News: Archive for March, 2010
‘WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.’
via Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time – NYTimes.com.
Today President Obama announced plans to open new coastal areas to offshore oil exploration and drilling, including in Alaska’s North Slope. He also called for development of “clean” coal.
Obama invoked science to mollify critics of offshore drilling: “We’ll be guided not by ideology but by scientific evidence”. However, this policy shift clashes with climate science. The extraction and use of fossil fuels moves carbon from safe long term underground storage up into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide where it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping additional heat in the atmosphere.
‘The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.’
‘LONDON (AP) — A parliamentary panel investigating allegations that scientists at one of the world’s leading climate research centers misrepresented data related to global warming announced Wednesday that it had found no evidence to support that charge.’
via Climate Data Wasn’t Distorted, British Panel Finds – NYTimes.com.
‘Reuters – More than 110 countries have signed up to the Copenhagen Accord on fighting global warming but the United Nations said on Wednesday that their pledges for cutting greenhouse gas emissions were insufficient.’
via Copenhagen Accord climate pledges too weak: U.N. | Reuters.
Greenpeace releases report exposing corporate funding of climate denialists:
‘Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch have a vested interest in delaying climate action: they’ve made billions from their ownership and control of Koch Industries, an oil corporation that is the second largest privately-held company in America which also happens to have an especially poor environmental record’
via Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine | Greenpeace USA.
Interesting analysis in The Economist.
‘In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions and mistakes. Whether your impression is dominated by the whole or the holes will depend on your attitude to the project at hand.’
via The science of climate change: The clouds of unknowing | The Economist.
Also see another climate article from the same issue, ‘Climate science: Spin, science and climate change‘.
excerpt: ‘Plenty of uncertainty remains; but that argues for, not against, action. If it were known that global warming would be limited to 2°C, the world might decide to live with that. But the range of possible outcomes is huge, with catastrophe one possibility, and the costs of averting climate change are comparatively small. Just as a householder pays a small premium to protect himself against disaster, the world should do the same.’
‘March 26 (Bloomberg) — Senators Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman outlined U.S. climate-change legislation that would have power companies buy and sell pollution rights in a carbon market and force oil companies to pay fixed fees for emissions.’
via Senators Outline U.S. Utility Carbon Market for Climate Bill – BusinessWeek.
‘The UN conference in Cancún next December needs to set the basis for a new climate change treaty in 2011, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.’
‘In China, local officials are in such a hurry to implement the central government’s new renewable energy policies that some projects are going up with too little planning.’
via China’s Rush Toward Green Development Suffers from Lack of Planning | SolveClimate.com.