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Seattle mayor touts 200-city consensus on greenhouse gas reductions (VIDEO)
OnPoint, E&E TV
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D) describes why cities around the country are pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
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In the past year, 200 cities have agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels, the same standard that the United States would have been held to had it ratified the Kyoto Protocol. During today’s OnPoint, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D) — who spearheaded the climate effort — describes how global warming is affecting snowpack and water resources in the Pacific Northwest. He also explains how Seattle plans on meeting its obligations and why local action could pave the way for a new federal policy. Plus, Nickels addresses criticism that reducing carbon emissions could stunt economic development in his state and others.
(30 January 2006)
PM issues blunt warning on climate change
Matt Weaver, Guardian
Tony Blair warns that the impact of climate change may be more serious than previously thought in a new government report on global warming published today.
The report raises fears that both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are likely to melt, leading to a devastating rise in sea levels.
It warns of large-scale and irreversible disruption if temperatures rise by more than 3C (5.4F) – well within the range of climate change projections for the century.
Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change is published as a book and collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office last February.
(30 January 2006)
Related:
Climate poses increased threat, admits Blair (UK Independent)
Clinton: Climate change is the world’s biggest worry
Dan Perry, Associated Press (via Newsday)
DAVOS, Switzerland — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton told corporate chieftains and political bigwigs Saturday that climate change was the world’s biggest problem _ followed by global inequality and the “apparently irreconcilable” religious and cultural differences behind terrorism.
Clinton’s comments provided something a freewheeling and philosophical finale _ ahead of Sunday’s formal wrap-up _ to several days of high-powered discourse on the state of the world, and the mostly admiring audience seemed to hang on his every word.
“First, I worry about climate change,” Clinton said in an onstage conversation with the founder of the World Economic Forum. “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we’re making irrelevant and impossible.”
Clinton called for “a serious global effort to develop a clean energy future” to avoid the onset of another ice age.
…Clinton won frequent enthusiastic applause _ not a common situation at the annual gathering in the Swiss Alps _ for articulating a global vision more conciliatory and inclusive than the one many of the assembled tend to associate with U.S. politics.
(28 January 2006)
This story didn’t seem to make it into the other major US media (NY Times, etc.).
Related:
WCSBSTV (same story)
Xinhuanet (China)
Pravda (Russia)
Stark warning over climate change
Richard Black, BBC
Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.
The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below “dangerous” levels.
It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to rise by 7m (23ft) over 1,000 years.
The poorest countries will be most vulnerable to these effects, it adds.
The report, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office in February 2005.
(30 January 2006)
Related:
Global warming demands urgent solutions: scientists (Reuters)
Global warming: how fast should you boil a frog?
Stuart Staniford, The Oil Drum
This is the second post in a series on carbon in the economy. The first post was The Carbon Economy. I was going to do one post on implications of carbon emissions, but found myself obliged to split it into two, with this one being on translating CO2 into temperature, and the second being on risks of that temperature. Again, I’m going to try and focus on developing rules of thumb that are decent enough approximations to be usable in reasoning, but simple enough to be comprehensible to non-climatologists.
The very basic physics of the greenhouse effect is probably familiar to most people, but let me take a second to review it for the rest of our readers.
…Ok. Now I’m going to do something that will make any real climatologists scream, but I’ll argue it’s defensible. Here’s the thing. I need a model of the way carbon dioxide translates into temperature that’s blog friendly….I want something simple and lightweight enough to be usable in this format. But correct enough that it will keep us within the (significant) uncertainties of the problem. Remember, we have 33% uncertainty in the climate sensitivity overall, and the model spread in the 2001 IPCC report was even larger than that.
So here’s my braindead blog-friendly one dimensional climate model, which turns out to work amazingly well…
(1 February 2006)
The second part of Stuart’s Tractus Carbonicus. Related:
GlobCarbon and the Global Carbon Cycle by Jamais Cascio at WorldChanging
Mexico plans to halve fuel emissions
Associated Press via CNN
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Mexico has launched an ambitious plan to drastically cut fuel emissions and improve air quality, the environment secretary said Tuesday. … Mexico City is among the world’s most polluted cities.
(31 January 2006)
