.
Check out some mind food below
1. Nanotechnology - risks and benefits
2. 'Clean Coal' ???
3. Americans and climate change
4. What is nanotechnology?
5. Peak Oil Debate
6. Limits to growth ???
7. History of Nanotechnology
.
Showing posts with label Climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate change. Show all posts
Monday, December 01, 2008
Worried about the Earth ??
.
Check out some mind food below
1. Nanotechnology - risks and benefits
2. 'Clean Coal' ???
3. Americans and climate change
4. What is nanotechnology?
5. Peak Oil Debate
6. Limits to growth ???
7. History of Nanotechnology
.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Isaac Asimov on Global Warming (1989)
Here is the legend himself, Isaac Asimov speaking about global warming back in 1989.
Note: Humanism is, by its very name, anthropocentric; perhaps we need a more ecocentric world-view.
I agree that we are 'all in this together' and that we have 'more similarities than differences' and think that a world government is the way to solve global problems.
America is in the process of losing its hegemonic power, and will (hopefully) under Obama will come to join the international community more fully to deal with problems such as global warming and poverty.
Any comments ????
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Global warming: An inconvenient truth or hot air?
4 March 2007
The Independent
Geoffrey Lean reports
Everyone agrees global warming is a terrible fact of life. Right? Wrong. A film to be screened this week ridicules the Al Gore orthodoxy.
After two decades, the long scientific and political debate over whether human activities are warming up the Earth is finally over. Or is it? The world scientific community says so. Even the most recalcitrant governments, including the Bush administration, reluctantly agree. But the British media is characteristically unwilling to let an old row simply fade away.
On Thursday, Channel 4 will screen what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin.
It follows hot on the heels of a decision by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which this month won two Oscars - to every secondary school throughout the country.
And the debate continues in the printed media with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph printing regular articles by sceptics and even The Independent, which - with this newspaper - presses for action to control climate change, giving space to the columnist Dominic Lawson, who rejects much of the green lobby's case. Yet, while contrarians remain common in broadcasting studios and newspaper offices, they are becoming increasingly hard to find in laboratories or governments.
Last month, the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.
Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields. A recent survey of 928 published scientific papers found not one that dissented over the reality of global warming. Even President Bush admitted - through gritted teeth - in January's State of the Union speech that the climate change presented "a major challenge".
Yet more recently, his main ally against the Kyoto Protocol, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, has been forced into a U-turn by a massive Australian drought and an approaching election, announcing a ban on energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs.
And Mr Bush's best hope of a replacement - the Canadian premier, Steven Harper - has been forced by public opinion into a similar conversion.
But if environmentalists thought they could finally give up arguing, and focus entirely on promoting action, they can think again. For the clash between the Oscar-winning film and the Channel 4 production is likely to spark new public debate. Both are produced by controversial figures. Al Gore last week came under attack for hypocrisy, after it was revealed that he spends £15,000 a year heating his home, 20 times more than the average American house. And, as The Independent on Sunday has repeatedly pointed out , he failed comprehensively to practise what he preaches when in Government.
Martin Durkin, for his part, achieved notoriety when his previous series on the environment for the channel, called Against Nature , was roundly condemned by the Independent Television Commission for misleading contributors on the purpose of the programmes, and for editing four interviewees in a way that "distorted or mispresented their known views".
Channel 4 was forced to issue a humiliating apology. But it seems to have forgiven Mr Durkin and sees no need to make special checks on the accuracy of the programme. For his part, the film-maker accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as "complete tosh."
His programme uncovers no startling new information, any more than does Mr Gore's film. The documentary repeats many of the arguments put in Britain by, among others what appears to be be something of a family cottage industry.
Standing with Dominic Lawson on the sceptic's barricades are his father (or to give him proper deference, Lord Lawson of Blaby) and his brother-in-law Christopher Monckton, Lord Monckton of Brenchley. Surprisingly, there is much common ground between sceptics and the environmentalists. Lord Lawson, for example, says that there is "little doubt that the 20th century ended warmer than it began".
He adds, similarly, that "there is no doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased greatly" during it.
He even agrees that it is "highly likely that carbon dioxide emissions" have played a significant part" in heating up the Earth.
He could hardly do otherwise. The measurements of what has happened are clear, and the basic science has been established, unchallenged for 180 years. Instead, the debate is about precisely what contribution to warming the pollution has made, whether it will continue and what to do about it.
The row concentrates on often arcane points of science, frequently delving far back into history. Three of them, raised in this week's documentary, are described above; in each the sceptics have a point, but fail to give the whole picture and so draw the wrong conclusions. Other arguments have been discredited.
Similarly, they emphasise that temperatures in Britain, Greenland and parts of Europe were warmer in the Middle Ages than they are now. That may or may not be true - since no accurate measurements were taken it is hard to be certain.
But, if so, it was only a regional effect: measurements of ice from the poles on which the sceptics place great reliance for other arguments (see table) show it did not happen worldwide. They also claim that tackling global warming would hurt the world's poorest by denying them fossil fuels. But renewable sources of energy should also be the poor's salvation.
They are abundant in the Third World and don't need costly distribution networks to get them to village. And even if the sceptics are right, and the bulk of the world's scientists wrong, there is still a compelling reason for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. For, as often reported in this newspaper, rising levels of the gas - in an entirely separate process - are killing the world's oceans by turning them acid.
Temperature
DURKIN SAYS: Studies of gases in bubbles of air in polar ice sheets reveal that in prehistoric hot periods temperatures began rising before C02 levels. So increasing concentrations of the gas are the result, not the cause of global warming.
GORE SAYS: "It's a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: when there is more C02 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases." He shows two graphs of rising temperature and C02 levels over the past 600,000 years and says they "fit together".
WE SAY: Temperature and C02 are bound together. When one goes up, the other will follow. In prehistory temperatures often started rising 800 years before levels of the gas, and Gore evades this point. But it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra C02 are being released.
The Arctic
DURKIN SAYS: Recent reports of how the amount of ice in the Arctic is shrinking have been exaggerated. The Arctic has always contracted and expanded over history.
GORE SAYS: The Arctic is a "canary in the coal mine". Since the 1970s ,the extent and thickness of its ice cap has "diminished precipitously". If we continue as we are, it will disappear during summers, profoundly changing the climate.
WE SAY: The amount of the ice ebbs and flows with natural warmings and coolings of the climate, and part of this shrinking is probably due to that. But this is being increased by global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, and these continue to go up. The Arctic is likely to be free of ice by 2050, for the first time in millions of years.
The sun
DURKIN SAYS: The sun is the main cause of global warming. The sun's activity increases from time to time, with increased solar flares, cutting down on cloud formation and raising temperatures on Earth. This activity correlates well with warmer periods over the past several hundred years.
GORE SAYS: The culprit is humanity's emissions of "huge quantities" of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which trap more of the infrared radiation of the sun that would otherwise escape out into space.
WE SAY: Variations in solar activity may have been responsible for past warm periods, though it's hard to be entirely sure because we have been taking good measurements of it only since 1978. But recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2326210.ece
The Independent
Geoffrey Lean reports
Everyone agrees global warming is a terrible fact of life. Right? Wrong. A film to be screened this week ridicules the Al Gore orthodoxy.
After two decades, the long scientific and political debate over whether human activities are warming up the Earth is finally over. Or is it? The world scientific community says so. Even the most recalcitrant governments, including the Bush administration, reluctantly agree. But the British media is characteristically unwilling to let an old row simply fade away.
On Thursday, Channel 4 will screen what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin.
It follows hot on the heels of a decision by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which this month won two Oscars - to every secondary school throughout the country.
And the debate continues in the printed media with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph printing regular articles by sceptics and even The Independent, which - with this newspaper - presses for action to control climate change, giving space to the columnist Dominic Lawson, who rejects much of the green lobby's case. Yet, while contrarians remain common in broadcasting studios and newspaper offices, they are becoming increasingly hard to find in laboratories or governments.
Last month, the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.
Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields. A recent survey of 928 published scientific papers found not one that dissented over the reality of global warming. Even President Bush admitted - through gritted teeth - in January's State of the Union speech that the climate change presented "a major challenge".
Yet more recently, his main ally against the Kyoto Protocol, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, has been forced into a U-turn by a massive Australian drought and an approaching election, announcing a ban on energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs.
And Mr Bush's best hope of a replacement - the Canadian premier, Steven Harper - has been forced by public opinion into a similar conversion.
But if environmentalists thought they could finally give up arguing, and focus entirely on promoting action, they can think again. For the clash between the Oscar-winning film and the Channel 4 production is likely to spark new public debate. Both are produced by controversial figures. Al Gore last week came under attack for hypocrisy, after it was revealed that he spends £15,000 a year heating his home, 20 times more than the average American house. And, as The Independent on Sunday has repeatedly pointed out , he failed comprehensively to practise what he preaches when in Government.
Martin Durkin, for his part, achieved notoriety when his previous series on the environment for the channel, called Against Nature , was roundly condemned by the Independent Television Commission for misleading contributors on the purpose of the programmes, and for editing four interviewees in a way that "distorted or mispresented their known views".
Channel 4 was forced to issue a humiliating apology. But it seems to have forgiven Mr Durkin and sees no need to make special checks on the accuracy of the programme. For his part, the film-maker accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as "complete tosh."
His programme uncovers no startling new information, any more than does Mr Gore's film. The documentary repeats many of the arguments put in Britain by, among others what appears to be be something of a family cottage industry.
Standing with Dominic Lawson on the sceptic's barricades are his father (or to give him proper deference, Lord Lawson of Blaby) and his brother-in-law Christopher Monckton, Lord Monckton of Brenchley. Surprisingly, there is much common ground between sceptics and the environmentalists. Lord Lawson, for example, says that there is "little doubt that the 20th century ended warmer than it began".
He adds, similarly, that "there is no doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased greatly" during it.
He even agrees that it is "highly likely that carbon dioxide emissions" have played a significant part" in heating up the Earth.
He could hardly do otherwise. The measurements of what has happened are clear, and the basic science has been established, unchallenged for 180 years. Instead, the debate is about precisely what contribution to warming the pollution has made, whether it will continue and what to do about it.
The row concentrates on often arcane points of science, frequently delving far back into history. Three of them, raised in this week's documentary, are described above; in each the sceptics have a point, but fail to give the whole picture and so draw the wrong conclusions. Other arguments have been discredited.
Similarly, they emphasise that temperatures in Britain, Greenland and parts of Europe were warmer in the Middle Ages than they are now. That may or may not be true - since no accurate measurements were taken it is hard to be certain.
But, if so, it was only a regional effect: measurements of ice from the poles on which the sceptics place great reliance for other arguments (see table) show it did not happen worldwide. They also claim that tackling global warming would hurt the world's poorest by denying them fossil fuels. But renewable sources of energy should also be the poor's salvation.
They are abundant in the Third World and don't need costly distribution networks to get them to village. And even if the sceptics are right, and the bulk of the world's scientists wrong, there is still a compelling reason for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. For, as often reported in this newspaper, rising levels of the gas - in an entirely separate process - are killing the world's oceans by turning them acid.
Temperature
DURKIN SAYS: Studies of gases in bubbles of air in polar ice sheets reveal that in prehistoric hot periods temperatures began rising before C02 levels. So increasing concentrations of the gas are the result, not the cause of global warming.
GORE SAYS: "It's a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: when there is more C02 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases." He shows two graphs of rising temperature and C02 levels over the past 600,000 years and says they "fit together".
WE SAY: Temperature and C02 are bound together. When one goes up, the other will follow. In prehistory temperatures often started rising 800 years before levels of the gas, and Gore evades this point. But it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra C02 are being released.
The Arctic
DURKIN SAYS: Recent reports of how the amount of ice in the Arctic is shrinking have been exaggerated. The Arctic has always contracted and expanded over history.
GORE SAYS: The Arctic is a "canary in the coal mine". Since the 1970s ,the extent and thickness of its ice cap has "diminished precipitously". If we continue as we are, it will disappear during summers, profoundly changing the climate.
WE SAY: The amount of the ice ebbs and flows with natural warmings and coolings of the climate, and part of this shrinking is probably due to that. But this is being increased by global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, and these continue to go up. The Arctic is likely to be free of ice by 2050, for the first time in millions of years.
The sun
DURKIN SAYS: The sun is the main cause of global warming. The sun's activity increases from time to time, with increased solar flares, cutting down on cloud formation and raising temperatures on Earth. This activity correlates well with warmer periods over the past several hundred years.
GORE SAYS: The culprit is humanity's emissions of "huge quantities" of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which trap more of the infrared radiation of the sun that would otherwise escape out into space.
WE SAY: Variations in solar activity may have been responsible for past warm periods, though it's hard to be entirely sure because we have been taking good measurements of it only since 1978. But recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2326210.ece
China goes for green before growth
Rowan Callick,
China correspondent
March 06, 2007
The Australian
CHINA has announced a sweeping program to shut some of its most polluting factories in a green initiative that is likely to cut its economic growth this year to 8 per cent from 10.7 per cent last year.
Premier Wen Jiabao used his state of the nation address yesterday to unveil environmental initiatives that would close a massive section of China's old heavy industry.
The initiatives also ban the wasteful use of land, including building golf courses and free-standing homes.
Launching the annual session of the National People's Congress, Mr Wen said future economic growth would hinge on "environmentally friendly industries".
Projects would be assessed for "energy consumption and environmental impact". Those that failed to meet such standards would be stopped. Mr Wen said China would close "backward" iron foundries with a production capacity of less than 30 million tonnes and "backward" steel mills that could produce 35million tonnes.
Source
China correspondent
March 06, 2007
The Australian
CHINA has announced a sweeping program to shut some of its most polluting factories in a green initiative that is likely to cut its economic growth this year to 8 per cent from 10.7 per cent last year.
Premier Wen Jiabao used his state of the nation address yesterday to unveil environmental initiatives that would close a massive section of China's old heavy industry.
The initiatives also ban the wasteful use of land, including building golf courses and free-standing homes.
Launching the annual session of the National People's Congress, Mr Wen said future economic growth would hinge on "environmentally friendly industries".
Projects would be assessed for "energy consumption and environmental impact". Those that failed to meet such standards would be stopped. Mr Wen said China would close "backward" iron foundries with a production capacity of less than 30 million tonnes and "backward" steel mills that could produce 35million tonnes.
Source
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Still time to save the world, scientists say
March 1, 2007
SMH
WRENCHING worldwide climate changes can no longer be avoided, but there is still time to stave off the worst consequences of global warming, an international research team says.
The scientists from 11 countries urged sweeping conservation measures to hold the expected increase in temperatures to no more than an average of 2 degrees globally - less than half the expected increase if emissions of greenhouse gas and soot continue unabated.
The scientists called for dramatic actions ranging from carbon taxes and a ban on conventional coal-fired power plants to an end to all beachfront construction worldwide. The researchers were funded by the non-profit UN Foundation and the research society Sigma Xi.
To meet the scientists' goal, global carbon dioxide emissions must level off by 2015 and then drop by two-thirds by 2100.
They urged stricter fuel efficiency standards, as well as fuel taxes, registration fees and rebates that favour more efficient transport, which today is responsible for 40 per cent of the world's carbon emissions.
The researchers also recommended expanded use of biofuels to reduce dependence on the oil that accounts for one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions. They endorsed broader use of nuclear power, if it can be made safer.
In addition, the scientists called for improved designs of appliances and office equipment and "greener" buildings. Taken together, heating, cooling and lighting buildings accounts for almost 30 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Los Angeles Times
SMH
WRENCHING worldwide climate changes can no longer be avoided, but there is still time to stave off the worst consequences of global warming, an international research team says.
The scientists from 11 countries urged sweeping conservation measures to hold the expected increase in temperatures to no more than an average of 2 degrees globally - less than half the expected increase if emissions of greenhouse gas and soot continue unabated.
The scientists called for dramatic actions ranging from carbon taxes and a ban on conventional coal-fired power plants to an end to all beachfront construction worldwide. The researchers were funded by the non-profit UN Foundation and the research society Sigma Xi.
To meet the scientists' goal, global carbon dioxide emissions must level off by 2015 and then drop by two-thirds by 2100.
They urged stricter fuel efficiency standards, as well as fuel taxes, registration fees and rebates that favour more efficient transport, which today is responsible for 40 per cent of the world's carbon emissions.
The researchers also recommended expanded use of biofuels to reduce dependence on the oil that accounts for one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions. They endorsed broader use of nuclear power, if it can be made safer.
In addition, the scientists called for improved designs of appliances and office equipment and "greener" buildings. Taken together, heating, cooling and lighting buildings accounts for almost 30 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Los Angeles Times
International panel presents U.N. with climate change plan
By CHARLES J. HANLEYAP
Special CorrespondentPublished:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change – a challenge, it said, “to which civilization must rise.”Failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displaced coastal populations, it said.“The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rise and storm surges increase will be in the tens of millions,” panel co-chair Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan ecologist, told reporters.
After a two-year study, the 18-member group, representing 11 nations, offered scores of recommendations: from pouring billions more dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, to mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, to winning political agreement on a global temperature “ceiling.”Their 166-page report, produced at U.N. request and sponsored by the private United Nations Foundation and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, was issued just three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, made headlines with its latest assessment of climate science.The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man’s burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. If nothing’s done, it said, global temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Tuesday's report said the world’s nations should agree to limit further rises this century to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.Beyond that, “we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on human well-being would rise very rapidly,” said panel member John P. Holdren, director of Massachusetts’ Woods Hole Research Center.The experts panel said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100, via a vast transformation of global energy systems – toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels, and toward biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
That changeover would be spurred by heavy “carbon taxes” or “cap-and-trade” systems, whereby industries’ emissions are capped by governments, and more efficient companies can sell unused allowances to less efficient ones.Such schemes _ already in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol climate pact _ have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, but are opposed by the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto.The White House points to what it says is spending of almost $3 billion a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion, and it's "far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities."
Tuesday's report said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to $45 billion or $60 billion a year.Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity's cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration _ technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.In fact, the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology.
The panel's other co-chair is biodiversity expert Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director and past president of Sigma Xi.
Special CorrespondentPublished:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change – a challenge, it said, “to which civilization must rise.”Failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displaced coastal populations, it said.“The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rise and storm surges increase will be in the tens of millions,” panel co-chair Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan ecologist, told reporters.
After a two-year study, the 18-member group, representing 11 nations, offered scores of recommendations: from pouring billions more dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, to mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, to winning political agreement on a global temperature “ceiling.”Their 166-page report, produced at U.N. request and sponsored by the private United Nations Foundation and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, was issued just three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, made headlines with its latest assessment of climate science.The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man’s burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. If nothing’s done, it said, global temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Tuesday's report said the world’s nations should agree to limit further rises this century to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.Beyond that, “we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on human well-being would rise very rapidly,” said panel member John P. Holdren, director of Massachusetts’ Woods Hole Research Center.The experts panel said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100, via a vast transformation of global energy systems – toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels, and toward biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
That changeover would be spurred by heavy “carbon taxes” or “cap-and-trade” systems, whereby industries’ emissions are capped by governments, and more efficient companies can sell unused allowances to less efficient ones.Such schemes _ already in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol climate pact _ have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, but are opposed by the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto.The White House points to what it says is spending of almost $3 billion a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion, and it's "far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities."
Tuesday's report said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to $45 billion or $60 billion a year.Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity's cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration _ technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.In fact, the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology.
The panel's other co-chair is biodiversity expert Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director and past president of Sigma Xi.
Climate change 'a campaign of alarmism'
By Denis Peters
February 28, 2007
Article from: AAP
A CONCERTED and well-organised campaign has created alarm over human-induced climate change, industrial magnate Sir Arvi Parbo says.
Sir Arvi also said today key international reports warning of climate change, including Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, are biased and scrutiny of them has been suppressed.
The former head of Western Mining Corporation, BHP and Alcoa Australia, is the keynote speaker at a gathering of climate change sceptics being hosted by Western Australian Liberal MP Dr Dennis Jensen, at Parliament House.
It also is supported by the Lavoisier Group, an Australian organisation set up as a base for climate change sceptics.
One of the founders of the Lavoisier Group is former WMC chief executive Hugh Morgan, one of the businessmen who have formed a company to look at building Australia's first nuclear reactor.
The occasion will also serve as the launch of a new book, entitled Nine Facts About Climate Change, by former Institute of Public Affairs head Ray Evans.
Sir Arvi said he had kept an open mind through 20 years of listening to debate about climate change but was now witnessing a "semi-religious fervour" overshadowing it.
"One must admire the skilful way in which the public has been led to believe that there is no longer any uncertainty, and that disastrous climate change caused by humans is imminent," he said.
"The appointment of Mr Al Gore as adviser to the UK Government on climate change is a good example.
"I am not aware of Mr Gore's ranking as a climate scientist but he has undoubted credentials as a politician and someone who knows how to influence public opinion.
"His film, The Inconvenient Truth has been widely publicised, has been seen by, and has influenced millions of people around the world.
"It has been severely criticised for deliberately and grossly exaggerating and distorting the issues and I understand that the recently published summary for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contradicts a number of Mr Gore's major contentions.
"This, in contrast, has had virtually no publicity and no effect on the public."
Sir Arvi said the review of the economic impact of climate change by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern had been found to be biased and alarming and neither accurate nor objective by a review of distinguished scientists.
"As far as I am aware, this criticism has not been answered," he said.
"An uninvolved observer has to conclude that there has been a concerted and well-organised campaign to create worldwide apprehension and alarm.
"Reading and listening to the media and to political discussion, this campaign has succeeded. In fact it may have succeeded too well."
Greens climate change spokeswoman Senator Christine Milne later described the forum as "the last gasp of the Dad's Army of sceptics". "What they try to do is give the impression that climate change science is uncertain," she said.
"They've been reasonably successful because they've been well funded, as with the tobacco industry before them.
"Now this group of people is trying to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
"They are backed by the coal industry and the oil industry."
She said the Lavoisier Group was associated with the Liberal Party and right-wing bodies such as the HR Nicholls Society.
"They are a joke in terms of climate science but they are actually a cost to future generations because they confuse the public when there is now no doubt about the science."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21303658-1702,00.html
February 28, 2007
Article from: AAP
A CONCERTED and well-organised campaign has created alarm over human-induced climate change, industrial magnate Sir Arvi Parbo says.
Sir Arvi also said today key international reports warning of climate change, including Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, are biased and scrutiny of them has been suppressed.
The former head of Western Mining Corporation, BHP and Alcoa Australia, is the keynote speaker at a gathering of climate change sceptics being hosted by Western Australian Liberal MP Dr Dennis Jensen, at Parliament House.
It also is supported by the Lavoisier Group, an Australian organisation set up as a base for climate change sceptics.
One of the founders of the Lavoisier Group is former WMC chief executive Hugh Morgan, one of the businessmen who have formed a company to look at building Australia's first nuclear reactor.
The occasion will also serve as the launch of a new book, entitled Nine Facts About Climate Change, by former Institute of Public Affairs head Ray Evans.
Sir Arvi said he had kept an open mind through 20 years of listening to debate about climate change but was now witnessing a "semi-religious fervour" overshadowing it.
"One must admire the skilful way in which the public has been led to believe that there is no longer any uncertainty, and that disastrous climate change caused by humans is imminent," he said.
"The appointment of Mr Al Gore as adviser to the UK Government on climate change is a good example.
"I am not aware of Mr Gore's ranking as a climate scientist but he has undoubted credentials as a politician and someone who knows how to influence public opinion.
"His film, The Inconvenient Truth has been widely publicised, has been seen by, and has influenced millions of people around the world.
"It has been severely criticised for deliberately and grossly exaggerating and distorting the issues and I understand that the recently published summary for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contradicts a number of Mr Gore's major contentions.
"This, in contrast, has had virtually no publicity and no effect on the public."
Sir Arvi said the review of the economic impact of climate change by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern had been found to be biased and alarming and neither accurate nor objective by a review of distinguished scientists.
"As far as I am aware, this criticism has not been answered," he said.
"An uninvolved observer has to conclude that there has been a concerted and well-organised campaign to create worldwide apprehension and alarm.
"Reading and listening to the media and to political discussion, this campaign has succeeded. In fact it may have succeeded too well."
Greens climate change spokeswoman Senator Christine Milne later described the forum as "the last gasp of the Dad's Army of sceptics". "What they try to do is give the impression that climate change science is uncertain," she said.
"They've been reasonably successful because they've been well funded, as with the tobacco industry before them.
"Now this group of people is trying to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
"They are backed by the coal industry and the oil industry."
She said the Lavoisier Group was associated with the Liberal Party and right-wing bodies such as the HR Nicholls Society.
"They are a joke in terms of climate science but they are actually a cost to future generations because they confuse the public when there is now no doubt about the science."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21303658-1702,00.html
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Economics of Climate Change
By Jonas Hagen
UN Cronicle online
The Stern Review concludes that the cost of acting to decrease global emissions of greenhouse gases is far less than the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change if no mitigation efforts are made.
However, Mr. Stern warned that "even if we are sensible about climate change and get the emissions down, the climate is going to change still more than it has".
While the world was currently experiencing the effects of an increase in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees Celsius, he said that "even if we act strongly to decrease emissions, we've got another 1.5 to 2.0 degrees centigrade to come. So we've seen maybe a quarter or a third of temperature increase we're going to have to cope with. St. Petersburg, New York, London, Cairo, Cape Town, Shanghai, Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka-they're all under threat from sea-level rise, and many parts of the world will be under threat from hurricanes, typhoons, droughts and floods."
Mr. Stern also warned that the heatwaves that killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003 "will probably be standard by the time we get to 2050", and the Nile river, which ten countries depend on, could drop to one half of current water levels in the second half of this century.
However, the "business as usual" scenario-where no action is taken to reduce emissions- would lead to changes in the earth's climate, he said, "that we don't really understand, absolutely unprecedented and earth-transforming--the difference between where we are now and the last ice age".
Climate change also highlights global inequities, according to Mr. Stern. "All countries in the world will be affected; we're all in this together, but it is the poor that will be hit earliest and hardest. You just have to look at the effects of Katrina in New Orleans, or the effects of the typhoon that hit Bombay a couple of years ago [in July 2005]."
Global security is affected by climate change and "could cause conflict within and across countries", he said, adding that most African leaders he met with at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in January 2007 attributed the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to the climate problem-pushed out of their traditional lands by drought, and pastoralists were forced to move and came into conflict with settled farmers.
To reduce emissions, Mr. Stern suggested a range of solutions, which included taxes on emission-producing activities, the development and deployment of low-emission technologies, investing in energy efficiency, and preserving forests around the world.
Time is of the essence, he said. "Even though this is a long-term problem, we've got to start now. We've left it very late. If we had gotten our heads around this problem 20 years ago, it would have been much simpler and much cheaper. If we wait another 20 years, it will be still more difficult and expensive."
Rich countries must take responsibility for a problem they have caused, Mr. Stern said, suggesting emission reductions of 60 to 80 per cent for developed nations. He noted that France had set the goal of a 75 per cent reduction by 2050, the United Kingdom at 60 per cent and the State of California in the United States aimed at 80 per cent.
Developing countries, he added, must understand that they can continue to expand their economies and achieve progress on the Millennium Development Goals-eight targets for human development that UN Member States agreed upon to reach by 2015.
Mr. Stern cited the progressive policy in China, which is "reforesting, not deforesting". The country hoped to make energy production 20 per cent more efficient as part of its 11th five-year plan, which is already underway, he reported, adding that an $8,000 tax was established on sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in Beijing.
"I'm much more optimistic six or nine months ago about where the world is moving", he said.
He called on the international community to "act strongly and on the right kind of scale", stating further that the United Nations is "a place we can really take that forward in a very powerful way".
Mr. Sachs agreed that "we have to move quickly and urgently on this issue. That means setting in place a full century of transition, with much of the transition being completed by 2050."
Some 40 or 50 years from today, energy sources should be very different from what they are today, he said. Supplying significant amounts of energy from nuclear power and coal-fired plants that used carbon sequestration technology, where carbon produced by the burning coal is pumped back into the earth, is "within reach", he noted.
Such plants must be built quickly in China or India, in order to see if they are viable as sources of clean energy. "Once those plants are done, everything is going to become a lot clearer and less hypothetical than it is now", Mr. Sachs pointed out.
UN Cronicle online
The Stern Review concludes that the cost of acting to decrease global emissions of greenhouse gases is far less than the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change if no mitigation efforts are made.
However, Mr. Stern warned that "even if we are sensible about climate change and get the emissions down, the climate is going to change still more than it has".
While the world was currently experiencing the effects of an increase in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees Celsius, he said that "even if we act strongly to decrease emissions, we've got another 1.5 to 2.0 degrees centigrade to come. So we've seen maybe a quarter or a third of temperature increase we're going to have to cope with. St. Petersburg, New York, London, Cairo, Cape Town, Shanghai, Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka-they're all under threat from sea-level rise, and many parts of the world will be under threat from hurricanes, typhoons, droughts and floods."
Mr. Stern also warned that the heatwaves that killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003 "will probably be standard by the time we get to 2050", and the Nile river, which ten countries depend on, could drop to one half of current water levels in the second half of this century.
However, the "business as usual" scenario-where no action is taken to reduce emissions- would lead to changes in the earth's climate, he said, "that we don't really understand, absolutely unprecedented and earth-transforming--the difference between where we are now and the last ice age".
Climate change also highlights global inequities, according to Mr. Stern. "All countries in the world will be affected; we're all in this together, but it is the poor that will be hit earliest and hardest. You just have to look at the effects of Katrina in New Orleans, or the effects of the typhoon that hit Bombay a couple of years ago [in July 2005]."
Global security is affected by climate change and "could cause conflict within and across countries", he said, adding that most African leaders he met with at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in January 2007 attributed the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to the climate problem-pushed out of their traditional lands by drought, and pastoralists were forced to move and came into conflict with settled farmers.
To reduce emissions, Mr. Stern suggested a range of solutions, which included taxes on emission-producing activities, the development and deployment of low-emission technologies, investing in energy efficiency, and preserving forests around the world.
Time is of the essence, he said. "Even though this is a long-term problem, we've got to start now. We've left it very late. If we had gotten our heads around this problem 20 years ago, it would have been much simpler and much cheaper. If we wait another 20 years, it will be still more difficult and expensive."
Rich countries must take responsibility for a problem they have caused, Mr. Stern said, suggesting emission reductions of 60 to 80 per cent for developed nations. He noted that France had set the goal of a 75 per cent reduction by 2050, the United Kingdom at 60 per cent and the State of California in the United States aimed at 80 per cent.
Developing countries, he added, must understand that they can continue to expand their economies and achieve progress on the Millennium Development Goals-eight targets for human development that UN Member States agreed upon to reach by 2015.
Mr. Stern cited the progressive policy in China, which is "reforesting, not deforesting". The country hoped to make energy production 20 per cent more efficient as part of its 11th five-year plan, which is already underway, he reported, adding that an $8,000 tax was established on sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in Beijing.
"I'm much more optimistic six or nine months ago about where the world is moving", he said.
He called on the international community to "act strongly and on the right kind of scale", stating further that the United Nations is "a place we can really take that forward in a very powerful way".
Mr. Sachs agreed that "we have to move quickly and urgently on this issue. That means setting in place a full century of transition, with much of the transition being completed by 2050."
Some 40 or 50 years from today, energy sources should be very different from what they are today, he said. Supplying significant amounts of energy from nuclear power and coal-fired plants that used carbon sequestration technology, where carbon produced by the burning coal is pumped back into the earth, is "within reach", he noted.
Such plants must be built quickly in China or India, in order to see if they are viable as sources of clean energy. "Once those plants are done, everything is going to become a lot clearer and less hypothetical than it is now", Mr. Sachs pointed out.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Changing Climate on Climate Change
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
The message, it seems, has finally gotten through: global warming represents a serious threat to our planet. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, world leaders saw climate change, for the first time, topping the list of global concerns.
Europe and Japan have shown their commitment to reduce global warming by imposing costs on themselves and their producers, even if it places them at a competitive disadvantage. The biggest obstacle until now has been the United States. The Clinton administration had called for bold action as far back as 1993, proposing what was in effect a tax on carbon emissions; but an alliance of polluters, led by the coal, oil, and auto industries beat back this initiative.
To the scientific community, the evidence on climate change has, of course, been overwhelming for more than a decade and a half. I participated in the second assessment of the scientific evidence conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which perhaps made one critical mistake: it underestimated the pace at which global warming was occurring. The Fourth Assessment, which was just issued, confirms the mounting evidence and the increasing conviction that global warming is the result of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The increased pace of warming reflects the impact of complex non-linear factors and a variety of “tipping points” that can result in acceleration of the process. For instance, as the Arctic ice cap melts, less sunlight is reflected. Seemingly dramatic changes in weather patterns including the melting of glaciers in Greenland and the thawing of the Siberian permafrost have at last convinced most business leaders that the time for action is now.
Recently, even President Bush seems to have woken up. But a closer look at what he is doing, and not doing, shows clearly that he has mostly heard the call of his campaign contributors from the oil and coal industries, and that he has once again put their interests over the global interest in reducing emissions. If he were truly concerned about global warming, how could he have endorsed the construction of coal-fired electricity plants, even if those plants use more efficient technologies than have been employed in the past?
What is required, first and foremost, are market-based incentives to induce Americans to use less energy and to produce more energy in ways that emit less carbon. But Bush has neither eliminated massive subsidies to the oil industry (though, fortunately, the Democratic Congress may take action) nor provided adequate incentives for conservation. Even his call for energy independence should be seen for what it is a new rationale for old corporate subsidies.
A policy that entails draining America’s limited oil supplies I call it “drain America first” will leave the US even more dependent on foreign oil. The US imposes a tariff of more than 50 cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, but subsidizes inefficient corn-based American ethanol heavily indeed , it requires more than a gallon of gasoline to fertilize, harvest, transport, process, and distill corn to yield one gallon of ethanol.
As the world’s largest polluter, accounting for roughly a quarter of global carbon emissions, America’s reluctance to do more is perhaps understandable, if not forgivable. But claims by Bush that America cannot afford to do anything about global warming ring hollow: other advanced industrial countries with comparable standards of living emit only a fraction of what the US emits per dollar of GDP.
As a result, American firms with access to cheap energy are given a big competitive advantage over firms in Europe and elsewhere. Some in Europe worry that stringent action on global warming may be counterproductive: energy-intensive industries may simply move to the US or other countries that pay little attention to emissions. And there is more than a grain of truth to these concerns.
A striking fact about climate change is that there is little overlap between the countries that are most vulnerable to its effects mainly poor countries in the South that can ill afford to deal with the consequences and the countries, like the US, that are the largest polluters. What is at stake is in part a moral issue, a matter of global social justice.
The Kyoto Protocol represented the international community’s attempt to begin to deal with global warming in a fair and efficient way. But it left out a majority of the sources of emissions, and unless something is done to include the US and the developing countries in a meaningful way, it will be little more than a symbolic gesture. There needs to be a new “coalition of the willing,” this time perhaps led by Europe and this time directed at a real danger.
This “coalition of the willing” could agree to certain basic standards: to forego building coal-fired plants, increase automobiles’ fuel efficiency, and provide targeted assistance to developing countries to enhance their energy efficiency and reduce emissions. Coalition members could also agree to provide stronger incentives to their own producers, through either more stringent caps on emissions or higher taxes on pollution. They could then agree to impose taxes on products from other countries including the US that are produced in ways that unnecessarily add substantially to global warming. What is at stake is not protecting domestic producers, but protecting our planet.
The changing climate on climate change provides political leaders in Europe and other potential members of this “coalition of the willing” an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond mere rhetoric. The time to act is now.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at Columbia University and was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Clinton and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank. His latest book is Making Globalization Work.
The message, it seems, has finally gotten through: global warming represents a serious threat to our planet. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, world leaders saw climate change, for the first time, topping the list of global concerns.
Europe and Japan have shown their commitment to reduce global warming by imposing costs on themselves and their producers, even if it places them at a competitive disadvantage. The biggest obstacle until now has been the United States. The Clinton administration had called for bold action as far back as 1993, proposing what was in effect a tax on carbon emissions; but an alliance of polluters, led by the coal, oil, and auto industries beat back this initiative.
To the scientific community, the evidence on climate change has, of course, been overwhelming for more than a decade and a half. I participated in the second assessment of the scientific evidence conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which perhaps made one critical mistake: it underestimated the pace at which global warming was occurring. The Fourth Assessment, which was just issued, confirms the mounting evidence and the increasing conviction that global warming is the result of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The increased pace of warming reflects the impact of complex non-linear factors and a variety of “tipping points” that can result in acceleration of the process. For instance, as the Arctic ice cap melts, less sunlight is reflected. Seemingly dramatic changes in weather patterns including the melting of glaciers in Greenland and the thawing of the Siberian permafrost have at last convinced most business leaders that the time for action is now.
Recently, even President Bush seems to have woken up. But a closer look at what he is doing, and not doing, shows clearly that he has mostly heard the call of his campaign contributors from the oil and coal industries, and that he has once again put their interests over the global interest in reducing emissions. If he were truly concerned about global warming, how could he have endorsed the construction of coal-fired electricity plants, even if those plants use more efficient technologies than have been employed in the past?
What is required, first and foremost, are market-based incentives to induce Americans to use less energy and to produce more energy in ways that emit less carbon. But Bush has neither eliminated massive subsidies to the oil industry (though, fortunately, the Democratic Congress may take action) nor provided adequate incentives for conservation. Even his call for energy independence should be seen for what it is a new rationale for old corporate subsidies.
A policy that entails draining America’s limited oil supplies I call it “drain America first” will leave the US even more dependent on foreign oil. The US imposes a tariff of more than 50 cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, but subsidizes inefficient corn-based American ethanol heavily indeed , it requires more than a gallon of gasoline to fertilize, harvest, transport, process, and distill corn to yield one gallon of ethanol.
As the world’s largest polluter, accounting for roughly a quarter of global carbon emissions, America’s reluctance to do more is perhaps understandable, if not forgivable. But claims by Bush that America cannot afford to do anything about global warming ring hollow: other advanced industrial countries with comparable standards of living emit only a fraction of what the US emits per dollar of GDP.
As a result, American firms with access to cheap energy are given a big competitive advantage over firms in Europe and elsewhere. Some in Europe worry that stringent action on global warming may be counterproductive: energy-intensive industries may simply move to the US or other countries that pay little attention to emissions. And there is more than a grain of truth to these concerns.
A striking fact about climate change is that there is little overlap between the countries that are most vulnerable to its effects mainly poor countries in the South that can ill afford to deal with the consequences and the countries, like the US, that are the largest polluters. What is at stake is in part a moral issue, a matter of global social justice.
The Kyoto Protocol represented the international community’s attempt to begin to deal with global warming in a fair and efficient way. But it left out a majority of the sources of emissions, and unless something is done to include the US and the developing countries in a meaningful way, it will be little more than a symbolic gesture. There needs to be a new “coalition of the willing,” this time perhaps led by Europe and this time directed at a real danger.
This “coalition of the willing” could agree to certain basic standards: to forego building coal-fired plants, increase automobiles’ fuel efficiency, and provide targeted assistance to developing countries to enhance their energy efficiency and reduce emissions. Coalition members could also agree to provide stronger incentives to their own producers, through either more stringent caps on emissions or higher taxes on pollution. They could then agree to impose taxes on products from other countries including the US that are produced in ways that unnecessarily add substantially to global warming. What is at stake is not protecting domestic producers, but protecting our planet.
The changing climate on climate change provides political leaders in Europe and other potential members of this “coalition of the willing” an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond mere rhetoric. The time to act is now.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at Columbia University and was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Clinton and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank. His latest book is Making Globalization Work.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Big donation for environmental studies centre
pic: Yahoo founder Jerry Yang.
February 16, 2007
SMH
Jerry Yang, co-founder of internet media company Yahoo, is donating $US75 million ($A96m) to Stanford University, which will spend most of the money on a new environmental studies center, the university said on Thursday.
Yang, who started Yahoo in 1994 with fellow student David Filo while working on his doctorate, planned to make the donations over a period of several years, said Howard Pearson, director of Stanford's development office.
It will be the largest of several donations Yang has made to his alma mater, although Pearson declined to say how much he has previously given.
Yang would make the donations with his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, also a Stanford graduate.
Of the total, $US50 million will pay for a new environment and energy building and $US5 million will go toward a doctor training facility for Stanford's medical school.
The remaining $US20 million will be used for future projects, Stanford said.
Yang's net worth was estimated at $US2.4 billion in 2006, according to a report in Forbes magazine last September.
Stanford received $US911 million in alumni donations in its fiscal year ended August 31, up more than 50 percent from the $US603 million the previous year.
Although Yang obtained both bachelor's and master's degrees from Stanford, he never completed his doctorate in electrical engineering, and his biography on Yahoo says he "is currently on a leave of absence" from the program.
Reuters
Friday, February 02, 2007
UN panel blames humans for global warming
The United Nations (UN) climate panel has agreed that human activities are causing global warming that may bring more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas, delegates say.
The panel's report, due for release tonight and bolstering conclusions from a 2001 study, may put pressure on governments and companies to do more to curb greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Scientists and government officials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative group on global warming, agreed it was "very likely" that human activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, delegates say.
In IPCC language, "very likely" means at least 90 per cent probability and is the strongest link to human activities since the IPCC was set up in 1988.
The previous study in 2001 said a link was "likely" or 66 per cent probable.
IPCC officials declined comment, saying the report will be released soon.
The IPCC, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.
The report is the first of four this year by the panel that will outline threats of warming.
Delegates say the Paris meeting, looking at the science of global warming, later agreed a "best estimate" that temperatures will rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 over pre-industrial levels, the biggest change in a century for thousands of years.
Rain, less ice
It says bigger gains, of up to 6.3 degrees Celsius in one model, cannot be ruled out but do not fit well with other data.
The world is now about 5 degrees Celsius warmer than during the last Ice Age.
The draft accord projects that Arctic ice will shrink, and perhaps disappear in summers by 2100, while heatwaves and downpours would get more frequent.
The numbers of tropical hurricanes might decrease but the storms would become stronger.
The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says.
Sea levels are likely to rise by between 28 and 43 centimetres this century, a lower range than forecast in 2001.
Rising seas threaten low-lying Pacific islands and low-lying coastal nations from Bangladesh to the Netherlands.
"Governments planning coastal defences have to live with large uncertainties for now and quite some time in future," Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.
Professor Rahmstorf wrote a report last year saying that observations of past changes indicated a bigger rise by 2100, of 50 to 140 centimetres.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris, near where the IPCC experts were meeting, was to shut off its famous night-time illuminations for five minutes on Thursday night (local time) to draw attention to energy use.
Many experts hope the IPCC report will spur stalled talks on expanding the fight against global warming.
Thirty-five industrial nations aim to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 under the UN Kyoto Protocol and want outsiders such as the United States, China and India to do more.
Last week President George W Bush said climate change was a "serious challenge".
But he has stopped short of capping emissions despite pressure from Democrats who control both houses of Congress, arguing Kyoto would damage the economy.
- Reuters
The panel's report, due for release tonight and bolstering conclusions from a 2001 study, may put pressure on governments and companies to do more to curb greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
Scientists and government officials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative group on global warming, agreed it was "very likely" that human activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, delegates say.
In IPCC language, "very likely" means at least 90 per cent probability and is the strongest link to human activities since the IPCC was set up in 1988.
The previous study in 2001 said a link was "likely" or 66 per cent probable.
IPCC officials declined comment, saying the report will be released soon.
The IPCC, grouping 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also set to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.
The report is the first of four this year by the panel that will outline threats of warming.
Delegates say the Paris meeting, looking at the science of global warming, later agreed a "best estimate" that temperatures will rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 over pre-industrial levels, the biggest change in a century for thousands of years.
Rain, less ice
It says bigger gains, of up to 6.3 degrees Celsius in one model, cannot be ruled out but do not fit well with other data.
The world is now about 5 degrees Celsius warmer than during the last Ice Age.
The draft accord projects that Arctic ice will shrink, and perhaps disappear in summers by 2100, while heatwaves and downpours would get more frequent.
The numbers of tropical hurricanes might decrease but the storms would become stronger.
The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says.
Sea levels are likely to rise by between 28 and 43 centimetres this century, a lower range than forecast in 2001.
Rising seas threaten low-lying Pacific islands and low-lying coastal nations from Bangladesh to the Netherlands.
"Governments planning coastal defences have to live with large uncertainties for now and quite some time in future," Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.
Professor Rahmstorf wrote a report last year saying that observations of past changes indicated a bigger rise by 2100, of 50 to 140 centimetres.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris, near where the IPCC experts were meeting, was to shut off its famous night-time illuminations for five minutes on Thursday night (local time) to draw attention to energy use.
Many experts hope the IPCC report will spur stalled talks on expanding the fight against global warming.
Thirty-five industrial nations aim to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 under the UN Kyoto Protocol and want outsiders such as the United States, China and India to do more.
Last week President George W Bush said climate change was a "serious challenge".
But he has stopped short of capping emissions despite pressure from Democrats who control both houses of Congress, arguing Kyoto would damage the economy.
- Reuters
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Australian of the Year
Environmentalist awarded top honour
January 25, 2007
SMH
Environmentalist Tim Flannery got an early birthday present today when he was named the 2007 Australian of the Year, giving him a platform to convince Australians about the dangers of over-consumption.
As a scientist who has been warning about sustainability and the risk of climate change for decades, public opinion is finally catching up with Dr Flannery.
But the next year will give him an even greater opportunity to convince sceptics that the globe needs to better live within its means.
Prime Minister John Howard, a late climate change convert, bestowed the honour on Dr Flannery at a ceremony at Parliament House tonight.
"He has encouraged Australians into new ways of thinking about our environmental history and future ecological challenges," Mr Howard said.
A renowned explorer and palaeontologist, Dr Flannery, who will turn 51 on Sunday, was the bookies' favourite to take out the award.
His expertise on climate change has come into its own of late as the nation grows increasingly concerned about what global warming could do to our already dry continent.
He has written best-selling books on the issue, been an environmental adviser to the South Australian and federal governments, catalogued the mammals of Melanesia, discovered dinosaur fossils and kangaroo species in his own country, and taught at Harvard.
Dr Flannery accepted his award with pride, vowing to continue his quest to help Australians live sustainably.
"This award means I have an obligation to the people of Australia to continue the quest to create a sustainable future for our country and for our children," he said.
"We can only call ourselves Australian if we have a long-term future in this country and that means to live sustainably."
Thursday, January 18, 2007
George Bush has plan for global warming
“George Bush has a plan to fight Global warming. Sending 20,000 troops on a mission to the sun.”
David Letterman
David Letterman
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Affluent lifestyles harming climate
Stephanie Peatling
December 7, 2006
SMH
AFFLUENT lifestyles are producing more waste, using more water and energy and relying more on cars with damaging effects on the environment.
The State of the Environment report, produced every five years and released yesterday, warned that most of the threats reported in 2001 were still present and, in some cases, had worsened.
The past decade had produced higher incomes and lower unemployment, the report found, but the higher consumption rates this brought had affected the environment.
"Realising a sustainable human environment requires a reduction in net consumption and waste," the report found.
"This will involve greater population densities than currently is the case, significant increases in building and material recycling, the capture and use of stormwater, the recycling of wastewater and biological waste, and improved urban form and urban structures.
"It also requires changes in behaviour by individuals."
The chairman of the report committee, University of Queensland Associate Professor Bob Beeton, said "business as usual is not an acceptable model". "We have got to plan to live in this country," he said.
A different approach was needed to get people thinking about their impact on the environment and changing their lifestyles, Professor Beeton said.
"The shock-horror approach is not working," he said.
"If you scare people with something they can't fix they switch off."
Some environmental programs were having unintended consequences and he warned against assuming that market-based approaches would solve natural problems.
The Federal Government will announce a taskforce soon to look at carbon emissions trading and its potential impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also pursuing a national water trading market to help prevent water shortages.
The Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, said the Federal Government was "the best friend the environment had ever had".
Spending on environmental programs had increased in the past decade, he said, and the Government was near to its target of planting 1 billion trees.
But the Opposition's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, said despite the billions of dollars spent, most environmental indicators were going backwards.
"On John Howard's watch, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and our vital waterways are deteriorating," he said.
Mr Albanese released a discussion paper raising the possibility of combining land, water and biodiversity programs to cut back on bureaucracy and increase the amount of money spent on environmental protection.
"Labor will establish national targets for environmental improvement, take immediate action to help avoid dangerous climate change and will put 1500 gigalitres per annum back into the Murray River within 10 years," Mr Albanese said.
The Greens senator Rachel Siewert said the report attempted to "greenwash the severe environmental crisis".
"The report acknowledges that increasing demand for water is placing significant pressure on Australia's inland water systems and notes that the impact of wetlands has been dramatic," she said.
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, said: "Our greenhouse emissions continue to rise, the condition of vital waterways is deteriorating and the decline of important indicator species, including many frogs and fish, is reaching alarming levels."
UNDER THREAT
- Greenhouse gas emissions to increase 22 per cent by 2020.
- Rainfall in the eastern states has been below average for five years.
- 231 nationally significant wetlands under threat.
- Ocean temperatures have risen 0.28C since 1950.
December 7, 2006
SMH
AFFLUENT lifestyles are producing more waste, using more water and energy and relying more on cars with damaging effects on the environment.
The State of the Environment report, produced every five years and released yesterday, warned that most of the threats reported in 2001 were still present and, in some cases, had worsened.
The past decade had produced higher incomes and lower unemployment, the report found, but the higher consumption rates this brought had affected the environment.
"Realising a sustainable human environment requires a reduction in net consumption and waste," the report found.
"This will involve greater population densities than currently is the case, significant increases in building and material recycling, the capture and use of stormwater, the recycling of wastewater and biological waste, and improved urban form and urban structures.
"It also requires changes in behaviour by individuals."
The chairman of the report committee, University of Queensland Associate Professor Bob Beeton, said "business as usual is not an acceptable model". "We have got to plan to live in this country," he said.
A different approach was needed to get people thinking about their impact on the environment and changing their lifestyles, Professor Beeton said.
"The shock-horror approach is not working," he said.
"If you scare people with something they can't fix they switch off."
Some environmental programs were having unintended consequences and he warned against assuming that market-based approaches would solve natural problems.
The Federal Government will announce a taskforce soon to look at carbon emissions trading and its potential impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
It is also pursuing a national water trading market to help prevent water shortages.
The Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, said the Federal Government was "the best friend the environment had ever had".
Spending on environmental programs had increased in the past decade, he said, and the Government was near to its target of planting 1 billion trees.
But the Opposition's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, said despite the billions of dollars spent, most environmental indicators were going backwards.
"On John Howard's watch, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and our vital waterways are deteriorating," he said.
Mr Albanese released a discussion paper raising the possibility of combining land, water and biodiversity programs to cut back on bureaucracy and increase the amount of money spent on environmental protection.
"Labor will establish national targets for environmental improvement, take immediate action to help avoid dangerous climate change and will put 1500 gigalitres per annum back into the Murray River within 10 years," Mr Albanese said.
The Greens senator Rachel Siewert said the report attempted to "greenwash the severe environmental crisis".
"The report acknowledges that increasing demand for water is placing significant pressure on Australia's inland water systems and notes that the impact of wetlands has been dramatic," she said.
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, said: "Our greenhouse emissions continue to rise, the condition of vital waterways is deteriorating and the decline of important indicator species, including many frogs and fish, is reaching alarming levels."
UNDER THREAT
- Greenhouse gas emissions to increase 22 per cent by 2020.
- Rainfall in the eastern states has been below average for five years.
- 231 nationally significant wetlands under threat.
- Ocean temperatures have risen 0.28C since 1950.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Climate change 'to impact big miners'
December 11, 2006
Mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are among six Australian companies most at risk from the impact of climate change, a report says.
Among the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) top-100 listed companies, those involved in emissions-intensive industries are most at risk, says Citigroup research.
In a surprise result, property trusts are among those most likely to benefit from climate change as they could earn emissions credits from a likely trading scheme by reducing energy use when constructing environmentally friendly buildings.
The companies most at risk are Rio Tinto, BHP and BlueScope Steel, Caltex, Iluka and OneSteel, according to the research titled Climate change and the ASX100 - An assessment of risks and opportunities.
Climate change effects companies' profitability due to the cost of potentially pricing carbon,and through weather and climate impacts, the report says.
"Those at risk include emissions-intensive companies, facilities particularly exposed to severe weather damage, agriculture and water-intensive industries exposed to drought, and in the long term insurers that may misprice catastrophe risk," the report said.
BlueScope Steel is the most emissions-intensive company by double that of the next companies, Iluka, OneSteel and AGL and Alumina, when levels of carbon dioxide production for each $10,000 market of capitalisation were compared, the report said.
Citigroup Investment Research managing director Bruce Rolph said some of Australia's biggest companies were beginning to recognise the importance of climate change.
"Some of the big resource companies are taking it seriously - both the issues to do with emissions but also the understanding what physical risks there may be to their portfolio of assets," Mr Rolph said.
He said Rio, BHP and Alumina were among companies most aware of climate change issues and all had strategies in place to reduce emissions.
The report noted that the big miners could be exposed to falling coal sales, as governments seek alternative energy sources to meet climate change commitments.
Prime Minister John Howard announced a task force on the weekend to inquire into Australia's possible involvement in an emissions trading scheme.
The task force of bureaucrats and resource industry figures, will also investigate how Australia might be involved in an emissions trading system that involved other major nations.
Mr Rolph said the research found that the "winners" in renewable energy and gas, as they had low or zero emissions.
"Winners were also in the property industry where a number of property trusts are building sustainable buildings and in some cases earning emissions credits (in the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme) through reducing energy use," he said.
Top of the list of "winners" were property investment company Investa Property Group, energy retailer Origin Energy Limited, and metals recycler Sims Group Ltd.
The airline, media and retail sectors were among the 40 per cent of ASX100 companies that failed to provide relevant climate change information and were therefore not included in the research.
AAP
Mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are among six Australian companies most at risk from the impact of climate change, a report says.
Among the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) top-100 listed companies, those involved in emissions-intensive industries are most at risk, says Citigroup research.
In a surprise result, property trusts are among those most likely to benefit from climate change as they could earn emissions credits from a likely trading scheme by reducing energy use when constructing environmentally friendly buildings.
The companies most at risk are Rio Tinto, BHP and BlueScope Steel, Caltex, Iluka and OneSteel, according to the research titled Climate change and the ASX100 - An assessment of risks and opportunities.
Climate change effects companies' profitability due to the cost of potentially pricing carbon,and through weather and climate impacts, the report says.
"Those at risk include emissions-intensive companies, facilities particularly exposed to severe weather damage, agriculture and water-intensive industries exposed to drought, and in the long term insurers that may misprice catastrophe risk," the report said.
BlueScope Steel is the most emissions-intensive company by double that of the next companies, Iluka, OneSteel and AGL and Alumina, when levels of carbon dioxide production for each $10,000 market of capitalisation were compared, the report said.
Citigroup Investment Research managing director Bruce Rolph said some of Australia's biggest companies were beginning to recognise the importance of climate change.
"Some of the big resource companies are taking it seriously - both the issues to do with emissions but also the understanding what physical risks there may be to their portfolio of assets," Mr Rolph said.
He said Rio, BHP and Alumina were among companies most aware of climate change issues and all had strategies in place to reduce emissions.
The report noted that the big miners could be exposed to falling coal sales, as governments seek alternative energy sources to meet climate change commitments.
Prime Minister John Howard announced a task force on the weekend to inquire into Australia's possible involvement in an emissions trading scheme.
The task force of bureaucrats and resource industry figures, will also investigate how Australia might be involved in an emissions trading system that involved other major nations.
Mr Rolph said the research found that the "winners" in renewable energy and gas, as they had low or zero emissions.
"Winners were also in the property industry where a number of property trusts are building sustainable buildings and in some cases earning emissions credits (in the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme) through reducing energy use," he said.
Top of the list of "winners" were property investment company Investa Property Group, energy retailer Origin Energy Limited, and metals recycler Sims Group Ltd.
The airline, media and retail sectors were among the 40 per cent of ASX100 companies that failed to provide relevant climate change information and were therefore not included in the research.
AAP
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Attenborough: Climate is changing
Climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world, naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said.
The veteran broadcaster said scientific data clearly showed that human-induced climate change was now beyond doubt.
Sir David, 80, added that everyone had a responsibility to change their behaviour, including being less wasteful and more energy efficient.
It is the first time Sir David has voiced his concerns in public about the impacts of global warming.
His comments come ahead of a two-part BBC series in which he examines the impacts of global warming on the Earth.
Sir David has been criticised by environmentalists in the past for not speaking out on the matter.
If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something
Sir David Attenborough"If you take one moment in time, you can't be sure what the trend is," he told the BBC.
"Now... when we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather."
Sir David, whose distinguished broadcasting career spans more than half a century, says everyone has a responsibility to act: "What people (must) do is to change their behaviour and their attitudes.
"If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.
His comments came as a UK parliamentary body, the All-Party Environment Group, issued a report labelling the government a "climate laggard" for its record on reducing emissions.
Sir David, whose natural history programmes have been watched by millions of people around the world, is the latest high-profile figure to say the world is facing a climate crisis.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; the government's chief scientist Sir David King, and former Royal Society president Sir Robert May have all expressed public concern on the issue.
This week, former US Vice President Al Gore has been at the Cannes Film Festival to promote a documentary on climate change.
Mr Gore told festival goers that the world was facing a "planetary emergency" due to global warming.
The man who beat him to the White House in the 2000 US presidential elections, George W Bush, remains sceptical about the influence of human activity on the state of the planet's atmosphere.
He says binding targets to reduce greenhouse emissions are inefficient and would harm the US economy.
Last year, he launched a partnership alongside five Asia-Pacific nations to promote technological solutions for reducing the world's dependency on fossil fuels.
Sir David will present a two-part television programme that will explore how climate change is altering the planet, from drought-hit rainforest to the decline of polar bears.
Sir David Attenborough presents Are We Changing Planet Earth?
on BBC One, Wednesday, 24 May 2006, at 2100 BST
BBC
The veteran broadcaster said scientific data clearly showed that human-induced climate change was now beyond doubt.
Sir David, 80, added that everyone had a responsibility to change their behaviour, including being less wasteful and more energy efficient.
It is the first time Sir David has voiced his concerns in public about the impacts of global warming.
His comments come ahead of a two-part BBC series in which he examines the impacts of global warming on the Earth.
Sir David has been criticised by environmentalists in the past for not speaking out on the matter.
If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something
Sir David Attenborough"If you take one moment in time, you can't be sure what the trend is," he told the BBC.
"Now... when we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather."
Sir David, whose distinguished broadcasting career spans more than half a century, says everyone has a responsibility to act: "What people (must) do is to change their behaviour and their attitudes.
"If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.
His comments came as a UK parliamentary body, the All-Party Environment Group, issued a report labelling the government a "climate laggard" for its record on reducing emissions.
Sir David, whose natural history programmes have been watched by millions of people around the world, is the latest high-profile figure to say the world is facing a climate crisis.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; the government's chief scientist Sir David King, and former Royal Society president Sir Robert May have all expressed public concern on the issue.
This week, former US Vice President Al Gore has been at the Cannes Film Festival to promote a documentary on climate change.
Mr Gore told festival goers that the world was facing a "planetary emergency" due to global warming.
The man who beat him to the White House in the 2000 US presidential elections, George W Bush, remains sceptical about the influence of human activity on the state of the planet's atmosphere.
He says binding targets to reduce greenhouse emissions are inefficient and would harm the US economy.
Last year, he launched a partnership alongside five Asia-Pacific nations to promote technological solutions for reducing the world's dependency on fossil fuels.
Sir David will present a two-part television programme that will explore how climate change is altering the planet, from drought-hit rainforest to the decline of polar bears.
Sir David Attenborough presents Are We Changing Planet Earth?
on BBC One, Wednesday, 24 May 2006, at 2100 BST
BBC
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Climate change special: State of denial
04 November 2006
NewScientist
Fred Pearce
KEVIN TRENBERTH reckons he is a marked man. He has argued that last year's devastating Atlantic hurricane season, which spawned hurricane Katrina, was linked to global warming. For the many politicians and minority of scientists who insist there is no evidence for any such link, Trenberth's views are unacceptable and some have called for him step down from an international panel studying climate change. "The attacks on me are clearly designed to get me fired or to resign," says Trenberth.
The attacks fit a familiar pattern. Sceptics have also set their sights on scientists who have spoken out about the accelerating meltdown of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the thawing of the planet's permafrost. These concerns will be addressed in the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global organisation created by the UN in 1988 to assess the risks of human-induced climate change. Every time one of these assessments is released, about once every five years, some of the American scientists who have played a part in producing it become the targets of concerted attacks apparently designed to bring down their reputations and careers. At stake is the credibility of scientists who fear our planet is hurtling towards disaster and want to warn the public in the US and beyond.
So when the next IPCC report is released in February 2007, who will be the targets and why? When New Scientist spoke to researchers on both sides of the climate divide it became clear that they are ready for a showdown. If the acrimony were to become so intense that American scientists were forced to stop helping in the preparation of IPCC reports, it could seriously dent the organisation and rob the world of some significant voices in the climate change debate.
One of those who knows only too well what it is like to come under attack from climate change sceptics is Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. The lead author of a chapter in the 1995 IPCC report that talked for the first time about the "discernible human influence on global climate", he was savaged by sceptics and accused of introducing this wording without consulting colleagues who had helped write the chapter. One sceptic called it the "most disturbing corruption of the peer-review process in 60 years". Another accused him of "scientific cleansing" - at a time when the phrase "ethnic cleansing" was synonymous with genocide in Bosnia. The IPCC investigated and dismissed the allegations as baseless.
Another scientist to suffer the ire of the sceptics was Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He was attacked after the IPCC assessment in 2001, which highlighted his "hockey stick" graph showing that temperatures began a rapid rise in recent decades and are now higher than at any time over the past thousand years. The sceptics accused Mann of cherry-picking his data and criticised him for refusing to disclose his statistical methods which, they claimed, biased the study to show recent warming (New Scientist, 18 March, p 40). Last year, Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, ordered Mann to provide the committee with voluminous details of his working procedures, computer programs and past funding. Barton's demands were widely condemned by fellow scientists and on Capitol Hill. "There are people who believe that if they bring down Mike Mann, they can bring down the IPCC," said Santer at the time. Mann's findings, which will be endorsed in the new IPCC report, have since been replicated by other studies.
Santer says, however, that he expects attacks to continue on other fronts. "There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.
“There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disreputeBen Santer, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory”
The "contrarians" include scientists and politicians who are sceptical of the scientific evidence for climate change. Some of those who spoke to New Scientist insist that they are not planning character assassinations, and intend merely to engage in robust scientific debate, not least by challenging the IPCC's status as the arbiter of truth on climate change.
Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.
The money trail
Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."
So what is this money buying? For one, an ability to coordinate responses to the IPCC reports. Michaels told New Scientist that a flashpoint in the upcoming report could be hurricanes. Trenberth, who is the head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has angered the IPCC's critics by supporting the idea of a link between global warming and the intensity of hurricanes. The sceptics insist there is no published evidence to back this up. Trenberth says he is simply putting two established facts together: "Sea-surface temperature is rising because of global warming, and high sea-surface temperatures make for more intense storms."
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and with a US administration that has a record of hostility to concerns about climate change, Trenberth's statements are political dynamite. "I suspect the sceptics will want to try and dismantle the argument that there is a link," Mann says. Santer agrees: "If I was an industry-funded sceptic, I'd hit that area hard, for sure." Trenberth himself fears the worst. "I would not be surprised if the hurricane aspect of the report is targeted, along with my own role," he says. "But I am proud of what we have achieved."
One lead author of the chapter on hurricanes told New Scientist that it will include discussion of two papers published last year in Science and Nature, both of which showed that the frequency of the most intense hurricanes has increased in recent years. Even if Trenberth and his co-authors do not directly attribute this to global warming, the mere mention of these papers in the context of climate change is likely to provoke criticism.
Trenberth's opinions have already alienated his co-author Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Florida. Landsea disputed Trenberth's view, arguing that older measurements made before the era of satellite observation were not reliable enough to make the claim stick (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 36). When IPCC chiefs refused to censure Trenberth for his remarks directly linking last year's hurricanes to climate change, Landsea resigned, claiming that the IPCC had been "subverted, its neutrality lost".
Another sensitive area is the concern that existing models of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica massively underestimate future melting and consequent sea-level rise. "Our understanding of the dynamics of ice-sheet destruction has completely changed in the last five years," says Richard Alley of Penn State University, a lead author of the chapter on ice sheets who expects to find himself in the firing line over this issue. "We used to think it would take 10,000 years for melting to penetrate to the bottom of the ice sheet. But now we know it can take just 10 seconds," he says.
The rethink has come from the discovery that when surface water from melting ice drains down though crevasses it can lubricate the join between ice and bedrock. This mechanism appears to explain the faster discharge of ice from Greenland into the Atlantic, but it has yet to be incorporated into ice-sheet models, which still assume that the limiting factor is the rate at which heat penetrates through solid ice.
Michaels dismisses the idea of more rapid loss as "hysteria", and has thrown down a challenge to the IPCC to justify any change to the ice-sheet models. "[The IPCC] criticise people like me for saying the models are wrong, so it's going to be really interesting to see how they respond when their own people say the models are wrong." Alley, however, points out that leading glaciologists mostly agree that the current generation of ice-sheet models are wanting, whereas climatologists are mostly happy with their models.
A third focus for debate will be the way the IPCC treats recent reports of climate change disrupting the natural carbon cycle more than anticipated. This has to do with the release of large amounts of CO2 from rainforests and soils, and methane from permafrost and beneath continental shelves, possibly speeding up global warming. "These are factors not included in the current models, which may cause us to underestimate warming," Mann says.
Some insiders suggest that the IPCC may be more cautious in its upcoming report than it has been in the past, but this is unlikely to placate climate-change sceptics. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, Boulder, accuses the IPCC leadership of "seeing their role as political advocates rather than honest brokers". And Michaels has set out to prove this (see "A taste for bad news?", below).
For the majority of climate scientists, who are convinced that global warming is a real and present danger, the most alarming outcome of this discord is that federal funding could be withdrawn from those who work on IPCC reports. Here too Trenberth may find himself caught in the headlights. The US Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee under its chairman James Inhofe has begun investigating NCAR, Trenberth's employer. Inhofe has repeatedly written to NCAR and other agencies demanding details about financial and contractual arrangements with their employees and with federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). In a letter to the NSF in February, Inhofe said he needed the information to help him in "researching, analyzing and understanding the science of global climate change". Inhofe has a record of hostility to the idea of climate change, having asked on the Senate floor in July 2003: "Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
NCAR is not commenting on Inhofe's investigation, but many climate scientists contacted by New Scientist regard it as a tactic designed to intimidate those working on the IPCC report. "Inhofe's actions appear to be an effort to discourage leading US scientists from being involved in international scientific assessment processes such as the IPCC," Mann says.
“There appears to be an effort to discourage US scientists from being involved in international scientific assessment processesMichael Mann, Penn State University”
This is potentially disastrous for the IPCC. Out of 168 scientists listed as lead authors or reviewers involved in assessing the science of climate change, 38 are from the US - more than twice as many as the second-largest national grouping, the British.
IPCC scientists who spoke to New Scientist insist they are not trying to turn science into politics or to shut down genuine debate. They do, however, worry that their conclusions might be drowned out by some politically motivated and industry-funded sceptics. "I'd hate to see hundreds of people putting years of their lives into producing a report that is then trashed by these people for political ends," says Santer. "That is what happened in my case, and I felt very bad about it."
“The literature is intrinsically biased, and that means that the IPCC is also biasedPat Michaels, University of Virginia, Charlottesville”
From issue 2576 of New Scientist magazine, 04 November 2006, page 18-21
A taste for bad news?
Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, claims that climate research is biased towards pessimistic conclusions, and says he can prove it.
Michaels has analysed publications by climate scientists in the journals Nature and Science between mid-2005 and mid-2006. He found 115 articles of which 83 said that the likely impact of the greenhouse effect was going to be worse than previously suggested, 23 saw no change and only 9 said that things were not as bad as previously thought.
To most researchers this is solid evidence that the prognosis for the planet is worsening as new science comes in. Michaels rejects this interpretation. To have any faith in the forecasts of climatologists, he argues, "we should expect that new research should have an equal probability of being better or worse [for Earth's climate] than previous research."
His explanation for what he calls "this highly skewed result" is that scientists and journal editors are more interested in bad news. "The literature is intrinsically biased," he says. "And that means that the IPCC - which is largely a literature review process - is also biased." Michaels aims to publish his work in February, when it is likely to distract attention from the IPCC report expected at that time.
NewScientist
Fred Pearce
KEVIN TRENBERTH reckons he is a marked man. He has argued that last year's devastating Atlantic hurricane season, which spawned hurricane Katrina, was linked to global warming. For the many politicians and minority of scientists who insist there is no evidence for any such link, Trenberth's views are unacceptable and some have called for him step down from an international panel studying climate change. "The attacks on me are clearly designed to get me fired or to resign," says Trenberth.
The attacks fit a familiar pattern. Sceptics have also set their sights on scientists who have spoken out about the accelerating meltdown of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the thawing of the planet's permafrost. These concerns will be addressed in the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global organisation created by the UN in 1988 to assess the risks of human-induced climate change. Every time one of these assessments is released, about once every five years, some of the American scientists who have played a part in producing it become the targets of concerted attacks apparently designed to bring down their reputations and careers. At stake is the credibility of scientists who fear our planet is hurtling towards disaster and want to warn the public in the US and beyond.
So when the next IPCC report is released in February 2007, who will be the targets and why? When New Scientist spoke to researchers on both sides of the climate divide it became clear that they are ready for a showdown. If the acrimony were to become so intense that American scientists were forced to stop helping in the preparation of IPCC reports, it could seriously dent the organisation and rob the world of some significant voices in the climate change debate.
One of those who knows only too well what it is like to come under attack from climate change sceptics is Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. The lead author of a chapter in the 1995 IPCC report that talked for the first time about the "discernible human influence on global climate", he was savaged by sceptics and accused of introducing this wording without consulting colleagues who had helped write the chapter. One sceptic called it the "most disturbing corruption of the peer-review process in 60 years". Another accused him of "scientific cleansing" - at a time when the phrase "ethnic cleansing" was synonymous with genocide in Bosnia. The IPCC investigated and dismissed the allegations as baseless.
Another scientist to suffer the ire of the sceptics was Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He was attacked after the IPCC assessment in 2001, which highlighted his "hockey stick" graph showing that temperatures began a rapid rise in recent decades and are now higher than at any time over the past thousand years. The sceptics accused Mann of cherry-picking his data and criticised him for refusing to disclose his statistical methods which, they claimed, biased the study to show recent warming (New Scientist, 18 March, p 40). Last year, Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, ordered Mann to provide the committee with voluminous details of his working procedures, computer programs and past funding. Barton's demands were widely condemned by fellow scientists and on Capitol Hill. "There are people who believe that if they bring down Mike Mann, they can bring down the IPCC," said Santer at the time. Mann's findings, which will be endorsed in the new IPCC report, have since been replicated by other studies.
Santer says, however, that he expects attacks to continue on other fronts. "There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride. "There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.
“There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disreputeBen Santer, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory”
The "contrarians" include scientists and politicians who are sceptical of the scientific evidence for climate change. Some of those who spoke to New Scientist insist that they are not planning character assassinations, and intend merely to engage in robust scientific debate, not least by challenging the IPCC's status as the arbiter of truth on climate change.
Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports. Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." CEI's past funders include ExxonMobil, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.
The money trail
Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Worried about the potential cost of cleaning up coal-fired power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions, IREA's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, wrote: "We believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists... In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels."
So what is this money buying? For one, an ability to coordinate responses to the IPCC reports. Michaels told New Scientist that a flashpoint in the upcoming report could be hurricanes. Trenberth, who is the head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has angered the IPCC's critics by supporting the idea of a link between global warming and the intensity of hurricanes. The sceptics insist there is no published evidence to back this up. Trenberth says he is simply putting two established facts together: "Sea-surface temperature is rising because of global warming, and high sea-surface temperatures make for more intense storms."
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and with a US administration that has a record of hostility to concerns about climate change, Trenberth's statements are political dynamite. "I suspect the sceptics will want to try and dismantle the argument that there is a link," Mann says. Santer agrees: "If I was an industry-funded sceptic, I'd hit that area hard, for sure." Trenberth himself fears the worst. "I would not be surprised if the hurricane aspect of the report is targeted, along with my own role," he says. "But I am proud of what we have achieved."
One lead author of the chapter on hurricanes told New Scientist that it will include discussion of two papers published last year in Science and Nature, both of which showed that the frequency of the most intense hurricanes has increased in recent years. Even if Trenberth and his co-authors do not directly attribute this to global warming, the mere mention of these papers in the context of climate change is likely to provoke criticism.
Trenberth's opinions have already alienated his co-author Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Florida. Landsea disputed Trenberth's view, arguing that older measurements made before the era of satellite observation were not reliable enough to make the claim stick (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 36). When IPCC chiefs refused to censure Trenberth for his remarks directly linking last year's hurricanes to climate change, Landsea resigned, claiming that the IPCC had been "subverted, its neutrality lost".
Another sensitive area is the concern that existing models of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica massively underestimate future melting and consequent sea-level rise. "Our understanding of the dynamics of ice-sheet destruction has completely changed in the last five years," says Richard Alley of Penn State University, a lead author of the chapter on ice sheets who expects to find himself in the firing line over this issue. "We used to think it would take 10,000 years for melting to penetrate to the bottom of the ice sheet. But now we know it can take just 10 seconds," he says.
The rethink has come from the discovery that when surface water from melting ice drains down though crevasses it can lubricate the join between ice and bedrock. This mechanism appears to explain the faster discharge of ice from Greenland into the Atlantic, but it has yet to be incorporated into ice-sheet models, which still assume that the limiting factor is the rate at which heat penetrates through solid ice.
Michaels dismisses the idea of more rapid loss as "hysteria", and has thrown down a challenge to the IPCC to justify any change to the ice-sheet models. "[The IPCC] criticise people like me for saying the models are wrong, so it's going to be really interesting to see how they respond when their own people say the models are wrong." Alley, however, points out that leading glaciologists mostly agree that the current generation of ice-sheet models are wanting, whereas climatologists are mostly happy with their models.
A third focus for debate will be the way the IPCC treats recent reports of climate change disrupting the natural carbon cycle more than anticipated. This has to do with the release of large amounts of CO2 from rainforests and soils, and methane from permafrost and beneath continental shelves, possibly speeding up global warming. "These are factors not included in the current models, which may cause us to underestimate warming," Mann says.
Some insiders suggest that the IPCC may be more cautious in its upcoming report than it has been in the past, but this is unlikely to placate climate-change sceptics. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, Boulder, accuses the IPCC leadership of "seeing their role as political advocates rather than honest brokers". And Michaels has set out to prove this (see "A taste for bad news?", below).
For the majority of climate scientists, who are convinced that global warming is a real and present danger, the most alarming outcome of this discord is that federal funding could be withdrawn from those who work on IPCC reports. Here too Trenberth may find himself caught in the headlights. The US Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee under its chairman James Inhofe has begun investigating NCAR, Trenberth's employer. Inhofe has repeatedly written to NCAR and other agencies demanding details about financial and contractual arrangements with their employees and with federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). In a letter to the NSF in February, Inhofe said he needed the information to help him in "researching, analyzing and understanding the science of global climate change". Inhofe has a record of hostility to the idea of climate change, having asked on the Senate floor in July 2003: "Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
NCAR is not commenting on Inhofe's investigation, but many climate scientists contacted by New Scientist regard it as a tactic designed to intimidate those working on the IPCC report. "Inhofe's actions appear to be an effort to discourage leading US scientists from being involved in international scientific assessment processes such as the IPCC," Mann says.
“There appears to be an effort to discourage US scientists from being involved in international scientific assessment processesMichael Mann, Penn State University”
This is potentially disastrous for the IPCC. Out of 168 scientists listed as lead authors or reviewers involved in assessing the science of climate change, 38 are from the US - more than twice as many as the second-largest national grouping, the British.
IPCC scientists who spoke to New Scientist insist they are not trying to turn science into politics or to shut down genuine debate. They do, however, worry that their conclusions might be drowned out by some politically motivated and industry-funded sceptics. "I'd hate to see hundreds of people putting years of their lives into producing a report that is then trashed by these people for political ends," says Santer. "That is what happened in my case, and I felt very bad about it."
“The literature is intrinsically biased, and that means that the IPCC is also biasedPat Michaels, University of Virginia, Charlottesville”
From issue 2576 of New Scientist magazine, 04 November 2006, page 18-21
A taste for bad news?
Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, claims that climate research is biased towards pessimistic conclusions, and says he can prove it.
Michaels has analysed publications by climate scientists in the journals Nature and Science between mid-2005 and mid-2006. He found 115 articles of which 83 said that the likely impact of the greenhouse effect was going to be worse than previously suggested, 23 saw no change and only 9 said that things were not as bad as previously thought.
To most researchers this is solid evidence that the prognosis for the planet is worsening as new science comes in. Michaels rejects this interpretation. To have any faith in the forecasts of climatologists, he argues, "we should expect that new research should have an equal probability of being better or worse [for Earth's climate] than previous research."
His explanation for what he calls "this highly skewed result" is that scientists and journal editors are more interested in bad news. "The literature is intrinsically biased," he says. "And that means that the IPCC - which is largely a literature review process - is also biased." Michaels aims to publish his work in February, when it is likely to distract attention from the IPCC report expected at that time.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Australia's drought could be worst in 1,000 years
07 Nov 2006
Reuters
By James Grubel
CANBERRA, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The drought gripping Australia could be the worst in 1,000 years, government officials said on Tuesday, as Australia started to draw up emergency plans to secure long-term water supplies to towns and cities.
The drought affecting more than half of Australia's farmlands, already lasting more than five years, had previously been regarded as the worst in a century.
But officials from the Murray-Darling river basin commission told a water summit of national and state political leaders on Tuesday that analyses of the current prolonged drought now pointed to the driest period in 1,000 years.
"What we're seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming," the leader of the South Australian state government Mike Rann told reporters.
A spokeswoman for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission said the current consecutive years of drought had not been observed in the 114 years since records were first kept.
She said mathematical and probability analyses of the current dry spell found Australia was moving into what was possibly a one-in-1,000-year drought.
"We don't have the records to substantiate a one-in-100-year drought any more -- it's beyond that," she told Reuters.
Lack of winter rain has meant record-low inflows into the Murray-Darling river system, which drains an area the size of France and Spain combined and provides water to Australia's major agricultural areas.
The average inflow of water into the Murray River, which flows through three states, is 11,000 gigalitres a year. In the past five months it has received less than 600 gigalitres. One gigalitre is one billion litres.
Green groups have warned that towns and cities along the river system could run out of water if the drought goes into another year.
Prime Minister John Howard used the water summit to announce moves to investigate how to secure log-term water supplies for towns and cities along the Murray River.
The summit also approved a new weir across the Murray to provide emergency water, if needed, for the South Australian capital of Adelaide, a city of about one million people, which draws 40 percent of its drinking water from the Murray River.
But Howard, who remains sceptical about the impact of global warming, declined to publicly declare the drought the worst in 1,000 years. "All I know it is a very bad drought. It is the worst in living memory," Howard told reporters.
The Australian Democrats party criticised the summit, saying the meeting had ignored both the need to buy water back from farmers and irrigators, and the need to put a higher price on water use.
"Making water more expensive is not going to be popular, but it needs to be done," Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett told reporters.
The Murray-Darling catchment covers 1.06 million sq km (409,000 sq miles), 15 percent of Australia's landmass, and accounts for 41 percent of Australia's agricultural production and A$22 billion worth of the nation's agricultural exports.
Reuters
By James Grubel
CANBERRA, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The drought gripping Australia could be the worst in 1,000 years, government officials said on Tuesday, as Australia started to draw up emergency plans to secure long-term water supplies to towns and cities.
The drought affecting more than half of Australia's farmlands, already lasting more than five years, had previously been regarded as the worst in a century.
But officials from the Murray-Darling river basin commission told a water summit of national and state political leaders on Tuesday that analyses of the current prolonged drought now pointed to the driest period in 1,000 years.
"What we're seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming," the leader of the South Australian state government Mike Rann told reporters.
A spokeswoman for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission said the current consecutive years of drought had not been observed in the 114 years since records were first kept.
She said mathematical and probability analyses of the current dry spell found Australia was moving into what was possibly a one-in-1,000-year drought.
"We don't have the records to substantiate a one-in-100-year drought any more -- it's beyond that," she told Reuters.
Lack of winter rain has meant record-low inflows into the Murray-Darling river system, which drains an area the size of France and Spain combined and provides water to Australia's major agricultural areas.
The average inflow of water into the Murray River, which flows through three states, is 11,000 gigalitres a year. In the past five months it has received less than 600 gigalitres. One gigalitre is one billion litres.
Green groups have warned that towns and cities along the river system could run out of water if the drought goes into another year.
Prime Minister John Howard used the water summit to announce moves to investigate how to secure log-term water supplies for towns and cities along the Murray River.
The summit also approved a new weir across the Murray to provide emergency water, if needed, for the South Australian capital of Adelaide, a city of about one million people, which draws 40 percent of its drinking water from the Murray River.
But Howard, who remains sceptical about the impact of global warming, declined to publicly declare the drought the worst in 1,000 years. "All I know it is a very bad drought. It is the worst in living memory," Howard told reporters.
The Australian Democrats party criticised the summit, saying the meeting had ignored both the need to buy water back from farmers and irrigators, and the need to put a higher price on water use.
"Making water more expensive is not going to be popular, but it needs to be done," Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett told reporters.
The Murray-Darling catchment covers 1.06 million sq km (409,000 sq miles), 15 percent of Australia's landmass, and accounts for 41 percent of Australia's agricultural production and A$22 billion worth of the nation's agricultural exports.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Heat to soar in NSW, says CSIRO
November 6, 2006
Average temperatures in NSW could soar by up to 6.4 degrees by 2070 unless action is taken to tackle climate change, new research by the CSIRO shows.
The study also warns that annual rainfall in key farming areas could drop by 70 per cent in the next 64 years.
The NSW Government, which commissioned the research, seized on the figures to attack Prime Minister John Howard's refusal to sign up for a national emissions trading scheme.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma said climate change was a real threat to the state's way of life.
"The CSIRO research paints a frightening picture; that's why we need a national approach to climate change," he said.
Under the emissions trading scheme proposed by the states, greenhouse gas emissions from Australia's electricity industry would be capped at between 1997 and 2000 levels by 2035.
Electricity generators would be required to hold permits to emit greenhouse gases but would be able to purchase extra permits and offset emissions through forestry and capturing or storing carbon.
"To our national shame, John Howard refuses to sign up in the face of overwhelming evidence of the impact of climate change on families and the economy," Mr Iemma said.
The new research also predicts that summer temperatures in inland northern NSW could be up to 7.1 degrees higher by 2070 and that spring rainfall could be up to 60 per cent lower.
Further climate change studies covering all of the major catchment areas in NSW will be released in the coming months.
The State Government is also funding research into the effect of climate change on rainfall patterns, water availability and flooding in the greater metropolitan region.
AAP
Average temperatures in NSW could soar by up to 6.4 degrees by 2070 unless action is taken to tackle climate change, new research by the CSIRO shows.
The study also warns that annual rainfall in key farming areas could drop by 70 per cent in the next 64 years.
The NSW Government, which commissioned the research, seized on the figures to attack Prime Minister John Howard's refusal to sign up for a national emissions trading scheme.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma said climate change was a real threat to the state's way of life.
"The CSIRO research paints a frightening picture; that's why we need a national approach to climate change," he said.
Under the emissions trading scheme proposed by the states, greenhouse gas emissions from Australia's electricity industry would be capped at between 1997 and 2000 levels by 2035.
Electricity generators would be required to hold permits to emit greenhouse gases but would be able to purchase extra permits and offset emissions through forestry and capturing or storing carbon.
"To our national shame, John Howard refuses to sign up in the face of overwhelming evidence of the impact of climate change on families and the economy," Mr Iemma said.
The new research also predicts that summer temperatures in inland northern NSW could be up to 7.1 degrees higher by 2070 and that spring rainfall could be up to 60 per cent lower.
Further climate change studies covering all of the major catchment areas in NSW will be released in the coming months.
The State Government is also funding research into the effect of climate change on rainfall patterns, water availability and flooding in the greater metropolitan region.
AAP
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