NewsTrust - Global Warming - Most Trusted Stories: News

How to survive the coming century

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Scientist - By Gaia Vince - Feb. 25 (Special Report) - ALLIGATORS basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 °C. Clearly this is a vision of the future that no one wants, but it might happen. Fearing that the best efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions may fail, or that planetary climate feedback mechanisms will accelerate warming, some scientists and economists are considering not only what this world of the future might be like, but how it could sustain a growing human population. They argue that surviving in the kinds of numbers that exist today, or even more, will be possible, but only if we use our uniquely human ingenuity to cooperate as a species to radically reorganise our world.

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US seeks closer China ties

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Daniel Dombey, Sarah O'Connor - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Barack Obama sought to recast the US's relationship with China, urging Asia's rising superpower to forge deeper ties with Washington on the economy, climate change and nuclear proliferation.

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Arctic tundra hotter, boosts global warming: expert

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By David Ljunggren - Jul. 31 (Special Report) - Professor Greg Henry of the University of British Columbia also said higher temperatures meant larger plants were starting to spread across the tundra, which is usually covered by small shrubs, grasses and lichen. The thicker plant cover means the region is getting darker and absorbing more heat.

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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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It's time we stopped saying 'climate change' and started addressing the disaster

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Mar. 12 (News Analysis) - Apart from the sheer animal panic I felt on reading these reports, two things jumped out at me. The first is that governments are relying on IPCC assessments that are years out of date even before they are published, as a result of the IPCC's extremely careful and laborious review and consensus process. This lends its reports great scientific weight, but it also means that the politicians using them as a guide to the cuts in greenhouse gases required are always well behind the curve.

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Reduced flow signals death of Ganga

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Times of India - By Binay Singh - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - factors like increasing pollution, over-extraction of water and reduced flow of the Ganga are causing slow death to the river. The unscientific extraction of river water through Bhimgauda Barrage to Western Ganga Canal is harming the river badly. The capacity of this barrage has been enhanced from 6,000 cubic feet per second to 9,000 cubic-ft per second, he said adding: "People in Delhi are drinking Gangajal (Ganga water) while the natives of the cities like Varanasi are using polluted water."

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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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Carbon Detectives Are Tracking Gases in Colorado

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Susan Moran - Dec. 02 (Special Report) - The quest to track carbon began 50 years ago when an atmospheric scientist, David Keeling, cranked up an analyzer and started running the world’s first carbon dioxide-measuring observatory, at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Now, thanks to an expanding combination of atmospheric and land-based measuring techniques, scientists can quantify more precisely the sources and sinks of CO2. They also better understand how heat-trapping gases vary over time and space, not just globally but on continental and even regional scales.

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James L. Jones' energy views worry some environmentalists

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Tom Hamburger - Dec. 02 (News Report) - Jones will not be responsible for environmental policy, but he has said energy is a vital national security issue. It affects domestic economic stability and international geopolitical relationships, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East.

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Member of UN Environment Panel Warns Greenhouse Emissions Rising at Alarming, Unexpected Rate

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Chris Field, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzales - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - We speak to Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, about his warning that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rising more rapidly than expected in recent years. Field says the current trajectory of climate change is now much worse than the IPCC had originally projected. On Wednesday, Field told a Senate panel droughts caused by global warming could make parts of the American Southwest dangerous to live in.

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Science minister 'shocked' by denial of global warming among senior figures in the manufacturing industry

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Ian Sample - Mar. 04 (News Report) - "There is a significant minority of senior managers who do not accept the evidence for climate change and don't see the need to take action," Drayson said. "It really shocked me that those views are held, and it's not limited to the car industry." "The industrialists are faced with a very difficult challenge, which is huge infrastructure investment in existing ways of doing business and very difficult global economic circumstances.

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As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Elisabeth Rosenthal - Dec. 04 (Special Report) - A group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a smelly but impeccably clean research farm have a new take on making a silk purse from a sow’s ear: They cook manure from their 3,000 pigs to capture the methane trapped within it, and then use the gas to make electricity for the local power grid.

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Lisa Versus Lisa: EPA's Jackson Bests Sen. Murkowski

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Stephen Power - Sep. 25 (News Report) - Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s plan to limit EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases won’t be coming up for a vote after all. This, after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers sent letters to Congress warning that the Alaska Republican’s amendment would prevent the EPA from completing its recent proposal to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions. If that had happened, the industry would face “a patchwork of conflicting state and federal regulations,” the Alliance warned in its letter. A Murkowski spokesman said Senate Democratic leaders prevented a vote on her amendment and that the senator disputes the EPA administrator’s view that the amendment would prevent the EPA from completing its vehicle proposal. “They’ve gone out of their way to refuse to debate the merits of this” amendment, the spokesman said.

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Forged letters to congressman anger local groups

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Charlottesville Daily Progress - By Brian McNeill - Jul. 31 (News Report) - As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

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Forged letters to congressman anger local groups

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

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Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says

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

National Geographic - By Christine Dell'Amore - Sep. 04 (News Report) - The North Pole is warmer now than it has been in the past 2,000 years, a trend that is holding off the next ice age, according to the most extensive study yet on Arctic climate change.

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Carbon dioxide lifetime 50-100x longer than generally reported

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Scholars & Rogues - By Brian Angliss - Dec. 05 (News Analysis) - There is a great deal of confusion regarding how long carbon dioxide (CO2) persists in the atmosphere. There are at least two reasons for this. The first reason is that there are multiple physical and biological processes that combine to remove CO2 from the air and they behave differently and at different speeds.

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India will reject greenhouse gas emission targets

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Matthias Williams - Jun. 30 (News Report) - India will not sign up to targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions but will instead focus on fighting poverty and boosting economic growth, the environment minister said Tuesday.

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POWER POLITICS: Is the proposed clean energy agency a dirty deal for taxpayers and the environment?

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

southernstudies.org - By Sue Sturgis - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy. But watchdogs are raising questions about whether the way the proposed agency is structured is unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. Among their concerns are its bias toward nuclear power -- a critical issue for the South, which is at the center of the nuclear industry's planned revival.

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Ancient skills 'could reverse global warming'

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Geoffrey Lean - Dec. 07 (News Report) - Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America in the most serious commercial attempt yet to reverse global warming. Trials are to be started in Sussex and Belize early in the new year, backed with venture capital from Silicon Valley, on techniques to take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, where it should act as a powerful fertiliser.

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Rain Forests to Headline at Poznan

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Green Grok - By Bill Chameides - Dec. 04 (Special Report) - Tropical rain forests -- a treasure trove of biodiversity that contributes to a wide range of valuable products including medicines -- store huge reservoirs of carbon. But in the rush to ramp up agricultural output, tropical rain forests are being cut down and burned at a rate of 32 million acres (roughly the size of England) per year. When forests are chopped and burned, their carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO2. Amazingly – and disturbingly – tropical rain forest destruction accounts for about one fifth of the total global CO2 emissions.

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Earth to Washington

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By David Corn - Dec. 04 (News Analysis) - There are systemic factors keeping government from coming up with a far-reaching solution to a far-reaching problem. Long story short: Washington doesn't do bold well.

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Crisis Guide: Climate Change

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Council on Foreign Relations - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - [Interactive Content] There is almost no question that temperatures are rising on average globally. Over the last half century the rate of warming has been about double the rate of warming that we've seen over the last century as a whole. Eleven of the last twelve years have been in the twelve warmest years on record. There is a possibility that we'll discover some flaws in the temperature record, but it's extremely unlikely that people will find that warming is not occurring at the kinds of rates that we are seeing now.

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Radical Ways to Cool the Planet

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fred Guter - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - As forecasts for global temperatures grow increasingly dire, scientists are taking a serious look at an idea once considered crazy: reengineering the atmosphere.

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Droughts 'may lay waste' to parts of US

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - "We are close to a threshold in a very large number of American cities where uncomfortable heatwaves make cities uninhabitable," Field told the Senate's environment and public works committee. The warnings were the first time Congress had been directly confronted with the growing evidence that the impact of climate change will be far more severe than revealed even in the UN's most recent report, in 2007.

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