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Ask Umbra: Apocalypse 101 (a climate-change compendium)
Umbra Fisk, Grist
Dear Umbra,
I know you don’t make up questions, but in this instance I think it’s acceptable. Could you suggest a collection of resources on climate change?…
– Umbra Fisk
Dearest Umbra,
Great idea! Plus it fits well with this month’s “Climate Change Until We’re All Deranged” theme. How better to celebrate Earth Day than to move toward understanding and perhaps saving our complex planet? Cue violins and cicadas.
(19 April 2006)
The emerging environmental majority
Christina Larson, Washington Monthly
There’s a thaw in relations between greens and hunters. It could heat up big-time over global warming.
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Today’s GOP-controlled Congress has shown itself to be no friend of the environment, but even by conservatives’ own standards, last October’s surprise was a standout. An amendment inserted at the last minute into a budget reconciliation bill would have opened up millions of acres of public lands, including tracts in national monuments and wilderness areas, to purchase by mining companies and other commercial interests. It was to be the biggest divestiture of public lands in almost a century, and it was happening completely under the radar, with no floor vote, no public hearings, and no debate.
Washington’s environmental community was the first to notice the amendment and sound the alarm. …But to stop the land sales, Republican senators would also need to speak out. That was a harder sell. Many conservatives accept large campaign contributions from mining, oil, and gas companies, and they tend to favor more industry access to public lands and resources.
…But there are outdoor organizations whose members include voters who can draw conservatives’ attention. After an Earthworks staffer tipped off a counterpart at Trout Unlimited, the sportsmen’s group (whose membership is two to one Republican) emailed its roughly 100,000 members and contacted regional editorial boards to spotlight the fight. News spread like wildfire—western sportsmen were outraged that public lands where they hunt and fish might be put on the auction block. Once they knew the stakes, local hook-and-bullet organizations held phone-bank days, organized letter-writing campaigns, and scheduled visits to regional Senate offices.
…The outcry from rural and exurban voters achieved what no amount of lobbying from environmentalists in Washington alone could have. Within weeks, western Republican senators renounced the measure on the Senate floor and to their hometown newspapers.
…This victory marked a telling moment of cooperation between hunters and environmentalists, a working partnership once as unlikely as Madeleine Albright and Jesse Helms.
Christina Larson is the managing editor of The Washington Monthly.
(May 2006 issue)
Discussions at Grist here, here, and here
Related: Sportsmen fight for Wyo. habitats (USA Today)
Climate change will be significant but not extreme, study predicts
Rick Weiss, Washington Post
Earth will experience significant climate change in the coming century as a result of greenhouse gas buildups, but the more extreme estimates of global warming generated by some studies are unlikely to occur, according to newly published research.
“This still commits us to quite a bit of climate change, but it leaves the door open to avoiding the largest and most devastating consequences,” said Gabriele C. Hegerl, a Duke University climate expert who led the study.
The new work extends a difficult line of research that uses historical climate data and computer models to predict the impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which are increasing as a result of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels.
Specifically, the research aims to refine a value known as “climate sensitivity,” which is defined as the global average temperature change that can be expected to occur in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide levels.
Climate scientists from around the world have for more than a decade concurred that climate sensitivity’s most likely value is in the range of about 2.5 degrees to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. But because many factors can affect global temperatures in poorly understood ways — including the extent to which the oceans have tempered climate trends — scientists have not been able to rule out more extreme calculations suggesting a warm-up of 16 degrees Fahrenheit or more.
…The result [of the recent study]: Climate sensitivity almost certainly falls within the more conventional range of current predictions, with only a 5 percent chance that it will exceed 11 degrees Fahrenheit.
(20 April 2006)
A 1 in 20 chance of horrendous catastrophe is still bad odds. -BA
Gordon Brown: ‘The environment must be centre of policy worldwide’
Gordon Brown, The Independent
For too long too many governments thought their objectives began and ended with economic prosperity and jobs.
But I believe that the world needs a new paradigm that moves the environmental challenge to the centre of policy.
Over the next few days in America, starting at the UN, I will be setting out detailed and substantive ways that governments can meet the challenge of climate change.
So today at the UN in New York, Britain will call for the first global emissions trading scheme to cut carbon emissions.
Tomorrow at the G7 meeting in Washington I will tell the world’s richest countries that Britain will invest in a private- public institute for new research into alternative sources of energy and new environmental technologies – and ask other countries to join us in a global network researching into better uses of energy.
…I believe that global economic goals and global environmental goals are converging and can reinforce each other and that the basis for a new global consensus which all countries should be challenged to join lies in new detailed and substantive policies.
First, higher energy prices will and must now encourage the development of new cleaner sources of energy. So we are sponsoring new work on renewable sources of energy and will continue to provide more incentives for their introduction. And setting new standards for energy efficiency with new standards this month to make new buildings 40 per cent more efficient than in 1997.
Second, we can now demonstrate that scientific advance can bring forward new environmentally friendly technologies that can provide jobs as well as wealth for the future.
Gordon Brown is Chancellor of the Exchequer
(20 April 2006)
Brown will be probably be the Labour contender for next prime minister of the UK.
UK Tory leader pledges to firm up green credentials with carbon levy
Patrick Wintour, The Guardian
· Tory leader’s dog-sleigh ride to melting glaciers
· Brown aides scorn ‘back of a fag packet’ proposals
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David Cameron sought to rid himself of the albatross holding back his green credentials yesterday by promising concrete proposals on climate change, including support for a levy targeted on carbon use.
Conservative opposition to the climate change levy has been highlighted by Labour as a sign that the Tories do not have the hard-edged policies to make a reality of their new environmentalism.
(21 April 2006)
Tories and Labour vying to see who can come up with the most effective strategy for climate change.
UK scientists fear new attempts to undermine climate action
David Adam, The Guardian
Britain’s scientists are drawing up a plan to fight renewed attempts by sceptics and industry-funded lobby groups to derail international action on climate change.
According to a confidential internal memo, the Royal Society expects “groups and individuals” to question the science of global warming and the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
It predicts that lobbyists will try to undermine a report next year from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is expected to give a new warning on climate change.
Sources say the report, a draft of which was handed to governments earlier this month, will warn that global warming could drive the Earth’s temperature to levels far higher than previously predicted. The report draws together research over the past five years and will be made public in February.
The Royal Society memo says: “It seems likely that these groups will again seek to undermine the IPCC in the period around publication. There are already signs these groups will be targeting European countries and Canada to seek to provoke opposition to the Kyoto protocol.”
(21 April 2006)
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviews four Republican Senators on global warming
Robert Smigel?, NBC? via Video-Google
One of the best interviews of climate change skeptics – Triumph doesn’t take any weasel answers.
Hat tip to David Roberts at Gristmill.
According to Wikipedia:
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is a puppet created and performed by Robert Smigel premiering in 1997 on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Triumph was identified in the early appearances as a Yugoslavian Mountain Hound and he speaks with a bogus Slavic accent. Triumph often puffs a cigar, which usually falls out of his mouth when he begins speaking. The crudeness of the puppetry behind Triumph-Smigel’s arm is often clearly visible in the shot-has added to the character’s popularity.
(20 November 2005)
