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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the United States focused on curbing climate change as soon as a new president took office -- or sooner -- it could help pull the world from the financial brink, environmental policy experts told Reuters. "Skyrocketing energy prices and the financial crisis have been a wake-up call that something's got to change," said Cathy Zoi, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which is chaired by former Vice President Al Gore.

There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that, back in the 1970s, the Greens were issuing warnings and even writing books about the coming Ice Age. They would abandon this issue, based in well-known and accepted solar science, in favor of a vast international hoax alleging man-made global warming. As the global warming hoax begins to lose its power to influence public opinion and policy, the Greens are not likely to be heeded for a long time to come because they were right about an Ice Age and lying through their teeth about global warming. Scientists and laymen who follow...

The media in the hip pocket of big oil and coal? Sounds like an outrageous claim given how much those industries get blasted on the networks. But that’s just what the CEO of the Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection’s “We Campaign” has alleged. CEO Cathy Zoi, in an Oct. 8 e-mail, complained that ABC, CBS and CNN aired TV spots for the oil and coal industry during the Oct. 7 presidential debate, but ABC was refusing to air theirs. “Did you notice the ads after last night’s presidential debate?” Zoi wrote. “ABC had Chevron. CBS had Exxon. CNN had...

Haggis is at risk of dying out due to of global warming. The meat pudding is known to children as a rare tartan creature found only in the Highlands but the rise of the common parasite lung worm, which is thriving due to global warming, is putting it at risk. Haggis is made from a sheep's stomach, which is stuffed with oatmeal and minced intestines. But butchers are finding it more and more difficult to get hold of the principle ingredient of sheep's lung, as so many are infected with lung worm. Dr Sandy Clark, the vetinary centre manager at...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The federal government will designate "critical habitat" for polar bears off Alaska's coast, a decision that could add restrictions to future offshore petroleum exploration or drilling. Federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely modify critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery. That likely will affect oil and gas activity, said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups that sued to force the critical habitat designation. "Other than global warming, the worst thing that's going on in polar bear habitat right now is oil development and the potential for...

John McCain has earned a part of his maverick reputation by supporting strong and purposeful environmental policy that protects our common resources and public land. His history of advancing change within his own party makes him the best presidential choice for protecting the Earth. As an environmental entrepreneur and co-chairman of McCain's Environmental Coalition in Washington, I can attest that his leadership is inspiring a new generation of Republicans to revisit our philosophical roots as conservationist in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt.

Will the Wall Street bailout be the beginning of the New (Green) Deal? Environmental activists are trying to figure out ways to advance their global-warming-regulation agenda by exploiting the current financial crisis, including the Wall Street bailout bill to be voted on by the House. The good news for them is that they may not need to succeed, since someone with a very Green agenda will be in charge of implementing the bill should it become law. As reported by Carbon Control News (Sep. 24), "Environmentalists and some Democrats are seizing upon the financial sector crisis to call for major...

PARIS (AFP) — Wall Street's sickness and its contagiousness for the world economy are bad news for the already faltering effort to craft a new pact to tackle climate change. Tighter budgets, shrinking corporate profits and worries about jobs could crimp manoeuvering room at upcoming UN talks on toughening curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions, sources say. But -- so far, at least -- the crisis does not appear to be having an impact on investment in clean technology, say these sources. Indeed, some are confident that spending on wind, solar and other renewables may even rise.

Bjorn Lomborg on the priorities that should come before global warmingWhere in the world can we do the most good? That is the basic question addressed by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank founded six years ago by the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. To answer the question, the center periodically convenes panels of leading economists, who weigh and prioritize the solutions experts have proposed to the world's biggest problems. Lomborg, a boyish 43-year-old, first burst onto the intellectual scene in 2001 with his best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. There the former Greenpeace...

He said he would involve former Vice President Al Gore in efforts to address the issue. "I would tap him, I would tap people who have been involved in these issues for many years." McCain noted that he disagreed with the Nobel Peace Prize winner about nuclear energy but added, "I have great respect for Al Gore."

• Study looks at food impact on greenhouse gases • Return to old-fashioned cooking habits People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns. The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates. It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season...

Scientists in California are testing the hearing of polar bears to try to find out whether the noises associated with melting Arctic ice could affect their ability to survive. In the wild, polar bears live in one of the quietest places on Earth. For much of the time, the Arctic is a bitterly cold, silent world. But global warming is changing that. Ice, which is crucial to the bears' survival, is disappearing and people are moving in. "We're expecting industrial activity, shipping, recreation, all of those human activities to increase in the Arctic," says Dr Ann Bowles, a senior research...

News - September 5, 2008 A Deep Thaw: How Much Will Vanishing Glaciers Raise Sea Levels? Some say high, some say low, some say fast, some say slow By David Biello GLACIAL SPEED: Greenland may get much of the scientific attention but it is smaller glaciers such as the Columbia Glacier in Alaska pictured here that are already contributing to sea level rise--and will continue to do so in future. Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more...

The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say. Measurements of the cosmic blasts of radiation, ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere, were made with the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The solar wind "inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system," which protects the inner planets against the radiation from other stars, said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "With...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon. The former U.S. vice president, whose climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award, told a philanthropic meeting in New York City that "the world has lost ground to the climate crisis." "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the...

Nationalization has its consequences. Just note the rhetoric coming from some prominent voices on the left. The government's foray into offering services normally provided by the private sector by bailing out aging mortgage giants gives it the power to implement "green" building requirements, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He suggested Sept. 23 that any construction financed by government-funded mortgages should be certified "green" according to the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. "If we're going to be in the mortgage business as a government, then every government-funded mortgage -...

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system. "The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research...

Scientists fear the rate of global warming could accelerate due to the escape of methane from beneath the Arctic seabed. Researchers found massive stores of sub-sea methane in several areas across thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf and observed the gas bubbling up from the sea floor through "chimneys", according to reports. Mr Gustafsson said: "At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as...

(CNN) -- Summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but it's been another chilling season for researchers who study Arctic sea ice. "It's definitely a bad report. We did pick up little bit from last year, but this is over 30 percent below what used to be normal," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. This past summer, the Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level. Arctic sea ice is usually one to three meters, or as much as 9 feet thick. It grows during autumn and winter...

Ancient wedges in permafrost appear to have 'stubbornness' to survive hotter periods - providing hope for a slower release of carbonA team of Canadian researchers has unearthed the most ancient ice ever found in North America - 700,000-year-old wedges that didn't melt when the Earth was much balmier than it is today. The scientists say their discovery means the permafrost that covers a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere may not release its vast stores of carbon as quickly as some experts fear.

The recent economic downturn could push the European Union to adopt more modest ambitions in its fight against climate change. Although the European Commission has said it wants to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, business leaders oppose the use of fines to oblige industry to reduce its emissions -- especially in the current economic crisis. The cost to industry is estimated at some 44 billion euros per year between 2013 and 2020, with a tonne (1.1 US tons) of C02 costing 30 euros. Business leaders have denounced the policy as a "tax", threatening to take their investments...

The findings, from two separate research groups... say the process of carbon sequestration is already underway. Even so, the new carbon sink is unlikely to make a significant dent in the huge amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by industrial activities... Phytoplankton produce chlorophyll to obtain energy from the sun and assimilate CO2, and so increased phytoplankton productivity would remove more carbon from the atmosphere... From one year to the next, the phytoplankton grew more in areas where the ice had disappeared: less ice meant more open water for longer, allowing the plankton to soak up more energy from...

WASHINGTON -- "NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun's solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system."

DALLAS (Sept. 19, 2008)- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has no evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are harming the environment, according to comments filed this week by Sterling Burnett, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. The EPA is considering whether it should be regulating greenhouse gas emissions and whether the Clean Air Act is an effective way to do so. "Using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases is not at all what the law was intended to do," Burnett said. "You're seeing a lot of regulation without any results." According to Burnett, laws intended to...

Many scary stories have been written about the dangers of catastrophic global warming, allegedly due to increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the combustion of fossil fuels. But is the world really catastrophically warming? NO. And is the warming primarily caused by humans? NO. Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since...

September 12, 2008, 0:20 p.m. Crossing the LineTop NASA climatologist James Hansen endorses eco-vandalism. By Henry Payne Prominent NASA climatologist James Hansen, a close ally of global-warming activist Al Gore and one of the world’s leading scientific voices warning of a global climate crisis, has endorsed eco-vandalism. Hansen’s controversial turn stems from testimony he gave this month in a London criminal trial against Greenpeace supporters who were accused of defacing — at a cost of $60,000 in property damage — Kingsnorth, an English coal plant. Hansen testified in support of the defense’s assertion that the Greenpeace members had a...

Yes, kids, science is a wonderful thing. But not nearly as wonderful as climate modeling, which can perform supernatural miracles. Honest! Climate modeling can raise the level of the oceans (even without Obama's intervention), it can burn up the planet a hundred years from now, and Shazzam! -- the models can save us again -- all without leaving your video games, and without the benefit of the real-world data that you need for boring old regular science. At least, that's what Nature -- the oldest science journal in the world, going back to Isaac Newton -- now claims. According to...

Despite record lows in solar magnetic activity, thought to influence the climate, trends continue to point to a clear rise in temperatures worldwide. This is reflected by increased melting and other significant changes.

Arctic Sees Massive Gain in Ice Coverage Michael Asher (Blog) - September 3, 2008 2:44 PM Increase twice the size of Germany: "colder weather" to blame. Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany. With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring. The data is for August 2008 and indicates a...

The GOP is making a dramatic change to its stance on climate change thanks to a “push” from presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, according to the 2008 Republican Platform Committee chairman. Platform Chair Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Calif., spoke to the group of conservative bloggers at the Republican National Convention on September 3 in St. Paul, Minn. He said McCain’s campaign was an instrumental part in pushing for a plank about climate change, to the chagrin of many conservatives.

The GOP is making a dramatic change to its stance on climate change thanks to a “push” from presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, according to the 2008 Republican Platform Committee chairman. Platform Chair Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Calif., spoke to the group of conservative bloggers at the Republican National Convention on September 3 in St. Paul, Minn. He said McCain’s campaign was an instrumental part in pushing for a plank about climate change, to the chagrin of many conservatives. “One thing you got to understand, when it comes to a platform, this is the difficulty that you have – you have...

Around the 4th of July, here in the States, there is a tendency for official weather forecasts to show a probability of precipitation that is lower than it should be. It rains more than the forecasters guess. The same thing inverted happens around December 25th (the Federally-Recognized Holiday That Shall Not Be Named): the forecasts tend to give too high a probability of precipitation. It snows less than the forecasters guess. This phenomena is well recognized in meteorology where it has long gone by the name of wishcasting: it is also found in many other areas of life, which I’ll...

PARIS (AFP) - Scientists Sunday said they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet -- a prospect, once the preserve of doomsayers, that would see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas. The researchers found that the great Laurentide icesheet which smothered much of North America during the last Ice Age melted far swifter than realised, dumping billions of tonnes of water into the ocean.

Global warming has probably made Hurricane Gustav a bit stronger and wetter, some top scientists said Sunday, but the specific connection between climate change and stronger hurricanes remains an issue of debate. [snip] But the same scientists also caution it is impossible to blame global warming for any single weather event and that some form of Gustav (and other hurricanes) would have likely still formed and turned deadly without man-made climate change.

Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth. The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted. The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth. According to data from the NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center, the last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749. When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to...

Then in 1999 an obscure young US physicist, Michael Mann, came up with a new graph like nothing seen before. Instead of the familiar rises and falls in temperature over the past 1,000 years, the line ran virtually flat, only curving up dramatically at the end in a hockey-stick shape to show recent decades as easily the hottest on record. This was just what the IPCC wanted, The Mediaeval Warming had simply been wiped from the record. When its next report came along in 2001, Mann's graph was given top billing, appearing right at the top of page one of...

The Mayans and Egyptians constructed incredible feats of architecture able to weather the test of time, but they had no idea their pyramids would inspire the shape of the latest carbon-neutral super-structure to hit Dubai. Dubai-based environmental design firm Timelinks recently released some eye-catching renderings of the gigantic eco pyramid - aptly named Ziggurat - with plans for its official unveiling scheduled for the Cityscape Dubai event which runs October 6-9 of this year. The ginormous pyramid will cover 2.3 square kilometers and will be able to sustain a “community” of up to 1 million. Timelinks claims that their Ziggurat...

Ten polar bears have been spotted swimming in open water during an aerial survey as the peak of summer sea ice melting nears. Drowning polar bears has only been seen as a threat to the species in recent years as the extent of sea ice recedes to historic low levels. Last year, there was more open water than ever before recorded; this year's melt, while dramatic, won't reach the same extent as 2007.

GOP adds global warming to its 2008 platform By Jackie Kucinich Posted: 08/26/08 04:34 PM [ET] The National Republican Party for the first time is expected to acknowledge global warming in its 2008 GOP Platform, according to a draft of the document. “Increased atmospheric carbon has a warming effect on the earth,” the document said. “While the scope and long term consequences of this warming effect are the subject of ongoing research, we believe the United States should take measured and reasonable steps today.” Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is a strong proponent of tackling global...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, are big fans of Hannah Montana – and maybe there’s a reason why. Teen star Miley Cyrus, known as Hannah Montana in the Disney Channel TV series television of the same name, is now crusading for global warming alarmism. But she admits she isn’t really sure what it means. Disney, conveniently owns ABC, a network that often hypes climate change alarmism. On the 15-year-old singer’s recently released album “Breakout,” she sings that she wants America to wake up and deal with global warming. The song, “Wake Up...

Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Ewin Hannan | August 26, 2008 AUSTRALIA has no ability to environmentally dispose of the batteries from the Toyota Camry hybrids whose production has been championed by Kevin Rudd. Labor in Victoria, where the cars will be built, has conceded a "current hole" in the nation's recycling policies means there is no capacity to environmentally dispose of the nickel-metal hydride car batteries from the 10,000 hybrid cars to be produced by Toyota every year from the start of 2010. Victorian Environment Minister Gavin Jennings appeared to concede that the hybrid Camry batteries, which...

ACCRA (AFP) - Rising sea levels caused by climate change will brutally redraw a 4,000-kilometre (2500-mile) stretch of west African coastline from Senegal to Cameroon by century's end, experts were told AFP Friday. "The cost of Guinea will cease to exist by the end of this century," said Stefan Cramer, a marine geologist and head of German green group Heinrich Boll Stiftung's operations in Nigeria. "The countries most threatened by this looming environmental disaster are Gambia, Nigeria, Burkina Fasso and Ghana," he told AFP on the sidelines of a major UN climate conference in the Ghanaian capital Accra. Cramer said...

Sign Kyoto – fund a war Mark Henderson August 11 2008 New Zealanders are starting to get nervous about what might happen to the money they are paying the Russians for failing to meet their Kyoto targets. As reported in our feature on New Zealand and Kyoto, the poor kiwis are paying the Russians 4.1 billion dollars by 2012 to purchase carbon credits to offset the increase in CO2 emissions beyond mandated Kyoto targets. Kiwiblog is reporting that there is no mechanism for New Zealand to avoid handing over this money even if it is used to fund the war...

See all the climate myths in our special feature Even if the atmospheric temperature near the earth's surface has become cooler recently, that doesn't mean the planet as a whole isn't heating up Imagine two people standing at the South Pole, one dressed in full Antarctic gear and the other wearing not much at all. Now imagine that you're looking through one of those infrared thermal imagers that show how hot things are. Which person will look warmest - and which will be frozen solid after a few hours? The answer, of course, is that the near-naked person will appear...

The NBC family of networks has no problem showing viewers how to save the planet. But if it is a muggy, smoggy 85 degrees, as is the forecast for Beijing this week, consider looking elsewhere for eco-inspiration. WHTR, the NBC affiliate for Indianapolis reported from Beijing and described the NBC set used for the networks two highest rated news broadcasts, “NBC Nightly News” and “Today,” as air conditioned – even though it is outdoors. “The set is outside, but air conditioning vents make the weather bearable,” Anne Marie Tiernon wrote for WHTR Eyewitness News on August 14.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US and British researchers have confirmed the link between warmer climate and an increase in powerful rainstorms, according to a study released Thursday that underscores one of the challenges of global warming. The researchers even found that the increase of extreme rainfall was higher than what has been predicted in current computer models, according to the study published in the journal Science...

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, an important hub for work on the causes and consequences of climate change, has shut down a program focused on strengthening poor countries’ ability to forecast and withstand droughts, floods and other climate-related hazards. -- The Center for Capacity Building (still online at ccb.ucar.edu) was created in 2004. It built on decades of work by its director, Michael Glantz, a political scientist who has focused on the societal effects of natural climate extremes and any shifts related to accumulating greenhouse gases. -- Clifford A. Jacobs, the National Science Foundation’s section head for the atmospheric...

Climate Change? Blame Your Stuff By SCOTT LEARN To cut energy use, save money and, while you're at it, live a greener life, you can turn down the air conditioning, back off the accelerator, hop on a bike. But when it comes to your personal energy tally, there's another big but not as commonly considered source: the stuff you buy. Every product, from televisions to teapots, takes energy to get to the shopping bag — energy to mine raw materials, make the product and ship it.Yet that use goes unreported in the tracking of greenhouse gases and energy. Though some...

Record high temperatures on Baffin Island last month -- it hit 27C on July 21--have made the news around the world, as has the evacuation of 21 visitors from the island's Auyuittuq National Park. Fear that melt water from the park's glaciers might lead to flash flooding and landslides has been reported by everyone from AFP to the BBC as proof of the adverse side-effects of man-made climate change. Meanwhile, it is barely reported outside Alaska that America's northernmost state is having a record cool summer. If it reaches 19C in Anchorage today, it will be just the eighth time...

Maybe the snow in the Cascade Mountains isn't in such immediate peril from global warming after all. Despite previous studies suggesting a warmer climate is already taking a bite out of Washington's snowpack, there's no clear evidence that human-induced climate change has caused a drop in 20th century snow levels, according to a new study by University of Washington scientists. In fact, the newest study also predicts the Cascade snows — vital to water supplies, crop irrigation and salmon — could enjoy a delay in the effects of global warming.