The Punches Keep on Coming...
Lord May, the president of the prestigious British Royal Society, said the impact of climate change will be as bad as any weapons of mass destruction. He adds it is conceivable that the Gulf Coast of the US could be effectively uninhabitable by the end of the century.
A recent study published in the Journal Science found the Earth's ocean levels have risen twice as fast in the past 150 years, signaling the impact of human activity on temperatures worldwide. The research team at the University of Rutgers says that driving cars and other carbon producing activities are having a clear impact. Other studies confirm that greenhouse gases are rising faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
--------
It's official. 2005 was the most expensive year for insurance loses from weather-related natural disasters - ever. This from a report by one of the largest companies, Munich Re, released at the international climate conference in Montreal.
Weather damage claims topped 200 billion dollars, compared to the previous record of 145 billion dollars set in 2004.
Despite the massive coverage of Katrina, the strongest ever hurricane was Wilma, which smashed into the resort community of Cancun and the rest of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Most of those people were not insured. Katrina hit the better insured and more expensive American Gulf real estate causing an estimated 125 billion dollars damage. The insurance companies covered about 30 billion of that, so families and governments have taken historic losses that may alter American policy and the economy.
Munich Re Foundations director Thomas Loster said:
"There is a powerful indication from these figures that we are moving from predictions of the likely impacts of climate change to proof that it is already fully underway."
The full article by Jim Lobe is available at ipsnews.net
------
ENS, the Environmental News Service, reports: "a village of 100 people in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has become one of the first communities forced to move as a result of global warming. After their coastal homes were repeatedly swamped by surges and large waves linked with climate change driven storms, in August the villagers of Lateu were relocated to higher ground in the interior of Tegua, one of Vanuatu's northern provinces."
Full article at www.ens-newswire.com for December 6th.
----------
ENS also reports: "Climate changes have led to a drastic fall in agricultural production in Malawi and other southern African countries, delegates to the ongoing UN climate change conference are learning. Already over-burdened with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, unprecedented drought has hit these countries, pressuring them to import huge amounts of food."
------------
It's difficult to find out what is really going on at the Montreal climate meetings. The news media in North America have swept both the conference and the protests outside under a very deep shaggy carpet of non-reporting. A face transplant has become more important than the future of life on the planet. Here is a December 6th press release from the three largest environmental groups. Quote:
"As the UN Climate Conference in Montreal reaches a critical phase, the Climate Action Network, CAN) today warned that the EU's negotiating strategy lacks ambition and risks failure in the face of determined opposition from the Bush administration.
The Montreal Conference is set to launch a negotiation process on a second commitment period - beginning in 2013 - for the Kyoto Protocol. Deeper emissions cuts from developed countries, including the EU member countries, are vital to avoid catastrophic climate change. Negotiations on this issue started on Wednesday. However, a broader process to bring about additional action from developing countries is also needed. Such action could be in the form of renewable energy targets or sustainable development policies. The question is where and how this could be started.
Climate Action Network is deeply concerned by the EU strategy to start talks about additional action under the UN Climate Convention, instead of the Kyoto Protocol. The result would be a process where the USA (which has ratified the Convention but has withdrawn from the Protocol) could veto any real progress, and has in fact declared its intention to do just that. CAN, which comprises a broad range of non-governmental Organizations which represent several million people, is urging broader progress to be made under Kyoto.
Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth said: "These negotiations can make a real difference in the life of the millions of people already threatened by climate change. If the EU want a meaningful process to come out of Montreal, they have to leave the Bush administration behind."
CAN-Europe Director Matthias Duwe said from Montreal:
"The lack of leadership on this issue from the UK, currently holding the Presidency of the EU, is particularly alarming. It has been active in developing a progressive position for the EU in the past, but at this critical moment it is looking for a fairy tale ending with the Bush administration that does not exist. The Kyoto Protocol is the only vehicle for a credible long-term international solution to stop dangerous climate change. Its scope needs to be broadened, rather than weakened."
Stephan Singer, director of European Climate Policy at WWF added: "The Bush Administration is increasingly isolated in the US in its state of denial on climate change. At the state and city level in the US, support for climate protection is growing rapidly and real action is already being taken. Even the US senate voted in favor of mandatory emissions controls, a slap in the face of the Bush administration. The USA will eventually rejoin the international efforts, but only if the international community keeps the process going under the Kyoto Protocol."
The EU appears to be also divided on a key issue that will determine whether a credible process for discussing new developed country targets can be established. Among the most problematic countries are apparently Finland and Italy which are opposed to setting a clear timeline on when negotiations for the second commitment period will end. If the new binding targets for developed countries are not agreed by 2008 there is a risk they will not be ratified by 2012, when the current targets expire.
Laura Yates, climate campaigner from Greenpeace UK: "A timeline for the post-2012 talks is absolutely essential if developed countries are to make the process credible to developing countries and the nascent carbon markets. Countries that block the timeline endanger the success of these climate talks and risk a breach of trust with developing countries, into which the EU has invested a lot of effort. Hopefully the arrival of EU Environment Ministers will push the talks in the right direction and ensure future negotiations can proceed under the Kyoto Protocol, depriving Bush of the chance to wreck long-term action."
For more info, go to Climate Action Network at http://www.climatenetwork.org
---
Another report in the Journal Science warns that the ocean currents that transport heat around the world, and keep Europe relatively mild for its latitude, are weakening. Long suspected as an effect of climate change, this is the first long-term study to offer proof of changes in the ocean conveyor belt. British oceanographers studying the Atlantic since 1957 showed the overall movement of water slowed 30 percent in the last 50 years - an astounding and worrying change.
According to an article in the Times, by Usha Lee McFarling, computer models had predicted melting glaciers and ice sheets at the poles would add more fresh water to the ocean, changing currents important to our current climate. Now, we have proof that the computer models were correct, and an imbalance has begun. A climate expert from the University of Munich called the results "alarming."
These deep ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, carry heat from the tropics to northern latitudes. If the salt content is changed, then mixing does not take place, and the current can stall, causing dramatic, almost unimaginable climate changes, in very short periods of time. Although exaggerated for the movies, the film "The Day After Tomorrow" suggests humans are in no way prepared for the possible climate catastrophes resulting from our love affair with fossil carbon.
McFarling writes:
"The currents have stopped in the past - and within a decade lowered the temperature of parts of Europe by 10 and sometimes 20 degrees, said Richard Alley, an expert on abrupt climate change at Penn State University. The last time this happened was 8,200 years ago when a large
ice-dammed lake in North America suddenly drained and freshened the Arctic, he said."
endquote
--[Oh Shit, the Poles are Melting clip]
This June, Ruth Curry, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, published a paper showing that an additional 19,000 cubic kilometers 'nearly 4 Amazon's worth' of freshwater had entered the North Atlantic since 1960. Normally, about 5,000 cubic kilometers enter the region each year. The excess water is coming from
additional precipitation, higher river runoff and melting ice from glaciers and ice sheets, she said.
Curry fully expects that the freshening she has measured in the North Atlantic, and the warming of the waters there, will slow ocean circulation in the future. But she's not convinced that the slowing has already occurred.
"This is not a certainty, but it could be a prelude," Curry said of the new measurements. "Only time will tell us. We have no crystal ball here."
----------------
There is SOME POSTIIVE NEWS....[CHEER]
State and federal regulators have approved the construction of six underwater turbines in New York City. The array, which may grow to 300 turbines, would be the first multi-turbine source of tidal energy, connected to the electric grid, any where in the world.
Daniel Hendrick's article "Harnessing the Waves" in E Magazine describes giant underwater windmills grabbing energy from the tidal flows in the East River. Putting the generators near big consumers saves transmission loss and provides the stability of a locally sources system. Trey Taylor of Verdant Power says the first 18-month project with 15 foot diameter turbines will help power a supermarket and parking garage a few hundred feet away. If the test is successful, the larger installation will provide 10 megawatts, enough for 4,000 homes.
Get more from E the Environment magazine at www.emagazine.com
---------
The Rainforest Action Network issued a press release November 28th, announcing that mega-investment firm Goldman Sachs has adopted a climate change policy. RAN has been pressuring Wall Street firms to act responsibly, as though the future of the planet mattered.
RAN says:
Goldman Sachs & Co. Inc. is the first global investment bank to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy acknowledging "the degradation of global ecosystems services," according to the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group in San Francisco.
"We don't have a lot more time to deal with climate change," Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs' chairman and chief executive, said in a statement released last week by the network. "We need the right balance between regulation and market-based approaches."
New York-based Goldman Sachs' environmental policy acknowledges the scientific consensus on climate change, the Rainforest Action Network said.
The network was critical of other financial services firms that have not adopted such a policy.
"In stark contrast to holdouts like Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, Hank Paulson and his executives reached out to RAN and worked closely with our team as well as other citizens groups," Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, said in a prepared statement.
Goldman Sachs is "helping to fill a leadership vacuum" on environmental and social issues, he said, adding that "this is the beginning of a long-term transformative process, not just for Goldman Sachs but for our economy."
-------
Toyota hybrid car sales have topped half a million, according to Greencarcongress.com.
83% of those sales were the Toyota Prius, the car driven by stars like Leonardo diCaprio.
In Japan, Toyota also sells a hybrid minivan, a luxury sedan, and even a light-duty hybrid truck, as well as hybrid Lexus SUV and a Highlander hybrid pickup.
------------
A United Nations conference on Migratory Species has announced new 20 new additions to the sadly long list of traveling animals needing protection from human interference and hunting. New species at risk include a series of bats, birds like warblers and thrushes, the Basking sharks, short-beaked dolphins, gorillas and central Asian deer, and many more.
The Signatories to the Convention on Migratory Species met in Nairobi, Africa in late November.
----------
Unlike North Americans, Europeans have been given a choice in the food they eat. A clear majority of Swiss voters turned down a government plan to introduce Genetically Modified food. Now a referendum has approved a 5 year ban on GM organisms on Swiss farms. The Genetic Modification of farm animals has been banned, permanently.
[applause]
-------
This has been news from Radio Ecoshock at www.ecoshock.org
A recent study published in the Journal Science found the Earth's ocean levels have risen twice as fast in the past 150 years, signaling the impact of human activity on temperatures worldwide. The research team at the University of Rutgers says that driving cars and other carbon producing activities are having a clear impact. Other studies confirm that greenhouse gases are rising faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
--------
It's official. 2005 was the most expensive year for insurance loses from weather-related natural disasters - ever. This from a report by one of the largest companies, Munich Re, released at the international climate conference in Montreal.
Weather damage claims topped 200 billion dollars, compared to the previous record of 145 billion dollars set in 2004.
Despite the massive coverage of Katrina, the strongest ever hurricane was Wilma, which smashed into the resort community of Cancun and the rest of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Most of those people were not insured. Katrina hit the better insured and more expensive American Gulf real estate causing an estimated 125 billion dollars damage. The insurance companies covered about 30 billion of that, so families and governments have taken historic losses that may alter American policy and the economy.
Munich Re Foundations director Thomas Loster said:
"There is a powerful indication from these figures that we are moving from predictions of the likely impacts of climate change to proof that it is already fully underway."
The full article by Jim Lobe is available at ipsnews.net
------
ENS, the Environmental News Service, reports: "a village of 100 people in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has become one of the first communities forced to move as a result of global warming. After their coastal homes were repeatedly swamped by surges and large waves linked with climate change driven storms, in August the villagers of Lateu were relocated to higher ground in the interior of Tegua, one of Vanuatu's northern provinces."
Full article at www.ens-newswire.com for December 6th.
----------
ENS also reports: "Climate changes have led to a drastic fall in agricultural production in Malawi and other southern African countries, delegates to the ongoing UN climate change conference are learning. Already over-burdened with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, unprecedented drought has hit these countries, pressuring them to import huge amounts of food."
------------
It's difficult to find out what is really going on at the Montreal climate meetings. The news media in North America have swept both the conference and the protests outside under a very deep shaggy carpet of non-reporting. A face transplant has become more important than the future of life on the planet. Here is a December 6th press release from the three largest environmental groups. Quote:
"As the UN Climate Conference in Montreal reaches a critical phase, the Climate Action Network, CAN) today warned that the EU's negotiating strategy lacks ambition and risks failure in the face of determined opposition from the Bush administration.
The Montreal Conference is set to launch a negotiation process on a second commitment period - beginning in 2013 - for the Kyoto Protocol. Deeper emissions cuts from developed countries, including the EU member countries, are vital to avoid catastrophic climate change. Negotiations on this issue started on Wednesday. However, a broader process to bring about additional action from developing countries is also needed. Such action could be in the form of renewable energy targets or sustainable development policies. The question is where and how this could be started.
Climate Action Network is deeply concerned by the EU strategy to start talks about additional action under the UN Climate Convention, instead of the Kyoto Protocol. The result would be a process where the USA (which has ratified the Convention but has withdrawn from the Protocol) could veto any real progress, and has in fact declared its intention to do just that. CAN, which comprises a broad range of non-governmental Organizations which represent several million people, is urging broader progress to be made under Kyoto.
Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth said: "These negotiations can make a real difference in the life of the millions of people already threatened by climate change. If the EU want a meaningful process to come out of Montreal, they have to leave the Bush administration behind."
CAN-Europe Director Matthias Duwe said from Montreal:
"The lack of leadership on this issue from the UK, currently holding the Presidency of the EU, is particularly alarming. It has been active in developing a progressive position for the EU in the past, but at this critical moment it is looking for a fairy tale ending with the Bush administration that does not exist. The Kyoto Protocol is the only vehicle for a credible long-term international solution to stop dangerous climate change. Its scope needs to be broadened, rather than weakened."
Stephan Singer, director of European Climate Policy at WWF added: "The Bush Administration is increasingly isolated in the US in its state of denial on climate change. At the state and city level in the US, support for climate protection is growing rapidly and real action is already being taken. Even the US senate voted in favor of mandatory emissions controls, a slap in the face of the Bush administration. The USA will eventually rejoin the international efforts, but only if the international community keeps the process going under the Kyoto Protocol."
The EU appears to be also divided on a key issue that will determine whether a credible process for discussing new developed country targets can be established. Among the most problematic countries are apparently Finland and Italy which are opposed to setting a clear timeline on when negotiations for the second commitment period will end. If the new binding targets for developed countries are not agreed by 2008 there is a risk they will not be ratified by 2012, when the current targets expire.
Laura Yates, climate campaigner from Greenpeace UK: "A timeline for the post-2012 talks is absolutely essential if developed countries are to make the process credible to developing countries and the nascent carbon markets. Countries that block the timeline endanger the success of these climate talks and risk a breach of trust with developing countries, into which the EU has invested a lot of effort. Hopefully the arrival of EU Environment Ministers will push the talks in the right direction and ensure future negotiations can proceed under the Kyoto Protocol, depriving Bush of the chance to wreck long-term action."
For more info, go to Climate Action Network at http://www.climatenetwork.org
---
Another report in the Journal Science warns that the ocean currents that transport heat around the world, and keep Europe relatively mild for its latitude, are weakening. Long suspected as an effect of climate change, this is the first long-term study to offer proof of changes in the ocean conveyor belt. British oceanographers studying the Atlantic since 1957 showed the overall movement of water slowed 30 percent in the last 50 years - an astounding and worrying change.
According to an article in the Times, by Usha Lee McFarling, computer models had predicted melting glaciers and ice sheets at the poles would add more fresh water to the ocean, changing currents important to our current climate. Now, we have proof that the computer models were correct, and an imbalance has begun. A climate expert from the University of Munich called the results "alarming."
These deep ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, carry heat from the tropics to northern latitudes. If the salt content is changed, then mixing does not take place, and the current can stall, causing dramatic, almost unimaginable climate changes, in very short periods of time. Although exaggerated for the movies, the film "The Day After Tomorrow" suggests humans are in no way prepared for the possible climate catastrophes resulting from our love affair with fossil carbon.
McFarling writes:
"The currents have stopped in the past - and within a decade lowered the temperature of parts of Europe by 10 and sometimes 20 degrees, said Richard Alley, an expert on abrupt climate change at Penn State University. The last time this happened was 8,200 years ago when a large
ice-dammed lake in North America suddenly drained and freshened the Arctic, he said."
endquote
--[Oh Shit, the Poles are Melting clip]
This June, Ruth Curry, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, published a paper showing that an additional 19,000 cubic kilometers 'nearly 4 Amazon's worth' of freshwater had entered the North Atlantic since 1960. Normally, about 5,000 cubic kilometers enter the region each year. The excess water is coming from
additional precipitation, higher river runoff and melting ice from glaciers and ice sheets, she said.
Curry fully expects that the freshening she has measured in the North Atlantic, and the warming of the waters there, will slow ocean circulation in the future. But she's not convinced that the slowing has already occurred.
"This is not a certainty, but it could be a prelude," Curry said of the new measurements. "Only time will tell us. We have no crystal ball here."
----------------
There is SOME POSTIIVE NEWS....[CHEER]
State and federal regulators have approved the construction of six underwater turbines in New York City. The array, which may grow to 300 turbines, would be the first multi-turbine source of tidal energy, connected to the electric grid, any where in the world.
Daniel Hendrick's article "Harnessing the Waves" in E Magazine describes giant underwater windmills grabbing energy from the tidal flows in the East River. Putting the generators near big consumers saves transmission loss and provides the stability of a locally sources system. Trey Taylor of Verdant Power says the first 18-month project with 15 foot diameter turbines will help power a supermarket and parking garage a few hundred feet away. If the test is successful, the larger installation will provide 10 megawatts, enough for 4,000 homes.
Get more from E the Environment magazine at www.emagazine.com
---------
The Rainforest Action Network issued a press release November 28th, announcing that mega-investment firm Goldman Sachs has adopted a climate change policy. RAN has been pressuring Wall Street firms to act responsibly, as though the future of the planet mattered.
RAN says:
Goldman Sachs & Co. Inc. is the first global investment bank to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy acknowledging "the degradation of global ecosystems services," according to the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group in San Francisco.
"We don't have a lot more time to deal with climate change," Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs' chairman and chief executive, said in a statement released last week by the network. "We need the right balance between regulation and market-based approaches."
New York-based Goldman Sachs' environmental policy acknowledges the scientific consensus on climate change, the Rainforest Action Network said.
The network was critical of other financial services firms that have not adopted such a policy.
"In stark contrast to holdouts like Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, Hank Paulson and his executives reached out to RAN and worked closely with our team as well as other citizens groups," Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, said in a prepared statement.
Goldman Sachs is "helping to fill a leadership vacuum" on environmental and social issues, he said, adding that "this is the beginning of a long-term transformative process, not just for Goldman Sachs but for our economy."
-------
Toyota hybrid car sales have topped half a million, according to Greencarcongress.com.
83% of those sales were the Toyota Prius, the car driven by stars like Leonardo diCaprio.
In Japan, Toyota also sells a hybrid minivan, a luxury sedan, and even a light-duty hybrid truck, as well as hybrid Lexus SUV and a Highlander hybrid pickup.
------------
A United Nations conference on Migratory Species has announced new 20 new additions to the sadly long list of traveling animals needing protection from human interference and hunting. New species at risk include a series of bats, birds like warblers and thrushes, the Basking sharks, short-beaked dolphins, gorillas and central Asian deer, and many more.
The Signatories to the Convention on Migratory Species met in Nairobi, Africa in late November.
----------
Unlike North Americans, Europeans have been given a choice in the food they eat. A clear majority of Swiss voters turned down a government plan to introduce Genetically Modified food. Now a referendum has approved a 5 year ban on GM organisms on Swiss farms. The Genetic Modification of farm animals has been banned, permanently.
[applause]
-------
This has been news from Radio Ecoshock at www.ecoshock.org
