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News Archive 2009 back to archive main page

James Hansen | Copenhagen has given us the chance to face climate change with honesty A carbon-use dividend for everybody must replace the old, ineffectual 'cap-and-trade' schemeLast weekend's minimalist Copenhagen global climate accord provides a great opportunity. The old deceitful, ineffectual approach is severely wounded and must die. Now there is a chance for the world to get on to an honest, effective path to an agreement.The centrepiece of the old approach was a "cap-and-trade" scheme, festooned with offsets and bribes " bribes that purportedly, but hardly, reduced carbon emissions. It was analogous to the indulgences scheme of the Middle Ages, whereby sinners paid the Church for forgiveness.In today's indulgences the sinners, developed countries, buy off developing countries by paying for "offsets" to their own emissions and providing reparation money for adaptation to climate change.	29th December 2009
China introduces law to boost renewable energy BEIJING (Reuters) - A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.	29th December 2009
Toilet Power Trumps Nuclear Image Credit : NowPublic I still don t know what all the fuss is about Nuclear Power, when the BioMethane from all the toilets, farm slurry, hospital and food waste in the country could trounce the amount of power available from atoms by 2020. Without all that nasty radioactive leftover, massive expensive building projects, social tension, election nightmare and increasing security issues. With a bit of time on my paws over the Christmas Vortex (everything gets sucked up by Christmas and nothing ever gets spat out again until January), I started to dig into Professor David J.	29th December 2009
Which way will the wind - power blow in 2010? The United States became the No. 1 wind power market in the world in 2008. But under the credit crisis in 2009, the building of new wind farms slackened and the United States ceded its top global spot to China. With the demand for renewable energy still growing, the American Wind Energy Association is eyeing 2010 as a critical year. Here are some of their top trends to watch for: Second to natural gas: Wind power generates only 2 percent of the U.S. electrical supply. But new wind power generation in the United States has been second only to natural gas generation in terms of new capacity built each year since 2005. See also: Is clean tech the next bubble? - National Post	29th December 2009
Dismantling the Infrastructure: A Scientific Approach I have always been wary about technologies, despite the fact that I graduated as an electrical engineer, and defended two dissertations. The Chernobyl disaster put an end to my infatuation with science, and revived my interest in poetry, philosophy and nature. Since the late '80s, I was gradually converted into the Luddite type of a scientist and stepped onto a shaky path of techno-criticism. I remember my enthusiasm when, in the mid-'90s, I found in the America House Library a book openly criticizing the technological society. I knew then I was not alone.	29th December 2009
Economics and the environment: Down to earth index How much is the planet worth? Not a jot, according to most economists' calculations. Last week, politicians and City analysts got Tiggerishly excited over an official report showing that Britain's economy shrank 0.2% in the three months to the end of September rather than the 0.4% initially reported. Yet that all-important measure of GDP is a 20th-century invention which simply tots up all the goods and services produced in an economy, as valued at market prices. Among all the many things it leaves out is the cost to the environment of this activity. Indeed, it often puts a perverse value on damage to the planet.	29th December 2009
The Lost Decade: What The World Can Learn From 10 Years Of Excesses - Free Internet Press The first decade of the 21st century was marked by crises. Militant Islamists attacked New York, the financial system crashed, the climate is threatened by catastrophe and democracy lost some of its standing.	29th December 2009
The coming climate panic? When the psychology of in-your-face warming gets combined with a shocking climate event-something like Hurricane Katrina on steroids-you end up with a witches brew that can result in what political scientist Aristide Zolberg has referred to as "moments of madness"-unique historical moments when society challenges conventional wisdom and new norms are forcibly-oftentimes disruptively-created. There are many historical precedents: the economic and political chaos in Weimar Germany that ultimately led to the rise of Hitler, the violence of the French Revolution, the sudden, peaceful collapse of the Soviet empire.	29th December 2009
Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe Lowland tropics, mangroves and deserts at greater risk than mountainous areas as global warming spreads, study findsGlobal warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a new study that highlights the problems that rising temperatures pose to plants and animals. Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive. Wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests."These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place," said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution in the US, who worked on the project.	29th December 2009
Mini Hockey Sticks - 3 Yet another vindication for Michael Mann's work on the legendary Hockey Stick comes from an analysis of global warming by decade from the World Meteorological Organisation. Alongside this, some of the research from sea floor sediment drilling has now been published, and it should make you sit up and pay attention. The key issue in Global Warming Science is Climate Sensitivity , and that's not a measure of how prickly you are when someone wants to talk to you about how Climate Change is one big hoax. It is essentially defined by the results of research that look into how the Earth would respond to a doubling of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.	29th December 2009
The long view How climate has shaped human history	29th December 2009
The History of Climate Denial Funding Follow the money : take a peek behind the Climate Change Denier-Sceptic propaganda theatre stage curtain and you will find large Fossil Fuel interests offering financial resources to unseat the Climate Change Science. Ross Gelbspan calls this a manufactured campaign , and lays some of the obligations for rooting it out on those who work in the Media. We may already be witnessing runaway Climate Change is his conclusion on the consequences of 20 years of delay in setting effective policy. Virtually no group in society escapes Gelbspan's probing gaze.	29th December 2009
Updates to model-data comparisons It's worth going back every so often to see how projections made back in the day are shaping up. As we get to the end of another year, we can update all of the graphs of annual means with another single datapoint. Statistically this isn t hugely important, but people seem interested, so why not? For example, here is an update of the graph showing the annual mean anomalies from the IPCC AR4 models plotted against the surface temperature records from the HadCRUT3v and GISTEMP products (it really doesn t matter which). Everything has been baselined to 1980-1999 (as in the 2007 IPCC report) and the envelope in grey encloses 95% of the model runs.	29th December 2009
Philip Radford: Carbon Price Drops Are True Signal That Copenhagen Was a Cop-Out - The Huffington Post Obama's speech said three things: hey foreign leaders, we don't want foreign oil; hey China, even though we've been negotiating all year well, I'm going to scold you; and hey world: even though these are negotiations, I have nothing to offer. See also: Stocks Rise, Bonds Drop on Economic Recovery; Carbon Declines - Bloomberg Low carbon price threatens investment crucial to meet UK green goals	23rd December 2009
Requiem for a Crowded Planet This is what the failure of the climate talks means.	23rd December 2009
Looking for a Silver Lining in the Post-Summit Landscape Much was left undone in Copenhagen, and the many loopholes in the climate accord could lead to rising emissions. But the conference averted disaster by keeping the UN climate negotiations alive, and some expressed hope that the growth of renewable energy technology may ultimately save the day. BY FRED PEARCE	23rd December 2009
Copenhagen's failure belongs to Obama The American president has been uniquely placed to lead the world on climate change and squandered every opportunityContrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the US economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up.	23rd December 2009
Copenhagen: Historic Failure That Will Live in Infamy There is nothing in this deal that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.	23rd December 2009
Taking Responsibility for the Climate Crisis The unnatural dominant culture, coldly spewing its noise and heat, subjecting us to dirty machines and pavement, no longer makes sense in terms of our needs as humans. But don't let it get you down and make you give up. Play your guitar, enjoy the company of friends, or whatever else restores your humanity. Perhaps the songs and the conversations will lead to some liberation and justice, alleviating the pain of this senseless system running our lives into the ground. But we must do even more. Finding a "better job" is no solution long-term, however much we think we need money to survive.	23rd December 2009

Copenhagen Post Mortem.
Evils of False Progress Interfere in Fight for Climate - Now It's up to Us Although one yearns for global warming to indeed not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (or less, as African countries demand), the take-home message from the Copenhagen COP meeting is that polluters and growth mongers, large and small, will not let up. This is because they are not being forced to -- whether by their own peoples or by natural forces such as ecological or economic collapse. Most diabolical is the intention to switch energy as the main strategy for climate protection, when it will not work.	21st December 2009
Copenhagen was no disaster. Copenhagen was no disaster. On the contrary it was a triumph. Here is why:	21st December 2009
Order or chaos? Assessing the outcomes of the climate summit See also: Copenhagen deal reaction in quotes	21st December 2009
After Copenhagen Why the climate talks bode ill for concerted action	21st December 2009
Copenhagen Talks End With Agreement, But No Binding Deal: So, How Screwed Are We? 'The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.' See also: The Truths Copenhagen Ignored Copenhagen negotiators bicker and filibuster while the biosphere burns	21st December 2009
Beyond ecological imperialism | Jayati Ghosh Climate change isn't just a battle between rich and poor " it shows how an obsession with economic growth is a dead endSo the Copenhagen summit did not deliver any hope of substantive change, or even any indication that the world's leaders are sufficiently aware of the vastness and urgency of the problem. But is that such a surprise? Nothing in the much-hyped runup to the summit suggested that the organisers and participants had genuine ambitions to change course and stop or reverse a process of clearly unsustainable growth.Part of the problem is that the issue of climate change is increasingly portrayed as that of competing interests between countries.	21st December 2009
The grim meaning of 'meaningful' Like businessmen who insist a deal is legit, politicians protesting they have done something "meaningful" arouse suspicions that the opposite is in fact true. And "meaningful" was about the best word the spin doctors could muster in respect of the agreement of sorts that was brokered in Copenhagen late last night.The climate change summit had three big tickets on its agenda: emissions, financial assistance and the process going ahead. And on each of these counts the accord " which was effectively hammered out not by the whole conference, but rather by the US, India, China and South Africa " fell woefully short.	21st December 2009
Copenhagen chaos sets world on track for 3.5 C In the early hours of Saturday morning, the climate talks fell to pieces and climate modellers predicted dangerous levels of man-made global warming	21st December 2009
Stiglitz Says Copenhagen Is a Great Disappointment - Update2 - Bloomberg Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the Copenhagen climate-change agreement was a great disappointment because it lacked a framework to cut carbon-dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.	21st December 2009
Carbon prices drop sharply as Copenhagen comes up short - Financial Times Carbon prices dropped sharply on Monday in response to disappointment at the outcome of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen , which ended with an agreement that fell well short of its goals for significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. See also: CO2 Prices Probably Will Fall on Climate Deal, Barclays Says - Bloomberg	21st December 2009
The Truth Of What Happened At Copenhagen Summit By Fidel Castro It is important now that Cuba and the world come to know as much as possible of what happened in Copenhagen. The truth can be stronger than the influenced and often misinformed minds of those holding in their hands the destiny of the world	21st December 2009
Copenhagen: A New Beginnning? Looking below the surface, the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009 could be considered the start of waking the world up to the crisis of climate change, no matter how weak the outcome has been dubbed. For the iconic Polar bear, that 350 ppm request might not be met, but the world has woken up to the crisis and national measures will definitely help to kick in a change	21st December 2009

Global warming likely to be amplified by slow changes to Earth systems Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases.	21st December 2009
African leaf-eating monkeys are 'likely to be wiped out' by climate change (PhysOrg.com) -- Monkey species will become 'increasingly at risk of extinction' because of global warming, according to new research published this week.	21st December 2009
Tibetan Glaciers Are Retreating At An Alarming Rate By James HansenTibetan glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate over the past decade. Glacier changes depend on local weather, especially snowfall, so glacier retreat or advance fluctuates with time and place. Thus it is inevitable that some Tibetan glaciers advance over short periods, as has been reported. But overall, Tibetan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate	21st December 2009
Technology will save us...or not Technology will save us--it's the mantra heard around the world when it comes to climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and myriad other environmental and resource challenges. But, that mantra rarely comes with the proviso that technology often has unintended and even perverse consequences."Yes, yes," you will say, "we know that." Then, why, may I ask, is this almost never mentioned in the same speeches, op-ed pieces, and journal articles that tout the efficacy of one or another technology to definitively solve or at least help solve critical environmental and resource problems? It is because these pronouncements are polemics, or more properly, sermons meant to instruct us in the supposed invincibility of our technology.Let us take just one example of a technology that is so ubiquitous that people rarely even think about a world without it ...	21st December 2009
Drought could be worst for a century - Vietnam Net VietNamNet Bridge - About two billion cubic metres of water will be released from reservoirs to save winter-spring crops in northern regions from looming drought.	21st December 2009
Copenhagen: The Price Of The Atmosphere By Andrew GliksonThe EU pledges for fighting global warming US$10 billion is 0.5% of global entertainment and media spending, 0.7% of the US military expenditure for 2008 and 1.4% of the US banks bailout	18th December 2009
Computer simulation strengthens link between climate change and release of subsea methane (PhysOrg.com) -- A first-of-its-kind computer simulation that mirrors real-world observations of methane bubbling up from a seabed in the Arctic Ocean provides further evidence that warming oceans may unleash vast quantities of methane trapped in hydrate deposits buried beneath the seafloor.	18th December 2009
Rooibos tea farmers on the front line of climate change When Mma Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of the best selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency has a particularly troublesome case to consider she sits down and pours herself a soothing cup of bush tea.	18th December 2009
BANGLADESH: Food Security in Great Peril from Climate Change COPENHAGEN, Dec 18 (IPS/TerraViva) - Unless the world comes to its aid, Bangladesh says the vulnerability of its agriculture sector to climate change could spell severe consequences for its millions of people, who stand to lose their main source of livelihood.	18th December 2009
Birds staying north for the winter - Parksville Qualicum Beach News There's something odd about some of the local bird life in Oceanside, says Sandra Gray, and she wants volunteers at this weekend's Christmas Bird Count to keep an eye out.	18th December 2009
How Effective Are Renewables, Really? The last 10 years have seen massive amounts of taxpayer money invested in renewable energies in Germany. Growth in the industry has been rapid. But has the development been universally good? SPIEGEL ONLINE takes a look at those renewables with promise -- and those which might flop	18th December 2009
U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared a Global Warming Crime Scene" 4193040570_9a3aaaef55.jpg Hours before President Obama leaves for the Copenhagen climate summit, Greenpeace activists deployed an emergency response team to declare the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters a Climate Policy Hostage Area, and a Global Warming Crime Scene. The Chamber has spent millions of dollars on misinformation campaigns and lobbyists working to derail Congressional efforts to pass climate and energy legislation. The lobby group's efforts have therefore created a primary obstacle in the international negotiations, hampering the United States ability to commit to a science-based emissions reduction target and a fair, ambitious and binding treaty in Copenhagen.Greenpeace activists arrived at the Chamber's office building, which is directly across from the White House, in a fleet of climate emergency vehicles, including four squad cars from the Climate Crime Unit and an ambulance from the Climate Emergency Response Unit. ...	18th December 2009
Warning as climate deal emerges A deal is emerging at the UN climate change talks but there are fears it will not prevent a 3C (5.4F) rise in temperature.	18th December 2009
Better to have no deal at Copenhagen than one that spells catastrophe | Naomi Klein The only offer on the table in Copenhagen would condemn the developing world to poverty and suffering in perpetuityOn the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3"3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger", and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people".Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale A global goal of about 2C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development."And yet that is precisely what Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed to do when he stopped off in Paris on his way to Copenhagen ...	18th December 2009
Kyoto Extension May Be Transition to New Climate Deal - Update2 - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations envoys will probably decide to extend the Kyoto Protocol this week and merge it after 2012 into a broader climate-protection deal that includes the U.S. and China, the head of carbon at BofA Merrill Lynch said.	18th December 2009
Breaking: LEAKED final draft of Copenhagen treaty declaration [Update: I've added in analysis of the key text] With only hours left in the Copenhagen climate treaty talks we have obtained an early version of the final agreement' draft text. President Obama's speech wrapped up a few minutes ago with nothing new announced. But as long as this session continues there remains hope that world leaders can deliver a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Things continue to evolve and according to the draft version of the agreement, the major issue of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions cuts by what year, remains unanswered. As it stands, the text states ...	18th December 2009
Three in four UK voters believe climate change is important problem - Guardian Unlimited New Guardian/ICM survey shows Britons overwhelmingly reject view that Copenhagen conference is panicking about an exaggerated threat Three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll. Voters overwhelmingly reject the view of climate change sceptics that world leaders ...	18th December 2009
Famous Comma Slows Climate Talks as Punctuation Splits Envoys - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A single contentious comma inserted into a paragraph of a United Nations climate deal two years ago is again causing squabbles among delegates from 193 nations in Copenhagen devising a method to fight global warming.	18th December 2009
Study forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold Hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.In this scenario, hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. See also: Sea level rise may exceed worst expectations - Nature	17th December 2009
Evo Morales: Trillions for war, peanuts to save the planet Below is the transcript from US radio show Democracy Now! of Bolivian President Evo Morales's December 16 speech to the United Nations climate change summit at Copenhagen.	17th December 2009
Chavez calls for system change at Copenhagen: If the climate was a bank, they would have bailed it out already The Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when [Australian climate minister] Penny Wong's speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation , Lenore Taylor wrote in the December 17 Australian.	17th December 2009
Throwing our energy at impossible dreams... "as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold" read more	17th December 2009
The Copenhagen Tea Party The American Tea Party phenomenon unfortunately has a long arm, reaching all the way to the international climate negotiations currently underway in Copenhagen, Denmark. With their outrageous signs and over-the-top rhetoric, the Tea Party claims can be easily dismissed as fringe players, but they are nevertheless playing a role in blocking action in Washington on the issue of climate change. This is something the fossil fuel industry and their think tank network are very aware of and are using to their full advantage. One need not look any further than the notorious Americans for Prosperity, one of the leading groups organizing Tea Party attacks on healthcare reform, and now climate solutions.	17th December 2009
World will heat more sharply from 2010, warn scientists - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Another steep temperature rise is on the horizon, following the warmest decade since records began, scientists have warned.	17th December 2009
Loopholes in climate deal could render it useless The devil is in the detail, and a deal to slash emissions by 20 per cent could in fact increase them by 10 per cent	17th December 2009
Sugar Production Drops 9.6% in India as Drought Damages Crop - Bloomberg Mills produced 1.7 million metric tons, down from 1.88 million tons a year ago, as drought hurt the cane crop and a price dispute delayed crushing, the official said. He didn t want to be identified as the information was not public. Mills reported lower sugar recovery than a year earlier, he said.	17th December 2009
Peak Oil, Peak Food By Aetius Romulous The single greatest challenge facing our modern economic food chain is the insanely unnatural low cost of food to the consumer, making the simple and necessary act of eating dependent on food that is almost free. The global edifice of cheap food rests on the volatility of a single input; the exponentially depleting supply of easy, cheap oil. We are gorging ourselves at the $1.99 all-you-can-eat oil buffet. Food is too cheap, a correction is coming, and there is not a damn thing anybody can do about it	17th December 2009
Global Warming : New Record Just when is November hotter than July ? Well, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you would expect November to be warmer than July. But, globally ? This week's NASA GISS update of global temperature anomalies , the difference between now and pre-industrial figures, shows that, worldwide, November 2009 has been the hottest November ever in the instrumental record. What can I say ? It's warming up, folks ! And you d better believe it. And we do know why, whatever the newspapers say to sell editions.	17th December 2009
African climate hubs could drive clean energy research - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Africa needs new sources of clean energy, including a mix of wind and solar energy technologies, and should introduce 'climate innovation centres' to speed their uptake, energy experts have said.	17th December 2009
New climate deal may have to wait The Danish presidency of the climate summit in Copenhagen suggests a deal may have to wait until next year.	17th December 2009
ClimateSpin: Using the Stolen Emails to Cripple Policy Standard cover.jpg The stolen email narrative is beginning to take shape, in a way that is both disingenuous and damaging, and a prime example is attached and linked here. This article, by Stephen Hayward in the Weekly Standard, is a mash of good information and bad analysis - a strident overstatement of the case "proven" by the emails that were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and released last month. It also seems to provide a case study for how the emails will be used to undermine action by people who are not well-informed about climate science and can be misled with a few sensible-sounding references.	17th December 2009
Is Too Little Better Than Too Late? Right now, on two different fronts, political progressives face a horrible choice: Accept a severely compromised political agreement or stick to their guns and run the risk of getting nothing. Sure, this is a recurring question for activists and advocates of all stripes but"unlike the so-called "death tax""in these two cases the question really is a matter of life or death. read more	17th December 2009
Copenhagen: World leaders 'face public fury' if agreement proves impossible Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and ChinaWorld leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public "fury" if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. "People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order," said Miliband. "People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible."The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997.	17th December 2009
George W. Bush’s man in Copenhagen by Jonathan Hiskes COPENHAGEN"To understand how global climate negotiations reached such a troubled state before the U.N. talks began here last week, one could do worse than to look to James L. Connaughton.James L. Connaughton headed George W. Bush's Council for Environmental QualityFile photo / Wikimedia CommonsFor eight years, Connaughton was the top White House environmental adviser to President George W. Bush. So when I saw him at a business summit in Copenhagen last Friday, I asked him about the Bush administration's responsibility for the climate quagmire"the fact that negotiators haven t gotten past disagreements that were evident a decade ago. Look, I m looking to the future, he said in a sit-down interview.	17th December 2009
Battle for climate data approaches tipping point Behind the "climategate" headlines, there are real struggles over access to climate records	17th December 2009
Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change Poem - CBS News - blog Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change PoemCBS News (blog)So Sad! by Gumbercules54 December 17, 2009 12:15 AM EST The people that deny global warming, do it because it's easier to do that than do something about it ...and more	17th December 2009
Resisting the Dangerous Allure of Global Warming Technofixes As the world weighs how to deal with warming, the idea of human manipulation of climate systems is gaining attention. Yet beyond the environmental and technical questions looms a more practical issue: How could governments really commit to supervising geoengineering schemes for centuries? BY DIANNE DUMANOSKI	17th December 2009
Cop-enhagen: Preemptive Mass Arrests in Context of History of Danes' Movement The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media have been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so. read more	16th December 2009
The Road: A film that every one of us needs to see As the credits roll and we fall stricken and tear-stained out onto the dark streets of Soho, it seems fitting that I am accompanied by the director of the second bleakest film ever made " Franny Armstrong, creator of the The Age of Stupid. The bleakest film ever made we have just endured together, over two relentless, harrowing hours, and are now so emotionally raw that we know not where we are going, nor do we much care. It doesn't seem to matter. "Oh my God," moans Franny, repeatedly, head in hands.	16th December 2009
To Fight Global Warming and Prevent Hunger, We Need to Change How We Grow Our Food Unless we control global climate change, caused in part by industrial farming, agricultural output across the world is likely to plummet.	16th December 2009
Copenhagen: why can't we write off Third World debt at the same as dealing with the environment? - Telegraph As climate change negotiations get into full swing ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, debate over the basis upon which developed countries should compensate developing countries for their historic emissions intensifies.	16th December 2009
Poll: Action on climate will heat up economy, jobs - The Associated Press WASHINGTON — More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	16th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: The Many Lives of the Tobin Tax BERLIN, Dec 15 (Tierramérica**) - In the decades since 1972, when Nobel laureate economist James Tobin (1918-2002) first proposed it, the idea of a tax on currency speculation has resurfaced and disappeared many times, according to the economic tides. See also: Climate conference: 'Make bankers pay for deal'	16th December 2009
50 reasons why global warming isn't natural A British newspaper today published "100 reasons why global warming is natural". We take a quick look at the first 50 of its claims, and debunk each one See also: The Daily Hoaxpress ?	16th December 2009
Are the CRU data suspect ? An objective assessment. Kevin Wood, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington Eric Steig, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington In the wake of the CRU e-mail hack, the suggestion that scientists have been hiding the raw meteorological data that underpin global temperature records has appeared in the media. For example, New York Times science writer John Tierney wrote, It is not unreasonable to give outsiders a look at the historical readings and the adjustments made by experts Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. The implication is that something secretive and possibly nefarious has been afoot in the way data have been handled, and that the validity of key data products (especially those produced by CRU) is suspect on these grounds.	16th December 2009
The proteststers offer the best hope at Copenhagen At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group of angry black-clad teenage protesters who were carrying spray cans started quoting statistics to me about how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can safely absorb. (It's 350 parts per million they pointed out, before sucking their teeth.) Before that, I saw a couple in a pantomime cow costume being attacked by the police, who accused them of throwing stones with their hooves.	16th December 2009
NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research - w/ Video (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.	16th December 2009
The Latest From Copenhagen: U.S. Undermining Effort to Curb Deforestation "Basically the trees that Barack Obama is talking about planting are meant to fuel U.S. cars."	16th December 2009
US to be allowed to buy its way out of greenhouse gas emissions cuts - Times Online The United States will be allowed to buy its way out of adopting a more stringent target on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in a compromise being brokered by Britain.	16th December 2009
It's World War In 2030 If Obama Fails Climate Test ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- Obama the game-changer saves Copenhagen? Uses his new Nobel "Just War" doctrine, takes command, unifies world in a "Just War" on climate change, the biggest economic issue facing the world in the 21st century? Maybe, maybe not. But if he doesn't, Copenhagen fails. America is the game-fixer in the do-nothing scenario. Worse: Population growth will eventually outstrip depleting resources. Without a long-term economic strategy and a leader, we may not survive into the next century. Yes, if Obama's "Just War" doctrine becomes a "Just War on Climate Change" he is the game-changer that not only honors Alfred Nobel's legacy, but also means Copenhagen would be a success going forward. However, developing nations fear they'll get a token commitment from a nation that just bailed out its failed banking system with trillions. They fear we'll simply commit to some vague emission limits that help Wall Street bankers build a new trillion-dollar short-term cap-and-trade system with toothless enforcement rules that invite all nations to game the system. And they fear America's do-nothing scenario will leave the rest of the world worse off till the next summit, exposed and at risk, as the impact of climate change pushes us closer to a game-ending Black Swan catastrophe. See also: Recipe for Failure	15th December 2009
This Is About Us The talks at Copenhagen are not just about climate change. They represent a battle to redefine humanity.	15th December 2009
Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn't listen | Madeleine Bunting Copenhagen must face up to the decade lost in curbing volatile finances, corporate power and the pillage of resourcesTen years ago, protesters gathered in a port city; politicians arrived for intense backroom negotiations; the city's hotels were booked out by representatives of thousands of NGOs from all over the world. In 1999 Seattle, like Copenhagen this week, was a big international meeting attempting to exert some governance over globalisation. There's a fitting symmetry that these two meetings bookend this decade. For while the Seattle protests were deliberately misrepresented and widely misunderstood at the time, their agenda has proved unanswerable. Copenhagen is belatedly grappling with just one aspect of Seattle's unfinished business.For those for whom Seattle is a hazy memory, let's recap.	15th December 2009
A Copenhagen activist speaks: 'I was afraid I would go back to the cages' | Tomas Lundstrm Tomas Lundström was held for over 11 hours without charge in the Vallby 'prison', where he says police used violent tacticsI came to Copenhagen to protest against the undemocratic and ineffective climate talks and to stand up for climate justice. On Saturday, I joined together with 100,000 other people to march to the Bella centre. I was in a section of the march calling for "System Change Not Climate Change", together with people from all over the world who are sick of fake corporate solutions like carbon trading, and want to see real climate solutions that deliver justice to the global south.Not long into the event, the police suddenly cut off a large section of the march " about 1,000 people " for no obvious reason. See also: Copenhagen's policing by design | Naomi Klein	15th December 2009
Trusting Nature as the Climate Referee - International Herald Tribune An idea for a tax that is linked to the future warming of the earth.	15th December 2009
Hopes of global emissions deal at Copenhagen begin to fade Gordon Brown will travel to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen tomorrow, two days ahead of most other world leaders, in an attempt to to break the deadlock over a new global-warming agreement.	15th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE-CUBA: "Energy is an Instrument of Power" COPENHAGEN, Dec 13 (IPS) - "Energy is an instrument of power. Whoever has energy, controls the world," Cuban expert Luis Bérriz said in an address to Klimaforum, the civil society meeting being held in parallel to the UN conference on climate change in the Danish capital.	15th December 2009
Document shows Canada removing emission restrictions harper_stephen.jpg As if Canada's performance on climate were not alread the second worst among all countries surveyed by GermanWatch for the Global Climate Change Performance Index (we were aced for last place by Saudi Arabia), new documents discovered by the CBC show the Conservative government actually looking to WEAKEN the pathetic greenhouse gas emission limits that barely restrain the Alberta oil and gas sector. The government, which has presented no plan to meet its humiliating target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, is now leaning toward giving the oil and gas sector even more room to pollute, leaving the responsibility for reducing emissions (should the country ever decide to do so) on individuals and businesses outside the industry that is primarily responsible.	15th December 2009
The Rear Guard: 1,100 Lobbyists Wait to Block Copenhagen Success climate lobbyists.gif Thanks to the consistently brilliant work of the Center for Public Integrity, there is now an extensive online resource searchable for all the special interest groups and companies lobbying Congress on climate change (and on other issues). The database is searchable by lobbyist, sector, time frame, or money (you can type in a dollar amount and find lobbying expenses at that amount or higher). These are the people who will work to sabotage any reasonable agreement that happens (against the odds?) to emerge from this negotiation. Inspired by the deniersphere (which will argue that no action is necessary) and funded by fossil fuel industries that must, by necessity, roll back their businesses if the world is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will be determined to stop the U.S.	15th December 2009
Critically Thinking Copenhagen Everyone is talking about climate change and Copenhagen, so I suppose I should be...The latest dither around the topic involves back and forths between adherents and deniers of the climate change hypothesis and a certain expose of emails supposedly refuting the reality of climate change and a plethora of rebuttals to those emails. read more	15th December 2009
Chinese farmers struggle with climate change ZHONGZHUANG, China (Reuters) - Across the brown hills of Zhongzhuang Village in northwest China, farmers count the costs of a changing climate in lost crops, dry wells and lives weighed down by poverty.	15th December 2009
Bank of England urged to put climate scientist on MPC MPC needs green advocate, says former scientific adviser Economic policy must not overlook low-carbon projectsThe government's former chief scientific adviser is calling for a climate scientist to be given a seat on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, saying the bank currently operates without regard for the environment.The proposal today from Sir David King, scientific adviser under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is known to have the support in principle of some MPC members.King also criticises the Treasury under Alistair Darling, saying "it is pulling in the wrong direction" and not doing enough to promote a green economy.	15th December 2009
Long Term Climate Finance: FOUND! by Steve Kretzmann We are pleased to report from Copenhagen that after years of searching, long term funding for climate finance has been foundhellip;but the question is whether we can pry it out of Big Oil and Coal's hands. The pledge by G20 nations championed by the US is potentially a huge new source of funds for developed country finance obligations that can and should be shifted to helping, rather than harming the climate. Leaders have already agreed that we must phase these subsidies out " the questions are: by when and where does the money go?How much money will be freed up by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the developed countries?	15th December 2009
No time for tears in Copenhagen by Bill McKibben COPENHAGEN"I ve spent the last few years working more than fulltime to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That's meant shutting off my emotions most of the time"this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer work.This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen's main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week.	15th December 2009
Australia accused of cooking the carbon books - ABC via Yahoo!7 News The Australian Government has been accused of accounting fraud in the reporting of its carbon emissions.	15th December 2009
The Hague is a place in Copenhagen - Land Use Loopholes and Hot Air Again - New Matilda The atmosphere on the Danish streets is more than a little tense as we move into the second week of negotiations. A small but notable minority of insiders are still hopeful at the prospect of a legally binding treaty, but one can only imagine that the last minute horsetrading that would be necessary may not [...]	15th December 2009
Getting the Story Right: The Peak Oil vs. Climate Change Inanity Continues The IEA has pretty much conceeded peak oil, announcing that growth to meet demand in the coming decades will come from entirely mythical sources. Ok, they didn't say that, what they said in the latest World Energy Outlook was that the majority of oil production by 2030 will be coming from "fields yet to be developed or found." But what that means is "we're hoping someone with magic powers will come and reverse the long-stand trend towards decline in oil discovery." read more	15th December 2009
European taxpayers lose 5bn in carbon trading fraud Europol says EU's Emission Trading System in peril Fraudsters could target gas and electricity markets next The European Union has probably lost at least 5bn (£4.5bn) to VAT fraud related to carbon trading and there is a risk that the criminals will now shift their attention to Europe's electricity and gas markets, according to Europol.The news will cause further embarrassment for European governments negotiating at the Copenhagen climate summit and trying to persuade other parts of the world to sign up to carbon trading as a way of reducing emissions.The Guardian recently revealed that the Danish government had been forced, on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, to rush through an emergency law making it impossible for criminal gangs to reclaim huge amounts of VAT on fraudulent trades they were making on Europe's various carbon exchanges.At the time, the Danes refused to estimate ...	15th December 2009
The idea behind our global climate simulator See what will happen to the world by specifying the year when emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafterThe idea behind our new global carbon emissions interactive is that it does for global climate policy what our quick carbon calculator does for individuals. You specify the year when global emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafter and it tells you what will happen. For each scenario, three graphs appear: the first showing emissions between now and 2100; the second showing how those emissions will change the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ...	15th December 2009
US left behind in technological race to fight climate change | George Monbiot A speech by the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, shows how America's unquestioning belief in the free market has held back technological innovationI have just been watching the tragic sight of a fallen giant flailing around on its back like a beetle, desperately trying to turn itself over.The occasion was a speech by the US secretary of energy, Steven Chu. He is, of course, a Nobel physicist, brilliant, modest, likeable, a delightful contrast to the thugs employed by the previous administration. But his speech was, in the true sense of the word, pathetic: it moved me to pity.Yesterday afternoon in Copenhagen " where the UN climate talks are entering their second week " Professor Chu unveiled what would have been a series of inspiring innovations, had he made this speech 15 years ago.	15th December 2009
Under the icy north lurks a carbon bomb - Boston Globe North of Canada's capital, underneath an endless expanse of spruce, pine, and birch, ticks what some scientists are calling a carbon bomb: Peat.	15th December 2009
U.S. Business Interests Suspected in 'Fabricated' Climate Scandal The emails that have right-wingers frothing aren't scandalous. The issue is who hacked the scientists' computers, and what they had to gain from undermining their research.	15th December 2009
World Opinion on the Environment - Foreign Relations A majority in every country polled says that global warming is a problem or a threat and that governments should give it a high priority, while only small minorities say it is not a problem. Despite these numbers, people tend to underestimate how much other people are concerned about climate change.	15th December 2009
Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea Governments from the developed world will never come up with enough money to help poorer nations adapt to global warming and implement renewable energy technologies. The solution may lie in using a modest allocation of government funds to spur private sector investment in green energy projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. BY ORVILLE SCHELL	15th December 2009
AP Poll: Greater share of US public believes global warming action will help economy - Canoe Money WASHINGTON - More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	15th December 2009
Monckton lies to AP, denies he called clean energy advocates Hitler youth Climate-change-deniers-To-001.jpg Despite video evidence, Christopher Monckton stated in an interview yesterday with Associated Press: "It was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the audience." It would appear that a more appropriate title than "climate denier" for Monckton, might be "reality denier." For Monckton to now deny what he has admitted repeatedly on tape as doing, shows just how willing he is to bend the truth. Here's the video (again) of Monckton calling young climate change campaigners the "Hitler youth": After lying to Associated Press about his Hitler youth comments, Monckton then proceeded to compare the climate activists to Adolf Hitler's fascist army, saying the activists were attempting to stifle free speech, using tactics "last seen here when the Nazis occupied Denmark." <!--break-->	15th December 2009
U.S. does "not anticipate" tougher carbon target COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The United States does not anticipate sharpening its target to cut carbon emissions by 2020, said Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, on Tuesday.	15th December 2009
Paddy Power offers odds on polar bears | Leo Hickman Ireland's largest bookmaker is now taking bets on the survival of endangered speciesI recently saw a mail order catalogue for a wine company with a picture of three penguins standing on a small, thin sheet of sea ice with the strapline: Disappearing fast " fine wine winter sale 2009. What were they thinking?The same thought crossed my mind when I heard that Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, has announced that it is now taking bets of the estimated global polar bear population on December 31, 2011.The current WWF estimate places the polar bear population between 20,000 and 25,000 however Paddy Power's odds predict a sharp decline in their population over the next two years and are offering odds of 13/8 that the number dips between 15,000 to 20,000 With global warming now generally agreed to be the most significant threat to the ...	15th December 2009
Copenhagen loopholes could mean rise in emissions, report warns Climate summit must close loopholes or greenhouse gases may increase by 10% in 2020 compared with 1990 levels, says Friends of the EarthFour major loopholes in the Copenhagen draft texts could see carbon emissions increase by 2020, rather than plunge as scientists say must happen to avert dangerous global warming. That is the conclusion of a new analysis by Friends of the Earth, who argue the loopholes would cause greenhouse gases to rise by 10% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, if they are not closed in the final four days of negotiations at the UN summit.The most serious loophole is known as "hot air".	15th December 2009
Denialism and the power of fear by Jay Inslee There are two types of pesky partisans on the loose right now who refuse to accept reality due to their ideological blindness"birthers and global warming deniers. This realization struck me last week as I listened to Republicans argue that we should let the world boil over, all while they dithered over reading silly emails written between a few climate scientists. The members of the Flat Earth Society may be out of ideas, but they are not out of denials.All the shouting in the world can t refute the fact that the science of climate change is sound.iStock PhotoThe Flat Earth Society is, of course, the climatic analog of the birthers movement, determined to undermine Americans confidence in clear facts about climate change.	15th December 2009

Global warming likely to be amplified by slow changes to Earth systems Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases.	21st December 2009
African leaf-eating monkeys are 'likely to be wiped out' by climate change (PhysOrg.com) -- Monkey species will become 'increasingly at risk of extinction' because of global warming, according to new research published this week.	21st December 2009
Tibetan Glaciers Are Retreating At An Alarming Rate By James HansenTibetan glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate over the past decade. Glacier changes depend on local weather, especially snowfall, so glacier retreat or advance fluctuates with time and place. Thus it is inevitable that some Tibetan glaciers advance over short periods, as has been reported. But overall, Tibetan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate	21st December 2009
Technology will save us...or not Technology will save us--it's the mantra heard around the world when it comes to climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and myriad other environmental and resource challenges. But, that mantra rarely comes with the proviso that technology often has unintended and even perverse consequences."Yes, yes," you will say, "we know that." Then, why, may I ask, is this almost never mentioned in the same speeches, op-ed pieces, and journal articles that tout the efficacy of one or another technology to definitively solve or at least help solve critical environmental and resource problems? It is because these pronouncements are polemics, or more properly, sermons meant to instruct us in the supposed invincibility of our technology.Let us take just one example of a technology that is so ubiquitous that people rarely even think about a world without it ...	21st December 2009
Drought could be worst for a century - Vietnam Net VietNamNet Bridge - About two billion cubic metres of water will be released from reservoirs to save winter-spring crops in northern regions from looming drought.	21st December 2009
Copenhagen: The Price Of The Atmosphere By Andrew GliksonThe EU pledges for fighting global warming US$10 billion is 0.5% of global entertainment and media spending, 0.7% of the US military expenditure for 2008 and 1.4% of the US banks bailout	18th December 2009
Computer simulation strengthens link between climate change and release of subsea methane (PhysOrg.com) -- A first-of-its-kind computer simulation that mirrors real-world observations of methane bubbling up from a seabed in the Arctic Ocean provides further evidence that warming oceans may unleash vast quantities of methane trapped in hydrate deposits buried beneath the seafloor.	18th December 2009
Rooibos tea farmers on the front line of climate change When Mma Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of the best selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency has a particularly troublesome case to consider she sits down and pours herself a soothing cup of bush tea.	18th December 2009
BANGLADESH: Food Security in Great Peril from Climate Change COPENHAGEN, Dec 18 (IPS/TerraViva) - Unless the world comes to its aid, Bangladesh says the vulnerability of its agriculture sector to climate change could spell severe consequences for its millions of people, who stand to lose their main source of livelihood.	18th December 2009
Birds staying north for the winter - Parksville Qualicum Beach News There's something odd about some of the local bird life in Oceanside, says Sandra Gray, and she wants volunteers at this weekend's Christmas Bird Count to keep an eye out.	18th December 2009
How Effective Are Renewables, Really? The last 10 years have seen massive amounts of taxpayer money invested in renewable energies in Germany. Growth in the industry has been rapid. But has the development been universally good? SPIEGEL ONLINE takes a look at those renewables with promise -- and those which might flop	18th December 2009
U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared a Global Warming Crime Scene" 4193040570_9a3aaaef55.jpg Hours before President Obama leaves for the Copenhagen climate summit, Greenpeace activists deployed an emergency response team to declare the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters a Climate Policy Hostage Area, and a Global Warming Crime Scene. The Chamber has spent millions of dollars on misinformation campaigns and lobbyists working to derail Congressional efforts to pass climate and energy legislation. The lobby group's efforts have therefore created a primary obstacle in the international negotiations, hampering the United States ability to commit to a science-based emissions reduction target and a fair, ambitious and binding treaty in Copenhagen.Greenpeace activists arrived at the Chamber's office building, which is directly across from the White House, in a fleet of climate emergency vehicles, including four squad cars from the Climate Crime Unit and an ambulance from the Climate Emergency Response Unit. ...	18th December 2009
Warning as climate deal emerges A deal is emerging at the UN climate change talks but there are fears it will not prevent a 3C (5.4F) rise in temperature.	18th December 2009
Better to have no deal at Copenhagen than one that spells catastrophe | Naomi Klein The only offer on the table in Copenhagen would condemn the developing world to poverty and suffering in perpetuityOn the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3"3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger", and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people".Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale A global goal of about 2C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development."And yet that is precisely what Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed to do when he stopped off in Paris on his way to Copenhagen ...	18th December 2009
Kyoto Extension May Be Transition to New Climate Deal - Update2 - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations envoys will probably decide to extend the Kyoto Protocol this week and merge it after 2012 into a broader climate-protection deal that includes the U.S. and China, the head of carbon at BofA Merrill Lynch said.	18th December 2009
Breaking: LEAKED final draft of Copenhagen treaty declaration [Update: I've added in analysis of the key text] With only hours left in the Copenhagen climate treaty talks we have obtained an early version of the final agreement' draft text. President Obama's speech wrapped up a few minutes ago with nothing new announced. But as long as this session continues there remains hope that world leaders can deliver a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Things continue to evolve and according to the draft version of the agreement, the major issue of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions cuts by what year, remains unanswered. As it stands, the text states ...	18th December 2009
Three in four UK voters believe climate change is important problem - Guardian Unlimited New Guardian/ICM survey shows Britons overwhelmingly reject view that Copenhagen conference is panicking about an exaggerated threat Three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll. Voters overwhelmingly reject the view of climate change sceptics that world leaders ...	18th December 2009
Famous Comma Slows Climate Talks as Punctuation Splits Envoys - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A single contentious comma inserted into a paragraph of a United Nations climate deal two years ago is again causing squabbles among delegates from 193 nations in Copenhagen devising a method to fight global warming.	18th December 2009
Study forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold Hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.In this scenario, hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. See also: Sea level rise may exceed worst expectations - Nature	17th December 2009
Evo Morales: Trillions for war, peanuts to save the planet Below is the transcript from US radio show Democracy Now! of Bolivian President Evo Morales's December 16 speech to the United Nations climate change summit at Copenhagen.	17th December 2009
Chavez calls for system change at Copenhagen: If the climate was a bank, they would have bailed it out already The Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when [Australian climate minister] Penny Wong's speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation , Lenore Taylor wrote in the December 17 Australian.	17th December 2009
Throwing our energy at impossible dreams... "as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold" read more	17th December 2009
The Copenhagen Tea Party The American Tea Party phenomenon unfortunately has a long arm, reaching all the way to the international climate negotiations currently underway in Copenhagen, Denmark. With their outrageous signs and over-the-top rhetoric, the Tea Party claims can be easily dismissed as fringe players, but they are nevertheless playing a role in blocking action in Washington on the issue of climate change. This is something the fossil fuel industry and their think tank network are very aware of and are using to their full advantage. One need not look any further than the notorious Americans for Prosperity, one of the leading groups organizing Tea Party attacks on healthcare reform, and now climate solutions.	17th December 2009
World will heat more sharply from 2010, warn scientists - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Another steep temperature rise is on the horizon, following the warmest decade since records began, scientists have warned.	17th December 2009
Loopholes in climate deal could render it useless The devil is in the detail, and a deal to slash emissions by 20 per cent could in fact increase them by 10 per cent	17th December 2009
Sugar Production Drops 9.6% in India as Drought Damages Crop - Bloomberg Mills produced 1.7 million metric tons, down from 1.88 million tons a year ago, as drought hurt the cane crop and a price dispute delayed crushing, the official said. He didn t want to be identified as the information was not public. Mills reported lower sugar recovery than a year earlier, he said.	17th December 2009
Peak Oil, Peak Food By Aetius Romulous The single greatest challenge facing our modern economic food chain is the insanely unnatural low cost of food to the consumer, making the simple and necessary act of eating dependent on food that is almost free. The global edifice of cheap food rests on the volatility of a single input; the exponentially depleting supply of easy, cheap oil. We are gorging ourselves at the $1.99 all-you-can-eat oil buffet. Food is too cheap, a correction is coming, and there is not a damn thing anybody can do about it	17th December 2009
Global Warming : New Record Just when is November hotter than July ? Well, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you would expect November to be warmer than July. But, globally ? This week's NASA GISS update of global temperature anomalies , the difference between now and pre-industrial figures, shows that, worldwide, November 2009 has been the hottest November ever in the instrumental record. What can I say ? It's warming up, folks ! And you d better believe it. And we do know why, whatever the newspapers say to sell editions.	17th December 2009
African climate hubs could drive clean energy research - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Africa needs new sources of clean energy, including a mix of wind and solar energy technologies, and should introduce 'climate innovation centres' to speed their uptake, energy experts have said.	17th December 2009
New climate deal may have to wait The Danish presidency of the climate summit in Copenhagen suggests a deal may have to wait until next year.	17th December 2009
ClimateSpin: Using the Stolen Emails to Cripple Policy Standard cover.jpg The stolen email narrative is beginning to take shape, in a way that is both disingenuous and damaging, and a prime example is attached and linked here. This article, by Stephen Hayward in the Weekly Standard, is a mash of good information and bad analysis - a strident overstatement of the case "proven" by the emails that were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and released last month. It also seems to provide a case study for how the emails will be used to undermine action by people who are not well-informed about climate science and can be misled with a few sensible-sounding references.	17th December 2009
Is Too Little Better Than Too Late? Right now, on two different fronts, political progressives face a horrible choice: Accept a severely compromised political agreement or stick to their guns and run the risk of getting nothing. Sure, this is a recurring question for activists and advocates of all stripes but"unlike the so-called "death tax""in these two cases the question really is a matter of life or death. read more	17th December 2009
Copenhagen: World leaders 'face public fury' if agreement proves impossible Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and ChinaWorld leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public "fury" if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. "People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order," said Miliband. "People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible."The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997.	17th December 2009
George W. Bush’s man in Copenhagen by Jonathan Hiskes COPENHAGEN"To understand how global climate negotiations reached such a troubled state before the U.N. talks began here last week, one could do worse than to look to James L. Connaughton.James L. Connaughton headed George W. Bush's Council for Environmental QualityFile photo / Wikimedia CommonsFor eight years, Connaughton was the top White House environmental adviser to President George W. Bush. So when I saw him at a business summit in Copenhagen last Friday, I asked him about the Bush administration's responsibility for the climate quagmire"the fact that negotiators haven t gotten past disagreements that were evident a decade ago. Look, I m looking to the future, he said in a sit-down interview.	17th December 2009
Battle for climate data approaches tipping point Behind the "climategate" headlines, there are real struggles over access to climate records	17th December 2009
Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change Poem - CBS News - blog Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change PoemCBS News (blog)So Sad! by Gumbercules54 December 17, 2009 12:15 AM EST The people that deny global warming, do it because it's easier to do that than do something about it ...and more	17th December 2009
Resisting the Dangerous Allure of Global Warming Technofixes As the world weighs how to deal with warming, the idea of human manipulation of climate systems is gaining attention. Yet beyond the environmental and technical questions looms a more practical issue: How could governments really commit to supervising geoengineering schemes for centuries? BY DIANNE DUMANOSKI	17th December 2009
Cop-enhagen: Preemptive Mass Arrests in Context of History of Danes' Movement The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media have been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so. read more	16th December 2009
The Road: A film that every one of us needs to see As the credits roll and we fall stricken and tear-stained out onto the dark streets of Soho, it seems fitting that I am accompanied by the director of the second bleakest film ever made " Franny Armstrong, creator of the The Age of Stupid. The bleakest film ever made we have just endured together, over two relentless, harrowing hours, and are now so emotionally raw that we know not where we are going, nor do we much care. It doesn't seem to matter. "Oh my God," moans Franny, repeatedly, head in hands.	16th December 2009
To Fight Global Warming and Prevent Hunger, We Need to Change How We Grow Our Food Unless we control global climate change, caused in part by industrial farming, agricultural output across the world is likely to plummet.	16th December 2009
Copenhagen: why can't we write off Third World debt at the same as dealing with the environment? - Telegraph As climate change negotiations get into full swing ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, debate over the basis upon which developed countries should compensate developing countries for their historic emissions intensifies.	16th December 2009
Poll: Action on climate will heat up economy, jobs - The Associated Press WASHINGTON — More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	16th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: The Many Lives of the Tobin Tax BERLIN, Dec 15 (Tierramérica**) - In the decades since 1972, when Nobel laureate economist James Tobin (1918-2002) first proposed it, the idea of a tax on currency speculation has resurfaced and disappeared many times, according to the economic tides. See also: Climate conference: 'Make bankers pay for deal'	16th December 2009
50 reasons why global warming isn't natural A British newspaper today published "100 reasons why global warming is natural". We take a quick look at the first 50 of its claims, and debunk each one See also: The Daily Hoaxpress ?	16th December 2009
Are the CRU data suspect ? An objective assessment. Kevin Wood, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington Eric Steig, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington In the wake of the CRU e-mail hack, the suggestion that scientists have been hiding the raw meteorological data that underpin global temperature records has appeared in the media. For example, New York Times science writer John Tierney wrote, It is not unreasonable to give outsiders a look at the historical readings and the adjustments made by experts Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. The implication is that something secretive and possibly nefarious has been afoot in the way data have been handled, and that the validity of key data products (especially those produced by CRU) is suspect on these grounds.	16th December 2009
The proteststers offer the best hope at Copenhagen At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group of angry black-clad teenage protesters who were carrying spray cans started quoting statistics to me about how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can safely absorb. (It's 350 parts per million they pointed out, before sucking their teeth.) Before that, I saw a couple in a pantomime cow costume being attacked by the police, who accused them of throwing stones with their hooves.	16th December 2009
NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research - w/ Video (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.	16th December 2009
The Latest From Copenhagen: U.S. Undermining Effort to Curb Deforestation "Basically the trees that Barack Obama is talking about planting are meant to fuel U.S. cars."	16th December 2009
US to be allowed to buy its way out of greenhouse gas emissions cuts - Times Online The United States will be allowed to buy its way out of adopting a more stringent target on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in a compromise being brokered by Britain.	16th December 2009
It's World War In 2030 If Obama Fails Climate Test ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- Obama the game-changer saves Copenhagen? Uses his new Nobel "Just War" doctrine, takes command, unifies world in a "Just War" on climate change, the biggest economic issue facing the world in the 21st century? Maybe, maybe not. But if he doesn't, Copenhagen fails. America is the game-fixer in the do-nothing scenario. Worse: Population growth will eventually outstrip depleting resources. Without a long-term economic strategy and a leader, we may not survive into the next century. Yes, if Obama's "Just War" doctrine becomes a "Just War on Climate Change" he is the game-changer that not only honors Alfred Nobel's legacy, but also means Copenhagen would be a success going forward. However, developing nations fear they'll get a token commitment from a nation that just bailed out its failed banking system with trillions. They fear we'll simply commit to some vague emission limits that help Wall Street bankers build a new trillion-dollar short-term cap-and-trade system with toothless enforcement rules that invite all nations to game the system. And they fear America's do-nothing scenario will leave the rest of the world worse off till the next summit, exposed and at risk, as the impact of climate change pushes us closer to a game-ending Black Swan catastrophe. See also: Recipe for Failure	15th December 2009
This Is About Us The talks at Copenhagen are not just about climate change. They represent a battle to redefine humanity.	15th December 2009
Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn't listen | Madeleine Bunting Copenhagen must face up to the decade lost in curbing volatile finances, corporate power and the pillage of resourcesTen years ago, protesters gathered in a port city; politicians arrived for intense backroom negotiations; the city's hotels were booked out by representatives of thousands of NGOs from all over the world. In 1999 Seattle, like Copenhagen this week, was a big international meeting attempting to exert some governance over globalisation. There's a fitting symmetry that these two meetings bookend this decade. For while the Seattle protests were deliberately misrepresented and widely misunderstood at the time, their agenda has proved unanswerable. Copenhagen is belatedly grappling with just one aspect of Seattle's unfinished business.For those for whom Seattle is a hazy memory, let's recap.	15th December 2009
A Copenhagen activist speaks: 'I was afraid I would go back to the cages' | Tomas Lundstrm Tomas Lundström was held for over 11 hours without charge in the Vallby 'prison', where he says police used violent tacticsI came to Copenhagen to protest against the undemocratic and ineffective climate talks and to stand up for climate justice. On Saturday, I joined together with 100,000 other people to march to the Bella centre. I was in a section of the march calling for "System Change Not Climate Change", together with people from all over the world who are sick of fake corporate solutions like carbon trading, and want to see real climate solutions that deliver justice to the global south.Not long into the event, the police suddenly cut off a large section of the march " about 1,000 people " for no obvious reason. See also: Copenhagen's policing by design | Naomi Klein	15th December 2009
Trusting Nature as the Climate Referee - International Herald Tribune An idea for a tax that is linked to the future warming of the earth.	15th December 2009
Hopes of global emissions deal at Copenhagen begin to fade Gordon Brown will travel to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen tomorrow, two days ahead of most other world leaders, in an attempt to to break the deadlock over a new global-warming agreement.	15th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE-CUBA: "Energy is an Instrument of Power" COPENHAGEN, Dec 13 (IPS) - "Energy is an instrument of power. Whoever has energy, controls the world," Cuban expert Luis Bérriz said in an address to Klimaforum, the civil society meeting being held in parallel to the UN conference on climate change in the Danish capital.	15th December 2009
Document shows Canada removing emission restrictions harper_stephen.jpg As if Canada's performance on climate were not alread the second worst among all countries surveyed by GermanWatch for the Global Climate Change Performance Index (we were aced for last place by Saudi Arabia), new documents discovered by the CBC show the Conservative government actually looking to WEAKEN the pathetic greenhouse gas emission limits that barely restrain the Alberta oil and gas sector. The government, which has presented no plan to meet its humiliating target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, is now leaning toward giving the oil and gas sector even more room to pollute, leaving the responsibility for reducing emissions (should the country ever decide to do so) on individuals and businesses outside the industry that is primarily responsible.	15th December 2009
The Rear Guard: 1,100 Lobbyists Wait to Block Copenhagen Success climate lobbyists.gif Thanks to the consistently brilliant work of the Center for Public Integrity, there is now an extensive online resource searchable for all the special interest groups and companies lobbying Congress on climate change (and on other issues). The database is searchable by lobbyist, sector, time frame, or money (you can type in a dollar amount and find lobbying expenses at that amount or higher). These are the people who will work to sabotage any reasonable agreement that happens (against the odds?) to emerge from this negotiation. Inspired by the deniersphere (which will argue that no action is necessary) and funded by fossil fuel industries that must, by necessity, roll back their businesses if the world is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will be determined to stop the U.S.	15th December 2009
Critically Thinking Copenhagen Everyone is talking about climate change and Copenhagen, so I suppose I should be...The latest dither around the topic involves back and forths between adherents and deniers of the climate change hypothesis and a certain expose of emails supposedly refuting the reality of climate change and a plethora of rebuttals to those emails. read more	15th December 2009
Chinese farmers struggle with climate change ZHONGZHUANG, China (Reuters) - Across the brown hills of Zhongzhuang Village in northwest China, farmers count the costs of a changing climate in lost crops, dry wells and lives weighed down by poverty.	15th December 2009
Bank of England urged to put climate scientist on MPC MPC needs green advocate, says former scientific adviser Economic policy must not overlook low-carbon projectsThe government's former chief scientific adviser is calling for a climate scientist to be given a seat on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, saying the bank currently operates without regard for the environment.The proposal today from Sir David King, scientific adviser under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is known to have the support in principle of some MPC members.King also criticises the Treasury under Alistair Darling, saying "it is pulling in the wrong direction" and not doing enough to promote a green economy.	15th December 2009
Long Term Climate Finance: FOUND! by Steve Kretzmann We are pleased to report from Copenhagen that after years of searching, long term funding for climate finance has been foundhellip;but the question is whether we can pry it out of Big Oil and Coal's hands. The pledge by G20 nations championed by the US is potentially a huge new source of funds for developed country finance obligations that can and should be shifted to helping, rather than harming the climate. Leaders have already agreed that we must phase these subsidies out " the questions are: by when and where does the money go?How much money will be freed up by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the developed countries?	15th December 2009
No time for tears in Copenhagen by Bill McKibben COPENHAGEN"I ve spent the last few years working more than fulltime to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That's meant shutting off my emotions most of the time"this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer work.This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen's main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week.	15th December 2009
Australia accused of cooking the carbon books - ABC via Yahoo!7 News The Australian Government has been accused of accounting fraud in the reporting of its carbon emissions.	15th December 2009
The Hague is a place in Copenhagen - Land Use Loopholes and Hot Air Again - New Matilda The atmosphere on the Danish streets is more than a little tense as we move into the second week of negotiations. A small but notable minority of insiders are still hopeful at the prospect of a legally binding treaty, but one can only imagine that the last minute horsetrading that would be necessary may not [...]	15th December 2009
Getting the Story Right: The Peak Oil vs. Climate Change Inanity Continues The IEA has pretty much conceeded peak oil, announcing that growth to meet demand in the coming decades will come from entirely mythical sources. Ok, they didn't say that, what they said in the latest World Energy Outlook was that the majority of oil production by 2030 will be coming from "fields yet to be developed or found." But what that means is "we're hoping someone with magic powers will come and reverse the long-stand trend towards decline in oil discovery." read more	15th December 2009
European taxpayers lose 5bn in carbon trading fraud Europol says EU's Emission Trading System in peril Fraudsters could target gas and electricity markets next The European Union has probably lost at least 5bn (£4.5bn) to VAT fraud related to carbon trading and there is a risk that the criminals will now shift their attention to Europe's electricity and gas markets, according to Europol.The news will cause further embarrassment for European governments negotiating at the Copenhagen climate summit and trying to persuade other parts of the world to sign up to carbon trading as a way of reducing emissions.The Guardian recently revealed that the Danish government had been forced, on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, to rush through an emergency law making it impossible for criminal gangs to reclaim huge amounts of VAT on fraudulent trades they were making on Europe's various carbon exchanges.At the time, the Danes refused to estimate ...	15th December 2009
The idea behind our global climate simulator See what will happen to the world by specifying the year when emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafterThe idea behind our new global carbon emissions interactive is that it does for global climate policy what our quick carbon calculator does for individuals. You specify the year when global emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafter and it tells you what will happen. For each scenario, three graphs appear: the first showing emissions between now and 2100; the second showing how those emissions will change the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ...	15th December 2009
US left behind in technological race to fight climate change | George Monbiot A speech by the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, shows how America's unquestioning belief in the free market has held back technological innovationI have just been watching the tragic sight of a fallen giant flailing around on its back like a beetle, desperately trying to turn itself over.The occasion was a speech by the US secretary of energy, Steven Chu. He is, of course, a Nobel physicist, brilliant, modest, likeable, a delightful contrast to the thugs employed by the previous administration. But his speech was, in the true sense of the word, pathetic: it moved me to pity.Yesterday afternoon in Copenhagen " where the UN climate talks are entering their second week " Professor Chu unveiled what would have been a series of inspiring innovations, had he made this speech 15 years ago.	15th December 2009
Under the icy north lurks a carbon bomb - Boston Globe North of Canada's capital, underneath an endless expanse of spruce, pine, and birch, ticks what some scientists are calling a carbon bomb: Peat.	15th December 2009
U.S. Business Interests Suspected in 'Fabricated' Climate Scandal The emails that have right-wingers frothing aren't scandalous. The issue is who hacked the scientists' computers, and what they had to gain from undermining their research.	15th December 2009
World Opinion on the Environment - Foreign Relations A majority in every country polled says that global warming is a problem or a threat and that governments should give it a high priority, while only small minorities say it is not a problem. Despite these numbers, people tend to underestimate how much other people are concerned about climate change.	15th December 2009
Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea Governments from the developed world will never come up with enough money to help poorer nations adapt to global warming and implement renewable energy technologies. The solution may lie in using a modest allocation of government funds to spur private sector investment in green energy projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. BY ORVILLE SCHELL	15th December 2009
AP Poll: Greater share of US public believes global warming action will help economy - Canoe Money WASHINGTON - More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	15th December 2009
Monckton lies to AP, denies he called clean energy advocates Hitler youth Climate-change-deniers-To-001.jpg Despite video evidence, Christopher Monckton stated in an interview yesterday with Associated Press: "It was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the audience." It would appear that a more appropriate title than "climate denier" for Monckton, might be "reality denier." For Monckton to now deny what he has admitted repeatedly on tape as doing, shows just how willing he is to bend the truth. Here's the video (again) of Monckton calling young climate change campaigners the "Hitler youth": After lying to Associated Press about his Hitler youth comments, Monckton then proceeded to compare the climate activists to Adolf Hitler's fascist army, saying the activists were attempting to stifle free speech, using tactics "last seen here when the Nazis occupied Denmark." <!--break-->	15th December 2009
U.S. does "not anticipate" tougher carbon target COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The United States does not anticipate sharpening its target to cut carbon emissions by 2020, said Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, on Tuesday.	15th December 2009
Paddy Power offers odds on polar bears | Leo Hickman Ireland's largest bookmaker is now taking bets on the survival of endangered speciesI recently saw a mail order catalogue for a wine company with a picture of three penguins standing on a small, thin sheet of sea ice with the strapline: Disappearing fast " fine wine winter sale 2009. What were they thinking?The same thought crossed my mind when I heard that Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, has announced that it is now taking bets of the estimated global polar bear population on December 31, 2011.The current WWF estimate places the polar bear population between 20,000 and 25,000 however Paddy Power's odds predict a sharp decline in their population over the next two years and are offering odds of 13/8 that the number dips between 15,000 to 20,000 With global warming now generally agreed to be the most significant threat to the ...	15th December 2009
Copenhagen loopholes could mean rise in emissions, report warns Climate summit must close loopholes or greenhouse gases may increase by 10% in 2020 compared with 1990 levels, says Friends of the EarthFour major loopholes in the Copenhagen draft texts could see carbon emissions increase by 2020, rather than plunge as scientists say must happen to avert dangerous global warming. That is the conclusion of a new analysis by Friends of the Earth, who argue the loopholes would cause greenhouse gases to rise by 10% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, if they are not closed in the final four days of negotiations at the UN summit.The most serious loophole is known as "hot air".	15th December 2009
Denialism and the power of fear by Jay Inslee There are two types of pesky partisans on the loose right now who refuse to accept reality due to their ideological blindness"birthers and global warming deniers. This realization struck me last week as I listened to Republicans argue that we should let the world boil over, all while they dithered over reading silly emails written between a few climate scientists. The members of the Flat Earth Society may be out of ideas, but they are not out of denials.All the shouting in the world can t refute the fact that the science of climate change is sound.iStock PhotoThe Flat Earth Society is, of course, the climatic analog of the birthers movement, determined to undermine Americans confidence in clear facts about climate change.	15th December 2009

Our leaders are staging a scam in Copenhagen Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city's central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos - the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald's announces I m loving it! in great red letters above. Welcome to Hopenhagen! it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air. This plastic planet is the perfect symbol for this summit. The world is being told that this is an emergency meeting to solve the climate crisis " but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to prevent the unraveling of the biosphere.	13th December 2009
"Copenhagen is about doing as little as possible" - Salon.com An interview with Dennis Meadows, whose 1972 book "The Limits of Growth" was an early warning of global crisis	13th December 2009
Rescuing A Planet Held Hostage By Frank Joseph Smecker I urge people to follow what is happening in Copenhagen right now. The past week has proven that the worlds elected officials are not going to be making any decisions that are in the best interests of the people and communities of the planet, human and nonhuman. The solutions presented thus far have included market-based mechanisms and more discourse. Clearly, our future is in the hands of powerful elite and private institutions unless we rescue it. And I believe we can, if only we awake from the nihilistic and apathetic haze of our times to act together	13th December 2009
Scientists: Climate talks aim too low, even without impact of 'hugely important' methane - The Canadian Press COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The cuts in greenhouse gases offered at the 192-nation climate conference are "clearly not enough" to assure the world it will head off dangerous global warming, a key U.N.-affiliated scientist said Saturday.	13th December 2009
ENVIRONMENT: Europeans Pay Companies to Pollute More BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (IPS) - Some of the world's most polluting companies are receiving financial support from the European taxpayer to promote the continued use of the fuels that cause global warming, according to a new report.	13th December 2009
CEO: Business Lobby Pushing Self-Interest Over Success A watchdog group called the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) says that corporate lobbyists, who have been working overtime to influence the UNFCCC COP15 in the run-up period, are still here in force, still pushing their position and standing dangerously in the way of success. CEO spokester Jiorgos Vassalos said that Europe appears lucky to have no mainstream corporate groups that actually denier climate science. "The dominant discourse is that something has to be done, but nothing that might harm the European Union's corporate competitiveness." That, for example, means no technology transfer to the developing world unless it comes in the form of direct foreign investment - on which corporations will have an opportunity to make ongoing profit.	13th December 2009
End Monopoly Capitalism To Arrest Climate Change By Prof. Jose Maria Sison To arrest climate change, we need to put an end to this systematic plunder of the environment for the superprofits of corporations in industrialized countries. To arrest climate change, we need to organize and defend our future against this parasitic and moribund system. To arrest climate change, we need to end monopoly capitals dominance over our lives and build a socialist future	13th December 2009
Climategate : Myles Allen is Confused Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department is confused. It is odd that we still don t take climate change seriously , he writes in The Guardian online, discussing the fact that a good proportion of the British public don t believe in Global Warming :- [link]commentisfree/2009/dec/11/science-climate-change-phil-jones He might need to wake up to the fact that the British Press are being misled, and in turn, misleading the country. He ascribes Climate Change scepticism, denier-tribe , in print and online, to the Media's fondness for the narrative of the fallen idol .	13th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Cattle, the Ignored Predator RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 11 (IPS) - Because of its effect on the environment, cattle must be given the same priority in global agendas as nuclear weapons, wars and, in particular, climate change, says Brazilian activist João Meirelles Filho, author of two books on Amazon deforestation.	13th December 2009
Back to the bunker | John McQuaid The 'Climategate' emails have given new life to America's conservative sceptics " and they will be the biggest losersUntil recently, American conservatism's once-monolithic opposition to the very idea of global warming - based mostly, it sometimes seemed, on a common disdain for Al Gore - was starting to crack.Outright denial " of the kind preached by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe " was once the conservative movement's default position, and still is for many Republicans. The denialist camp even includes intellectuals such as George Will, who has penned a preposterous series of columns arguing, in essence, that climate change is a myth cooked up by scientists in service to a political agenda that will generate more grant money to produce more research into this mythical problem.	13th December 2009
Amazon projects undercut Brazil's new green path PORTO VELHO, Brazil (Reuters) - Straddling one the Amazon's main tributaries and flanked by dense jungle, a construction pit the size of a small town bustles with bulldozers and nearly 10,000 workers blasting huge slabs of rock off the river bank.	13th December 2009
Why the Idea of a Carbon Tax is Making a Comeback - Newsweek The idea of a carbon tax, proposed by Al Gore 17 years ago, is winning new converts.	13th December 2009
Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages Britain faces a 'perfect storm' of water shortage and lack of food, says the government's chief scientist, and climate change and crop and animal diseases will add to future woes. Science is now striving to find solutionsIt was an ecological disaster that occurred on the other side of the planet. Yet the drought that devastated the Australian wheat harvest last year had consequences that shook the world. It sent food prices soaring in every nation. Wheat prices across the globe soared by 130%, while shopping bills in Britain leapt by 15%.A year later and the cost of food today has still to fall to previous levels.	13th December 2009
Loss of ice heralds an emergency - The Age The planet's ''canary in the coal mine'' is showing disturbing symptoms and we have only years, not decades, to save it.	13th December 2009
Governments turn to cloud seeding to fight drought (AP) -- On a mountaintop clearing in the Sierra Nevada stands a tall metal platform holding a crude furnace and a box of silver iodide solution that some scientists believe could help offer relief from searing droughts.	13th December 2009
Inuits need cash for freezers in warming Arctic COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Inuit communities need funds to adapt to climate change in the Arctic, including measures to build communal deep freezers to store game because warming is reducing their hunting season, an Inuit leader said on Friday.	13th December 2009
A chat with Earl Blumenauer about his ‘carbon audit’ of the U.S. tax code by David Roberts Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)Tucked away in the frantically assembled and hastily passed bailout bill of Sept. 2008 was a little-noticed provision that would empower the National Academy of Sciences to do a carbon audit of the U.S. tax code, scoring tax provisions according to their impact on the national carbon footprint. But the audit" brainchild of Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)"never got underway, because Congress never appropriated any money for it. Until now, anyway: the minibus just approved by the House set aside $1.5 million for the NAS to get started.The program is based on the old saw that what gets measured get done.	13th December 2009
Q&A: "We're Here to Insert Some Reality into an Unreal Situation" COPENHAGEN, Dec 10 (IPS/TerraViva) - Bill McKibben is a U.S. writer, environmentalist and the founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign. His first book, "The End of Nature", was published in 1989 and is regarded as the first book written for a general audience about climate change.	13th December 2009
Nation of sceptics - BBC News Why US evangelical Christians could tip the climate debate	13th December 2009
12 Crazy Futuristic Water Buildings That May Help Humans Survive Climate Change Catastrophe Twelve prototype habitats are making a convincing argument for mankind's offshore living.	13th December 2009
The answer could be blowing in the wind Well into the first week of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, the haves and have nots of the world are still divided over who should pay for the cleanup of the planet. Poor countries want rich countries to cough up more ambitious goals for emissions cuts and developing technologies. From emerging wind and solar industries to geothermal advances, the technologies being tested for adaptability in the fight against climate change are still quite new and in some cases revolutionary. To kick off today's discussion, we posed the question to our panel of climate experts: What technology could be the most successful solution to global warming?	13th December 2009
Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers " and the planet Shrinking of food and drink industry likely, says report Government advisers call for reduction in wasteThe first official recommendations for a diet that is both healthy and good for the environment are published today, and they are likely to be seen as an assault on the UK's current food system.To fight climate change and tackle the growing crisis of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, British consumers must cut down on meat and dairy produce, reduce their intake of processed foods and curb waste.These are the three priorities identified in a report by the government's independent advisory body on sustainability, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), which calls for radical changes in patterns of consumption.The report " which will dismay many in the livestock and processed food industries " will feed into all government departments and procurement agencies.	13th December 2009
Clean energy to grow into 1.6 trillion euros industry: WWF The clean energy technology sector will grow into a 1.6 trillion-euro (2.4 trillion-dollar) industry by 2020, becoming the third largest industrial sector after automobiles and electronics, WWF said Friday.	13th December 2009
"Climate Deal Likely to Bear Big Price Tag" - Critical Comment For decades the nations of the southern hemisphere have asked for -- or have been portrayed by social justice activists as needing -- a piece of the industrial pie. A related theme has been the drive to not have to pay for the overconsumption of the North. "Development" often meant World Bank projects to facilitate power consumption for spreading the use of appliances and cars. In the run-up to Copenhagen the idea of funding poor countries for climate mitigation has gained popularity, but it may really be about corporate business. How feasible this is with the global economy's imploding -- from the end of cheap energy and peaking of funny money -- is forgotten as plans count...	13th December 2009
Three Tracks In Copenhagen By Liam PhelanThe big question in Copenhagen is to ditch the Kyoto Protocol or not to ditch it	13th December 2009
Richest Nations Fall Short in First Copenhagen Draft - Update4 - Bloomberg Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The first draft agreement for a climate treaty from the Copenhagen talks calls for the world's richest nations to make far steeper cuts to their greenhouse-gas emissions than they ve pledged.	13th December 2009
Global warming: back to basics - Times Online Daily NationGlobal warming: back to basicsTimes OnlineGlobal concern over climate change is unprecedented. For those working on research in to this topic, even just ten years ago, we would have been amazed to ...Draft Copenhagen deal targets maximum 2 C warmingAFPWhose war on science?Washington PostBalance of Opinion: The global-warming debateDallas Morning NewsMirror.co.uk -Weatherford Democrat -Examiner.comall 1,061	13th December 2009
Coral climate crisis puts 250 million at risk: U.N. COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - More than 250 million people risk losing their livelihoods because of dying tropical coral reefs in what a senior U.N. environmental economist said on Saturday was part of a double climate crisis facing the world.	13th December 2009
Copenhagen police detain 968 in climate change rally Climate activists criticise Danish police for heavy-handed tactics after they detained 968 people at a Copenhagen summit rally.	13th December 2009
Latest news, comment and analysis News and analysis on the UN Copenhagen climate change conference 2009	13th December 2009
ENVIRONMENT-ICELAND: Do-it-Yourself Renewable Energy Catches On REYKJAVIK, Dec 13 (IPS/IFEJ) - When Innovation Centre Iceland (ICI) managers began courses in farming renewable energy in October they were unprepared for the enthusiastic response from citizens.	13th December 2009
Senate Poses Obstacles to Obama Pledge on Climate- New York Times WASHINGTON " President Obama jets off to Copenhagen later this week to try to place an American stamp on a global climate change agreement . He will be trailed by a cloud of diplomats and bureaucrats all proclaiming the progress his administration has made on global warming in its 11 months in office.	13th December 2009
Copenhagen Comes Down To A Numbers Game By Michael McCarthy Michael McCarthy on the battle over emissions cuts that is dividing the world	13th December 2009
Copenhagen 'not on track to save planet' - BigPond News Australia has warned the Copenhagen climate summit that negotiations to save the planet are not on track.	13th December 2009
[bonkers] Closed UK steel plant to get 2010 CO2 permits: government LONDON (Reuters) - A steel plant in northeast England due to close in January will likely get its 2010 quota of free European carbon permits, a windfall worth around 100 million euros ($147.3 million), the UK government said on Friday.	13th December 2009
[bonkers?] CLIMATE CHANGE: Willingly or Not, We Must Prepare for Geoengineering COPENHAGEN, Dec 10 (IPS) - So what do we do if COP15 does not bring adequate emission reduction targets or if the targets are not implemented by countries? What if we are faced with an ecological crisis in the next 15-20 years?	13th December 2009
Scientists tip 2010 as hottest yet - Sydney Morning Herald THE past six months have been Australia's warmest winter-spring period on record and it is likely next year will set global temperature records. Scientists predict that, whatever the outcome at Copenhagen, Australia must adapt to unprecedented heatwaves. David Jones, the head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, said yesterday that claims by sceptics the planet was cooling were wrong. Every decade in Australia for the past 70 years had been getting warmer, and this decade has been the globe's warmest so far.	10th December 2009
Acidification rates pose disaster for marine life: major study Report launched from leading marine scientists at Copenhagen summit shows seas absorbing dangerous levels of CO2The world's oceans are becoming acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the last 55m years, threatening disaster for marine life and food supplies across the globe, delegates at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen have been warned.A report by more than 100 of Europe's leading marine scientists, released at the climate talks this morning, states that the seas are absorbing dangerous levels of carbon dioxide as a direct result of human activity. This is already affecting marine species, for example by interfering with whale navigation and depleting planktonic species at the base of the food chain.The report " Ocean acidification ...	10th December 2009
On the climate frontline in Yakutsk Jonathan Watts reports from Yakutsk, where climate change is slowly melting Siberia's permafrost, forcing local people to rebuild their houses to deal with the regular floodingJonathan Watts	10th December 2009
Climate change turns up heat on mushrooms (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have discovered that spring-fruiting fungi, including the morel and St George`s mushroom are fruiting nearly three weeks earlier than they did 50 years ago.	10th December 2009
Oceans' Uptake of Manmade Carbon May Be Slowing (PhysOrg.com) -- The oceans play a key role in regulating climate, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air. Now, the first year-by-year accounting of this mechanism during the industrial era suggests the oceans are struggling to keep up with rising emissions -a finding with potentially wide implications for future climate.	10th December 2009
A changing climate: UNEP maps extreme weather events worldwide | Felicity Carus - Guardian Unlimited From Atlantic hurricanes to Australian droughts, extreme weather events are more frequent and more violent In the run-up to Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published its Climate Change Science Compendium , a summary of 400 peer-reviewed research papers published since 2006. To illustrate some of the extreme weather events " which appear to be happening with increasing ...	10th December 2009
Interactive: effects of ocean acidification around the world A major study from European scientists released at the Copenhagen climate conference shows marine life under threat from increased CO2 in the oceans	10th December 2009
Copenhagen Won't Be Enough -- Only a 'Human Movement' Can Save Civilization from the Climate Crisis A strange cloud envelops human civilization as its leaders fail to take the measures to protect it in Copenhagen that they themselves endorsed just five months ago.	10th December 2009
'Ten years remain' to cut carbon Carbon emissions must fall within a decade to keep the global temperature rise under 2C, the UK Met Office says.	10th December 2009
The Peak Oil Crisis: Copenhagen - Prelude to extinction? Although world oil production is likely to start declining in the next few years, followed by world coal production in another 20 or so years, neither of these are likely to reduce emissions enough for many decades to have much of an impact on increasing carbon emissions. The decline in world oil production and much higher prices are likely to have a major impact on economic growth however. read more	10th December 2009
Emissions 'higher than reported' Emissions of some greenhouse gases are substantially higher than companies and countries report, say scientists.	10th December 2009
Climate change puts us all in the same boat. One hole will sink us all | Kofi Annan Global warming does not respect borders. A mindset shift is required if world leaders are to save us from ourselvesThe UN climate change conference in Copenhagen offers the prospect of a robust political deal, endorsed by the world's leaders and witnessed by the world's people, that sets out clear targets and a timeline for translating it into law. To be a truly historic achievement, such a deal must do two things.First, it must lay the basis for a global regime and subsequent agreements that limit global temperature rise in accordance with the scientific evidence. Second, it must provide clarity on the mobilisation and volume of financial resources to support developing countries to adapt to climate change.The stakes are enormous.	10th December 2009
The carbon cuts promised by developing countries at Copenhagen The table below summarizes the greenhouse gas reduction pledges of 11 non-Annex1 (developing) countries, organised by type of pledge. From the World Resources Institute, part of the Guardian Environment Network	10th December 2009
Copenhagen is a world and a decade away from Kyoto | Tim Flannery and Erik Rasmussen Kyoto's ineffectiveness was due to lack of scientific clarity and lack of public understanding: none of these excuses now apply Few people outside Japan would have heard of Kyoto prior 1997, its Katsura palace or famous spring blossom. Mention the city now and it is immediately associated with the closest thing we have to an adequate global response to the global climate problem.As delegates meeting in Copenhagen this month well know, the Kyoto protocol set legally binding requirements for developed economies to achieve emissions reductions by 2012.But the deficiencies of the protocol are also well known. To name only three ...	10th December 2009
Technology transfer to developing countries is an impossible dream | Cath Bremner Collaboration between private investors and public sector is the only way to introduce low-carbon technology to poor countriesOne of the most contentious topics for discussion at the Copenhagen climate talks will be "technology transfer", the proposition that climate technologies should be handed from rich nations to poor.It's a fine idea in theory. It happened in pharmaceuticals with the licensing of HIV/Aids medications to the developing world. But climate change is a different ball game, where technology transfer is a complex challenge. For a start, governments don't own intellectual property, companies do. Getting companies to surrender it is no easy task.A hybrid car has more than 350 individual patents.	10th December 2009
U.S. Says China Must Be Major Player in Global Emissions Cuts - Bloomberg Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama's top climate change envoy, responding to criticism from China that the U.S. isn t doing enough to cut greenhouse-gas pollution, said China must be a major player in the push to cut global emissions.	10th December 2009
Copenhagen Assessing fair in 2050 The first Tuesday in Copenhagen saw the leak to the Guardian newspaper of a document called The Copenhagen Agreement , a proposed political agreement prepared by the Danish hosts, supposedly in consultation with the USA, the UK and some others. This may be one of several such texts in circulation. Neverthless, it raises a challenging issue. As has already been widely discussed by many parties and observers, the text proposes a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 when compared to 1990, with developed countries reducing emissions by at least 80% by 1990. That presumably leaves the balance to developing countries, which is where the arguements started.	10th December 2009
Duke, Shell, Environmentalists to Meet With Obama on Copenhagen - Bloomberg Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will meet with company executives and environmentalists to discuss the climate- change conference in Copenhagen, a spokesman said.	10th December 2009
Climate Contrarian Monckton calls young climate activists Hitler Youth and "Nazis" Fifty young U.S. clean energy activists stormed the stage today in Copenhagen during a live webcast organized by Americans for Prosperity and featuring climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton. When the youth group interrupted the webcast to deliver the message that real Americans want clean energy and a fair climate treaty, Monckton went ballistic, calling the students crazed Hitler youth and Nazis. The incident was not likely the intended result Americans for Prosperity hoped for as it launched the COP15 version of its "Hot Air Tour" (a.k.a. denial-a-palooza).	10th December 2009
The Human Ecology of Collapse, Part One: Failure is the Only Option As world leaders meet at Copenhagen to avoid taking action about climate change, it's crucial to recognize that the industrial world's repeated failure to confront the limits to growth is woven into the foundations of our collective life. In this first part of three, the Archdruid explores the political barriers that make a failure to meet the challenge of climate change the only option on the table. read more	10th December 2009
The First Decade: Mankind's race against time to halt climate change Although the date of 10 August 2003, is engraved on my brain, I've never found anyone else who instantly recalls it or has it fixed for its significance in the forefront of their mind. I still find that strange. I once thought that what happened that day would be a marker for everyone in Britain, that it would enter into the collective psyche almost as a piece of folklore, and yet it seems to have been instantly forgotten, expunged from the record of interest or importance. For virtually everyone reading this, I imagine, the date is meaningless.	10th December 2009
Twists and turns on the ‘Hope-to-Despair Express’ by Geoffrey Lean The Rutschbanen roller coaster.Photo courtesy wikimedia commonsCOPENHAGEN"The Danish capital's famous Tivoli gardens boasts an equally celebrated roller coaster. Built in 1914, it is the oldest all-wooden one still operating in the world; being at the climate summit here over the last two days has felt like taking as ride on it.In truth, the 15,000 people from over 190 nations attending the summit were always in for a series of stomach-wrenching ups and downs as the vital talks proceeded, with hope alternating with despair. But few expected that the roller coaster ride would start so violently and so soon.The summit opened with more optimism than I can remember for any similarly difficult negotiations over the last 40 years, with a widespread and growing belief that a worthwhile agreement to get global warming under control could be struck by over ...	10th December 2009
The research that might save us after Copenhagen Science has its work cut out for the next decade if we are to reach a low-carbon society. New Scientist finds the stepping stones	10th December 2009
U.S. sees robust climate talks, no "reparations" COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's top aides promised on Wednesday "robust" negotiations toward a global climate change deal this month, but firmly stated the United States does not owe the world "reparations" for centuries of carbon pollution.	10th December 2009
"I have a way" to unlock climate finance: Soros COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Billionaire financier George Soros told Reuters on Thursday he had found a path to unlock a Copenhagen stalemate on climate finance, using International Monetary Fund assets.	10th December 2009
Climate concerns put fuel focus back on uranium LONDON (Reuters) - Uranium, the silvery-white mineral that powers nuclear reactors, is capturing growing attention amid burgeoning demand for power from emerging nations and a scramble to curtail carbon emissions.	10th December 2009
Tax fraud loses EU carbon trading billions: Europol - AFP via Yahoo! News Tax fraudsters have targeted the EU's carbon emissions trading system, pocketing about five billion euros (7.4 billion dollars), the Europol police agency said Wednesday.	10th December 2009
Flooding, crop failures and drought " even if we cut back on emissions - The Scotsman THE most stringent measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will still leave hundreds of millions of people suffering crop failures, flooding and water shortages by the end	10th December 2009
FRANCE: Sarkozy - Unlikely Champion of Environmental Action PARIS, Dec 10 (IPS) - For a centre-right politician, best known for his law-and-order stance and tough immigration policies, French President Nicolas Sarkozy would seem an unlikely champion of environmental issues	10th December 2009
Climategate: Anatomy of a Public Relations Disaster The way that climate scientists have handled the fallout from the leaking of hacked e-mails is a case study in how not to respond to a crisis. But it also points to the need for researchers to operate with greater transparency and to provide more open access to data. BY FRED PEARCE	10th December 2009
Nine European Nations Plan Offshore Wind Supergrid in North Sea Nine European nations have agreed to develop a wind energy supergrid in the North Sea, a project leaders say will link at least nine nations currently developing offshore wind power to the continent's electricity system. While the nations have yet to allocate any funds, they pledged to meet in early 2010 to establish a timetable and plan. Hans Erik Kristofferson, head of the Danish national grid, Energinet, said the North Seas Countries Offshore Grid Initiative would allow existing and future wind farms to send electricity across national boundaries whenever it is needed. We re in the first phase now of something that could be quite huge, Kristofferson said.	10th December 2009
Failure at Copenhagen will be OK - poll - BigPond News A survey shows most Aussie CEOs think a failure to reach agreement at Copenhagen will not harm business.	10th December 2009
Islands, Left Off Copenhagen Globe, Fear a Planetary Pompeii - Bloomberg Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Island-nations raised their voices at United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen today, saying they feared a planetary Pompeii as a result of climate change if current treaty negotiations aren t more productive	10th December 2009
Competition Will BeThe End Of Us By Lionel Anet For the sake of our children, the first change we need to make is to see competition as destructive; this will release our real nature of cooperative activity and compassion to thrive	8th December 2009
Q&A: 'Economic Growth Is Making us Poorer' VITERBO, Italy, Dec 7 (IPS) - Dinner one evening when he was a kid put William Rees on track to becoming a sustainability pioneer. It was after a day at work on the family farm when he was nine or 10. He saw he had had a hand in growing everything on his plate. That brought a fascination with a connection to earth that would never leave him.	8th December 2009
How Hyper-Capitalism May Hobble the Copenhagen Summit Unless we re-think the export-oriented capitalism that's causing all of our climate problems, the Copenhagen conference will be nothing more than a Band-Aid.	8th December 2009
Climate denial industry is out to dupe the public Think environmentalists are stooges? You're the unwitting recruit of a hugely powerful oil lobby " I've got the proof Read the case notes for this article hereWhen you survey the trail of wreckage left by the climate emails crisis, three things become clear. The first is the tendency of those who claim to be the champions of climate science to minimise their importance. Those who have most to lose if the science is wrong have perversely sought to justify the secretive and chummy ethos that some of the emails reveal. If science is not transparent and accountable, it's not science.I believe that all supporting data, codes and programmes should be made available as soon as an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal. See also: Case Studies	8th December 2009
Why We Find it so Hard to Act Against Climate Change It should be easy to deal with climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus supported by very sound data; consensus across much of the religious and political spectrum and among businesses including the largest corporations in the world. The vast majority of people claim to be concerned. The targets are challenging, but they are achievable with existing technologies, and there would be plentiful profits and employment available for those who took up the challenge. read more See also: How voters' whims could scupper Copenhagen	8th December 2009
OIL: A Market Psychology of Fear? VANCOUVER, Canada, Dec 8 (IPS/TerraViva) - With or without a binding deal at the climate talks in Copenhagen this month, it seems the world may have to cut its oil consumption, as emerging geological and economic trends limit the availability and affordability of petroleum.	8th December 2009
Warming or not, we must end global oil economy - Asia News Network This month, leaders from all across the globe are in the Danish capital of Copenhagen for a conference on climate change that may end in a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto accord.	8th December 2009
World climate anomalies In the run-up to Copenhagen, the United Nations Environment Programme published a map of extreme weather events around the worldJenny RidleyFelicity Carus	8th December 2009
Feds put $40 million toward pine beetle problem - Summit Daily News DENVER - The U.S. Forest Service will funnel an additional $40 million to Rocky Mountain states where a tiny bug has killed more than 2 million acres of pine trees in what has been called one of the West's biggest natural disasters.	8th December 2009
Last decade 'the warmest on record' The past 10 years have been the warmest decade on record and this year has been one of the five hottest, scientists revealed today as negotiators attempt to make progress on a new international deal to combat climate change.	8th December 2009
SA crop yields slashed by extreme weather - ABC Online Extreme weather back in November has cut the expected crop yields of some South Australian farms by half.	8th December 2009
Heatwave hits citrus crops - ABC Online Heatwave hits citrus crops:A Renmark citrus grower says the heatwave that hit the region in October and November has wiped out most of his crop. Norm Hood says more than 98 per cent of his valencia and navel orange crop is on the ground, because the sunburnt stems could not hold the weight of the fruit.	8th December 2009
Plans in place to meet our green energy targets 'three times over' - The Scotsman SCOTLAND would meet its 2020 renewable energy targets three times over if all the schemes currently planned were granted permission.	8th December 2009
The papers that will carry the Copenhagen editorial Follow the links below to read the global editorial on each host news organisation's website Read the editorial In pictures: See also: Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'	8th December 2009
US climate agency declares CO2 public danger Environmental Protection Agency declaration allows it to impose emissions cuts without agreement of reluctant SenateThe Obama administration adopted its climate change plan B today, formally declaring carbon dioxide a public danger so that it can cut greenhouse gas emissions even without the agreement of a reluctant Senate.The timing of the announcement " in the opening hours of the UN's Copenhagen climate change summit " prevents Barack Obama from arriving at the talks without concrete evidence that America will do its bit to cut the emissions that cause global warming."Climate change has now become a household issue," said Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), adding that the evidence of climate change was real and increasingly alarming. See also: EPA's Carbon Decision Gives Obama Copenhagen Tool - Update1 - Bloomberg	8th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Negawatts and Smart Grids BERLIN, Dec 7 (IPS/TerraViva) - Electricity is indispensable to modern life, but its generation is responsible for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming and climate change.	8th December 2009
Activist Naomi Klein attacks the 'capitalisation of hope' "Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole and leave the tar sand in the land," said Nnimmo Bassy, Friends of the Earth International chief, in his message at the opening of the People's Summit, Klimaforum in Copenhagen last night.	8th December 2009
Britain: Massive climate protest demands real deal at Copenhagen December 5 " It feels like we're going to war , I overheard one teenager say to his friend. Such was the atmosphere of serious, creative resistance to government inaction on climate change that marked the London's December 5 Wave demonstration.	8th December 2009
Elizabeth May: A Response to Comments on East Anglia Emails Last week, in response to the hacked emails at East Anglia, Elizabeth May took the time to read every single email. Providing context and analysis, her report goes a long way, giving us more than just the cherry picked nuggets that skeptics have taken out of context and doggedly been holding on to. Here, she follows up with a response to the comments on her original posting...	8th December 2009
Hacked email climate scientists receive death threats CRU scientists receive torrents of abusive and threatening e-mails since leaks that began in mid-November 2009. From environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment NetworkTwo of the scientists involved in "Climategate" " the e-mail hacking incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK " have been emailed death threats since the contents of their private e-mails were leaked to the world. No further information can be revealed about these particular threats at present because they are currently under investigation with the FBI in the United States.Many other CRU scientists and their colleagues have received torrents of abusive and threatening e-mails since the leaks first began in mid-November 2009.	8th December 2009
Air fares to rise on carbon taxes - BBC News Including aviation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme will drive up the price of plane tickets, a report says.	8th December 2009
Jared Diamond Done Drunk the Kool-Aid Jared Diamond seems to have missed one of the central observations of his own _Collapse_ - that when societies actually avert collapse, the tend to do so with strong levels of prohibition and regulation. That is, Japan didn't ask the gun manufacturers to self-regulate, they prohibited the use of guns entirely. The reason the Dominican Republic is so much better off than Haiti isn't because people refined their logging practices, but because they restricted them. read more	8th December 2009
The Only Way Is Up Image Credit : Anja Niedringhaus It doesn t matter which way up Michel Jarraud (Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization) holds the temperature chart. The only way the trend can be understood is up . Looking at the temperature data from any of the major data sets around the world, it doesn t take a second to accept that the Earth is warming :- That doesn t stop rogue weather forecasters raining on the Climate Change parade :- [link]UN-Climate-Change-Conference%2C-Copenhagen"Statement-.php Apparently there's some kind of underground bush telegraph amongst amateur and semi-professional weather prophets.	8th December 2009

Global warming likely to be amplified by slow changes to Earth systems Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases.	21st December 2009
African leaf-eating monkeys are 'likely to be wiped out' by climate change (PhysOrg.com) -- Monkey species will become 'increasingly at risk of extinction' because of global warming, according to new research published this week.	21st December 2009
Tibetan Glaciers Are Retreating At An Alarming Rate By James HansenTibetan glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate over the past decade. Glacier changes depend on local weather, especially snowfall, so glacier retreat or advance fluctuates with time and place. Thus it is inevitable that some Tibetan glaciers advance over short periods, as has been reported. But overall, Tibetan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate	21st December 2009
Technology will save us...or not Technology will save us--it's the mantra heard around the world when it comes to climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and myriad other environmental and resource challenges. But, that mantra rarely comes with the proviso that technology often has unintended and even perverse consequences."Yes, yes," you will say, "we know that." Then, why, may I ask, is this almost never mentioned in the same speeches, op-ed pieces, and journal articles that tout the efficacy of one or another technology to definitively solve or at least help solve critical environmental and resource problems? It is because these pronouncements are polemics, or more properly, sermons meant to instruct us in the supposed invincibility of our technology.Let us take just one example of a technology that is so ubiquitous that people rarely even think about a world without it ...	21st December 2009
Drought could be worst for a century - Vietnam Net VietNamNet Bridge - About two billion cubic metres of water will be released from reservoirs to save winter-spring crops in northern regions from looming drought.	21st December 2009
Copenhagen: The Price Of The Atmosphere By Andrew GliksonThe EU pledges for fighting global warming US$10 billion is 0.5% of global entertainment and media spending, 0.7% of the US military expenditure for 2008 and 1.4% of the US banks bailout	18th December 2009
Computer simulation strengthens link between climate change and release of subsea methane (PhysOrg.com) -- A first-of-its-kind computer simulation that mirrors real-world observations of methane bubbling up from a seabed in the Arctic Ocean provides further evidence that warming oceans may unleash vast quantities of methane trapped in hydrate deposits buried beneath the seafloor.	18th December 2009
Rooibos tea farmers on the front line of climate change When Mma Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of the best selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency has a particularly troublesome case to consider she sits down and pours herself a soothing cup of bush tea.	18th December 2009
BANGLADESH: Food Security in Great Peril from Climate Change COPENHAGEN, Dec 18 (IPS/TerraViva) - Unless the world comes to its aid, Bangladesh says the vulnerability of its agriculture sector to climate change could spell severe consequences for its millions of people, who stand to lose their main source of livelihood.	18th December 2009
Birds staying north for the winter - Parksville Qualicum Beach News There's something odd about some of the local bird life in Oceanside, says Sandra Gray, and she wants volunteers at this weekend's Christmas Bird Count to keep an eye out.	18th December 2009
How Effective Are Renewables, Really? The last 10 years have seen massive amounts of taxpayer money invested in renewable energies in Germany. Growth in the industry has been rapid. But has the development been universally good? SPIEGEL ONLINE takes a look at those renewables with promise -- and those which might flop	18th December 2009
U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared a Global Warming Crime Scene" 4193040570_9a3aaaef55.jpg Hours before President Obama leaves for the Copenhagen climate summit, Greenpeace activists deployed an emergency response team to declare the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters a Climate Policy Hostage Area, and a Global Warming Crime Scene. The Chamber has spent millions of dollars on misinformation campaigns and lobbyists working to derail Congressional efforts to pass climate and energy legislation. The lobby group's efforts have therefore created a primary obstacle in the international negotiations, hampering the United States ability to commit to a science-based emissions reduction target and a fair, ambitious and binding treaty in Copenhagen.Greenpeace activists arrived at the Chamber's office building, which is directly across from the White House, in a fleet of climate emergency vehicles, including four squad cars from the Climate Crime Unit and an ambulance from the Climate Emergency Response Unit. ...	18th December 2009
Warning as climate deal emerges A deal is emerging at the UN climate change talks but there are fears it will not prevent a 3C (5.4F) rise in temperature.	18th December 2009
Better to have no deal at Copenhagen than one that spells catastrophe | Naomi Klein The only offer on the table in Copenhagen would condemn the developing world to poverty and suffering in perpetuityOn the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3"3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger", and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people".Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale A global goal of about 2C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development."And yet that is precisely what Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed to do when he stopped off in Paris on his way to Copenhagen ...	18th December 2009
Kyoto Extension May Be Transition to New Climate Deal - Update2 - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations envoys will probably decide to extend the Kyoto Protocol this week and merge it after 2012 into a broader climate-protection deal that includes the U.S. and China, the head of carbon at BofA Merrill Lynch said.	18th December 2009
Breaking: LEAKED final draft of Copenhagen treaty declaration [Update: I've added in analysis of the key text] With only hours left in the Copenhagen climate treaty talks we have obtained an early version of the final agreement' draft text. President Obama's speech wrapped up a few minutes ago with nothing new announced. But as long as this session continues there remains hope that world leaders can deliver a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal. Things continue to evolve and according to the draft version of the agreement, the major issue of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions cuts by what year, remains unanswered. As it stands, the text states ...	18th December 2009
Three in four UK voters believe climate change is important problem - Guardian Unlimited New Guardian/ICM survey shows Britons overwhelmingly reject view that Copenhagen conference is panicking about an exaggerated threat Three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll. Voters overwhelmingly reject the view of climate change sceptics that world leaders ...	18th December 2009
Famous Comma Slows Climate Talks as Punctuation Splits Envoys - Bloomberg Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A single contentious comma inserted into a paragraph of a United Nations climate deal two years ago is again causing squabbles among delegates from 193 nations in Copenhagen devising a method to fight global warming.	18th December 2009
Study forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold Hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. Global sea levels could rise by up to 9m in the next few hundred years, even if the world manages to stabilise average temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new study.In this scenario, hundreds of millions of people around the world would be affected as low low-lying coastal areas became inundated. See also: Sea level rise may exceed worst expectations - Nature	17th December 2009
Evo Morales: Trillions for war, peanuts to save the planet Below is the transcript from US radio show Democracy Now! of Bolivian President Evo Morales's December 16 speech to the United Nations climate change summit at Copenhagen.	17th December 2009
Chavez calls for system change at Copenhagen: If the climate was a bank, they would have bailed it out already The Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when [Australian climate minister] Penny Wong's speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation , Lenore Taylor wrote in the December 17 Australian.	17th December 2009
Throwing our energy at impossible dreams... "as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold" read more	17th December 2009
The Copenhagen Tea Party The American Tea Party phenomenon unfortunately has a long arm, reaching all the way to the international climate negotiations currently underway in Copenhagen, Denmark. With their outrageous signs and over-the-top rhetoric, the Tea Party claims can be easily dismissed as fringe players, but they are nevertheless playing a role in blocking action in Washington on the issue of climate change. This is something the fossil fuel industry and their think tank network are very aware of and are using to their full advantage. One need not look any further than the notorious Americans for Prosperity, one of the leading groups organizing Tea Party attacks on healthcare reform, and now climate solutions.	17th December 2009
World will heat more sharply from 2010, warn scientists - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Another steep temperature rise is on the horizon, following the warmest decade since records began, scientists have warned.	17th December 2009
Loopholes in climate deal could render it useless The devil is in the detail, and a deal to slash emissions by 20 per cent could in fact increase them by 10 per cent	17th December 2009
Sugar Production Drops 9.6% in India as Drought Damages Crop - Bloomberg Mills produced 1.7 million metric tons, down from 1.88 million tons a year ago, as drought hurt the cane crop and a price dispute delayed crushing, the official said. He didn t want to be identified as the information was not public. Mills reported lower sugar recovery than a year earlier, he said.	17th December 2009
Peak Oil, Peak Food By Aetius Romulous The single greatest challenge facing our modern economic food chain is the insanely unnatural low cost of food to the consumer, making the simple and necessary act of eating dependent on food that is almost free. The global edifice of cheap food rests on the volatility of a single input; the exponentially depleting supply of easy, cheap oil. We are gorging ourselves at the $1.99 all-you-can-eat oil buffet. Food is too cheap, a correction is coming, and there is not a damn thing anybody can do about it	17th December 2009
Global Warming : New Record Just when is November hotter than July ? Well, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you would expect November to be warmer than July. But, globally ? This week's NASA GISS update of global temperature anomalies , the difference between now and pre-industrial figures, shows that, worldwide, November 2009 has been the hottest November ever in the instrumental record. What can I say ? It's warming up, folks ! And you d better believe it. And we do know why, whatever the newspapers say to sell editions.	17th December 2009
African climate hubs could drive clean energy research - SciDev.net [COPENHAGEN] Africa needs new sources of clean energy, including a mix of wind and solar energy technologies, and should introduce 'climate innovation centres' to speed their uptake, energy experts have said.	17th December 2009
New climate deal may have to wait The Danish presidency of the climate summit in Copenhagen suggests a deal may have to wait until next year.	17th December 2009
ClimateSpin: Using the Stolen Emails to Cripple Policy Standard cover.jpg The stolen email narrative is beginning to take shape, in a way that is both disingenuous and damaging, and a prime example is attached and linked here. This article, by Stephen Hayward in the Weekly Standard, is a mash of good information and bad analysis - a strident overstatement of the case "proven" by the emails that were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and released last month. It also seems to provide a case study for how the emails will be used to undermine action by people who are not well-informed about climate science and can be misled with a few sensible-sounding references.	17th December 2009
Is Too Little Better Than Too Late? Right now, on two different fronts, political progressives face a horrible choice: Accept a severely compromised political agreement or stick to their guns and run the risk of getting nothing. Sure, this is a recurring question for activists and advocates of all stripes but"unlike the so-called "death tax""in these two cases the question really is a matter of life or death. read more	17th December 2009
Copenhagen: World leaders 'face public fury' if agreement proves impossible Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and ChinaWorld leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public "fury" if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. "People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order," said Miliband. "People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible."The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997.	17th December 2009
George W. Bush’s man in Copenhagen by Jonathan Hiskes COPENHAGEN"To understand how global climate negotiations reached such a troubled state before the U.N. talks began here last week, one could do worse than to look to James L. Connaughton.James L. Connaughton headed George W. Bush's Council for Environmental QualityFile photo / Wikimedia CommonsFor eight years, Connaughton was the top White House environmental adviser to President George W. Bush. So when I saw him at a business summit in Copenhagen last Friday, I asked him about the Bush administration's responsibility for the climate quagmire"the fact that negotiators haven t gotten past disagreements that were evident a decade ago. Look, I m looking to the future, he said in a sit-down interview.	17th December 2009
Battle for climate data approaches tipping point Behind the "climategate" headlines, there are real struggles over access to climate records	17th December 2009
Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change Poem - CBS News - blog Al Gore Pens Apocalyptic Climate Change PoemCBS News (blog)So Sad! by Gumbercules54 December 17, 2009 12:15 AM EST The people that deny global warming, do it because it's easier to do that than do something about it ...and more	17th December 2009
Resisting the Dangerous Allure of Global Warming Technofixes As the world weighs how to deal with warming, the idea of human manipulation of climate systems is gaining attention. Yet beyond the environmental and technical questions looms a more practical issue: How could governments really commit to supervising geoengineering schemes for centuries? BY DIANNE DUMANOSKI	17th December 2009
Cop-enhagen: Preemptive Mass Arrests in Context of History of Danes' Movement The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media have been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so. read more	16th December 2009
The Road: A film that every one of us needs to see As the credits roll and we fall stricken and tear-stained out onto the dark streets of Soho, it seems fitting that I am accompanied by the director of the second bleakest film ever made " Franny Armstrong, creator of the The Age of Stupid. The bleakest film ever made we have just endured together, over two relentless, harrowing hours, and are now so emotionally raw that we know not where we are going, nor do we much care. It doesn't seem to matter. "Oh my God," moans Franny, repeatedly, head in hands.	16th December 2009
To Fight Global Warming and Prevent Hunger, We Need to Change How We Grow Our Food Unless we control global climate change, caused in part by industrial farming, agricultural output across the world is likely to plummet.	16th December 2009
Copenhagen: why can't we write off Third World debt at the same as dealing with the environment? - Telegraph As climate change negotiations get into full swing ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, debate over the basis upon which developed countries should compensate developing countries for their historic emissions intensifies.	16th December 2009
Poll: Action on climate will heat up economy, jobs - The Associated Press WASHINGTON — More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	16th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: The Many Lives of the Tobin Tax BERLIN, Dec 15 (Tierramérica**) - In the decades since 1972, when Nobel laureate economist James Tobin (1918-2002) first proposed it, the idea of a tax on currency speculation has resurfaced and disappeared many times, according to the economic tides. See also: Climate conference: 'Make bankers pay for deal'	16th December 2009
50 reasons why global warming isn't natural A British newspaper today published "100 reasons why global warming is natural". We take a quick look at the first 50 of its claims, and debunk each one See also: The Daily Hoaxpress ?	16th December 2009
Are the CRU data suspect ? An objective assessment. Kevin Wood, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington Eric Steig, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington In the wake of the CRU e-mail hack, the suggestion that scientists have been hiding the raw meteorological data that underpin global temperature records has appeared in the media. For example, New York Times science writer John Tierney wrote, It is not unreasonable to give outsiders a look at the historical readings and the adjustments made by experts Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. The implication is that something secretive and possibly nefarious has been afoot in the way data have been handled, and that the validity of key data products (especially those produced by CRU) is suspect on these grounds.	16th December 2009
The proteststers offer the best hope at Copenhagen At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group of angry black-clad teenage protesters who were carrying spray cans started quoting statistics to me about how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can safely absorb. (It's 350 parts per million they pointed out, before sucking their teeth.) Before that, I saw a couple in a pantomime cow costume being attacked by the police, who accused them of throwing stones with their hooves.	16th December 2009
NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research - w/ Video (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.	16th December 2009
The Latest From Copenhagen: U.S. Undermining Effort to Curb Deforestation "Basically the trees that Barack Obama is talking about planting are meant to fuel U.S. cars."	16th December 2009
US to be allowed to buy its way out of greenhouse gas emissions cuts - Times Online The United States will be allowed to buy its way out of adopting a more stringent target on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in a compromise being brokered by Britain.	16th December 2009
It's World War In 2030 If Obama Fails Climate Test ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- Obama the game-changer saves Copenhagen? Uses his new Nobel "Just War" doctrine, takes command, unifies world in a "Just War" on climate change, the biggest economic issue facing the world in the 21st century? Maybe, maybe not. But if he doesn't, Copenhagen fails. America is the game-fixer in the do-nothing scenario. Worse: Population growth will eventually outstrip depleting resources. Without a long-term economic strategy and a leader, we may not survive into the next century. Yes, if Obama's "Just War" doctrine becomes a "Just War on Climate Change" he is the game-changer that not only honors Alfred Nobel's legacy, but also means Copenhagen would be a success going forward. However, developing nations fear they'll get a token commitment from a nation that just bailed out its failed banking system with trillions. They fear we'll simply commit to some vague emission limits that help Wall Street bankers build a new trillion-dollar short-term cap-and-trade system with toothless enforcement rules that invite all nations to game the system. And they fear America's do-nothing scenario will leave the rest of the world worse off till the next summit, exposed and at risk, as the impact of climate change pushes us closer to a game-ending Black Swan catastrophe. See also: Recipe for Failure	15th December 2009
This Is About Us The talks at Copenhagen are not just about climate change. They represent a battle to redefine humanity.	15th December 2009
Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn't listen | Madeleine Bunting Copenhagen must face up to the decade lost in curbing volatile finances, corporate power and the pillage of resourcesTen years ago, protesters gathered in a port city; politicians arrived for intense backroom negotiations; the city's hotels were booked out by representatives of thousands of NGOs from all over the world. In 1999 Seattle, like Copenhagen this week, was a big international meeting attempting to exert some governance over globalisation. There's a fitting symmetry that these two meetings bookend this decade. For while the Seattle protests were deliberately misrepresented and widely misunderstood at the time, their agenda has proved unanswerable. Copenhagen is belatedly grappling with just one aspect of Seattle's unfinished business.For those for whom Seattle is a hazy memory, let's recap.	15th December 2009
A Copenhagen activist speaks: 'I was afraid I would go back to the cages' | Tomas Lundstrm Tomas Lundström was held for over 11 hours without charge in the Vallby 'prison', where he says police used violent tacticsI came to Copenhagen to protest against the undemocratic and ineffective climate talks and to stand up for climate justice. On Saturday, I joined together with 100,000 other people to march to the Bella centre. I was in a section of the march calling for "System Change Not Climate Change", together with people from all over the world who are sick of fake corporate solutions like carbon trading, and want to see real climate solutions that deliver justice to the global south.Not long into the event, the police suddenly cut off a large section of the march " about 1,000 people " for no obvious reason. See also: Copenhagen's policing by design | Naomi Klein	15th December 2009
Trusting Nature as the Climate Referee - International Herald Tribune An idea for a tax that is linked to the future warming of the earth.	15th December 2009
Hopes of global emissions deal at Copenhagen begin to fade Gordon Brown will travel to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen tomorrow, two days ahead of most other world leaders, in an attempt to to break the deadlock over a new global-warming agreement.	15th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE-CUBA: "Energy is an Instrument of Power" COPENHAGEN, Dec 13 (IPS) - "Energy is an instrument of power. Whoever has energy, controls the world," Cuban expert Luis Bérriz said in an address to Klimaforum, the civil society meeting being held in parallel to the UN conference on climate change in the Danish capital.	15th December 2009
Document shows Canada removing emission restrictions harper_stephen.jpg As if Canada's performance on climate were not alread the second worst among all countries surveyed by GermanWatch for the Global Climate Change Performance Index (we were aced for last place by Saudi Arabia), new documents discovered by the CBC show the Conservative government actually looking to WEAKEN the pathetic greenhouse gas emission limits that barely restrain the Alberta oil and gas sector. The government, which has presented no plan to meet its humiliating target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, is now leaning toward giving the oil and gas sector even more room to pollute, leaving the responsibility for reducing emissions (should the country ever decide to do so) on individuals and businesses outside the industry that is primarily responsible.	15th December 2009
The Rear Guard: 1,100 Lobbyists Wait to Block Copenhagen Success climate lobbyists.gif Thanks to the consistently brilliant work of the Center for Public Integrity, there is now an extensive online resource searchable for all the special interest groups and companies lobbying Congress on climate change (and on other issues). The database is searchable by lobbyist, sector, time frame, or money (you can type in a dollar amount and find lobbying expenses at that amount or higher). These are the people who will work to sabotage any reasonable agreement that happens (against the odds?) to emerge from this negotiation. Inspired by the deniersphere (which will argue that no action is necessary) and funded by fossil fuel industries that must, by necessity, roll back their businesses if the world is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they will be determined to stop the U.S.	15th December 2009
Critically Thinking Copenhagen Everyone is talking about climate change and Copenhagen, so I suppose I should be...The latest dither around the topic involves back and forths between adherents and deniers of the climate change hypothesis and a certain expose of emails supposedly refuting the reality of climate change and a plethora of rebuttals to those emails. read more	15th December 2009
Chinese farmers struggle with climate change ZHONGZHUANG, China (Reuters) - Across the brown hills of Zhongzhuang Village in northwest China, farmers count the costs of a changing climate in lost crops, dry wells and lives weighed down by poverty.	15th December 2009
Bank of England urged to put climate scientist on MPC MPC needs green advocate, says former scientific adviser Economic policy must not overlook low-carbon projectsThe government's former chief scientific adviser is calling for a climate scientist to be given a seat on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, saying the bank currently operates without regard for the environment.The proposal today from Sir David King, scientific adviser under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is known to have the support in principle of some MPC members.King also criticises the Treasury under Alistair Darling, saying "it is pulling in the wrong direction" and not doing enough to promote a green economy.	15th December 2009
Long Term Climate Finance: FOUND! by Steve Kretzmann We are pleased to report from Copenhagen that after years of searching, long term funding for climate finance has been foundhellip;but the question is whether we can pry it out of Big Oil and Coal's hands. The pledge by G20 nations championed by the US is potentially a huge new source of funds for developed country finance obligations that can and should be shifted to helping, rather than harming the climate. Leaders have already agreed that we must phase these subsidies out " the questions are: by when and where does the money go?How much money will be freed up by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies in the developed countries?	15th December 2009
No time for tears in Copenhagen by Bill McKibben COPENHAGEN"I ve spent the last few years working more than fulltime to organize the first big global grassroots climate change campaign. That's meant shutting off my emotions most of the time"this crisis is so terrifying that when you let yourself feel too deeply it can be paralyzing. Hence, much gallows humor, irony, and sheer work.This afternoon I sobbed for an hour, and I m still choking a little. I got to Copenhagen's main Lutheran Cathedral just before the start of a special service designed to mark the conference underway for the next week.	15th December 2009
Australia accused of cooking the carbon books - ABC via Yahoo!7 News The Australian Government has been accused of accounting fraud in the reporting of its carbon emissions.	15th December 2009
The Hague is a place in Copenhagen - Land Use Loopholes and Hot Air Again - New Matilda The atmosphere on the Danish streets is more than a little tense as we move into the second week of negotiations. A small but notable minority of insiders are still hopeful at the prospect of a legally binding treaty, but one can only imagine that the last minute horsetrading that would be necessary may not [...]	15th December 2009
Getting the Story Right: The Peak Oil vs. Climate Change Inanity Continues The IEA has pretty much conceeded peak oil, announcing that growth to meet demand in the coming decades will come from entirely mythical sources. Ok, they didn't say that, what they said in the latest World Energy Outlook was that the majority of oil production by 2030 will be coming from "fields yet to be developed or found." But what that means is "we're hoping someone with magic powers will come and reverse the long-stand trend towards decline in oil discovery." read more	15th December 2009
European taxpayers lose 5bn in carbon trading fraud Europol says EU's Emission Trading System in peril Fraudsters could target gas and electricity markets next The European Union has probably lost at least 5bn (£4.5bn) to VAT fraud related to carbon trading and there is a risk that the criminals will now shift their attention to Europe's electricity and gas markets, according to Europol.The news will cause further embarrassment for European governments negotiating at the Copenhagen climate summit and trying to persuade other parts of the world to sign up to carbon trading as a way of reducing emissions.The Guardian recently revealed that the Danish government had been forced, on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, to rush through an emergency law making it impossible for criminal gangs to reclaim huge amounts of VAT on fraudulent trades they were making on Europe's various carbon exchanges.At the time, the Danes refused to estimate ...	15th December 2009
The idea behind our global climate simulator See what will happen to the world by specifying the year when emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafterThe idea behind our new global carbon emissions interactive is that it does for global climate policy what our quick carbon calculator does for individuals. You specify the year when global emissions will peak and the annual rate at which they decline thereafter and it tells you what will happen. For each scenario, three graphs appear: the first showing emissions between now and 2100; the second showing how those emissions will change the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ...	15th December 2009
US left behind in technological race to fight climate change | George Monbiot A speech by the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, shows how America's unquestioning belief in the free market has held back technological innovationI have just been watching the tragic sight of a fallen giant flailing around on its back like a beetle, desperately trying to turn itself over.The occasion was a speech by the US secretary of energy, Steven Chu. He is, of course, a Nobel physicist, brilliant, modest, likeable, a delightful contrast to the thugs employed by the previous administration. But his speech was, in the true sense of the word, pathetic: it moved me to pity.Yesterday afternoon in Copenhagen " where the UN climate talks are entering their second week " Professor Chu unveiled what would have been a series of inspiring innovations, had he made this speech 15 years ago.	15th December 2009
Under the icy north lurks a carbon bomb - Boston Globe North of Canada's capital, underneath an endless expanse of spruce, pine, and birch, ticks what some scientists are calling a carbon bomb: Peat.	15th December 2009
U.S. Business Interests Suspected in 'Fabricated' Climate Scandal The emails that have right-wingers frothing aren't scandalous. The issue is who hacked the scientists' computers, and what they had to gain from undermining their research.	15th December 2009
World Opinion on the Environment - Foreign Relations A majority in every country polled says that global warming is a problem or a threat and that governments should give it a high priority, while only small minorities say it is not a problem. Despite these numbers, people tend to underestimate how much other people are concerned about climate change.	15th December 2009
Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea Governments from the developed world will never come up with enough money to help poorer nations adapt to global warming and implement renewable energy technologies. The solution may lie in using a modest allocation of government funds to spur private sector investment in green energy projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. BY ORVILLE SCHELL	15th December 2009
AP Poll: Greater share of US public believes global warming action will help economy - Canoe Money WASHINGTON - More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.	15th December 2009
Monckton lies to AP, denies he called clean energy advocates Hitler youth Climate-change-deniers-To-001.jpg Despite video evidence, Christopher Monckton stated in an interview yesterday with Associated Press: "It was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the audience." It would appear that a more appropriate title than "climate denier" for Monckton, might be "reality denier." For Monckton to now deny what he has admitted repeatedly on tape as doing, shows just how willing he is to bend the truth. Here's the video (again) of Monckton calling young climate change campaigners the "Hitler youth": After lying to Associated Press about his Hitler youth comments, Monckton then proceeded to compare the climate activists to Adolf Hitler's fascist army, saying the activists were attempting to stifle free speech, using tactics "last seen here when the Nazis occupied Denmark." <!--break-->	15th December 2009
U.S. does "not anticipate" tougher carbon target COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The United States does not anticipate sharpening its target to cut carbon emissions by 2020, said Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, on Tuesday.	15th December 2009
Paddy Power offers odds on polar bears | Leo Hickman Ireland's largest bookmaker is now taking bets on the survival of endangered speciesI recently saw a mail order catalogue for a wine company with a picture of three penguins standing on a small, thin sheet of sea ice with the strapline: Disappearing fast " fine wine winter sale 2009. What were they thinking?The same thought crossed my mind when I heard that Paddy Power, Ireland's largest bookmaker, has announced that it is now taking bets of the estimated global polar bear population on December 31, 2011.The current WWF estimate places the polar bear population between 20,000 and 25,000 however Paddy Power's odds predict a sharp decline in their population over the next two years and are offering odds of 13/8 that the number dips between 15,000 to 20,000 With global warming now generally agreed to be the most significant threat to the ...	15th December 2009
Copenhagen loopholes could mean rise in emissions, report warns Climate summit must close loopholes or greenhouse gases may increase by 10% in 2020 compared with 1990 levels, says Friends of the EarthFour major loopholes in the Copenhagen draft texts could see carbon emissions increase by 2020, rather than plunge as scientists say must happen to avert dangerous global warming. That is the conclusion of a new analysis by Friends of the Earth, who argue the loopholes would cause greenhouse gases to rise by 10% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, if they are not closed in the final four days of negotiations at the UN summit.The most serious loophole is known as "hot air".	15th December 2009
Denialism and the power of fear by Jay Inslee There are two types of pesky partisans on the loose right now who refuse to accept reality due to their ideological blindness"birthers and global warming deniers. This realization struck me last week as I listened to Republicans argue that we should let the world boil over, all while they dithered over reading silly emails written between a few climate scientists. The members of the Flat Earth Society may be out of ideas, but they are not out of denials.All the shouting in the world can t refute the fact that the science of climate change is sound.iStock PhotoThe Flat Earth Society is, of course, the climatic analog of the birthers movement, determined to undermine Americans confidence in clear facts about climate change.	15th December 2009

Mainstream media misdirected in stolen email story Unless you live under a rock, you have undoubtedly heard by now about the emails stolen from a computer server belonging to the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Britain. This hack job was committed by an unknown individual or group who illegally infiltrated the university's system, stole thousands of emails from a select group of climate scientists spanning over a decade, and then published a subset for the world to see, ostensibly to prove that global warming is a hoax. While the scientific evidence demonstrating that climate change poses a very real threat to our health, economy, and planet has never been clearer, an army of climate deniers has used its extensive echo chamber to manufacture a scandal out of this rather bland collection of email banter. See also: Copenhagen conspiracies: Russian computer used An Open Letter To Congress From US Scientists On Climate Change And Recently Stolen Emails	7th December 2009
Editorial | The truth about climate: Copenhagen isn't enough Politicians are rarely accused of focusing too much on the long term. Tomorrow's headlines are always in view. In that context there is already something to celebrate from this week's global summit in Copenhagen.Not long ago a gathering to discuss carbon emissions would be attended by junior environment ministers with limited clout inside their own governments. No longer. This week climate change commands the attention of world leaders.That is where the good news starts to run out. With so much diplomatic pressure on the negotiations, a commitment to fairly substantial cuts in carbon emissions is inevitable. But a deal is unlikely to match the recommendations of the UN inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC), and it will not be a binding treaty.	7th December 2009
Nick Cohen | This anti-green backlash is a gift to brutish regimes If you think climate change is a lie, your logic will lead you into the arms of Putin and ChávezAnyone who knows the history of backlash populism, from Nixon and Agnew onwards, will find the new fury at the environmental taxes comfortingly familiar. From the Palin rallies in the American Midwest via the baking suburbs of Brisbane to the screaming blogs of the English Tory party, the chants about climate change are the same. The liberal elite, the so-called experts, the unelected, unaccountable grandees, who poison our children's minds through their control of the schools, foist their values on us through their courtier newspapers and television stations, take our taxes and use them to fund their weird minority causes, are at it again.	7th December 2009
Study: Earth more sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought In the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.	7th December 2009
Points of view What are the arguments used by climate sceptics?	7th December 2009
Reserves are bunk Henry Ford is famous for having once said, "History is more or less bunk." He was, in fact, attacking tradition in an age of rapid technological and social change. Almost a century later we have a less ambitious observation which may not achieve the broad visceral appeal of Ford's statement, but one which may turn out have a good deal of importance, to wit: Oil and natural gas reserve numbers are more or less bunk.Let me introduce you to B. J. Doyle, vice president of operations for a small Houston-based oil and natural gas exploration company. Doyle's views on the oil and gas business have been on display for more than a year now at The Oil Drum, a site famous for its technical prowess and breadth of coverage when it comes to energy-related issues.	7th December 2009
Bill McKibben: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization - The Huffington Post Climate change is not like any other issue we've ever dealt with. The adversary here is not Republicans, or socialists, or deficits, or taxes, or misogyny, or racism. The adversary here is physics. See also: Greenhouse gas cuts just 'token gestures' - Independent Copenhagen emissions targets not enough to avert catastrophic warming - Times Online	7th December 2009
Coal throbs at the heart of India growth engine KORBA, India (Reuters) - A thin coat of coal dust covers everything from trees to houses in Korba, a coal mining town in central India which lies at the heart of the country's struggle to balance economic growth with climate change concerns.	7th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Youth See Their Future in the Balance COPENHAGEN, Dec 6 (IPS/TerraViva) - Young people from 44 countries are demanding that world leaders take decisive action on climate change. The time for talk is over, they declared at the end of a weeklong Children's Climate Forum here.	7th December 2009
'In danger' - BBC News Inuit warn climate change will hit way of life	7th December 2009
Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten 1.3 billion Asians - Channel NewsAsia KATHMANDU: More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate, threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent.	7th December 2009
Yellowstone a petri dish for climate change - Los Angeles Times Los Angeles TimesYellowstone a petri dish for climate changeLos Angeles TimesSpasm Geyser is one of hundreds at Yellowstone -- including Old Faithful -- that may be affected by global warming. Park officials worry that receding ...and more	7th December 2009
Climate summit: Nearly half the world will suffer from water shortages 'within 30 years' - Daily Telegraph Global leaders gathering at the Copenhagen climate change summit urgently need to address the fact that 40pc of the world will suffer from water shortages within 30 years, according to the chief executive of Suez Environnement, Europe's second biggest water company.	7th December 2009
A Direct Tax On Fossil Fuel Is What The World Needs Urgently A direct tax on fossil fuel will reduce the indiscriminate manner in which agricultural goods are being traded. I dont see any justification in importing Washington apples from America, while the US imports Chinese apples. I dont see any economic justification in importing oranges to India all the way from Chile, while the Indian oranges go rotting	7th December 2009
Leading article: One world, one agenda The world has already changed. Whatever is agreed or not agreed at the summit on climate change that begins in Copenhagen tomorrow, momentous change has already occurred.	7th December 2009
World newspapers unite on climate change - New Vision CBC.caWorld newspapers unite on climate changeNew VisionThe joint editorial, also run by The New Vision, points out that the facts on global warming have started to speak for themselves: 11 of the past 14 years ...World Concerns About Climate Change Dwindle - SurveyNew York TimesCopenhagen: the Climate SummitBoston Globe"Climate Gate" Casts Cloud on Change MeetCBS NewsSydney Morning Herald -Examiner.com -RadioFreeEurope/RadioLibertyall 2,696	7th December 2009
'Until the West makes sacrifices, nothing will change' Capturing the reality of climate change " stripping away the political point scoring and scientific sophistry to focus on its real, human impact " has become almost impossible. Nevertheless, Martin Parr, a British documentary photographer, accepted the challenge from Oxfam to do just that.	7th December 2009
Blair is paid thousands of pounds to 'endorse' a fossil-fuel power plant Tony Blair has triggered an outcry on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit by endorsing a fossil-fuel power plant that is owned by an Azerbaijan oligarch.	7th December 2009
The Wave climate change demo Thousands of people joined a climate change march in central London calling for world leaders to agree a deal to protect the environment at their summit in Copenhagen	7th December 2009
Book Report: 'Blessed Unrest' A determined environmental activist explores a book proposing that community action can overpower elites.	7th December 2009
Copenhagen must be a turning point. Our children won't forgive us if we fail | Gordon Brown We need to build a low carbon economy across the world, with a deal that helps developing nations and ensures trustThroughout history human progress has arisen from the dream of achieving far-reaching change even when people have said it was beyond our grasp, and from the struggle to overcome obstacles even when they seem insurmountable.Today we face a global challenge whose solution, for decades until now, has appeared beyond our reach " impossible, unaffordable and unworkable.But catastrophic climate change is no more a matter of untameable fate than slavery, women's oppression, mass unemployment or nuclear war. And over the next two weeks we have the chance to come together, as a truly global community, to take the first decisive action needed to change its course.	7th December 2009
Climate change: the eco-socialist solution The following article is from the soon-to-be published, updated What Resistance Stands For manifesto. Resistance branches around the country will be launching this exciting new document, and selling it at Walk Against Warming rallies on December 12.	7th December 2009
'Butler' De Boer Resigned to Danish Climate Summit Shortcomings - Bloomberg 'Butler' De Boer Resigned to Danish Climate Summit ShortcomingsBloomberg6 (Bloomberg) -- On the eve of the climate summit in Copenhagen, Yvo de Boer, the man shepherding United Nations efforts to forge a global warming deal, ...and more	7th December 2009
U.S.: Climate Policy Derailed by Corporate Interests BOSTON, Dec 6 (IPS/TerraViva) - As the U.S. climate delegation arrives in Copenhagen nearly empty-handed, watchdog groups back at home say they know why: a political system gone astray due to the influence of huge amounts of corporate cash.	7th December 2009
Climate fears on rise: BBC poll - BBC News A BBC World Service poll finds that concern about climate change is higher now than a decade ago.	7th December 2009
China minister eyes date for peak carbon emissions: report - SpaceDaily LONDON, Dec 7 (AFP) Dec 07, 2009 China's greenhouse gas emissions will peak between 2030 and 2040, the country's science and technology minister said Monday, as crunch talks on climate change were set to get under way in Copenhagen.	7th December 2009
Obama's Climate Push Plays Catch-Up With Corporate Lobbyists - Bloomberg Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has given fresh impetus to climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen, corporate leaders supporting an agreement to control greenhouse-gas emissions are pressing anew for action.	7th December 2009
IPCC Working Group 1 Responds on Stolen Emails For the Record: Working Group One of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put out an official response to the East Anglia University email thefts: In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientificcommunity and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased,open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes. The complete text is below and the document is attached. <!--break-->Bern, 4. December 2009Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) firmly standsbehind the conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the community of researchersand its individuals providing the scientific basis, and the procedures of IPCC Assessments.Comments on blogs and in the media about the contents of a large number of private emails stolenfrom the Climatic Research Unit ...	6th December 2009
The story of cap and trade: a short video on what is wrong with emissions trading The Story of Cap Trade (below) is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Cap and trade is also variously described as carbon trading'' and emissions trading . In Australia, the federal Labor government is trying to push a variation of this through the Senate called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme .	6th December 2009
Key dates in the story of a warming planet - The Associated Press Telegraph.co.ukKey dates in the story of a warming planetThe Associated Press... global warming "is already happening now." 1988 " UN creates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a clearinghouse for climate science. ...Copenhagen climate summit: history of climate changeTelegraph.co.ukall 101	6th December 2009
Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanent - The Associated Press Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanentThe Associated PressWASHINGTON " Cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing, government and academic scientists said Friday. ...and more	6th December 2009
To really save the planet, stop going green - Washington Post To really save the planet, stop going greenWashington PostAs President Obama heads to Copenhagen next week for global warming talks, there's one simple step Americans back home can take to help out: ...and more	6th December 2009
Leading article: An unwelcome distraction - Independent In calling for an investigation into claims that researchers at the University of East Anglia manipulated their findings in a way that strengthened the case for man-made climate change, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, is doing absolutely the right thing. The accusations have to be addressed seriously.	6th December 2009
The Most Surprising Results of Global Warming - LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News At the United Nations meeting on climate change next week, scientists will be discussing some of the potentially devastating effects of global warming, such as rising temperatures, melting ice caps and rising sea levels in the near future. But Earth's changing climate is already wreaking havoc in some very weird ways. So gird yourself for such strange effects as savage wildfires, disappearing ...	6th December 2009
Timber line vegetation shifting due to climate change - Press Trust of India Pithoragarh, Dec 5 (PTI) Timber Line (vegetation line) in Uttarakhand is shifting toward Himalaya, a senior state official said today.	6th December 2009
Copenhagen, Climate Files, Hot Sharks - International Herald Tribune A roundup on climate files, the treaty, angry Copenhagen prostitutes and a study claiming sharks are getting more aggressive in warming waters.	6th December 2009
Migration is the only escape from rising tides of climate change in Bangladesh - Guardian Unlimited Some 60% of Bangladesh is at risk of rising sea levels, contaminating fish stock, farmland and drinking water with salt At an impromptu meeting in Moura village on the south-eastern coast of Bangladesh last week, 30 families said that their only hope of survival was to become climate refugees. "The tides come into the village every two weeks. Twenty years ago the sea was far away. Now it's a few ...	6th December 2009
Met Office to reveal climate data The Met Office is to announce it will publish the raw data it uses to analyse man-made global warming.	6th December 2009
Climate finance, the new fiscal frontier Not deterred by the international financial crisis which became widespread in 2008 or by the many recessionary patterns that grip most country economies, financial engineers are massing in København to prepare for the next wave. This one is about the commercial opportunities which renewable energy technologies, country climate funds and sectoral mitigation programmes promise to contain. read more	6th December 2009
Are they gaining any credence? Hacked emails and a political victory in Australia have emboldened the denial lobbyAs climate sceptics began unwrapping the package of illegally hacked emails sent by scientists at the University of East Anglia, they could have been forgiven for thinking that Christmas had come early. Just when even the US government had come round to the view that climate change was a serious man-made problem that needed radical international action, here apparently was the ammunition the sceptics needed to sway public opinion and again begin poking holes in the science of global warming.The climate scientist at the centre of the row, Prof Phil Jones, stepped down temporarily as head of the university's climatic research unit on Thursday while an independent inquiry into the emails is carried out.	6th December 2009
Why there's no sign of a climate conspiracy in hacked emails Nothing in the material leaked from key climate research centre undermines the overwhelming case for urgent action to prevent dangerous climate change	6th December 2009
U.N. panel rejects China windfarms, lifts suspension LONDON (Reuters) - A United Nations climate panel has blocked carbon financing for around ten Chinese wind farms on Friday over concerns that they are financially viable without receiving carbon offsets, the panel said.	6th December 2009
Climate protesters demand 'justice' A blue wave rolled towards Westminster today as thousands of people marched wearing the colour to call for action on climate change.	6th December 2009
Who you gonna call? The problem of false balance in reporting " the distortions that can result from trying give equal time to the two perceived sides of an issue " is well known. In an excellent editorial a few years ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called for a greater emphasis on truth, rather than balance . Unfortunately, this basic element of careful journalism seems to have been cast aside, especially in recent weeks. I was both amused and stunned by the effort at balance provided by Richard Harris's report on NPR, in which he claimed that the peer review process was so distorted that neither John Christy nor Jim Hansen can get their work published.	6th December 2009
Taiwan plans massive growth in solar energy - AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News Taiwan plans to boost its use of solar panels by a factor of 200 over the next decade and a half in an effort to increase clean energy, a ranking official said Friday.	6th December 2009
No Future Act of 2010: Oil Industry Comes Up With Their Version of a Federal Energy Bill Not surprisingly, the industry's bill requires expedited oil drilling everywhere -- Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain, fish-rich Bristol Bay, and on the Florida Gulf Coast and Panhandle.	6th December 2009
UN Needs Months to Fix No. 2 Carbon Market, Squeezing Supply - Bloomberg Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations carbon market has staffing shortages and needs more than six months to streamline approvals for projects to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, said Lex de Jonge , chairman of its regulatory board.	6th December 2009
Heathrow owner presses on with third runway despite warning over flying curbs - Guardian Unlimited BAA to launch a consultation to coincide with the general election Carbon Trust warns airline expansion may need to be curtailed BAA is pushing ahead with a planning application for a third runway at Heathrow despite a warning from the government-backed Carbon Trust that airport expansion might have to be curbed to meet emission reduction targets. Britain's largest airport owner has told the ...	6th December 2009
"We Could've Stopped Global Warming...We Didn't" - Fast Company Magazine A sobering ad campaign hits Copenhagen, ahead of the pivotal 2009 climate summit. Next week, the 15th U.N. Climate Change Congress convenes in Copenhagen--and the world leaders and functionaries passing through the airport might be met with a bracing message: A new series of ads, created by Arc Communications for Greenpeace, which depicts aged world leaders ruing what might have been, if they'd ...	6th December 2009
John Reid on climate change and global security - John Reid MP, formerly UK Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence, is the Chairman of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College, London. The opinions expressed are his own. - Barack Obama's announcement that there will be no all-encompassing protocol agreed at Copenhagen underlines that climate change is perhaps the most complex issue facing the world today. In part, this is because it involves long-term thinking and modeling which our existing political, financial and economic institutions and governance frameworks are ill-designed and configured to grapple with and resolve. With uncertainty building over what, if anything, the Copenhagen Summit can still achieve, now is therefore the time to remind ourselves about some of the larger stakes in play next month at what has been billed by some as the most important environmental summit in world history.	6th December 2009
How I wish the global warming deniers were right... Every day, I pine for the global warming deniers to be proved right. I loved the old world – of flying to beaches wherever we want, growing to the skies, and burning whatever source of energy came our way. I hate the world to come that I've seen in my reporting from continent after continent - of falling Arctic ice shelves, of countries being swallowed by the sea, of vicious wars for the water and land that remains. When I read the works of global warming deniers like Nigel Lawson or Ian Plimer, I feel a sense of calm washing over me. The nightmare is gone; nothing has to change; the world can stay as it was. But then I go back to the facts. However much I want them to be different, they sit there, hard and immovable.	4th December 2009
The war against warming Military and intelligence experts become increasingly focused on the climate security threat. Keith Kloor reports.	4th December 2009
The oily echo machine behind "climategate" glenn beck climategate.jpg The most vocal organizations around the University of East Anglia hacked email story (aka. "climategate") have been involved in a decade-plus campaign to delay action on climate change. The goal of this campaign, which began around the time of the first Kyoto Protocol negotiations, was to assemble a group of like-minded "free-market" think tanks and pseudo-experts that would bring into question the scientific realities of climate change, create doubt with the public and politicians and effectively delay the introduction of clean energy policy in the United States. It's no coincidence that the groups pushing this story the hardest have a long history of taking money from oil and coal companies to attack the conclusions made by climate scientists. See also: Emails Trigger Criticism of Media Performance Kevin Trenberth: Standing up for the IPCC Process Elizabeth May: An Informed Look at the East Anglia Emails Nature Weighs in on Email Controversy Senior civil servant to investigate leaked emails between climate scientists Climate change: free speech for the sceptics? | Padraig Reidy	4th December 2009
Unsettled Science Unusually, I'm in complete agreement with a recent headline on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page: The Climate Science Isn t Settled The article below is the same mix of innuendo and misrepresentation that it's author normally writes, but the headline is correct. The WSJ seems to think that the headline is some terribly important pronouncement that in some way undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change but they are simply using an old rhetorical trick . The phrase the science is settled is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what some scientists are supposed to have said.	4th December 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Likhotal | Climate change Russian roulette We need to avoid a global hangover the day after the summit in Copenhagen. A breakthrough is possible, but only with sacrificesMounting scepticism and deadlocked negotiations have culminated in an announcement that the Copenhagen climate conference will not result in a comprehensive global climate deal. Disappointing? Certainly. But the summit was always meant to be a transitional step. The most important thing to consider is where we will go from here.The phrase "the day after" is most commonly associated with the word "hangover". The absence of a binding agreement could mean a global hangover, and not just for a day.	4th December 2009
Unlucky strike Lightning storms at mid-latitudes and in the subtropics produce more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than previously thought, finds a new study. What's more, most of the NOx pollution a precursor to the greenhouse gas ozone ends up in the upper troposphere, where it has a strong influence on climate.
Antarctica was climate refuge during great extinction Animals fled to Antarctica to escape global warming, suggests a fossil study " with implications for how animals may adapt to future global warming	4th December 2009
TIMELINE-Carbon pledges, schemes pile up ahead of Copenhagen - AlertNet Source: Reuters Dec 3 (Reuters) - Singapore, a Southeast Asian city-state with high per-capita emissions, will head to global climate talks next week with a pledge to cut carbon pollution by 16 percent versus ... See also: Global emissions to double on current pledges-Ecofys	4th December 2009
Buy time with two-track climate pact: UK economist LONDON (Reuters) - A leading British economist said leaders at climate talks in Copenhagen next week should agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol without a U.S. commitment to cut its greenhouse gases.	4th December 2009
Novel carbon-trading scheme could stop large-scale extinctions A new strategy for saving tropical forest species was published in the leading journal Science on the eve of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, by a team of researchers, including William Laurance, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and distinguished professor at James Cook University. The authors state that wealthy countries should adopt a carbon-payment system that explicitly incorporates biodiversity values.	4th December 2009
Renewable Energy Investments Will Soar to $200 Billion Worldwide in 2010 Global investments in alternative energy projects will rise nearly 50 percent in 2010, climbing from $130 billion this year to $200 billion next year. In a survey of the green energy market, Bloomberg News reports that despite the dim prospects of forging a climate treaty in Copenhagen this month, companies and governments are moving rapidly ahead to build wind power farms, large solar arrays, and other green energy projects. Thanks in large part to state-funded economic stimulus programs, government spending on green energy will more than double in 2010 to about $60 billion, according to the report.	4th December 2009
A green industrial revolution calls | Noreena Hertz Copenhagen pledges on carbon emissions will mean little unless we do some radical thinking about how to finance themWith the world's attention focused on what will be agreed at Copenhagen, the reality is that unless there is a massive rethink about how a transition to a low-carbon economy is to be financed, whatever is agreed will not be achievable.Take solar: the economies of solar mean that putting a panel on one's roof is a huge upfront investment, only at the moment recoupable in about 40 years. No wonder solar, an energy source with limitless potential, has not yet realised its ambitions.	4th December 2009
China completes climate circle - BBC News A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - announcing pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.	4th December 2009
Viable future? - BBC News Can the world's energy become 100% renewable?	4th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE-US: Citizens Back Action, Despite Lobbying Surge WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (IPS) - As both Washington and the international community come gradually closer to taking substantive action on climate change at a high-level conference in Copenhagen, a side effect of this progress has been a parallel increase in the intensity of campaigns opposing such action " which may be a factor in the slight dip in the U.S. public's concern about climate change.	4th December 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: "We Are a Harbinger of What Is to Come" COPENHAGEN, Dec 3 (IPS) - A small group of indigenous people have travelled here to the historic Copenhagen climate talks to show negotiators dramatic documentary videos they made about the immediate impacts of climate change on their homelands and way of life.	4th December 2009
Professor foresees rising Antarctic snowmelt The 30-year record low in Antarctic snowmelt that occurred during the 2008-09 austral summer was likely due to concurrent strong positive phases for two main climate drivers, ENSO (El Niño - Southern Oscillation) and SAM (Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode), according to Dr. Marco Tedesco, Assistant Professor of Earth Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York.	4th December 2009
One killed in Mumbai water shortage protests MUMBAI (Reuters) - One man was killed and about a dozen injured in a violent protest on Thursday against water cuts in India's largest city after the worst monsoon in nearly four decades left Mumbai authorities scrambling to ration supplies.	4th December 2009
Pressure on primates Several endangered primate species could be adversely affected by climate change, finds a new study.	4th December 2009
In the balance Greenland, home to one-tenth of the world's land ice, is rapidly losing mass, pushing up global sea levels. Approximations of how fast this is happening vary widely, but a study now offers one estimate verified using two independent methods.	4th December 2009
Study measures ocean's CO2 uptake There are substantial variations in the amount of carbon being absorbed by the North Atlantic Ocean, a study shows.	4th December 2009
Glacier threat to Bolivia capital Fears grow for the future of water supplies in Bolivia's sprawling, fast-growing capital of La Paz and its twin El Alto.	4th December 2009
A Review of Michael Mann's Exoneration Hockey sticks.png In the endless - and senseless - assault on Michael Mann and his famous hockey stick graph, it is generally overlooked that the graph has withstood all of the criticism and, still today, stands as a perfectly accurate picture of climate over the past millennia. Most convincingly, its results have been replicated by other methods, using other proxies on more than a dozen occasions. As well, however, Mann's conclusions were vindicated in two independent reviews, the second of which, by Edward Wegman, was particularly hostile in it conception, but ultimately exculpatory. Arie Brand covered this so well in a comment to the next post that I felt compelled to reproduce his note here, for the convenience of those who are too offended by the trolls to pick through all of the excellent comments buried among the mindless criticisms.	4th December 2009
Warmest December day in Moscow history - CNews The meteorological service says Moscow is experiencing its warmest December day in recorded history, preventing bears at the zoo from hibernating.	4th December 2009
U.S. Northeast temps warmest in more than 10 years - Reuters via Yahoo! News This is turning out to be the warmest day in parts of the U.S. Northeast in more than a decade, according to weather forecasters.	4th December 2009
The eye of the storm Outspoken climate scientist James Hansen has just completed his first book, due for release in December. Interview by Keith Kloor.	4th December 2009
Curbing emissions: cap and rate Climate policy should aim to limit the rate of warming, as well as setting a cap on total allowable emissions.	4th December 2009
Mind the gap Policymakers must aim to avoid a 2 °C temperature rise, but plan to adapt to 4 °C.	4th December 2009
Global emissions only 'few billion tonnes' short of targets, says Stern Leading economist says world leaders are more than halfway towards pledges needed for effective deal at Copenhagen. Offers on the table ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks are only "a few billion tonnes" short of the scale of annual CO2 emission cuts required to meet 2020 environment targets, Lord Stern said today.He acknowledged there was a "significant way to go" but insisted: "It is possible to get there."The economist and global warming expert was speaking in Brussels after breakfast talks with European commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Yesterday in London he said world leaders were more than halfway towards the kind of promises needed to save the planet at Copenhagen.His latest report says global emissions are currently 47bn tonnes of greenhouses gases a year, and could rise to 58bn tonnes in 2020.To keep global ...	4th December 2009
Tories attacked as 'climate saboteurs' The Conservative peer Lord Lawson, the Tory MP David Davis and other politicians who have been casting doubt on the science of global warming in advance of next week's Copenhagen climate conference were "climate saboteurs", Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said yesterday. See also: Australia carbon plans foiled by right	4th December 2009
Do more to help climate, scientists tell Canada OTTAWA (Reuters) - More than 500 Canadian scientists on Thursday urged the country's government -- portrayed by critics as a laggard in the fight against climate change -- to significantly boost efforts to fight global warming.	4th December 2009
Senate climate compromise nowhere near ready WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Negotiators in the U.S. Senate are nowhere close to writing details of a compromise climate change bill requiring reductions in greenhouse gas pollution, Senator Joseph Lieberman said on Thursday. See also: Senate Climate Bill Progress Report: "Definite Republican Votes," Dems Have New Demands	4th December 2009
Trouble down under As an Australian living in London and subject to the market forces that an emissions trading system brings to the economy, I watch with great interest as Australia wrestles with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), or cap-and-trade by another name (or emissions trading by another). Since Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister just days before the Bali UN Climate Change Conference in 2007, he has ratified the Kyoto Protocol and tabled legislation to introduce an economy wide cap-and-trade system. The legislation has passed through the House of Representatives but is now stuck in the Senate where the Rudd government does not have a working majority.	4th December 2009
Military Veterans Seek Inhofe Apology over Global Warming Remark - SolveClimate Retired U.S military leaders and war veterans are calling on Sen. James Inhofe to apologize for an offensive remark he made accusing them of supporting global warming action only to get publicity.	4th December 2009
China denounces carbon tariff idea ahead of Copenhagen BEIJING (Reuters) - China's official news agency has denounced proposals for "carbon tariffs" on goods from big greenhouse gas emitting countries, saying on Friday that the idea could trigger trade battles with poor countries.	4th December 2009
For more news, click here >> News from previous days is below
Senate rejects Rudd climate plan Australia's Senate has voted down Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's flagship policy on climate change for a second time. See also: Why do climate deniers hold sway in Australia? | Fred Pearce	2nd December 2009
Guardian Environment Network: RBS: How public money went into environmentally damaging investments Treasury accused of writing a 'blank cheque' with taxpayers' money for bank to make environmentally damaging investments. From the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment NetworkThe full extent of unsustainable investments made by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) were revealed this week in a report published by a coalition of organisations.Since being bailed out by the taxpayer in October 2008, RBS has financed a host of environmentally-damaging projects, including open cast mining in Bangladesh, tar sands exploration in Canada and a heavily criticised mining company in India.The coalition of groups, including Platform and the World Development Movement said the investments paid for by the taxpayer put the UK to 'shame'.'We're paying for some of the most damaging mining and fossil fuel projects around the world,' said Julian Oram, head of policy at the World Development Movement.Sustainable investmentsThe report, 'Royal Bank of Sustainability', ...	2nd December 2009
Climate change denial is the new article of faith for the far right | Bob Ward Despite a complete lack of evidence, the leaked emails hysteria has encouraged more deniers to emerge from the shadowsIt is now 12 days since the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia first appeared online, and the propaganda machine for the climate change denial lobby is in overdrive.The University of East Anglia has rightly announced an independent investigation into the hacking episode. It is essential that the investigation examines, thoroughly and transparently, the substance of the email messages and establishes whether there has been any wrongdoing. From what I have seen, there is no evidence of research misconduct, but the only way to clear the air now is through an investigation.Some people have already, and predictably, taken on the role of judge, jury and executioner, and have called for Phil Jones, the director of the unit, to resign.	2nd December 2009
Antarctica may heat up dramatically as ozone hole repairs, warn scientists As blanket of ozone over southern pole seals up, temperatures on continent could soar by 3C, increasing sea level rise by 1.4mThe hole in the Earth's ozone layer has shielded Antarctica from the worst effects of global warming until now, according to the most comprehensive review to date of the state of the Antarctic climate. But scientists warned that as the hole closes up in the next few decades, temperatures on the continent could rise by around 3C on average, with melting ice contributing to a global sea-level increases of up to 1.4m.The western Antarctic peninsula has seen rapid ice loss as the world has warmed, but other parts of the continent have paradoxically been cooling, with a 10% increase in ice in the seas around the region in recent decades.	2nd December 2009
George Monbiot v Nick Stern Two of the top thinkers on climate change explain why the most important political gathering of our time will succeed or failNicholas Stern The two defining challenges of our century are managing climate change and overcoming poverty. And if we fail on one we will fail on the other. So the world faces a stark choice at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.Do we collaborate and act to reach a strong political agreement that both decisively cuts the devastating risks posed by climate change, and rapidly opens up the opportunities offered by low-carbon economic growth? Do we in that way set ourselves to overcome poverty and promote prosperity? See also: Can we fix it? Perhaps, but it depends who you ask	2nd December 2009
Climate's Lost Decade Now Leads to a 'Last' Decade - US News & World Report Global CO2 emissions currently match the worst case among seven scenarios laid down in 2001 by the IPCC	2nd December 2009
Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist - Guardian Unlimited The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse.	2nd December 2009
Time to confront the invisible enemy that threatens us all - Independent You could be forgiven for thinking it's not happening " and there, in fact, is the heart of the problem. Climate change, according to one view the greatest threat that human civilisation has ever faced, may seem a particularly nebulous danger to many people who look around them and see no evidence whatsoever of it taking place.	2nd December 2009
Big Drop in Those Who Believe That Global Warming Is Coming - Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance NEW YORK----As President Obama prepares to head to Copenhagen next week, a new Harris Poll finds that those who believe that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases will lead to global warming has dropped from 71% two years ago to only 51% now.	2nd December 2009
Latest evidence - BBC News How climate science has moved on since key summit decision	2nd December 2009
Why Copenhagen must be the end of the beginning - Financial Times The Copenhagen summit on climate change is going to fall short. Does this matter? Yes and no: yes, because the case for action is so strong; no, because the likely agreement would be inadequate. Tackling climate change will be hard. It is crucial that we achieve the goal effectively and efficiently.	2nd December 2009
Climate e-mail hackers aimed to maximise harm to Copenhagen summit - Times Online E-mails alleged to undermine climate change science were held back for weeks after being stolen so that their release would cause maximum damage to the Copenhagen climate conference, according to a source close to the investigation of the theft.	2nd December 2009
Climate change special: Twelve days to save the world Mohammed Nasheed knows what global warming means, because he sees it every day. He survived years of imprisonment and torture to lead his country " the Maldives " to democracy. But now, as its President, he is being forced to watch as his homeland is wiped from the map. With each year that passes, the rising sea claims more land, and at the current rate it will claim everything.	2nd December 2009
INDIA: Climate Change Fuels Rural Out-Migration, Rising Farm Debt BHUBANESWAR, India, Dec 1 (IPS/IFEJ) - Under a shed made of bamboo and corrugated sheet metal, Purusottam Sur feeds his two bullocks and a cow with a bundle each of dry paddy plant. A fifth of his five-acre paddy harvest will be used only as cattle feed; the rice seeds just did not develop because of untimely rains this monsoon.	2nd December 2009
THE ARCTIC IS MELTING While the politicians fiddle, the world keeps warming. The Arctic may be down to its last few summers of being white. Johann Hari, in Greenland, asks hunters and scientists how climate change really feels ...	2nd December 2009
Nigeria: 'Climate Change May Lead to Civil Unrest' - AllAfrica.com No water, or in excess can mean no agriculture thus resulting to Insufficient harvests mean price escalations Nothing much has been done on rain harvesting and storage. The absence or excess of rain speedily translates into the total absence of water for a long or a short period.	2nd December 2009
Heatwave puts Russian white Christmas on hold - ABC Online Heatwave puts Russian white Christmas on holdABC OnlineThere is no dreaming of a white Christmas in Russia yet, as record temperatures in Moscow ward off any sign of snow. The calendar may show winter has ...	2nd December 2009
California water allocation hits record-low level LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California officials said on Tuesday that drought and environmental restrictions have forced them to cut planned water deliveries to irrigation districts and cities statewide to just 5 percent of their contracted allotments.	2nd December 2009
Europeans could save planet for $3 a day: study BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europeans could help cut climate warming emissions to much safer levels for just 2 euros ($3) each per day, but they would also have to cut back on driving and meat eating, a report said Tuesday.	2nd December 2009
China May Seek Bigger Carbon Cut in Future, Morgan Stanley Says - Bloomberg Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- China may eventually aim for a larger cut in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2020 as the recently set target to reduce pollution is not as large as it seems, Morgan Stanley said.	2nd December 2009
Critic of 'Climate Oligarchy' Defends Case for CO2-Driven Warming A scientist critical of the "climate oligarchy" sees the basic case for human-driven global warming unchanged by the disclosed climate files.	2nd December 2009
Global warming threatens China harvests: forecaster BEIJING (Reuters) - Droughts and floods stoked by global warming threaten to destabilize China's grain production, the nation's top meteorologist has warned, urging bigger grain reserves and strict protection of farmland and water supplies.	2nd December 2009
EU 'should cut emissions by 30%' Europe should impose a unilateral cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 30% by 2020, a leading climate economist says.	2nd December 2009
Stopping deforestation with a Tobin tax | Tony Juniper Money is needed to preserve a vital part of the carbon cycle. It's there even in a recession, if only we sort out our prioritiesEvery day, the Amazon basin rainforests pump about 20bn tonnes of moisture into the Earth's atmosphere. This forms clouds that create rain and is just one of the vital environmental services provided by the vast shimmering forest that stretches from the Atlantic to the Andes. The creation of the rain clouds is one vivid reminder of how the human economy is really a wholly owned subsidiary of nature.The rain waters crops on farmland across South America, including the globally important grain baskets of southern Brazil, northern Argentina and Paraguay.	2nd December 2009
Global emissions exceeding 'carbon budget', PwC study finds World has emitted extra greenhouse gases this century equivalent to the annual totals of China and the United States, PricewaterhouseCoopers research findsThe world is rapidly depleting its "carbon budget" for the first half of this century and must slash the carbon intensity of the global economy, a new report said today.Economists and climate change experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said their new research highlights the need for an ambitious carbon reduction agreement at the Copenhagen climate conference, which starts next week.The report's authors calculated the global carbon budget between 2000 and 2050 required to limit temperature rises to 2C, the climate threshold defined as "dangerous" by the EU.A fifth of that budget had been used up by 2008, they said, meaning the world is already 10% off the necessary trajectory to hit the target.	2nd December 2009
84 months and counting | Andrew Simms The world produces 73m cars and trucks a year. So a few million wind turbines and solar plants shouldn't be a problemOn the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit we seem to be poised between the possibility of new directions for the world, and meek capitulation to environmental upheaval. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says we have just months to take large-scale action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He calls on developing countries not to try to copy western consumer lifestyles.In an interview to be broadcast on the BBC, he adds that growth and rising GDP are an "extremely harmful" way to measure human progress.	2nd December 2009
Western lifestyle unsustainable, says climate expert Rajendra Pachauri Ahead of the Copenhagen summit, leading scientist and IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warns of radical charges and regulation if global disaster is to be avoidedHotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer.Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of "sustainable consumption" was now urgently required, he said."Today we have reached the point where consumption and people's desire to consume has grown out of proportion," said Pachauri.	2nd December 2009
Low-carbon future: We can afford to go green An exclusive study for New Scientist shows that westerners can radically cut carbon emissions and keep their lifestyles	2nd December 2009
Researchers look at water-energy impacts of climate change (PhysOrg.com) -- Climate projections for the next 50 to 100 years forecast increasingly frequent severe droughts and heat waves across the American Southwest, sinking available water levels even as rising mercury drives up demand for it.	2nd December 2009
U.S. climate bill to benefit farmers: USDA WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Financial benefits from climate change legislation for U.S. farmers will greatly outweigh any additional costs they face from measures limiting greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Wednesday.	2nd December 2009
Some Ocean Dwellers Increase Shell Production In CO2-Rich Environment - redOrbit Image 1: The conch shell at left was exposed to current CO2 levels; the shell at right was exposed to the highest levels in the study. (Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)Image 2: Lead researcher Justin Ries works on CO2 study in WHOI lab. (Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)Image 3: The larger of these two pencil urchins was exposed to current CO2 levels; the ...	2nd December 2009
Brazil Wants Limits on Tropical Trees for CO2 Credits - Update1 - Bloomberg Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil, whose Amazonia rainforest is the biggest in the world, wants a new climate agreement to limit the use of forests to slow global warming, putting a crimp on investors hoping to create carbon credits from trees.	2nd December 2009
Antarctic Climate Report Sees Sharp Temperature and Sea Level Rise Temperatures in Antarctica are expected to increase by 5.3 degrees F this century and the melting of much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could contribute to a global sea level rise of 4.5 feet by 2100, according to the most comprehensive study to date on the impact of global warming on the world's coldest continent. The 400-page study, conducted by 100 scientists from eight countries, said that, paradoxically, the vast hole in the ozone layer over the continent has led to an increase in the westerly winds that spin around Antarctica, which has served to insulate most of the continent from warmer temperatures.	2nd December 2009
Brazil's oil and climate change dilemma - Channel 4 Brazil has been at the forefront of pioneering renewable energy, but the discovery of oil off the coast has left the country with a dilemma. Science correspondent Julian Rush reports.	2nd December 2009
Of Climategate, Googlegate & When Stories Get Too Long - Search Engine Land Daily Telegraph writer James Delingpole got worked up yesterday because his colleague Christopher Booker's story on the Climategate scandal mysteriously disappeared from Google. Skullduggery, he pondered? Nothing so dramatic, says Google.	2nd December 2009
Is Canada Criminally Negligent on Climate Policy? - in Opinion - The Tyee A leading environmental scientist says it is time for the international law to target climate culprit countries like his own, Canada.	2nd December 2009
The Angry Mermaid Award - Vote On The Worst Industry Lobbyists Killing Climate Action Mermaid_Colour_300x374_96dpi.jpg Citizens from around the world will convene in Copenhagen next week for the COP15 U.N. climate conference, ready to voice their frustration at the slow pace of global action to address climate change. Friends of the Earth International recently launched The Angry Mermaid Award, inviting everyone to vote for the worst corporate lobbyists who are primarily responsible for obstructing progress toward a global agreement. Copenhagen is home to The Little Mermaid statue, a Danish landmark honoring Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairy tale character. In Andersen's tale, the Little Mermaid saves the life of a shipwrecked prince and then risks her voice and tail to win his love.	2nd December 2009
Moloch's Children: Do Climate Skeptics and Climate Change Activists Need to Agree? I've gottten literally dozens of emails begging me to weigh in on the East Anglia climate scandal, and for a while, I was reluctant to do so, because ultimately, paying attention to something so inane just gives it credibility. We're back, again, to the old battles over climate change -- attention to trivialities in the absence of the central issue. read more	2nd December 2009
Enough posturing politics. Time to let the experts lead | Jeffrey Sachs Copenhagen must mark the end of politician-dominated negotiation. The technical stuff has to come out of the shadowsWe can only marvel at the disarray. Here we are, 17 years after the signing of the UN framework convention on climate change, two years after the decision in Bali to agree a new climate policy, one year after Barack Obama's election, and days out from the Copenhagen conference. Yet a real global strategy to avoid catastrophe remains elusive.Yes, there is some progress. The Obama administration has now offered a 2020 and 2050 target on emissions reduction. China and India have stepped forward with commitments to slow the rise of emissions, and Mexico has tabled creative proposals for climate financing.	2nd December 2009
Antarctica served as climatic refuge in Earth's greatest extinction event A new fossil species suggests that some land animals may have survived the end-Permian extinction by living in cooler climates in Antarctica. Researchers have identified a distant relative of mammals that apparently survived the mass extinction by living in Antarctica.	2nd December 2009
Solar industry in limbo as grants dry up - Financial Times Renewable energy manufacturers have warned of their frustration after the government's flagship grant scheme for solar power ran out of money less than halfway through the financial year.	2nd December 2009
Climate Email Scandal: Scientists Engaged in a Conspiracy of Science [Global Warming] - Gawker Climate change is real and man-made. Period, end of story. But recently, some emails have leaked that conclusively prove that climate scientists... are really pissed off that a well-funded industry exists that subverts and denies their work.	30th November 2009
Glenn Beck: the renegade running the opposition to Obama - Guardian Unlimited Glenn Beck is a TV host, bestselling author and the most influential voice on the rightwing Fox channel. Now, even some Republicans worry that the extreme and maverick views of Beck and his supporters will make their party unelectable. Is the TV tail wagging the political dog?	30th November 2009
Peak oil: fields of plenty, or are we scraping the barrel? - Guardian Unlimited Crude is still being discovered; existing fields are not being exploited to the full. So it's hard to predict the exact point at which the world's dwindling reserves will precipitate a crisis. But it's coming .	30th November 2009
The Urgent Threat to World Peace is Canada The harm this country could do in the next two weeks will outweigh all the good it has done in a century.	30th November 2009
Peat fires drive temperatures up Peatlands, especially those in tropical regions, sequester gigantic amounts of organic carbon. Human activities are now having a considerable impact on these wetlands. For example, drainage projects, in combination with the effects of periodic droughts, can lead to large-scale fires, which release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and thus contribute to global warming.	30th November 2009
I'd rather not know: the psychology of climate denial - SpaceDaily PARIS, Dec 1 (AFP) Dec 01, 2009 If the evidence is overwhelming that man-made climate change is already upon us and set to wreak planetary havoc, why do so many people refuse to believe it?	30th November 2009
As the World Waits on the U.S., a Sense of Déjà Vu in Denmark? Twelve years ago in Kyoto, the world was poised to act on a climate treaty but looked for a clear signal from the United States. Now, with the Copenhagen talks set to begin, the outcome once again hinges on what the U.S. is prepared to do. BY BILL MCKIBBEN	30th November 2009
Climate 'time bombs' stoke scientists' fears - SpaceDaily PARIS, Nov 29 (AFP) Nov 29, 2009 Whatever the outcome of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Nature may have some extremely nasty surprises up its sleeve, say scientists.	30th November 2009
Less efficient natural 'cleaning' could tip global carbon balance - The Japan Times Land and sea sinks removed an average of 57 percent (or 5.3 billion tons per year) of all CO2 from human activities between 1958 and 2008, leaving 43 percent in the atmosphere where it will stay for at least several centuries. The research of professor Le Quere and her colleagues also indicates that the portion of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere may be rising. Dr. Shobhakar Dhakal, an executive director of the Global Carbon Project at Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies, says that this has occurred over the past 50 years and suggests that natural sinks are becoming "less efficient 'cleaners' of human carbon pollution." U.S. oceanographer Richard Feely, who is also part of the Global Carbon Project, says: "We're concerned that if the natural sinks can't keep pace with the increased CO2 emissions, then the physical and biological impacts of global warming will accelerate over the next century." There is disagreement among scientists about whether the capacity of Earth's biosphere to keep the global carbon budget in balance has already been exceeded.	30th November 2009
Gaze into clean technology's crystal ball for 2010 Clean technology investors who have suffered through 2009 can find cheer in a new report by the Cleantech Group that gives its top ten predictions for 2010. The number one prediction: Private capital growth will recover, the research group said. The group believes that the amount of money from global venture capital and private equity in clean technology in 2010 will surpass that in 2009 by a healthy margin and could be a record year. The group also is watching for major investments like Khosla Ventures raising $1 billion for renewable energy and clean technology funds, more capital in Asia and innovative fund strategies.	30th November 2009
Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense - Scientific American What follows is only a partial list of the contrarians' bad arguments and some brief rebuttals of them.	30th November 2009
Solar panel costs 'set to fall' The cost of installing and owning solar panels will fall even faster than expected according to new research.	30th November 2009
Its Possible To Avert Climate Crisis By James Hansen Science reveals what is needed to stabilise atmospheric composition and climate. Geophysical data on the carbon amounts in oil, gas and coal show that the problem is solvable, if we phase out global coal emissions within 20 years and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands and oil shale	30th November 2009
Climate Changes Impact In Arctic Worse Than Thought By University Of Manitoba Arctic sea ice has duped satellites into reporting thick multiyear sea ice where in fact none exists, a new study by University of Manitoba researcher David Barber has found	30th November 2009
Antarctic to feed major sea rise Melting Antarctic ice is likely to contribute to a sea level rise of about 1.4m by 2100, says a major review of climate change on the continent.	30th November 2009
Mini Hockey Sticks Michael Mann's giant Hockey Stick is backed up by a lot of other reasearch, from proxies to glaciers. Everything appears to be going up :- [link]index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/ I d like here to introduce you to two Mini Hockey Sticks that correlate strongly with the evidence from Michael Mann. A. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States of America, plotting record high temperatures in the USA versus record lows :- B. From a research paper by Joelle L. Gergis and Anthony M. Fowler entitled A history of ENSO events since A.D.	30th November 2009
2 degrees of separation from disaster - The New Straits Times THIS is all about seven-tenths of a degree Celsius.	30th November 2009
Barroso: Copenhagen climate pledges not enough - EARTHtimes.org Nanjing, China - Pledges made to next month's Copenhagen summit on climate change are not enough to stop global warming, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday. "So far we are not there," Barroso said after a meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao ahead of an EU-China summit in the eastern city of Nanjing on Monday.	30th November 2009
Warming will 'wipe out billions' - Scotland on Sunday MOST of the world's population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK's most senior	30th November 2009
BNP leader Griffin will attend climate summit The leader of the British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin, is to represent the European Parliament at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen next week.	30th November 2009
Dalai Lama says climate change needs global action SYDNEY (Reuters) - Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama entered the climate change debate on Monday, urging governments to take serious action and put global interests ahead of domestic concerns.	30th November 2009
EXCLUSIVE-Danish draft urges 50 pct global emissions cut by 2050 - AlertNet Source: Reuters NEW DELHI, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The world should cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels with the bulk of the reduction coming from rich countries, according to a draft proposal by Denmark, host of Dec 7-18 U.N. climate talks.	30th November 2009
Counter-proposal drawn up for Copenhagen - UPI BEIJING, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Four of the world's major developing countries, including China and India, have come up with a counter-draft listing their "non-negotiable" demands ahead of the U.N. climate summit that begins next week in Copenhagen, Denmark.	30th November 2009
Russian demands to maintain Kyoto carbon credits could lead to failure at Copenhagen - Bellona Foundation NEW YORK " A long simmering but infrequently discussed issue over carbon credits that Russia has amassed under its Kyoto Protocol obligations threatens to erupt at Copenhagen and possibly scuttle chances for a politically viable agreement to emerge from the talks, American and foeign analysts have said.	30th November 2009
Copenhagen's missing ingredient: water - Los Angeles Times Scientists stress water's profound link with climate change, yet delegates at next week's conference have deleted water from the working draft of a binding environmental treaty.	30th November 2009

A Petrocollapse Timeline Since the early two thousand oughts we pessimistas have been trying to discern the shape of the backside of Mr. Hubbert's curve. John Michael Greer has made a strong case for catabolic collapse, which could be described as a stair-step down from the present peak, punctuated by precipitous drops (the 147-dollar oil spike; the Lehman default; the ARMs race) and level treads ("Green Shoots," the "Morning in America" phase we are currently hallucinating).	28th November 2009
Carbon offsetting 'not working' The first travel firm to offer consumer carbon offset schemes says they are a "distraction" from the urgency of climate change.	28th November 2009
China says to cut carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent by 2020 BEIJING (Reuters) - China will reduce its carbon intensity -- the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of GDP -- 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.	28th November 2009
Peak Everything By Gunther OstermannOur planet is but a speck in the cosmos, but its unique, and perhaps the only planet in our galaxy that harbours life, as we know it. I refrain from saying intelligent life, because the wanton destruction of our beautiful world, through stupidity, greed and senseless wars, and letting over 26 000 children die of starvation every day, is a crime that must reverberate throughout the universe	28th November 2009
The Real Scandal Over Climate Change Isn't About Hacked Emails But the Media's Coverage There's been a lot of talk recently about the "hacked climate emails." But a much bigger scandal is just waiting to break. See also Where's the data? Climategate : Too Tired To Resist ?	28th November 2009
China's Pledge on Carbon Emissions: Is It Enough? - Time Magazine Beijing's decision to bring targets on carbon emissions reductions to Copenhagen is hopeful, but it is important to understand what exactly Beijing is promising -- and what it's not US and China to reduce emissions, but not enough - The Star	28th November 2009
Buy Nothing day is only the beginning for a new counter-consumer culture | Tony Juniper Our demand for resources now outstrips the natural world's ability to meet it. It's time to foster habits fit for a finite planetAsk a representative group of people what is the greatest threat facing humankind in the 21st century and a number of suggestions will follow. Terrorism, hunger, poverty and pandemics will probably be among them. Few would probably say that the way we consume should be at the top of the list, but there's good reason to believe that this is in fact the correct answer " especially now, one day before the official UK Buy Nothing day.The reason is simple.	28th November 2009
Catching rays cutting emissions The phrase "catching a few rays" might conjure up images of lying on a sunny beach. But Germany's Renewable Energy Act has given that phrase a whole new meaning. I've discovered that you can get paid for capturing the sun's energy on your roof, converting it into CO2-free electricity with the help of special equipment, and feeding it into the grid and watch the investment yield handsome long-term returns.	28th November 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Angry Greenhouse Gas Victims Demand Action VITERBO, Italy, Nov 28 (IPS) - Angry is not the adjective that comes to mind when you first meet Nelly Damaris Chepkoskei.	28th November 2009
Thirsty camels face bullet after terrorising Australian town Northern Territory officials plan mass cull after 6,000 wild camels run amok in Docker River in search of waterAustralian authorities plan to round up about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and shoot them after they overran an outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.The Northern Territory government announced its plan yesterday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving every day for weeks because of drought conditions."The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," the local government minister, Rob Knight, said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500km) north-east of Docker.	28th November 2009
Commonwealth backs climate fund Commonwealth leaders pledge backing for a multi-billion-dollar fund to help developing nations cope with climate change	28th November 2009
Burning coal worse for climate than clearing rain forests Deforestation has had a big influence on the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the past three centuries, but its impact is tapering off relatively. Nowadays, the burning of fossil fuels is a more crucial factor. This is the contention of Dutchh professor Rik Leemans of the Environmental Systems Analysis Group.	28th November 2009
An offering I video-taped and posted all the lectures from my Global Warming class this quarter. The class is part of our core science curriculum for non-science majors at the University of Chicago, and interest has been strong enough that the class has kind of taken over my teaching life. The lectures are based on my textbook, Understanding the Forecast, written for the class a few years ago. The students found it useful, I think, to be able to skip lectures and watch them later, but mostly I taped them for y all, thinking someone might them useful. cheers, David.	28th November 2009
Criminal gangs plunder Madagascar forests ANTANANARIVO (Reuters) - Criminal gangs are stripping Madagascar's poorly-protected national parks every day of precious hardwood worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, two environmental campaign groups have said.	28th November 2009
China says no emissions checks without foreign funds BEIJING (Reuters) - A top Chinese climate envoy said Friday only emissions curbs carried out under its newly announced carbon intensity targets that have international financial support will be open to outside scrutiny.	28th November 2009
Just what is in a political agreement ? As the world turns its attention to Copenhagen, the most asked question is What do you think will be agreed? . The reality is nobody knows what will happen but given the political announcements of recent weeks expectations are dropping. We have all been told that a legally binding agreement will not be completed in Copenhagen, but rather to expect a major step forward or a political agreement . When all is said and done, Copenhagen will almost certainly represent a landmark in the progressive shift to a global low carbon economy. Whether the final agreement is reached there or 6-12 months later is of little consequence, provided clear direction comes in December.	28th November 2009
US 'pledges major emissions cuts' President Obama is to pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions in several stages, beginning with 17% by 2020, officials say.	26th November 2009
Climate policies 'improve health' Cutting emissions to mitigate climate change will also make people healthier, according to research.	26th November 2009
Swiftboating Climate Science - aka. climategate - what you need to know swift boat veterasns.jpg One of my favorite bloggers Josh Nelson has put together the definitive guide to the hacked climate science email story. Below is the original article from his website Enviro Know.com. --- The SwiftHack Scandal: What You Need to Know First of all, this story should never have been called ClimateGate. Given the similarities between this smear job and the Swift Boat attacks on Senator John Kerry, SwiftHack is a far more appropriate name. I ve attempted to cover the major points of interest in this story. Consider this post a perpetual work in progress.	26th November 2009
'Organic farming may counter climate change,' report says Organic farming can play an important role in countering climate change, a new report suggests today.	26th November 2009
For Balance: Let's Have Marc Morano's emails morano.jpg The Deniersphere being alive with delight over the emails stolen from the UK Hadley Centre, my colleague Kevin Grandia has wondered aloud (see next post) about what a similar sampling of emails might look like if they were sourced from one of the most aggressive and least (climate) credible think tanks - the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Why stop there? As a stunning amount of email traffic on this issue currently seems to be coming from uberDenier Marc Morano, why doesn't the former aide to Okalahoma Senator and Republican Denier-in-Chief James Inhofe volunteer to share his correspondence?	26th November 2009
Climate 'diagnosis' is stark message for politicians The Copenhagen Diagnosis argues that the environment is in a worse state than predicted as recently as 2007 and calls for drastic action	26th November 2009
Climate change to hit water-scarce Arab world hard CAIRO (Reuters) - Climate change is likely to hit the water-starved Arab world harder than many other parts of the globe and threatens to slash agricultural output in the area, U.N. and Arab League officials said.	26th November 2009
Right Before Your Eyes If you care to actually spend 10 seconds looking at the NASA GISS Blob Chart (see link above), you will easily detect a continually warming trend. Yes, there are dips and climbs. Yes, there is variability. No, Global Warming did not stop in 1998. This very easy-reading level of visual information, apparently, is not good enough to convince Janet Daley that Global Warming is happening. She just can t make it out amongst all the noise, probably coming from the Climate Change Deniers. Whether she knows it or not, she is not telling the truth. What dodgy dossier did she read ?	26th November 2009
Temps up 4 degrees since 1958, reducing NW snowpack - KGW NewsChannel 8 Portland CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — Scientists report that rising temperatures appear to be responsible for cutting the snowpack in Oregon's Cascade Range in half over the past 77 years. The report from Oregon State University released Tuesday found that the warming trend is seen most in the spring. Temperatures are up almost 4 degrees since 1958 in January, March and April. Meanwhile, there has been no significant trend in precipitation. Geosciences professor Julia Jones says the shrinking snowpack has been the most visible impact of global warming, and will continue into the future. The mountain snowpack acts as a natural reservoir for rivers that are crucial to salmon, farming and ranching.	26th November 2009
What to make of the new climate poll by David Roberts There's a new Washington Post-ABC News poll out on climate change; Juliet Eilperin's got a good piece up about it (despite the terrible headline, for which she is not responsible).Having watched this story bounce around today, I m frustrated yet again by how these polls are discussed. Here's how I would write the lede to the story:A ramped-up effort by conservatives and industry groups to cast doubt on climate science has largely failed to convince the public that the science is in error. The fact that the earth's atmosphere has warmed over the last 100 years is accepted by 72 percent of the public, down from from 80 percent last year.	26th November 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Latin America's Perpetual Fever MONTEVIDEO, Nov 25 (Tierramérica) - "To use a soccer metaphor, which Brazilian politicians like so much, the Kyoto Protocol was the 10-minute warm-up before the real game begins," said scientist Carlos Nobre in reference to global climate change treaties.	26th November 2009
Revolt Against Climate Change! By Rebecca Solnit The we that could win and needs to win in the climate change wars isnt the United States itself. The citizens of the U.S. need to revolt, again, against their nations failure of vision and responsibility, in solidarity with the rest of the people of the world, and the animals, and the plants, and the coral reefs, and the coastlines, and the rivers, the glaciers, the ice caps, and the weather as we now know it, or once knew it. Thats why November 30th is going to be a global day of action	26th November 2009
Destruction spreads 'like a disease' - PhysOrg (PhysOrg.com) -- People have cleared more than a quarter of the world`s forests and half of its grasslands, according to a paper published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society by researchers from The University of Queensland and Imperial College London.	26th November 2009
Why Obama Is Going to Copenhagen - Newsweek Now that the Copenhagen talks look likely to fail, it is safe for President Obama to go.	26th November 2009
Kenyan Tea Output Falls 7.4% in October on Drought - Update2 - Bloomberg Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Kenya's tea production fell 7.4 percent in October to 32.7 million kilograms (719.4 million pounds), compared with the same month a year earlier because of a drought.	24th November 2009
This year 'in top five warmest' This year will be in the top five warmest years globally since records began, according to the UK Met Office.	24th November 2009
World's last bastion of stable ice now thawing The East Antarctica ice sheet, which was thought to be stable, is losing billions of tonnes of ice a year " climate change may be the culprit	24th November 2009
Victims of climate change tell the world how it's destroying their lives OXFAM's climate hearings are being held in 17 countries around the world, taking the testimonies of real people from all walks of life about how climate change is affecting them. Oxfam will relay these messages to world leaders at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year.Climate change is a huge threat to development in Africa. Despite contributing less than 3% of global emissions the continent will be hit hard. read more	24th November 2009
NSW drought conditions worsening: govt - Brisbane Times Drought conditions in NSW are worsening with the latest figures revealing just 1.9 per cent of the state is in a satisfactory condition.	24th November 2009
Next year may be hottest yet, Met Office says There is a good chance that next year will be the hottest year recorded for the world, according to new forecasts from the Met Office's climate prediction and research branch, the Hadley Centre.	24th November 2009
Melting Arctic: Forget polar bears, worry about humans Climate change is transforming the Arctic so fast that many species could be gone within our lifetimes. But the important thing is to put human self-interest first, says Alun Anderson	24th November 2009
Society faces 'grim' post-fossil fuel energy crisis, report warns - Environmental Data Interactive Exchange Society faces a future energy crisis because renewable energy will not be enough to replace dwindling fossil fuel supplies, a new US study warns.	24th November 2009
Mankind using Earth's resources at alarming rate - AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News Humanity would need five Earths to produce the resources needed if everyone lived as profligately as Americans, according to a report issued Tuesday.	24th November 2009
Greenhouse Gases Increase to Record in Atmosphere - Update1 - Bloomberg Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, the main man-made greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, increased to record concentrations in the atmosphere last year, the United Nations said.	24th November 2009
Disagreeable truth about the coming Copenhagen charade - The Age We are about to see an advanced case of ''agreementism'' between world leaders at the Copenhagen climate change meeting. It is a painful and embarrassing disorder with familiar results.	24th November 2009
Study: Climate change to have irreversible consequences by 2050 - Monsters and Critics.com WWF InternationalStudy: Berlin - A lack of determined action on climate change means that by 2050 global warming of more than the targeted 2 degrees celsius will have taken place, a study released in Berlin Monday said. In its 'Tipping Points' report, environmental advocacy group WWF and global insurance firm Allianz said the consequences of emissions already made would, by 2050, likely include a global sea-level rise of 0.5 metres, disrupted monsoon rain patterns, Amazon die-back, and severe drought in the south-western United States. The report's authors said that large, sudden changes would likely affect the world's climate, rather than a gradual, manageable process. The report envisaged that the value of property and assets in port cities worldwide endangered by a 0.5m rise in sea level would amount to 28 trillion dollars by mid-century.	24th November 2009
Global warming dangers 'alarming' Leading UK scientists issue an unprecedented statement about the dangers of failing to cut greenhouse gases.	24th November 2009
The Coming Chaos It now seems to me that the systemic collapse of modern civilization will have two distinct phases. The first will be merely economic hardship, and the second will be chaos. In the first phase, the major issues will be inflation, unemployment, and the stock market. In the second phase, there will be the disappearance of government, law, and money. I am reminded of Robert D. Kaplan's Ends of the Earth. We might imagine the USA, for example, as one of the collapsed countries he describes, where official borders are meaningless, and where police, armies, and bandit hordes are indistinguishable from one another.	24th November 2009
Shell: market alone cannot deliver green energy Chief executive says falling carbon price stifling investment Call for government action to support new technologyShell's new chief executive has called on governments to intervene in carbon markets, the first time the Anglo-Dutch oil company has acknowledged that markets cannot be left to set the price of pollution.Peter Voser told the Guardian that action needed to be taken to make expensive green projects like carbon capture and storage (CCS) economically viable.	24th November 2009
Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking by Gar Lipow Carbon Fixated has now a exposed a far greater scandal than Carbongate. It is time to expose the fraudulent religion that worships Issac Newton, who was even fatter than Al Gore, and his silly assertions about gravity, not to mention the meaningless babble of incantations called calculus.If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton's private correspondence were compiled and published.I m tempted to quote extensively, but instead simply urge you to read the whole thing.	24th November 2009
African conflicts spurred by warming Africa is set to experience a surge in civil wars, causing nearly 400,000 additional battle deaths by 2030 " all as a direct result of rising temperatures, a study suggests	24th November 2009
Is global warming unstoppable? In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.	24th November 2009
Green technologies in peril as rich nations dither on climate deal - Guardian Unlimited Vital business investment in clean technology to tackle climate change is being threatened by delays and doubts over the Copenhagen deal on climate change, senior figures have told the Guardian. Without urgent progress which will stimulate funding for renewables, nations could be locked into high-carbon energy and transport technologies for decades, inflating another unsustainable economic bubble, they fear.	24th November 2009
Climate change: Copenhagen in graphics - BBC News As the UN summit in Copenhagen approaches, we look at the global challenge of climate change in detail.	24th November 2009
Boulder climate scientist: E-mail leak aimed at undermining Denmark summit - Colorado Daily Kevin Trenberth gives a presentation on climate change in 2007. Trenberth's e-mails were among those hacked last week. Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said Sunday the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month's global climate summit in Denmark.	24th November 2009
Could denying bedroom privileges save the planet? There will be a record number of side events at the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month, but one woman's one-woman show could give the delegates, most of whom will be men, the incentive they really need to agree a new global warming treaty. In The Boycott , Kathryn Blume plays Lyssa, First Lady of the United States and climate crusader. Loosely borrowing from a play from ancient Greece, Lyssa launches a nationwide sex strike to fight global warming. As the play unfolds, Lyssa is forced to take on her indifferent husband, a hostile press and a romantic rival who's not only in bed with the President, but with the oil industry as well.	24th November 2009

East Antarctica 'is losing ice' - BBC News The massive and apparently stable East Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass, a new study suggests.	22nd November 2009
Permafrost thaw threatens Russia oil and gas complex: study - AFP via Yahoo! News Thawing permafrost caused by global warming is costing Russian energy firms billions of dollars annually in damage control and shrinking Russia's territory, Greenpeace warned in a new study Friday.	22nd November 2009
Rising sea levels threaten Caribbean region - Los Angeles Times The Colombian city of Cartagena is trying to plan ahead as scientists say cities nearer the equator, where temperatures are already higher, are at greater risk if global warming isn't checked. The effect of climate change is anything but hypothetical to retired Colombian naval officer German Alfonso. Just ask him about the time his neighborhood in this historic coastal city became an island.	22nd November 2009
INDIA: Glacier Man Vows to Build More Artificial Glaciers LADAKH, India, Nov 22 (IPS) - He is well known as India's glacier man , but for 74-year-old retired government civil engineer, Chewang Norphel, accolades have made little dent in his quiet determination to build more high-altitude water conservation systems, or artificial glaciers , to beat the lack of water from receding Himalayan glaciers.	22nd November 2009
Low-carbon road map for China - New Scientist Report claims that the country can get all its new energy from renewable and nuclear power by 2050 while boosting economic growth	22nd November 2009
Wave machine to power homes - Times Online A hydroelectric wave-energy machine called the Oyster, which could revolutionise energy production in Scotland, was yesterday switched on to the National Grid by Alex Salmond, the First Minister.	22nd November 2009
Climate change survey says 83% willing to make sacrifices More than 80 per cent of people believe climate change is a serious threat and are willing to make sacrifices to combat it, a survey by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) showed today.	22nd November 2009
Fish 'at risk' in acidified ocean Fish reared in water acidified by CO2 may become "fatally attracted" to the smell of their predators, say scientists.	22nd November 2009
Climate change sceptics and lobbyists put world at risk, says top adviser Chance to limit warming squandered, says scientist World needs to prepare to cope with at least 3-4C riseClimate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.In an interview with the ...	22nd November 2009
Security 'cover-up' at nuclear plants Ministers refuse to release details of five incidents last yearThe government is refusing to provide details on five separate security breaches at Britain's nuclear power stations last year.The breaches have prompted accusations that ministers are suppressing damaging information at a time when they are attempting to sell the idea of more nuclear power stations. Earlier this month, 10 new sites in England and Wales were approved.The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, told MPs that nuclear was a "proven and reliable" energy source. But the latest annual report from the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) has prompted questions about the measures being taken to protect the country's ageing plants.	22nd November 2009
Climate crunch Unless they end in promises, and a treaty within months, Ed Miliband believes the Copenhagen talks will be a disaster. But can the British energy secretary, in Denmark for a frantic round of pre-summit diplomacy, win the argument?It's breakfast time in the biggest of Copenhagen's Scandic hotels. Over the obligatory croissants and coffee " and, for those who want it, an off-beam version of the English breakfast " 42 international delegations are preparing to go into a second day of talks. Phones tweet; hushed conversations within teams of negotiators form a low conversational hum.Look closely, and some of the outlines of modern geopolitics are clear.	22nd November 2009
The CRU hack As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.	22nd November 2009
The trouble with apocalypse Although for us the End has perhaps lost its naive imminence, its shadow still lies on the crises of our fictions.When you read, as you must almost every passing day, that ours is the great age of crisis--technological, military, cultural--you may well simply nod and proceed calmly to your business; for this assertion, upon which a multitude of important books is founded, is nowadays no more surprising than the opinion that the earth is round. --Frank Kermode, The Sense of an EndingThe trouble with apocalypse is that most people have already seen it at the movie theater, watched it on television, read it in a book, or heard all about it from the pulpit.	22nd November 2009
'Carbon tax' is sensible, and perhaps inevitable, advocate says - Los Angeles Times Dieter Helm of Oxford says climate change policy should focus not on carbon production, but carbon consumption. A tax on carbon-heavy activities places the emphasis where it belongs, he says. With the global climate change summit in Copenhagen just a few weeks away, gloom has settled in many quarters over the increasing likelihood that a robust international treaty to lower carbon emissions is ...	22nd November 2009
[BONKERS] OPEC head calls for Copenhagen compensation - Press TV The chief of OPEC says oil-producing countries should be compensated for lost revenues if climate talks in Copenhagen next month agree to cut the use of oil.	22nd November 2009
[BONKERS] All fired up: wood-burning stoves They keep our homes warm in style, and are a renewable energy source to boot. What's not to like about wood-burning stoves, asks Dominic Murphy Why buy one? It's potentially carbon neutral. Although burning logs releases CO2, this is the same amount as was absorbed while the wood was growing. If a new tree is planted for each one burned, there is no overall increase in carbon emissions.A bit old-fashioned, no? So what if there's a touch of Heidi about some. There are plenty more with a contemporary feel " 007 just back from the ski slopes, say.Where do I start?	22nd November 2009
[BONKERS] TRUenergy Says Taxpayers May Be Hit By Carbon Rule, Review Says - Bloomberg Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Taxpayers may be forced to pay compensation to TRUenergy Pty if the government's proposed carbon pollution reduction program results in the closure of its Yallourn power station, the Australian Financial Review said.	22nd November 2009
El Nino intensifies Latin America drought From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.	20th November 2009
U.S. group sees worsening coastal flooding threat WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fast-melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica will lead to a much sharper rise in sea levels than previously estimated, touching off flooding that will radically alter U.S. East Coast cities from Miami to Baltimore, according to a new study.	20th November 2009
Melting sea ice dilutes water, endangers sea life HONG KONG (Reuters) - Melting of the Arctic sea ice due to global warming is diluting surface waters and this is endangering some species of shellfish which need minerals in the water to form their shells and skeletons, scientists have found.	20th November 2009
Inferno on Earth: Wildfires spreading as temperatures rise by Lester Brown The following is a Plan B Update by my colleague Janet Larsen, the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute, about the connection between the increase of wildfires and rising temperature. Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009, a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country's history. On Feb. 9, now known as Black Saturday, the mercury in Melbourne topped 115 degrees F as fires burned over 1 million acres in the state of Victoria"destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing more than 170 people, tens of thousands of cattle and sheep, and 1 million native animals.Even as more people move into fire-prone wildlands around the world, the intense droughts and ...	20th November 2009
In Kiribati, a way of life is being washed away - The Age Each year, villagers need to head further inland to find fresh food and water.	20th November 2009
Dutch build more dunes against rising seas - SpaceDaily MONSTER, Netherlands, Nov 20 (AFP) Nov 20, 2009 On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding.	20th November 2009
'Catastrophic' warnings as bushfires flare in Australia - The New Straits Times SYDNEY, Fri: Australian firefighters battled dozens of bush blazes today as record-breaking hot weather sparked catastrophic warnings in two states, just months after the country's worst ever wildfire disaster.	20th November 2009
Heatwave cuts hopes for Australia's crops - Agrimoney.com Heatwave cuts hopes for Australia's cropsAgrimoney.comThe revisions, which follow months of rising hopes for Australia's production, come amid a heatwave which has brought record temperatures to some growing ...Australia wheat crop estimates cut in record heatForexyardall 7	20th November 2009
Hackers target world's leading climate research unit The e-mail system of one the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers. E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.	20th November 2009
The road to Copenhagen Today we present a special edition of our daily news podcast focusing on next month's crucial United Nations summit on climate change. Many fear that if world leaders fail to reach a deal in Copenhagen, there will be years of wrangling without agreement.Activist and commentator George Monbiot is pessimistic about Copenhagen's chances of success, even though time is running out both in terms of the science of global warming and in the expiry of the Kyoto pact.It was hoped that this week's meeting in Beijing of the US and Chinese leaders would fire some momentum into negotiations. But Suzanne Goldenberg, our Washington-based US environment correspondent, says anything Barack Obama promises in Copenhagen will then have to be approved by Congress, which may not be easy.And in Beijing, Jonathan Watts, our Asia environment correspondent, says that many people in China – even scientists – are sceptical about man-made climate change.	20th November 2009
Activists Plan to Reduce Emissions if Govt Won't - OneWorld LONDON, Nov 18 (OneClimate.net) - In a week when world leaders concluded that it would be "unrealistic" to aim for a legally binding agreement at the upcoming UN Climate Conference, there are signs that activist groups are working to create their own systematic plans for reducing global emissions. OneClimate.net read more	20th November 2009
End Times In Copenhagen By Joel KovelThese meetings will be a turning point. The question remains as to the direction taken, whether toward eco-catastrophe or hope for life. But we should do our best to non-violently impede the meetings so long as they serve capital. We can build a movement of movements from below, harbingers of a transformed world: a movement to reveal the murderous betrayal of life by the capitalist class, and centered around the principle of keeping the sources of carbon in the ground as we build ecologically socialist ways of production	20th November 2009
Are the Earth's Oceans Hitting Their Carbon Cap? - Time Magazine A new study finds that the oceans' ability to absorb man-made carbon emissions may be dwindling, at the same time the world's emissions rates show no sign of slowing	19th November 2009
'Kyoto forests' sow seeds for emissions surge When New Zealand's sink forests are harvested in the 2020s, as is likely, all that carbon will return to the atmosphereThe government of New Zealand responded with some irritation to my column last week, which castigated a national strategy for meeting its Kyoto climate targets by allowing greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 22% from 1990 to 2007.All was well, it said. The 600,000 hectares of forests that were planted in the 1990s would soak up all the excess CO2 " around 90m tonnes of it between 2008 and 2012. In fact, the country was likely to be ahead of its Kyoto target of stabilising emissions at 1990 levels.But back home this policy is controversial, to say the least, with many experts accusing the government of a sleight of hand.	19th November 2009
Food, famine & climate change special - Guardian Unlimited Do you know what's in your freezer and store cupboards? Could you dine in style for a week without shopping? A month? allen and york. london.	19th November 2009
DEVELOPMENT: Climate Change Likely to Increase African Hunger Woes BERLIN, Nov 18 (IPS) - Africa, the continent already most affected by hunger and food scarcity, is likely to see its woes increased due to climate change and the changing rain patterns it provokes, experts and scientists say.	19th November 2009
Fresh Food From Small Spaces: A Beginner's Guide to Urban Farming You don't need a red barn and rolling wheat fields. Urbanites, too, can grow their own food indoors, in cramped spaces, and without access to land! For real.	19th November 2009
A 3700-year old bristlecone pine cannot lie - Salon.com Rising temps are forcing plants to adapt, whether they want to or not. But humans have brains -- let's use them!	19th November 2009
Cuts won't cost the earth - The New Statesman Economic reality is a curious thing. The term has a solid, reassuring sound. To go against it would be very foolish and immature. But what exactly is it?	19th November 2009
Battery Research Aims To Store Renewable Energy The biggest chemical battery in the United States is located near Interstate 90 in the small town of Luverne, Minn. The 80 ton device -- the size of two tractor-trailers stacked on top of each other -- stores as much energy as about 3 million rechargeable AA batteries and can power about 3,000 houses for more than an hour when discharging at its maximum rate.	19th November 2009
Review: 'The Ecotechnic Future' by John Michael Greer John Michael Greer has officially established himself as an institution within the peak oil community. Truly one of the finest minds working on the predicament of modern-day industrial civilization, he is so well-read in so many fields that he regularly gains access to insights that utterly elude his contemporaries. For this he is treasured by a growing number of loyal readers"and, I suspect, hated by equally many fellow bloggers who wish that they could be half as good. read more	19th November 2009
Poor women 'bear climate burden' Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the UN Population Fund warns.	19th November 2009
Green technologies in peril as rich nations dither on climate deal Uncertainty over investing in green technologies more dangerous than lack of Copenhagen treaty says Achim Steiner, the head of the UN environment programme Vital business investment in clean technology to tackle climate change is being threatened by delays and doubts over the Copenhagen deal on climate change, senior figures have told the Guardian.Without urgent progress which will stimulate funding for renewables, nations could be locked into high-carbon energy and transport technologies for decades, inflating another unsustainable economic bubble, they fear.Achim Steiner, the head of the UN environment programme, said: "Far more worrying [than formally ratifying a treaty] is that every month we delay we send a ambiguous signal into the world economy, the markets, investors and RD." The markets had not yet had that strong signal, said economist Lord Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics.	19th November 2009
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers! by David Roberts From a sharp-eyed reader comes this ad for Humble Oil (which later merged with Standard to become, yes, Exxon). It may win the All Time Millenial Award for Maximal Irony. It's from a 1962 edition of Life Magazine, available on Google Books (click for larger version):How right they were ... Related Links: Time: The science of climate change grows more dire. Voters in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri support climate action Would You Like Carbon Insurance With That Latte?	19th November 2009
NASA Develops Algae Bioreactor as a Sustainable Energy Source (PhysOrg.com) -- As a clean energy alternative, NASA invented an algae photo-bioreactor that grows algae in municipal wastewater to produce biofuel and a variety of other products.	19th November 2009
Australian heatwave in carbon trade battle CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government demanded on Thursday that conservative rivals stop opposing carbon trade laws, citing a heatwave searing the country's biggest cities as evidence of Australia's vulnerability to climate change. See also: Bushfires rage as country swelters through heatwave - Herald Sun	19th November 2009
Searching For A Miracle: Net Energy Limits And The Fate Of Industrial Society By Post Carbon Institute International Forum on Globalization The fundamental disturbing conclusion of the report is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can reliably be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth or even current levels of economic activity during the remainder of the current century	18th November 2009
Leading article: A climate change warning we ignore at our peril Two years ago, the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change forecast an increase in global temperatures by the end of the century of between 1.8C and 4C, depending on the success of nations in reducing their carbon emissions. But now an international team of scientists, led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, argues that the world is in fact on course for a 6C rise in temperature by 2100. These might sound like small numbers. But their implications could not be bigger " or more dangerous. See also: Fossil fuel CO2 emissions up by 29 percent since 2000	18th November 2009
Copenhagen cop-out: The 'longest suicide note in history'? - Politics.co.uk via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News Procrastinating politicians are in danger of turning next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen into little more than a talking shop, a body of leading scientists and engineers has warned.	18th November 2009
What They Really Believe - New York Times Clean energy opponents believe global warming doesn t exist because that is the only way their arguments make sense.	18th November 2009
Sharks under threat as environmental change bites hard (PhysOrg.com) -- Their size and fearsome appearance have made them the stuff of nightmares, but new research just published suggests that sharks may not be as tough as they appear.	18th November 2009
Rice to Return 100% as Typhoons, Drought Roil Asians - Update3 - Bloomberg Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Rice prices have nowhere to go but up as drought in India and cyclones in the Philippines cripple harvests, according to the world's biggest importer and the top exporter.	18th November 2009
Feeding the world, climate change, and peak oil - Nov 17 -UN links climate with hunger-Hungry for change-The Links Between Food Security And Climate Change-Agriculture in the Climate Change Negotiations, Platform Issue Paper-The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it-Promoting climate-smart agriculture read more	18th November 2009
Carbon myth-busting interactive	18th November 2009
Low-carbon energy - BBC News A survey of low-carbon methods of generating electricity.	18th November 2009
Capitalism will implode | Ulrich Duchrow - Guardian Unlimited Our current system is doomed. But 1989 gives us hope at least that we have the power of self-liberation The question: Was 1989 a good year for humanity? "We are the people" " this was one of the slogans shouted in the big demonstrations in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) leading to the "peaceful revolution" in October/November 1989. The demonstrations always started with prayers for ...	18th November 2009
US is a dead weight on Copenhagen talks Europe needs to take the lead and face down Barack Obama's 'no we can't' attitude on agreeing a climate change dealIn his inaugural address, President Obama promised to "work tirelessly to roll back the spectre of a warming planet", and to "restore science to its rightful place", adding: "Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions " that time has surely passed."You wouldn't know it from reading the Guardian this morning. Instead of sensing the spirit of "yes we can", you feel the familiar muscle of America's Big Carbon special interests. For months, US officials have been dampening expectations and lowering the bar on which climate measures could be expected from the new administration.	18th November 2009
Fighting climate change by turning CO2 to stone (PhysOrg.com) -- While politicians debate the best ways to cut global carbon dioxide emissions, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory's Center for Advanced Energy Studies are charging ahead on a strategy to defuse the CO2 the world already produces. They want to inject the greenhouse gas deep underground, where it would react with rocks and remain, entombed, for thousands of years.	18th November 2009
Carbon market clouded by uncertainty - BBC News Ahead of next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen, the BBC's Damian Kahya takes a look at the carbon trading sector.	18th November 2009
Climate Denial Industry Costs Us $500 Billion a Year toilet money.JPG The International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced in its latest World Energy Outlook that every year of delayed action to address climate change will add $500 Billion to the price tag of saving the planet. The climate denial industry should foot the bill, since they are responsible for causing the delay.In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, a growing number of government leaders from around the world - and even high level United Nations representatives - have suggested that an ambitious, legally binding agreement is all but impossible to achieve in Denmark this December.	17th November 2009
Peak Energy Vs. Climate Change: Stupidest Debate Ever Kjell Aleklett should really pretty much stop talking about climate change, because he looks like a fool when he does. And that's not a good thing, given that he's not one - on energy he's done deeply important work, and I d hate to see people dismiss it because he says dumb things about the climate. read more	17th November 2009
The new farm owners With all the talk about "food security," and distorted media statements like "South Korea leases half of Madagascar's land," it may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today's global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. read more	17th November 2009
Questions for the new world Our need for a greener, life-enhancing economic model should make us seek answers in the unlikeliest of placesPerhaps it was when investigators realised that a mortgage had been given to an "M Mouse" that the depth of the banking crisis became apparent. Throwing money that didn't really exist, at cartoon characters that weren't real, meant something horrible was bound to happen. And if the old banking system was more vulnerable than people realised, what other things, built on fantasy foundations, might also be about to collapse?But while analysis of how the world does its business can indeed reveal wider life-threatening problems, from climate change to a fragile food system to oil running out faster than previously admitted, lessons for how we might live better may also be learned in unusual places.	17th November 2009
The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it | George Monbiot The challenge of feeding billions of people as fuel supplies fall is staggering. And yet leaders' heads remain stuck in the sandI don't know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into free fall: the credibility of the body that's meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world's oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA's forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible.	17th November 2009
No deal, we're out of time, Obama warns Brown still hopes to salvage climate talks as US rules out binding targetsBarack Obama acknowledged today that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at the Copenhagen summit in December and threw his support behind plans to delay a formal pact until next year at the earliest.During a hastily convened meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from next month's meeting by aiming to make it a first-stage series of commitments rather than an all-encompassing protocol.Postponing many contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer until the second-stage, leaders will instead try to reach a political agreement in Copenhagen that sends a strong message of intent.While this falls short of hopes that the meeting would lock in place a global action plan to replace the Kyoto protocol, it recognises the lack of progress ...	17th November 2009
Copenhagen summit: Change we can't yet believe in Confirming yesterday what had already been apparent for some months, Barack Obama and other leaders yesterday said that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at Copenhagen. They said the 22 remaining days were just too few in number to secure binding emissions targets and overcome the divisions between the developed and developing world. This could be viewed as a realistic assessment. Mr Obama said that we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The British government's view is also optimistic. As long as political targets and outline commitments are agreed at Copenhagen, why should it matter that a few more months are taken to thrash out the details, if the end result is a package that is workable and enforceable?	17th November 2009
Copenhagen: a non-negotiable deadline Time is not on our side. We need our leaders to take on to the big challenges of climate change with a sense of urgencyBarack Obama and other leaders have confirmed what has been likely for some time " that there won't be a legally binding deal coming from next month's Copenhagen climate change summit. Instead, and as many insiders have been saying for months, the talks will need to continue into 2010, with a deal hopefully thrashed out during the course of next year. More time might help politicians come up with a workable solution, but time is not on our side.While politics is sometimes about compromise and being flexible, unfortunately it is not possible to negotiate with nature.	17th November 2009
Douglas Alexander & Bert Koenders: The moral imperative behind a Copenhagen deal Next month's climate change meeting in Copenhagen is even more important in the fight against poverty than the 2005 G8 meeting at Gleneagles.	17th November 2009
Russia's Medvedev warns of climate catastrophe SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday that climate change posed a "catastrophic" threat in some of the sharpest comments yet on a subject the Kremlin has often seemed reluctant to confront.	17th November 2009
Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change Even as the climate science becomes more definitive, polls show that public concern in the United States about global warming has been declining. What will it take to rally Americans behind the need to take strong action on cutting carbon emissions? BY TED NORDHAUS AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER	17th November 2009
Climate: A question of justice - BBC News Why a human rights activist is making the jump to mainstream environmentalism.	17th November 2009
Government intervention key to low-carbon economy Scientists argue that rich nations must make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. The way energy is used, priced and created would have to change in order to institute these cuts. Ahead of elections in Britain, which must be held before June 2010, Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth shared his thoughts with Reuters on what the group thinks the next government needs to do in order to build a low-carbon economy.	17th November 2009
Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world - Boston Globe A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.	17th November 2009

Obama backs two-step plan to reach climate deal SINGAPORE (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has backed a plan by the host of next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen to seek a political deal and leave legally binding decisions for later, a U.S. official said on Sunday. See also: Copenhagen climate summit hopes fade as Obama backs postponement How to make a successful failure out of Copenhagen - Financial Times	15th November 2009
Apec leaders drop climate target Asia-Pacific leaders say it will not be possible to reach a climate change deal ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen.	15th November 2009
Nuclear disposal put in doubt by recovered Swedish galleon The plan to use copper for sealing nuclear waste underground has being thrown into disarray by corrosion in artefacts from the VasaPlans for nuclear waste disposal could be thrown into confusion tomorrow at a summit because of new evidence of corrosion in materials traditionally used for burial procedures.The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) says it will keep careful watch on a meeting organised by the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, which will look at potential problems with copper, designated for an important role in sealing radioactive waste underground.Concerns have risen from a most unexpected quarter. Examination of copper artefacts from the Vasa, a fifteenth-century galleon raised from Stockholm harbour, has shown a level of decay that challenges the scientific wisdom that copper corrodes only when exposed to oxygen.David Lowry, a consultant on the nuclear industry, said the latest evidence had profound implications.	15th November 2009
Ray Mears: We'll struggle to survive climate change Ray Mears is Mr Bushcraft. He wants people to be confident about surviving in the wild, but reckons most of us won't make it through a global climate crisis	15th November 2009
Dog stew? - BBC News The BBC's Ethical Man asks if it's time to eat the pets	15th November 2009
The Oceans are Coming - Part II: Living on the Land Are you still talking about Cyclone Nargis? Have you ever heard of Cyclone Nargis? Here's a reminder: on 1 May 2008 a weakening low-pressure system suddenly picked up energy as it approached Burma from the Bay of Bengal. By the second day of this rapid strengthening, Cyclone Nargis was blowing in excess of 135MPH and made landfall on the low-lying southern coast of Burma armed with vast reserves of cyclonic energy, a storm surge beneath, and constant heavy rain from above. The Irrawaddy Delta was devastated, causing at least 140,000 human deaths. Most of us have forgotten about it.	15th November 2009
Gordon Brown must overcome public scepticism before Copenhagen - Times Online With the most important meeting on man-made climate change starting in about three weeks, the last thing the Government needs is a survey showing that more the half the population is reluctant to believe that there is a problem.	15th November 2009
Is There a Technology Resistance? The driving force behind the anthropogenic destruction of Planet Earth is locked inside our skulls. Neuroscientists are just beginning to identify the neural networks of the Technological Mind, but one thing is certain: the irresistible impulse to use tools is the product of natural selection over the last 1.5 million years, and so it is probably more deeply ingrained than even our impulse to use language.	14th November 2009
Trading away our future in China | Kevin Gallagher The economy is suffering and the planet is warming, but Barack Obama's first visit to China is all about a trade warBarack Obama makes his first trip to China in the middle of a global financial crisis and just weeks before world leaders meet to try to strike a global climate change deal. Leadership from the US and China is imperative to solving these crises. But rather than tackle them, the two countries are mired in a good old-fashioned trade war and plan to use Obama's historic visit to negotiate an investment deal that could set the stage for more trade disputes in the decades to come.In September the US slapped heavy tariffs on Chinese tires.	14th November 2009
UK climate targets 'unachievable' UK government plans to make carbon emission cuts of 80% by 2050 are impossible to achieve, according to an analysis.	14th November 2009
Climate Rage The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they've done - or face the consequences. See also: The Seattle activists' coming of age in Cophenhagen will be very disobedient | Naomi Klein	14th November 2009
From hopeful climate to climate of despair by Geoffrey Lean It was less than a year ago, but everything seemed so different then. George W. Bush was still in the White House, but officials gathered at the annual international climate talks, held last December in Poznan, felt new hope in the chilly Polish air: President-elect Obama had, against many expectations, made it clear that combatting global warming was to be a priority for his incoming administration.George W. Bush may no longer be president, but America is once again seen as the bad guy in the effort to negotiate a new climate change pact. Obove, a gagged Statue of Liberty at a 2007 climate protest in Britain.jystewart via FlickrThe hope grew, if anything, in March when Obama's new climate envoy, Todd Stern, traveled to Bonn and addressed the first of this year's long series of climate negotiations.	14th November 2009
Widespread scepticism on climate change undermines Copenhagen summit - Times Online The finding suggests that the public is unconvinced by the Government's message that climate change is the moral issue of our times and that we must embrace urgently a low-carbon lifestyle.	14th November 2009
CLIMATE CHANGE: Signs and Portents of a Hostile New World MéRIDA, Mexico, Nov 12 (IPS) - Lawrence Amos travelled from the Arctic at the top of the world to the tropical middle to recite in a soft voice the ongoing destruction of his home by climate change.	14th November 2009
Record-high U.S. temps outpace record lows: study WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In another sign of a warming planet, there were twice as many record-high temperatures in the United States as record lows over the last decade, climate scientists reported on Thursday.	14th November 2009
Greenland ice loss 'accelerating' - BBC News Satellites, models and ground stations give scientists a better view than ever before of how the Greenland icecap is melting.	14th November 2009
AGRICULTURE-ARGENTINA: Desperately Dry BUENOS AIRES, Nov 12 (IPS) - The persistent drought affecting some 90 percent of Argentine territory has slain cattle in the hundreds of thousands and caused forest fires, drastic restrictions on water use and local disputes over water.	14th November 2009
Bolivian Glacier Melting Faster Than Experts Projected - redOrbit Image Caption: The world's highest ski resort at the Chacaltaya glacier in La Paz, Bolivia. Courtesy Ville Miettinen - Wikipedia	14th November 2009
Global warming a growing threat to Arctic reindeer - AFP via Yahoo! News On Norway's border with Russia, the consequences of climate change are affecting the reindeer population as rising temperatures hit food stocks and industry growth eats into vital grazing land.	14th November 2009
Turtles Are Casualties of Warming in Costa Rica - International Herald Tribune Global warming may deal the fatal blow to an animal that has dwelt in the Pacific for 150 million years.	14th November 2009
'Big drop' in Amazon deforestation The level of deforestation in the Amazon drops by 45% to the lowest on record, Brazil's government says.	14th November 2009
Big profit from nature protection - BBC News Money invested in protecting nature can bring huge financial returns, according to a study backed by the UK.	14th November 2009
Netherlands to levy 'green' road tax by the kilometre The Dutch government said Friday it wants to introduce a "green" road tax by the kilometre from 2012 aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent and halving congestion.	14th November 2009
Asia governors endorse U.N. forest carbon scheme SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Six provincial governors from Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines on Thursday backed an expanded U.N. scheme aimed at protecting and conserving forests in return for carbon credits.	14th November 2009
Ethiopia PM: world not serious on climate change ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who will represent Africa at next month's Copenhagen climate change talks, said on Thursday it was unlikely the world was serious about tackling global warming.	14th November 2009
The cost of nuclear doesn't add up - Guardian Unlimited Government plans to fast-track major projects pose a real threat to their action plan on global warming ( UK's nuclear future is mapped out as race to tackle climate change hots up , 10 November). Reports on the government's national policy statements have predictably focussed on the controversial issue of new nuclear reactors, but a fundamental flaw in the proposals, which has gone largely ...	14th November 2009
High-tech monitors track methane on seabed - Alberni Valley News Trawlers stumbled upon it accidentally off Vancouver Island's coast.	14th November 2009
'Large amounts' of water on Moon Nasa's experiment last month to find water on the Moon was a major success, agency scientists have announced.	14th November 2009
APEC leaders row back on 2050 emissions cut target SINGAPORE (Reuters) - APEC leaders have watered down draft text on emissions cuts, dropping a reference to reductions of minus 50 percent by 2050, pledging instead to "substantially" cut carbon pollution by 2050, the latest draft leaders' statement says.	14th November 2009
'Affluent climate' - BBC News The climate change challenge facing society's well-off	14th November 2009
Earth, wind or fire - The Age Australia's addiction to coal-powered energy is unsustainable. But a shift to greener solutions (like gas, solar and wind power) means hard decisions.	14th November 2009
ETS scheme 'in the bag' - The Age Australia is likely to have an emissions trading scheme locked in by the end of next week.	14th November 2009
One day in early 2045 This week I managed to stay a bit closer to home and met up for lunch with Dr. Myles Allen of the Department of Physics (Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics) at the University of Oxford. Although we have probably all understood the bit about the area under the curve when it comes to CO2 emissions, Myles and his team have brought a whole new dimension to the issue with a recent article in Nature. The core of the arguement is that simply emitting carbon dioxide slower will not address the issue of climate change unless it involves phasing out carbon dioxide emissions altogether, before we reach an upper limit of one trillion tonnes of carbon.	14th November 2009
The Choice Ahead: Entrenched Fossil Fuel Dependence Or Climate Change Management By Emily Spence Humanity needs to proactively come together to deal with climate change mitigation rather than remain separated along nationalistic lines to contentiously vie for control over the worlds remaining fossil fuels. The rationale behind such a course of action is clear. Time is running out in terms of our surpassing climate change tipping points that would drastically alter life across the entire Earth for many centuries to come	12th November 2009
The Links Between Food Security And Climate Change By Kanayo F. Nwanze Recent reports indicate that the rains have failed once again across vast swathes of Eastern Africa, putting millions of people at risk. This current regional crisis is a stark reminder to all of us that the global food security crisis of 2007 and 2008, which was marked by a sharp contraction in food supplies and food price spikes, is far from over	12th November 2009
Warming drives off Cape Cod's namesake, other fish (AP) -- Fishermen have known for years that they've had to steam farther and farther from shore to find the cod, haddock and winter flounder that typically fill dinner plates in New England.	12th November 2009
What Would Failure at Copenhagen Mean for Climate Change? - Scientific American This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions - none of which deliver the necessary cuts - and an altered climate. [More]	12th November 2009
Yangtze 'facing climate threat' Environmentalists say China's Yangtze river basin faces a future of more extreme weather events, threatening its ecosystems.	12th November 2009
Makeover 'will cost up to £15,000' The head of Britain's climate change watchdog predicted today that households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.Warning that Britain needs to step up its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases after picking all the "low-hanging fruit", Adair Turner said radical steps would be needed for electricity generation, cars and homes.Amid growing concern that next month's Copenhagen climate change summit could end in bitter failure, the chairman of the government's climate change commission warned against using the drop in emissions caused by the longest recession since the 1930s as an excuse to relax in the fight against climate change.The government has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 34% from their 1990 levels by 2020 but slipped off course during the economic boom earlier this decade.	12th November 2009
Poor nations vow low-carbon path Poor countries vulnerable to climate change plot a low-carbon future and challenge richer states to match them.	12th November 2009
Are global warming and deforestation too scary for Sesame Street? | Leo Hickman Scaring kids might not be the best approach, but we shouldn't avoid talking about 'scary' subjects with children altogetherDuring the four decades since its inception, Sesame Street has introduced some pretty challenging subjects to its young audience " death, AIDS, adoption. It has even recently talked about the impact of the ongoing recession on family life.But there's one topic that will not be raised, according to Rosemarie Truglio, vice president of research and education at Sesame Workshop, the New York-based charity that produces Sesame Street " and that's global warming. It's just "too scary" for kids, apparently.At a press conference earlier this week to announce the launch of a two-year, environmental "curriculum" on the show called My World is Green and Growing, Truglio said ...	12th November 2009
China's Yangtze Basin Will See Weather Extremes, Report Says Extreme weather events caused by a warming climate pose a growing threat to China's Yangtze River basin, which encompasses Shanghai and some of the most productive agricultural land in the nation. The basin, which cuts through the center of China, has already seen a spike in floods, heat waves, and drought over the last two decades, according to the study conducted by the conservation group WWF. And over the next 50 years, the report predicts, temperatures will increase an average of 1.5 to 2 degrees C (2.7 to 4 degrees F). Of particular concern is the threat of rising waters as increasing glacier melt from the Himalayas flows into the basin, posing a greater threat of flooding to major cities and damage to corn, winter wheat, and rice crops.	12th November 2009
No time to waste on climate change, report declares - Los Angeles Times Less than a month before the Copenhagen summit on climate change, the International Energy Agency says that governments must act now to avoid catastrophic results. Governments must act now to ward off catastrophic climate change or face additional costs of $500 billion per year of delay, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency .	12th November 2009
Undercurrent of doubt over electric motors Electric cars, which emit no carbon dioxide from their tailpipe, are not the answer some people think they are to environmental transport problems, a new report claims today.	12th November 2009
It's all about me - thane! Well, it's not really all about me. But methane has figured strongly in a couple of stories recently and gets an apparently-larger-than-before shout-out in Al Gore's new book as well. Since a part of the recent discussion is based on a paper I co-authored in Science, it is probably incumbent on me to provide a little context. First off, these latest results are being strongly misrepresented in certain quarters. It should be obvious, but still bears emphasizing, that redistributing the historic forcings between various short-lived species and CH4 is mainly an accounting exercise and doesn t impact the absolute effect attributed to CO2 (except for a tiny impact of fossil-derived CH4 on the fossil-derived CO2).	12th November 2009
Meles Unites 52 Nations to Increase Clout at UN Climate Summit - Bloomberg Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Africa's point man at the Copenhagen climate-change summit next month is prime minister of drought- stricken Ethiopia, a former Marxist rebel who favors tailored suits and has coaxed billions of dollars in aid from the West.	12th November 2009
Surf's up for Cornwall's Wave hub Work to begin next week on undersea socket for Cornwall's pioneering marine energy test centre. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment NetworkConstruction on the £42m Wave Hub project off the coast of Cornwall is to start next week with the goal of having the flagship facility up and running by the end of next year.The Wave Hub, which will be based 10 miles off the north coast of Cornwall, will feature a large grid-connected "socket" on the seabed that will allow up to four different marine energy devices to connect to it at any one time.	12th November 2009
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower Exclusive: The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves. The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies. See also: Are we running out of oil? The world in energy statistics IEA says OPEC could lose in climate deal - SpaceDaily	10th November 2009
Energy demand to rise rapidly if no CO2 deal: IEA LONDON (Reuters) - World energy consumption will rise rapidly over the next 20 years, pushing up costs and increasing greenhouse gases, unless a deal is reached to curb carbon dioxide emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday. See also: Cost of extra year's climate inaction $500 billion: IEA	10th November 2009
ENERGY-SPAIN: Windfall for the Grid MADRID, Nov 9 (IPS) - Wind energy notched up a new record in Spain on Sunday, when it generated 53 percent of total electricity demand nationwide for part of the day, according to official figures announced Monday.	10th November 2009
Carbon ration account for all proposed by Environment Agency - Times Online Everyone should be given an annual carbon ration and face financial penalties if they exceed it, under a proposal by the Environment Agency.	10th November 2009
Gordon Brown is right: rich western banks should pay for the developing world to go green A global tax on banking transactions would curb speculation and the proceeds could break the deadlock on Copenhagen climate talksThe response was predictable. No sooner had Gordon Brown expressed enthusiasm for a global transaction tax than the backlash began. Not something we like, said the Americans. We want lower not higher taxes, said the Canadians. Too hard to enforce, said the International Monetary Fund.This is the last gasp of an ancien régime. The banks in 2009 are the Bourbons in 1789, the Romanovs in 1917. They existed in a bubble of privilege and took the public for a ride. They caused a financial crisis and triggered the biggest economic crash since the 1930s.	10th November 2009
Contraction & Convergence : Agreeable, Workable, Ethical This week, the campaigning organisation Friends of the Earth took the bold step of publishing their critical negative analysis of Carbon Trading. It is clear that money, alone, cannot buy you Carbon Emissions reductions, and as we come up to Copenhagen, it is essential that we reach beyond the ifs, buts, greys and muted tones to a framework that can be made to work, agreeable to all : Contraction & Convergence from the Global Commons Institute :- [link]contconv/cc.html A market-based system for Carbon control stands a good chance of failure.	10th November 2009
Global Solution for Global Disease After more than 10 years of research, in every possible spot, about the phenomenon. After being depressed to the edge for not finding one single headline in a newspaper or website in the whole world, that responsibly approaches the most important subject to human survival and the entire planet. Only after the human self-defeat to common sense the time has come to set what appears to be sci-fi, trying to stop the Climate Changes.	8th November 2009
'Road trains' get ready to roll A sensor system that joins vehicles in 'platoons' so they travel close together is being researched with European cash.	10th November 2009
W Australia sea level rising fast Rising sea levels in Australia are worst in the west, where they are double the world average, new figures reveal.	10th November 2009
Is Pine Island Glacier the Weak Underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? Guest post by Mauri Pelto	10th November 2009
Gabura: a terrifying vision of a world devastated by climate change In Gabura global warming is a bleak reality as villagers face rising sea levels, failed crops and devastating cyclonesWhat would your world look like if it were devastated by climate change? In the small, impoverished community of Gabura in Bangladesh, the concept of global warming, often only words on a screen or in a newspaper to us, is an all too bleak reality. The inhabitants face danger from rising sea levels, devastation of crops and the increased likelihood of devastating cyclones.Oxfam's remarkable new online interactive documentary " Gabura, from daily life to disaster - launched in conjunction with the Guardian yesterday, allows you both to bear witness to the impact of climate change and to choose your own journey through the story.We enable you to see vividly how livelihoods have been ruined, crops destroyed, and families torn apart.	10th November 2009
Nasa: Methane effect worse than thought - The New Zealand Herald New Zealand may be making a bigger contribution to global warming than scientists thought. A Nasa study says climate scientists have underestimated by 20 to 40 per cent how much methane warms the planet - even though it is already believed to be 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.	10th November 2009
Maldives anger at climate inertia The president of the Maldives strongly criticises the world's rich countries for doing too little to stem climate change.	10th November 2009
UK carbon capture competition 'dead on its feet' says expert Professor Stuart Hazeldine warns only Scottish Power can deliver carbon capture and storage within the government's timetable. From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment NetworkThe UK's carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition is "dead on its feet" with only one of the three projects in the running capable of delivering a full scale working demonstration plant by the 2014 deadline, a leading expert has warned.Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Professor Stuart Hazeldine, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh and leading expert in CCS technologies, said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) should close the competition and award the funding to Scottish Power to develop CCS at its Longannet plant in Fife in order to prevent any more time being wasted."Scottish Power are the only people who can deliver by 2014 now," he said.	10th November 2009
Copenhagen climate change deal could be two separate treaties - Daily Telegraph A climate change deal at the end of the year could end up being two treaties because the Americans refuse to sign up to existing global agreements.	10th November 2009
India 'arrogant' to deny global warming link to melting glaciers IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri accuses Indian environment ministry of 'arrogance' for its report claiming there is no evidence that climate change has shrunk Himalayan glaciers	10th November 2009
Copenhagen climate change summit: The issues What is the Copenhagen climate change summit?The UN meeting is the deadline for thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto protocol, with the aim of preventing dangerous global warming. It will run for two weeks from 7 December and is the latest in a series that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth summit in Rio.What's the bottom line?Climate scientists are convinced the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall very soon. To have a chance of keeping warming under the dangerous 2C mark, cuts of 25%-40% relative to 1990 levels are needed, rising to 80%-95% by 2050.	10th November 2009
A bright nuclear future: true or false? Britain has identified 10 'suitable sites' for next-generation nuclear power plants. Here's a list of awkward questionsIf you think the Labour government has done the right thing in its decision to expand nuclear power in the UK by 50%, see how you fare with this quiz. Are the following dozen statements true or false?1) The independent French nuclear safety authority