Summary of Recent News Articles on Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis Coalition Newsfeed, The Weekend Summary
Climate Crisis Coalition, February 19, 2006
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/

Where's the Ice?

No Ice on the Great Lakes <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19lake.html> . By Christopher Maag, The New York Times, February 19, 2006. "For the first time that anyone in Put-in-Bay could remember, the Great Lakes were ice-free in the middle of winter. Even Lake Erie, the shallowest of the five lakes and usually the first to freeze over, was clear."

Ice Dumped by Greenland's Glaciers Triples in 10 Years <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-glacier17feb17,0,1635034.story?coll=la-home-headlines> . By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2006. "Greenland's vast glaciers are dumping ice into the ocean three times faster than they did 10 years ago because of increasing temperatures, suggesting that sea level could rise even more quickly than current projections."

Snows of Kilimanjaro disappearing, glacial ice loss increasing <http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/osu-sok021306.php> . By Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University, February 13, 2004. "Five years after warning that the famed ice fields on Tanzania 's Mount Kilimanjaro may melt, researchers have sadly found that their prediction is coming true. And the impact of the loss of that ice atop Africa 's highest peak - disregarding the loss of tourism that will follow the vanishing ice - could add to the heavy drought burden already facing those living near that mountain."

As the Arctic ice retreats, the old Great Game begins to boil over <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2034643,00.html> . By Ben Macintyre, The Times, UK, February 11, 2006. Thawing ice has opened up the far North, prompting a new scramble for territory and resources.

Energy Alternatives

Investors Are Tilting Toward Windmills <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/business/15electric.html?ex=1297659600&amp;en=793a87c3d4e899cb&amp;ei=5088&amp;partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss> . By Claudia H. Deutsch, The New York Times, February 15, 2006. Energy financing is barely a footnote in General Electric's revenue stream, but the company is gearing up for change.

Solargenix Breaks Ground on Large Solar Power Plant in Nevada <http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=9723> . EERE Network News, U.S. Department of Energy, February 15, 2006. Ground has been broken for the construction of a 64-megawatt solar thermal power plant in Nevada. Called Nevada Solar One, the plant is the largest of its kind to be built since 1992. It uses trough-shaped mirrors to collect and concentrate sunlight.

Austria Puts Its Energy Into Plant Power <http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-ft-austria13feb13,0,5265044.story?coll=la-news-environment> . By Delphine Strauss, Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2006. High-tech boilers and biomass fuels are providing electricity and heat in the nation.

Japanese Cars Top Annual 'Greenest' List. <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11276142/> MSNBC, February 14, 2006. U.S. automakers 'not closing the gap,' energy conservation group says.

250 Miles Per Gallon <http://afstrinity.com/press.html> . Press release, AFS Trinity Power, January 24, 2006. Partnership is formed in Seattle and London to develop ultra efficient autos. "The Extreme Hybrid's extraordinary fuel economy derives from the fact that most of the time it will burn no gasoline at all ­ it will operate on electricity obtained from the power grid through night-time off-peak charging, but for trips longer than 40 miles, it will operate on its conventional hybrid power sub-system for up to 500 miles."

Dirty Energy

Moving Mountains <http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/16/reece/index.html> . By Eric Reece, Orion Magazine, via Grist Magazine, February 16, 2006. "Mountaintop-removal mining increasingly common in Appalachia poses dangers not just to miners but to whole communities already struggling to get by."

Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14oil.html?ei=5094&amp;en=2895b151845e0dd6&amp;hp=&amp;ex=1139979600&amp;partner=homepage&amp;pagewanted=all> By Edmund L. Andrews, The New York Times, February 14, 2006.
"The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government."

Asia-Pacific Partnership and Kyoto

Greenhouse battle handed to industry <http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/greenhouse-battle-handed-to-industry/2006/01/12/1136956303520.html> . By Stephanie Peatling and Wendy Frew, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 13, 2006. "The six governments responsible for nearly half the world's greenhouse gas emissions will rely on industry to shoulder most of the burden of offsetting global warming. Ministers from Australia, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and India yesterday formed eight groups to research ways to reduce emissions but will not report back for at least a year on exactly how that will be done. No targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions were set and no timetable for how quickly emissions need to be lowered was acknowledged at the end of the first meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Instead, a communique emphasised the need to continue using fossil fuels such as coal for the bulk of their countries' energy requirements."

A year on, Kyoto climate backers urge US action <http://feeds.feedburner.com/reuters/scienceNews?m=1657>. By Alister Doyle, Reuters, February 16, 2006. ­ "Backers of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol renewed their pleas to the United States on Thursday to do more to fight global warming, even though their own records are patchy in the year since the pact went into force."

Japan races to hit Kyoto targets <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720978.stm> . By Jonathan Head, BBC News, February 16, 2006. "As the country which hosted the 1997 Kyoto conference on climate change, Japan has always been one of its strongest advocates, ratifying the treaty in June 2002."

Hockey Fans Face Off Against Global Warming, Decry Pols' Inaction
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20060216/wl_oneworld/45361277241140067191> . By Abin Aslam, OneWorld US, February 16, 2006. ­ "Global warming watch out: Ice hockey fans are out to get youŠ The face off, timed to coincide with Thursday's anniversary of a landmark UN treaty to slow global warming, also would serve to highlight discontent with governments' implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, environmental activists said."

Other Climate News

Hotter issue in red states: global warming <http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0214/p03s03-sten.html> . By Peter N. Spotts, The Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 2006. "Global warming isn't just a "blue state" issue anymore. From the Rocky Mountain West to the Southeast, influential red-state voices are beginning to call for more concerted efforts at local, state, and federal levels to curb greenhouse-gas emissions."

Bush is a fan of Michael Crichton <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19warming.html> . By Michael Janofsky, The New York Times, February 19, 2006. In Fred Barnes' new book about Mr. Bush, he "describes Mr. Bush as a dissenter on the theory of global warming, writes that the president avidly read [Crichton's novel, ŒState of Fear,' which depicts the global warming scare as a scam]." In a meeting arranged by Karl Rove, he says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement."

Global warming threatens millions of species
<http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=7425972d720e0f12f13bf50393c9a5b0>
By Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist, February 7, 2006.
Climate change will mean one in four land animals and plants are on their way to extinction by 2050, predicts a major new study

How Long Have We Got?
<http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece>
By Jim Hansen, Director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, The Independent, February 17,2006. A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic. Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet. This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behaviour of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometres of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance. Hundreds of cubic kilometres sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge. Our understanding of what is going on is very new. Today's forecasts of sea-level rise use climate models of the ice sheets that say they can only disintegrate over a thousand years or more. But we can now see that the models are almost worthless. They treat the ice sheets like a single block of ice that will slowly melt. But what is happening is much more dynamic. Once the ice starts to melt at the surface, it forms lakes that empty down crevasses to the bottom of the ice. You get rivers of water underneath the ice. And the ice slides towards the ocean. Our Nasa scientists have measured this in Greenland. And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid. How fast can this go? Right now, I think our best measure is what happened in the past. We know that, for instance, 14,000 years ago sea levels rose by 20m in 400 years - that is five metres in a century. This was towards the end of the last ice age, so there was more ice around. But, on the other hand, temperatures were not warming as fast as today. How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself. It's hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded. How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don't have much time left. Jim Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is President George Bush's top climate modeller. He was speaking to Fred Pearce