Quoted Text

NJ enacts anti-global warming law  
  
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI, Associated Press
Last updated: 9:03 p.m., Friday, July 6, 2007

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- New Jersey became the third state in the nation to enact a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction law Friday, requiring the Garden State to significantly cut emissions of global-warming gases.
  
Al Gore, the former vice president turned environmental activist, was on hand as Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed the "Global Warming Response Act" into law. California and Hawaii have adopted similar laws, and eight other states are considering them.

Passage of these laws can "inspire hope and build the enthusiasm necessary to get this crisis solved," Gore told an enthusiastic crowd of lawmakers and environmentalists who witnessed the bill signing at the Meadowlands sports complex.

"It's great to be able to tell 'em in every country that ... state governments are beginning to take the lead, cities are beginning to take the lead, and citizens of this country are beginning to take the lead," he said.

New Jersey will now be featured prominently in the traveling slide show he uses to teach people about global warming, Gore said.

New Jersey's new law was enacted on the eve of a series of concerts around the world drawing attention to global warming, including one at The Meadowlands in New Jersey that Gore said he would attend.

The legislation requires the state to reduce global warming gases to 1990 levels by 2020, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050. New Jersey is the first state to set global warming targets so far into the future, environmentalists said, and the first to require that energy imports adhere to New Jersey's standards.

"This is a very, very important day for the state of New Jersey," said Corzine. "We are making a long-lived commitment today that will impact not just our generation but future generations."

Corzine admonished the Bush administration for lagging behind on global warming, but praised the actions of state governments. He said, "The states are making a difference; New Jersey is making a difference."

Emissions from fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline, are believed by many scientists to be a leading cause of global warming.

Critics of the New Jersey law argued that it hurts the state's energy industry and that the act contained no specific proposals to lower emissions.

"New Jersey acting alone is not going to solve global warming," said Sara Bluhm, assistant vice president for energy affairs with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, a business group that campaigned against the law.

"Instead of setting arbitrary goals, the governor could do something today to help businesses remain competitive by releasing funds for energy audits," she said, adding that millions of dollars set aside for such audits 18 months ago have yet to be released by the state treasury.

Despite such criticisms, the anti-global warming measure enjoyed widespread bipartisan support in the Legislature.

Under the new law, the Department of Environmental Protection will conduct an emissions inventory, and based on the results, devise a plan to monitor and reduce harmful emissions. The law mirrors an executive order Corzine issued in January.

A study by The Associated Press using 2003 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed that in terms of total emissions of carbon dioxide, New Jersey came in 16th in the country with 123.7 million metric tons; per capita, New Jersey was much lower, in 40th position.

Quoted from CICERO

Buenos Aires Gets First Snow Since 1918
By BILL CORMIER, Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 9, 2007

(07-09) 19:35 PDT BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) --
Thousands of Argentines cheered and threw snowballs in the streets of Buenos Aires on Monday as the capital's first major snowfall since 1918 spread a thin white mantle across the region.
Wet snow fell for hours in the Argentine capital, accumulating in a mushy but thin white layer late Monday, after freezing air from Antarctica collided with a moisture-laden low pressure system that blanketed higher elevations in western and central Argentina with snow.
"Despite all my years, this is the first time I've ever seen in snow in Buenos Aires," said Juana Benitez, an 82-year-old who joined children celebrating in the streets.
Argentina's National Weather Service said it was the first major snow in Buenos Aires since June 22, 1918, though sleet or freezing rain have been periodically reported in decades since.
One man stripped to his shorts to welcome the snow. Children scraped snow off cars and threw snowballs. Motorists honked horns, some with small snowmen on their hoods. Some fender benders were reported on slick suburban streets.
The storm struck on Argentina's Independence Day holiday, adding to a festive air and prompting radio stations to play an old tango song inspired by the 1918 snowfall, "What a night!"
"This is the kind of weather phenomenon that comes along every 100 years," forecaster Hector Ciappesoni told La Nacion newspaper. "It is very difficult to predict."
The snow followed a bitter cold snap in late May that saw subfreezing temperatures, the coldest in 40 years in Buenos Aires. That cold wave contributed to an energy crisis and 23 deaths from exposure.
Two more exposure deaths were reported on Monday.

Quoted Text

Rockers’ lifestyle not exactly green

   If you were among the estimated 2 billion worldwide who tuned in to the global music festival Live Earth, then you likely heard the phrase “carbon offset.” It’s a way of reducing greenhouse gases, or carbon emissions.
   Former Vice President and global-warming town crier Al Gore told The Associated Press that Live Earth would be “the greenest event of its kind, ever.”
   Electricity at the concert venues were powered by renewable sources. Recycling bins were everywhere. Hybrid and fuel-effi cient vehicles were used to transport music acts when possible.
   Still, the greenest event of its kind? One hundred fifty acts playing in a 24-hour event from Australia to England? Just how many barrels of oil were used to spread the word of global warming?
   Western nations and their citizens must be more conscious of fuel and power consumption. But we don’t need conservation dissertations from rock stars, who will have to plant forests each to offset their jet-setting, highconsumption lifestyles. Their message gets lost in hypocrisy.
   --Kokomo (Ind.) Tribune

Quoted from senders

They ARE our conscience ya know......

Quoted Text

AS OTHERS SAY IT Much ado over global warming

   If the torrent of water was not bad enough, the surge of ignorant speculation as to its causes has added to the misery of the season.
   Numerous commentators and supposed “experts” have asserted that the flooding is proof of global warming. Much the same was contended by similar characters about the mild February (remember that?) enjoyed this year. That this flies totally in the face of the mainstream thesis about climate change that Britain will endure wetter winters and drier summers is plainly immaterial. If the weather moves away from the “norm” in any direction, then it must be global warming.
   One camp that has not joined in this ludicrous orgy of false prophecy is the category that should know the most about the weather, the professional meteorologist. Our weather correspondent, Paul Simons, has pointed out that summer floods do occur in Britain rather often. There were, he outlines, dreadful runs of weather in the 1840s, 1910s and 1950s before the advent of low-cost airlines and quantifiable carbon emissions.
   There is no doubt that the climate is changing and that the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt, but the members of our contemporary apocalyptic cult do not. This year will be warmer than 1860 was (but probably not as hot as 1560). How much of this is part of a natural cycle and how much due to man-made activities is not an exact science.
   — The Times, London  

Quoted Text

Gore says companies paying to undermine climate theories
BY GILLIAN WONG The Associated Press

   SINGAPORE — Former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday that some of the world’s largest energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., are funding research aimed at disputing the scientifi c consensus on global warming as part of a campaign to mislead the public.
   ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, rejected the allegation.
   “There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientifi c community” about global warming, Gore said at a forum in Singapore. “In actuality, there is very little disagreement.”
   “This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science,” Gore said. “We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion.”
   Gore likened the campaign to that of the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of uncertainty and debate within the scientific community on the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes.
   “Some of the tobacco companies spent millions of dollars to create the appearance that there was disagreement on the science. And some of the large coal and utility companies and the largest oil company, ExxonMobil, have been involved in doing that exact same thing for the last several years,” Gore said.
   After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world’s top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned the cause of global warming is “very likely” man-made, “the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere,” Gore said.
   “They’re trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools,” he said.
   Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. The company said the scientists’ reports were just attempts to smear ExxonMobil’s name and confuse the debate.
   ExxonMobil spokesman Gantt Walton said Tuesday that the company’s financial support for scientific reports did not mean it influenced the outcome of those studies. ExxonMobil believes the risk that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change warrants taking action to limit them, he said.
   Gore said that with growing awareness of climate change, the world will see an acceleration in efforts to fight the problem.

Quoted from BIGK75

Thought I'd bring you all some quick global cooling.



Maybe he should start working with his buddies at the North Pole.

Quoted Text

Climate hasn’t changed but hype certainly has
RON RENAUD Rotterdam

   Just over 33 years ago, America was alarmed with all the hype Time Magazine’s editor could muster with his provocative headline, “Another Ice Age?”
   Simultaneously, the BBC and many major news outlets were perpetuating the same fare through at-the-scene reporting, documentaries and “credible” scientific evidence that, yes, the world was getting cooler. You and I caused it, and we need to make some lifestyle changes. Oh, and it’ll cost us, too.
   Time continued: “The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.” Message: stop farming, driving, producing anything in a factory and, for heaven’s sake, stop kicking up dust or you’ll block the sun’s ability to penetrate our atmosphere. Next, Time warned: “The atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades ... The trend shows no indication of reversing” ... “Telltale signs are everywhere” ... “Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” All of this was “supported by other convincing data.”
   The game has obviously changed, though different, skewed data is used to offer a different “truth” (global warming is destroying the earth — not enough dust, I guess). The intended outcomes (by those pushing this as fact) of greater control, accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of our corporate/ political leaders through another potential catastrophe, haven’t changed. Throughout history, some summers are warmer than others (we aren’t living in the warmest times); some winters are colder.  

Quoted Text

You and I caused it, and we need to make some lifestyle changes.

Quoted Text

Hundreds bare all
in climate protest
   BETTMERALP, Switzerland — Hundreds of naked people formed a “living sculpture” on Switzerland’s Aletsch glacier Saturday, hoping to raise awareness about climate change.
   The photo shoot by Spencer Tunick, the New York artist famous for his pictures of nude gatherings in public settings worldwide, was designed to draw attention to the effects of global warming on Switzerland’s shrinking glaciers.
   “The melting of the glaciers is an indisputable sign of global climate change,” said the environmental group Greenpeace, which co-organized the event.

Quoted from Admin

http://www.dailygazette.com

Quoted Text

Switzerland’s shrinking glaciers.

Quoted Text

Study: Global warming means more severe storms for U.S.
NASA scientists see more frequent tornadoes in future
BY SETH BORENSTEIN The Associated Press

   WASHINGTON — As the world warms, the United States will face more severe thunderstorms with deadly lightning, damaging hail and the potential for tornadoes, a trailblazing study by NASA scientists suggests.
   While other research has warned of broad weather changes on a large scale, like more extreme hurricanes and droughts, the new study predicts even smaller events like thunderstorms will be more dangerous because of global warming.
   The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.
   And when that happens, watch out.
   “The strongest thunderstorms, the strongest severe storms and tornadoes are likely to happen more often and be stronger,” Del Genio said in an interview Thursday from his office at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The paper he co-authored was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
   Other scientists caution that this area of climate research is too difficult and new for this study to be definitive. But some upcoming studies also point in the same direction.
   With a computer model, Del Genio explores an area that most climate scientists have avoided. Simple thunderstorms are too small for their massive models of the world’s climate. So Del Genio looked at the forces that combine to make thunderstorms.
   A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world’s hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer. The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere’s jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.
   Del Genio’s computer model shows that global warming will mean more strong updrafts, when the wind moves up and down instead of sideways.
   “The consequences of stronger updrafts are more lightning and bigger hail,” he said.
   On a normal sunny day, updrafts are less than 1 mile per hour. In a big rainstorm that is not severe, they’re about 2 mph. In a severe storm, they could be 20 to 30 mph. The faster that updraft, the worse the storms.
   The Southeast and Midwest lie in the path of most of the most dangerous of these storms.
   However, the new study also forecasts danger for the Western United States. It predicts that lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide — the chief global warming gas — doubles.
   Previous studies have shown that the West will get drier, making it a tinderbox for more wildfires. This study shows that there will be more lightning strikes to start those fires, Del Genio said.
   One general benefit of global warming is decreased wind shear, which is the speed of side-to-side wind as the altitude rises, Del Genio said. That would moderate the effects of updrafts.
   However, during certain times of the year and under the right conditions in the Midwest and Southeast, wind shear will increase. Combine wind shear and updrafts and damaging winds result, the scientist said.  

Quoted Text

The basic ingredients for whopper U.S. inland storms are likely to be more plentiful in a warmer, moister world, said lead author Tony Del Genio, a NASA research scientist.

Quoted Text

A unique combination of geography and weather patterns already makes the United States the world’s hottest spot for tornadoes and severe storms in spring and summer.

Quoted Text

The large land mass that warms on hot days, the contours of the atmosphere’s jet stream, the wind coming off the Rocky Mountains and warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico all combine.

Quoted Text

It predicts that lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide — the chief global warming gas — doubles.

Quoted Text

However, during certain times of the year and under the right conditions in the Midwest and Southeast, wind shear will increase. Combine wind shear and updrafts and damaging winds result, the scientist said.  

Quoted Text

NEW YORK STATE
State taking lead in initiatives to fight against global warming
BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter

   Starting in 2010, all new cars and passenger trucks in New York will feature a “global warming index” sticker that contains information about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
   The goal? Getting consumers to purchase the most fuel-efficient vehicles possible by educating them about the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
   Even as the debate over global warming continues, New York is moving forward with a multipronged approach for dealing with climate change. The global warming index stickers are just one of the many new initiatives that could make the state a national leader in the fight against global warming.
   A new Climate Change Office, established in the spring at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, is charged with implementing climate change initiatives and conducting climate change research. One of the office’s major undertakings will be overseeing the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in nine northeastern and mid-Atlantic states.
   But state officials and environmentalists consider RGGI, as it’s known, just the tip of the iceberg. A number of other projects, they note, have similar goals.
   New York recently announced plans to cut electricity consumption 15 percent by 2015, signed onto a new Climate Registry that allows participating states to collect and share information on greenhouse gas emissions and is seeking to limit carbon dioxide emissions from New York cars and trucks.
   “[The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative] is just the beginning of what we’re going to do on climate change,” said Peter Iwanowicz, director of the Climate Change Office. “We’ve defined an office where climate policy can be developed and implemented.”
   “New York is playing a key role in the push to stop global warming,” said Jason Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group.
   Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and automobiles are a major contributor to global warming, the gradual increase in temperature average that scientists say will drastically alter the world’s climate if allowed to continue unchecked. A lack of activity on the federal level has prompted states such as New York to enact stricter environmental standards to reduce the emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
   Under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the participating states will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent in 10 years, beginning in the year 2009. The program, which is the first such program in the United States, sets emission limits for power plants, but lets polluters buy and sell credits to meet those limits. Companies that emit less pollution can sell unused allowances to companies that overshoot their limit.
   Iwanowicz, who previously served as vice president for the American Lung Association, where he helped enact the New York State Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2006, said New York plans to release its draft rules for RGGI in the fall.
   The Climate Change Office has 13 staff, including Iwanowicz.
   Climate change, Iwanowicz said, is not some far off, distant thing. “We are seeing changes in New York’s climate,” he said. “We’re feeling the impact of climate change right now. In New York City, rain events are shutting down the subway. Upstate, there’s severe flooding in culverts, roads.” New York is the second state in the country, after California, to pass legislation requiring a “global warming index” sticker on cars and passenger trucks.
   The requirement applies to passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks with a gross weight of 8,500 pounds or less; each sticker will include an index that compares the emissions of global warming gases from the vehicle with the average projected emissions from all vehicles of the same model year and identifies the vehicle model within its class with the lowest emissions of that model year. The index will be based on emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.
   “This provides consumers with the information to make the right decision,” Iwanowicz said. “It’s important for people to understand that the climate is changing and that there are severe implications, but there are also choices we can make.” It’s similar, he noted, to the labeling that already exists for appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines.
   Babbie agreed. “Clearly, pollution limits are needed,” he said. “Labeling is a good tool consumers can use. ... Consumers are clearly responding to our changing world. If you examine the market for hybrids, it’s gone crazy.”
   Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said new vehicles already include information mileage stickers that contain information on carbon dioxide emissions. “Fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions are the exact same thing,” she said. “They can be addressed in the exact same way, through fuel efficient technology.”
   “Automakers generally support providing more consumer information, but there is always a concern about putting too much information on the new vehicle stickers,” Bergquist said. “We encourage consumers to consider buying autos with fuel-efficient technologies, both to improve mileage and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” She said automakers are investing millions of dollars each year in many different types of fuelefficient technologies.
   Under former Gov. George Pataki, the state announced plans to limit carbon dioxide emissions from New York cars and trucks by adopting more stringent standards first announced by California. Meanwhile, The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has filed a lawsuit that claims the states have no right to implement tougher vehicle emission standards. The organization maintains that only the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authority to “regulate fuel economy,” and that a state-led effort to limit carbon dioxide emissions is a back-door attempt to do just that.
   The Department of Environmental Conservation has also joined 30 other states as charter members of The Climate Registry, which allows participating states to collect and share greenhouse gas emission data. The registry, which will begin accepting emissions data in January, will measure and track greenhouse gases; the idea is that this information will support the creation of new emission reduction programs.
   Another initiative, announced earlier this year by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, calls on the state to reduce electricity consumption by 15 percent below forecasted levels by 2015. If nothing is done, electricity consumption will continue increasing by about 1.2 percent every year.
   “That really is revolutionary,” Babbie said. While some states have said they want to stabilize their electricity consumption, no one else has vowed to reduce it, he said.  

Quoted Text

Global warming's toll

First published: Wednesday, September 12, 2007

It's come to this in the ongoing measurements of the vast environmental damage caused by global warming. To deny the problem, or to otherwise resist efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is more than defying the mounting evidence of statistics on the changing temperature of the earth.
Instead it's to declare the moral equivalent of war on the polar bear.

The U.S. Geological Survey says what's known as summer sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic Ocean at such a rate that two-thirds of the world's polar bear population will disappear by 2050.

Such is the prognosis even if the world's industrial nations somehow managed to reach agreement on drastic reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. Reversal of that trend of destruction would take decades.

Consider these words of doom, from the report by the U.S. Geological Survey:

"Sea ice conditions would have to be substantially better than even the most conservative computer simulations of warming and sea ice to avoid the anticipated drop in bear population."

The Arctic ice cap is deteriorating at a frighteningly quick pace. Polar bears would be gone entirely from Alaska, the U.S. Geological Survey's study predicts, and mostly confined to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast. Worldwide, their population would decline from about 22,000 to about 8,000.

What polar bears can do to adapt to the destruction of their habitat -- eating garbage and a wider range of food, like snow geese, for instance -- is limited. Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, which is their primary food.

"As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear," Steven Amstrup, a biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, tells The New York Times. Quantified, the dependence of polar bears upon sea ice was determined to be 84 percent.

These findings come as President Bush prepares to act as host for a meeting of major industrial nations in Washington later this month. The aim is to reach consensus on drafting a treaty on climate change.

A secondary issue, for the United States alone, is whether to commit to protecting polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.

Anyone who stands in the way of an effective treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or to amend the Endangered Species Act to address the consequences of global warming, might give a hard look to a photograph of a polar bear.

Look at one, and then another -- and contemplate the demise of about 14,000 of them.

THE ISSUE:The climate change crisis is expected to reduce the polar bear population by about two-thirds.THE STAKES:How much starker a warning do we need?

Quoted Text

Medieval clues on climate changes
Weather reports by monks scoured
BY BRADLEY S. KLAPPER The Associated Press

   EINSIEDELN, Switzerland — A librarian at this 10th century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots.
   He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.
   “Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze,” says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and “weatherman” of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. “Since I’ve been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice.”
   “But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory,” he adds.
   Diaries of day-to-day weather details from the age before 19th-century standardized thermometers are proving of great value to scientists who study today’s climate. Historical accounts were once largely ignored, as they were thought to be fraught with inaccuracy or were simply inaccessible or illegible. But the booming interest in climate change has transformed the study of ancient weather records from what was once a “wallflower science,” says Christian Pfister, a climate historian at the University of Bern.
   The accounts dispel any lingering doubts that the Earth is heating up more dramatically than ever before, he says. Last winter — when spring blossoms popped up all over the Austrian Alps, Geneva’s official chestnut tree sprouted leaves and flowers, and Swedes were still picking mushrooms well into December — was Europe’s warmest in 500 years, Pfister says. It came after the hottest autumn in a millennium and was followed by one of the balmiest Aprils on record.
   “In the last year there was a series of extremely exceptional weather,” he says. “The probability of this is very low.”
   The records also provide a context for judging shifts in the weather. Brother Konrad Hinder, the current weatherman at Einsiedeln and an avid reader of Dietrich’s diaries, says his predecessor’s precise accounts of everything from yellow fog to avalanches provide historical context.
   “We know from Josef Dietrich that the extremes were very big during his time. There were very cold winters and very mild winters, very wet summers and very dry summers,” he says, adding that the range of weather extremes has been smaller in the 40 years he has recorded data for the Swiss national weather service.
   “That’s why I’m always cautious when people say the weather extremes now are at their greatest. Without historical context you lose control and you rush to proclaim every latest weather phenomenon as extreme or unprecedented,” Hinder says.
   Most historians and scientists delving deep into archives seek accounts of disasters and extreme weather events. But the records can also be used to obtain a more precise temperature range for most months and years that goes beyond such general indicators as tree rings, corals, ice cores or glaciers.
   Such weather sources include the thrice-daily temperature and pressure measurements by 17th-century Paris physician Louis Morin, a shortlived international meteorological network created by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1653, and 33 “weather diaries” surviving from the 16th century. In Japan, court officers kept records of the dates of cherry blossom festivals, which allow modern scientists to track the weather of the time.
   Early records often are only discovered by chance in documents that have survived in centuries-old European monasteries like Einsiedeln, or in the annals of rulers, military campaigns, famines, natural hazards and meteorological anomalies. In Klosterneuberg near Vienna an unidentified writer notes a lack of ice on the Danube in 1343-1344 and calls the winter “mild,” while the abbot of Switzerland’s Fischingen Monastery laments the late harvest of hay and corn in the summer of 1639 when “there was hardly ever a really warm day.”
   Scores of similar clues are pieced together year by year to determine temperature ranges, says Pfister, whose team of four uses old “weather reports” to work back as far as the 10th century.
   Pfister has found that from 1900 to 1990, there was an average of five months of extreme warmth per decade. In the 1990s, that number jumped to an unprecedented 22 months. The same decade also had no months of extreme cold, in contrast to the half-millennium before.
   Even in the last major global warming period from 900 to 1300, severe winters were only “somewhat less frequent and less extreme,” Pfi ster says. Over the past century, temperatures have gone up an average of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is often attributed to the accumulation of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

BRADLEY S. KLAPPER/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A page in one of 13 diaries by Brother Josef, inscribed from 1671 to 1704, is shown in the monastery in Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Quoted Text

Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON - A trio of climate change meetings in the United States this week will focus attention on how Washington can deliver on its pledge to play a lead role in combating global warming.


The central issue is how to curb the emission of climate-warming greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles, and whether to make the goals mandatory or "aspirational" as the White House has proposed.
As the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases -- with China close behind and gaining fast -- the United States has said it wants to lead, but critics from the US environmental movement and elsewhere question whether its voluntary approach will work.

A "high-level" UN meeting in New York on Monday is meant to send a "strong political message" from world leaders, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, although it is not a negotiation on climate change.

Harlan Watson, the chief US climate negotiator, said it was time to move beyond talk and try to develop a way forward.

"We're getting beyond the conceptual ... level and want to get down to the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves stage," Watson said on Friday at a briefing. "We really want to get away from the dialogue ... and see how we can really construct an architecture for what happens after the first commitment period of Kyoto ends in 2012."

The United States is at odds with the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, when the protocol expires.

President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto plan, saying it unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing countries like China and India, and that it will cost US jobs.


GETTING READY FOR BALI

Climate change negotiations will take place in December in Bali, when representatives will consider a way to cut emissions after the Kyoto pact expires. The deadline for figuring this out is 2009, so countries have enough time to ratify the agreement.

Eighty-one heads of state or government will attend Monday's event, along with two vice presidents, five deputy prime ministers, 33 foreign ministers and 12 environment ministers, in addition to 18 other representatives, according to the United Nations. Former US Vice President Al Gore and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are scheduled to attend.

Bush will not attend but is scheduled to dine with Ban afterward, in advance of his address on Tuesday to the UN General Assembly.

Bush will speak at a two-day Washington meeting at the State Department on Thursday and Friday, a gathering of "major economies" -- which are also the world's biggest global warming contributors -- on energy security and climate change.

"Unless the United States decides it wants to be a major and committed leadership player in this and make very specific leadership commitments, much of the rest of the world is going to effectively hide behind the skirts of the United States and not do anything," said Tim Wirth, head of the nonprofit UN Foundation.

"So what the United States does and how the United States decides to enter this negotiation is going to be a very, very telling commentary on the future of the climate negotiations and I believe on the fate of the Earth."

Only the United States and the chief UN climate change representative, Yvo de Boer, are scheduled to make public comments at the Washington meeting.

The White House would not release the names of participants, so it was unclear whether top government officials would attend. At least one country, Brazil, did not plan to send its president or even its environment minister.

In between the UN and Washington meetings, the nongovernmental Clinton Global Initiative will convene in New York from Wednesday through Friday. A nonpartisan project of former US President Bill Clinton's foundation, it will discuss climate change with participants from business, academia, entertainment and nongovernmental environmental organizations.

Quoted Text

Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption
to fight global warming

Article from:  
Karen Collier
October 10, 2007 02:35pm

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.
The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.
Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.
"It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said.
"Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."
The eat roo recommendation is contained in a report, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future, commissioned by Greenpeace and released today.
It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.
Australians eat about a third of the 30 million kilograms of roo meat produced annually. The delicacy is exported to dozens of countries and is most popular in Germany, France and Belgium.
The Greenpeace report has renewed calls for Victoria to lift a ban on harvesting roos for food.
Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia spokesman John Kelly said roos invading farmers' crops were already being illegally shot.
"They are being culled and left to rot," Mr Kelly said.
Kangaroo meat sold in Victoria is imported from interstate.
Australia's kangaroo population has halved to 25 million in the past five years as the drought has taken a toll on breeding and the animals' food sources, Mr Kelly said.
Under a quota system, 10 to 12 per cent can be killed for the meat and leather industry. Aerial surveys estimate their numbers.
Today's report by leading scientist Dr Mark Diesendorf, from the University of NSW, says greenhouse gas emissions need to be slashed by at least a third by 2020 to avoid a climate change catastrophe.
His recommendations include:
REDUCING beef consumption and increasing kangaroo meat production.
CUTTING gas and coal production.
HALTING land clearing and deforestation.
SHIFTING to renewable energy such as wind power and bioelectricity from crop residues.
"The world is currently on track to experience runaway global warming with average temperatures soon to exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, Dr Diesendorf said.
"We face a catastrophe unless there is urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020."
A major report by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology released this month warned average temperatures will rise 1C by 2030 and could increase as much as 5C in Australia by 2070 unless global greenhouse emissions are cut dramatically.

Quoted Text

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane

Quoted Text

Peace prize goes to Gore
Scientists share in victory for global warming message
BY SETH BORENSTEIN AND LISA LEFF
The Associated Press

PALO ALTO, Calif. — For years, former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were belittled and, worst of all, ignored for their message about how dire global warming is.
On Friday, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their warnings about what Gore calls “a planetary emergency.”
Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists. This scientific panel has explained the dry details of global warming in thousands of pages of footnoted reports every six years or so since 1990.
   Gore, fresh from a near miss at winning the U.S. presidency in 2000, translated the numbers and jargonladen reports into something people could understand. He made a slide show and went Hollywood. His documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” won two Academy Awards and has been credited with changing the debate in America about global warming. For Gore, it was all about the message. “This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now,” he said Friday at the offices of the Alliance For Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded. “The alarm bells are going off in the scientific community.” Despite a live global stage, Gore did not take ques- tions from reporters, avoiding the issue of a potential 2008 presidential run. His aides repeatedly say he won’t enter the race. Gore donated his share of the $1.5 million prize to the nonprofit.
   “For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency,” Gore said in brief remarks. “It is a planetary emergency and we have to act quickly.”
   In announcing the award earlier in the day in Oslo, Norway, Nobel committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the prize was not a slap at the Bush administration’s current policies. Instead, he said it was about encouraging all countries “to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming.”
   Gore is the first former vice president to win the peace prize since 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt, who by that time had become president, was honored. Sitting Vice President Charles Gates Dawes won the prize in 1925. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
   Gore, who learned of his award from watching the live TV announcement — hearing his name amid the Norwegian — was not celebratory Friday. His tone was somber. He spoke beside his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report. Outside the building, schoolchildren held a sign saying, “Thank you Al.”
   For years, there was little thanks.
   From the late 1980s with his book “Earth in the Balance,” Gore championed the issue of global warming. He had monthly science seminars on it while vice president and helped negotiate the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that called for cuts in greenhouse gases.
   “When he first started really working on the climate change issue, I remember he was ridiculed in the press and certainly by political opponents as some kind of kook out there in la-la land,” said federal climate scientist Tom Peterson, an IPCC co-author. “It’s delightful that he’s sharing this and he deserves it well. And it’s nice to have his work being vindicated.”
   Since his loss to George W. Bush in 2000, Gore put aside political aspirations and become a global warming evangelical. He traveled to more than 50 countries. He presented his slide show on global warming more than 1,000 times.
   He turned that slide show into “An Inconvenient Truth.”
   The film won praise but also generated controversy. On Wednesday, a British judge ruled in a lawsuit that it was OK to show the movie to students in school. High Court Judge Michael Burton said it was “substantially founded upon scientific research and fact” but presented in a “context of alarmism and exaggeration.” He said teachers must be given a written document explaining that.
   More than 20 top climate scientists told The Associated Press last year that the film was generally accurate in its presentation of the science, although some were bothered by what they thought were a couple of exaggerations.
   Gore’s movie was deeply personal. It was about him after losing the 2000 election and about his travels, and he talked about the changing climate in a personal way.
   “He has honed that message in a way that many scientists are jealous of,” said University of Michigan Dean Rosina Birnbaum. She was a top White House science aide to Gore and President Clinton. “He is a master communicator.”
   Climate scientists said their work was cautious and rock-solid, confirmed with constant peer review, but it didn’t grab people’s attention.
   “We need an advocate such as Al Gore to help present the work of scientists across the world,” said Bob Watson, former chairman of the IPCC and a top federal climate science adviser to the Clinton-Gore Administration.
   Watson and Birnbaum, who regularly briefed Gore about global warming, described him as voracious, wanting to understand every detail about the science. Birnbaum recalled one Air Force Two journey with Gore and the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
   “Gore was such a consummate scientist that he would keep asking and asking and asking deeper and deeper questions until at one point Jim Baker of NOAA and I ran back to our seats to go back through textbooks to get the answers,” Birnbaum said. “It was both exhilarating and exhausting to be part of his science team.”

Quoted Text

Quoted Text

UPDATED GORE FILM
   SCHENECTADY — An updated presentation of “An Inconvenient Truth” will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the First Unitarian Society, 1221 Wendell Ave.
   Dr. Steven Leibo, Sage College professor and WAMC commentator, will lead the free program.
   Former Vice President Al Gore has trained presenters to give a live, localized and updated slide show based on the Academy Award-winning fi lm about global warming. Leibo took the training in January in

Quoted from bumblethru

More propaganda!! Democratic fear tactics!

Quoted Text

Late Colors Prompt Climate Change Fears  
Saturday, October 20, 2007 11:41 AM

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Every fall, Marilyn Krom tries to make a trip to Vermont to see its famously beautiful fall foliage.


This year, she noticed something different about the autumn leaves.


"They're duller, not as sparkly, if you know what I mean," Krom, 62, a registered nurse from Eastford, Conn., said during a recent visit. "They're less vivid."


Other "leaf peepers" are noticing, too, and some believe climate change could be the reason.


Forested hillsides usually riotous with reds, oranges and yellows have shown their colors only grudgingly in recent years, with many trees going straight from the dull green of late summer to the rust-brown of late fall with barely a stop at a brighter hue.


"It's nothing like it used to be," said University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native.


He says autumn has become too warm to elicit New England's richest colors.


According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Burlington have run above the 30-year averages in every September and October for the past four years, save for October 2004, when they were 0.2 degrees below average.


Warming climate affects trees in several ways.


Colors emerge on leaves in the fall, when the green chlorophyll that has dominated all spring and summer breaks down.


The process begins when shorter days signal leaves to form a layer at the base of their stems that cuts off the flow of water and nutrients. But in order to hasten the decline of chlorophyll, cold nights are needed.


In addition, warmer autumns and winters have been friendly to fungi that attack some trees, particularly the red and sugar maples that provide the most dazzling colors.


"The leaves fall off without ever becoming orange or yellow or red. They just go from green to brown," said Barry Rock, a forestry professor at the University of New Hampshire.


He says 2004 was "mediocre, 2005 was terrible, 2006 was pretty bad although it was spotty. This year, we're seeing that same spottiness."


"Leaf peeping" is big business in Vermont, with some 3.4 million visitors spending nearly $364 million in the fall of 2005, according to state estimates.


State tourism officials reject the notion that nature's palette is getting blander. Erica Housekeeper, spokeswoman for the state Department of Tourism and Marketing, said she had heard nothing but positive reports from foresters and visitors alike this year.


The problem is perception, Housekeeper says: Recollections of autumns past become tinged by nostalgia.


"Sometimes, we become our own worst critics," Housekeeper said.


People who rely on autumn tourism in New England are worried.


"I don't have a sense that the colors are off, but the timing is definitely off," said Scott Cowger, owner and innkeeper at the Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast Inn at Hallowell, Maine.


"Some trees are just starting to change now," Cowger said Thursday. "It used to be, religiously, it was the second week of October when they were at their peak. I would tell my guests to come the second week if you want to see the peak colors. But it's definitely the third or fourth week at this point."


People in Northampton, Mass., are still waiting on fall color. If foliage-viewing is the goal, "I wouldn't send anybody down this way yet," Autumn Inn desk clerk Mary Pelis said this past week.


"The way things are going, the foliage season is the one sure thing for us," said Amie Emmons, innkeeper at the West Mountain Inn, in Arlington, Vt. "We book out two years in advance. It's very concerning if you think the business could start to be affected."

Quoted Text

Global Warming Being Blamed for Calif. Wildfires
By: Jim Meyers  Article Font Size  

Man-made global warming is being blamed for yet another natural calamity – the roaring California wildfires.

As the fires raged out of control in a number of Southern California locations, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada flatly declared on Tuesday: “One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming.” He cited the fires in stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package, The Hill newspaper reported.

When asked by a reporter if he really believed global warming caused the fires, however, Reid appeared to back away from his remark, saying many factors contributed to the disaster.

But “NBC Nightly News” on Tuesday night also chased the global warming connection, with anchor Brian Williams telling viewers: “This has been the driest season on record, unusually severe, that’s leading some people here to wonder: Are these fires somehow a result of climate change? The U.N. panel on global warming did warn that we would see more wildfires, so is there a real connection?”

Williams then turned to the network’s chief environmental affairs correspondent, Anne Thompson.

She said: “Wildfires so unusual today may not be in the future. A new study out this week suggests the impact of climate change could be stronger and sooner than expected. And one of the predicted impacts from climate change could be more wildfires.”

NBC did not point out that Thompson in August filed a story smearing critics of global warming panic as “deniers,” and more recently endorsed Al Gore’s position on the threat of climate change, NewsBusters.org observed.

Thompson continued: “The wildfires are just one example of this fall’s extreme weather: Tornadoes in Michigan, a lack of fall color in the Carolinas, the spectacular foliage muted by drought and warm temperatures…

“And here in Minnesota’s twin cities, they are still awaiting the first official frost, when the temperature dips to 32 degrees. It should have happened two weeks ago. But not this year. So does all this add up to global warming?”

She then acknowledged: “Scientists say you can’t answer that question after just one season.”

But NBC also spoke with Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, without pointing out that he has been called a leading global warming alarmist and serves as science adviser to Environmental Defense, an organization that warns about climate change.

“The weather we’ve seen this fall may or may not be due to the global warming trend,” he said, “but it’s certainly a clear picture of what the future is going to look like if we don’t act quickly to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases.”

Like Thompson, Oppenheimer did not offer a scientific explanation of the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and the California wildfires.

But Thompson termed Oppenheimer’s comments “a stark warning in this autumn of change.”

Quoted Text

Hear out bearer of bad news

   The White House has denied it, but there’s evidence to the contrary that someone in the Office of Management and Budget censored the most sensitive parts of 12 pages worth of damaging testimony on the health impacts of global warming that Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had prepared for a Senate committee Tuesday. It wouldn’t be the first time the White House has tried to mask the severity of this environmental issue from the public.
   The original draft of Gerberding’s speech, obtained by AP reporter H. Josef Hebert, contained far more information about specifi c health threats on the U.S. population posed by global warming than the speech she ultimately gave to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. That speech was reportedly half as long as the original; according to an unnamed CDC official, it was “eviscerated” at the White House, which had asked for a copy beforehand, something it does as a matter of course.
   The final speech did not include, for example, a list of specific, significant health problems that climate change could cause. Among them were the effects of more frequent hot spells on older and sicker Americans, increased air pollution in areas hurt by drought, increased incidences of vector-borne and waterborne diseases, and mental health issues. Undoubtedly it would have been a sobering presentation — and one that Americans have a right, if not an interest, to hear — if only Dr. Gerberding had been allowed to make it.
   Of course the Bush administration has been accused of censoring the bad news about climate change before (so as to justify its lame environmental policies). For example, renowned NASA physicist James Hansen complained to The New York Times early last year that the White House was not only trying to control what he was saying about global warming, but who he was saying it to.
   While there seemed to have been some positive movement in the administration’s attitude on this subject in recent months, this latest incident underscores the fact that when it comes to science, this administration believes only what it wants to believe and doesn’t like to be bothered by the facts.  

Quoted Text

Quoted Text

A problem that doesn’t end with cats

   Global warming is already impacting life on Earth in a number of ways, some decidedly bigger than others. While one of the smaller ones would seem to be the extension of the catbreeding season (subject of a Page 1 story last Saturday), don’t be too sure this quirky tale doesn’t have broader implications.
   The story focused on the overcrowding of area animal shelters due to an extra breeding cycle for cats resulting from this fall’s warmerthan-normal temperatures. It may not seem like a big deal — a cat having three litters over the course of a season instead of just two — but it’s not just one cat, of course. And what happens when those two to six extra kittens per cat get old enough (in just 6 months) to begin having kittens of their own? And then when those kittens start reproducing?
   In fairly short order, there are more cats running around — tearing up gardens, terrorizing dogs, “spraying,” spreading disease, etc. — than anyone knows what to do with. Indeed, many shelters in the region were overcrowded before this year’s phenomenon even occurred, and there are more feral cats around than usual.
   Now, what happens if the problem isn’t confined just to cats? Don’t other species face similar scenarios? Animal control experts and environmental conservationists are surely going to have their hands full.
   In the meantime, as far as cats are concerned, municipal licensing programs that encourage spaying or neutering are the obvious solution, but require the cooperation of pet owners. And if pet owners were responsible in the first place, they wouldn’t let their pets run loose and procreate. If the problem can’t be solved that way, it will have to be through euthanasia.  

Quoted from bumblethru

My My...now they are blaming global warming for the over populated cat population? What will be next?

Quoted Text

Now, what happens if the problem isn’t confined just to cats? Don’t other species face similar scenarios? Animal control experts and environmental conservationists are surely going to have their hands full.

Quoted Text

Time to step up fight against global warming

   Climate change/global warming are making almost daily headlines. Just last week we read about Bangkok disappearing bit by bit under ocean water; carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increasing faster than expected; polar ice caps melting faster than expected; and the censorship by the administration of testimony on health impacts of global warming.
   It’s time for everyone to become involved in doing their part to help with this impending climate crisis. How can we read about it almost daily and do nothing? What can we do? It may not sound like much, but lots of little things, like changing your light bulbs to the compact fluorescents, really make a big difference when everyone does it. Also, combining your errands will reduce the number of miles you drive, and using the bus or walking whenever possible helps. When you clean up the leaves in your yard, get out the rakes instead of the leaf blower — it’s good exercise and cuts lots of carbon emissions. And all of these measures not only help the planet but save money.
   All of us can also become involved in influencing our public officials and other decision makers. Let them know that you’re concerned about what happens to our planet before your grandchildren suffer the consequences. An opportunity to do this is coming on Nov. 3 — our second Step It Up event, part of a nationwide action to cut carbon emissions.
   At 10 a.m. you are invited to join us in the McChesney Room of the Schenectady Library for a press conference on local measures to conserve energy. After that we will rally on the steps of City Hall. Paul Tonko, head of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, will speak on state measures to conserve energy. There will be music, posters and information on what each of us can do to help.
   NANCY PETERSON
   Schenectady  

Quoted Text

All of us can also become involved in influencing our public officials and other decision makers. Let them know that you’re concerned about what happens to our planet before your grandchildren suffer the consequences. An opportunity to do this is coming on Nov. 3 — our second Step It Up event, part of a nationwide action to cut carbon emissions.

Quoted Text

Let them know that you’re concerned about what happens to our planet before your grandchildren suffer the consequences

Quoted Text

EEUUW! - Laurie David Award Finalists: Julia Roberts' & Other Dumb Environmentalist Antics of the Week


By Debbie Schlussel

In the spirit of Laurie David's (and Sheryl Crow's) insistence that we limit our toilet paper usage to one-square per visit, I bring you dumb environmental activist recommendations and experiments of the week:

* Julia Roberts stirring toilet-soup made of used diapers:

In order to promote her soon-to-be-released likely flop, "Charlie Wilson's War" (which denounces our involvement with the Afghanistan Mujahideen against the Soviets), Julia Roberts got USA Today to do a gushing piece, today--"Julia Roberts: The Greening of a Superstar." In it, Ms. Roberts tells us how she contributes less to the world's garbage:



"We make a lot of garbage. How can we make less garbage? This is our plight. I use Seventh Generation (chlorine-free, non-toxic) diapers for Finn and Hazel, and then I was turned on to the (plastic-free, flushable) gDiapers" for Henry. "It is flushable, but you've got to stir that thing! If you don't really break it all the way up, it doesn't go all the way down," advises the multimillion-dollar leading lady.
Um, who really believes this prima donna is running to her bathroom every time one of her three young kiddies makes a doody and is stirring diarpers in her toilet until they break up into pieces? If anyone is actually doing this--and I highly doubt it--it's a personal assistant or her servant-husband.

Stirring diapers in a toilet bowl? You keep doing that, Julia. But no thanks.

Question: Since there's lots of garbage created, each time they eat--much less make a move--on movie sets, did Julia Roberts stir the set garbage in her toilet . . . "to break it up" and make less garbage?

You keep lecturing us little people, "Pretty Woman."

Oh, and don't forget: This is the same woman who in 2000 said:

Republican falls between Reptile and Repugnant in the dictionary.
FYI, Roberts falls between Roach and Rodent in the dictionary.

* "Don't flush if it's yellow":

Fans at Saturday's University of Georgia homecoming game were asked not to flush the toilet . . . if it was #1 they were releasing. More info than I needed, but the slogan, "Don't flush if it's yellow," was posted on signs in bathrooms all over the stadium, in an effort to conserve water.

Not really a new concept, since passengers were forced to do the same on the planes that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked in 1970. You don't exactly want to have to behave like hostage of Islamic terrorists when you're at a football game.

Gee, I'll bet the smell in there was just lovely. Gee, I have an idea for a new perfume: "Eau d'Hillary."

* NBC Sports goes dark for a few minutes, expects you to go dark for a lifetime:

Last night, during the last minute of the kickoff show for NBC's "Sunday Night Football" broadcast and during its Half-time and Post-game shows, the studio went dark to do its part for the Green movement. Yup, I love watching my sporting events with 25% of normal visibility, too. Thrilling. NBC Sports says this is an attempt to get us to turn out our lights, too. Hey, NBC, I'll happily do that, so long as you do it the entire season, for the entire show, on all of your television shows, instead of as a few-minute BS publicity stunt. What's good for the goose, is good for NBC, right?:

NBC's studio show will deliberately go dark for the last minute of the show — before fully lit coverage of Dallas-Philadelphia kicks off at about 8:15 p.m. ET — and stay dark during the halftime and postgame studio shows.
"We're thinking of having Cris Collinsworth wear a miner's helmet with a light," says show producer Michael Weisman, seemingly serious. "And have candles. Or maybe Glow Sticks."

Weisman knows how this all sounds. "We're opening ourselves up for ridicule and sarcasm," he says. "It might be perceived as a stunt. But with 20 million people watching, some might say, 'Let's go turn out the lights in rooms we're not using.' "

Which is not something you'd expect NBC parent General Electric— founded by light bulb creator Thomas Edison - to be advocating.

But starting at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, NBC and its various cable channels begin a week of "green-themed" programming, weaving in environmental angles to all its shows.

To address that NBC "edict," Weisman says, FNA will show satellite shots of U.S. cities "to show all that electricity being used," turn its onscreen logos green and include Bob Costas talking to Matt Lauer, who'll be near the north pole to report for NBC's Today show next week. Says FNA analyst Jerome "The Bus" Bettis: "This week, I'm the hybrid bus."


Gee, how much energy does Jerome Bettis' gazillion-square-foot mansion use? Bob Costas? Matt Lauer? When they downsize, then I'll consider doing something.

Posted by Debbie at 09:50 AM | Comments (4) | Printer Friendly

Quoted Text

Support effort to fight global warming

   On Nov. 3, a national event was held in all but three states. It was the day for climate action, organized by Bill McKibben’s Step It Up team in conjunction with One Sky [One Sky’s mission is to promote sustainable living globally]. Most states had multiple events. In New York, events were held from New York City to Buffalo. One was held here in Schenectady.
   The message for this day of climate action was clear: Cut carbon emissions 80 percent by the year 2050, create green jobs and place a moratorium on new coal-burning power plants.
   That the national event was planned just before Election Day was in keeping with its theme: Who’s a leader? As a grass-roots citizens’ alliance, Step It Up is demanding accountability from all our elected officials. We are demanding political leadership to curb global warming. The future of the planet is at stake.
   The Schenectady events were held by a coalition of nonpartisan groups concerned with the tragic consequences of global warming. We do not endorse candidates. We represent a broad base of citizen concern about the looming consequences of inaction, particularly at the federal level.
   The Schenectady Coalition Against Global Warming counts as its participating members the following organizations: the Environmental Clearinghouse, the county League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, the Green Sanctuary of the Unitarian Society, ARISE [A Regional Initiative Supporting Empowerment] and the SCCC Science Club.
   Our coalition is planning programs and events for the coming year to keep our message in front of the community, and in front of our elected officials.
   PATRICIA RUSH
   Schenectady  

Quoted Text

Climate experts sound alarm
U.N. chief calls for ‘urgent, global action’
BY ARTHUR MAX The Associated Press

VALENCIA, Spain — Global warming is “unequivocal” and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to sea levels rising an average of up to 4.6 feet, the world’s top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.
   “Only urgent, global action will do,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, calling on the United States and China — the world’s two biggest polluters — to do more to slow global climate change.
   “I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role,” Ban told reporters. “Both countries can lead in their own way.”
   Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.
   Climate change imperils “the most precious treasures of our planet,” he said, and the effects are “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must work together.”
   According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fi fth to two-thirds of the world’s species.
GLOBAL THREAT coastal flooding, according to the report.
   Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.
   The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and go down after that.
   In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period, or about 1850.
   “We have already committed the world to sea level rise,” the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.
   Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent droughts, and could drive up to 70 percent of plant and animal species to extinction, according to the panel’s report.
BLUEPRINTS LAID OUT
   The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes — and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.
   “The world’s scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice,” Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, next month. “I expect the world’s policy makers to do the same.”
   The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
   That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.
   “This report will have an incredible political impact,” Yvo de Boer, the United Nations’ top climate change official, told The Associated Press. “It’s a signal that politicians cannot afford to ignore.”
   The United States opted out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the science was unproven and that the burden of mandatory emission cuts was unfair since it excluded fast-growing China and India.
   Chief U.S. delegate Sharon Hays said doubts have been dispelled. “What’s changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening,” she said in a conference call late Friday. She did not indicate that Washington would abandon its policy of voluntary emission cuts.
STEPS RECOMMENDED
   China and India have said any measures impinging on their development and efforts to lift their people from poverty were unacceptable — a point likely to be heeded at the Bali talks.
   The report offered dozens of measures for avoiding the worst catastrophes if taken together — at a cost of less than 0.12 percent of the global economy annually until 2050. They ranged from switching to nuclear and gas-fired power stations to developing hybrid cars, using more efficient electrical appliances and managing cropland to store more carbon.
   Ban said a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries develop clean energy resources, adapt to climate conditions and give them the technology to help themselves.
   He said he witnessed the devastation of climate change in disappearing glaciers of Antarctica, the deforested Amazon and under the ozone hole in Chile.
   “These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie,” said Ban. “But they are even more terrifying because they are real.”  

Quoted Text

Don't swallow meat theory on global warming  

First published: Monday, November 19, 2007

Robert Lawrence of the "Meatless Mondays" program ought to do his homework before linking U.S. meat production to climate change. ("Want to help save Earth? Lose some weight," Nov. 12)
  
While the United Nations claims meat producers are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gases, data from the Environmental Protection Agency show that U.S. livestock production only contributes 2.4 percent. If anything, Lawrence should be encouraging us to eat home-grown beef, since our domestic ranchers appear far more efficient and eco-friendly than their counterparts overseas.

And it's not true that Americans are eating far more red meat than the government recommends. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that the average American eats 2.3 ounces of red meat per day. This is far below the 5 to 7 ounces that the federal government's current Dietary Guidelines recommend for foods in the "meat" group.

Animal rights activists and other advocates of strict vegetarianism are working overtime trying to hitch their cause to the global-warming bandwagon. But the facts just aren't on their side.

DAVID MARTOSKO
Director of Research
Center for Consumer Freedom
Washington, D.C.

Quoted Text

Richard Monda STAR TALK Possible solutions to cool Earth are out of this world
Richard Monda is an astronomer living in the Capital Region.

   Polar ice core samples show that the average temperature of Earth has been increasing. Whether this increase will continue in the long term and cause a permanent climate change has yet to gather a scientific consensus. In the meantime, various engineering solutions have been proposed that are literally out of this world.
   Engineering practices that address Earth’s environment on a planet-wide scale are called geoengineering. One of the goals of geoengineering is to correct for any effects of global warming by decreasing the heating of Earth’s atmosphere.
   One such solution has been proposed by University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel. Wellknown for his innovative technique of “spin-casting” exceptionally large telescope mirrors for the world’s major observatories, Angel’s idea is to cool the entire planet slightly. His method involves decreasing the amount of incident energy that Earth receives from the sun.
   To accomplish this, he proposes placing a sunshade in space to uniformly reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth. This reduction would only amount to a few percent and would be enough to balance the additional heating of Earth if the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere were to double from its present value.
   The solar sunshade scheme, unquestionably, would be a tour de force of technology. Angel’s team envisions launching trillions of ultralight spacecraft, catapulted into space by magnetic launchers a million mechanisms at a time, parked in orbits spread out a million miles above the earth. Nonetheless, if a stack of fliers were launched every five minutes, it would still take a decade to complete the solar canopy.
   Dimensionally, each of these space vehicles would be about 2 feet across by one five-thousandth of an inch thick and weigh about as much as a large butterfly. Every one of these orbiting fliers would be made of a transparent film pierced with small holes so that tilting the little gadgets would control how much the sunlight is reduced.
   Angel estimates that the total weight of this constellation of spacecraft would be about 20 million tons but with magnetic launchers, the cost could be as little as $20 per pound for liftoff. (The current working figure for sending objects into space is $10,000 per pound.) Estimates place the lifetime of the sunshade at approximately 50 years.
MICROWAVE MAGIC
   In San Diego, Eastlund Scientific Enterprises has been looking at weather modification schemes for several years. In 2000, Eastlund joined with a NASA veteran to study how the “twist” could be taken out of a twister. They envisioned a satellite beaming microwave energy into a tornado to dissipate the energy of such a tempest.
   These kinds of surgical strikes on weather systems could moderate air temperatures, altering a storm’s wind currents and ultimately tame a tornado.
   The beamed microwave energy could also be directed to the edge of the jet stream, heating that region and influencing its temperature and pressure. This process could steer the jet stream without changing its chemistry. Global climate is influenced by the path of the jet stream, such as the way the El Niño temperature changes in the Pacific Ocean alter the course of the jet stream.
   Similarly, the jet stream could be steered to bring rain to a droughtstricken region or steered away from a rain-soaked area to prevent flooding.
SILVER BULLETS
   Power rays from space to manipulate weather cause meteorologists to raise a skeptical eyebrow. These weathermen prefer to introduce small changes to Earth’s atmosphere to fine-tune its climate.
   They favor making Earth’s surface more reflective or seeding the stratosphere with tiny silvered particles to make this part of Earth’s upper atmosphere more reflective to solar energy. Clearly, managing the ground’s reflectivity would not only allow for regional climate control but would be a more cost-effective solution than a planetary parasol.
   Lightheartedly mocking the astronomers, one meteorologist suggested that the first test of an atmospheric modification scheme should be to control the global dust storms on Mars.
   At present, all planetary engineering solutions are in the idea stage and would need serious research to determine if they are viable without the risk of any adverse consequences, and real cost estimates are yet to be determined for feasibility.
   Further, scientists agree that atmospheric adjustment plans are not a substitute for developing renewable and alternative energy sources. Technological innovation could help ensure that as well. However, if an abrupt climate crisis does occur, it is clearly advantageous that alternative remedies have been studied.
DECEMBER SKY
   Mars is a marvelous view in the evening sky. It outshines all of the night stars, outdoing the night’s brightest star, Sirius, by almost twice as much. Along with its brightness, this planet’s carroty-colored light makes it easy to identify. As a further aid, look for the waning gibbous moon next to Mars on Monday night and then the full moon next to Mars during the night of Dec. 23-24.
   The third quarter moon will appear next to Saturn throughout the night on Dec. 1. Then a lunar crescent will be near Venus during the hours before sunrise on Dec. 5. In addition, the Geminid meteor shower will take place on Dec 13-14.