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U.S. Agency [Finally] Affirms Human Influence on Climate
Andrew C. Revkin, NY Times
President Bush has said it.
But until yesterday, it appeared that no news release on annual climate trends out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Bush White House had said unequivocally that a buildup of greenhouse gases was helping warm the climate.
The statement came in a release that said 2006 was the warmest year for the 48 contiguous states since regular temperature records began in 1895. It surpassed the previous champion, 1998, a year heated up by a powerful episode of the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean by El Niño. Last year, another El Niño developed, but this time a long-term warming trend from human activities was said to be involved as well.
“A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases,” the release said, emphasizing that the relative contributions of El Niño and the human influence were not known.
A link between greenhouse gases and climate change was also made in a December news conference by Dirk Kempthorne, the secretary of the interior, as that agency proposed listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Still, the climate agency’s shift in language came as a surprise to several public affairs officials there. They said they had become accustomed in recent years to having any mention of a link between climate trends and human activities played down or trimmed when drafts of documents went to the Commerce Department and the White House for approval.
(10 Jan 2007)
Voice of America
Climate Experts Worry as 2006 Is Hottest Year on Record in U.S.
Marc Kaufman, Washington Post
Last year was the warmest in the continental United States in the past 112 years — capping a nine-year warming streak “unprecedented in the historical record” that was driven in part by the burning of fossil fuels, the government reported yesterday.
According to the government’s National Climatic Data Center, the record-breaking warmth — which caused daffodils and cherry trees to bloom throughout the East on New Year’s Day — was the result of both unusual regional weather patterns and the long-term effects of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“People should be concerned about what we are doing to the climate,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Burning of fossil fuels is causing an increase in greenhouse gases, and there’s a broad scientific consensus that is producing climate change.”
The center said there are indications that the rate at which global temperatures are rising is speeding up.
(10 Jan 2007)
Professor Sir David King on climate change (Audio)
Global Public Media
The earth is heating up. Manifestations of this trend are heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather, ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding, glaciers melting, arctic and Antarctic warming. In this lecture at the London School of Economics, Professor Sir David King explores the nature and origins of these phenomena and looks for political solutions both inside and outside the domain of national states.
Professor Sir David King is chief scientific adviser to the UK government and head of the Office of Science and Technology. He is a professor of chemistry at University of Cambridge.
(10 Jan 2007)
Do carbon offsets live up to their promise?
Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Christian Science Monitor
In 2006, “carbon neutral” became the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year, evidence not only of the “greening” of our culture, but of our language as well. As scientists predict another bout of record-setting temperatures this year, climate concerns may soon “green” our wallets as well. By all accounts, 2007 is poised to see the industry of carbon neutrality – so-called carbon offsetting – grow dramatically.
In theory, the idea is simple. The consumer pays a third party to remove a quantity of carbon (in the form of a greenhouse gas) equal to what he or she emits. But how voluntary carbon offsets actually work is unclear at best, and potentially fraudulent at worst, say experts.
The problem: No current certification or monitoring system has any teeth, and there is no easy way to confirm that offsetting companies are doing what they promise. Now, various organizations are scrambling to provide standards for what experts call a fragmented market with a product of drastically varying quality.
The first-ever ranking of carbon offsetters recently released by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit in Portsmouth, N.H., graded 30 companies on a scale of 1 to 10; tellingly, three-quarters scored below 5. Critics, meanwhile, question whether the carbon market might be a dangerous distraction at a time when decisive action is needed to avert climate catastrophe.
“On the one hand, there is the potential benefit of educating people through offsets,” says Dan Becker, director of Sierra Club’s global warming program. “On the other hand, if people view offsets like papal indulgences that allow you to continue to pollute, then it’s probably not a good idea.”
…But while experts disagree on the effectiveness of the carbon market at averting global warming, nearly everyone agrees on two points. First, the fact that people are beginning to factor in the cost of their carbon footprint when doing business is good. “You’re starting to put a price on the emissions of carbon,” says Bayon. “That cost begins to filter into your operations. And you start saying to yourself, ‘Should I throw that 10 or 20 bucks out of the window?’ “
Second, the more money invested in renewable energy, the better. “That has an important effect in the aggregate,” says Bogdan Vasi, assistant professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York City. “As more and more people make these choices, they are creating a market, and slowly it’s shifting the proportion of renewable energy to fossil-fuel energy.”
But ultimately the carbon-offset market is more a phase than a destination, says Jonathan Isham, professor of international environmental economics at Middlebury College in Vermont. “We really want a world where, in a generation, we don’t need offsets anymore,” he says. “Once we get the legislation we need, prices will reflect the social costs of carbon.”
(10 Jan 2007)
California’s bold move on global warming
A World First: Governor to order new standard to reduce carbon content of motor fuels
Greg Lucas, SF Chronicle
California will create the world’s first global warming pollution standard for transportation fuels, ratcheting down fuel carbon content 10 percent by 2020 under a plan put forward by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Tuesday in his State of the State address.
The new standard could have implications for the auto industry and change the way gasoline is produced around the globe. Environmentalists hailed it as a way to reduce one of the state’s chief sources of greenhouse gas emissions and kick-start fledgling alternative fuel technologies.
“This is a big deal. This policy will be noticed worldwide,” said Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation, which monitors the world’s energy technology.
Advocates of the proposal said competition from alternative fuels and a reduction in dependence on oil would prevent gasoline prices from rising, but oil companies said changing the mix of fuels to reduce carbon emissions would carry a cost.
(10 Jan 2007)
Related story at LA Times
