MAY 2007

April 6th : Agreement has been reached among delegates at a major conference on climate change in Brussels. A final accord was struck after delays caused by disagreement over the likely impact of global warming.

"What we have is a very good document," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report is expected to say climate change is already having major impacts on the natural world. The panel believes there is also a discernible, though less marked, impact on human societies. The details are due to be unveiled at a news conference shortly.

DETAILS:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the multinational UN organization that is tasked with the problem of climate change, is in the process of releasing its fourth assessment report on the "global present state of knowledge on climate change."

The IPCC has three working groups, that deal with "The Physical Science Basis," "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," and "Mitigation of Climate Change." These three groups can be summed up as "How is it happening," "What happens when it happens," and "How the hell do we stop it or deal with it?" Working Group I has already released its outline, and there are draft copies of their part of the report that have leaked onto the internet. Working Group III meets at the end of this month in Bangkok, and Working Group II, who have been meeting in Brussels, released their summary this morning. This summary is intended to distill the contents of the 1,500-page scientific report down to the point where it can be easily read and understood by policymakers.

But the release of that summary has not been without incident. Although the scientists behind the document were happy with their effort, they encountered fierce diplomatic pressure from a number of countries to tone down their language. The problem arises from the use of common language to describe scientific certainty. If one were speaking to another scientist, then they might describe certainty of outcome as a percentage; a 90 percent certainty, for example, or a 99 percent certainty. As the IPCC summaries are meant for politicians, very few of whom appear to have anything more than rudimentary scientific knowledge, these percentages are translated into plainer English.

The heart of the problem has been the successful efforts by delegates from China and Saudi Arabia to change language describing how many natural ecosystems around the world are already being affected. Originally, it was reported that there was "a very high confidence" that areas around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases." "A very high confidence" translates as a 90 percent certainty, but under political pressure, this was downgraded to "a high certainty," meaning only 80 percent. Other parts of the report were also watered down, causing outrage amongst the scientists who authored the report. t

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the second part of its Four Assessment Report series, titled Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

The areas that will be hit the hardest will be "The arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt, and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding."

-- from an interview with the BBC, Dr. Martin Parry, IPCC Working Group II Co-Chairman


elliott rader mydigitalnoise.com

The series of comprehensive assessment reports to be completed by the end of 2007 examines the devastating effects of global climate change. This newest report issued on Friday, April 6th, warns of widespread food shortages and starvation for humans and other animal species if steps are not taken immediately to combat the looming problem.

In an interview with the BBC, IPCC Working Group II Co-Chairman Dr. Martin Parry said that the areas hit hardest will be: "The arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt, and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding."

The report looked mostly at the impacts of climate change rather than the solutions. A later report will suggest ways to combat climate change such as carbon cap and trade systems, far more stringent energy efficiency and conservation, and rapid development of renewable energy.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant to the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

AMERICANS ARE RISING UP TO PROTEST AND CALL FOR CARBON EMISSION CUTS- AMY GOODMAN TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: This weekend tens of thousands of Americans are gathering across the country in the largest ever demonstration against global warming. Over 1,300 rallies, demonstrations and actions are being held in all 50 states to call on Congress to cut carbon emissions by 80% by the year by 2050. The actions range from a rally of thousands in New York City, to a handful of scuba divers of the coast of Key West, to several hundred pounds of ice being left melting on the sidewalks in Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. April 14th is being billed as a National Day of Climate Action. It is being spearheaded by a group called Step It Up.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben is one of the organizers of Step it up. In 1989 he wrote the book, The End of Nature one of the first books to describe global warming as an emerging environmental crisis. He writes frequently about global warming and alternative energy. He is author of eight book books, his latest is Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill McKibben joins us in the firehouse studio, welcome to Democracy Now!. Tell us about the span of actions that’s taking place tomorrow and what sparked April 14th?

BILL MCKIBBEN: What sparked it was after sort of 20 years of writing about this, my sense of growing despair that we were doing nothing. I mean Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore had educated us about the problem, the polling showed that most Americans understood it and still the 20-year bipartisan effort to accomplish nothing in Washington was succeeding all too well. In January, we – and by that I mean me and six students, recent graduates at Middlebury College where I work, launched a website, www.stepitup07.org and we started encouraging people around the country to hold rallies tomorrow, on April 14th. We had no money and no organization, so we figured we’d be doing well if we could organize 100 of these things by April 14th. And that would have been about 100 more global warming rallies than there had been.

Instead, because people were really eager to finally be able to take action about this, the thing has just kinda exploded. We have 1,350 rallies that’ll be taking place tomorrow in every corner of the country. And the creativity that people have brought to bear is as amazing as the numbers.

In Jacksonville, Florida, people are going to descend on the parking lot of the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium and they have hired a crane to lift a yatch 20 feet in the air so they can show people where the sea level is going to be some day and they are going to have a big gathering underneath. Down in the battery, midday, in Manhattan, there are going to be thousands of people in blue shirts crowding into Lower Manhattan to show where the new tide line will be, a kind of sea of people to demonstrate where the ocean will come not too far from now. Out in the Rockies there will be people descending, skiers descending in formation down those dwindling glaciers. You know, every corner of the country and every kind of person, evangelical churches, environmental groups, you name it, all joining this stepitup07.org thing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bill, given the enormous crisis that continues to mount over the environment and climate change, why do you think the environmental movement became so quiet for so long, so unable to go in the streets and be able to put the kind of pressure necessary on government? Obviously Earth Day was co-opted long ago by the corporations. But what has happened to the activists?

BILL MCKIBBEN: You know, the environmental movement that we have was built to fight a different problem. The sets of problems it was built to fight: air pollution in the cities, or toxic pollution and things, has done a pretty good darned job of fighting. Our air is cleaner, we have more cleaner lakes and rivers, and that kind of thing. It's too much to ask that environmental community alone to take on something as central as global warming, which means dealing with the most fundamental parts of our economy. We need a much larger movement than that. In fact, there is no question, we need a movement as morally urgent, as committed, as passionate as the Civil Rights Movement if we’re gonna have any chance of turning this around. That's what we are trying to build and that’s what we’re seeing the first real glimpses of this weekend.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben, you’ve written the book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities in the Durable Future, you talk about happiness through history.

BILL MCKIBBEN: You know, one of the questions -- the only question we ask about the economy in our society is how can we make it bigger? That question is running out of steam for two reasons, one, the environmental damage that we’re now seeing on a global scale. Two, as economists and others are beginning to realize with new research, endless expansion isn't making us as happy as it's supposed to. In fact, if anything, just the opposite.

If you poll Americans as people have done since the end of World War II, asking them are they happy with their lives, the number who say that they are very happy peaks in 1956 and goes downhill ever since. Now, that was before I was born so I missed what was ever going on in 1956. But the tragedy of it is that that downward curve coincides with an upward curve of about – we’re about three times as rich as we were in the late 50s. We have three times as much stuff. If what we think we know about economy was true, those two curves, satisfaction and prosperity should move in somewhat the same direction. That they are moving in opposite directions, really should lead us to ask some pretty stiff questions, and should lead us also not to fear the kind of world that we are going to need to create to deal with the environmental problems that are at hand, a world with much more localized economies, and much stronger communities, and much more emphasis on belonging and much less on belongings.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You talk about the need for an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. George Monbiot, in his new book talks about a 90% cut. How will that be possible, given the current political climate and domination of government policy by major corporations?

BILL MCKIBBEN: The first thing to be said is there's no study that says 81% reductions would be too much and 79% too little. What we need is very quickly, a strong, sharp signal from Washington about what future policy about energy is going to be. And it has to be strong enough and sharp enough to send a real message into the financial markets, to send a real price signal to anyone planning any kind of investment.

Twelve weeks ago when we launched stepitup07.org, people said 80% by 2050, that's unrealistic, that’s too big, whatever. Even in those twelve weeks, partly thanks to us, but partly thanks to all kinds of other things that have been going on like the Supreme Court decision and new scientific data from the U.N., the ground is shifting. A week ago John Edwards, the first of the Democratic Candidates to issue his big energy and environmental plan, people called us up the day before it came out and said take a look at it, I think you will like it and indeed the first thing on it said cut carbon by 80%, by 2050.

We are beginning to get some momentum finally. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy, we are up against the biggest adversaries on earth. Exxon Mobil made $40 billion last year, that’s more profit than anybody has ever made in the history of profits. We could take probably, almost everyone listening to Democracy Now! today and pool all our spare change and we would still come up slightly shy of 40 billion bucks. We’re not going to beat them that way, but if we can get into the streets, if we can be creative. If we can build a broad coalition across all kinds of people who understand that this is increasingly not a partisan issue, it's a survival issue, then we have some chance of getting that going.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben, I want to thank you for being with us. And on that issue of oil companies and auto companies, we are going to be talking about who killed the electric car next. Bill McKibben is one of the founders or organizers of Step It Up. Around the country on Saturday, we’ll report on it on Monday, and his new book is, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities in the Durable Future.

US generals urge climate action

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts.

They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions.

Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni.

lightning in hurricanes - an unusual feature

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/09jan_electrichurricanes.htm?list115530

The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle. During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005, three of the most powerful storms--Rita, Katrina, and Emily--did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why. Richard Blakeslee of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (GHCC) in Huntsville, Alabama, was one of a team of scientists who explored Hurricane Emily. "Hurricanes are most likely to produce lightning when they're making landfall," says Blakeslee. But there were no mountains beneath the "electric hurricanes" of 2005—only flat water. It's tempting to think that, because Emily, Rita and Katrina were all exceptionally powerful, their sheer violence somehow explains their lightning. But Blakeslee says that this explanation is too simple. "Other storms have been equally intense and did not produce much lightning," he says. "There must be something else at work."