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Senators to Exxon: Stop the Denial
Democrats and Republicans Say Stop Funding Global Warming Doubters
Clayton Sandell, ABC News
ExxonMobil should stop funding groups that have spread the idea that global warming is a myth and that try to influence policymakers to adopt that view, two senators said today in a letter to the oil company.
In their letter to ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appealed to Exxon’s sense of corporate responsibility, asking the company to “come clean about its past denial activities.”
The two senators called on ExxonMobil to “end any further financial assistance” to groups “whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth.”
Phone calls to ExxonMobil were not immediately returned to ABC News.
An upcoming study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report said, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community.
(27 Oct 2006)
The Planet in Peril
Jim Hansen, YaleGlobal
The evidence on global warming is overwhelming. Ongoing scientific research reveals that human-induced climate change will contribute to dangerous new weather patterns and rising sea levels that will gradually swamp many coastal cities, displacing millions of people over the next century. Jim Hansen, director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, explores the implications of global warming in a two-part series for YaleGlobal. The globe experienced abrupt temperature changes in the distant past, and Hansen offers a reminder that those changes resulted in mass extinctions and the evolution of new species. Meanwhile, the changes caused by modern human activities dwarf any natural events recorded during the prehistoric era. Unless humans take action soon, by restraining activities that contribute to global warming, they can anticipate adapting to a transformed planet. – YaleGlobal
(19 Oct 2006)
See also Part II
Sea change: why global warming could leave Britain feeling the cold
James Randerson, The Guardian
Scientists have uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Britain its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.
Most alarmingly, the data reveal that a part of the current, which is usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon river, came to a temporary halt during November 2004.
The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current which drives the Gulf stream was dramatically portrayed in The Day After Tomorrow. The climate disaster film had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age practically overnight.
Although no scientist thinks the switch-off could happen that quickly, they do agree that even a weakening of the current over a few decades would have profound consequences.
(27 Oct 2006)
Indonesian forest fires may fuel global warming: experts
Martin Abbugao, AFP via Yahoo!News
SINGAPORE – The annual recurrence of carbon-rich haze caused by illegal fires in Indonesia’s vast tropical peatlands may help fuel global warming if left unchecked, experts warn.
Saying there are no easy solutions, they called for an international effort to combat the problem, ranging from fire-fighting to prevention.
They also said authorities must address the social and economic issues that prompt people to use the cheap but destructive method to clear land for their crops.
(26 Oct 2006)
