Speaking of global warming (Global climate change)

Speaking of global warming

This week could set a record for the number of high-profile hours spent discussing global warming and what to do about it. It begins with a special one-day session at the United Nations, at which Al Gore will press the case for strong collective action to stop the rise of greenhouse gases. It ends with a two-day White House "summit" involving all of the major emitters, including India and China. Both of those nations have been conspicuously absent from climate negotiations, but their help in arresting global emissions is essential.

The problem needs all the attention it can get. But if talk is good, it is also cheap. And it will change nothing unless it leads to a real treaty with real, and enforceable, limits on the production of greenhouse gases. That means a broader and more inclusive version of the Kyoto Protocol, a noble but flawed treaty that expires in 2012. As we know, firm targets are not what President George W. Bush has in mind. Bush announced this summit in June at a time when he was under serious pressure from scientists, the Supreme Court, his Europeans allies and the nation's governors to do something about global warming. He made it clear even then that he would continue to resist binding targets of the sort envisioned by Kyoto in favor of voluntary, country-by-country agreements - "aspirational" goals, in the words of his environmental adviser, James Connaughton, instead of real ones. If this summit legitimizes an every-nation-for-itself approach, it will have been a failure.

Nor should all the hoopla be allowed to obscure the fact that there are plenty of things that Washington can do, should do and is still not doing to start slowing the damage from global warming. One obvious step is to let California and 13 other states proceed with stiff new rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases from cars and light trucks. This month, a federal judge ruled that the states should be allowed to proceed. In doing so, he systematically demolished every technological and economic argument advanced by the automobile industry as to why it cannot significantly improve automobile efficiency. But the states still need a federal waiver to proceed. Bush should grant it.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the Congress should stop inventing endless excuses - Iraq, a crowded calendar, procedural difficulties - for why they cannot move swiftly to reconcile their two energy bills. One of the big sticking points is a Senate provision requiring meaningful improvements in fuel economy. Again the automobile companies say they can't do it. History says they can.

Of course, the energy bill is controversial. Most energy bills are; this one more than most because it actually has some tough provisions requiring serious investment in efficiency and in the way we create and deliver energy. This is a big test for Democrats. If they cannot deliver on this bill, there's little hope they can ever handle the far more complex, but essential, task of producing a comprehensive strategy on climate change.

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(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.routers.com),(www.iht.com), (www.routers.com), (www.nytimes.com)

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Climate change becomes urgent security issue in Australia (Global Warming Problem)

Climate change becomes urgent security issue in Australia

By Tim Johnston

SYDNEY: As the first bush fires of the year rage through Australia's national forests, concern over climate change is intensifying among Australians.

A telephone survey of more than 1,000 people released Wednesday showed that 40 percent of Australians thought that global warming was a greater threat to security than Islamic fundamentalism. Only 20 percent thought it was less serious. The survey, by the U.S. Studies Center, based at the University of Sydney, came a day after the government's top scientific body said that rising temperatures and reduced rainfall were inevitable in Australia.

The report brought calls for more resources to be focused on mitigating the effects of future climate change rather than the current policy of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Extreme weather, including a drought that has persisted in some places for six years, has focused the Australian public on climate change, and it is shaping up as a major issue in general elections expected to be called in the next few weeks.

On Tuesday, Australia's most influential scientific research body, the government-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, released a report that said an average temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) was likely by 2030, along with many more days with temperatures of more than 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) and reduced rainfall over much of southern Australia, already the driest part of the driest inhabited continent on earth. "The message is that global warming is real, humans are very likely to be causing it and that it is very likely that there will be changes in the global climate system in the centuries to come larger than those seen in the recent past," the report said.

Recent events have made the subject even more urgent for many Australians. In the spring season, about 50 separate bush fires, fanned by unseasonably hot weather and strong winds, have already burned about 30,000 hectares, or 74,000 acres, of bush and national forest and destroyed a house. Large areas of the state of New South Wales, including Sydney, had a total fire ban in force Wednesday.

"It is very interesting to see how climate change has moved from the environmental field to the security sphere," said Alan Dupont, who heads the U.S. Studies Center, referring to the report released Wednesday. "Most of the government response has been about reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than trying to manage the effects of the change."

The survey's results echo comments last week by the head of the Australian police, Commissioner Mick Keelty, that climate was a growing security concern. "We could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water," Keelty said. "Crops could fail, disease could be rampant and flooding might be so frequent that people, en masse, would be on the move. "Even if only some and not all of this occurs, climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century."

His comments provoked a sharp response from Prime Minister John Howard, who said terrorism was a more immediate threat to security than climate change. Howard was until recently a skeptic on climate change, and the opposition Labor Party has said that his recent attention on climate is driven more by polls than conviction. Australia has one of the world's highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases. The government has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, saying it is meaningless because it does not impose restrictions on the two greatest emerging emitters, India and China.

Environmentalists say that the time to tackle climate change is running out and that the major global economies need to commit themselves to radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Both the United States and Australia have resisted efforts to set hard emissions targets and have encouraged the development of technologies like nuclear and "clean coal" in an effort to improve the efficiency of carbon-based fuel sources. The U.S. Studies Center survey relied on 1,213 phone interviews from July 13 to 29. It had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

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(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.routers.com),(www.iht.com), (www.routers.com), (www.nytimes.com)

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Foundation to Offer $100 Million to Deal With Global Warming (Global Warming Problem)

Foundation to Offer $100 Million to Deal With Global Warming

By STEVE LOHR

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is creating a $100 million program to support research intended to encourage policies aimed at reducing the threat of global warming.

The foundation’s climate change project, which is being announced today, comes amid an increasing political push for legislation to curb emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and gasoline.

Several bills that would set mandatory restrictions on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have been introduced in Congress. Other clean-energy bills under consideration are intended to increase the use of renewable energy and promote energy efficiency. Most of the presidential hopefuls for 2008 have proposals to deal with climate change.

“This a well-timed contribution of support for the enormous job we face in the next few years trying to figure out the most productive carbon policy for the United States,” said Robert H. Socolow, a professor and co-director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University.

All charitable grants for climate change programs add up to nearly $100 million a year, according to philanthropy experts. So the Duke foundation commitment of $100 million over five years is “a very big deal,” said Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation, a partnership of foundations that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.

But the Duke foundation’s commitment, while sizable, is probably most significant for its focus. “It has decided to take a path that should have a disproportionate impact, to sponsor the analysis and research to shape policy,” said Hal Harvey, director of the environment program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a leading philanthropic supporter of environment and energy programs.

The Duke foundation decided on its approach to climate change philanthropy after talking to dozens of scientists, policy analysts and other experts over the last 18 months, said Andrew J. Bowman, director of the new program. The guiding principal, he said, is that smart policy would stimulate the deployment and adoption of clean-energy technologies.

Though just getting under way, the broad outlines of Duke foundation’s research agenda are set. It will, for example, support research into issues like the appropriate price that should be placed on emitting a ton a carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from power station smokestacks or car tailpipes, and how to best design a system to either tax emissions or set up a cap-and-trade scheme.

Cap-and-trade is the approach embodied in the current legislative proposals, and it would involve setting an economywide cap on total carbon dioxide emissions, allocate or auction emissions allowances to utilities and other companies, and create a trading market in these “permissions to pollute.”

“How these policies are designed is crucial in terms of getting the right price signals that will encourage efficient private sector investment,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “And getting the design of policy right is where the Duke foundation’s support could have a real impact.”

Mr. Bowman of the Duke foundation said that putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions was crucial to provide the economic incentive for needed investments in industrial cleanup, innovative low-carbon technologies and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind power.

“But we also need policies that complement carbon price policy,” Mr. Bowman said.

Huge gains, Mr. Bowman said, should be achievable in energy efficiency with more stringent rules for building codes and appliance standards, which mandate the use of modern electronics and materials. The regulatory regime for utilities, he added, should be overhauled to encourage investment in “smart grids” that can monitor and conserve electricity. In most states, utilities are still paid to produce megawatts but not to save megawatts.

Homes, offices and power plants, Mr. Bowman noted, often last for 50 or 60 years. “We have to do everything we can to make sure we deploy the most efficient technologies that we can over the next five and ten years to prevent having an economy that is locked in to a really inefficient infrastructure,” he said.

The Duke foundation also plans to support research in strategies for adapting to climate change, which includes steps like protection from floods, building dikes and emergency evacuation plans. Adaptation policies assume that it is best to prepare for the ill effects of a warmer planet, even while taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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(Jakarta, Senin 19 February 2008, 16.03 sore)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.nytimes.com)

Britain Warns of High Costs of Global Warming (Global Warming Problem)

Britain Warns of High Costs

of Global Warming

By HEATHER TIMMONS

Britain warned Monday that failure to act swiftly on global warming would have a cataclysmic effect on the global economy and said it was stepping up efforts to get other nations involved. A report commissioned by the government predicted apocalyptic effects from climate change, including droughts, flooding, famine, skyrocketing malaria rates and the extinction of many animal species during the current generation if changes are not made soon.

It said the costs related to climate change, if it is allowed to continue unmitigated, could devour as much as 20 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. “The consequences for our planet are literally disastrous,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech on the report, one of the most comprehensive attempts to predict the economic impact of global warming.

“This disaster is not set to happen in some science-fiction future, many years ahead, but in our lifetime,” he said. “What is more, unless we act now, not some time distant but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible.” On the other hand, success in slowing carbon emissions could bring great savings to the world economy, possibly in the range of $2.5 trillion a year, the report estimated. This emphasis seems aimed at the few industrial nations, including the United States, that have refused to join initiatives like the Kyoto Protocol, citing economic reasons.

President Bush has called Kyoto “unrealistic” and its emissions targets arbitrary, saying it would cause layoffs and price increases.

The presence at the news conference on Monday of Mr. Blair and the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, who hopes to succeed him, reinforced the impression that the governing Labor Party was committed to acting on the challenge. Britain intends that “the report should be discussed as widely as possible throughout the world, not just among governments but among international institutions, business leaders, NGOs and civil society,” Mr. Brown said. He also said he had made former Vice President Al Gore an adviser on environmental issues.

The 700-page report was compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern, chief of the government economic service and former chief economist of the World Bank. It evaluated a body of scientific studies of global warming from an economic perspective. If the sources of greenhouse gases continue unchecked, average temperatures could rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 years, the report says. That could leave one-sixth of the world’s population facing floods or droughts and reduce crop production in Africa enough to put several hundred million people at risk of starvation.

Britain produces 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, but it has been one of the loudest voices on global warming and has established some of the world’s most punitive taxes on carbon emissions. It already has met its Kyoto emissions-reductions targets, but most European nations are trying to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 8 percent by 2012. A United Nations report released Monday said that greenhouse gas emissions of industrial nations that are part of the United Nations panel on climate change increased 11 percent between 1990 and 2004.

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(Jakarta, Senin 19 February 2008, 10.32 pagi)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.nytimes.com)

Turning up the Heat (Global Warming Problem)

Turning up the Heat

A surprising consensus is transforming the complex politics of global warming

By Bret Schulte

It's a group you'd be hard pressed to find sharing the same table, much less a point of view. Evangelicals and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Greenpeace and DuPont. Even some Republicans and Democrats are growing flirtatious. It's still no lovefest, but a number of strange bedfellows are cozying up on a subject that was once all but taboo in Washington: global warming.

America belches up more greenhouse gases than any other country: 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2003 alone, thanks mostly to autos burning gasoline and power plants consuming coal. But the Bush administration and the U.S. Senate have refused to join almost 160 nations in signing the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark treaty that went into effect last year and hopes to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. In the States, global warming skeptics and pro-business politicians argue that mandatory restrictions would drag down the economy and provide a boon for unregulated rivals like China and India.

But for reasons that range from economics to ethics, a confluence of Christian leaders, corporations, and investors are turning up the heat for legislative action. "If you said [a few years ago] that the development of climate-change policy would be where it is today, somebody would say you're smoking something," says Ray Kopp, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. Driving the discussion is an emerging consensus on global warming, fed by a stream of recent scientific reports. If that consensus view is correct, the results could be devastating: rising oceans, ferocious hurricanes, and prolonged droughts. A poll released last month by the Opinion Research Corp. showed public concern increasing markedly in the past two years. The public mood has some politicians listening, most notably Sen. Pete Domenici, the powerful chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. After seeing a number of climate-change-related bills shot down or stalled in recent years, the New Mexico Republican is trying to broaden the debate; this week he'll host a high-level forum of scientists, businesses, and public-interest groups that will argue the fine points of how to curb emissions without breaking the economy. The complexity of the issue and resistance of many in Congress make passage of a bill unlikely this year. And Democrats have no plans to make hay of climate change in this year's midterm elections. Nevertheless, experts say a tipping point has been reached--in both the real-life effects of global warming and the determination to do something about it. For the first time, federal legislation curbing greenhouse gas emissions is starting to feel like a case of when, not if.

The science. The National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and even, grudgingly, the Bush administration now believe Earth is warming. The roots of this emerging consensus go back to 1998, when climatologist Michael Mann used tree ring, ice core, and coral reef data to show relatively stable temperatures over the past millenniums, with a sharp spike in the 20th century. Called the "hockey stick" graph because of its shape, Mann's research concluded that human-generated greenhouse gases--such as carbon dioxide and methane--were the primary culprits. While the shape of the hockey stick has changed somewhat, numerous studies have largely vindicated Mann. "All the new data are in the same direction, showing that warming is continuing," says Ralph Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. Average surface temperatures have climbed about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 20th century, coinciding with spiking atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, which have ballooned 35 percent over the same period. Levels of methane, a far more potent heat-trapping gas, have jumped 152 percent since the preindustrial age. Last year was the hottest on record, and model projections show temperatures jumping anywhere from 2.7 to 10.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

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(Jakarta, Senin 18 February 2008, 14.11 siang)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.usnews.com)