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Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial
David Adam, The Guardian
The Royal Society is worried about climate change lobby groups, including those funded by Exxon.
Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.
In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”.
The scientists also strongly criticise the company’s public statements on global warming, which they describe as “inaccurate and misleading”.
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.
(20 Sep 2006)
ExxonMobil also stand out amongst the energy companies as the most aggressive deniers of imminent peak oil.
Contributor Sherry Mayo writes:
The Royal Society’s letter is at this link:
image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/09/19/LettertoNick.pdf
Related: Climate-change storm hits Exxon
-AF
The smoke is rising on climate-change deniers
George Monbiot, The Guardian
It takes quite a lot to get Britian’s most august scientific body, the Royal Society, riled. But now it has had enough. It is trying to bring an end to a ten-year campaign of disinformation about the world’s most important scientific issue. Throughout that period, journalists who have no background in science, and who appear to know less about the subject than the average 12-year-old, have been filling the pages of the Mail, the Telegraph and the Times with articles claiming that manmade global warming is a fraud.
(19 Sep 2006)
Drought May Eclipse Dust Bowl
Todd Neff, Daily Camera
Global warming could — in the coming decades — bring Colorado and neighboring states 12-year droughts more severe than the 1930s-era Dust Bowl, says a study that Boulder scientist Martin Hoerling presented Tuesday.
Hoerling said the work, presented at a drought conference hosted by the Geological Society of America, is the first to translate the results of global-warming models into regional drought predictions.
Those predictions are dire. Between now and 2050, half of the interior West — including Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could experience droughts more severe than the 1933-1936 Dust Bowl at any given time, Hoerling said. For comparison, from 1950 to 2005, droughts on average covered 13 percent of the region.
In addition, Hoerling said the length of a given drought could stretch to 12 years in the coming decades, more than four times the region’s average drought from 1950 to 2005.
(20 Sep 2006)
Gore tells of an inconvenient Australian truth
Rich Bowden, Monsters & Critics
Arriving in Australia last week to appear at the Sydney premiere of his film, Gore spoke of the acute dangers Australia faces with global warming. In a series of interviews, Gore warned Australians their country was more at risk through climate change due to its geographic location and state as the world’s driest continent.
“You have climate extremes; you’re here in the middle of the southern ocean, you’re an island continent, you’re in a very low latitude, you are subjected to extremes of climate, and it’s the extremes that are predicted to become more extreme,” he said at a press conference.
“You’re also the driest of the inhabited continents, and you’ve created an advanced society on very dry land. And one of the most powerful consequences of global warming is to pull moisture out of the soil and affect the rainfall patterns, and in places like Australia it would be accompanied by a shortage of drinking water supply,” he said.
(20 Sep 2006)
California sues car firms on climate
BBC
The state of California is suing six carmakers for costs associated with their cars’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The suit names General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chrysler and Nissan.
California is asking for “monetary compensation” for the damage which it says their emissions are doing to health, economy and environment.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM), a pan-industry body, called it a “nuisance” suit and suggested it may be dismissed.
(20 Sep 2006)
Starving seabirds hit by climate change?
peopleandplanet.net
Reports of hundreds of dead or starving young seabirds around Scotland – including some many miles from the coast – and Northern Ireland are leading to speculation among experts that these incidents may be linked to climate change.
Staff from several organisations, including the RSPB, are assessing the extent of the situation. Most of the casualties are guillemots – a type of seabird. Post mortems on the birds shown that many of the birds are underweight and have empty stomachs, suggesting they are suffering from a chronic shortage of food. Sandeels are a principal prey for guillemots and many other seabirds. …
The RSPB’s Conservation Director, Dr Mark Avery, said: “The seas surrounding the British Isles are among the most productive in the world and, despite decades of overfishing, they still support internationally important seabird colonies. But, seabirds are facing key threats as life-giving cold-water-loving plankton shift, taking the foundation of the foodchain with them. Distressing images of seabirds failing to find enough sandeels to feed their chicks is an early warning sign of worse to come.”
(18 Sep 2006)
Climate change makes fish migrate – experts
AFP, IOL
A warm-water Atlantic triple fin fish has, for the first time, been caught off the coast of Britain, in another sign of species migrating north as global temperatures rise, experts said on Tuesday.
(20 Sep 2006)
Climate Change Threatens Lemurs
Earthwatch Institute
Tropical rainforests are among the most stable environments on Earth, but they are still no match for global climate change. Dr. Patricia Wright, the widely admired primatologist and Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, finds that climate change could mean the difference between survival and extinction for endangered lemurs.
(18 Sep 2006)
