Anglonautes > English vocabulary > Earth > Environment

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Vocabulary > Earth > Environment > Climate change / Global warming

Earth
http://earth.google.com/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2008/mar/04/fragileearth?picture=332783927

Earth day
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/science/earth/22earth.html

Timeline: 70 Years of Environmental Change
Environmental milestones over 13 presidential administrations Published: April 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/22/science/earth/20100422_environment_timeline.html

unsustainable exploitation of the world's resources 2006
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1890953,00.html

sustainability
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2052490,00.html

environmentally friendly towns / eco towns
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1782025.ece
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2078595,00.html

preservation (FA)

conservation (FA)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/0,13369,969535,00.html

conservation group

activist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/31/kingsnorth-activists-climate-change-coal

climate activist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/28/tim-dechristopher-trial-oil-gas

climate change campaigner

climate change campaigner > George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/24/climatechange.carbonemissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2053521,00.html

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ipcc

New York Times > Select Editorials on Climate Change
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/series/select-editorials-on-climate-change/index.html

eco war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/31/kingsnorth-activists-climate-change-coal

The Kingsnorth six
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/may/31/kingsnorth-defence-lawyer

The Big Melt

No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

NYT

October 25, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/science/earth/25arctic.html?hp

The Big Melt

No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

NYT

October 25, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/science/earth/25arctic.html?hp

The Guardian p. 23 20.6.2007

The Guardian p. 2 1.6.2007

http://www.laurentian.ca/NR/rdonlyres/00DF059F-BA06-44C3-8B5F-C3DC9649092F/0/aninconvenienttruthposter.jpg
http://www.laurentian.ca/Laurentian/Home/Research/Special+Projects/Climate+Change+Case+Study/Links/An+Inconvenient+Truth.htm

climate change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange

due to climate change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/10/glacier-lakes-melt-himalayas

The Guardian > The ultimate climate change FAQ
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/the-ultimate-climate-change-faq

climate change adaptation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/27/climate-change-adaptation

global warming
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/business/global/warming-revives-old-dream-of-sea-route-in-russian-arctic.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-review/whatever-happened-to-global-warming.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/13/lizards-mexico-extinction-climate-change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/29/1
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2106689,00.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2093835,00.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2072404,00.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2067618,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-16-global-warming-water_N.htm
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2042999,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-04-03-tipping-points_N.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/heat/0,16122,1518079,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1168456,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1118281,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/0,12374,782494,00.html
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,7445,1098608,00.html

cartoons > Cagle > Global warming? 2010
http://www.cagle.com/news/GlobalWarming11/main.asp

climate change > Copenhagen summit December 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/opinion/l08climate.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/weekinreview/06zeller.html

Test our climate simulator

Play the role of a climate change negotiator at the Copenhagen summit
and use this tool to see how different emission levels affect global temperature
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/dec/14/climate-simulator

Climate map shows world after 4C rise
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/oct/22/climate-change-carbon-emissions

global warming > the world in the 2050's
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/graphic/0,7367,397048,00.html

The Arctic's near-record sea ice low – big picture September 2011

A view from space of Arctic sea ice at a near record low this month.
Scientists in Germany, who use a different methodology, said 2011 was a record low

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/picture/2011/sep/23/arctic-sea-ice-low

Greenland ice sheet 2008-2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/26/greenland-ice-sheet-climate-change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/01/sea.level.rise

glaciers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/glaciers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/16/glacier-imja-lake

Himalayan glaciers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/10/glacier-lakes-melt-himalayas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/19/un-climate-scientists-himalayan-glaciers

Captured on camera: 50 years of climate change in the Himalayas

Series of before and after panoramas
of Imja glacier taken five decades apart
highlights dramatic reduction of Himalayan ice

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/04/byers-himalaya-changing-landscapes

ice island

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/07/biggest-ice-island-greenland
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2010/08/100806-ice-chunk-island-greenland-glacier-petermann-biggest-science/

glaciologist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/19/times-atlas-wrong-greenland-climate-change

global warming > rising sea levels

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/science/earth/study-rising-sea-levels-a-risk-to-coastal-states.html

global warming / climate change > desert cities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1790471,00.html

eco disaster

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/arctic-seas-turn-to-acid

temperatures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/21/does-small-rise-temperatures-matter

global temperatures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/17/global-temperature-rise

soaring Arctic temperatures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/14/warming-arctic-southern-species

increase in mean temperature

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/06/05/world_temperature_rise.pdf

rising global temperatures > insects / insect pests

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/insect-explosion-a-threat-to-food-crops-781016.html

Al Gore
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/algore

Al Gore > Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/02/al-gore-our-choice-environment-climate

Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" Movie 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2644486.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/global/article2645371.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/12/climatechange.internationalnews
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_lynas/2007/10/the_truth_about_an_inconvenien.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/11/climatechange
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Film_Page/0,,-114266,00.html
http://film.guardian.co.uk/video/review/0,,1976908,00.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1976775,00.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1872159,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1695976,00.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-global-warming.html
http://www.aninconvenienttruth.com.au/truth/
http://www.aninconvenienttruth.co.uk/

biofuels
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3185588.ece

fossil fuels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/fossil-fuels

burn oil, coal and gas

the 'Kingsnorth Six',
the environmental activists who scaled a tower
at a coal-fired power station in protest against pollution in 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/may/31/kingsnorth-defence-lawyer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/may/31/nick-broomfield-kingsnorth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/31/kingsnorth-activists-climate-change-coal

non-carbon economy

greenhouse gas emissions
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/greenhouse_gas_emissions/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/opinion/14fri1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22mon1.html

greenhouse gases / global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/04/greenhouse-gases-rise-record-levels

greenhouse gas emissions from UK air travel
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,7445,1488495,00.html

reduce the output of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

melt
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/10/glacier-lakes-melt-himalayas

melting
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html

The world's melting glaciers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/apr/28/
glaciers-melting-climate-change?picture=346586112

The New York Times > The Big Melt: A Series
Effects of warming on the environment
and on the four million people who live in the Arctic,
and scientists' assessments of the inevitability of Arctic melting
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/series/thebigmelt/index.html

thawing permafrost > Climate change hits Alaska's national parks
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/us-alaska-climate-idUSTRE71B23320110214

Mt. Kilimanjaro ice cap Tanzania
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html

Arctic ice > Northwest Passage
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/environment/2007-09-15-ice-nwpassage_N.htm

loss of Arctic ice
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/environment/2007-09-15-ice-nwpassage_N.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/04/climatechange

Arctic melt December 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/
arctic-melt-passes-the-point-of--no-return-1128197.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/
mark-serreze-impact-of-melt-may-extend-beyond-the-pole-1128198.html

avoid the melting of the polar ice caps

glaciologist
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/africa/03melt.html

air
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28victor.html

one of the world's worst air pollutants: ozone
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/19/climatechange-health-ozone

ozone layer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/size-ozone-hole-layer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1471075,00.html

ozone hole
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/01/ozone-antarctica
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/size-ozone-hole-layer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1664133,00.html

greenhouse effect
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/graphic/0,7367,397352,00.html

greenhouse gases / greenhouse gas emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/21/nasa-orbiting-carbon-observatory-oco
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/15/climate-change-australia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/01/climatechange.carbonemissions1

CO2 / carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/opinion/13bryce.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/science/earth/13climate.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/17/global-temperature-rise
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/21/nasa-orbiting-carbon-observatory-oco
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/2008/04/spotlight_on_us_co2_emissions.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2106689,00.html

carbon dioxide emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/01/emissions-recession
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/21/carbon-emissions-questions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/graphic/0,7367,397009,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1260825,00.html

carbon dioxide pollution
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2045827,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1775689,00.html

carbon footprint
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwellers-smaller-carbon-footprints

Which industries and activities emit the most carbon? April 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/28/industries-sectors-carbon-emissions

Global carbon emissions steady for first time since 1992
Drop in rich countries' emissions caused by recession in 2009
was nullified by steep increases from China and India July 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/01/emissions-recession

The Guardian's quick carbon calculator
Calculate the impact of your travel, home and shopping habits
with our simple carbon footprint calculator.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/oct/20/guardian-quick-carbon-calculator

World carbon emissions, by country: new data released
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/oct/22/carbon-emissions-data-country-world

the world's biggest polluters / the biggest CO2 emitters March 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/
the-challenge-facing-the-worlds-biggest-polluters-1642109.html?action=Popup

Climate change: The carbon atlas December 2008
New figures published today confirm that China
has overtaken the US as the largest emitter of CO2.
This interactive emissions map shows how the rest of the world compares.
Global C02 emissions totalled 29,195m tonnes in 2006 – up 2.4% on 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/interactive/2008/dec/09/climatechange-carbonemissions

Orbiting Carbon Observatory
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/21/nasa-orbiting-carbon-observatory-oco

farm emissions USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.htm

urban air pollution
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2048662,00.html

Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2048662,00.html

pollute
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1775682,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1775718,00.html

the UK's five World Heritage Sites / pollution
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1995533,00.html

greenhouse gas emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,,2097367,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,,2097889,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g8/story/0,,2097817,00.html

cut greenhouse gas emissions

Second Kyoto phase
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1664133,00.html

Kyoto protocol > Full text
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html

Kyoto climate change pact
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1098635,00.html

ratify the Kyoto protocol

Hopes high for new climate pact despite US snub

· Second Kyoto phase gains backing of 150 nations
· Campaigners condemn Washington walkout

David Adam in Montreal The Guardian p. 4

Saturday December 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1664133,00.html

satellite tracking system

rain

acid rain
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1323910,00.html

torrential rain

floods

catastrophic floods

deluge

mud slide

artificial river

burst

weather

freak storm

Schrank

The Independent on Sunday

28 December 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-daily-cartoon-760940.html

L to R: President-elect Barack Obama, President George W. Bush

renewable forms of energy

renewable energy

renewables
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/21/renewable-energy-economic-crisis

wind energy

wind farm

wind turbine
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1489792,00.html

wind energy

wind power USA
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/wind-power/index.html

power-generating windmill turbine
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/21/renewable-energy-economic-crisis

population explosion / problem

a growing human population

What a population of 7 billion people means for the planet July 2011
With global population expected to surpass 7 billion people this year,
the staggering impact on the environment is hard to ignore
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/18/population-7-billion-planet

in the wild

habitat

forest 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/01/science/earth/forests.html

Changing Forests 2011
The world’s 9.9 billion acres of forest absorb roughly
a quarter of human emissions of carbon dioxide,
and help limit the increase of the gas in the atmosphere.
While many healthy forests are robustly absorbing carbon,
others are threatened by a warming climate.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/01/science/earth/forests.html

the New Forest 1079
http://www.hants.gov.uk/newforest/intro/nf_detail.html

deforestation

enclosures

Twilight of the Glaciers

July 29, 2011
The New York Times
By STEPHEN P. NASH

AN hour or so up ahead, at the higher elevations along the trail that leads over Siyeh Pass, huckleberries were ripening. Even a dawdling day hiker like me knows that huckleberries can quickly mean grizzlies in Glacier National Park. I indulged a nervous tic and patted around for the loud red aerosol can on my belt, whose label reads Counter Assault. It’s effective as a bear repellent, but even more reliable at making an urbanite feel faintly ridiculous.

I was in northwest Montana for the hikes and the huckleberries, but most of all to experience the namesake glaciers, which, I had recently learned, might be around for only another decade or so. Given that a century and a half ago there were 150 and now there are 25, the trip makes me an enlistee in the practice known by a somewhat prickly term: last-chance tourism.

For now, though, there are still glaciers to be seen. The park’s skein of well-maintained trails traverses every section of its million-plus acres and can accommodate any level of ability, from backpackers to the sheets-and-coverlets crowd. Even visitors who prefer to commune with nature through a car window can be awed by the views of the Jackson and Blackfoot Glaciers from Going-to-the-Sun Road, the often car-choked highway that more or less bisects the park west to east.

And for those who want to get closer, some serious legwork over steep terrain can put you right next to both the Grinnell and Sperry Glaciers, respectively a day and an overnight’s hike away. There are other glaciers to be glimpsed in the distance during a hike, but they can’t be reached by trails. These are excursions that require ice ax, ropes or crampons: the well-sequestered Pumpelly Glacier, for example, at 8,420 feet, and its close neighbor, the Pumpkin Glacier.

Other glaciers are nearer a trail, but still display their remote and frigid glory at some distance, and in a way the craggy surroundings make them even more vivid. I chose the Siyeh Pass Trail because it affords a prolonged, spectacular view of the Sexton Glacier from below.

Alpine glaciers like Sexton don’t look like peaks or cubes. A couple of miles into the hike, as the trail opened into a valley, it came into view: a massive, ragged smear of snow-laden ice, perched just under the sawtooth granite skyline.

My audio track, meanwhile, was the cascading water of Baring Creek, which runs parallel to much of the trail. Descending from the glacier, it charges over a series of red-rock ledges and then makes its way down into the azure St. Mary Lake far below.

As the trail continued, the bottom edge of Sexton became visible — a violent crumble, broken loose by gravity and temperature. Glaciers are forceful, slow-flowing rivers of ice. With binoculars, I could see Sexton’s thickness and true magnitude. The perspective also offers, if you’re up for it, a rather stunning view into the future. As I pushed ahead, a graying volunteer ranger approached me at a nimble gait. No bears sighted, he reported. (O.K.!) He was a veteran of decades here, it turned out. We craned our necks up at the still-formidable Sexton, and he said that it had once looked far larger to him. I read later that it has, in fact, lost at least 30 percent of its surface area since the mid-’60s.

There are several measures of what qualifies as a glacier. One generally accepted rule of thumb is that they are a minimum of 25 acres in size. The most recent report has Sexton at 68.

I moved on, ascending the switchbacks that pull the Siyeh trail up toward the 8,000-foot pass. I was well above tree line by now, and only a few peaks away from the Canadian border. Not far off, out on the moraines, a quartet of mountain goats appeared, munching and then settling.

A good idea. I was tired, too. According to Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage,” which follows the cross-country trek of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Lewis was able to bushwhack 30 miles in a day. I was going to do 11, and without the whacking. (The Lewis and Clark expedition came within sight of these mountains in 1806.)

As I rested I heard women’s voices come from up the trail, sounding like an exuberant traveling book group. They seemed delighted to find a sprawled, worn-out guy to greet in passing. “How do you like it? This is our backyard!” the leader announced, adding that they were from Kalispell, Mont., just southwest of the park. I responded in superlatives, and asked whether folks here talk much about what’s happening with the glaciers.

There was a pause and the temperature seemed to decline a degree or two. “God will take care of everything we need,” one said.

“I don’t think man has anything to do with that,” her friend put in.

(A bartender at one of the lodges, not-authorized-to-speak-publicly-on-the-matter, confided that not all locals share these views.)

After a bit, they warmed enough to point out some huckleberry bushes nearby. (This is a popular shrub around here, and not just for bears; after a few days in the area, I can attest to the virtues of locally marketed huckleberry beer, jam, pie, syrup, Riesling, lip balm, French toast, soda, cobbler, lemonade, ice cream, daiquiris, tea and milkshakes.)

Retracing my steps back down to the trailhead, I was alone again — not a wise practice, according to park brochures. Lewis recounted that one grizzly, already shot four times through the lungs, charged and dispersed a six-man hunting party while its stalwarts were still firing. Still, over the past hundred years, and despite tens of millions of visitors, only 10 fatal grizzly attacks have been recorded here. They do, however, take up a fair portion of mind space.

The Siyeh Pass Trail can either be an extended loop or a somewhat shorter out and back of about 11 miles — the option I chose. As I headed back down into the valley it wasn’t much of a stretch to think of the looming Sexton as alive. The pressure of the glaciers’ weight causes the ice to flow forward over the landscape; colder temperatures allow for a buildup of ice, which speeds up the flow. Heat — a warmer day, season or era — is the competing force, and the glaciers ebb. That movement is a defining feature, part of what makes glaciers distinct from your more prosaic all-year patches of snow.

The day before, I had spoken with Daniel Fagre, who coordinates climate change and glacial geology studies here for the United States Geological Survey. He is a 20-year veteran of research at the park. The retreat of the glaciers began around 1850, he said, as part of a slow, natural climatic variation, but the disappearing act has accelerated during the last hundred years. Until recently, his research projected that, as global warming hit its stride, the park’s glaciers would all be gone by the year 2030. Now he thinks it may be as soon as 2020.

Outsize snows this past winter, which kept many park roads and trails closed well into July, could briefly forestall the meltdown, but the longer warming trend is inexorable, he said.

No reprieve? “No, I think we are continuing on that path,” he said.

The science is preliminary, but it’s clear that this loss will be more than aesthetic for the park’s ecosystem, he said. Those glacial reservoirs provide a steady supply of cool meltwater through hot summers and dry spells, helping to sustain a constellation of plants and animals, some rare — big-horned sheep, elk and mountain goats among them.

Passing again under the glacier as daylight faded, the trail neared its end. Those prospective losses weighed heavily — nostalgia, of a sort, laced with dread.

MORE pleasantly, the park celebrates nostalgia of a different sort — from the Art Deco typography on the official signage to the fleet of low-slung, roll-top tour buses known as “red jammers,” which date from the ’30s. These ply the roads between robber-baron-era hotels, offering full- and half-day tours to various sections of the park ($30 and up).

There’s a wealth of accommodations along the eastern and western boundaries of the park, especially in the towns of East Glacier Park and West Glacier. Despite their names, these towns, with populations of only a few hundred each, are more like distant cousins than identical twins. West Glacier, half an hour from the Kalispell airport, is generally newer, and sprawls.

East Glacier Park, two and a half hours north of the Great Falls, Mont., airport, is a charming, tumbleweedy throwback with a string of weathered eateries and motor-court lodgings that are only slightly post-World War II. There’s also the Backpacker’s Inn, a combination hostel and super-cheap motel with a mostly youthful clientele who like the clean, spare single rooms for $30 a night. I’ve stayed in each of these places a time or two, but this night — after a fiery, pepper-laden dinner of enchiladas pasillas at Serrano’s Mexican restaurant among a crowd of other glacier-gawkers and local ranchers — I opted for the Mountain Pine Motel. It has endured, with appearance and ambience intact, since 1947. The owners are descendants of the pioneer Sherburne family that helped settle the park area in the 1890s.

Nearby is the century-old Glacier Park Lodge, a grandly creaky log cabin writ very large. There are three such concessioner-run legacy hotels at the park, erected by the Great Northern Railroad to lure tourism. My favorite is the Many Glacier Hotel, a darkly comical but generally comfortable old wooden monstrosity with a Swiss theme (the bellhops wear lederhosen). Its broad verandas face a transfixing view of a horizon of pinnacles that surround Swiftcurrent Lake — one of 131 named lakes in the park (631 others are as yet unnamed; feel free to follow my example and name a few after your friends).

When my wonderful clawfoot tub leaked onto the occupants of the room below, the two repair-crew guys who showed up grinned and shrugged after some futile work: that’s kind of the way this place is, they said. The only other available room was infested with bats, and smelled like it, I was told. It was a great stay, just the same. Half of the hotel is being renovated all this season and is closed, along with one of the dining rooms.

The Many Glacier Hotel is also the start of one of the park’s most popular hikes, to Grinnell Glacier. The 8- or 10-mile hike is strenuous, though less so than the Siyeh Pass Trail, and the payoff is that you can get within a stone’s toss of the glacier itself, the surface area of which is more than twice Sexton’s.

I embarked with a ranger-guided group on Chief Two Guns — a trim 45-footer, built locally and hauled up here somehow 50 years ago — for a quick trip over Swiftcurrent Lake. Then a short walk to another boat, the even older Morning Eagle, across Lake Josephine to the trailhead. The boats moved past a shifting panorama of jagged rock faces, slender waterfalls, and high above, the destination glacier. The trail is often crowded, but that scarcely registers in these surroundings. Hikers stop to catch a breath and find it taken again by the view out over the string of lakes, far below, fed by Grinnell’s meltwater. Connected by cascades, each lake is a deeper blue than the one above.

After three hours of steady ascent and a final quarter-mile of hard climbing, the trail ends at the foot of the glacier and an iceberg-studded, expanding lake. The lake does not appear on old maps, according to the ranger. It is a byproduct of the fact that Grinnell’s surface is 40 percent smaller than a half-century ago.

Above the lake, the glacier is a wide, tilted skirt of ice whose hem you can almost touch, brilliant under the sun even when it’s dirty with wind-blown grit by the end of the season. It seems immense, too big to disappear, and nearly crowds everything else from consciousness. The ranger said that until a few seasons back you could walk out onto the lower edge of it, which is too thin now to bear human weight safely.

Seaweed-like stromatolite fossils embossed in the cracked rocks along the trail supply a Precambrian perspective of perhaps a couple of billion years. But it is the view out over this lake of meltwater that grabs the imagination far more urgently.

A question hangs up there with the remnant glacier, which may soon be converted to a few patches of ice: what comes next?

Hikes and Huckleberries

GETTING THERE AND AROUND

You can reach Glacier by flying into Kalispell, Mont., and driving half an hour to the west side of the park, or flying into Great Falls and driving two and a half hours to reach the eastern entry point. You can also take Amtrak’s Empire Builder from Chicago, Seattle or Tacoma, and disembark at either East Glacier Park, Essex or West Glacier. The Going-to-the-Sun Road has been under repair since last year, which means that traffic is often rerouted to a single lane. This results in stops that can add 30 or 40 minutes to the usual one- or two-hour trip.

The Logan Pass parking lot and visitor center is usually posted “Full” by midmorning all summer, according to park staff members. A shuttle bus system along the Going-to-the-Sun Road ferries hikers and sightseers to and from Logan Pass and a series of trailheads.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

At East Glacier Park:

Both the Glacier Park Lodge and, to the north, Many Glacier Hotel (for both 406-892-2525; glacierparkinc.com/reservations.php; both from $140 a night for two in high season) are concessioner “legacy” railroad hotels — gracious dowager empresses that can’t help but show their age.

The Backpacker’s Inn, right behind Serrano’s Mexican Restaurant (29 Dawson Avenue; 406-226-9392; serranosmexican.com) and under the same ownership, is $30 a night for a single room, $12 a night for the gender-segregated hostel. Clean, quiet, spartan. Serrano’s has benches on the porch for its surplus of patrons — a mix of locals, tourists and backpackers who line up for the chimichangas and carne Tampico. The super-smoky habanero sauce is sold at the cash register.

At West Glacier:

The Silver Wolf Log Chalets (406-387-4448; silverwolfchalets.com; from $176) are cabins with interior décor that is almost exclusively logs, twigs and sticks, quiet and nicely appointed, 10 minutes from the park.

The Belton Chalet (406-888-5000; beltonchalet.com; from $155) is a lovely old hotel with predictable advantages and limitations. Keep in mind that a railroad line is close at hand. The restaurant is one of the best at this edge of the park.

In the park:

There are 13 national park campgrounds, many with views of lakes and peaks, including those at Apgar Lake, Medicine Lake or Swiftcurrent Lake. Cook a porterhouse or two over the iron grill, bring in a bottle of malbec and observe all bear precautions.

A NOTE ABOUT WATER

East Glacier Park, Mont., is a small tourist town whose water system is not reliably safe, according to state and federal authorities. Motels connected to that system are required to post a “boil order” warning, but some don’t, which could mean trouble if you’re unaware and brush your teeth or drink water from the tap in your room. (Boiling kills giardia, E. coli, cryptosporidium and other potentially illness-producing microorganisms not reliably filtered out by the current water operation, said Shelley Nolan of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.)

A few places, including the big Glacier Park Lodge, have their own wells or water filtration, so the water is safe to use without boiling. Restaurants should use bottled water. So ask.

A new water treatment plant is set to begin operation soon, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, but as of this writing, it’s not certain that will occur in 2011.

STEPHEN P. NASH is the author of “Millipedes and Moon Tigers: Science and Policy in the Age of Extinction.”
He teaches journalism and environmental studies at the University of Richmond.

Twilight of the Glaciers, NYT, 29.7.2011,
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/travel/glacier-national-park-montana-fading-glaciers.html

Editorial

Climate Change

February 22, 2010
The New York Times

Yvo de Boer’s resignation on Thursday after nearly four tumultuous years as chief steward of the United Nations’ climate change negotiations has deepened a sense of pessimism about whether the world can ever get its act together on global warming. Mr. de Boer was plainly exhausted by endless bickering among nations and frustrated by the failure of December’s talks in Copenhagen to deliver the prize he had worked so hard for: a legally binding treaty committing nations to mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

His resignation comes at a fragile moment in the campaign to combat climate change. The Senate is stalemated over a climate change bill. The disclosure of apparently trivial errors in the U.N.’s 2007 climate report has given Senate critics fresh ammunition. And without Mr. de Boer, the slim chances of forging a binding agreement at the next round of talks in December in Cancún, Mexico, seem slimmer still.

Yet his departure is hardly the death knell for international negotiations. It is not proof that such talks are of no value or that the U.N. negotiating framework in place since 1992 should be abandoned. Even Copenhagen, messy as it was, brought rich and poor nations closer together than they had been. And more than 90 countries representing 83 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases promised, at least notionally, to reduce their emissions.

But his resignation does remind us that the U.N. process is tiring, cumbersome and slow. It reinforces the notion that some parallel negotiating track will be necessary if the world is to have any hope of achieving the reductions scientists believe are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

The Copenhagen pledges, even if all of them are met, will merely stabilize global emissions by 2020. What really matters is what happens after 2020, whether the world can achieve reductions of at least 50 percent by midcentury. That won’t happen without big cuts by big emitters like the United States, the European Union, China, India and Brazil.

Even before Copenhagen, global leaders were exploring parallel tracks. Former President George W. Bush brought together some of the big emitters, and President Obama has expanded on this idea with the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a group of 17 countries that plans to meet regularly. The Group of 20 has put climate change high on its agenda, and bilateral efforts — technology exchanges between China and the United States, for instance — are under discussion.

The underlying thought is that the ultimate goal is a safe planet, and that absent a top-down global treaty, that goal is probably best achieved by aggressive, bottom-up national strategies to reduce emissions. Not that these are a sure thing; the United States, embarrassingly, has no national strategy. Until it gets one, it can hardly lecture anyone else. Nor will the world stand a ghost of a chance of bringing emissions under control.

Climate Change, NYT, 22.2.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22mon1.html

Op-Ed Contributor

A Farm on Every Floor

August 24, 2009
The New York Times
By DICKSON D. DESPOMMIER

IF climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

The floods and droughts that have come with climate change are wreaking havoc on traditional farmland. Three recent floods (in 1993, 2007 and 2008) cost the United States billions of dollars in lost crops, with even more devastating losses in topsoil. Changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish India’s agricultural output by 30 percent by the end of the century.

What’s more, population increases will soon cause our farmers to run out of land. The amount of arable land per person decreased from about an acre in 1970 to roughly half an acre in 2000 and is projected to decline to about a third of an acre by 2050, according to the United Nations. With billions more people on the way, before we know it the traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option.

Irrigation now claims some 70 percent of the fresh water that we use. After applying this water to crops, the excess agricultural runoff, contaminated with silt, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, is unfit for reuse. The developed world must find new agricultural approaches before the world’s hungriest come knocking on its door for a glass of clean water and a plate of disease-free rice and beans.

Imagine a farm right in the middle of a major city. Food production would take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.

Now apply the vertical farm concept to countries that are water-challenged — the Middle East readily comes to mind — and suddenly things look less hopeless. For this reason the world’s very first vertical farm may be established there, although the idea has garnered considerable interest from architects and governments all over the world.

Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years. (Disclosure: I’ve started a business to build vertical farms.) There is a rising consumer demand for locally grown vegetables and fruits, as well as intense urban-farming activity in cities throughout the United States. Vertical farms would not only revolutionize and improve urban life but also revitalize land that was damaged by traditional farming. For every indoor acre farmed, some 10 to 20 outdoor acres of farmland could be allowed to return to their original ecological state (mostly hardwood forest). Abandoned farms do this free of charge, with no human help required.

A vertical farm would behave like a functional ecosystem, in which waste was recycled and the water used in hydroponics and aeroponics was recaptured by dehumidification and used over and over again. The technologies needed to create a vertical farm are currently being used in controlled-environment agriculture facilities but have not been integrated into a seamless source of food production in urban high-rise buildings.

Such buildings, by the way, are not the only structures that could house vertical farms. Farms of various dimensions and crop yields could be built into a variety of urban settings — from schools, restaurants and hospitals to the upper floors of apartment complexes. By supplying a continuous quantity of fresh vegetables and fruits to city dwellers, these farms would help combat health problems, like Type II diabetes and obesity, that arise in part from the lack of quality produce in our diet.

The list of benefits is long. Vertical farms would produce crops year-round that contain no agro-chemicals. Fish and poultry could also be raised indoors. The farms would greatly reduce fossil-fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions, since they would eliminate the need for heavy farm machinery and trucks that deliver food from farm to fork. (Wouldn’t it be great if everything on your plate came from around the corner, rather than from hundreds to thousands of miles away?)

Vertical farming could finally put an end to agricultural runoff, a major source of water pollution. Crops would never again be destroyed by floods or droughts. New employment opportunities for vertical farm managers and workers would abound, and abandoned city properties would become productive once again.

Vertical farms would also make cities more pleasant places to live. The structures themselves would be things of beauty and grace. In order to allow plants to capture passive sunlight, walls and ceilings would be completely transparent. So from a distance, it would look as if there were gardens suspended in space.

City dwellers would also be able to breathe easier — quite literally. Vertical farms would bring a great concentration of plants into cities. These plants would absorb carbon dioxide produced by automobile emissions and give off oxygen in return. So imagine you wanted to build the first vertical farm and put it in New York City. What would it take? We have the technology — now we need money, political will and, of course, proof that this concept can work. That’s why a prototype would be a good place to start. I estimate that constructing a five-story farm, taking up one-eighth of a square city block, would cost $20 million to $30 million. Part of the financing should come from the city government, as a vertical farm would go a long way toward achieving Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal of a green New York City by 2030. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has already expressed interest in having a vertical farm in the city. City officials should be interested. If a farm is located where the public can easily visit it, the iconic building could generate significant tourist dollars, on top of revenue from the sales of its produce.

But most of the financing should come from private sources, including groups controlling venture-capital funds. The real money would flow once entrepreneurs and clean-tech investors realize how much profit there is to be made in urban farming. Imagine a farm in which crop production is not limited by seasons or adverse weather events. Sales could be made in advance because crop-production levels could be guaranteed, thanks to the predictable nature of indoor agriculture. An actual indoor farm developed at Cornell University growing hydroponic lettuce was able to produce as many as 68 heads per square foot per year. At a retail price in New York of up to $2.50 a head for hydroponic lettuce, you can easily do the math and project profitability for other similar crops.

When people ask me why the world still does not have a single vertical farm, I just raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. Perhaps people just need to see proof that farms can grow several stories high. As soon as the first city takes that leap of faith, the world’s first vertical farm could be less than a year away from coming to the aid of a hungry, thirsty world. Not a moment too soon.

Dickson D. Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, is writing a book about vertical farms.

A Farm on Every Floor, NYT, 24.8.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24Despommier.html

Study Halves Prediction of Rising Seas

May 15, 2009
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

A new analysis halves longstanding projections of how much sea levels could rise if Antarctica’s massive western ice sheets fully disintegrated as a result of global warming.

The flow of ice into the sea would probably raise sea levels about 10 feet rather than 20 feet, according to the analysis, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Science.

The scientists also predicted that seas would rise unevenly, with an additional 1.5-foot increase in levels along the east and west coasts of North America and the east coast of southern Africa. That is because the shift in a huge mass of water away from the South Pole would subtly change the shape and rotation of the Earth, the authors said.

Several Antarctic specialists familiar with the new study had mixed reactions to the projections.

But they and the study’s lead author, Jonathan L. Bamber of the British Glaciology Center, agreed that the odds of a disruptive rise in seas from warming over the next century or so remain serious enough to warrant the world’s attention.

They also uniformly called for renewed investment in ice-probing satellites and field missions that could within a few years substantially clarify the risk.

There is strong consensus that warming waters around Antarctica, and Greenland in the Arctic, would result in centuries of rising seas. But glaciologists and oceanographers still say uncertainty prevails on the vital question of how fast coasts will retreat in a warming world in the next century or two.

The new study combined computer modeling with measurements of the ice and underlying bedrock, both direct and by satellite.

It did not assess the pace or likelihood of a rise in seas. The goal was to examine as precisely as possible how much ice could flow into the sea if warming seawater penetrated between the West Antarctic ice sheet and the bedrock beneath. For decades West Antarctic ice has been identified as particularly vulnerable to melting because, although piled more than one mile above sea level in many places, it also rests on bedrock a half mile to a mile beneath sea level in others.

That topography means that warm water could progressively melt spots where ice is stuck to the rock, allowing it to flow more freely.

Erik I. Ivins, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, described the new paper as “good solid science,” but added that the sea-level estimates cannot be verified without renewed investment in satellite missions and other initiatives that are currently lagging.

A particularly valuable satellite program called Grace, which measures subtle variations in gravity related to the mass of ice and rock, “has perhaps a couple of years remaining before its orbit deteriorates,” Dr. Ivins said.

“The sad truth is that we in NASA are watching our earth-observing systems fall by the wayside as they age – without the sufficient resources to see them adequately replaced.”

Robert Bindschadler, a longtime specialist in polar ice at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said the study only provided a low estimate of Antarctica’s possible long-term contribution to rising seas because it did not deal with other mechanisms that could add water to the ocean.

The prime question, he said, remains what will happen in the next 100 years or so, and other recent work implies that a lot of ice can be shed within thattime.

“Even in Bamber’s world,” he said, referring to the study’s author, “there is more than enough ice to cause serious harm to the world’s coastlines.”

Study Halves Prediction of Rising Seas, NYT, 15.5.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/science/earth/15antarctica.html

For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated

Melting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously.
Scientists warn Arctic icecap is entering a 'death spiral'

Sunday, 31 August 2008
The Independent on Sunday
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.

Last night Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the official US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), hailed the publication of the images – on an obscure website by scientists at the University of Bremen, Germany – as "a historic event", and said that it provided further evidence that the Arctic icecap may now have entered a "death spiral". Some scientists predict that it could vanish altogether in summer within five years, a process that would, in itself, greatly accelerate.

But Sarah Palin, John McCain's new running mate, holds that the scientific consensus that global warming is melting Arctic ice is unreliable.

The opening of the passages – eagerly awaited by shipping companies who hope to cut thousands of miles off their routes by sailing round the north of Canada and Russia – is only the greatest of a host of ominous signs this month of a gathering crisis in the Arctic. Early last week the NSDIC warned that, over the next few weeks, the total extent of sea ice in the Arctic may shrink to below the record low reached last year – itself a massive 200,000 square miles less than the previous worst year, 2005.

Four weeks ago, tourists had to be evacuated from Baffin Island's Auyuittuq National Park because of flooding from thawing glaciers. Auyuittuq means "land that never melts".

Two weeks later, in an unprecedented sighting, nine stranded polar bears were seen off Alaska trying to swim 400 miles north to the retreating icecap edge. Ten days ago massive cracking was reported in the Petermann glacier in the far north of Greenland, an area apparently previously unaffected by global warming.

But it is the simultaneous opening – for the first time in at least 125,000 years – of the North-west passage around Canada and the North-east passage around Russia that promises to deliver much the greatest shock. Until recently both had been blocked by ice since the beginning of the last Ice Age.

In 2005, the North-east passage opened, while the western one remained closed, and last year their positions were reversed. But the images, gathered by Nasa using microwave sensors that penetrate clouds, show that the North-west passage opened last weekend and that the last blockage on the north- eastern one – a tongue of ice stretching down to Russia across Siberia's Laptev Sea – dissolved a few days later.

"The passages are open," said Professor Serreze, though he cautioned that official bodies would be reluctant to confirm this for fear of lawsuits if ships encountered ice after being encouraged to enter them. "It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by."

Shipping companies are already getting ready to exploit the new routes. The Bremen-based Beluga Group says it will send the first ship through the North-east passage – cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan – next year. And Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, last week announced that all foreign ships entering the North-west passage should report to his government – a move bound to be resisted by the US, which regards it as an international waterway.

But scientists say that such disputes will soon become irrelevant if the ice continues to melt at present rates, making it possible to sail right across the North Pole. They have long regarded the disappearance of the icecap as inevitable as global warming takes hold, though until recently it was not expected until around 2070.

Many scientists now predict that the Arctic ocean will be ice-free in summer by 2030 – and a landmark study this year by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, concluded that there will be no ice between mid-July and mid-September as early as 2013.

The tipping point, experts believe, was the record loss of ice last year, reaching a level not expected to occur until 2050. Sceptics then dismissed the unprecedented melting as a freak event, and it was indeed made worse by wind currents and other natural weather patterns.

Conditions were better this year – it has been cooler, particularly last winter – and for a while it looked as if the ice loss would not be so bad. But this month the melting accelerated. Last week it shrank to below the 2005 level and the European Space Agency said: "A new record low could be reached in a matter of weeks."

Four weeks ago, a seven-year study at the University of Alberta reported that – besides shrinking in area – the thickness of the ice had dropped by half in just six years. It suggested that the region had "transitioned into a different climatic state where completely ice-free summers would soon become normal".

The process feeds on itself. As white ice is replaced by sea, the dark surface absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and melting more ice.

For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated, IoS, 31.8.2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/for-the-first-time-in-human-history-the-north-pole-can-be-circumnavigated-913924.html

Southern Baptists Back a Shift on Climate Change

March 10, 2008
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”

The largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, is politically and theologically conservative.

Yet its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed.

“We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration.

A 2007 resolution passed by the convention hewed to a more skeptical view of global warming.

In contrast, the new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”

The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy.

Jonathan Merritt, the spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative and a seminarian at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., said the declaration was a call to Christians to return to a biblical mandate to guard the world God created.

The Southern Baptist signatories join a growing community of evangelicals pushing for more action among believers, industry and politicians. Experts on the Southern Baptist Convention noted the initiative marked the growing influence of younger leaders on the discussions in the Southern Baptist Convention.

While those younger Baptists remain committed to fight abortion, for instance, the environment is now a top priority, too.

“In no way do we intend to back away from sanctity of life,” said the Rev. Dr. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala.

Still, many powerful Southern Baptist leaders and agencies did not sign the declaration, including the convention’s influential political arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy at the commission, played down the differences between the declaration and the Southern Baptist Convention’s position.

The declaration says in fact that lack of scientific unanimity should not preclude “prudent action,” which includes changing individual habits and giving “serious consideration to responsible policies that effectively address” global warming.

The declaration is the outgrowth of soul-searching by Mr. Merritt, 25. The younger Mr. Merritt said that for years he had been “an enemy of the environment.” Then, he said, he had an epiphany.

“I learned that God reveals himself through Scripture and in general through his creation, and when we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to ripping pages from the Bible,” Mr. Merritt said.

Southern Baptists Back a Shift on Climate Change, NYT, 10.3.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/us/10baptist.html

Nations Agree on Steps to Revive Climate Treaty

December 16, 2007
The New York Times
By THOMAS FULLER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — The world's countries wrapped up two weeks of intense and at times emotional talks here on Saturday with a two-year timetable for reviving an ailing, aging climate treaty.

The deal came after the United States, facing sharp verbal attacks in a final open-door negotiating session, reversed its opposition to a last minute-amendment by India.

"We've listened very closely to many of our colleagues here during these two weeks, but especially to what has been said in this hall today," Paula Dobriansky, who led the U.S. delegation, told the other assembled delegates. "We will go forward and join consensus."

The Bush administration had earlier made a significant change in policy, ending its long-held objection to formal negotiations on new steps to avoid climate dangers. This time, the United States agreed to set a deadline for an addendum to the original treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by President George H.W. Bush during his final year in office in 1992 but never ratified by the United States.

The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required."

Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution.

"It starts a negotiation that allows but doesn't require an outcome where the U.S. takes a cap," or a national limit on greenhouse gases, said David Doniger, a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration and the climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private Washington-based environmental group.

The agreement sets the stage for some commitments by developing countries to reducing greenhouse emissions. But it includes no language making such steps mandatory.

U.S. negotiators here had pushed hard to get developing countries, including emerging economic giants like China and India, to agree to seek cuts while retaining flexibility on how to make them. The last-minute dispute Saturday was over the wording of commitments by developing countries.

The overall agreement, if completed by 2009, would also ensure continuity for parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in 2005 and is the only existing addendum to the original climate treaty. The Kyoto pact limits emissions by three dozen industrialized countries but has been rejected by the United States under President George W. Bush.

Its emissions caps expire in 2012, and adherents, particularly European countries, were eager to start the process of setting new limits to sustain markets in emissions credits — a keystone of the protocol. The carbon market allows rich countries to receive credit toward their targets by investing in climate-friendly projects in poor countries.

The Bush administration is increasingly under pressure domestically to take action on global warming. Climate legislation is gaining momentum in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress, and presidential candidates from both parties are generally more engaged on the subject.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and ordered it to re-examine the case for regulating carbon dioxide from vehicles ordered it to review its environmental policies. Dozens of states are moving ahead with caps on greenhouse gases.

The differences in philosophy at the meeting were striking and fundamental. European Union negotiators said they favored specific government-imposed caps on emissions and wanted industrial countries to lead the way.

The United States favored relying on "aspirational" goals, research to advance nonpolluting energy technologies and a mix of measures, including mandatory steps like efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances — but all set by individual nations, not mandated by a global pact.

Developing countries, a vaguely defined group that includes countries as different as China and Costa Rica, have long insisted that rich countries, which spent more than a century adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, should take the first step.

The tenor of the conference improved markedly after European nations, frustrated with the United States, threatened on Thursday to boycott talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month that would be separate from process here, sponsored by the United Nations.

Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who led the criticism of the United States earlier in the week, said Friday: "The climate in the climate convention has changed a little bit. It's true that during the last night and during the negotiations America was more flexible than in the first part of the conference.

We very much appreciate this. Not only the Americans but also other parties."

Reuters reported Friday that the European Union had dropped a central demand that the guidelines for the agreement should include a reference to tough emissions targets for wealthy countries to meet by 2020.

The mood here shifted after a speech Thursday by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year for helping to alert the world to the danger of global warming.

After declaring that the United States was "principally responsible for obstructing progress" in Bali, he urged delegates to agree to an open-ended deal that could be enhanced after Mr. Bush left office in January 2009.

"Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now," Mr. Gore said to loud applause. "You must anticipate that."

Developing nations, notably China and India, stuck with their longstanding refusal to accept limits on their emissions, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of climate-warming gases.

Separately, participants agreed on a system that would compensate developing countries for protecting their rain forests, a plan that environmentalists described as an innovative effort to mitigate global warming.

Rain forest destruction is a major source of carbon dioxide, and living rain forests, according to recent research, play an important role in absorbing the gas. Precisely how countries with large rain forests, like Indonesia and Brazil, would be compensated has not been fully worked out.

United Nations officials said part of the financing would come from developed countries through aid and other financing would come from carbon credits traded under the Kyoto pact.

Thomas Fuller reported from Nusa Dua, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Peter Gelling contributed reporting from Nusa Dua, and Graham Bowley from New York.

Nations Agree on Steps to Revive Climate Treaty, NYT, 15.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/world/16climate.html

A world dying, but can we unite to save it?

Pollution in the seas is now speeding global warming,
says a devastating new climate report.
'IoS' Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports from Valencia

Published: 18 November 2007
The Independent on Sunday

Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

The warning is just one of a whole series of alarming conclusions in a new report published by the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which last month shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore.

Drawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments, the report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch of the report in this ancient Spanish city, told The Independent on Sunday that he found the "quickening pace" of global warming "very frightening".

And, with unusual outspokenness for a UN leader, he said he "looked forward" to both the United States and China – the world's two biggest polluters – "playing a more constructive role" in vital new negotiations on tackling climate change that open in Indonesia next month.

The new IPCC report, which is designed to give impetus to the negotiations, highlights the little-known acidification of the oceans, first reported in this newspaper more than three years ago. It concludes that emissions of carbon dioxide – the main cause of global warming – have already increased the acidity of ocean surface water by 30 per cent, and threaten to treble it by the end of the century.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said yesterday: "The report has put a spotlight on a threat to the marine environment that the world has hardly yet realised. The threat is immense as it can fundamentally alter the life of the seas, reducing the productivity of the oceans, while reinforcing global warming."

Scientists have found that the seas have already absorbed about half of all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity since the start of the industrial revolution, a staggering 500 billion tons of it. This has so far helped slow global warming – which would have accelerated even faster if all this pollution had stayed in the atmosphere, already causing catastrophe – but at an increasingly severe cost.

The gas dissolves in the oceans to make dilute carbonic acid, which is increasingly souring the naturally alkali seawater. This, in turn, mops up calcium carbonate, a substance normally plentiful in the seas, which corals use to build their reefs, and marine creatures use to make the protective shells they need to survive. These include many of the plankton that form the base of the food chain on which all fish and other marine animals depend.

As the waters are growing more acid this process is decreasing, with incalculable consequences for the life of the seas, and for the fisheries on which a billion of the world's people depend for protein. Every single species that uses calcium in this way, that has so far been studied, has been found to be affected. And the seas are most acid near the surface, where most of their life is concentrated.

A report by the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, concludes that, as a result, of the pollution, the world's oceans are probably now more acidic that they have ever been in "hundreds of millennia", and that even if emissions stopped now, the waters would take "tens of thousands of years to return to normal".

Professor Ulf Reibesell of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany's leading expert on the process, concludes in an issue of UNEP's magazine Our Planet, to be published next month, that, if it continues to the levels predicted by yesterday's report for the end of the century, the seas will reach a condition unprecedented in the last 20 million years.

He recalls how something similar happened when a comet hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, blasting massive amounts of calcium sulphate into the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid, which in turn caused the extinction of corals and virtually all shell-building species.

"Two million years went by before corals reappeared in the fossil record," he says, adding that it took "a further 20 million years" before the diversity of species that use calcium returned to its former levels.

Scientists add that, as the seas become more acidic, they will be less able to absorb carbon dioxide, causing more of it to stay in the atmosphere to speed up global warming. Research is already uncovering some signs that the oceans' ability to mop up the gas is diminishing. Environmentalists point out that the increasing acidification of the oceans would in itself provide ample reason to curb emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and felling forests even if the dwindling band of sceptics were right and the gas was not warming up the planet.

But yesterday's cautiously worded report, which was agreed by the US government, also provides ample evidence that climate change is well under way, and is accelerating. It concludes that the warming is now "unequivocal" and "evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level".

It adds: "Eleven of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature". It goes on: "Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

If humanity were not affecting the climate, it concludes, declines in the sun's activity and increased eruptions from volcanoes – which throw huge amounts of dust in the air that screen out sunlight – would have been likely to "have produced cooling" of the planet.

But emissions of all the "greenhouse gas" pollutants that cause global warming increased 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004 alone, it reports, adding that levels of carbon dioxide, the most important one, in the atmosphere now "exceed by far" anything that the Earth has experienced in the past 650,000 years. And it goes on to conclude that "continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century."

It makes a host of specific predictions for every continent (for examples, see graphic) and warns that "impacts" could be "abrupt" or "irreversible". One example of an irreversible impact is an expected extinction of between 20 and 30 per cent of all the world's species of animals and plants even at relatively moderate levels of warming. If the climate heats further, it adds, extinctions could rise to 40 to 70 per cent of species.

The IPCC scientists and governments say that they are also more concerned about "increases in droughts, heatwaves and floods" as the climate warms. They believe that the damage to the world's economy would be even greater than they had previously predicted, and were even more certain that the poor and elderly in both rich and poor countries would suffer most.

Yet the report also concludes that, while some climate change is now inevitable, its worst effects could be avoided with straightforward measures at little cost if only governments would take action. It says that the job can be done by using "technologies that are either currently available or expected to be commercialised in coming decades". It could be done at a cost of slowing global growth by only a tenth of a percentage point a year, and might even increase it.

The missing element, virtually everyone agrees, is political will from governments. Next month they meet in Bali to start negotiations on a new treaty to replace the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, which run out in 2012.

The timetable is desperately tight; time lags in the process of getting a new treaty ratified by the world's governments means that it will have to be agreed by the end of 2009 – and there is no sign of anything on the horizon.

Yet the treaty will have to go far beyond the protocol in order to put the whole world on track rapidly to reduce emissions if the world is to achieve the pollution cuts that the scientists say will be needed to avoid catastrophe. And it will have to ensure rapid action. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman, yesterday repeated a consensus among experts that the world as a whole will have to start radical reductions within eight years if there is to be any hope of preventing dangerous climate change.

Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace International said: "It is clear from this report that we are gambling with the future of the planet – and the stakes are high. This document sets out a compelling case for early action on climate change."

The UN Secretary-General, agreed. The effects of climate change have become "so severe and so sweeping" he said "that only urgent, global action will do. There is no time to waste."

Mr Steiner called the report "the most essential reading for every person on the planet who cares about the future". He added: "The hard science has been distilled along with evidence of the social and economic consequences of global warming, but also the economic rationale and opportunities for action now. While the science will continue to evolve and be refined, we now have the compelling blueprint for action and, in many ways, the price tag for failure – from increasing acidification of the oceans to the likely extinction of economically important biodiversity."

And Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the parent treaty to the Kyoto Protocol – told the IoS that reaching agreement was "incredibly urgent".

He pointed out that the world would replace 40 per cent of its power generation capacity in the next five to 10 years and that China is already building one or two coal- fired power stations a week. Those installations would last for decades – and the nations that built them would be reluctant to demolish them any earlier – so that unless the world rapidly changed direction it would be all the more difficult to avoid climate change running out of control.

Sticking poin: It is crucial to get the US and China on board

Getting agreement on a new treaty to tackle climate change hangs on resolving an "after you, Claude" impasse between the United States and China, the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

China insists – with other key developing countries like India and South Africa – that the United States must move first to clean up. It points out that, because of the disparity in populations, every American is responsible for emitting much more of the gas than each Chinese. But the US refuses to join any new treaty unless China also accepts restrictions.

There is hope of breaking the logjam. Chinese leaders know their country would be severely affected by global warming, and have done more than is generally realised to tackle it, not least by rapidly expanding renewable energy. The US will have a new leader by the time negotiations are completed, and even President Bush is backtracking, at least rhetorically.

Yesterday UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was optimistic. "I look forward," he said, with a hint of steel, "to seeing the United States and China playing a more constructive role in the coming negotiations."

Arctic

Greenland ice sheet will virtually completely disappear, raising sea levels by over 30 feet, submerging coastal cities, entire island nations and vast areas of low-lying countries like Bangladesh

Latin America

The Amazon rainforest will become dry savannah as rising temperatures and falling water levels kill the trees, stoke forest fires and kill off wildlife

North America

California and the grain-producing Midwest will dry out as snows in the Rockies decrease, depriving these areas of summer water

Australia

The Great Barrier Reef will die. Species loss will occur by 2020 as corals fail to adapt to warmer waters. On land, drought will reduce harvests

Europe

Winter sports suffer as less snow falls in the Alps and other mountains; up to three-fifths of wildlife dies out. Drought in Mediterranean area hits tourism

Africa

Harvests could be cut by up to half in some countries by 2020, greatly increasing the threat of famine. Between 75 million and 250 million people are expected to be short of water within the next 30 years

A world dying, but can we unite to save it?, IoS, 18.11.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3172144.ece

Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland

October 28, 2007
The New York Times
By SARAH LYALL

NARSARSUAQ, Greenland — A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerge’s forest, a place so minute and unexpected that it brings to mind the teeny plot of land Woody Allen’s father carries around in the film “Love and Death.”

Its four oldest trees — in fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named Rosenvinge’s trees after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment in 1893 — are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had glued on fresh needles.

“The old ones, they’re having a second youth,” said Mr. Bjerge, 78, who has watched the forest, called Qanasiassat, come to life, in fits and starts, since planting most of the trees in it 50 years ago. He beamed like a proud grandson. “They’re growing again.”

When using the words “growing” in connection with Greenland in the same sentence, it is important to remember that although Greenland is the size of Europe, it has only nine conifer forests like Mr. Bjerge’s, all of them cultivated. It has only 51 farms. (They are all sheep farms, although one man is trying to raise cattle. He has 22 cows.) Except for potatoes, the only vegetables most Greenlanders ever eat — to the extent that they eat vegetables at all — are imported, mostly from Denmark.

But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests.

“If it gets warmer, a large part of southern Greenland could be like this,” Mr. Hoeg said, walking through Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny southern community notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a half acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are plunked in the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord, as startling as a mirage. “If it gets a little warmer, you could talk about a productive forest with enough wood for logs,” Mr. Hoeg said.

Farther north, Greenland’s great ice sheet, a vast white landscape of 0.695 million square miles covering 80 percent of the island’s land mass, is melting rapidly, alarmingly, with repercussions not only for the traditional way of life on an island of 56,000 people, but also for the rest of the world. The more the ice melts, the higher sea levels will eventually rise.

But here in the subarctic south — a land of icy water, forbidding mountains, rocky hills, shallow soil, sudden winds and isolated communities slipped in, almost apologetically, along a network of glacier-studded fjords, the changes are more subtle and carry more promise.

“The limiting factor for human survival here is temperature, and there’s a lot of benefits with a warmer climate,” Mr. Hoeg said. “We are on the frontier of agriculture, and even a few degrees can make a difference.”

Greenland, a self-governing province of Denmark, was settled by the pugilistic Viking Erik the Red in the 10th century, after his murderous ways got him ejected from Iceland. Legend has it that he called it Greenland as a way to entice others to join him, and, in fact, it was.

It was relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years. But temperatures dropped precipitously in the so-called Little Ice Age, which began in the 16th century, the Norse settlers died out and agriculture was no longer possible.

Climate is a delicate matter in a place like this. A degree more of warmth here, an inch less of rain there; these can have serious repercussions for a farmer eking out a living raising sheep on the harsh terrain. But while temperatures here in the south dipped in the 1980s, they have risen steadily since. Between 1961 and 1990, the average annual temperature was 33 degrees; in 2006, it was 35 degrees, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.

Winter is coming later and leaving earlier. That means there is more time to leave sheep in the mountains, more time to grow crops, more time to work outdoors, more opportunity to travel by boat, since the fjords freeze later and less frequently.

Cod, which prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again. Ewes are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing season, such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through mid-September, about three weeks longer than a decade ago. “Now spring is coming earlier, and you can have earlier lambings and longer grazing periods,” said Eenoraq Frederiksen, 68, a sheep farmer whose farm, near Qassiarsuk, is accessible by a harrowing drive across a rudimentary road plowed in the hillside. “Young people now have a lot of possibilities for the future.”

Scattered reports of successful strawberry crops in the odd home garden are heard, although it helps to keep them in perspective. As Hans Gronborg, a Danish horticulturist, put it, laughing, “They know whether they’ve harvested 20 strawberries, or 25.” He works at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural research station near Qaqortoq, one of the largest towns in the south. Like everywhere else, it is accessible only by boat or helicopter. As a rule, no roads connect Greenland towns.

As if visiting the zoo, people come from all over to gape at the varieties of grass in the fields and to see what is growing here, among other things, 15 strains of potatoes and, for the first time, annual flowers: chrysanthemums, violas, petunias.

Mr. Gronborg plucked a head of cauliflower from its nest of leaves. It had a rich, almost sweet flavor — the result, he explained, of slow growth, long summer days of 20 hours of light, and wide swings in temperature from day to night. “It’s small, but it means you get all that flavor concentrated in one-third the size of a regular cauliflower,” he said.

Mr. Gronborg loaded a dozen trays of vegetables into a motorboat to take them to the supermarket in Qaqortoq. Soon, he said, restaurants will serve Greenlandic vegetables beside Greenlandic lamb and reindeer.

“Greenlanders are hunters, and it takes time to change their way of living and being,” he said. “But I am confident that things can grow in south Greenland.”

Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland, NYT, 28.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/world/europe/28greenland.html

Cement Industry Is at Center of Climate Change Debate

October 26, 2007
The New York Times
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

PARIS, Oct. 23 — In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is literally the glue of progress. A binding agent that holds the other ingredients that together make concrete, cement is a crucial component in buildings and roads — which is why some 80 percent of it is made and used in emerging economies.

China alone makes and uses 45 percent of worldwide output. In places like Ukraine, production is doubling every four years.

But making cement means making pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions. Cement plants account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Cement has no viable recycling potential; each new road, each new building needs new cement.

Now, green incentives may be increasing pollution. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology. But the greenest technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by only about 20 percent.

So when Western companies revamp Eastern factories, the emissions decrease for each ton of concrete produced. But the amount of cement produced often goes way up, as does the total pollution generated.

Many of the world’s producers acknowledge the conundrum. “The cement industry is at the center of the climate change debate — but the world needs construction material for schools, hospitals and homes,” said Olivier Luneau, head of sustainability at Lafarge, the global cement giant based in Paris. “Because of our initiatives, emissions are growing slower than they would without the interventions.”

Cement manufacturers have invested millions of dollars in green programs, like the Cement Sustainable Initiative. Lafarge, a leader in doing so, has improved efficiency by decreasing emissions to 655 pounds of carbon dioxide for each ton of cement in 2006 emissions from 763 pounds in 1990. Its goal is to get to 610 pounds for each ton by 2010, but the company said it expected it would be difficult to get much below that number. Lafarge, which bought 17 cement plants in China in 2005 and has holdings throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, acknowledges that its total emissions are growing each year.

Many engineers, like Julian Allwood, a professor at the University of Cambridge in England, see sustainable cement as something of a contradiction in terms — like vegetarian meatballs.

Cement poses a basic problem: the chemical reaction that creates it releases large amounts of carbon dioxide. Sixty percent of emissions caused by making cement are from this chemical process alone, Mr. Luneau of Lafarge said. The remainder is produced from the fuels used in production, although those emissions may be mitigated with the use of greener technology.

“Demand is growing so fast and continues to grow, and you can’t cap that,” Mr. Luneau said. “Our core business is cement, so there is a limit to what we can change.”

Carbon trading arrangements— green incentives created by the European Union and the Kyoto agreement on curbing greenhouse gases — encourage purchases in Eastern Europe and Russia by Lafarge and competitors, like HeidelbergCement. But they also allow manufacturers to increase total production, both in the developing world and at home.

The European Union effectively limits production of European cement makers in their home countries by capping their yearly emissions allowances. But there are no limits in places like Ukraine.

Moreover, European companies get increased emission allowances at home — carbon credits — by mounting green cleanup projects elsewhere. So buying an old Soviet factory and converting it to green technology can bring multiple paybacks.

“The investment is much more attractive than it used to be,” said Lennard de Klerk, director of Global Carbon, a Budapest firm that brokers such carbon investments in Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria. Factor the value of the carbon credits into the cost of refitting a factory in Ukraine, and the predicted rate of return rises to almost 12 percent from 8.8 percent, he said.

Once the outmoded plants are refitted with clean technology, their emission for each ton of cement produced declines. The Podilsky plant in Ukraine is being refitted with greener kilns — a project financed by the Irish cement manufacturer CRH — and energy consumption for each ton of cement produced is expected to drop by 53 percent.

But even that sharp drop may not be enough to stop the inexorable growth in cement emissions over all, or compensate for the new lease on life that refitting provides old factories that otherwise might have shut their doors.

At the Doncement plant of HeidelbergCement in Ukraine, output soared 55 percent in the first nine months of 2006. Total production went up more than 10 percent in Ukraine in 2005 and again in 2006.

One industry project called the Cement Sustainability Initiative suggests that concrete should be mixed using smaller portions of cement to reduce emissions. But there is less incentive for manufacturers to make fundamental changes in how buildings and roads are made.

Mr. Allwood suggested that one solution might be to make concrete in blocks like large sugar cubes that could be stacked to make buildings and reused if they are demolished.

Western cement manufacturers emphasize that the emissions problem cannot be solved until China and India and other booming economies realize that they must limit emissions as well.

“Trying to solve emissions in the E.U. or G-8 will not solve the problem unless emerging economies and their cement production are included,” Mr. Luneau said.

Cement Industry Is at Center of Climate Change Debate, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/business/worldbusiness/26cement.html

Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Increasing

October 22, 2007
Filed at 10:16 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

''In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown'' of nature's ability to take the chemical out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization.

The changes ''characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing,'' the researchers report.

Kevin Trenberth of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said the ''paper raises some very important issues that the public should be aware of: Namely that concentrations of CO2 are increasing at much higher rates than previously expected and this is in spite of the Kyoto Protocol that is designed to hold them down in western countries,''

Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: ''What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink,'' meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere.

The researchers blamed that reduction on changes in wind circulation, but Robock said he also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas.

''Think that a warm Coke has less fizz than a cold Coke,'' he said.

Neither Robock nor Trenberth was part of Canadell's research team.

Carbon dioxide is the leading ''greenhouse gas,'' so named because their accumulation in the atmosphere can help trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the planet.

While most atmospheric scientists accept the idea, finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been a political problem because of potential effects on the economy. Earlier this month, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore for their work in calling attention to global warming.

''It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change,'' Robock commented. ''But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted.''

According to the new study, carbon released from burning fossil fuel and making cement rose from 7.0 billion metric tons per year in 2000 to 8.4 billion metric tons in 2006. A metric tons is 2,205 pounds.

The growth rate increased from 1.3 percent per year in 1990-1999 to 3.3 percent per year in 2000-2006, the researchers added.

Trenberth noted that carbon dioxide is not the whole story -- methane emissions have declined, so total greenhouse gases are not increasing as much as carbon dioxide alone. Also, he added, other pollution plays a role by cooling.

There are changes from year to year in the fraction of the atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide and the question is whether this increase is transient or will be sustained, he said.

''The theory suggests increases in (the atmospheric fraction), as is claimed here, but the evidence is not strong,'' Trenberth said.

The paper looks at a rather short time to measure a trend, Robock added, ''but the results they get certainly look reasonable, and much of the paper is looking at much longer trends.''

The research was supported by Australian, European and other international agencies.

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On the Net:

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Increasing, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Carbon-Increase.html

Global Warming May Make Humidity Worse

October 10, 2007
Filed at 1:00 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The world isn't just getting hotter from man-made global warming, it's getting stickier. It really is the humidity. The amount of moisture in the air near the surface -- the stuff that makes hot weather unbearable -- increased 2.2 percent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

''This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming,'' said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study.

Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002. Increases in humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research.

Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality.

He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.

Gillett's study followed another last month that used the same technique to show that moisture above the world's oceans increased and that it bore the ''fingerprint'' of being caused by man-made global warming.

Climate scientists have now seen the man-made fingerprint of global warming on 10 different aspects of Earth's environment: surface temperatures, humidity, water vapor over the oceans, barometric pressure, total precipitation, wildfires, change in species of plants in animals, water run-off, temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and heat content in the world's oceans.

''This story does now fit together; there are now no loose ends,'' said Ben Santer, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and author of the September study on moisture above the oceans. ''The message is pretty compelling that natural causes alone just can't cut it.''

The studies make sense, said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who was not part of either team's research.

It will only feel worse in the future, Gillett said. Moisture in the air increases by about 6 percent with every degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections for temperature increases, that would mean a 12 to 24 percent increase in humidity by the year 2100.

''Although it might not be a lethal kind of thing, it's going to increase human discomfort,'' Willett said.

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On the Net:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Global Warming May Make Humidity Worse, NYT, 10.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Global-Warming-Humidity.html

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts

October 2, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.

Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.

Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.

At a recent gathering of sea-ice experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Hajo Eicken, a geophysicist, summarized it this way: “Our stock in trade seems to be going away.”

Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it.

Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said.

The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. But that disconnect can cut two ways. Are the models overly conservative? Or are they missing natural influences that can cause wide swings in ice and temperature, thereby dwarfing the slow background warming?

The world is paying more attention than ever.

Russia, Canada and Denmark, prompted in part by years of warming and the ice retreat this year, ratcheted up rhetoric and actions aimed at securing sea routes and seabed resources.

Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity.

Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.

For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance. Many scientists say the last substantial warming in the region, peaking in the 1930s, mainly affected areas near Greenland and Scandinavia.

Some scientists who have long doubted that a human influence could be clearly discerned in the Arctic’s changing climate now agree that the trend is hard to ascribe to anything else.

“We used to argue that a lot of the variability up to the late 1990s was induced by changes in the winds, natural changes not obviously related to global warming,” said John Michael Wallace, a scientist at the University of Washington. “But changes in the last few years make you have to question that. I’m much more open to the idea that we might have passed a point where it’s becoming essentially irreversible.”

Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter’s freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit. At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013.

In essence, Arctic waters may be behaving more like those around Antarctica, where a broad fringe of sea ice builds each austral winter and nearly disappears in the summer. (Reflecting the different geography and dynamics at the two poles, there has been a slight increase in sea-ice area around Antarctica in recent decades.)

While open Arctic waters could be a boon for shipping, fishing and oil exploration, an annual seesawing between ice and no ice could be a particularly harsh jolt to polar bears.

Many Arctic researchers warned that it was still far too soon to start sending container ships over the top of the world. “Natural variations could turn around and counteract the greenhouse-gas-forced change, perhaps stabilizing the ice for a bit,” said Marika Holland, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

But, she added, that will not last. “Eventually the natural variations would again reinforce the human-driven change, perhaps leading to even more rapid retreat,” Dr. Holland said. “So I wouldn’t sign any shipping contracts for the next 5 to 10 years, but maybe the next 20 to 30.”

While experts debate details, many agree that the vanishing act of the sea ice this year was probably caused by superimposed forces including heat-trapping clouds and water vapor in the air, as well as the ocean-heating influence of unusually sunny skies in June and July. Other important factors were warm winds flowing from Siberia around a high-pressure system parked over the ocean. The winds not only would have melted thin ice but also pushed floes offshore where currents and winds could push them out of the Arctic Ocean.

But another factor was probably involved, one with roots going back to about 1989. At that time, a periodic flip in winds and pressure patterns over the Arctic Ocean, called the Arctic Oscillation, settled into a phase that tended to stop ice from drifting in a gyre for years, so it could thicken, and instead carried it out to the North Atlantic.

The new NASA study of expelled old ice builds on previous measurements showing that the proportion of thick, durable floes that were at least 10 years old dropped to 2 percent this spring from 80 percent in the spring of 1987, said Ignatius G. Rigor, an ice expert at the University of Washington and an author of the new NASA-led study.

Without the thick ice, which can endure months of nonstop summer sunshine, more dark open water and thin ice absorbed solar energy, adding to melting and delaying the winter freeze.

The thinner fresh-formed ice was also more vulnerable to melting from heat held near the ocean surface by clouds and water vapor. This may be where the rising influence of humans on the global climate system could be exerting the biggest regional influence, said Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University.

Other Arctic experts, including Dr. Maslowski in Monterey and Igor V. Polyakov at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, also see a role in rising flows of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, and in deep currents running north from the Atlantic Ocean near Scandinavia.

A host of Arctic scientists say it is too soon to know if the global greenhouse effect has already tipped the system to a condition in which sea ice in summers will be routinely limited to a few clotted passageways in northern Canada.

But at the university in Fairbanks — where signs of northern warming include sinkholes from thawing permafrost around its Arctic research center — Dr. Eicken and other experts are having a hard time conceiving a situation that could reverse the trends.

“The Arctic may have another ace up her sleeve to help the ice grow back,” Dr. Eicken said. “But from all we can tell right now, the means for that are quite limited.”

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts, NYT, 2.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html?hp

Arctic Ice Melt Opens Northwest Passage

September 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PARIS (AP) -- Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.

Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.

''The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected,'' Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected -- but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.

A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack -- sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

''Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions,'' he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

''It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year,'' Ragner said. ''The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes.''

''Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route,'' he said, ''but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there.''

The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.

------

Associated Press Writer Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYTC13J6F--index--1.html

Arctic Ice Melt Opens Northwest Passage, NYT, 16.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Northwest-Passage.html

Warming Is Seen as Wiping Out Most Polar Bears

September 8, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday.

The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000.

The report, which the United States Geological Survey released here, offers stark prospects for polar bears as the world grows warmer.

The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.

The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.

“As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear,” said Steven Amstrup, lead biologist for the survey team.

The report was released as President Bush was in Australia meeting with Asian leaders to try to agree on a strategy to address global warming. Mr. Bush will be host to major industrial nations in Washington this month to discuss the framework for a treaty on climate change.

The United Nations plans to devote its general assembly in the fall to global warming.

A spokeswoman for the White House declined to comment on the report, saying it was part of decision making at the Interior Department, parent of the survey.

In the report, the team said, “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.

In a conference call with reporters, the scientists also said the momentum to a warmer world with less Arctic sea ice — and fewer bears — would be largely unavoidable at least for decades, no matter what happened with emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

“Despite any mitigation of greenhouse gases, we’re going to see the same amount of energy in the system for 20, 30 or 40 years,” said Mark Myers, the survey director. “We would not expect to see any significant change in polar conditions regardless of mitigation.”

In other words, even in the unlikely event that all the major economies were to agree to rapid and drastic reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, the floating Arctic ice cap will continue to shrink at a rapid pace for the next 50 years, wiping out much of the bears’ habitat.

The report makes no recommendation on listing the bears as a threatened species or taking any action to slow ice cap damage. Such decisions are up to another Interior Department agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the Endangered Species Act. That decision is due in January, officials have said. The wildlife agency had to make a determination on the status of a threatened species because of a suit by environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In some places, the bears have adapted to eating a wide range of food like snow geese and garbage. But the survey team said their fate was 84 percent linked to the extent of sea ice.

Separate studies of trends in Arctic sea ice by academic and government teams have solidified a picture of shrinking area in summers for decades to come.

A fresh analysis by scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to be published Saturday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says sea-ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean will decline by more than 40 percent before the summer of 2050, compared with the average ice extent from 1979 to 1999.

This summer the ice retreated much farther and faster than in any year since satellite tracking began in 1979, several Arctic research groups said.

John H. Broder reported from Washington, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

Warming Is Seen as Wiping Out Most Polar Bears, NYT, 8.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/science/earth/08polar.html

Atlantic Tropical Storms Have Doubled

July 29, 2007
Filed at 7:05 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say.

The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research ''sloppy science'' and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase.

From 1905 to 1930, the Atlantic-Gulf Coast area averaged six tropical cyclones per year, with four of those storms growing into become hurricanes.

The annual average jumped to 10 tropical storms and five hurricanes from 1931 to 1994. From 1995 to 2005, the average was 15 tropical storms and eight hurricanes annually.

Even in 2006, widely reported as a mild year, there were 10 tropical storms.

''We are currently in an upward swing in frequency of named storms and hurricanes that has not stabilized,'' said Holland, director of mesoscale and microscale meteorology at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

''I really do not know how much further, if any, that it will go, but my sense is that we shall see a stabilization in frequencies for a while, followed by potentially another upward swing if global warming continues unabated,'' Holland said.

It is normal for chaotic systems such as weather and climate to move in sharp steps rather than gradual trends, he said.

''What did surprise me when we first found it in 2005 was that the increases had developed for so long without us noticing it,'' he said in an interview via e-mail.

Holland said about half the U.S. population and ''a large slice'' of business are ''directly vulnerable'' to hurricanes.

''Our urban and industrial planning and building codes are based on past history,'' he said. If the future is different, ''then we run the very real risk of these being found inadequate, as was so graphically displayed by (Hurricane) Katrina in New Orleans.''

Hurricanes derive their energy from warm ocean water. North Atlantic surface temperature increased about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit during the 100-year period studied. Other researchers have calculated that at least two-thirds of that warming can be attributed to human and industrial activities.

Some experts have sought to blame changes in the sun. But a recent study by British and Swiss experts concluded that ''over the past 20 years, all the trends in the sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.''

As the sea surface temperatures warm, they cause changes in atmospheric wind fields and circulations, and these changes are responsible for the changes in storm frequency, Holland said.

Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, said the study is inconsistent in its use of data.

The work, he said, is ''sloppy science that neglects the fact that better monitoring by satellites allows us to observe storms and hurricanes that were simply missed earlier. The doubling in the number of storms and hurricanes in 100 years that they found in their paper is just an artifact of technology, not climate change.''

But Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the study was significant. ''It refutes recent suggestions that the upward trend in Atlantic hurricane activity is an artifact of changing measurement systems,'' said Emanuel, who was not part of the research team.

Improvements in observation began with aircraft flights into storms in 1944 and satellite observations in 1970. The transitions in hurricane activity that were noted in the paper occurred around 1930 and 1995.

''We are of the strong and considered opinion that data errors alone cannot explain the sharp, high-amplitude transitions between the climatic regimes, each with an increase of around 50 percent in cyclone and hurricane numbers,'' wrote Webster, of Georgia Institute of Technology, and Holland.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

------

On the Net:

Royal Society Publishing: http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/

National Center for Atmospheric Research: http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/

Georgia Institute of Technology: http://www.gatech.edu

Atlantic Tropical Storms Have Doubled, NYT, 29.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-More-Storms.html

A message from the melting slopes of Everest

The sons of Hillary and Tenzing speak out about climate change:
"Believe us, it's a reality"

Published: 06 July 2007
The Independent
By Cahal Milmo and Sam Relph

Fifty-four years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to scale Everest, their sons have said the mountain is now so ravaged by climate change that they would no longer recognise it.

On the eve of the Live Earth concerts this weekend, Peter Hillary and Jamling Tenzing yesterday issued a timely warning that global warming is rapidly changing the face of the world's highest mountain and threatening the survival of billions of people who rely on its glaciers for drinking water.

The base camp where Sir Edmund and Norgay began their ascent is 40 metres lower than it was in 1953. The glacier on which it stands, and those around it, are melting at such a rate that scientists believe the mountain, whose Nepalese name, Qomolangma, means Mother of the World, could be barren rock by 2050.

Up to 40,000 Sherpas who live at the base of the Himalayas face devastation if vast new lakes formed by the melted ice burst and send a torrent of millions of tons of water down the slopes.

Mr Hillary, who has himself twice reached Everest's summit, said: "Climate change is happening. This is a fact. Base camp used to sit at 5,320 metres. This year it was at 5,280 metres because the ice is melting from the top and side. Base camp is sinking each year. For Sherpas living on Mount Everest this is something they can see every day but they can't do anything about it on their own."

The warning came as a survey revealed that most Britons remain unconvinced about the extent of climate change and that terrorism, crime, graffiti and even dog mess are more pressing issues for the UK. The Ipsos-Mori poll found that 56 per cent of people believe scientists are still debating whether human activity is contributing to climate change. In reality, there is virtual consensus that it is.

Just over half of people, 51 per cent, believe climate change will have little or no effect and more than one-third admitted they were taking no action to reduce their carbon emissions.

Speaking before the seven Live Earth concerts, which organisers hope will be a catalyst for action on global warming, Jamling Tenzing, who has also climbed Everest, said the mountain was serving as an early warning of the extent to which it is already changing the planet.

The glacier where Sir Edmund and Norgay pitched their base camp before eventually reaching the summit at 29,000ft on 29 May 1953 has retreated three miles in the past 20 years. Scientists believe that all glaciers in the Himalayas, which are between half a mile and more than three miles in length, will be reduced to small patches of ice within 50 years if trends continue.

Mr Tenzing said: "The glaciers have receded a great deal since my father's time. There are many things he wouldn't recognise today. The glacier on which base camp sits has melted to such a degree that it is now at a lower altitude. I think the whole face of the mountains is changing."

The glacial retreat presents a double peril for those who live in the Himalayas and the populations of India and China, where the water flowing from the mountains accounts for 40 per cent of the world's fresh water.

The rapid increase in the rate of glaciers melting - from 42 metres a year in the 40 years to 2001 to 74 metres a year in 2006 - has resulted in the formation of huge lakes in the space of a few years.

A United Nations study of the 9,000 glacial lakes in the Himalayas found that more than 200 are at risk of "outburst floods", unleashing thousands of cubic metres of water per second into an area where 40,000 people live. In 1985, Lake Dig Tsho in the Everest region released 10 million cubic metres of water in three hours. It caused a 10-metre-high wall of water which swept away a power station, bridges, farmland, houses, livestock and people up to 55 miles downstream. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous lakes today are up to 20 times bigger. One of those, Imja Tsho, did not exist 50 years ago and lies directly above the homes of 10,000 people.

The worst-case scenario according to Nepalese scientists is a cascade effect whereby one overflowing lake empties into another, starting a chain reaction which would kill thousands and wipe out agriculture for generations.

Peter Hillary said: "I've seen the result of glacial lakes bursting their banks and it's just catastrophic. It's like an atomic bomb has gone off. Everywhere is rubble. The floods of the past are unfortunately nothing compared with the size of what we are currently threatened with."

In the longer term, scientists believe the depletion of the glaciers will drastically reduce the flow of water into the nine major rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers.

Defra recruits critic of Bush

An outspoken critic of President George Bush's approach to combating global warming has been appointed to advise the British Government on climate change.

Bob Watson was voted out of his job chairing the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) five years ago after incurring the wrath of the Bush administration. He will take over as chief scientific adviser at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in September. The appointment was approved by Gordon Brown.

His recruitment, a week after Mr Brown took over as Prime Minister, will be seen as further evidence the Government is trying to distance itself from Mr Bush. Last week, he caused consternation at the White House when he appointed Sir Mark Malloch Brown, a strong critic of US foreign policy, as minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.

Dr Watson, a British-born expert on atmospheric pollution, advised former US President Bill Clinton on the environment and worked at the World Bank before becoming the IPCC's chairman. The US began manoeuvring to remove him shortly after President Bush's inauguration in 2001. A year later, he was replaced by Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian scientist.

Environmental groups uncovered a memo from the US oil corporation ExxonMobil, a major contributor to Mr Bush's election campaign, asking the White House to unseat Dr Watson because he had an "aggressive agenda". At the time, Dr Watson acknowledged the US government's intervention was an "important factor" in the campaign to oust him.

A Defra spokeswoman said: "He was the unanimous choice out of all the candidates."

Nigel Morris

A message from the melting slopes of Everest, I, 6.7.2007, http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2739751.ece

Researchers: Antarctica Ice Sheet Stable

June 27, 2007
Filed at 1:57 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- An ice sheet in Antarctica that is the world's largest -- with enough water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet -- is relatively stable and poses no immediate threat, according to new research.

While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will ''need quite a bit of warming'' to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday.

The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice mass more than 1,875 miles across and up to 2.5 miles thick centered on the South Pole, will remain cold enough to prevent significant melting in the near future, the New Zealand-led research shows.

But it eventually may become vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels driven by the melting of other ice sheets, Mackintosh's team found. Their research was published this week in the journal Geology.

''The East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest and the coldest and is going to be the last to respond in any great way'' to global warming, he said. ''Our research suggests changes in sea levels due to global warming will not be caused by changes in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet yet.''

The researchers found that from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by more than 330 feet, the East Antarctic ice sheet thinned by 660 feet to 1,150 feet. Rising waters during that period would have lifted the buoyant ice sheet's edges off its rocky base, causing pieces to detach or ''calve'' and melt.

If the sheet experienced such calving again, even small changes could have a significant impact, the researchers said.

The study -- conducted with Australia's Macquarie University and the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organization -- did not predict how much sea levels would have to rise before the sheet's edges started to break away.

Glaciologist Wendy Lawson, head of geography at Canterbury University who took no part in the study, said the new research supported previous modeling indicating the sheet was stable.

''There is no short-term risk as far as the overall magnitude of the East Antarctic ice sheet goes,'' she said.

Researchers: Antarctica Ice Sheet Stable, NYT, 27.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Antarctica-Ice-Sheet.html

China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter

Tuesday June 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
John Vidal and David Adam

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes.

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly." China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005. Per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low - about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.

The new figures only include carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production. They do not include sources of other greenhouse gases, such as methane from agriculture and nitrous oxide from industrial processes. And they exclude other sources of carbon dioxide, such as from the aviation and shipping industries, as well as from deforestation, gas flaring and underground coal fires.

Dr Olivier said it was hard to find up to date and reliable estimates for such emissions, particularly from countries in the developing world. But he said including them would be unlikely to topple China from top spot. "Since China passed the US by 8% [in 2006] it will be pretty hard to compensate for that with other sources of emissions."

To work out the emissions figures, Dr Oliver used data issued by the oil company BP earlier this month on the consumption of oil, gas and coal across the world during 2006, as well as information on cement production published by the US Geological Survey. Cement production, which requires huge amounts of energy, accounts for about 4% of global CO2 production from fuel use and industrial sources. China's cement industry, which has rapidly expanded in recent years and now produces about 44% of world supply, contributes almost 9% of the country's CO2 emissions. Dr Olivier calculated carbon dioxide emissions from each country's use of oil, gas and coal using UN conversion factors. China's surge beyond the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which analysts say is down to a slowing US economy.

The announcement comes as international negotiations to produce a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012 are delicately poised. The US refused to ratify Kyoto partly because it made no demands on China, and one major sticking point of the new negotiations has been finding a way to include both nations, as well as other rapidly developing economies such as India and Brazil. Tony Blair believes the best approach is to develop national markets to cap and trade carbon, which could then be linked.

Earlier this month, China unveiled its first national plan on climate change after two years of preparation by 17 government ministries. Rather than setting a direct target for the reduction or avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions, it now aims to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20% by 2010 and to increase the share of renewable energy to some 10%, as well as to cover roughly 20% of the nation's land with forest.

But it stressed that technology and costs are major barriers to achieving energy efficiency in China, and that it will be hard to alter the nation's dependency on coal in the short term. What China needs, said a government spokesman, is international cooperation in helping China move toward a low-carbon economy. Chinese industries have been hesitant to embrace unproven clean coal and carbon capture technologies that are still in their infancy in developed countries.

China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter, NYT, 19.6.2007, http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2106689,00.html

Many Arctic Plants Have Adjusted to Big Climate Changes, Study Finds

June 15, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Many Arctic plant species have readily adjusted to big climate changes, repeatedly recolonizing the rugged islands of the remote Svalbard archipelago off Norway’s coast through 20,000 years of warm and cool spells since the frigid peak of the last ice age, researchers report in today’s issue of the journal Science.

Their finding implies that, in the Arctic at least, plants may be able to shift long distances to follow the climate conditions for which they are best adapted as those conditions move under the influence of human-caused global warming, the researchers and some independent experts said.

Some experts on climate and biology who were not involved with the study, which was led by scientists from the University of Oslo, said it provided a glimmer of optimism in the face of generally bleak scientific assessments of the vulnerability of ecosystems to the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases.

Terry L. Root, a biologist at Stanford who has been involved with many studies concluding that plants and animals are measurably feeling the effects of human-driven warming, described the Svalbard research as “great news.”

“The large number of documented changes has created quite a concern about the fate of many species,” Dr. Root said. The new study, she said, shows that “some Arctic plants, and hopefully vegetation in other areas, apparently are able to respond in a manner that compensates for the rapid warming.”

Norwegian and French scientists analyzed the DNA of more than 4,000 samples of nine flowering plant species from Svalbard, a group of islands between the Scandinavian mainland and the North Pole. They said they found genetic patterns that could be explained only by the repeated re-establishment of plant communities after the arrival of seeds or plant fragments from Russia, Greenland or other Arctic regions hundreds of miles away.

The wide dispersal of the plants presumably occurs through a combination of Arctic winds, driftwood or dirt carried in floating ice and bird droppings, the scientists said.

Julie Brigham-Grette, a geosciences professor at the University of Massachusetts, said the findings were consistent with research from Alaska showing that forests had extended farther north during a period, warmer than the present, that peaked around 11,000 years ago.

“As the proper habitat is available, plants will survive,” she said. “I have not seen this demonstrated so clearly as it is in this paper. If dispersal is not a limiting factor, then maybe the rate of warming ongoing in the Arctic will not be a limiting factor in plant survival in distant places.”

Inger Greve Alsos, the study’s lead author, said natural adaptability in the plants might be tested if the projections for rapid Arctic warming from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came to pass. She also cautioned that the evidence for resilience and long-distance mobility in Arctic plants could be the exception, not the rule.

The ability of Arctic flora to disperse widely is probably an evolutionary consequence of the region’s tendency toward sharp climate swings, she said.

Many Arctic Plants Have Adjusted to Big Climate Changes, Study Finds, NYT, 15.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/science/earth/15arctic.html

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster, a Study Finds

May 1, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Climate scientists may have significantly underestimated the power of global warming from human-generated heat-trapping gases to shrink the cap of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean, according to a new study of polar trends.

The study, published online today in Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that an open-water Arctic in summers could be more likely in this century than had been estimated in the latest international review of climate research released in February by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“There are huge changes going on,” said Julienne Stroeve, a lead author of the new study and a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “Just with warm waters entering the Arctic, combined with warming air temperatures, this is wreaking havoc on the sea ice, really.”

The intergovernmental panel concluded that if emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide were not significantly reduced, the region could end up bereft of floating ice in summers sometime between 2050 and the early decades of the next century.

For the new study, Dr. Stroeve and others at the ice center reviewed nearly six decades of measurements by ships, airplanes and satellites estimating the maximum and minimum area of Arctic sea ice, which typically expands most in March and shrinks most in September.

With an expert from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder, they then compared the observed trends with the projections made for the climate panel’s review using the world’s most advanced computer models of climate.

Dr. Stroeve’s team found that since 1953 the area of sea ice in September has declined at an average rate of 7.8 percent per decade. Computer climate simulations of the same period had an average rate of ice loss of 2.5 percent per decade.

The finding implies that the Arctic ice may be quicker to respond to warming as concentrations of heat-trapping gases rise in coming decades, said Marika Holland, an author of the new paper and a computer modeler at the Boulder climate center.

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster, a Study Finds, 1.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/us/01climate.html

An island made by global warming

By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor
The Independent
Published: 24 April 2007

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea.

Shaped like a three-fingered hand some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it has been discovered by a veteran American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language, that he speaks fluently).

The US Geological Survey has confirmed its existence with satellite photos, that show it as an integral part of the Greenland coast in 1985, but linked by only a small ice bridge in 2002, and completely separate by the summer of 2005. It is now a striking island of high peaks and rugged rocky slopes plunging steeply to a sea dotted with icebergs.

As the satellite pictures and the main photo which we publish today make clear, Warming Island has been created by a quite undeniable, rapid and enormous physical transformation and is likely to be seen around the world as a potent symbol of the coming effects of climate change.

But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.

The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet.

That would inundate most of the world's coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.

Sea level rise is already accelerating. Sea levels are going up around the world by about 3.1mm per year - the average for the period 1993-2003. That is itself sharply up from an average of 1.8mm per year over the longer period 1961-2003. Greenland ice now accounts for about 0.5 millimetre of the total. (Much of the rest of the rise is coming from the expansion of the world's sea water as it warms.)

Until two or three years ago, it was thought that the break-up of the ice sheet might take 1,000 years or more but a series of studies and alarming observations since 2004 have shown the disintegration is accelerating and, as a consequence, sea level rise may be much quicker than anticipated.

Earlier computer models, researchers believe, failed to capture properly the way the ice sheet would respond to major warming (over the past 20 years, Greenland's air temperature has risen by 3C). The 2001 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was relatively reassuring, suggesting change would be slow.

But satellite measurements of Greenland's entire land mass show that the speed at which its glaciers are moving to the sea has increased significantly in the past decade, with some of them moving three times faster than in the mid-1990s.

Scientists estimate that, in 1996, glaciers deposited about 50 cubic km of ice into the sea. In 2005, it had risen to 150 cubic km of ice.

A study last year by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology showed that, rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the "lubricant" of meltwater forming at their base. As the meltwater seeps down it lubricates the bases of the "outlet" glaciers of the ice sheet, causing them to slip down surrounding valleys towards the sea,

Another discovery has been the increase in "glacial earthquakes" caused by the sudden movement of enormous blocks of ice within the ice sheet. The annual number of them recorded in Greenland between 1993 and 2002 was between six and 15. In 2003, seismologists recorded 20 glacial earthquakes. In 2004, they monitored 24 and for the first 10 months of 2005 they recorded 32. The seismologists also found the glacial earthquakes occurred mainly during the summer months, indicating the movements were indeed associated with rapidly melting ice - normal "tectonic" earthquakes show no such seasonality. Of the 136 glacial quakes analysed in a report published last year, more than a third occurred during July and August.

The creation of Warming Island appears to be entirely consistent with the disintegrating ice sheet, coming about when the glacier bridge linking it to the mainland simply disappeared. It was discovered by Mr Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, California, who has known Greenland for 40 years, during a trip he led up the remote coastline.

According to the US Geological Survey: "More islands like this may be discovered if the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to disappear."

A self-governing dependency of Denmark, Greenland is the largest island in the world but is inhabited by only 56,000 people, mainly Inuit. More than 80 per cent of the land surface is covered by the ice sheet.

An island made by global warming, I, 24.4.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2480994.ece

There is climate change censorship - and it's the deniers who dish it out

Global warming scientists are under intense pressure to water down findings,
and are then accused of silencing their critics

Tuesday April 10, 2007
The Guardian
George Monbiot

The drafting of reports by the world's pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel's reports are conservative - even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be.

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything that threatens their interests.

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make concessions. The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that "North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events".

This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the rightwing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky world of the climate conspiracists no explanations are required. The world's most conservative scientific body has somehow been transformed into a conspiracy of screaming demagogues.

This is just one aspect of a story that is endlessly told the wrong way round. In the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail, in columns by Dominic Lawson, Tom Utley and Janet Daley, the allegation is repeated that climate scientists and environmentalists are trying to "shut down debate". Those who say that man-made global warming is not taking place, they claim, are being censored.

Something is missing from their accusations: a single valid example. The closest any of them have been able to get is two letters sent - by the Royal Society and by the US senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe - to that delicate flower ExxonMobil, asking that it cease funding lobbyists who deliberately distort climate science. These correspondents had no power to enforce their wishes. They were merely urging Exxon to change its practices. If everyone who urges is a censor, then the comment pages of the newspapers must be closed in the name of free speech.

In a recent interview, Martin Durkin, who made Channel 4's film The Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed he was subject to "invisible censorship". He seems to have forgotten that he had 90 minutes of prime-time television to expound his theory that climate change is a green conspiracy. What did this censorship amount to? Complaints about one of his programmes had been upheld by the Independent Television Commission. It found that "the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing" and that they had been "misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part". This, apparently, makes him a martyr.

If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or suppressed.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints: 1. Pressure to eliminate the words "climate change", "global warming", or other similar terms from their communications; 2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors that "changed the meaning of scientific findings"; 3. Statements by officials at their agencies that misrepresented their findings; 4. The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate; 5. New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work; 6. Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings. They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years.

In 2003, the White House gutted the climate-change section of a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. It deleted references to studies showing that global warming is caused by manmade emissions. It added a reference to a study, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, that suggested that temperatures are not rising. Eventually the agency decided to drop the section altogether.

After Thomas Knutson at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a paper in 2004 linking rising emissions with more intense tropical cyclones, he was blocked by his superiors from speaking to the media. He agreed to one request to appear on MSNBC, but a public affairs officer at NOAA rang the station and said that Knutson was "too tired" to conduct the interview. The official explained to him that the "White House said no". All media inquiries were to be routed instead to a scientist who believed there was no connection between global warming and hurricanes.

Last year Nasa's top climate scientist, James Hansen, reported that his bosses were trying to censor his lectures, papers and web postings. He was told by Nasa's PR officials that there would be "dire consequences" if he continued to call for rapid reductions in greenhouse gases.

Last month, the Alaskan branch of the US fish and wildlife service told its scientists that anyone travelling to the Arctic must understand "the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues".

At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago, Philip Cooney, a former White House aide who had previously worked at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush administration. Though not a scientist, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming.

The guardians of free speech in Britain aren't above attempting a little suppression, either. The Guardian and I have now received several letters from the climate sceptic Viscount Monckton threatening us with libel proceedings after I challenged his claims about climate science. On two of these occasions he has demanded that articles are removed from the internet. Monckton is the man who wrote to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, claiming that their letter to ExxonMobil offends the corporation's "right of free speech".

After Martin Durkin's film was broadcast, one of the scientists it featured, Professor Carl Wunsch, complained that his views on climate change had been misrepresented. He says he has received a legal letter from Durkin's production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.

Would it be terribly impolite to suggest that when such people complain of censorship, a certain amount of projection is taking place?

There is climate change censorship - and it's the deniers who dish it out, G, 10.4.2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2053521,00.html

10.45am

Global warming 'will continue for centuries'

Friday February 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Peter Walker and agencies

Global warming is an "unequivocal" fact and is likely to continue for centuries, the leading international body studying climate change said in a report today.

It is "very likely" - a probability of more than 90% - that the phenomenon has been caused by human activity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its fourth report.

In 2001, the body - which brings together 2,500 scientists from more than 30 countries - said global warming was "likely", or 66% probable, to have been caused by humans.

Today's report predicted that global average temperatures would rise by between 1.1C and 6.4C (2-11.5F) by 2100 - a slightly broader range than in the 2001 findings.

However, it said the best estimate was for increases of between 1.8C and 4C. In comparison, the world is currently around 5C warmer than during the last ice age. The report predicts a rise of between 18cm and 58cm in sea levels by the end of this century, a figure that could increase by as much as 20cm if the recent melting of polar ice sheets continues.

The 21-page summary of the findings, called Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, was formally agreed by the IPCC in Paris yesterday.

It steers clear of policy recommendations, instead providing a rigorously scientific assessment of the likely risks.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," the summary said.

It added that greenhouse gases were already responsible for a series of existing problems, including fewer cold days, hotter nights, intense heatwaves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and an increase in the strength of hurricanes and tropical storms.

The scale of such phenomena in the 21st century "would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century", it said, warning that no matter how much humanity reduces greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rises would continue for hundreds of years.

"This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it," co-author Kevin Trenberth, the director of climate analysis for the US-based National Centre for Atmospheric Research, said.

"We're creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years, we'll have a different climate."

However, the scientists stressed this did not mean governments should accept the inevitable.

"The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," another co-author, Jonathan Overpeck, of the University of Arizona, said.

"I can tell if you will decide not to do something, the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

The head of the US delegation to the body said the report was a "comprehensive and accurate" presentation of the science.

Sharon Hays, the associate director of the White House office of science and technology policy, claimed George Bush's policy of slowing a rise in emissions rather than cutting them was working.

"The president has put in place a comprehensive set of policies to address what he has called the serious challenge of climate change," she told Reuters.

Climate change activists have lambasted Mr Bush for pulling out of the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, which he said was ineffective and harmful to the US economy. Instead, he has focused on investments in technologies such as hydrogen and biofuels.

Global warming 'will continue for centuries', G, 2.2.2007, http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2004550,00.html

Global Warming: The vicious circle

Published: 29 January 2007
The Independent
By Steve Connor, Science Editor

The effects of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are being felt on every inhabited continent in the world with very different parts of the climate now visibly responding to human activity.

These are among the main findings of the most intensive study of climate change by 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists. They conclude that there is now little doubt that human activity is changing the face of the planet.

In addition to rising surface temperatures around the world, scientists have now linked man-made emissions of greenhouse gases to significant increases in ocean temperatures, rises in sea levels and the dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice over the past 35 years.

A draft copy of the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that global temperature rises this century of between 2C and 4.5C are almost inevitable. Ominously, however, it also says that much higher increases of 6C "or more" cannot be ruled out.

The final version of the IPCC's latest report is to be published on Friday but a draft copy, seen by The Independent, makes it clear that climate change could be far worse than previously thought because of potentially disastrous "positive" feedbacks which could accelerate rising temperatures.

A warmer world is increasing evaporation from the oceans causing atmospheric concentrations of water vapour, a powerful greenhouse agent, to have increased by 4 per cent over the sea since 1970. Water vapour in the atmosphere exacerbates the greenhouse effect. This is the largest positive feedback identified in the report, which details for the first time the IPCC's concern over the uncertainties - and dangers - of feedback cycles that may quickly accelerate climate change.

All the climate models used by the IPCC also found that rising global temperatures will erode the planet's natural ability to absorb man-made CO2. This could lead to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rising by a further 44 per cent, causing global average temperatures to increase by an additional 1.2C by 2100.

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report will go further than any of its three previous reports in linking the clear signs of global climate change with increases in man-made emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

"Confidence in the assessment of the human contributions to recent climate change has increased considerably since the TAR [Third Assessment Report]," says the draft report. This is due to the stronger signs of climate change emerging from longer and more detailed records and scientific observations, it says.

The "anthropogenic signal" - the visible signs of human influence on the climate - has now emerged not just in global average surface temperatures, but in global ocean temperatures and ocean heat content, temperature extremes on the land and the rapidly diminishing Arctic sea ice. "Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is widespread and can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the free atmosphere and in the oceans," the draft report says. "It is highly likely [greater than 95 per cent probability] that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing [human activity]."

The report adds that global warming over the past 50 years would have been worse had it not been for the counterbalancing influence of man-made emissions of aerosol pollutants, tiny airborne particles that reflect sunlight to cause atmospheric cooling. "Without the cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols, it is likely that greenhouse gases alone would have caused more global mean temperature rise than that observed during the last 50 years," the draft report says.

"The hypothetical removal from the atmosphere of the entire current burden of anthropogenic sulphate aerosol particles would produce a rapid increase of about 0.8C within a decade or two in the globally averaged temperature."

The IPCC says that over the coming century we are likely to see big changes to the Earth's climate system. These include:

* Heat waves, such as the one that affected southern Europe in summer 2003, are expected to be more intense, longer-lasting and more frequent.

* Tropical storms and hurricanes are likely to be stronger, with increased rainfall and higher storm surges flooding coastlines.

* The Arctic is likely to become ice free in the summer, and there will be continued melting of mountain glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets.

* Sea levels will rise significantly even if levels of CO2 are stabilised. By 2100 sea levels could be 0.43 metres higher on average than present, and by 2300 they could be up to 0.8 metres higher.

The IPCC also finally nails the canard of the climate sceptics who argue that global warming is a myth or the result of natural climate variability; natural factors alone cannot account for the observed warming, the IPCC says. "These changes took place at a time when non-anthropogenic forcing factors (i.e. the sum of solar and volcanic forcing) would be expected to have produced cooling, not warming.

"There is increased confidence that natural internal variability cannot account for the observed changes, due in part to improved studies demonstrating that the warming occurred in both oceans and atmosphere, together with observed ice mass losses."

The report, the first draft of which was formulated last year, will be made public on Friday in Paris.

Key findings of the IPCC's fourth assessment report

* Global temperatures continue to rise with 11 of the 12 warmest years since 1850 occurring since 1995. Computer models suggest a further rise of about 3C by 2100, with a 6C rise a distant possibility

* It is virtually certain (there is more than a 99 per cent probability) that carbon dioxide levels and global warming is far above the range of natural variability over the past 650,000 years

* It is virtually certain that human activity has played the dominant role in causing the increase of greenhouse gases over the past 250 years

* Man-made emissions of atmospheric aerosol pollutants have tended to counteract global warming, which otherwise would have been significantly worse

* The net effect of human activities over the past 250 years has very likely exerted a warming influence on the climate

* It is likely that human activity is also responsible for other observed changes to the Earth's climate system, such as ocean warming and the melting of the Arctic sea ice

* Sea levels will continue to rise in the 21st Century because of the thermal expansion of the oceans and loss of land ice

* The projected warming of the climate due to increases in carbon dioxide during the 21st Century is likely to cause the total melting of the Greenland ice sheet during the next 1,000 years, according to some computer forecasting models

* The warm Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic is likely to slow down during the 21st Century because of global warming and the melting of the freshwater locked up in the Greenland ice sheet. But no models predict the collapse of that warm current by 2100.

Global Warming: The vicious circle, I, 29.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2193672.ece

Global warming: the final verdict

A study by the world's leading experts
says global warming will happen faster
and be more devastating than previously thought

Sunday January 21, 2007
The Observer
Robin McKie, science editor

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

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

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

'The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,' said one senior UK climate expert.

Climate concerns are likely to dominate international politics next month. President Bush is to make the issue a part of his state of the union address on Wednesday while the IPCC report's final version is set for release on 2 February in a set of global news conferences.

Although the final wording of the report is still being worked on, the draft indicates that scientists now have their clearest idea so far about future climate changes, as well as about recent events. It points out that:

· 12 of the past 13 years were the warmest since records began;

· ocean temperatures have risen at least three kilometres beneath the surface;

· glaciers, snow cover and permafrost have decreased in both hemispheres;

· sea levels are rising at the rate of almost 2mm a year;

· cold days, nights and frost have become rarer while hot days, hot nights and heatwaves have become more frequent.

And the cause is clear, say the authors: 'It is very likely that [man-made] greenhouse gas increases caused most of the average temperature increases since the mid-20th century,' says the report.

To date, these changes have caused global temperatures to rise by 0.6C. The most likely outcome of continuing rises in greenhouses gases will be to make the planet a further 3C hotter by 2100, although the report acknowledges that rises of 4.5C to 5C could be experienced. Ice-cap melting, rises in sea levels, flooding, cyclones and storms will be an inevitable consequence.

Past assessments by the IPCC have suggested such scenarios are 'likely' to occur this century. Its latest report, based on sophisticated computer models and more detailed observations of snow cover loss, sea level rises and the spread of deserts, is far more robust and confident. Now the panel writes of changes as 'extremely likely' and 'almost certain'.

And in a specific rebuff to sceptics who still argue natural variation in the Sun's output is the real cause of climate change, the panel says mankind's industrial emissions have had five times more effect on the climate than any fluctuations in solar radiation. We are the masters of our own destruction, in short.

There is some comfort, however. The panel believes the Gulf Stream will go on bathing Britain with its warm waters for the next 100 years. Some researchers have said it could be disrupted by cold waters pouring off Greenland's melting ice sheets, plunging western Europe into a mini Ice Age, as depicted in the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow.

The report reflects climate scientists' growing fears that Earth is nearing the stage when carbon dioxide rises will bring irreversible change to the planet. 'We are seeing vast sections of Antarctic ice disappearing at an alarming rate,' said climate expert Chris Rapley, in a phone call to The Observer from the Antarctic Peninsula last week. 'That means we can expect to see sea levels rise at about a metre a century from now on - and that will have devastating consequences.'

However, there is still hope, said Peter Cox of Exeter University. 'We are like alcoholics who have got as far as admitting there is a problem. It is a start. Now we have got to start drying out - which means reducing our carbon output.'

Global warming: the final verdict, O, 21.1.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1995348,00.html*

Ice Mass Snaps Free in Arctic

December 29, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

TORONTO (AP) -- A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a ''major'' reason for the event.

The Ayles Ice Shelf -- all 41 square miles of it -- broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw.

''This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years,'' Vincent said. ''We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead.''

The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land.

Some scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and that climate change was a major element.

''It is consistent with climate change,'' Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906. ''We aren't able to connect all of the dots ... but unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role.''

Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images in 2005 when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated.

Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data -- the event registered on earthquake monitors 155 miles away -- Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.

Copland said the speed with which climate change has effected the ice shelves has surprised scientists.

''Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly,'' he said.

Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, said the ice shelves get weaker and weaker as temperatures rise. He visited Ellesmere Island in 2002 and noticed that another ice shelf had cracked in half.

''We're losing our ice shelves and this a feature of the landscape that is in danger of disappearing altogether from Canada,'' Mueller said.

Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice. A spring thaw may bring another concern: that warm temperatures will release the new ice island from its Arctic grip, making it an enormous hazard for ships.

''Over the next few years this ice island could drift into populated shipping routes,'' Weir said.

Ice Mass Snaps Free in Arctic, NYT, 29.12.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Canada-Arctic-Ice-Break.html

Greenhouse gases hit record levels in 2005: U.N.

Fri Nov 3, 2006
12:52 PM ET
Reuters

GENEVA (Reuters) - Levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a record last year and are likely to keep rising unless emissions are radically cut, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report on Friday.

The U.N. weather agency found that the so-called "mixing ratios" of carbon dioxide reached an all-time high of 379.1 parts per billion in 2005, and the global average for nitrous oxide hit a record 319.2 parts per billion.

"It looks like this will continue like this for the foreseeable future," Geir Braathen, senior scientific officer at the Geneva-based organization, said of the rise, which extended the steady upward trend seen in recent decades.

"At least for the next few years, we do not expect any deceleration in the concentration," he said.

Scientists say the accumulation of such gases -- generated by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas -- traps the sun's rays and causes the temperature of the Earth to rise, leading to a melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, a spike in extreme weather, storms and floods, and other environmental shifts that are expected to worsen in coming years.

Speaking ahead of a major U.N. meeting on climate change next week in Nairobi, Braathen said the Kyoto Protocol on emissions-cutting was not strong enough in its current form to stabilize or cut the build-up of greenhouse gases.

"To really make C02 (carbon dioxide) concentrations level off, we will need more drastic measures than are in the Kyoto Protocol today," he said. The pact took effect last year and calls for the greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries to be cut to at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

A detailed study of the economics of global warming, issued in London on Monday, said that if determined global action to tackle climate change were taken now, the benefits would far outweigh the economic and human costs.

Failure to act swiftly could result in world temperatures rising by 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) over the next century, causing severe floods and droughts and uprooting some 200 million people, the Stern report said.

Greenhouse gases hit record levels in 2005: U.N., R, 4.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-11-03T175230Z_01_L03862436_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-UN-GASES.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-scienceNews-2

Swans deliver a climate change warning

Published: 28 October 2006
The Independent
By Cahal Milmo

For decades, the arrival of the first V-shaped flights of Bewick's swans in Britain's wetlands after a 2,000-mile journey from Siberia heralded the arrival of winter.

This year, a dramatic decline in numbers of the distinctive yellow-billed swans skidding into their winter feeding grounds could be the harbinger of a more dramatic shift in weather patterns: global warming. Ornithologists at the main reserves that host the birds, the smallest of Britain's swans, said only a handful had appeared on lakes and water courses. Normally, there would be several hundred.

The latest arrival in a decade of Britain's seasonal influx of 8,000 Bewick's swans throws into sharp relief the debate on the effects of climate change as it enters a crucial week. As the Government's forthcoming Climate Bill is finalised, Sir Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank economist, is expected to warn in a report on Monday that failure to tackle global warming will provoke a recession deeper than the Great Depression.

But far from Westminster, the potential ecological impact of the same phenomenon was being noted in the absence of the high-pitched honking call of Bewick's swans on reservoirs and wetlands from the Ouse to the Severn estuary. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) said its first three birds had arrived at its Slimbridge reserve in Glouc-estershire, only on Thursday, the latest arrival since 1995.

In Welney, Cambridgeshire, where there are normally 100 Bewick's by the end of October as the vanguard for a winter population of 1,000; a solitary male was this week the sole representative. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said that two of its reserves in East Anglia which host the bulk of the British population - the Ouse Washes and Nene Washes - were also devoid of Bewick's. Experts said that the slow arrival was due to warmer than usual conditions on the continent, in particular the birds' other main wintering grounds in the Netherlands, and an absence of the north-east winds that aid their migration from the Arctic tundra of northern Russia.

The disruption to the swans' migration pattern fits into an emerging pattern of fluctuating numbers of bird species and population movements blamed on climate change. Redwings, another winter visitor to the British Isles, started arriving from Scandinavia only this week. Normally, they come in early September.

Other species which normally leave Europe for the winter, such as the blackcap, are now staying through the year. The WWT and other bird conservation groups said that it would take weeks to assess whether the late arrival of the Bewick's, named after the 18th-century English engraver and ornithologist Thomas Bewick, would affect the overall numbers wintering in Britain.

Since reaching a peak of about 9,000 in 1992, numbers of the swans have fallen by about 5 per cent. In 2004, numbers of wintering ducks, geese, swans and wading birds fell to the lowest level for a decade.

Swans deliver a climate change warning, I, 28.10.2006, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1935939.ece

Global warming devastates sea ice in Arctic Circle

Published: 04 October 2006
The Independent
By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Sea ice in the Arctic last month melted to its second lowest monthly minimum in the 29-year record of satellite measurements.

Scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado said the total surface area covered by sea ice during September was smaller than in any previous year apart from 2005, when it reached an all-time record minimum. And it was only a sudden change to cool and stormy weather in August that prevented another record low being set this September, they said.

"At this rate, the Arctic Ocean will have no ice in September by the year 2060," said Julienne Strove, one of the NSIDC's research scientists.

The Arctic sea ice floats on the ocean and its surface coverage varies naturally in line with seasonal temperature changes, with an absolute minimum in summer occurring around mid-September.

However, rising temperatures have seen a steady long-term decline in sea ice during the summer months, with little recovery during the Arctic winter.

Summer sea ice across the entire Arctic has been dwindling steadily since satellite measurements began in 1977. But since 2002 scientists have detected a noticeable acceleration in the rate of summer loss, which they believe is caused by global warming.

Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said this summer could easily have surpassed last year's record loss if it had not been for the change in the weather.

"If fairly cool and stormy conditions hadn't appeared in August, slowing the rate of summer ice loss, I feel certain that 2006 would have surpassed last year's record low for September sea ice," Dr Serreze said.

"August broke the Arctic heatwave and slowed the melt, and storm conditions led to wind patterns that tend to spread the existing ice over a larger area."

Arctic sea ice acts like an insulating lid on the northernmost ocean, reflecting sunlight and preventing the water from absorbing heat and warming up.

Scientists fear that as more and more sea ice is lost, a "positive feedback" will kick in, with the Arctic Ocean absorbing more sunlight, which will in turn cause the loss of more sea ice.

"I'm not terribly optimistic about the future of the ice," Dr Serreze said. "Although it would come as no surprise to see some recovery of the sea ice in the next few years - such fluctuations are part of natural variability - the long-term trend seems increasingly clear. As greenhouse gases continue to rise, the Arctic will continue to lose its ice. You can't argue with the physics."

The Arctic has seen some of the largest increases in average temperatures in the world over the past few decades, and could be one of the places hardest hit by climate change.

"Arctic sea ice is an important climate indicator because it's so sensitive to this initial warming trend," said Ted Scambos, a senior scientist at the Snow and Ice Data Centre.

Global warming devastates sea ice in Arctic Circle, I, 4.10.2006, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1786830.ece

On This Day

September 2, 1898

From The Times archives

The average personal consumption of 150 litres (32 gallons) per day
is thought to be too great for the available water resources.
Even in 1898 Londoners were struggling with water supply

THE SO-CALLED “water famine” in East London has given rise to a good deal of descriptive reporting and to loud complaints of the neglect and greed of water companies in general, and of the East London Water Company in particular: and it has even formed the subject of some highly coloured references from a City pulpit.

To begin with, what are the facts? On August 22 the usual constant service over the district supplied by the East London Water Company was limited to six hours a day, the result being a reduction of the average daily supply from about 36 gallons per head of the population to 25 or 26 gallons per head. As our Correspondent points out, it is absurd to speak of this as a water “famine”. Some inconvenience, no doubt, is caused to people accustomed to have water always running, and so habitually careless and wasteful in its use as the East-end population appear to be.

At a time of scarcity and enforced restriction in the supply the voice of the consumer fills the air. But there is no doubt that, of all the difficulties which companies have to encounter in fulfilling their contract with the public, not the least is the consumer himself. The habitual wastefulness and carelessness of people who enjoy a constant water supply would be incredible if it were not well attested; and in the ignorant clamour that invariably arises in a time of scarcity we hear of people deliberately wasting water to spite the company.

From The Times archives > On This Day - September 2, 1898, Times, 2.9.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

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