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Glaciers in Africa Expected to Disappear
Associated Press via ENN
WASHINGTON — Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports.
Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues, the researchers report in this week’s online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
The researchers blamed an increase in air temperatures in recent decades for contributing to the decline of the ice fields.
“Recession of these tropical glaciers sends an unambiguous message of a changing climate in this region of the tropics,” said lead researcher Richard Taylor of the University College of London, Department of Geography.
(16 May 2006)
Legal battle to get feds to act on global warming
(Original: “Seattle’s big role in fight on global warming”)
Craig Welch, Seattle Times
The city of Seattle, a group of Alaska Natives and some of the nation’s top climate scientists — including two from the University of Washington — thrust themselves into a high-profile legal battle Monday, hoping to resolve a stalemate over global warming.
The group is fronting an orchestrated, national campaign to convince the Supreme Court that the federal government’s failure to regulate automobile emissions is already causing harm, from shrinking mountain snowpack to ecological changes in Arctic Alaska.
And in so doing, they are stepping onto the front lines of a dispute that has already divided the country.
“We should slow climate change now, while we still have a chance to see if we’re driving blindly toward the edge of a cliff,” said Scott Saleska, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona, who persuaded 14 other prominent scientists to file a court brief. That brief is among several legal documents that the scientists, the city and the Native groups filed Monday with the nation’s highest court, arguing that a lower federal appeals court last year misinterpreted science and the law when it ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have to regulate greenhouse gases produced by cars.
The immediate goal is to get the Supreme Court to take up the case. But the ultimate aim is to convince the justices that the EPA has a duty to protect the public from auto pollution that can worsen climate change.
On the other side of the debate are the Justice Department and an industry group, both of which are urging the high court to leave the case alone. Primarily, they say the legal issues aren’t worthy of the court’s consideration
(16 May 2006)
India says to tackle poverty before global warming
Alister Doyle, Reuters via AlertNet
BONN, Germany – India said on Tuesday that rich nations must lead a fight against global warming, telling a 189-nation U.N. conference that developing countries should instead give priority to ending poverty.
India said that it could not be expected to limit use of fossil fuels, widely blamed for stoking climate change, when 35 percent of its population lived on less than a dollar a day and many lacked electricity, clean water and other basics.
“Removal of poverty is the greater immediate imperative” than global warming, Prodipto Ghosh, Secretary of India’s Environment Ministry, told talks in Bonn trying to work out new ways to fight climate change.
He said that India needed to use more energy to reach what he called “minimalistic” development goals. Those included cutting poverty, raising literacy rates to 75 percent by 2007 or increasing forest cover to 33 percent of the nation by 2012.
“There will inevitably be greater greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “Placing curbs on the growth of greenhouse gases will entail reduced economic growth.” India has about a billion people, almost a sixth of humanity.
He said that industrial states had to do most to reduce emissions from power plants, factories and cars. He urged a “significant strengthening” of cuts in emissions by almost 40 nations which support the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol.
(16 May 2006)
House Science Chairman Boehlert looks back at his environmental legacy (video & transcript)
OnPoint, E&E TV
After 24 years in Congress, House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) will retire at the end of this year. During today’s episode of OnPoint, Rep. Boehlert talks about his accomplishments as head of the Science Committee and addresses the current energy crisis facing lawmakers. Boehlert also weighs in on fuel economy standards, President Bush’s stance on climate change and the importance of bringing energy and environmental issues into the mainstream.
(16 May 2006)
