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Tagged : climate-change
A Greener America: The next four years, the next first steps
By Barbara Kessler
The cork is off the champagne on the presidential election - and many environmentalists who’ve felt stifled by the Bush Administration’s indifference, hostility or lukewarm interest in ecological issues, including global warming, are giddy with new possibilities.
Frances Beinecke, head of the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, sounded buoyant in an address on the NRDC website: “Barack Obama’s election is a huge win for everyone exhausted from playing defense. Count us among them. It rekindles our hope that environmental protection may be restored to its rightful place as a treasured American value.”
Gene Karpinski, head of the League of Conservation Voters, was no less ebullient. “America embraced change today. And the planet will be better for it,” he announced.
Karpinski noted that, along with Obama, the nation also elected some environmental-minded senators, such as cousins Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), from a family with a long conservation history.
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Tags: · Barak Obama, Climate Change, environment, Green Initiatives, Green jobs
World Wildlife Fund warns of accelerating climate change
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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Tags: · Arctic Ocean, Carbon Sink, Climate Change, European Union, global warming, Greenhouse Gases, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPPC, sea level, World Wildlife Fund
Virginia survey reveals public attitudes on global warming
By Barbara Kessler
Three in four Virginians believe that global warming has been occurred over the past four decades, according to an extensive survey of state opinions, released today by University of Virginia researchers.
A smaller percentage of the populace (39 percent) said that human activity “such as burning fossil fuels” is causing the phenomenon; 33 percent felt global warming was caused by a combination of human factors and natural trends; 20 percent attributed it to “natural patterns” and 8 percent reported they were “not sure” of the causes.
The survey of 660 Virginians, conducted by UV’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and released this week, was devised to better probe residents’ viewpoints on global warming, in light of the fact that states have “taken an unexpectedly central role” in forming climate change policy.
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Tags: · Climate Change, global warming, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Virginia
Peat bogs highly sensitive to rising temperatures
By John DeFore
Announced this week is news of another way in which warming climates may exacerbate warming by adding more carbon to the atmosphere: A letter published online by the journal Nature Geoscience offers an abstract of research into carbon release by peat moss.
The work, led by Takeshi Ise of Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, was a simulation using data from both shallow and deep peat areas in Manitoba, Canada.
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Tags: · Canada, Carbon Sink, Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, peat bogs
Western climate initiative sets emissions targets
September 23rd, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
While the world waits for Washington to act on one looming crisis - the Wall Street mortgage debacle -  states in the Western U.S. acted today on another crisis, announcing a plan to reduce emissions to combat global warming.
The Western Climate Initiative, a collaborative of seven Western states and four Canadian provinces, agreed to try to reduce carbon emissions to 15 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2020.
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Tags: · Arizona, British Columbia, California, Climate Change, Manitoba, Montana, New Mexico, Ontario, Oregon, Quebec, Union of Concerned Scientists, Utah, Washington, Western Climate Initiative
Cartoon contest satirizes government interference in scientific inquiry
September 16th, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
And the winner of the Union of Concerned Scientist’s “Science Idol” cartoon contest is. . . Justin Bilicki, a senior art director at ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish, who lives in Brooklyn.
 The contest, an annual event for the non-profit alliance of scientists, invited cartoonists to explore the challenges and political pressures that impede or distort scientific inquiry. Bilicki’s cartoon, clearly informed by the debate over climate change and global resource depletion, features a scientist in a lab coat with a poster that declares: RESEARCH CONCLUDES: WE ARE DESTROYING EARTH.
Two men in suits look on, and one, holding a briefcase overstuffed with money and labeled “Government” asks, “Could you kindly rephrase that in equivocal, inaccurate, vague, self-serving and roundabout terms that we can all understand?”
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Tags: · Climate Change, global warming, Union of Concerned Scientists
Bush's Global Warming Address Gets Cold To Lukewarm Reception
By Harriet Blake
Soon after President Bush’s address on greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, environmentalists criticized the president’s goal of halting the growth of emissions by 2025 as too little, too late.
The Environmental Defense Fund praised Bush for acknowledging that federal action is needed to address climate change, “a new and welcome shift.” But, it falls [...]
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Tags: · Climate Change, global warming, President George Bush
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