Whenever you hear the word miracle, you know there's trouble just
around the corner. But however many times they lead to disappointment
or disaster, the newspapers never tire of promoting miracle cures,
miracle crops, miracle fuels and miracle financial instruments. We have
a bottomless ability to disregard the laws of economics, biology and
thermodynamics when we encounter a simple solution to complex problems.
So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new miracle. It's a low-carbon
regime for the planet which makes the Atkins Diet look healthy:
woodchips with everything.
The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.
Five countries that created a treaty nearly four decades ago to protect polar bears through limits on hunting issued a joint statement on Thursday identifying climate change as "the most important long-term threat" to the bears.
The statement came at the end of a three-day meeting in Tromso, Norway, of scientists and officials from the United States, Norway, Canada, Russia and Denmark, all with territory abutting the Arctic Ocean that serves as habitat for the bears. (Denmark was represented through Greenland, which is moving toward becoming an independent country.)
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.
James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.
OSLO - A drastic climate shift such as a thaw of Greenland's ice or death of the Amazon forest is more than 50 percent likely by the year 2200 in cases of strong global warming, according to a survey of experts.
The poll of 52 scientists, looking 100 years beyond most forecasts, also revealed worries that long-term warming would trigger radical changes such as the disintegration of the ice sheet in West Antarctica, raising world sea levels.
America is woefully unprepared for climate change, and the government agencies charged with delivering the latest science to decision makers are not up to the task, a new report said today.
The National Research Council, a policy advice centre that is part of the US National Academy of Sciences, said that government agencies and political leaders, concerned more than ever about climate change, were not getting the information or the guidance they needed.
WASHINGTON - More Americans than at any time in the past decade believe that the seriousness of global warming is being exaggerated, a Gallup poll showed Thursday.
Forty-one percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they are doubtful that global warming is as serious as the mainstream media are reporting, putting public skepticism about the hot-button issue at the highest level recorded by Gallup in more than a decade.
The previous high came in 2004, when 38 percent of Americans said news reports exaggerated the seriousness of global warming.
SAN FRANCISCO - Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday.
Nearly half a million people and $100 billion in property, two-thirds of it concentrated around the bay, are at risk of major flooding, researchers found in the most comprehensive study to date of how climate change will alter the state's coastal areas.
The world faces a bleak future over its dwindling water supplies, with pollution, climate change and rapidly growing populations raising the possibility of widespread shortages, a new report compiled by 24 agencies of the United Nations says.
The warning from the UN is based on one of the most comprehensive assessments the global body has undertaken on the state of the world's fresh water and was commissioned for use at a major international water conference being held next week in Istanbul.
COPENHAGEN - The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change, researchers have found.
Damage will be so severe that it will cause irreversible changes to the world's weather patterns, which would be expected to bring more storms, floods and heatwaves to Britain.
Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to 2C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050.
