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Cheap flights threaten UK targets for carbon emissions
Martin Hickman, Independent (UK)
The boom in foreign travel generated by cheaper air fares and no frills airlines will wreck Britain’s attempts to bring climate change under control, environmentalists fear.
As the travel industry prepares for record bookings in 2006, green groups expressed concern over the “failure” of the Government to curb the availability of cheap flights that have sent aviation pollution surging. Fumes spewed out by jets are expected to become the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The increase reflects the steady rise of overseas travel, which is growing at between 5 and 6 per cent a year. According to a study by Mintel this month, tourism from the world’s leading 15 outbound tourism markets is likely to double between now and 2020. Britons, second only to the Germans for volume of travel, are forecast to take 101 million foreign trips by 2020. Greenpeace warned that level of air travel would be “catastrophic” for climate.
(28 January 2006)
Good climate-change journalism: Jane Kay (SF Chronicle)
David Roberts, Gristmill
While I’m noting journalists worth their salt, how about a shout out for the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Jane Kay? A couple weeks ago she wrote a superb series on global warming, under the rubric “A Warming World: The Difference a Degree Makes.” I should have noted it then, but let me remedy that:
- “Polar Warning,” about the declining fate of polar bears;
- “Seashore Sea Change,” about the web of effects brought about by a three-degree rise in the temperature of California coastal waters;
- “Survival of a Reef,” about the slow death of the Cabo Pulmo coral reef in the Gulf of California, and its effect on one Mexican family;
- a fantastic audio slide show in three parts — one, two, three.
It was all good, but I think my favorite was the second. The next time a friends what the big deal is about a few degrees difference in the global temperature, point them here…
(29 January 2006)
Climate expert says NASA tried to silence him
Andrew C. Revkin, NY Times
The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” he said.
Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. “That’s not the way we operate here at NASA,” Mr. Acosta said. “We promote openness and we speak with the facts.”
He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.
Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. “This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming,” he said. “It’s about coordination.”
(29 January 2006)
This incident brings to mind Trofim Lysenko. (“Under Lysenko’s guidance, [the USSR’s agricultural] science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology.”)
Related:
Climate expert says NASA bids to muzzle him: report (Reuters)
Good climate-change journalism: Revkin edition (David Roberts, Gristmill)
-BA
Debate on climate shifts to issue of irreparable change
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
Some Experts on Global Warming Foresee ‘Tipping Point’ When It Is Too Late to Act
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Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.
This “tipping point” scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.
There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world’s fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.
(29 January 2006)
Related:
Good climate-change journalism: Eilperin edition (David Roberts, Gristmill)
