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I have zero expectation that Mr. Krugman, whose analyses I highly regard, will either read or heed the contents of this comment. Let me at the outset provide my credentials: from 1978 to 1989, I was counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works where I organized on December 10, 1985 the first-ever Senate hearing on global warming. I served at the will of Sen. Robert T. Stafford os Vermont, the most environmentally responsible Senator since Edmund S. Muskie, who wrote the revolutionary Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. I have also worked for two other Senators, both also environmental champions: the late William V. Roth, Jr. and Patrick Leahy. I have written two books, innumerable articles, including companion magazine pieces 20 years ago,”Does Your Cup of Coffee Cause Forest Fires?” and “Will Changing Your Light Bulb Save the World?” My clients have ranged from Greenpeace and the American Lung Association to the Southern California Gas Company and the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
The Waxman-Markey bill is not better than nothing, but instead a likely death warrant. First, it focuses almost exclusively on a pollutant, carbon dioxide, with a lifetime of 50 to 3,000 years. Reductions today will do virtually nothing to save the Arctic, Antarctic, tundra, permafrost, glaciers and humanity. For that, there must be immediate and immense reductions in short-lived causes of global warming, which have lifetimes of a few seconds to a few years: black carbon, or soot; ozone, or smog; methane, or natural gas; the “F-gases” such as CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs, etc.
Secondly, the bill relies heavily on emissions trading, which has never, ever worked. It failed for leaded gasoline, ditto for smog in southern California, carbon dioxide in the so-called Clean Development Mechanism for CO2, the European trading programs for CO2 and the acid rain trading program. I spent four months traveling to California and Europe, interviewing officials and scientists, and the plain truth is that trading simply does not work. Think it does? Hike into the mountains of Vermont, and you will find the same soils that were poisoned when the acid rain program was adopted in 1990 still poisoned. The lakes are still dead and so are the forests. Sen. Stafford knew exactly what was required to save those lakes, forests and soils: a 16- to 18-million-ton reduction in sulfur missions, but the political will didn’t exist, so politicians–with the complicity of some environmental groups–hid the truth from the public by pretending that trading would do the trick.
Similarly, Stafford knew exactly what was required to save us from global warming: reductions in the full range of pollutants that cause global warming. Had the comprehensive legislation he introduced been enacted, the United States would today have cut its CO2 emissions by half, eliminated F-gases, and taken a wide range of other measures to reduce smog and other causes of warming. One advantage of Stafford’s approach is not only that it could work, but it provides actions that China, India and other such nations could take that would saves the lives of their own citizens. Indoor exposure to black carbon, for example, kills 5 million children under the age of 5 annually in the developing world.
This is science, not social policy. If the objective is to eliminate child labor, perhaps starting with a ban on 10-year-olds working, then later moving to 12-year-olds and so on is a defensible first step, and better than nothing. Same with a minimum wage or racial discrimination.
But science operates on rigid rules and is indifferent to human survival: to achieve a given effect requires a sufficient cause. If it requires 10, for example, 11 might provide relief, but 8 or 9 will not. There is no such thing as a good first step. Some of the world’s most competent scientists, ranging from James Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Center to V. Ramanathan at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute are warning that we are imminent danger. Listen to them, and act accordingly.
I have known and worked with Henry Waxman and his staff, whom I admire greatly, for more than a quarter century. He is, in my judgment, the best legislator in Congress, and his staff is the most competent and dedicated known to me. But adoption of the Waxman-Markey proposal will prove merely that Waxman is a Chairman who can produce legislation, not that he is a Chairman who can eliminate the gravest threat ever posed to human survival. I wish he could and, mostly, I wish he would.
- Curtis123, VA
California’s Suite Music
It’s Thursday of the second week of the climate negotiations in Bali, which is the traditional day to reach agreement–or not–at the international global warming negotiations. But do not confuse an agreement–if there is one, and there almost certainly will be–with a solution. A Bali roadmap may be a great accomplishment, but not a solution, nor will it lead to one. A solution is what is desperately needed–and there is one place in the world where it can be found–because the peril posed by global warming is far more grave and imminent than all but a few realize.
One of the great flaws in the negotiations process is that policies are developed on science as expounded by the 2,000 participants in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It, in turn, reaches its conclusions considering only studies published in “peer reviewed” literature, meaning they have been scrutinized closely by expert scientists. This means the science elaborated by the IPCC is rock solid, but three to five years old, so when negotiators from throughout the world gather annually to craft policies, they may be utterly ignorant of the newest science, even if has profound implications. That is certainly the case in Bali.
In the last five years, thanks in part to improved super computers and new information, but also due to the inspiration of some, scientists looking for answers to troubling and unexplained environmental changes, serious shortcomings in the assumptions on which the negotiating process is based have been revealed.
First, scientists knew that a variety of pollutants excluded from the Kyoto Protocol–tropospheric ozone, or smog, for example, and carbon monoxide the colorless, odorless gas emitted by every tailpipe and smokestack–cause global warming. But because they had short lifetimes–meaning they are destroyed by a variety of chemical reactions in the atmosphere or by other means–they were thought to be much less important than the so-called “long lived” gases. But in fact, it is now clear the majority of today’s warming is due to these short-lived pollutants.
Second, some pollutants were not then known to be significant causes of warming. Black carbon, like the soot emitted by diesels, for example was not seriously considered for inclusion in the Protocol. It now turns out, however, that it is a major cause of warming, especially where it darkens snow and ice, thus increasing the absorption of sunlight. Moreover, black carbon now appears to not only cause melting by warming areas like Greenland, Alaska and Siberia, but also by actually changing the way that snow melts, accelerating the process. This may account for the fact that while warming in the Arctic is roughly what computer models predict, melting is much, much faster, perhaps twice the speed of predictions.
Third, some pollutants and sources were excluded from coverage because, in theory, they are subject to other international agreements, but also because the true magnitude of their contribution to global warming was not accurately known. Ships, for example, are excluded. But recent estimates place are that they account not for a small amount of pollution, but an immense quantity: between 15 and 30 percent of global emissions of oxides of nitrogen, a pollutant that helps form smog, for example. Indeed emissions from ships are roughly equal to those of the continent of either Europe or North America. Aircraft are also excluded, even though they injects immense amounts of carbon where it can be most dangerous, at high altitudes and over the Arctic.
Negotiators also left chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the industrial chemicals like DuPont’s Freons that destroy stratospheric ozone, out of global warming coverage, supposedly because they were subject to another international regime, the Montreal Protocol to Protect the Ozone Layer. Chemicals subject to Montreal are regulated, however, solely to address their impacts on stratospheric ozone. As a result, the chemical–again, one made by DuPont–now used as a chilling agent in the air conditioners of cars and trucks was allowed on the market as a CFC replacement even though it was known at the time to be a powerful cause of global warming.
Perhaps worst of all, the true atmospheric lifetime of the chemical that will be the single largest contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide–created when carbon-rich fuels like coal, oil and wood are burned–was greatly underestimated. Although there was some uncertainty as to CO2’s lifetime, there was a consensus that one century was about right. Instead, it is now known that after even 1,000 years, one third of CO2 being emitted now will still be in the system.
The upshot of this miscalculation of CO2’s lifetime is that even if emissions were to cease this instant, it would be over a century before the full cooling benefit would be realized. These are grim realities, but as is often the case, there are solutions, if only policy-makers will address them.
Because the lifetimes of the short-lived pollutants range from a few days to weeks to a few years, reducing them can produce near-term cooling. HFC-134a, the DuPont chemical used in car air conditioners, has 3,400 times the warming power of CO2 on a molecule-to-molecule basis, and a lifetime of about 12 to 15 years. Thus, if the entire world were to ban use of the chemical in automotive air conditioners, as Europe is doing starting in 2011, there would be cooling benefit before children born today graduated from high school.
For the other short-lived pollutants that cause global warming, the health payback would be immense. Black carbon kills and ozone both kills and causes asthma. The global annual total surely is in the hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of millions of illnesses. Reduce them, and needless sickness and death would be avoided–and reduce them we must.
The Earth is approaching–some believe it may have already passed–a half dozen tipping points. These are infinitesimally small changes that trigger sudden, often violent and irreversible change–think avalanche, lighting strikes and the Twin Towers, standing, standing, standing, then in seconds collapsing into immense heaps of rubble.
Because of the extended delay from the development of science until its restatement by the IPCC, none of these considerations is before negotiators in Bali. But one government in the world has considered these facts, then adopted the most comprehensive, multifaceted and aggressive program to combat global warming in the world. That government, which will come as no surprise to many, is California..
It was in California that the link between cars and smog was first established, where the first pollution control technologies were mandated and the first statewide regulatory program for air pollution was installed. It was California that gave birth to solar photovoltaic cells to generate electricity from sunlight, where turbines to generate electricity were installed in huge numbers and where the most aggressive and effective energy conservation requirements in the world were developed.
After reviewing new science and examining what regulations and new technologies could achieve, the California legislature adopted not one law, but an entire suite. (They are listed below.) They deal with the near, mid and long term; cover transportation, electricity generation, and industrial processes as well as residential and commercial activities. They require reductions right away–“early actions,” they’re called–and other cuts that must be the “maximum technologically feasible, cost effective” reductions.
They encourage the deployment of solar and wind power, and the adoption of new, tougher conservation requirements. They require reductions in not only carbon dioxide and the other pollutants covered by international global warming law, but also black carbon, ozone and its precursors and the industrial chemicals like DuPont’s 134a.
There are some gaps in the California Suite, but the legislature is working to close them, so that when they are finished the final product will be a solution–not just agreement. To see the California Suite become the symphony played worldwide would be, pardon the pun, sweet music indeed.
California Leads the Way to a Post-Kyoto World
With New Laws
2002
AB 1493 required reduced emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and light trucks.
2006
AB 32 requires—
+ “maximum technologically achievable and cost-effective” emission reductions;
+ reductions in emissions of all pollutants that cause global warming, not just those listed under the Kyoto Protocol;
+ implementation by January 1, 2010 of “discrete early actions” to reduce emissions;
+ adoption of “market-based compliance mechanisms” measures, which may include taxes, feebates, auctions and other approaches, as well as trading;
+ return to 1990 emission levels by 2010; and,
+ implementation to be by the state’s air pollution control agency, the California Air Resources Board.
SB 1 establishes goals of—
+ installing 3,000 megawatts solar generation capacity;
+ establishing a self-sufficient solar industry; and,
+ placing photovoltaic (PV) systems on 50 percent of new homes in 13 years.
SB 107 requires retail sellers of electricity to procure at least 20 percent of their retail sales from renewable power by 2010.
SB 1368 prohibits investment in new baseload capacity, or new or renewed contracts with a term of five or more years, unless the electricity is as clean as that from a modern, state-of-the-art powerplant.
AB 2021 requires the state to save 30,000 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity over 10 years through energy efficiency measures.
AB 2778 extends the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), which provides financial incentives to generating electricity with wind power and fuel cells.
Vetoed By Governor Schwarzenegger
SB 757 would have required state agencies to take every “cost-effective and technologically feasible action” to reduce the growth of petroleum demand and increase vehicle energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels.
SB 927 would have imposed a $30 fee on each cargo container entering the Ports of Long Beach or Los Angeles to pay for reducing air pollution while improving security and rail transport.
AB 1012 would have required that starting in 2020, one-half of all new passenger and light-duty trucks, to be “clean alternative vehicles”, running on at least 50 percent non-petroleum fuel.
The Roadmap
Negotiators in Bali are in theory supposed to produce a “roadmap” to a future agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. What might emerge instead, however, is a roadmap to a confrontation of historic proportions, a rematch between George Bush–or, at least, his surrogates–and his opponent in the campaign for the Presidency, former Vice President Al Gore.
The two could not be further apart on an issue than they are on global warming. Bush is casual and sanguine, Gore urgent and demanding. Bush’s emissaries to Bali, to their credit from their perspective, have thus far succeeded beyond all expectations in obstructing and slowing negotiations. The result has been, in the words of one journal that specializes in covering the proceedings, a “shift” in tone, with parties “already casting blamefor the apparent failure of talks” in one arena.
Ten years ago negotiations reach a similar stage in Kyoto, when they seemed hopelessly bogged down. Then Gore, whose signature issues even then were the threats of global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion, arrived unexpectedly on a White House jet. In a matter of about 13 hours he forged the consensus that became the Kyoto Protocol.
For the past several days Gore. He has been in Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work to raise public concern over global warming. By all accounts his talks have been stemwinders, with an “almost historic aura,” according to one observer.
Thursday, Gore arrives in Bali where the situation today is much the same as 10 years ago in Kyoto. But on this occasion, those who have created the logjam are representatives of the United States.
Say what you like about the Bush’s appointees, there can be no doubt that some of them–at least judging from their work in Bali– are geniuses at negotiation. Bush’s second term as President expires in January, 2009, so in theory, decisions about international policy on global warming after that should be the responsibility of the person elected President in November, 2008. But Bush appointees in Bali have maneuvered themselves into a position that could freeze the current status quo, or something close to it, until as late as 2012.
So far, U.S. negotiators have –
● Refused to allow any reference to scientific evidence that rich nations should cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, saying that would “prejudge” the outcome of negotiations.
● Demanded striking draft language in the draft calling for “sufficient, predictable, additional and sustainable financial resources” to help poor nations adapt to climate change, saying it is vague.
● Opposed asking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific body that asses global warming sciences and makes recommendations for action, for an updated report priot to the 2009 climate meeting. James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality and is in Bali, said it was too much, “a huge amount of work for the IPCC.”
● Rejected requests by developing nations such as China and India for industrialized countries to provide more money to ease the transfer of clean energy technology overseas and by poor nations to help them slow deforestation. American representatives said that while the United States endorses the goals in principle, it opposes specifying how much money developed countries should contribute.
Some of these are deal killers. Compelled in part by the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, passed in 1997 95-0 by the U.S. Senate demanding reductions by developing nations as a prerequisite to American participation in a global warming agreement, Bush’s negotiators have insisted on “measurable and reportable national mitigation actions” by the poorer countries. But for China, the price of agreeing to this is technology transfer. Thus, by refusing to agree to technology transfer, U.S. negotiators guarantee China will reject America’s demands for emission reductions by developing nations. That in turn, triggers the terms of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, allowing the White House to blame, at least in part, a Democrat, Sen. Robert C. Byrd.
Similarly, China refuses to agree to curb its emissions unless developed nations will commit to specific numeric reductions, which the U.S. rejects.
Thus, when Gore steps off the plane, he will arrive at a situation remarkably similar to that in Kyoto ten years ago. But there is one critical difference.
Then, the American public seemed barely aware of global warming, much less concerned. Now, two-thirds of Americans want action on global warming, and they want it now.
Then, there had not been a Hurricane Katrina, films of polar bears adrift on ice floes, record-setting heat waves throughout not merely the United States, but the entire world.
In Oslo, Gore could hardly have been more passionate. Saying that “our world is spinning out of kilter” and that “the very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed,” he warned that “we, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency — a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here.” But, he added, “there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst — not all — of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.”
Surely, few would have predicted a year ago–even a few months ago–that Bali might be where George Bush and Al Gore–or at the least, their respective values–would once again confront each other. And perhaps that confrontation will never transpire. But if it does, its outcome will not only what roadmap to the future is produced, but perhaps the future itself.
No Place for Cripples
On Tuesday, the second day of the second week of a Conference of the Parties, it reaches a full throated roar. Everybody has arrived. But at this one, in Bali, I kept looking in vain for the Wrecking Crew, who, lo and behold, were nowhere to be found.
Since the very first COP, and at many other associated assemblies, this handful of veteran American lobbyists, seasoned by as many as four decades in the trenches defending the interests of coal, oil, auto, cement and other companies, have been a fixture. For many years, their coordinator was Donald Pearlman, a silver-haired Washington lawyer who had worked in the Reagan Administration for Secretary of Energy Don Hodel. (It was Pearlman who said that the proper response to the increased cancer-causing sunlight from continued destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer by chemicals such as DuPont’s Freons was not to ban them, but instead for the public to wear hats and sunglasses.)
Pearlman could be seen at the Conferences sprawling in a couch or chair near the entrance to the meeting room for delegates, especially those from oil-rich nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Conveniently positioned to grab a delegate by the arm, Pearlman would whisper instructions, or pass a note. A few moments later, the delegate would ask for recognition and dutifully read what had been whispered or written.
But Pearlman’s ever-present cigarettes finally claimed his life, so the chair passed to Dave Finnegan, who spent decades working for the Rep. John Dingell, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and a tough guy. An avid hunter, Dingell once told an interviewer that “When I go hunting, I take the biggest gun I can carry. When I shoot something I want it to go down. I don’t want any cripples walking around.”
Pearlman, Finnegan and the others share this take-no-prisoners attitude, which has made them extraordinarily effective–indeed, more effective than all but a few know.
Ten years ago, as it became clear that the nations of the world were steamrolling their way to Kyoto, the consensus was that some sort of global agreement would be arrived at and, more likely than not, the United States would be a party. After all, Al “Ozone Man”Gore, as he was casually derided by President Bush-the-father in campaign of 1992, held the nation’s number two spot, and the Congress was in the hands of those wacko treehuggers, the Democrats.
But not all Democrats are treehuggers, and chief among these is Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. A former coal miner himself, Byrd was a pit bull when it came to protecting or advancing the interests of the state and its miners. Trouble is, how could he collect a majority of votes in a Senate that was increasingly troubled by the threat posed by global warming.
Byrd’s solution, in which he was joined by freshman Republican Chuck Hagel, was a stroke of genius: instead of opposing an international agreement outright, the pair merely objected to mandating emission reductions in the United States and other industrialized nations unless “new specific scheduled commitments” were imposed on developing nations. The resolution zipped through the Senate 95-0.
The rest was child’s play. Pearlman simply instructed the delegation from oil-rich Nigeria to object in Kyoto to the imposition of new commitments and, viola, the Protocol arrived in the United States still born. One observer insisted that in Kyoto he overheard Pearlman cackling gleefully while huddled with a Nigerian delegate, exalting over the victory, one that is now in its tenth year. Pearlman may be dead, but his victory survives, and that will continue to be the case as long as nations such as China, India and Nigeria object to “new specific scheduled commitments.”
Total attendance at the climate negotiations has risen steadily, even as meetings have been held in ever-more-distant locations, such as Bali this year and Nairobi, Kenya the last. Finnegan, it turns out, is here somewhere, according to the registration staff, even if he is less visible than in the past. Still, the presence of U.S. business lobbyists at this year’s session seems notably off, especially given the importance that some assign to it, expecting that it will lay the foundation a successor agreement to Kyoto.
The explanation for their absence may be quite simple: everything is going according to the plans laid out in the months preceding Kyoto. There have been ten years of massive disinformation–nay, outright lies and fraud–by so-called scientists in the pay of ExxonMobil, General Motors and much of the rest of corporate America. Now, as warming has become indisputable, the United States Congress is moving to adopt the worst of all possible solutions, and the one ardently desired by industries and the rich, emissions trading.
As long as the world’s biggest polluter, the United States, refuses to act, the rest of the world is caught between a rock and a hard place. Frankly, what they ought to do is act unilaterally and impose sanctions on nations that refuse to follow suit, including China, India and the United States. Would there be some sudden economic disruptions. Yes, and they might be severe.
As matters now stand, however, the world is continuing on what at least a few fairly well qualified people believe might later prove to have been a death spiral, a period where even incomplete action might have been enough to pull the planet back from the brink of climate chaos. Until at least some nations simply grit their teeth and confront the United States, they are little more than what John Dingell does not like to see walking around: cripples.
Re Donald Pearlman: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_leggett/2006/04/exxonmobils_longlived_emulatio.html
Carbon wars
Beware renewed ExxonMobil’s efforts to discredit the evidence of climate change. They’ve been at it for years.
August 1990, Sundsvaal, Sweden: Don Pearlman of the World Climate Council, a key carbon club organisation, openly coaches the Saudi Arabian delegation to the final IPCC plenary before the World Climate Conference. The Saudis deploy stalling tactics as a device to water down the IPCC’s summary report, (attempted sabotage: partially successful), including a laughable concerted effort to excise the words “carbon dioxide” from the document (manipulation: partially successful).
Re Exxon: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ExxonMobil#Exxon.27s_funding_of_climate_skeptics
Exxon’s funding of climate skeptics
A study by the US Union of Concerned Scientists reports that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report says, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community. [3]
See exxonsecrets.org for fact-sheets on funding recipients.
Re purpose of Bali:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/02/AR2007120200583.html
UN Kicks Off Bali Climate Conference
By JOSEPH COLEMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, December 3, 2007; 1:21 AM
Also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2220767,00.html
Hope and fear in Bali
Leader
Monday December 3, 2007
The Guardian
The science of climate change is clear. The politics of the world’s response are still murky, as the Bali summit, which begins today, will show. Even the most optimistic bets as to the outcome of the two-week meeting fall short of what scientists say is needed. There will be no transforming Bali protocol at the end of it, no sudden conversion of the United States to deep cuts in its own emissions and no binding agreement to cap pollution from rapidly growing economies such as China and India. Instead, 10,000 officials and ministers from around 190 countries will battle for advantage at the start of a process that will take at least two years to complete. The aim is to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol. No one can be sure yet what form it will take.
BALI, Indonesia — Delegates and scientists from around the world opened the biggest-ever climate change conference Monday, urging rapid progress in building a new international pact by 2009 to combat global warming _ or risk economic and environmental disaster.
Dear Friends
For those of you who don’t know me, and that would be the entire world save a handful of folks, this is my third decade of working on global warming, approaching the fourth decade on the environment generally.
I was lucky enough to work for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works during the days when the United States was still the world leader in facing up to the threats of air and water pollution, poisonous chemicals, and the full range of other challenges. The nation has long since abandoned that leadership role. While the Germans, Swedes and others have managed to fill some of the resulting vacuum, the world is now essentially drifting, somewhat like a rudderless boat. That is evident here in Bali.
This the 13th “Conference of the Parties,” or COP, where the nations of the world gather to supposedly hammer out solutions to global warming. The meetings are actually a succession of self-congratulatory photo-ops by politicians with little understanding of the imminent and grave danger posed by global warming. There are at least a half-dozen positive feedbacks–that is, changes caused by warming that then themselves increase warming, so that the hotter it gets, the hotter it will get–that have kicked in already, meaning that the planet is rapidly approaching one or more “tipping points” beyond which survival of civilization is unlikely. These include increasing acidification of the oceans, melting and warming in the Arctic, global bleaching of coral, a 30 percent decline in phytoplankton, massive thawing of tundra in Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, and the retreat of glaciers worldwide, to name but a few.
Yet nowhere in the literature gathered from the booths lining the hallways in Bali can the words tipping point be found, nor is there discussion of emission reductions next year and the year after. The time frames for action are couched in decades.
This has been the tenor of the Conferences of the Parties since the ill-fated Kyoto meeting, where the United States demanded emissions trading as the price of agreeing to an international protocol, then welched on the deal. The Kyoto Protocol is now on its way out, and the Bali meeting is being promoted as the place where the foundation will be laid for the successor. That may well happen, but if so, the son- (or daughter-) of-Kyoto is likely to be little improvement, if any.
In reality, the corporations of the world, especially those in the United States, have the international process well in hand. One testament to that is the very name employed: the “Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Almost universally, politicians and most others talk of “climate change,” not “global warming”. Why?
Well, in the case of the United States, Republican pollster Frank Luntz ran focus groups and polls of the various terms for describing the phenomenon and found that Americans found climate change a far less ominous term than global warming. His advice to Republicans: watch your language, and talk about climate change, not global warming.
ExxonMobil, Chevron and the U.S. oil companies, together with coals miners and sellers and a variety of electricity generators like the Southern Company, have actively conspired with oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Nigeria to preclude international agreement to really deal with global warming. There are cars that will travel 100 miles on a single gallon of fuel and powerplants that will squeeze 92 percent of the energy from a pound of coal. But if that happened, sales of coal and oil would drop by two-thirds or more. So, it’s not going to happen.
Later in the week California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and World Bank President Robert Zoellick will show up in Bali and suck all of the political oxygen out of the air. This is an undeniably positive sign, because each says some of the right things when it comes to global warming, and even though a case can be made that each may be more motivated by politics than substance in crafting truly effective solutions. Schwarzenegger, for example, insists on carbon-equivalent trading–something heavy campaign contributor Chevron wants desperately–even though it has failed horrribly when tried elsewhere. Still, to all appearances, both are well intended. But, as the old saying goes, that’s what the road to Hell–that place where,like the planet,it’s really, really hot–is paved with: good intentions.
Re tundra: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4141348.stm
The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago.
The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear.
Re Arctic warming and melting: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070330-warming-arctic.html
Arctic Melting Linked to Human Causes, Long-Term Review Finds |
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Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
March 30, 2007
The dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in recent years is the result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions combined with natural cycles, according to a new study.
The loss of ice will likely change water temperatures and affect the circulation of ocean currents, which may alter climates around the world, the study suggests.
Re ocean acidification: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/abs/nature04095.html
Article
Nature 437, 681-686 (29 September 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04095
Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms
Today’s surface ocean is saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, but increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are reducing ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations, and thus the level of calcium carbonate saturation. Experimental evidence suggests that if these trends continue, key marine organisms—such as corals and some plankton—will have difficulty maintaining their external calcium carbonate skeletons.
Re phytoplankton decline: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020801plankton.html
PHYTOPLANKTON IN NORTHERN OCEANS HAVE DECLINED FROM 1980s LEVELS
Introduction
A check up of the Earth’s planetary health reveals that the lowest rung in the ocean food chain is shrinking. For the past 20 years (early 1980s to present), phytoplankton concentrations declined as much as 30 percent in northern oceans. Scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say warmer ocean temperatures and low winds may be depriving the tiny ocean plants of necessary nutrients. However, they still do not know if the loss of phytoplankton is a long-term trend or a climate oscillation.
Re coral bleaching: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060515232529.htm
Global Warming May Have Damaged Coral Reefs Forever
ScienceDaily (May 16, 2006) — Global warming has had a more devastating effect on some of the world’s finest coral reefs than previously assumed, suggests the first report to show the long-term impact of sea temperature rise on reef coral and fish communities.
Re glacier retreat: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/sci_nat_how_the_world_is_changing/html/1.stm
See it for yourself
In pictures: How the world is changing
