Category — Global warming

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change published February 2.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science.

It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

Ten months before Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W. Bush.

The Queen’s tradition of meeting once a week with Britain’s elected head of government to discuss matters of state—usually on Tuesday evenings in Buckingham Palace and always alone, to ensure maximum confidentiality—goes back to 1952, the year she ascended the throne. In all that time, the contents of those chats rarely if ever leaked.

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Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures.

But that may be the sugarcoated version.
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A study by the world’s leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought.

Global warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms — like the ones that battered Britain last week — will increase dramatically.

Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.

“The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect.

“Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely.

“Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document — that’s what makes it so scary,” said one senior UK climate expert.

The Independent Online reports that an unprecedented coalition of blue-chip US companies and environmental lobby groups will urge President Bush next week to get serious about global warming, calling for caps on carbon dioxide emissions that would cut greenhouse gases by 10-30 per cent over 15 years.

The group, called the US Climate Action Partnership, will unveil the details of its plan on the eve of President Bush’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

The companies involved include some of the old-fashioned pollution-generating industries normally associated with anti-environmental policies and politicians — the chemical giant DuPont, the bulldozer company Caterpillar, the aluminium producer Alcoa and the US subsidiary of BP.

They, and environmental lobby groups such as Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, said yesterday they will call for “swift federal action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the adoption of climate-friendly technology”.

According to Associated Press, some leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders have agreed to put aside their fierce differences over the origin of life and work together to fight global warming.

Representatives met recently in Georgia and agreed on the need for urgent action.

“Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today,” said Rich Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 45,000 churches.

Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, agreed, saying: “Scientists and evangelicals have discovered that we share a deeply felt common concern and sense of urgency about threats to life on Earth and that we must speak with one voice to protect it.”

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.

According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.
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The New York Times: Hundreds of tourists and locals packed the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center yesterday, pretending that it really was a cold, snowy day in January as they circled beneath the giant Christmas tree.

In Brooklyn, eight members of a cold-water-braving organization known as the Coney Island Polar Bear Club walked toward the waves, some wearing nothing but swim trunks.

The only thing that ruined this winter imagery was the temperature, which reached a record-breaking 72 degrees (22.2°C) in Central Park yesterday.

The warm spell shattered records around the city and the state as well as throughout New Jersey and Connecticut.

In Central Park, the high temperature at 1:37 p.m. — 72 degrees — broke the date’s previous high of 63 degrees in 1950, the National Weather Service reported.

It was the highest temperature recorded in the park in January since record-keeping began in the late 1800s, sharing that distinction with a 72-degree high on Jan. 26, 1950.

In Bridgeport, Conn., the weather service said, the high of 68 was 15 degrees above the previous record, in 1949; and in Newark, the high of 72 was 11 degrees over the old mark, from 1950.

Australia appears to be suffering from an accelerated Greenhouse effect, with the pace of global warming faster across the country than in other parts of the world, climatologists say.

The world’s driest inhabited continent, already enduring one of its worst droughts, was waging its own unique climate war, said Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology yearly climate report.

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