By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
OK, I admit, I didn’t want to wade into this slush.
I was aware, as most of you no doubt are, that the IPCC (that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been caught in a few mistakes recently. And I was concerned, because we reporters rely on the IPCC’s reports — especially that last one from 2007. The one that many scientists believe underestimates what will happen with climate change. We rely on it because it’s based on the efforts of hundreds of peer-reviewed reports by scientists around the world and it’s widely considered to be the best forecast we have of what climate change might bring.
Of course, I had trouble hearing myself think in the din of cheers from climate skeptics, who were already reveling in record snows in the U.S. (The naysayers conveniently ignore that extreme weather patterns are predicted by global-warming models.) They shout from the stands, as though this were a junior high wrestling match instead of a serious discussion of what’s true or not, or reasonable to believe, about the future of the planet.
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February 16th, 2010
Green Right Now Reports
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and the state’s Attorney General and Agriculture commissioner, announced Tuesday that the state will challenge the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are endangering human health.
Texas has filed a Petition for Review of the EPA’s finding with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit , questioning the science behind the EPA’s finding and whether the agency should be allowed to regulate industries’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The move follows a similar one by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week, when the Chamber filed a petition against the EPA to stop the agency from regulating greenhouse gases. The Chamber says it favors greenhouse gas reductions, but that giving the EPA the authority to assess fines against polluters is the “wrong way” to do it.
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Related Topics: · carbon pollution, Clean Air Act, EPA, Governor Rick Perry, Greenhouse Gases, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Texas, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Supreme Court
October 23rd, 2008
By Harriet Blake
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a report earlier this week stating that global warming is increasing at an even faster pace than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in 2007. The report, “Climate Change: Faster, Stronger, Sooner,” was pegged to the Oct. 20 Luxembourg meeting of the European Union’s Environment Ministers.
Despite concerns about the global financial crisis, the ministers have chosen to stick with their environmental improvement plan – to reduce greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020. The WWF would like to see that increased to 30 percent.
According to the WWF’s scientific data, there were six key findings:
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Related Topics: · Arctic Ocean, Carbon Sink, Climate Change, European Union, global warming, Greenhouse Gases, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPPC, sea level, World Wildlife Fund
