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Britain starts eating the planet on Sunday 16 April
New research of the New Economics Foundation reveals that on Sunday 16 April the UK in effect stopped relying on its own natural resources to support itself and starts to live off the rest of the world. At current UK levels of consumption our ecological debt day‚ "the day we begin living beyond our environmental means" falls only a third of the way through the year and has crept ever earlier over the last four decades. (04/15/06) MORE»
10 States Sue EPA Over Global Warming
Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government Thursday in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants. The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming. (04/27/06) MORE»
ScottishPower gets go-ahead for Europe's biggest onshore windfarm
Engineers were yesterday granted permission by the Scottish Executive to build the largest onshore windfarm in Europe, after they agreed to erect a new radar tower for Glasgow airport. ScottishPower's new windfarm, at Whitelee, south of Glasgow, will cost £300m to build and its 140 turbines will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. (04/28/06) MORE»
Solar for Portugal – Govt Policy Supports
Next month the company PowerLight, using $75 million of General Electric's money, will begin installing on the 150 acres the first of what will be 52,000 solar panels, capable of generating 11 megawatts of electricity - enough to light and heat 8,000 homes. The Portuguese government, seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, has introduced legislation that forces utilities to pay 31 euro cents a kilowatt hour for solar energy. Spain and Germany have similar programs, and Italy recently introduced one as well. (04/27/06) MORE»
Trickle-up response to global warming
Ready for some good news on global warming this Earth Day weekend? Tired of doom and gloom? Worried that it's already too late? Then you're like most Americans. But instead of sliding into cynicism like the Bush administration and Congress, Americans are leading their country toward smart energy solutions that will preserve this beautiful planet for our children. (04/25/06) MORE»
Our Food: Hidden Miles Must End
Everything we buy has "embodied energy" in it—that is, what it took in energy resources to make, package, and transport it to us. The miles that our food travels today is without precedent and will not continue. From the place where the food was grown or born until it reaches your grocery store is called the "chain." These chains are far longer than most people realize. (04/06) MORE»
The oil party is finally over
Welcome to the world of $70-per-barrel oil. That's if there is no crisis in the Persian Gulf over Iran's nuclear ambitions. If there is, then get ready for $140 a barrel. Oil briefly breached the $70 barrier eight months ago, but this time it is going up for good. (04/25/06) MORE»
How Much Do We Need to Cut Emissions?
In 2007, Jerry Mahlman will be a senior editor of the assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is currently a senior researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "There's a colossal misperception that if you bike to work once a week and recycle your garbage, then global warming will be fixed up. If you were to hold the emissions constant, you would get up to eight times the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that there was before the Industrial Revolution." (04/06) MORE»
Visuals of New York Under Water, Queen's Concern and How Much It Costs to Get Doubters
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, the lengthy article on climate change has interesting information. Besides the powerful pictures of New York when the seas rise, we learn that the Queen of England met privately with Blair and told him her deep concerns over climate change and offered to help. An analysis of how and how much several doubting scientists get paid to question is also useful to understand. (04/06) MORE»
International Energy Forum Gets Told Reduce Emissions and Go to Renewables by Swiss
To an audience that includes the wealthiest Arab oil men, OPEC and the leaders of major oil companies, Energy Minister Moritz Leuenberger of Switzerland has called for sustained efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions in a bid to combat global warming. Speaking at an international meeting in the Gulf emirate of Qatar he pleaded for close cooperation in the search of new technologies and renewable energy sources. (04/23/06) MORE»
Brace for $100-a-barrel oil and the sacrifices required to put in place a national policy for energy alternatives
Are Americans willing to live with $100-a-barrel oil prices, which could translate into $6-a-gallon gasoline and heating oil? They may have no choice. It could happen as soon as five years from now, according to some energy experts. The price for a barrel of crude has nearly tripled in three years, from $25 in April 2003, to over $72 today. (04/23/06) MORE»
Climate-Change Model Shows Global Warming Poses Major Threat to Ski Industry By 2050
Global warming may spell disaster for much of the Rocky Mountain West's ski industry by the year 2050, according to a climate-trends model showing dramatic snowpack loss due to climate warming. The climate model results are part of the 2006 Colorado College State of the Rockies Report Card, released this week. (04/15/06) MORE»
Study shows melting ice a danger to walruses
Arctic researchers who discovered a surprising number of abandoned baby walruses say melting sea ice may be the culprit, according to a study in the April issue of Aquatic Mammals. "We were on a station for 24 hours, and the calves would be swimming around us, crying. We couldn't rescue them," said team member Carin Ashjian, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (04/14/06) MORE»
Salt Lake City: Global climate change is a moral issue
When Rocky Anderson introduced Australian scientist and author Tim Flannery last week at the City Library and compared him to Rachel Carson, he may have had in mind the galvanizing power Carson's Silent Spring had on the early environmental movement of the 1960s and the potential for Flannery's new book, The Weather Makers, to have a similar power on the growing debate about climate change.But the comparison was far more apt than Anderson may have realized. (04/15/06) MORE»
Blair dealt nuclear power blow by parliament body
A British parliamentary committee on Sunday rejected any government dash for nuclear power to meet Britain's looming energy needs, delivering an apparent blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is widely believed to favour replacing the country's ageing nuclear plants with new ones, but the all-party environment audit committee's report was the second time a leading body has opposed a new generation of nuclear stations. (04/16/06) MORE»
Energy Efficiency Can Loosen America's Energy Straitjacket
"When we look across all energy markets, we see an alarming picture," stated author Dr. Neal Elliott, ACEEE's Industrial Program Director. "In past energy crunches, U.S. consumers could switch to another fuel when supplies were tight. Today demand for petroleum fuels, natural gas, and coal is surging beyond the markets' ability to deliver. High coal and natural gas prices are in turn driving electricity prices higher in many regions." "Energy efficiency is the cornerstone of sustainable energy policy," stated Bill Prindle, ACEEE's Deputy Director. "Our continuing straitjacket situation shows that without moderating energy demand, no supply strategy will be able to keep up. (04/06) MORE»
Mayor, city take lead on battling warming
Mayor Martin Chavez has said "The principal message is that the jury has come back. Global warming is real and presents a very clear and present danger to all of us." Chavez notes Albuquerque has been reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, by changing the way the city does business, including favoring new vehicles for its fleet that burn environmentally friendly fuels and burning methane gas produced by the city's garbage. It plans to produce energy from the methane burning and sell it for power. Albuquerque certainly can and should be proud it is a model for how to do it. Chavez also is to be commended for taking a national leadership role, through the Conference of Mayors last year. (04/11/06) MORE»
Smithsonian Exhibit Disappointing
The new exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History show ice melting in the Artic, yet barely mention carbon dioxide! When a reporter asked exhibit designer Barbara Stauffer why there wasn't more of a discussion about the role of humans in climate change, she said, "It's about the science." She added, "I think it undermines what we do in the exhibit if we start pointing fingers." She went further: "It's about functions of the atmosphere. It's not a climate change exhibit." (04/12/06) MORE»
Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
The assertion that climate scientists are being censored first surfaced in January when James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times and The Washington Post that the administration sought to muzzle him after he gave a lecture in December calling for cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Now many scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration are coming forward to tell how censorship is occurring. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing. (04/06/06) MORE»
Diversity of species faces 'catastrophe' from climate change
Tens of thousands of animals and plants could become extinct within the coming decades as a direct result of global warming. This is the main conclusion of a study into how climate change will affect the diversity of species in the most precious wildlife havens of the world.Scientists believe that if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide double from pre-industrial times—which is expected by the end of the century—then biodiversity will be devastated. (04/11/06) MORE»
Oslo's sewage heats its homes
In an extreme energy project tapping heat from raw sewage, Oslo's citizens are helping to warm their homes and offices simply by flushing the toilet.Large blue machines at the end of a 300-meter long tunnel in a hillside in central Oslo use fridge technology to suck heat from the sewer and transfer it to a network of hot water pipes feeding thousands of radiators and taps around the city. "We believe this is the biggest heating system in the world using raw sewage.
(04/07/06) MORE»
Most people think climate change threat not in their lifetime
Americans are more convinced than ever that the Earth is being affected by global warming, but they have still not grown especially concerned about it. Only a third predict global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetimes.
(04/07/06) MORE»
EU executive gets tough on environmental violations
European Union regulators said on Thursday they were taking legal action against several EU member states for failing to apply four of the 25-nation bloc's climate change laws. The European Commission sent first warnings to Cyprus, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta and Poland for their failures.
(04/06/06) MORE»
UK onshore wind energy set to power 3 million by 2010
By 2010, the onshore wind industry will generate 50 per cent more electricity than previously predicted...generating almost 5% of UK electricity supply.
(04/06/06) MORE»
2-year global-warming study OK'd
The Western Regional Air Partnership voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a two-year program to quantify global-warming trends from 1990 to 2020. The partnership, a multiagency group that developed plans to clean up haze in the Grand Canyon, signed on with the nonprofit Center for Climate Strategies to make the regionwide assessment.
(04/05/06) MORE»
US Senate panel takes baby steps on climate change
A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday heard diverging views from electric utilities on whether Congress should slap mandatory caps on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and who should foot the bill.
Committee chairman Pete Domenici has warned it would be "impossible" to pass legislation to cut heat-trapping gas emissions in 2006 because of election-year gridlock.
(04/04/06) MORE»
US Utilities' CO2 Emissions Up Since 1990 - Report
US electric utilities' emissions of pollutants that cause acid rain and smog have fallen sharply since the federal government adopted stricter standards in 1990, but greenhouse gas emissions have risen in that time, according to a report released Wednesday.
(04/06/06) MORE»
Climate change leaves adverse impact on wheat produce
AN UNEXPECTED change in climate has adversely affected the yield of wheat crop here in the entire eastern Uttar Pradesh this year. Agricultural scientists believe that the total yield would fall around 25 to 30 per cent than expected this year. It was due to sudden rise in temperature in the month of February this year that the yield would now fall down by 25 to 30 per cent.
(04/05/06) MORE»
Forecast for Prairies: drier than a dust bowl
The Prairies are almost certain to experience future droughts far worse than the dry period that turned the region into a dust bowl during the 1930s, warns a new study by one of Canada's most prominent water experts.
Given the likelihood of a severe water crunch, Dr. Schindler suggests people in the West should consider some radical steps, such as limiting the number of industries and residents.
(04/04/06) MORE»
Deep-sea corals in danger
Even the coldest, darkest depths of the world's oceans can't escape the harmful effects of global warming -- and that includes deep-sea corals, local researchers have found.
The scientists are connecting the ocean's increasing absorption of carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels -- with changes in the chemistry of seawater.
(04/03/06) MORE»
Bishops call for action on climate change
Eighteen New Zealand and Pacific Anglican bishops are calling for governments and people to take action on climate change in the region.
The bishops' statement came in the wake of last week's two-day climate change conference in Wellington.
(04/04/06) MORE»
Canada's New Government Cold Shoulders Climate Change Action
In office just two months, the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper has begun disassembling Canada’s Climate Change Program, according to the Sierra Club of Canada.
All climate change programs announced in Action Plan 2000 have not been renewed and Natural Resources Canada has begun laying off staff, the conservation group points out.
(04/04/06) MORE»
California Global Warming Fight Gains Steam, Sets National Precedent
First of-its-kind bill would set statewide limits on heat-trapping pollution, stimulate new jobs and growth in California's clean energy economy
Two Democrats into the House today jointly introduced an historic bill to set concrete new limits on global warming pollution.
(04/03/06) MORE»
Global warming: act now and stand a chance
But many scientists are not so sure that the oncoming train of global warming can be avoided. Temperatures are going to rise for decades to come because the chief gas that causes global warming lingers in the atmosphere for about a century. (04/03/06) MORE»
Americans willing to fight global warming
An overwhelming majority of Americans think they can help reduce global warming and are willing to make the sacrifices that are needed, according to a new poll. After years of controversy, now 71 percent of Americans believe global warming is real, according to a telephone survey of 1,200 people for the advocacy group Environmental Defense. (04/03/06) MORE»
UN accused of ignoring 500,000 Chernobyl deaths
United Nations nuclear and health watchdogs have ignored evidence of deaths, cancers, mutations and other conditions after the Chernobyl accident, leading scientists and doctors have claimed in the run-up to the nuclear disaster's 20th anniversary next month. (03/25/06) MORE»
Boxer, Feinstein Tell President To Let California Fight Global Warming
U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein sent a letter to President Bush urging him to reverse his Administration's attempts to undo California's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. Boxer said, "This Administration is trying to slam the door on California's pioneering efforts to address the grave crisis of global warming. On the same day that President Bush described his ideas to respond to climate change, his own Administration issued a rule that would hurt the fight against global warming. This rule includes an attempt to override California and 10 other states' efforts to promote innovative technological solutions to climate change and it should be withdrawn immediately." (04/01/06) MORE» |
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