NewsTrust - Climate Change - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Extremes back climate experts' warnings

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

theaustralian.com.au - By Jared Owens, Lanai Vasek - Nov. 23 (News) - IT was a weekend of extremes. Melbourne copped a month's worth of rain in just 17 hours, NSW grappled with "catastrophic" bushfire conditions and record November temperatures -- and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong linked the unpredictable weather patterns to the effects of global warming.

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Road to Copenhagen Part: US Climate Legislation & Lobbyists

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy - By Jeff Smith - Nov. 22 (News Analysis) - Called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the Waxman-Markey bill was fought hard by the energy industry. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, “More than 460 new businesses and interest groups jumped into lobbying Congress on global warming in the weeks before the House neared its historic vote on climate change legislation.” You can see from the chart above that there was a spike in the amount of lobbying just prior to the bill’s passing.

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Missing the Gain But Joining the Pain

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Miller-McCune - By Sam Kornell - Nov. 15 (News Analysis) - Since the industrial revolution, profits from the exploitation of fossil energy — coal, oil and natural gas — have not been equally distributed. America, Europe and Japan got rich off of oil and coal; now China, India and much of the rest of the developing world are attempting to do the same thing. If they succeed, climate scientists say, it will mean environmental catastrophe. This progression has created a situation in which any solution to climate change is, to a greater or lesser extent, going to be unfair — a fact many negotiators openly acknowledge. The Danish environmental minister hosting the Copenhagen conference, Connie Hedegaard, has reportedly been "extraordinarily blunt" in insisting that China, India and the rest of the developing world shoulder a large share of the climate load.

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Reducing Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Enough To Slow Climate Change

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceDaily - Nov. 14 (News Report) - Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone is publishing a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

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Former Baucus Staffers Lobby on Climate Bill

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Independent - By Aaron Wiener - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Over a complete Republican boycott, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed its climate bill last week by a vote of 11-1. The lone dissenter was Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — a name you’ll be hearing a lot more if you’re keeping tabs on

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Enviro groups face some tough decisions on path to climate bill

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Environment and Energy Publishing - Nov. 06 (News Report) - For the past year, major environmental groups have framed the climate change bill as the movement's single most significant piece of legislation in several decades -- if not ever -- dedicating the bulk of their political muscle and heavy financial resources to passage of the effort. But as the bill moves forward, with this summer's historic House vote and yesterday's Senate committee markup, some question whether in their quest to get a bill, environmentalists and their allies are far too willing to compromise on historic priorities such as offshore drilling and nuclear power.

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The Worldwide Efforts Of The Global Energy Lobby To Kill Progress On Climate Change

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Katherine Goldstein Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/exposed-the-worldwide-eff_n_346110.html?grist&cp&cp - Nov. 05 (Special Report) - The Center For Public Integrity just released a blockbuster investigative report that details the intense corporate pressure to block an effective global treaty from being reached at the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen in December, and to halt efforts in individual countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

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The Greenest Place in the U.S. May Not Be Where You Think

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Yale Environment 360 - By David Owen - Nov. 05 (Special Report) - Green rankings in the U.S. don’t tell the full story about the places where the human footprint is lightest. If you really want the best environmental model, you need to look at the nation’s biggest — and greenest — metropolis: New York City.

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Pro-Coal Lobby Boss Claims Never To Have Opposed Climate Change Bill

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Arthur Delaney - Oct. 29 (News Analysis) - Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, told a House panel on Thursday that his organization never opposed climate change legislation passed by the House over the summer.

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Lindsey Graham: Not a Nuclear Wussypants

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kate Sheppard - Oct. 16 (News Report) - When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for legislation last week to cap carbon emissions, he revived hopes that a cap-and-trade measure could pass the Senate this year. (He also got branded a "wussypants" by tea party protesters for his trouble.) But

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Is Copenhagen Dead?

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Sep. 28 (News Report) - Is the Obama administration giving up on reaching a comprehensive international climate change agreement this year? A statement released on Friday by John Podesta, who headed Barack Obama's presidential transition, is a big hint that the White House is looking to dramatically downplay expectations.

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Red Snow Warning

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Chip Ward, - Sep. 14 (Special Report) - Pink snow is turning red in Colorado. Here on the Great American Desert -- specifically Utah's slickrock portion of it where I live -- hot 'n' dry means dust. When frequent high winds sweep across our increasingly arid landscape, redrock powder is lifted up and carried hundreds of miles eastward until it settles on the broad shoulders of Colorado's majestic mountains, giving the snowpack there a pink hue.

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Triaging the Train Wreck of Climate Change

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Brian Helmuth - Sep. 08 (Special Report) - Like many scientists, I didn't start out studying climate change; it more or less became a fact of life when the organisms I was studying started to die...I have been fortunate to travel to many sites around the globe, ranging from the waters of the southern Pacific Ocean to the crashing surf along the Pacific coast of North America, and what I see matches the observations made by what now is an army of scientists: The Earth's flora and fauna are changing — shifting their geographic locations, altering when they reproduce or dying wholesale — as a result of human-induced global warming.

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Study: Global warming would hit Utah hard

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

StandardNet - By Charles F. Trentelman - Sep. 08 (Special Report) - the Nature Conservancy has issued a warning on what global warming will do to the humans in Utah if current trends do not change. Average temperatures will rise just a bit over nine degrees in the next 90 years. Lakes will dry up faster, snowpack will be less, grasslands will die and huge chunks of the state’s economy all will be affected if the latest projections of the effect of climate change come to pass. That puts Utah at number nine in the list of 10 states that will see the largest change.

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Bodega Bay scientists weigh impact of ocean acid levels on shellfish

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

pressdemocrat.com - By Bob Norberg - Sep. 06 (News Report) - The danger from increasing levels of acid in the ocean, which could devastate California's shellfish industry, is under investigation by Bodega Bay scientists. It is painstaking work that requires the team to wade through knee-deep mud at Tomales Bay to collect native Olympic oysters and then raise their young in salt-water tanks under conditions that mimic climate change.

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Big Oil creates phony climate denial site, lies about it

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Miles Grant - Sep. 04 (News Report) - A friend just alerted me to the website PlantsNeedCO2.org, which is running ads on NYTimes.com. From the site’s “about us” page: Our mission is to educate the public on the positive effects of additional atmospheric CO2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO2. Plants Need CO2 is a 501 (c)(3) non profit corporation. How do I say this? False. I know you’re never gonna believe who really owns the website ... Big Oil. It’s registered to Quintana Minerals Corporation:

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There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Terrence McNally - Aug. 25 (Special Report) - One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history -- 27 million. Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money.

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Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Anna Lenzer - Aug. 23 (Special Report) - THE INTERNET CAFé in the Fijian capital, Suva, was usually open all night long. Dimly lit, with rows of sleek, modern terminals, the place was packed at all hours with teenage boys playing boisterous rounds of video games. But one day soon after I

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Kindling For Climate Change

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

pubs.acs.org - By Lisa M. Jarvis - Aug. 17 (Special Report) - Researchers at Toolik Field Station, the National Science Foundation's Arctic long-term ecological research site located about 150 miles south of the Arctic Ocean, are studying the impact of severely burned tundra on the local and global environment. Though scientists have for years examined burns in Alaska's boreal forest, where fire is a natural part of the growing cycle, the idea of a blazing fire in the tundra is hard to imagine.

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Leaked Memo - Oil Lobby's 'Energy Citizens' Astroturf Campaign Exposed Before Launch

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Kevin Grandia - Aug. 14 (Investigative Report) - An internal memo obtained recently by Greenpeace USA details polluting interests' plans to launch a nationwide Astroturf campaign attacking climate legislation at public events scheduled...

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Four Democratic senators call for delay on climate legislation

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Kate Sheppard - Aug. 14 (News Report) - “The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told Bloomberg. Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) are also calling for a delay on climate action. While they are amenable to moving ahead with the energy bill that passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June, they are less enthusiastic about passing a bill that would cap carbon dioxide emissions.

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Clinton Makes the Population-Climate Connection

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

populationaction.org - Aug. 11 (News Report) - In a July 19th forum in New Delhi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that it is “odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning.” Secretary Clinton went on to say that “we talk about these things in very separate and often unconnected ways.”

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Warning green fears could make farming more industrialised

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

nzherald.co.nz - By Geoff Cumming - Aug. 09 (News Report) - Images of carefree cows roaming free, chewing grass or silage year round (well, almost), used to be the green selling point of New Zealand's dairy industry. Not for us those "factory farms" of the Northern Hemisphere where the poor cows are consigned to sheds and fed grain for long periods.

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Climate change ranked as a threat to U.S. security

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Pioneer Press - By John M. Broder - Aug. 09 (News Report) - The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

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Knowing How to Pick a Fight

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seed - By Steve Olson - Aug. 04 (Special Report) - For decades, right-wing commentators have heaped abuse on Paul Ehrlich. He has been derided as a “stupendously bad prophet” by the Wall Street Journal, “always wrong” by Investor’s Business Daily, a “doom-monger” by the Hoover Institution. When I repeat some of these characterizations to Ehrlich over lunch at a Palo Alto cafe, he laughs. “I don’t give a shit what people like Ann Coulter think of me,” he says. The opinions that he cares about are those of his fellow scientists, and they are, fortunately, far less caustic. “They might say, ‘Ehrlich is more pessimistic than I would be,’ or ‘Ehrlich has not valued the green revolution as much as I would have,’” he says. “But I don’t think I’ve seen a single scientific review of something I’ve written that says, ‘This is wrong.’”

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