degrees F in
summer.
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=wsj:2003:04:09:263594:LOCAL/
WISCONSIN

See also:
http://www.madison.indymedia.org/feature/display/20960/index.php

"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution, we as a
nation must undergo a radical revolution of value .... When machines and
computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and
economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered ...."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/message/4
86
http://danenet.danenet.org/bcp/neuman_gw_letter.pdf
http://danenet.wicip.org/bcp/neuman_gw.pdf

Climate: The Arctic Goes Bush

Boulder CO (UPI) Jan 17, 2005
The Arctic may be undergoing a transition in its vegetation thanks to
global warming. That is the conclusion of a paper in the January issue
of the journal Bioscience.
...
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/arctic-05a.html

Commentary: Environment
http://twincities.indymedia.org/

NBC mislead the public on global warming (local work at 2).
by Pat Neuman 17 Jan 2005

NBC's "in depth" feature mislead the public into concluding that rapid global
warming is not happening on Earth, but it is.
NBC's Jan 11th "Catastrophes, What's Happening on Planet Earth?" didn't mention
hurricanes, tornados, heat waves, numerous floods, etc; yet NBC concluded that
recent catastrophes are not telling us something.

Catastrophes ARE telling us that humans have triggered rapid global warming on
Earth.

1. Photos of Muir Glacial gone
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1731.html

2. Local self-only work on earlier snowmelt runoff
http://www.mnforsustain.org/climate_change.htm

3. Plots of atmospheric CO2
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/insitu.html

4. Plot of global temperature
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/

5. Text for Conserve, Now
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/message/229

See also:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/
http://profiles.yahoo.com/patneuman2000

http://twincities.indymedia.org/newswire/display/19672/index.php

SHEILA N.'S RESPONSE to CARL POPE'S RESPONSE
TO SIERRA CLUB POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING:

RESPONSE TO SIERRA CLUB POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING:

CARL POPE WRITES:
By Carl Pope
13 Jan 2005
In December 2004, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope distributed
this response to the essay "The Death of Environmentalism." Get the
backstory here.


There Is Something Different About Global Warming
You may have recently received a memorandum entitled "The Death of
Environmentalism" by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.

"The greatest achievements to reduce global warming are today
happening
in Europe.....

"Environmentalists are learning all the wrong lessons from Europe. We
closely scrutinize the policies without giving much thought to the
politics that made the policies possible."

POPE RESPONDS:
We do need to examine the European experience. But when we do, we find
the same definition of global warming as an environmental problem, and
the same technical policy solutions.

UNTRUE, CARL.
WESTERN EUROPE CUT DOWN ON POPULATION GROWTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE
EXPANSION AND NATIONAL DEBT FROM 1973.  THE TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS THEY
APPLIED WERE ALSO LARGELY CONSOLIDATORY; NOT EXPANSIVE.
THOSE SOLUTIONS CONTINUE TO BE APPLIED ON A POPULATION BASE WHICH IS
ON THE CUSP OF A RETURN TO THE MUCH SMALLER POPULATIONS OF PRE-FOSSIL
FUEL SOCIETIES.  THUS THEIR POLICIES ARE RELATIVELY EFFECTIVE.

THE US HAS TAKEN JUST THE OPPOSITE APPROACH; BORROWING FINANCES,
SELLING OFF EQUITY, ERODING ITS SOCIAL CAPITAL, JUST IN ORDER TO
CONTINUE POPULATION GROWTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE EXPANSION.  THUS, NOT
ONLY ARE ITS TECHNO SOLUTIONS LIKE USELESS GNATS ON A BEHEMOTH FOR
ITSELF, BUT IT IS AFFECTING THE REST OF THE WORLD IN THE MANNER OF A
CULT SUICIDE BOMBER EXPLODING IN A PUBLIC PLACE.

BY FAILING TO LOUDLY PROCLAIM THAT GROWTH IS SLOWING IN THE OTHER
HALF OF THE WESTERN WORLD THE SIERRA CLUB IS NEGLIGENT TOWARDS THE
PUBLIC IT HAS A DUTY TO EDUCATE IN THESE BASIC DIFFERENCES OF
APPROACH TO GLOBAL WARMING AND FOSSIL FUEL DECLINE.

ON THIS BASIS ALONE I FIND THAT THE ACCUSATION THAT THE MAINSTREAM US
ENVIRONMENT MOVEMENT HAS FAILED TO BE UTTERLY TRUE.

LEAVE ASIDE THE SIDELINING OF SCIENCE FOR TECHNO AND ECONOMIC DOGMA;
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FAILURE TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF MALIGNANT
GROWTH IN ALL ITS SOCIAL AND MATERIAL FORMS MAKES U.S. PEAK
ENVIRONMENT BODIES PART OF THE PROBLEM.  WHILST THEY OCCUPY CENTRE
STAGE AS PUTATIVE PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVES THE PREVENT THOSE WHO DO NOT
DEAL IN SLOGANS FROM DOING ANYTHING REAL TO RAISE PUBLIC
CONSCIOUSNESS ABOUT THE DANGER WE ARE ALL IN AND THE FACT THAT ON THE
OTHER SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC SOLUTIONS HAVE BEEN IN HAND FOR OVER 30
YEARS.

POPE WRITES: What is different is the politics of carbon. European
nations have been carbon importers for much longer than the U.S., and
most have nationalized those industries so that they are no longer
independent political actors.

EUROPEAN NATIONS (EXCLUDING THE MOTHER OF FOSSIL FUEL MAN - THE UK)
HAVE REDUCED THEIR GROWTH IN CARBON USE & IMPORTATION MORE AND FOR
LONGER THAN THE US AND THEY ENTERED THE [FOSSIL FUEL
BASED] 'INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION' MUCH LATER THAN EITHER ENGLAND OR THE
US.  NATIONALISATION HAS MEANT THAT THE PUBLIC HAS SOME CONTROL OVER
THOSE INDUSTRIES AND THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS SOME OBLIGATION TO THE
PUBLIC.

IF CARL POPE REALLY DOESN'T KNOW HOW DIFFERENT CONTINENTAL EUROPE'S
POLICIES ON POPULATION, ENERGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE GROWTH ARE FROM
THOSE OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING SETTLER STATES THEN HE NEEDS TO INFORM
HIMSELF AND HIS PUBLIC THAT THEY ARE BOTH EQUALLY IGNORANT AND
REFRAIN HENCEFORTH FROM POSING AS SOME KIND OF INFORMED EXPERT.

THE MAIN MESSAGE I GARNER FROM THIS DOCUMENT IS THAT THERE IS AN
ATTEMPT TO BLOW THE WHISTLE ON THE ELEPHANTINE INSTITUTIONS THAT POSE
AS ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES.  WE SUFFER FROM THE SAME MAINSTREAM
ENVIRONMENTAL PARASITISM IN AUSTRALIA.

IN THE MEAN-TIME, ON THE INTERNET, PEOPLE HAVE BEEN COMMUNICATING NOW
FOR SEVERAL YEARS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO SUCH INSTITUTIONS AND
EVENTUALLY ACTIONS AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS WILL EVOLVE AROUND WHATEVER
REALITY DEVELOPS AS OUR TOXIC ATMOSPHERE AND IMPOVERISHED, TORTURED
AND TRASHED NATURAL WORLD, DETERIORATE.

I CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW ANGRY I AM THAT THIS DETERIORATION HAS BEEN
ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

WE ALL JUST HAVE TO TREAT  ORGANISATIONS LIKE THE SIERRA CLUB FOR THE
ROAD-BLOCKS THEY REPRESENT AND GO ROUND THEM.  THERE IS NO TIME TO
WASTE.  THERE IS NO SLACK LEFT IN THE SYSTEM.

SHEILA N.

mtneuman@... wrote:
By Carl Pope
13 Jan 2005
In December 2004, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope distributed
this response to the essay "The Death of Environmentalism."
(snip)

-----Original Message-----
From: Ned Leonard [mailto:wcr@...]
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 3:41 PM
To: CO2andClimate Alert
Subject: Two New CO2andClimate Alerts Posted - January 17, 2005.


Two new CO2andClimate Alerts have been posted on our website at
www.CO2andClimate.org. Here are the summaries and links.



Scientific Consensus



Global Warming Consensus?: We always hear about the "scientific
consensus" on global warming. Actually there is very little agreement
on the topic, including validity of models and the reality of
the "hockey stick" characterization of the global temperature record.



To learn how you can rebut this argument the next time you hear it,
click here http://www.co2andclimate.org/wca/2004/wca_29c.html



Rising Seas



Life Imitates Fiction: Who would believe it? Christmas morning we
began reading our gift copy of Michael Crichton's global warming
novel "State of Fear." The villain, implausibly we thought, believes
the effects of a tsunami will sway an international climate change
conference. Then, within a week, the Voice of America is linking
tsunamis and global warming by featuring an academic who voices alarm
because of sea level rise (likely measured in inches) in relation to
that of tsunamis (measure in many tens of feet).



To learn more, click here
http://www.co2andclimate.org/wca/2004/wca_29b.html



Our thanks to the many individuals who decided to renew their
financial support of Greening Earth Society and our web-publication
of CO2andClimate Alert for 2005. Subscriber financial support –
though voluntary – is important to us, appreciated, and makes
possible our continued presence on the Internet. We receive thousands
of visits every week though few share your financial commitment.
Thank you!





------------------------------------------------------------

Ned Leonard

Executive Director

Greening Earth Society

333 John Carlyle Street, Suite 530

Alexandria, VA 22314

(703) 684-4748 Phone

(703) 684-6297 Fax

Analysis of peak flows: Illinois River 1892-2005 at Marseilles, IL

...
...

Conclusions:

1. The flow on Jan. 14, 2005 (81,400 cfs*, preliminary) was the highest peak
flow in the month of January, over the 114 year period of record (Table 1).


2. The number of peak flows (11) above 70,000 cfs for the most recent 25 year
period (1981- 2005) was more than double the number of occurrences of peak flows
(1,4,4) above 70,000 cfs for each of the three preceding 25 year periods (Table
2).

* cfs: cubic feet per second


Table 1. Peak flows greater than 70,000 cfs
---------------------
Year Peak(cfs) Month Day
1892 72,500 May 06
1908 77,000 Mar 07
1942 74,400 Feb 07
1943 73,800 May 21
1947 72,000 Apr 06
1950 83,300 Apr 26
1957 93,900 Jul 14
1970 92,500 May 15
1979 71,100 Mar 20
1981 88,500 Jun 14
1982 75,800 Mar 14
1982 94,100 Dec 04
1985 84,800 Feb 24
1990 85,800 Nov 29
1996 79,300 Jul 19
1997 95,000 Feb 22
1998 77,200 May 08
2002 79,200 May 13
2005 81,400 Jan 14 *

* preliminary


Table 2. Frequency of peak flows greater than 70,000 cfs
--------------------------------------------------------
25 yr
Period Frequency
1906-1930 1
1931-1955 4
1956-1980 4
1981-2005 10

------------------

Draft(1/18/2005)
Self only
Pat N

Pollution during pregnancy is linked to childhood cancer
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=601500

17 January 2005

Women who breathe air polluted with smoke and exhaust fumes are up to
four times more likely to have children who develop cancer, a study
shows.
Research at the University of Birmingham suggests atmospheric pollution
from oil-fired furnaces and vehicle exhausts may be the principal cause
of
childhood cancer.

By linking pollution "hot spots" round the country with the incidence of
cancer, the findings show that pregnant women and those about to conceive
who live near factories, power stations or major road junctions are at
greatest risk.

The study, in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, will fuel
speculation about the causes of childhood cancer which have baffled
scientists for decades.

Cancer is a defect of cell division associated with ageing, but studies
in children with leukaemia have shown that cancer cells are present from
birth, suggesting the origins of the disease may lie in the womb.
Heredity,
radiation and viruses are among the suggested causes.

Some experts say childhood leukaemia, the commonest childhood cancer, is
increasing, though the claim is disputed. If a rise in childhood cancer
is confirmed, the increase in vehicle pollution could be a cause.

George Knox, emeritus professor of epidemiology, who made the study,
said: "Most childhood cancers are probably initiated by close perinatal
encounters with one or more of these high emission sources. The low
atmospheric
levels of these substances suggest the mother may breathe them in, with
carcinogens passing across the placenta."

He added that "direct exposures in early infancy, or through breast milk,
or even pre-conceptually, cannot be excluded."

Professor Knox compared a map showing chemical emissions for the UK
prepared by the National Atmospheric Emissions Laboratory with details of
all
children who died of leukaemia and other cancers before their 16th
birthday between 1966 and 1980.

The scientist said: "The evidence from this set of data is that these
exposures account for half or more of cancers in childhood. This needs to
be pursued with further research and we need to separate people from the
sources of pollution and to reduce toxic emissions."
  ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

Also see:
Pollutants From Vehicles, Power Plants and Other Combustion Sources
http://www.energyaction.net/main/index.php?module=announce&ANN_user_op=vi
ew&ANN_id=35

--- In earthchanges@yahoogroups.com,

Global Warming Melts Winter Joy at Top Resort

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=2&u=/nm/20050118/sc_nm/env\
ironment_snow_dc
--- End forwarded message ---

Science - Reuters
Reuters
Global Warming Melts Winter Joy at Top Resort

Tue Jan 18,12:49 PM ET

Add to My Yahoo!  Science - Reuters

By Erik Kirschbaum

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Reuters) - Global warming (news - web sites) is
more than just a theory to Germany's most famous winter resort, where a
worrisome shortage of snow in recent decades has forced the Alpine village to
reinvent itself.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen gained worldwide fame as the venue for the 1936 winter
Olympics, but the picturesque town of 27,000 has now become more reliant on
summer tourism because rain falls more often than snow in winter.

As the snow line retreats up mountains in the face of what many scientists
believe to be the effects of global warming, Garmisch -- at an altitude of 2,300
feet -- is rarely covered in snow. Losing its "white gold" has alarmed the local
populace.

The town, where 70 percent of economic output derives from tourism, has
nevertheless tried hard to replace what nature has stopped giving by investing
millions of dollars in state-of-the-art snow-making equipment that blows
man-made crystals onto the ski slopes and into the valleys.

"Without the artificial snow we simply wouldn't be able to attract enough
tourists here in the winter," said Thomas Schmid, mayor of
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a town that lies in an Alpine valley just north of the
Austrian border.

"We have enough snow on the slopes thanks to the snow machines," he told
Reuters. "We can't be afraid of global warming. We have to be ready for it. We
can't afford to be surprised by it."

It is, Schmid concedes, more than a shame that Garmisch and picture-postcard
mountain villages like it in nearby Austria as well as in Italy, Switzerland and
France are getting less snow.

A U.N.-funded panel of scientists said in 2001 that a build-up of heat-trapping
gases from burning fossil fuels was nudging up global temperatures.

A minority of scientists dismiss global warming or say that natural variations,
as in solar radiation, are to blame.

RISING TEMPERATURES MELT MOUNTAIN SNOW

The United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program (UNEP) warned in a
2003 report that global temperatures were expected to rise due to global warming
by up to three degrees Celsius in the next 50 years, raising the snow line and
crippling the ski industry.

The UNEP report said slopes above altitudes of 3,940 feet now considered viable
ski areas would be at risk within 30 to 50 years, when skiers would have to trek
up to altitudes of 4,920 to 5,900 feet for snow.

Most of Garmisch's ski and snowboard slopes are between 2,460 and 6,560 feet --
among the highest in Germany. World Cup ski races at a lower Bavarian resort,
Berchtesgaden, were canceled in two of the last five years because of a lack of
snow.

"There's nothing more beautiful than a snow-filled winter landscape," said
Schmid. "It's our jewel and we have to do what we can to protect it. But it's a
global problem. In Garmisch we have to be pragmatic and ready for the era that
might follow."

To that end, Schmid said Garmisch has developed a network of summer hiking
trails and mountain bike routes. It has also heavily promoted its summer
tourism, touting its pristine mountain air as an antidote to allergies.

"We're taking the problem seriously," said Schmid, whose office is filled with
oversized paintings of the snow-capped mountains that rim the valley around
Garmisch.

The town, which has 15 million tourists each year and books 1.2 million
overnight stays, recently unveiled plans to invest $11.8 million on more
snow-making infrastructure for four miles of slopes into the valley.

"You can fool nature a bit, but you can't buy the weather," said Thomas
Eisenhofer, 37, who operates a ski rental business. "The artificial snow will
help keep us going for a while, but we're going to have to figure out what to do
then."

Karl Ernst, 70, remembers as a child when snow in Garmisch piled up as high as
6-1/2 feet.

"The winters were completely different back then," said the retired train
conductor. "Now winters feel more like spring."

Gerhard Hofmann, head of climate observation at the German Weather Service
office in Bavaria, said snow cover days in the region have declined by 10
percent in the last 15 years.

"It's due to global warming and not climate fluctuation," Hofmann said. "Keeping
ski slopes into the valleys open and operating is becoming a problem all over
Bavaria."

Wilhelm Blenk, 73, a retired BMW design engineer and hobby skier, said: "Sure
I'm afraid the snow will be gone one day, but not before I'm dead and buried."

Andrew Syme, manager of a restaurant at the Ostfelderkopf ski slope above
Garmisch at an altitude of 6,725 feet, looked out at the thin covering of snow
and sadly shook his head.

"Normally we should have at least a meter of snow by January," he said. "Two
years ago there was no snow through the Christmas season and lifts were shut
down. We could never make up for those losses. It's scary. The weather is going
crazy."

Numerous articles on global warming (four of them I wrote):
http://www.energyaction.net/main/index.php
http://www.energyaction.net/main/index.php?module=help&MMN_position=7:7

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html

TERRA.WIRE

Airbus success will help drive global warming, says expert

PARIS (AFP) Jan 18, 2005
If the new Airbus A380 is the commercial success its European makers
hope, the big loser -- apart from Boeing -- will be the environment, a
French expert says.
Airbus says its newborn giant will be far more fuel efficient than
Boeing's 747, a jetliner whose basic design goes back 35 years, and thus
by carrying more passengers farther per litre (gallon) of kerosene
burned, it is doing the planet a favour.

But French expert Jean-Marc Jancovici says that such calculations "fail
to give the full picture" when it comes to carbon pollution.

Jancovici, author of numerous books on climate change and who runs a
well-regarded website (manicore.com) on global warming phenomenon, says
that if Airbus' business plan is right, "the number of air passengers
will triple in the next 20 years."

Even if planes get bigger, there will still be a lot more of them in the
skies in order to meet demand and this will cancel out the benefits in
improved fuel efficiency, he told AFP.

Jancovici drew a parallel with car pollution. In the past two decades,
pollution standards for cars have become progressively tougher. But so
many more cars have flooded onto the road in the meantime that the annual
volume of pollution remains unchanged.

Airbus says the A380 offers a gain in fuel use of some 15 percent when
compared with Boeing's top-of-the-range 747-400.

At a cruising speed of 900 kilometers (550 miles) per hour, the A380
delivers a consumption of three litres (5.4 pints) of fuel per passenger
per 100 kms (62 miles) travelled, according to Airbus. It cites a figure
of 3.4 litres (6.2 pints) for the 747-400.

Jancovici says the gain may be an improvement "but it is obviously not a
solution" if the new generation of aircraft continues to burn a dirty
fuel and more and more of the planes take to the skies.

"Instead of increasing pollution, scientists say that the world will have
to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by three-quarters just to
stabilise the climate system," he says.

UN experts, in a series of reports published in 2001, estimated that the
world's average temperature will rise by between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.5 to
10.4 F) by the end of this century, as heat from the Sun is trapped by
carbon gases spewed out by coal, gas and oil.

Aircraft currently account for 2.5 percent of emissions of carbon dioxide
(CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

This figure may look small, but it is deceptive, says Jancovici. Air
transport accounts for a very small part of the global economy in
proportion to its far bigger environmental cost.

In addition, because aircraft emit their pollution at altitude rather
than at ground level, the effect as an amplifier of global warming can be
five times worse than that of a truck.

Compounding the problem is that the aviation business is so far immune
from global-warming regulations demanding higher fuel efficiency or lower
pollution, and kerosene, a highly polluting fuel, is untaxed.

According to a report published last month by the French Institute for
the Environment (IFEN), a passenger travelling by airliner emits 40
percent more CO2 per km (mile) than when travelling by car, a figure
calculated on the basis of 1.8 persons per vehicle.

Just flying from Paris to New York and back is the equivalent to a
quarter of annual French per-capita emissions.

The problem is bound to get worse as low-cost airlines make air travel
more widely accessible, says the study's author, Michel Hubert.

He estimates that if passenger traffic rises just five percent annually,
CO2 emissions by the aviation business will surge by 240 percent over the
next 30 years.

"The improvements in energy efficiency achieved are seemingly not
sufficient to prevent a significant increase in the impact of air
transport and climate change," Hubert concludes gloomily.

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050118152919.b7o7xhno.html






"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles/message/4
86

Temperatures rising in Alps, less snow

PARIS (AFP) Jan 14, 2005
Temperatures in the French Alps have risen between one and three degrees
Celsius (two and five degrees Fahrenheit) in the past 40 years and there
has been less snow in recent years, a report by France's national weather
service said on Friday.
Temperatures in the Alps are also rising faster than in the rest of the
country.

While in the rest of France the temperature has risen by one degree
Celsius in the past century, in the Alps above 1,800 metres altitude
(5,900 feet) it had gone up by between one and three degrees during the
winter period, the report said.

The fluctuations were particularly marked at the beginning and end of the
winter and the rises especially evident from the 1980s and 1990s onwards,
the report said.

"The French Alps therefore appear extremely susceptible to the warming of
the atmosphere during the winter period," Meteo-France said.

The climate report, which covered the years between 1958 and the present
day, revealed that "the most recent years were in the main deficient" as
far as snowfalls were concerned.

The Alps are home to a vast skiing industry and resorts have in recent
years expressed concern about falling quantities of snow.

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050114201949.6y0szcwj.html

Putting Some Heat on Bush
Scientist Inspires Anger, Awe for Challenges on Global Warming

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page A17

In his worn navy windbreaker, 63-year-old climatologist James E.
Hansen looks more like the Iowa farm native that he is than a rebel --
but he's both.

Hansen, a lifelong government employee who heads NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies in New York, has inspired both anger and
awe in the nation's scientific and political communities since
publicly denouncing the Bush administration's policy on climate change
last year.

Speaking in the swing state of Iowa days before the presidential
election, Hansen accused a senior administration official of trying to
block him from discussing the dangerous effects of global warming.

In the University of Iowa speech, Hansen recounted how NASA
Administrator Sean O'Keefe told him in a 2003 meeting that he
shouldn't talk "about dangerous anthropogenic interference" -- humans'
influence on the atmosphere -- "because we do not know enough or have
enough evidence for what would constitute dangerous anthropogenic
interference."

But Hansen said that scientists know enough to conclude we have
reached this danger point and that their efforts to get the word out
are being blocked by the administration. "In my more than three
decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the
degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has
been screened and controlled as it has now," Hansen said. He added
that although the administration wants to wait 10 years to evaluate
climate change, "delay of another decade, I argue, is a colossal
risk."

Senior administration officials deny Hansen's charges: O'Keefe
spokesman Glenn Mahone said the administrator doesn't "recall ever
having the conversation" on climate change that Hansen described,
adding that O'Keefe "has encouraged open dialogue and open
conversation about those issues."

But Hansen, who has worked for NASA since he was 25, has continued to
chide the administration for not moving swiftly enough to address
global warming. In a recent interview, he called Bush officials
"reasonable people" who need to be convinced that climate change is an
urgent matter.

"As the evidence gathers, you would hope they would be flexible,"
Hansen said in the slow, measured tones he has retained from his years
growing up on an Iowa farm. "We have to deal with this. You can't
ignore it."

The ongoing sparring match between Hansen and his superiors
underscores a broader tension between President Bush's top policy
advisers and many senior U.S. scientists, who have loudly blasted the
administration's approach to environmental questions in recent months.
Nearly 50 Nobel laureates endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for
president; this year the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected
more than 6,000 scientists' signatures on a letter questioning how the
president applies research to policymaking.

After the barrage of criticism, John H. Marburger III, Bush's top
science adviser, told Science magazine that if the researchers
continue their protests, they might alienate influential lawmakers who
set federal science budgets.

Hansen, who also took on Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, on
the question of climate change in the late 1980s, is undeterred. An
advocate for caps on carbon dioxide emissions and stricter fuel
standards for automobiles -- two policies that Bush advisers say would
hurt the U.S. economy -- Hansen said he has to oppose what he said is
the government's choice to delay action on new regulations to limit
emissions under the guise of seeking more scientific research.

"We have got to be an independent voice. We should not be influenced
in any way by funding," Hansen said.

Hansen is no stranger to controversy. In 1989, he accused the Office
of Management and Budget of watering down his congressional testimony
on climate change to make the situation appear less dire.

"I'm strictly trying to understand the Earth as a planet," said
Hansen, who started his career studying the clouds around Venus but
switched in 1978 to climate modeling.

The administration has done nothing to punish Hansen since he made his
public comments last fall, and Marburger said in an interview that he
considers Hansen "a very good climate scientist" who should stick to
scientific analysis instead of policy prescriptions.

"I take his work seriously. His work has had a big impact on this
administration's climate-change policy," Marburger said. "But he's not
an economist. The fact that he's a good scientist does not necessarily
make him the best person to formulate policy that would affect the
economy."

Former vice president Al Gore, who backs limits on emissions of carbon
dioxide, said the administration's strained relationship with Hansen
shows the "contempt for the rule of reason" of Bush and his deputies.

"When science conflicts with the exercise of power, they attempt to
demean the messenger attempting to deliver the truth, and they seek
out self-interested advocates of alternative views of reality," said
Gore, who as a senator defended Hansen during the controversy over his
1989 testimony.

Within the scientific community, Hansen remains respected for much of
his research, though some have questioned his recent studies on the
effect of aerosols on global warming. He is popular at the space
institute -- housed at Columbia University above the famed diner from
the comedy series "Seinfield" -- where he has played Frisbee in the
halls.

Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist who has worked with Hansen at
Goddard for nearly a decade, said Hansen gets his leverage from the
fact that he a senior scholar who is still breaking scientific ground.

"Very few people have that kind of longevity and credibility and are
still doing new things," Schmidt said. "Any time he says something,
it's news. He still sets the agenda."

Kevin E. Trenberth, who heads the climate analysis section of the
nonprofit, federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research,
said Hansen's willingness to espouse the dominant scientific view on
climate change "is a responsible thing to do, even if it puts at
potential jeopardy his own position." Trenberth added: "This is an
important issue, a long-term issue that affects humanity in the
future."

Some, however, have questioned Hansen's approach. Patrick J. Michaels,
a climatologist and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the
libertarian Cato Institute, said it was inappropriate for Hansen as a
federal employee to attack the administration in a battleground state
less than two weeks before the election.

"The problem with Jim is he does climate and then he makes policy
decisions that I don't think are very thoughtful," said Michaels, who
receives funding from public and industry sources, and opposes
mandatory carbon controls.

Hansen has found some common ground with administration officials, who
like his recent findings that curbing methane emissions from
landfills, mining operations and gas-drilling ventures can help
counter warming. The administration recently persuaded more than a
dozen countries to sign a pact to capture methane before it is
released into the atmosphere, a program Hansen praised.

But it remains unclear whether Bush officials can reach some sort of
detente with Hansen, who said in a recent e-mail that he is not
interested in "making the administration mad" but in persuading it to
cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and elsewhere. But in
the meantime, Hansen said he will continue to press ahead with both
research and advocacy.

"You can't just give up," he said. "I remain optimistic, even in this
administration, that the evidence is going to become strong enough so
there's a chance there will be a change in policy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19162-2005Jan18?
language=printer

j2997
--- End forwarded message ---

Pat N

To:
President George W. Bush
Representative John Kline
Senator Mark Dayton
Senator Norm Coleman


Now is the Time for Global Warming Solutions

Dear Sir,

This morning I listened to a Twin Cities radio interview with the author of a
"go-anywhere" book called: "Conversations on the Go: Clever Questions to Keep
Teens and Grown-Ups Talking".

Some clever questions included:

"If you were the smartest person in the world,
what would you use your intelligence to do?"

"What does integrity mean to you?"

The author was asked:

"If you could take the next year off what would you do?"

The author responded that she would travel with her daughter, and that her
daughter would choose to travel too.

After that, I heard about wishes to go to Disney World, the Superbowl and warm
places (as many Minnesotans do this time of year).

Are they aware that "travel" causes major health problems for others and is
contributing to catastrophic global climate change?

I think they need to have some honest conversations about those
things.

Do you agree?

-----------

I wrote the message above called "Honest conversations needed" on Dec. 19, 2004.
I posted the message along with the forwarded message below to the Twin Cities
group and my group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ClimateArchive/

We have young adult daughters.  Although they are out of the house and make
their own decisions, we have had honest conversations about global warming, and
what kind of world is likely for new borns.  I think they should consider that
before they make decisions to start a family.  I think other people should be
weighing the future before making their important decisions.  However, many
people do not understand the kind of world that lies ahead with global warming
and decreasing energy supplies.

Your support on measures to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissiohs
is needed now.

Pat Neuman
Chanhassen, MN

----- Forwarded Message -----
U.S. Waters Down Global Commitment to Curb Greenhouse Gases
By LARRY ROHTER

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 18 - Two weeks of negotiations at a United Nations
conference here on climate change ended early Saturday with a weak
pledge to start limited, informal talks on ways to slow down global
warming, after the United States blocked efforts to begin more
substantive discussions.
(snip)
...
"There is more and more evidence building up that indicates that
whatever is going on is not natural and is no longer within the realm
of variability," said Alden Meyer, policy director of the Union of
Concerned Scientists. Enough research has been done, especially in the
Arctic, he added, to establish that "we are starting to see the impact
of human interference" and "a clear pattern of human-induced climate
change."

Those sharply different perceptions led to a clash even over what
language should be used in discussing disaster relief. Bush
administration emissaries opposed the use of the phrase "climate
change," employed since the days of the first Bush administration, in
favor of "climate variability," a much more nebulous term.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/science/19climate.html?
oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=


---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Dear Patrick,

Thanks for sending an inauguration message on global warming.

Now here's what else you can do to help:

1. Spread the word some more. Invite friends and family to take
action:
http://www.actionnetwork.org/campaign/jan20th/forward

2. Donate! Support Environmental Defense:
https://secure.environmentaldefense.org/donate/member.cfm?pcd=HAW03AK001

3. Get Involved - Volunteer with Environmental Defense:
http://actionnetwork.org/ED_volunteers/join.html?source=ty

4. Visit Undoit.org for more on global warming and urge friends
to sign the Emissions Petition:
http://iw.rtm.com/ed/undoit_spread_1.asp?sitecode=uedan

Thanks for taking action with Environmental Defense.

If you would like to unsubscribe from Environmental Defense, you
can respond to this email with "REMOVE" as the subject, or you
can visit your subscription management page at:
http://actionnetwork.org/EDF_Action_Network/smp.tcl?nkey=87x68waan

***********************************
Powered by GetActive Software, Inc.
Relationship Management for Member Organizations (tm)
http://www.getactive.com
***********************************

--- In Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles@yahoogroups.com, Sonya
<msredsonya@e...> wrote:
Great Dying' linked to climate changes
Two teams of scientists point to volcanic eruptions rather than asteroid
as cause of extinction 250 million years ago

MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 2:20 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2005


Atmospheric changes related to volcanic eruptions, and not a giant
asteroid, were probably the main factors behind Earth's biggest die-off
about 250 million years ago, according to two separate teams of
scientists working at sites around the globe.The mass extinction, known
as the "Great Dying," extinguished 90 percent of sea life and nearly
three-quarters of land-based plants and animals.There has been recent
evidence that a big asteroid or meteor hit the Earth and triggered the
catastrophe, but researchers say they now have evidence that something
much more long-term was the culprit.

Kliti Grice of Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, and
colleagues studied sediment cores drilled off the coasts of Australia
and China and found evidence that the ocean was lacking oxygen and full
of sulfur-loving bacteria at that time.This finding would be consistent
with an atmosphere low in oxygen and poisoned by hot, sulfurous,
volcanic emissions, they wrote in a report published in the journal
Science.

Gradual die-off
A second team, led by Peter Ward at the University of Washington, looked
at fossil evidence in South Africa — they found little evidence of a
sudden catastrophe but instead saw signs of a gradual die-off.

They examined 126 reptile and amphibian skulls from the Karoo Basin in
South Africa, where there is an exposed piece of dried sediment from the
end of the Permian Era and the beginning of the Triassic, 250 million
years ago.They found two patterns, one showing gradual extinction over
about 10 million years leading up to the time of the extinction, and
then a spike in extinction rates that lasted another 5 million years,
Ward's team reported."Animals and plants both on land and in the sea
were dying at the same time, and apparently from the same causes — too
much heat and too little oxygen," Ward said in a statement.

Ward believes mass volcanic eruptions may have pumped greenhouse gases
into the air, which would have trapped heat in the atmosphere and raised
temperatures.

'Double-whammy' at work
"I think temperatures rose to a critical point. It got hotter and hotter
until it reached a critical point and everything died," Ward said. "It
was a double-whammy of warmer temperatures and low oxygen, and most life
couldn't deal with it."But Ward also warned against drawing too close of
a comparison between the Permian-Triassic climate changes and the
current rise in average global temperatures, which some scientists
attribute to increases in industrial greenhouse gases.

"What we're not having is this humongous sea-level drop at the end of
the Permian Era," Ward told MSNBC.com. Lower sea levels, perhaps caused
by geological shifts, exposed wide stretches of carbon-rich sea sediment
to the air, and Ward said the resulting chemical reaction played a
crucial role in changing Earth's atmosphere."When that stuff hit the
air, it started sucking the oxygen out," Ward said. That "suck-down" of
oxygen had a suffocating effect on land animals, he said.

What about an asteroid?
Last May, researchers said they found evidence of a giant asteroid
striking Earth off the coast of what is now Australia 251 million years
ago, and suggested that the impact may have played a role in the
Permian-Triassic extinction. Others have disputed their conclusions,
however.

One of the main researchers behind the asteroid study, Luann Becker of
the University of California at Santa Barbara, said the causes of the
Permian-Triassic extinction are the subject of an "ongoing discussion."

She said Ward's research team "did a nice job of presenting the
paleontological data and the stratigraphy, which seem to show some
indication of an evolutionary change going on for a prolonged period of
time." However, she added, she doesn't believe that addresses the
subject of cause and effect.

The Permian-Triassic extinction opened the way for the rise of dinosaurs
— which themselves fell victim to another mass die-off 65 million years
ago. Most experts agree that the catastrophic impact of a massive
asteroid or crater played the primary role in that extinction, at the
boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary geologic periods. The blast
is thought to have formed the Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula.

This report includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press
as well as from MSNBC's Alan Boyle.

© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6848487/

--
Sonya GarrettKoch PLoS Medicine
The open-access general medical journal from the Public Library of
Science
Inaugural issue: Autumn 2004   Share your discoveries with the world.
http://www.plosmedicine.org
--- End forwarded message ---

--- In Paleontology_and_Climate_Articles@yahoogroups.com, Sonya
<msredsonya@e...> wrote:
Source: University of Washington Released: Mon 17-Jan-2005, 14:00 ET
Evidence Indicates Biggest Extinction Wasn't Caused by Asteroid or Comet

Newswise — For the last three years evidence has been building that the
impact of a comet or asteroid triggered the biggest mass extinction in
Earth history, but new research from a team headed by a University of
Washington scientist disputes that notion.

In a paper published Jan. 20 by Science Express, the online version of
the journal Science, the researchers say they have found no evidence for
an impact at the time of "the Great Dying" 250 million years ago.
Instead, their research indicates the culprit might have been
atmospheric warming because of greenhouse gases triggered by erupting
volcanoes. The extinction occurred at the boundary between the Permian
and Triassic periods at a time when all land was concentrated in a
supercontinent called Pangea. The Great Dying is considered the biggest
catastrophe in the history of life on Earth, with 90 percent of all
marine life and nearly three-quarters of land-based plant and animal
life going extinct.

"The marine extinction and the land extinction appear to be
simultaneous, based on the geochemical evidence we found," said UW
paleontologist Peter Ward, lead author of the paper. "Animals and plants
both on land and in the sea were dying at the same time, and apparently
from the same causes – too much heat and too little oxygen." The paper
is to be published in the print edition of Science in a few weeks.
Co-authors are Roger Buick and Geoffrey Garrison of the UW; Jennifer
Botha and Roger Smith of the South African Museum; Joseph Kirschvink of
the California Institute of Technology; Michael De Kock of Rand
Afrikaans University in South Africa; and Douglas Erwin of the
Smithsonian Institution.

The Karoo Basin of South Africa has provided the most intensively
studied record of Permian-Triassic vertebrate fossils. In their work,
the researchers were able to use chemical, biological and magnetic
evidence to correlate sedimentary layers in the Karoo to similar layers
in China that previous research has tied to the marine extinction at the
end of the Permian period.

Evidence from the marine extinction is "eerily similar" to what the
researchers found in the Karoo Basin, Ward said. Over seven years, they
collected 126 reptile or amphibian skulls from a nearly 1,000-foot thick
section of exposed Karoo sediment deposits from the time of the
extinction. They found two patterns, one showing gradual extinction over
about 10 million years leading up to the boundary between the Permian
and Triassic periods, and the other for a sharp increase in extinction
rate at the boundary that then lasted another 5 million years.

The scientists said they found nothing in the Karoo that would indicate
a body such as an asteroid hit around the time of the extinction, though
they looked specifically for impact clays or material ejected from a
crater left by such an impact. They contend that if there was a comet or
asteroid impact, it was a minor element of the Permian extinction.
Evidence from the Karoo, they said, is consistent with a mass extinction
resulting from catastrophic ecosystem changes over a long time scale,
not sudden changes associated with an impact.

The work, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's
Astrobiology Institute, the National Science Foundation and the National
Research Foundation of South Africa, provides a glimpse of what can
happen with long-term climate warming, Ward said. In this case, there is
ample evidence that the world got much warmer over a long period because
of continuous volcanic eruptions in an area known as the Siberian Traps.
As volcanism warmed the planet, large stores of methane gas frozen on
the ocean floor might have been released to trigger runaway greenhouse
warming, Ward said. But evidence suggests that species began dying out
gradually as the planet warmed until conditions reached a critical
threshold beyond which most species could not survive.

"It appears that atmospheric oxygen levels were dropping at this point
also," he said. "If that's true, then high and intermediate elevations
would have become uninhabitable. More than half the world would have
been unlivable, life could only exist at the lowest elevations." He
noted that the normal atmospheric oxygen level is around 21 percent, but
evidence indicates that at the time of the Great Dying it dropped to
about 16 percent – the equivalent of trying to breathe at the top of a
14,000-foot mountain. "I think temperatures rose to a critical point. It
got hotter and hotter until it reached a critical point and everything
died," Ward said. "It was a double-whammy of warmer temperatures and low
oxygen, and most life couldn't deal with it."

http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/

-------------------------------------------------------------
Sonya PLoS Medicine
The open-access general medical journal from the Public Library of
Science
Inaugural issue: Autumn 2004   Share your discoveries with the world.
http://www.plosmedicine.org
--- End forwarded message ---