Time for change

EPA to issue more rules in climate fight

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency will roll out more regulations on greenhouse gases and other pollution to help fight climate change, but they will not be as strong as action by Congress, a senior administration official said.
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'Climate migrants' projected to flood US

Washington Times: Climate change in Latin America – and the accompanying drought, flooding and desertification – is likely to drive increased illegal migration across the Mexico-U.S. border in coming years, according to a report. Worsening economic conditions, spiraling social tensions and growing political instability will drive greater numbers to make the dangerous journey to the United States in the long term, according to the American Security Project, a bipartisan nonprofit research group focused ...
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Nations meet on climate cash, UN sees long haul

GENEVA (Reuters) - About 45 nations met on Thursday to seek ways to raise billions of dollars in aid to help the poor combat climate change as the United Nations warned them of a long haul to slow global warming.
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Press continue to hound Rajendra Pachauri despite his innocence

Guardian: If ever you need evidence that a smear can keep spreading after it has been discredited, look no further. Last week I showed that the Sunday Telegraph's claims that Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been "making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies", profiting to the tune of "millions of dollars", were entirely false. A review by the auditors KPMG, of Pachauri's full financial records and the accounts of the ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Overhaul of UN climate change body 'could lead to more mistakes'

Telegraph: In a damning report out earlier this week, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was criticised for making a number of errors about the potential impacts of global warming. The most notable mistake was wrongly predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The IPCC was also told to stick to the science rather than straying into the politics of climate change. The review, by the InterAcademy Council, called for "fundamental reform', including a more ...
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India backs embattled IPCC chief Pachauri

AFP: India's government said it remained fully supportive of IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri after a damning UN-ordered review called for changes to the Nobel Prize-winning climate change body's leadership. "Pachauri has the full support of the government," Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said late Tuesday after a report on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for major reforms in its functioning. The UN-ordered probe said a major overhaul was required of ...
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LA mayor, Latino activists take on oil companies over Proposition 23

LA Times: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday rebuked Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., which operate refineries in Wilmington, for bankrolling a measure that would effectively scuttle the state's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. "Go home, Texas oil companies," Villaraigosa urged at a news conference aimed at encouraging voters to oppose Proposition 23, a November ballot initiative to suspend California's 2006 climate change law until the state's unemployment rate ...
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Change of heart from climate sceptics

ABC: MARK COLVIN: Two of the world's most influential climate sceptics appear to have had a change of heart. The Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book in 2001 called The Skeptical Environmentalist which said climate change wasn't that serious and we couldn't and shouldn't do much about it. But now he says it's undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today. Michael Hanlon the formerly ultra-sceptic science editor of Britain's two-million-copies-a-day Daily Mail has also ...
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Russia submits "breakthrough" carbon-cutting project

Business Green: Russia yesterday submitted for registration its first emission reduction project under a new procedure designed to bolster confidence in the UN-backed Joint Implementation (JI) carbon offsetting mechanism while increasing the number of projects authorised to issue carbon credits under the scheme. The UN's climate change secretariat, which is responsible for the running of the JI, said the Russian government had submitted its first project under the so-called Track 2 procedure, which ...
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Climate: Risks loom for China: study

AFP: Climate change could reduce key harvests in China by a fifth if the gloomiest scenarios prove true, according to a study on Wednesday. Publishing in the journal Nature, a team of Chinese scientists say China's climate "has clearly warmed" over the past half century, gaining 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1960. The hotspots were northeastern China with a warming trend of 0.36 C (0.65 F) per decade, and Inner Mongolia, with a warming of 0.4 C (0.7 F) per ...
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Report: Climate change threatens historic Jamestown, Va

USA Today: Human-caused climate change threatens to flood Jamestown, the first permanent European settlement in what became the American colonies and the United States, says a report Wednesday by environmental groups. Jamestown Island, the site of the original 1607 settlement, is low enough to be inundated by rising seas and tidal waters -- even if the waters do not rise as much by 2100 as scientists predict, according to the report by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Climate scientists should not write their own software, says researcher

Business Green: A study by a computer scientist at the University of Toronto suggests that the computer models used to predict climate change may be undermined due to a lack of programming expertise. Steve Easterbrook, of the University's Department of Computer Science, has had his paper, Climate Change: A Grand Software Challenge, accepted by the 2010 FSE/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software Engineering Research. In the pape he suggests that, because many climate prediction software modelling ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Climate Change Implicated in Decline of Horseshoe Crabs

U.S. News and World Report: A distinct decline in horseshoe crab numbers has occurred that parallels climate change associated with the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study that used genomics to assess historical trends in population sizes. The new research also indicates that horseshoe crabs numbers may continue to decline in the future because of predicted climate change, said Tim King, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a lead author on the new study published in Molecular ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Financing said vital for world climate change deal

Reuters: A global fund to help poorer countries switch to green industrial technology is vital in any new international pact to battle global warming, Switzerland's top climate change negotiator said on Wednesday. The official, Franz Perrez, was speaking at a news conference on the eve of a two-day gathering of environmental ministers and experts from some 45 countries to discuss how to reach agreement on a funding deal. "An agreement on viable long-term financing is one of the very ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Financing said vital for world climate change deal

GENEVA (Reuters) - A global fund to help poorer countries switch to green industrial technology is vital in any new international pact to battle global warming, Switzerland's top climate change negotiator said on Wednesday.
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Executive Director of Greenpeace to CEO of Facebook: Unfriend Coal!

We've been talking a lot about Facebook lately. We were alarmed in January by the company's announcement that it would build a coal-powered data center in Prineville, Oregon. So we started a little group to ask the company not to use dirty energy to power our profiles. That group grew and grew as Facebook users across the globe joined up to tell Facebook to get off of coal. And as of this week, the group is half-a-million strong.

Then, we were further dismayed by Facebook's second announcement about its data center: it plans to double its size! That means twice the energy use, twice the coal, and twice the global warming pollution. Why isn't Facebook listening to its users?

Those 500,000 Facebook users have gotten someone's attention, though. Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, has heard our message and is taking up the charge. In a letter sent today, Kumi asks Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, to take responsibility for his company's growing energy footprint and show some climate leadership.

Climate leadership is the focus of the Cool IT Challenge, which encourages IT companies to apply their technological know-how and innovative spriit to solving the climate crisis. The campaign urges IT companies to put forth solutions, mitigate their own carbon footprint, and advocate for significant policy changes in the mutual interest of business and the climate.

Here is the complete text of Kumi's letter to Mr. Zuckerberg:

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

Climate scientists around the world tell us that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015 in order to stay within a critical temperature threshold to have a chance of avoiding runaway global warming. To do this, we must break our addiction to oil, coal, and other dirty fossil fuels and transition away from them as rapidly as possible. Given the tremendous growth of IT cloud computing companies like Facebook expected in this same period, your company has an increasingly essential role to play in helping to drive the deployment of renewable energy sources needed to avert the most devastating possible effects of our changing climate. 

Facebook, which now connects over 500 million people, has a responsibility to exhibit good corporate citizenship toward the growing public it serves. No global business leader, particularly not one who reaches so many people daily, could deny that in this time it is both a threat to a company’s reputation and financial health risk to ignore their company’s environmental impacts.

Facebook appears to be on a path that will make breaking our addiction to dirty coal-fired electricity even more difficult. As you are aware, following Facebook’s announcement to build a new data center in Prineville, OR, Greenpeace and over half a million Facebook users have expressed significant concerns with your decision to power this data center with dirty coal-fired electricity from PacificCorp, which runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution.

Despite this controversy, Facebook’s recent announcement that it will more than double the size of the Prineville facility, and thus double the demand for dirty coal energy in Oregon, is a disturbing sign that Facebook remains on the wrong path.

Other cloud-based companies face similar choices and challenges as you do in building data centers, yet many are making smarter and cleaner investments. Google, for instance, entered into a long-term agreement with a large wind power producer earlier this month. It has demonstrated that it is not only possible to prioritize the purchase of clean energy, but prudent as well.

Greenpeace regularly uses Facebook to engage its supporters and their friends to hold other corporations accountable for their environmental impact. Facebook’s innovative and easy-to-use platform has enabled it to become an incredibly important tool for connecting people to engage in driving social change. Facebook is uniquely positioned to be a truly visible and influential leader to drive the deployment of clean energy.   

Greenpeace has spent the last six years focusing a significant portion of our corporate engagement within the IT industry. We have worked with a number of companies including Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, and Google on corporate and government policy issues. We have seen big progress ranging from curbing electronic waste to eliminating toxic chemicals from IT equipment. More recently we have been tackling energy and climate change issues. We see the potential for the sector to use the hallmark values of innovation and competitiveness that are pervasive in the IT world to become leaders in the fight against many of our greatest environmental challenges, including global warming.

Given that your corporate and public policies on the environment have not been articulated, we would welcome the opportunity to sit down with you and your team to hear what work Facebook has planned and to discuss the steps we feel would put Facebook in a leadership position on climate change within the IT sector. Key areas of leadership for Facebook should include:

1. Commit to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity to power your data centers;

2. Use your purchasing power to choose locations that allow you to rely on only clean, renewable sources of electricity;

3. Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as the IT industry's energy demand increases, so does the supply of renewable energy;

4. Disclosure your greenhouse gas emissions inventory (through mechanisms such as the carbon disclosure project);

5. Share this plan for environmental stewardship publicly on your website so your hundred of millions of users know that your company is a climate leader.

It is with the interest of your company, your millions of users, and our planet in mind that I urge you to exercise bold and immediate leadership in addressing climate change. I invite you to engage with me in dialogue regarding these points, as I am sure that with further discussion regarding your company’s environmental goals and growth plans, we will be able to reach common ground. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Kumi Naidoo

Executive Director

Greenpeace International

World Bank says Population Growth, Climate Change Demand Better Water Management

Voice of America: A soaring world population, climate change and greater demands for food are placing greater demands on the planet's water resources. The World Bank says the best way to address those issues is to have better information and a more integrated approach to water management. The bank says a review of its 2003 water resources strategy finds many successes in water projects. But it also sets priorities and makes recommendations as access to water becomes critical for many people around the ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Judge rejects Ken Cuccinelli's probe of U-Va. global warming records

Washington Post: A Virginia judge on Monday dismissed a civil subpoena issued by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II to the University of Virginia that had sought documents related to the work of a global warming scientist and former university professor. Retired Albemarle County Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. sided with the university, which had been resisting Cuccinelli's demand, ruling that Cuccinelli had failed to state an objective reason to believe that professor Michael Mann committed ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

EU foreign policy chief in China

AFP: European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was in China Tuesday ahead of talks with top leaders on trade, climate change and security issues such as the Iran and North Korea nuclear standoffs. Ashton, who visited the World Expo in Shanghai on Monday, will take part in the inaugural EU-China High-Level Strategic Dialogue in the southwestern city of Guiyang on Wednesday, according to the EU. During the dialogue -- a forum intended to keep the two sides in contact on key ...
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IPCC 'must avoid playing politics'

Telegraph: A group of leading scientists from around the world said on Monday that the leaders of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had left themselves open to the accusation that they had "gone beyond IPCC's remit". In March the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC) was called in after a number of errors were found in the IPCC's landmark 2007 Fourth Assessment Report into man-made climate change. Key among those was the unsubstantiated claim - based on an article in ...
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Is it possible to predict future climate change?

Sify: Climate change is a topic for hot debate across countries right now, but is it possible to predict future climate change? Researchers at Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen said that climate change probably occurs as a result of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict. The most pronounced climate shifts besides the end of the ice age is a series of climate changes during the ice age where the temperature suddenly rose 10-15 ...
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Wind farms feel the heat from small-scale solar

Sydney Morning Herald: WIND farm investment is suffering from a ''bust'' due to complex policy changes and uncertainty over government responses to climate change, says Infigen Energy. The company's shares have lost a quarter of their value since June but it is confident this will become a ''boom'' within a few years, as power retailers are forced to obtain a growing share of their electricity from renewable sources. The country's biggest specialist wind developer yesterday reported a $73.5 million ...
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Tiny Antarctic creatures hint at sea level rise

Reuters: Tiny marine creatures found on the seabed on opposite sides of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet give a strong hint of the risks of sea level rise caused by climate change, scientists said Tuesday. The discovery of very similar colonies of bryozoans, animals that anchor themselves to the seabed, in both the Ross and Weddell Seas are a clue that the ice sheet once thawed and the seas were once linked, they said. West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise world sea levels by ...
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Rajendra Pachauri: IPCC chief in the spotlight

AFP: Rajendra Pachauri, under harsh scrutiny as head of the UN's top advisory body on climate change, is a 69-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner with a sideline in writing steamy novels. The Indian said late Monday that member nations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have to decide his fate after a damning UN-ordered review into the body's research. But Pachauri, a vocal advocate for tough action against global warming, also criticized what he called ...
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Climate panel must 'fundamentally reform' to survive

New Scientist: The world's leading climate science body must "fundamentally reform" its organisation and how it operates if it is to regain the public's trust, according to a major review. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was hit by a series of scandals earlier this year, when some statements in its most recent assessment of climate change were found to be either exaggerated or incorrect. In the aftermath of these revelations, the InterAcademy Council ...
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Geothermal: Getting Energy from the Earth

Inter Press Service: The heat in the upper six miles of the earth's crust contains 50,000 times as much energy as found in all the world's oil and gas reserves combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity have been harnessed worldwide. Partly because of the dominance of the oil, gas, and coal industries, which have been providing cheap fuel by omitting the costs of climate change and air pollution from fuel prices, relatively little has been ...
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Why it's time for change at the IPCC

New Scientist: Having collectively bagged a Nobel peace prize, the only path for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was down. And the forceful analysis of the panel's failings just published by the InterAcademy Council is a strong dose of realism about the organisation's failings "" and about our own inflated expectations about what it can achieve. Change must come if the panel is to have a useful future. The IPCC has tried hard to preserve the normal rules of scientific discourse and to ...
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Billionaire funding climate change study on trees

ABC Local: California's ancient Redwoods have survived floods, fires and the logger's axe, but the impact of global warming is still a big question mark. What will climate change mean for the sequoias of the Southern Sierra and the Coast redwoods up north? An unconventional experiment is taking place high above the ground in the branches of giant sequoias in the Whitaker Forest near Kings Canyon National Park. "Just spent the day crown mapping or branch mapping," says researcher ...
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Tiny Antarctic creatures hint at sea level rise

OSLO (Reuters) - Tiny marine creatures found on the seabed on opposite sides of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet give a strong hint of the risks of sea level rise caused by climate change, scientists said Tuesday.
Read more [Reuters]

Nuclear News: Chernobyl Effects Could Last for Centuries

Pravda: Chernobyl Effects Could Last for Centuries
‘Nearly 25 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, new scientific findings suggest that the effects of the explosion at Chernobyl have been underestimated. Experts last month published a series of studies indicating that, contrary to previous findings, populations of animals decreased in the exclusion zone surrounding the site of the former nuclear power plant, and that the effects of radioactive contamination after the outbreak had been "overwhelming." More and more pigs with high levels of cesium are found at the scene. This information was disclosed months after doctors detected increased rates of cancer in Ukraine and Belarus, mutations and diseases of the blood, which they believe are related to Chernobyl. Meanwhile, an American investigation published in April found an increase in birth defects, apparently due to sustained exposure to low level doses of radiation. For activists against nuclear power, these studies demonstrate that the inhabitants of the affected area will suffer devastating consequences for decades, perhaps centuries. "This is a problem that will not go away in few years. It will be there for centuries," said Rianne Teule, from the environmental organization, Greenpeace.’

Nuclear N-Former: India finalizes Indo-US deal
‘India’s Parliament approved a final, critical piece of a long-delayed landmark civil nuclear agreement on Monday, a pact regarded as a cornerstone of a Bush-era effort to transform the relationship between the United States and the world’s largest democracy. But even as supporters praised a historic victory, the end result is probably not what the United States had hoped for, nor does it seem likely to signal a new era in relations between the United States and India. Indeed, some analysts say the compromises needed to move Monday’s legislation through India’s contentious Parliament could undermine the practical impact of a political, diplomatic and economic accord that took years to negotiate. With President Obama scheduled to make his first visit to India in early November, the governments in both countries are trying to strengthen a relationship sometimes described as a natural and strategic alliance of democracies. But drawing closer has proved complicated as differences remain on issues like trade and climate change as well as how to effectively deal with Pakistan. The nuclear issue, putatively about India’s future, has sparked weeks of bitter political debate in New Delhi, tapped into Indian nationalism and public suspicion of foreign corporate interests while also dredging up a very different chapter in the countries’ relations: the 1984 Union Carbide industrial disaster at Bhopal, which killed thousands. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accused of toadying to America, appeared before the lower house of Parliament to deny that his allegiance was anywhere but with India.’
 
Eurasia.net: New Nuke Plant in Armenia Draws Criticism from Environmentalists
‘Armenian leaders are ecstatic that Russia is getting involved in the construction of a new nuclear power plant at Metsamor. Environmentalists and technical experts are far less enthused, saying that a new Metsamor unit poses considerable risks. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev signed bilateral agreements on August 20 to enable Moscow’s participation in the construction of a new unit at the Metsamor atomic power station. Under the agreement, Russia could contribute about 20 percent of the financing for the unit’s construction, currently projected at between $5 billion and $7.2 billion. Work is slated to begin in 2012, although questions remain about how Armenia will come up with the bulk of the money to build the facility. Construction of the new unit, capable of producing 1,060 Megawatts of power annually, will help Armenia comply with the international community’s wishes to shut down the VVER reactors. Currently, Metsamor produces about 40 percent of the power consumed in Armenia. Environmentalists say that the area’s vulnerability to earthquakes, makes operating a nuclear plant at Metsamor a high-risk proposition, regardless of the new reactor’s design. "It's a crime to build a new nuclear power station in Metsamor," Hakob Sanasaryan, president of the Greens Union of Armenia, told EurasiaNet.org. "A nuclear power station cannot be constructed near water and agricultural systems, in seismic zones, in densely populated areas.’

French Nuclear Watchdog Says EDF Has Problems With Flamanville EPR Liner
‘Electricite de France SA, Europe’s biggest power producer, experienced renewed problems with welding quality at the EPR nuclear reactor being built in Normandy, according France’s nuclear safety agency. Faults in welds of the containment liner of the Flamanville EPR, the utility’s first in France, were found during an inspection in July, the Autorite de Surete Nucleaire said in an Aug. 27 report on its website. EDF officials weren’t immediately available for a comment. "Welding difficulties caused by the ergonomics of the welder’s post’ were the cause of similar problems at the building site in 2008 and 2009 and treatment by EDF ‘was not performed correctly,’ according to the report. The agency also said EDF was slow in detecting ‘inferior weld quality.’ EDF’s EPR, which was designed by Areva SA, is considered key to the utility’s ability to export nuclear technology to other countries. Earlier this month, EDF was asked for modifications of the control platform on the reactor, which is delayed and will cost more than expected.  EDF is developing a similar model in Taishan, China, and plans more in Italy, the U.K. and U.S. The state-controlled operator of France’s 58 nuclear reactors in July said the Normandy reactor will cost 5 billion euros to develop, about 50 percent more than initially estimated, and will be delayed by about two years to 2014.’

Gabon's Dark Side of Dams and Mines
‘An independent study released this month by Gabonese NGO, Brainforest, documents the devastation caused by uranium and manganese mines in southeast Gabon. The study, Impacts of mining on the local populations and the environment in Haut-Ogooué, also describes the government’s plan to build the Grand Poubara hydropower dam to help expand mining and mineral processing. Toxic pollution of the rivers and soil, disappearance of fish, and lack of public information are amongst Brainforest’s main concerns. The report hopes to bring attention to the government's role in enabling profits at the cost of local people. Since 1961, French company Areva has operated four uranium mines at Mounana. Radioactive residues from the mines have contaminated the area’s waterways and soils. During the mine’s first 15 years, radioactive waste was poured directly into the river. The radioactive contamination is the source of the main environmental and medical problems for nearby villagers. In nearby Moanda, manganese mining is conducted by a subsidiary of French company, Eramet.  After the manganese is mined, it is processed at the Industrial Complex of Moanda (CIM) and taken by train to the port of Owendo. Eramet would like to expand production through development of the 200 million Euros Metallurgical Complex of Moanda (CM). The complex would depend on electric power from the Poubara dams.’

Don’t pass climate finance back to private sector

Gland, Switzerland: Ministers meeting on climate finance in Geneva this week should stick to financial commitments made in Copenhagen to help developing countries reduce emissions and cope with climate change impacts.

While the Copenhagen climate conference ended with disappointingly little result, the Copenhagen Accord stipulated at least a set of concrete promises by different countries, including setting out levels of climate finance to be delivered by developed countries.

Ministers and representatives from more than 30 countries are gathering at the invitation of the Swiss and Mexican governments to discuss key climate finance issues in the lead-up to the next UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010.

"By transparently mobilising public sector finance to meet the commitments made in Copenhagen, ministers can help set the scene for progress at climate talks in China and Mexico,” said Gordon Shepherd, Leader WWF Climate Initiative.

According to WWF, the private sector can and should play an important role, but if industrialized nations start counting private investments as a significant part of meeting their Copenhagen commitments, it is going to be seen by developing countries as an attempt to shirk their responsibilities..

"It is clear what Ministers need to do - the promises of the Copenhagen Accord exist and need to be kept if developing countries are to re-gain trust and engage in a wider global climate treaty," said Shepherd.

In the short term (2010 to 2012), US$ 30bn were promised with a special focus on helping most vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change, while by 2020 developed countries promised to provide US$ 100bn annually.

However, there is little transparency on the delivery of the promised short term funding that has been made available already, and there has been little visible progress towards a framework for delivery on longer term funding commitments.

Public funding needs to be clearly identified even when leveraging private funding, WWF says. Private sector finance can contribute much of the investments needed in clean energy technologies, but public funding is critical for research and development, adaptation and resilience building, infrastructure and construction, as well as for leveraging much greater private sector investments.

WWF estimates that public funding at the level of USD 200 billion will be necessary by the year 2020 for adaptation and mitigation activities in developing countries, and this is still small compared to the scale of private finance that needs to be mobilized for the energy transition, which WWF estimates at ten times as much. However, meeting the $100b pledged in Copenhagen would still be a significant milestone.


Read more [WWF]

Russia submits 1st Kyoto CO2 offset project to U.N.

Reuters: Russia has submitted its first clean energy project to a U.N. climate panel for registration to earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Monday. The project is located at Shaturskaya thermal power plant near Moscow and involves building an additional generating unit using a combined-cycle gas turbine. The submission could signal a substantial increase in the number of projects in the Kyoto Protocol's Joint ...
Read more [EcoEarth.info]

Review Finds Flaws in UN Climate Panel Structure

NYT: The scientists involved in producing the periodic United Nations reports on climate change need to be more open to alternative views and more transparent about their own possible conflicts of interest, an independent review panel said Monday. Those were among numerous recommendations made by the panel appointed last March to assess how a few glaring errors – including a prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 – made it into the last such United Nations report, ...
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UN climate body 'needs reforms'

BBC: The UN's climate science body needs "fundamental" reforms, including a shorter term for its chairperson, an international review has concluded. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007. The review commends the IPCC on the way it carried out previous assessments. But the report recommends changes to the way the body is run and the way science is ...
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IPCC climate change panel needs transparency, review panel finds

Christian Science Monitor: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up 22 years ago to provide science advice to governments as they try to deal with global warming, needs to overhaul the way it runs itself, according to a report released Monday. Among those needs: more transparency; a rigorous set of conflict-of-interest rules; wider representation of dissenting views among practicing climate scientists in its final reports; and a limit on the number of reports scientists can take a lead role in ...
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IPCC told to stop lobbying and restrict role to explaining climate science

Telegraph: Senior officials at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have also been ordered to disclose their outside financial interests to avert any allegations that they may have profited from policies to tackle global warming. New controls should also be introduced to ensure that the scientific claims made in influential international reports are robust in future. The independent inquiry which delivered the rebuke was ordered after the IPCC admitted it had ...
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Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign

Guardian: Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the UN's science panel on climate change, is coming under pressure to step aside as chair of the organisation after an independent review of the panel's work called for tighter term limits for its senior executives. Pachauri has come under heavy fire in recent weeks amid the swirl of allegations concerning the scientific basis of climate change, including accusations of conflict of interest and charges of inaccuracy in the assessments of the ...
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Record heat may be our new normal

Houston Chronicle: Boiling, blazing and blistering are all words one might apply to this August, which likely will end Tuesday as Houston's warmest month ever. Here's one more: foreshadowing. Although careful not to attribute any particular weather event to climate change, scientists say that Houston's sultry summer fits the pattern of what to expect in a warmer world. "Temperatures 4 to 5 degrees above normal and near-normal precipitation -- it sounds like a typical summer around about ...
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State must adapt to change

Mercury News: FROM mountain tops to coastal waters, a new report says Tasmania has a lot to lose if the state does not act to adapt to climate change. The report released yesterday, Vulnerability of Tasmania's Natural Environment to Climate Change: An Overview, is the State Government's first assessment of the potential impact of climate change on Tasmania. It will be used to formulate policy in response to climate change. Environment, Parks and Heritage Minister David O'Byrne said it ...
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U.N. climate panel urged to reform, stick to science

Reuters: The U.N. climate panel should only make predictions when it has solid evidence and should avoid policy advocacy, scientists said in a report on Monday that called for thorough reform of the body. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was widely criticized after admitting its 2007 global warming report wrongly said Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035 and that it had overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level. Such firm forecasts should be ...
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Report: Climate science panel should be better run

AP: An international panel of scientists says the acclaimed committee studying global warming needs stronger leadership and fundamental changes. Representatives of the world's science academies have released their report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body that won a Nobel Prize in 2007. Last year, a series of errors embarrassed the authors of the climate report. For example the report erred in how fast the Himalayan glaciers are melting. The InterAcademy ...
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New nuclear tech 'could benefit developing countries'

SciDev.Net: The world is on the brink of a nuclear power renaissance, and developing countries may also benefit, according to researchers. In a study published in Science this month (12 August) British researchers outlined a vision for flexible and more user-friendly nuclear technologies, as worries over the climate change, energy supply security, and depletion of fossil fuels, are overturning decades of hesitancy over the safety of nuclear power plants. Robin Grimes, materials researchers ...
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Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune

Guardian: Lomborg advocates that much more attention and money be lavished on climate engineering methods. Photograph: Camera Press Few statisticians can have inspired more passion than Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish academic who became famous as the author of the controversial (some would say contrarian) Skeptical Environmentalist, which set him up as perhaps the world's best-known critic of the dominant scientific view of global warming and the ensuing climate change. Lomborg's prolific ...
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More trust needed in climate change panel

Christian Science Monitor: One of my favorite cartoons shows a man writing a letter while snow falls outside his window. The letter states: "Dear weatherman, I just shoveled two feet of 'partly cloudy' off my driveway." Let's hope the United Nations scientific committee on global warming does not receive such letters in the future. Its forecasts of a toaster Earth this century so far seem on track with record temperatures in recent years. But the committee, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...
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Dramatic Climate Change Is Unpredictable

redOrbit: The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate change and is it possible to predict future climate change? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows that it may be due to an accumulation of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict. The results have just been ...
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Report: Climate science panel needs change at top

AP: Scientists reviewing the acclaimed but beleaguered international climate change panel called Monday for major changes in the way it's run, but stopped short of calling for the ouster of the current leader. The independent review of the UN climate change panel puts new pressure on panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who has been criticized for possible conflicts of interest, but shows no sign of stepping down. "It's hard to see how the United Nations can both follow the advice of ...
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UN climate panel ordered to make fundamental reforms

AFP: An international review panel on Monday called on the UN global climate change body to carry out fundamental reforms after embarrassing errors in a landmark report dented its credibility. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was caught in an international storm after it admitted its landmark 2007 report exaggerated the speed at which Himalayas glaciers were melting. The review panel said the IPCC has been "successful overall" but called ...
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UN climate panel needs to 'fundamentally reform'

AFP: A UN-ordered review said Monday that the global panel on climate change needed to "fundamentally reform" how it operates after embarrassing errors in a landmark report dented its credibility. The five-month probe recommended an overhaul of the position of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who said he would accept whatever fate member-states decide for him. The United Nations ordered the review by the InterAcademy Council, which ...
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$100bn needed to stop warming - Lomborg

Guardian: The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby. Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for ...
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Fighting Global Warming by Saving British Columbia's Old Growth Forests

Huffington Post: Seven western states and four Canadian provinces have joined forces in a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. An entire new source of long-term revenue is available to British Columbia's government, which will enable protecting massive tracks of old growth forests and fresh water supplies. The Western Climate Initiative includes: Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Washington, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, and they have agreed to cut the region's carbon ...
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