Blue Spot

Obama says climate change a matter of urgency | Reuters

CHICAGO, Dec 9 (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue.

In remarks to reporters, Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on Jan. 20.

He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with former Vice President Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago.

"All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over," Obama said.

He said he would work with Democrats and Republicans, businesses, consumers and others with a stake in the issue to try to reach a consensus on a bold, aggressive approach to tackling the problem.

"This is a matter of urgency and of national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That's what I intend my administration to do," Obama said.

Obama had a willing accomplice in Gore, whose won a Nobel in 2007 for his years-long effort to educate people about the gradual warming of the planet and to argue against those scientists who believe a warming trend is a naturally occurring event.

There was no talk of offering Gore a job in the Obama administration. Gore has indicated he is not interested in a position of climate "czar" or any Cabinet post.

Just two days after Obama won the Nov. 4 election, Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection rolled out a media campaign to push for immediate investments in energy efficiency, renewable power generation like wind and solar technology and the creation of a unified national power grid.

Gore and his group are in line with most U.S. environmental groups, which believe the Obama administration has a chance to stem global warming.

Critics have accused the outgoing Bush administration of stalling on the issue, but the White House insists it is taking steps aimed at addressing the problem without damaging the U.S. economy.

"We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country, in all 50 states, to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy, to think about how we are increasing efficiency, to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us competitive for decades to come, even as we're saving the planet," Obama said.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Global Warming, Green/Energy related, President-elect Obama

Op-Ed Contributor - The Climate for Change - NYTimes.com

THE inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.

The electrifying redemption of America’s revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet.

The world authority on the climate crisis, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after 20 years of detailed study and four unanimous reports, now says that the evidence is “unequivocal.” To those who are still tempted to dismiss the increasingly urgent alarms from scientists around the world, ignore the melting of the north polar ice cap and all of the other apocalyptic warnings from the planet itself, and who roll their eyes at the very mention of this existential threat to the future of the human species, please wake up. Our children and grandchildren need you to hear and recognize the truth of our situation, before it is too late.

Here is the good news: the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis.

Economists across the spectrum — including Martin Feldstein and Lawrence Summers — agree that large and rapid investments in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way. Many also agree that our economy will fall behind if we continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign oil every year. Moreover, national security experts in both parties agree that we face a dangerous strategic vulnerability if the world suddenly loses access to Middle Eastern oil.

As Abraham Lincoln said during America’s darkest hour, “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” In our present case, thinking anew requires discarding an outdated and fatally flawed definition of the problem we face.

Thirty-five years ago this past week, President Richard Nixon created Project Independence, which set a national goal that, within seven years, the United States would develop “the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy sources.” His statement came three weeks after the Arab oil embargo had sent prices skyrocketing and woke America to the dangers of dependence on foreign oil. And — not coincidentally — it came only three years after United States domestic oil production had peaked.

At the time, the United States imported less than a third of its oil from foreign countries. Yet today, after all six of the presidents succeeding Nixon repeated some version of his goal, our dependence has doubled from one-third to nearly two-thirds — and many feel that global oil production is at or near its peak.

Some still see this as a problem of domestic production. If we could only increase oil and coal production at home, they argue, then we wouldn’t have to rely on imports from the Middle East. Some have come up with even dirtier and more expensive new ways to extract the same old fuels, like coal liquids, oil shale, tar sands and “clean coal” technology.

But in every case, the resources in question are much too expensive or polluting, or, in the case of “clean coal,” too imaginary to make a difference in protecting either our national security or the global climate. Indeed, those who spend hundreds of millions promoting “clean coal” technology consistently omit the fact that there is little investment and not a single large-scale demonstration project in the United States for capturing and safely burying all of this pollution. If the coal industry can make good on this promise, then I’m all for it. But until that day comes, we simply cannot any longer base the strategy for human survival on a cynical and self-interested illusion.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Oil

US climate bill dies; hope for 2009 | Reuters

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - A U.S. carbon-capping bill aimed at curbing climate change died on Friday in the Senate but its supporters looked to the next president to enact a global warming law as early as 2009.

The bill aimed to cut total U.S. global warming emissions by 66 percent by 2050. Opponents said it would cost jobs and raise fuel prices in an already pinched American economy.

Far from being discouraged, Sen. Joe Lieberman said international observers would be gratified that the measure got support from a majority in the Senate, including presumptive presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama.

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming, Senate

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

OSLO, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in a statement released after the award was announced. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he added.

Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Global Warming, Nobel Prize

U.N.: Record extreme weather in '07 - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

GENEVA - The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heat waves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said Tuesday.

The World Meteorological Organization said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.

There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heat waves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine - Newsweek Technology - Sharon Begley

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming

The pros & cons of proposed congestion pricing in Manhattan.

Labels: Global Warming, Local

C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change - Independent Online Edition > Media

The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle have been accused of fabricating data by one of the scientists who participated in the film.

The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on 8 March and has been criticised by leading scientists for errors, distortions and misrepresentations.

The film has also been referred to the regulatory watchdog Ofcom which is considering a complaint from 37 senior scientists that the programme breached the broadcasting code on the misrepresentation of views and facts.

Now even a climate sceptic whose dissenting views were used by the film- makers to bolster their claims about the "lies" and "swindles" of global warming has accused the documentary of promulgating falsehoods.

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming, Media, World news

John Edwards speaks about energy and the environment at a Step It Up 2007 rally in Fort Myers, Florida on April 14, 2007.

Labels: Election 2008, Global Warming, John Edwards

Global boom in coal power – and emissions | csmonitor.com A Monitor analysis shows the potential for an extra 1.2 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere per year.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Forget the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Disregard rising public concern over global warming. Ignore the Kyoto Protocol.

The world certainly is – at least when it comes to building new electric-power plants. In the past five years, it has been on a coal-fired binge, bringing new generators online at a rate of better than two per week. That has added some 1 billion tons of new carbon-dioxide emissions that humans pump into the atmosphere each year. Coal-fired power now accounts for nearly a third of human-generated global CO2 emissions.

So what does the future hold? An acceleration of the buildup, according to a Monitor analysis of power-industry data. Despite Kyoto limits on greenhouse gases, the analysis shows that nations will add enough coal-fired capacity in the next five years to create an extra 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year.

Labels: Global Warming

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - Al Gore spoke out on his signature issue Wednesday, telling Congress that the world faces “a true planetary emergency” unless it dramatically and immediately reduces emissions that most scientists tie to global warming.

In a return he described as emotional, the former vice president testified before House panels that it is not too late to deal with climate change “and we have everything we need to get started.”

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.

But several Republicans sharply questioned Gore's recommendations.

“A lot of those recommendations are more regulations and more taxation,” said former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, although he added that he agrees with Gore that the scientific debate on climate change is over. “I think we can find answers to use the coal energy, to use the natural gas we have.”

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a former chairman of the House energy committee, questioned scientific evidence from Gore’s popular film and said cutting carbon dioxide emissions would “provide little benefit at a huge cost,” particularly to major coal-producing and coal-burning states.

“You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,” Barton said as he challenged Gore’s conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions cause rising global temperatures. Barton and Gore’s exchange grew testy at one point — Barton demanding that Gore get to the point and Gore responding that he would like time to answer without being interrupted.

Labels: Al Gore, Global Warming

Inhofe speaking at the CPAC conference: "I have been called -- my kids are all aware of this -- dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the month, hate-filled, warmonger, Neanderthal, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun," he announced. "And I can just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly."



read more | digg story

Labels: Anti-Science, Global Warming

U.N. chief: Warming as dangerous as war - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

UNITED NATIONS - Human-induced global warming poses as much danger to the world as war, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday as he urged the United States to take the lead in the fight against global warming.

In his first address on the subject at the U.N. General Assembly hall, Ban said he would emphasize the climate crisis with the leaders at a June meeting in Germany of the Group of Eight industrialized nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.

Labels: Climate change, Global Warming, U.N.