8. What are the Governments Doing about Climate Change?

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 8

2011 May 23. A City Prepares for a Warm Long-Term Forecast. By Leslie Kaufman, The NY Times. Excerpt: …Chicago is getting ready for a wetter, steamier future. Public alleyways are being repaved with materials that are permeable to water. The white oak, the state tree of Illinois, has been banned from city planting lists, and swamp oaks and sweet gum trees from the South have been given new priority. Thermal radar is being used to map the city’s hottest spots, which are then targets for pavement removal and the addition of vegetation to roofs. And air-conditioners are being considered for all 750 public schools, which until now have been heated but rarely cooled…..
…The precise consequences of the increase of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are hard to determine, but scientists are predicting significant sea level rise; more extreme weather events like storms, tornadoes and blizzards; and, of course, much more heat….
...Some of these events will occur in the near-enough term that local governments are under pressure to act. Insurance companies are applying pressure in high-risk areas, essentially saying adapt or pay higher premiums — especially in urban and commercial areas….

2011 May 17. Chris Huhne pledges to halve UK carbon emissions by 2025. By Fiona Harvey and Allegra Stratton, The Guardian. Excerpt: The UK is to put in place the most ambitious targets on greenhouse gases of any developed country, by halving carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, after a tumultuous week of cabinet rifts on the issue….
…The energy and climate secretary, Chris Huhne, announced to parliament that the "carbon budget" – a 50% emissions cut averaged across the years 2023 to 2027, compared with 1990 levels – would be enshrined in law….
…The carbon budget runs from 2023 to 2027, part of efforts to meet legally binding emissions cuts of 80% by 2050, and will put the UK on target for 60% cuts by 2030. There will be a review of the budget in 2014, under a compromise….

2011 April 22. NASA RELEASE 11-121: NASA and Partners Fund New Climate Impact Studies On Species and Ecosystems. Excerpt: …NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Smithsonian Institution will provide $18 million for 15 new research projects during the next four years. Organizations across the United States in academia, government and the private sector will study the response of different species and ecosystems to climate changes and develop tools to better manage wildlife and natural resources….
…"We know very little about how the majority of species and ecosystems will respond to environmental changes related to changing climates," said Woody Turner, manager of NASA's Ecological Forecasting program in Washington. "These projects bring together NASA's global satellite data of the physical environment with ground-based data on specific species and ecosystems and computer modeling to detect and understand biological responses to climate. As a result, we will improve our management and mitigation of the impact of changing climate." ...

2011 March 28. Forest Service adopts climate-change 'scorecard.' By Bob Berwyn, Summit County Citizens Voice. Excerpt: Recognizing that climate change calls for a coordinated response, the U.S. Forest Service is implementing a climate change road map to guide the agency’s efforts in the face of potentially staggering impacts to the landscapes and watersheds it manages across the country….
…The scorecard approach will help field-level rangers plan actions that fit into a broader scope of landscape-level action aimed at addressing climate change, rather than relying on “random acts of conservation,” said regional agency planners familiar with the effort....

2011 January 12. NASA RELEASE: 11-014: NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record. Excerpt: Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
…The record temperature in 2010 is particularly noteworthy, because the last half of the year was marked by a transition to strong La Nina conditions, which bring cool sea surface temperatures to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean….

2010 August 19. Worldwide Slowdown in Plant Carbon Uptake. Excerpt: Deep and extended droughts are responsible for a recent slowdown in the amount of carbon dioxide that land plants pulled from the atmosphere as they grew, a new study suggests...
…Satellite data suggest that between 1982 and 1999, the world’s net primary production — the amount of carbon pulled from the air as CO2 and stored in living plants each year — rose about 6 percent, says Maosheng Zhao, an ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula...
…Previous studies have hinted that drought is a major contributor to declines in plant productivity, says Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. But, she adds, “what’s really cool about this paper is the global time series of satellite observations” — a set of data that can’t be reproduced by simply extrapolating from occasional studies of widely scattered plots of forest.
…The new study also indicates that the CO2 fertilization effect on vegetation, thought by a few scientists to be a possible solution to the ever-increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, isn’t automatic, Fung says. “Water is a major, major thing,” she notes...

2010 July 20. NASA RELEASE: 10-173: First Map of Global Forest Heights Created From NASA Data. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map of the height of the world's forests by combining data from three NASA satellites. The map will help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world's forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere.
…The primary data… used was from a laser technology called lidar on the ICESat. Lidar can capture vertical slices of forest canopy height by shooting pulses of light at the ground and observing how much longer it takes for light to bounce back from the surface than from the top of the forest canopy. Since lidar can penetrate the top layer of forest canopy, it provides a detailed snapshot of the vertical structure of a forest.
…Measuring canopy height has implications for efforts to estimate the amount of carbon tied up in Earth's forests and for explaining what absorbs 2 billion tons of "missing" carbon each year. Humans release about 7 billion tons of carbon annually, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide. Of that, 3 billion tons end up in the atmosphere and 2 billion tons in the ocean. It's unclear where the remaining 2 billion tons of carbon go, although scientists suspect forests capture and store much of it as biomass through photosynthesis.
…Sassan Saatchi, senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., already has started combining the height data with forest inventories to create biomass maps for tropical forests. Global biomass inventories will eventually be used to improve climate models and guide policymakers on carbon management strategies.

July 2010. Touring the Atmosphere Aboard the A-Train. By Tristan S. L'Ecuyer and Jonathan H. Jiang, Physics Today. Excerpt: To better understand the climate system, climate scientists need to quantify the complex relationships that connect water in all three phases to heat exchanges between the surface, atmosphere, and space; to aerosols; and to trace gases. That is a daunting task, given the sheer number and diversity of measurements and parameters involved, but a one-of-a-kind constellation of satellites collectively known as the A-Train is helping scientists to meet the challenge
…Together the satellites view Earth from the UV to the microwave—a wavelength span of four orders of magnitude. That wavelength diversity, coupled with the distinct viewing geometries and scanning patterns of the instruments aboard the A-Train, provides composite information about a wide variety of climate parameters
…The data from the four satellites yield new information about the three-dimensional structure of clouds and aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. Armed with those data, scientists can quantitatively determine how clouds and aerosols influence global energy balance.
...The A-Train carries tools for evaluating how well climate models represent several aspects of present-day energy and water cycles, atmospheric composition and transports, and surface–atmosphere exchanges. Such tests are critical because accurate prediction of climate variability on decadal and longer time scales requires that models be capable of simulating current climate and short-term variations such as the diurnal and annual solar cycles and the year-to-year variations associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

2010 June 29. White House Energy Session Changes No Minds. By John M. Broder, The NY Times. Excerpt: …Democrats continued to insist on putting some sort of price on greenhouse gas emissions; Republicans continued to insist that to do so would be to impose a tax that would smother the economy.
…This battle has divided the Senate for a year and must be somehow resolved in the coming weeks if the Senate is to produce a comprehensive energy bill that also addresses the gases contributing to climate change.
…Among the ideas circulating in Washington are a so-called energy-only bill that would encourage conservation and greater efficiency in buildings and vehicles; more government incentives for alternative fuels; a plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants while delaying regulation of other major sources of pollution for years; and a measure to rapidly build nuclear power plants and electrify the American vehicle fleet.
…The House Energy and Commerce Committee will take up a bill called the Blowout Prevention Act that will require oil companies digging high-risk wells in deep water to use more sophisticated emergency equipment with backup systems to ensure they work in the case of a blowout. The bill also sets strict new rules for how wells are designed, cemented and encased and requires that a relief well be started within 15 days of an accident.

2010 June 24. Defense Experts Want More Explicit Climate Models. By Lauren Morello, The NY Times. Excerpt: …While political leaders on Capitol Hill seek definitive answers about how quickly the world's climate will change, military and national security experts say they're used to making decisions with limited information.
…But as they turn their attention to the geopolitical implications of climate change, they're pressing scientists to help them understand the risk and uncertainty inherent in forecasts of future environmental shifts.
…"We had to use a low-resolution [climate] model," she said. "We were constrained by the computer model we had. And what that doesn't do is give you the outliers" -- extreme, but low probability, events.
…Still, climate scientists said their models have improved greatly since the last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released in 2007. At the Hadley Center, they're running a new model -- for the next IPCC report -- that covers changes in the atmosphere, the ocean, the carbon cycle, chemistry and land use.
…Observations of key aspects of climate change are also improving. Scripps glaciologist Helen Fricker noted that scientists now understand how melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and glaciers on land contribute to sea level rise -- something that was an open question just a few years ago.
…According to Titley, the Navy and Air Force are in talks with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop next-generation climate models that will incorporate knowledge of the social sciences, agriculture, and marine ecosystems -- "not just understanding that temperature is going up 'X' degrees."

2010 June 8. Release 10-135: NASA Icebreaker Voyage to Probe Climate Change Impact on Arctic. Excerpt: ...The "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment" mission, or ICESCAPE, will investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. A key focus is how changes in the Arctic may be altering the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is a leading cause of global warming.
…The Arctic Ocean, unlike other oceans, is almost completely landlocked, making it an ideal location to study ongoing climate changes in a marine ecosystem already heavily impacted by declining sea ice cover, ocean acidification, and an increase in incoming solar radiation. These changes are likely to modify the physics, biogeochemistry, and ecology of this environment in ways that are not well understood. Satellite remote sensing has provided some insight into these changes which ICESCAPE is designed to advance.
…"The ocean ecosystem in the Arctic has changed dramatically in recent years, and it's changing much faster and much more than any other ocean in the world," said ICESCAPE chief scientist Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University. "Declining sea ice in the Arctic is certainly one reason for the change, but that's not the whole story. We need to find out, for example, where the nutrients are coming from that feed this growth if we are going to be able to predict what the future holds for this region."

2010 April 15. Release 10-059: "Missing" Heat May Affect Future Climate Change. NSF. Excerpt: Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a "Perspectives" article in this week's issue of the journal Science.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., warn that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system....
The authors suggest that last year's rapid onset of El Niño, the periodic event in which upper ocean waters across much of the tropical Pacific Ocean become significantly warmer, may be one way in which the solar energy has reappeared.
..."The flow of energy through the climate system is a key issue in understanding climate change," says Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funds NCAR. "It poses a major challenge to our observing systems."...

2010 April 1. U.S. Issues Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Cars. By John M. Broder, NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The federal government took its first formal step to regulate global warming pollution on Thursday by issuing final rules for greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles and light trucks.
The move ends a 30-year battle between regulators and automakers but sets the stage for what may be a bigger fight over climate-altering emissions from stationary sources like power plants, steel mills and refineries.
The new tailpipe rules, jointly written by the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, set emissions and mileage standards that would translate to a combined fuel economy average for new vehicles of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Most drivers will see lower mileage figures in actual driving.
The rules are expected to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases about 30 percent from 2012 to 2016.
Officials said the program would save the owner of an average 2016 car about $3,000 in fuel over the life of the vehicle and eliminate emissions of nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gases over the lives of all regulated vehicles....

2010 March 18. RELEASE 10-067: NASA IceBridge Mission Prepares for Study of Arctic Glaciers. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- NASA's Operation IceBridge mission, the largest airborne survey ever flown of Earth's polar ice, kicks off its second year of study when NASA aircraft arrive in Greenland March 22.
The IceBridge mission allows scientists to track changes in the extent and thickness of polar ice, which is important for understanding ice dynamics. IceBridge began in March 2009 as a means to fill the gap in polar observations between the loss of NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, and the launch of ICESat-2, planned for 2015. Annual missions fly over the Arctic in March and April and over Antarctica in October and November.
"NASA's IceBridge mission is characterizing the changes occurring in the world's polar ice sheets," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The mission's goal is to collect the most important data for improving predictive models of sea level rise and global climate change."
Researchers plan to resurvey previous flight lines and former ground tracks of ICESat while adding new areas of interest. Scientists also will target some areas that have been undergoing mysterious changes. The major glaciers in southeast Greenland once thinned simultaneously, but some of those glaciers have been thinning at an accelerated rate -- as much as 40 feet per year -- while others have thickened. And glaciers in northwest Greenland, once a stable region, have mostly begun to thin....

2010 Feb 23. New NASA Web Page Sheds Light on Science of a Warming World. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Will 2010 be the warmest year on record? How do the recent U.S. "Snowmageddon" winter storms and record low temperatures in Europe fit into the bigger picture of long-term global warming? NASA has launched a new web page to help people better understand the causes and effects of Earth's changing climate.
The new "A Warming World" page hosts a series of new articles, videos, data visualizations, space-based imagery and interactive visuals that provide unique NASA perspectives on this topic of global importance.
...The new web page is available on NASA's Global Climate Change Web site at: http://climate.nasa.gov/warmingworld

2010 February 18. Road Transportation Emerges As Key Driver of Warming. Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Excerpt: For decades, climatologists have studied the gases and particles that have potential to alter Earth's climate. They have discovered and described certain airborne chemicals that can trap incoming sunlight and warm the climate, while others cool the planet by blocking the Sun's rays.
Now a new study led by Nadine Unger of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City offers a more intuitive way to understand what's changing the Earth's climate. Rather than analyzing impacts by chemical species, scientists have analyzed the climate impacts by different economic sectors.
Each part of the economy, such as ground transportation or agriculture, emits a unique portfolio of gases and aerosols that affect the climate in different ways and on different timescales
…The new analysis offers policy makers and the public a far more detailed and comprehensive understanding of how to mitigate climate change most effectively, Unger and colleagues assert. "Targeting on-road transportation is a win-win-win," she said. "It's good for the climate in the short term and long term, and it's good for our health."

2010 Feb 18. U.N. Climate Chief Resigns. By Neil MacFarquhar and John M. Broder, NY Times. Excerpt: UNITED NATIONS — The sense of disarray in the global effort to address climate change deepened Thursday with the resignation of Yvo de Boer, the stolid Dutch bureaucrat who led the international climate change negotiations over four tumultuous years.
His departure, which takes effect on July 1, comes after a largely unsuccessful meeting in Copenhagen in December that was supposed to produce a binding international treaty but instead generated mostly acrimony and a series of unenforceable pledges by nations to reduce their global warming emissions.
Mr. de Boer did not directly link his decision to step down to the chaos at Copenhagen. But he was known to be frustrated and exhausted by the meeting’s failures. His resignation was seen by some as a further sign that the United Nations framework, which for almost two decades has been viewed as the best approach to tackling global warming, may have outlived its usefulness. And it raised questions about whether any significant progress toward a global treaty would be made by December, when the next United Nations climate talks are to be held in Cancún, Mexico....

2010 Feb 1. Panel Suggests 100 Ways Buildings Can Be Greener. By Mireya Navarro, The NY Times. Excerpt: A panel of experts convened by the mayor and City Council issued more than 100 recommendations Monday on how to make New York City’s building codes more environmentally sound by imposing energy-saving requirements on construction and renovation work.
The measures, presented to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Council’s speaker, Christine C. Quinn, include rules for insulating glass skyscrapers and a plan that would place temperature controls in individual apartments, eliminating the winter ritual of opening windows to vent excess heat....
The recommendations are the city’s latest attempt to reduce the greenhouse gases produced by its buildings, which are estimated to be the source of about 75 percent of the city’s emissions over all. In December, the City Council passed legislation requiring owners of New York’s largest buildings to pay for energy audits, upgrade lighting and take other steps to reduce energy consumption....

2010 Feb 1. Countries Submit Emission Goals. By John M. Broder, The NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The climate change accord reached at Copenhagen in December passed its first test on Monday after countries responsible for the bulk of climate-altering pollution formally submitted their emission reduction plans, meeting the agreement’s Jan. 31 deadline.
Most major nations — including the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union, China, India, Japan and Brazil — restated earlier pledges to curb emissions by 2020, some by promising absolute cuts, others by reducing the rate of increase from a business-as-usual curve.
In all, 55 developed and developing countries submitted emission reduction plans to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body overseeing global negotiations. Two major nations — Mexico and Russia — had not submitted plans as of Monday evening.
United Nations officials said that the countries that have already filed plans account for 78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally....

2010 January 21. NASA RELEASE 10-017. NASA Research Finds Last Decade was Warmest on Record, 2009 One of Warmest Years. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.
Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York....
"There's always interest in the annual temperature numbers and a given year's ranking, but the ranking often misses the point," said James Hansen, GISS director. "There's substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated."
January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Looking back to 1880, when modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, although there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.
In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880....

2010 January. Carbon Markets - An Approach to Mitigate Climate Change. Maine Bureau of Air Quality.

2009 Dec. 18. NASA RELEASE : 09-291. NASA and Maryland Researcher Recognized for Data that Provides Clues to Earth's Changing Climate, Forests, and Crops. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- A NASA-led team has been recognized with a prestigious award for helping scientists better understand our home planet. NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior presented the William T. Pecora Award to the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System, or CERES, team and to Forrest Hall, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
...presented Dec. 17 in San Francisco during the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. ...Led from Langley, the CERES team has compiled a critical data set for monitoring and predicting climate change. The data set, which comes from five instruments on three spacecraft, is being used to improve our understanding of the natural and human-induced changes in the climate through accurate measurements of the Earth's radiative energy balance. This balance is the amount of energy Earth receives from the sun and keeps in the atmosphere or radiates back into space. Along with measurements of oceans, land, snow, ice, clouds, aerosols and meteorology, CERES data products provide a scientific basis for developing global environmental policies.
"CERES is a major NASA success story," said Freilich. "The team has made an exceptional contribution to understanding the Earth system. This interagency, academic, international effort has resulted in critical data that, among other benefits, has supported the conclusions of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."....

Winter 2010. Why Cap and Trade is a Bad Idea. By Rep. Peter DeFazio. Forest Magazine, Winter 2010. Excerpt: Less than three months ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. If signed into law, the bill would implement a cap-and-trade program in the United States intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.
I agree that addressing climate change is the most serious environmental challenge of our time, but this bill is fatally flawed.
A cap-and-trade program works by setting pollution limits (the "cap") and distributing allowances to regulated entities that can be bought and sold in a market to meet emission targets (the "trade"). Theoretically, emissions would be reduced as the number of available allowances is ratcheted down over time.
A cap-and-trade program has been in place in Europe since 2005 and has largely been a failure. In 2007, the last year for which numbers are available, greenhouse gas emissions in Europe rose 1.1 percent; that is three consecutive years of higher emissions in Europe under a cap-and-trade program.
Why has the European cap-and-trade system failed? I see at least three reasons.
First, Europe deregulated its carbon market and allowed unregulated entities to buy, trade and sell allowances. As a result, the European carbon market has been prone to market manipulation, speculation and profiteering that have brought higher costs to consumers without benefits.
Second, Europe gave away allowances to industry for free based on historical emission levels. In some cases, this allowed industry to generate windfall profits to the tune of $10 billion by selling unused allowances.
Third, Europe allowed regulated entities to use international offsets to meet their emission targets. Offsets allow industry, governments and private business to invest in promised pollution reduction projects-such as overseas forestry projects-to meet emission targets. These projects can be highly questionable and forestall meaningful emission reductions.
Unfortunately, when the House of Representatives passed the Clean Energy and Security bill in June 2009, it incorporated the fatal flaws of Europe's cap-and-trade program. Like Europe, a cap-and-trade program in the United States would create a carbon market open to speculators. Wall Street will have enormous opportunities to game the system with new exotic financial products, new derivative markets and volatile prices for allowances.
The bill gives away most allowances to industry free of charge. Total giveaways to industry are estimated to be $821 billion over the first seven years of the cap-and-trade program alone. ...Finally, but perhaps most fatally, the bill relies on questionable international offsets to meet emission targets. International offsets are one of the keys to my opposition to the bill in its current form.
...Peter DeFazio has represented Oregon's Fourth Congressional District since 1984. He serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, among others.

2009 Dec 15. Weather Device Also Tracks Greenhouse Gas. By KENNETH CHANG. Excerpt: A satellite instrument designed to improve weather forecasts has provided a wealth of data on the flow of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, scientists said Tuesday.
The data also verified a mechanism in which rising temperatures increase the rate of ocean evaporation, and the increased water vapor, also a potent greenhouse gas, raises the earth's temperatures further.
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder - called AIRS for short - aboard NASA's orbiting Aqua spacecraft measures temperature and cloud cover by recording infrared emissions across the entire globe twice a day. The data helps meteorologists predict major storms.
... "In essence, we're videotaping the atmosphere and its constituents," Thomas Pagano, the instrument's project manager, said at a news conference in San Francisco during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union....

2009 November 23. U.S. to Set Emissions Target Before Climate Talks. By John M. Broder, The NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The United States will propose a near-term target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before the United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen next month, a senior administration official said Monday. President Obama, the official said, will announce the specific target “in coming days.”
... The lack of consensus in Congress puts Mr. Obama in a tricky domestic and diplomatic bind. He cannot promise more than Congress may eventually deliver when it takes up climate change legislation next year. But if he does not offer some concrete pledge, the United States will bear the brunt of the blame for the lack of an international agreement....

2009 November 2. E.P.A. Lawyers Challenge ‘Cap and Trade’ for Climate. By Andrew C. Revkin, The NY Times. Excerpt: When an economist at the Environmental Protection Agency rejected the Obama administration’s stance on global warming by  writing an unsolicited report challenging the scientific consensus on greenhouse dangers, groups fighting restrictions on greenhouse gases hailed him as  a courageous maverick. Climate campaigners said he was  irrelevant and ill informed.
Now two more functionaries at the agency — Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are lawyers and a married couple — have sharply criticized the core element of climate legislation pushed by Democratic lawmakers and President Obama.
Their views are unlikely to be welcomed by either side in the political fight. Like the administration, they say that human-driven climate change poses enormous risks; they just completely reject the  cap and trade system favored by Democratic leaders and some environmental groups. This system would force overall emission reductions but allow flexibility through a market that trades credits accrued by companies or institutions that make extra-deep cuts.
...They argued that the trading system provides far too much leeway for dealing in “offsets,” credits earned by avoiding or preventing emissions of carbon dioxide. In summary, they wrote: “Together, the illusion of greenhouse-gas reductions and the creation of powerful lobbies seeking to protect newly created profits in permits and offsets would lock in climate degradation for a decade or more.”...

2009 October 29. China outperforms US on green issues. By Jim Giles, NewScientist. Excerpt: China is often accused of not doing enough to reduce the carbon dioxide and other pollution pouring from its factories and coal-fuelled power stations. But a new report suggests the country is doing more to tackle climate change than it gets credit for: in fact, its environmental standards surpass the US in some key measures.
The World Resources Institute (WRI), a respected environmental think tank based in Washington DC, says China is on track to meet its main climate change target, which is a 20 per cent reduction in energy intensity – the amount of energy used per dollar of gross domestic product – by the end of next year....
China is also making good progress towards its goal of generating 15 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, according to the report. By the end of the next decade it will have 150 gigawatts of wind power installed – over five times the current US level. One in 10 Chinese homes already has solar heaters, with the number growing by 20 per cent per year....

2009 October 14. Arctic Now Traps 25 Percent of World's Carbon -- But That Could Change. USGS. Excerpt: The arctic could potentially alter the Earth’s climate by becoming a possible source of global atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The arctic now traps or absorbs up to 25 percent of this gas but climate change could alter that amount, according to a study published in the November issue of Ecological Monographs.
In their review paper, David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues show that the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age, which has recently accounted for between zero and 25 percent, or up to about 800 million metric tons, of the global carbon sink. On average, says McGuire, the Arctic accounts for 10-15 percent of the Earth’s carbon sink. But the rapid rate of climate change in the Arctic – about twice that of lower latitudes – could eliminate the sink and instead, possibly make the Arctic a source of carbon dioxide....
Carbon generally enters the oceans and land masses of the Arctic from the atmosphere and largely accumulates in permafrost, the frozen layer of soil underneath the land’s surface. Unlike active soils, permafrost does not decompose its carbon; thus, the carbon becomes trapped in the frozen soil. Cold conditions at the surface have also slowed the rate of organic matter decomposition, McGuire says, allowing Arctic carbon accumulation to exceed its release.
But recent warming trends could change this balance. Warmer temperatures can accelerate the rate of surface organic matter decomposition, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Of greater concern, says McGuire, is that the permafrost has begun to thaw, exposing previously frozen soil to decomposition and erosion. These changes could reverse the historical role of the Arctic as a sink for carbon dioxide....

2009 August 7. Glacier melt accelerating, federal report concludes. By Jim Tankersley, LA Times. Excerpt: ...Washington - The federal government Thursday released the most comprehensive study of melting glaciers in North America -- and the results show a rapid and accelerating shrinkage over the last half a century because of global warming.
One of the glaciers in the study, the South Cascade Glacier in Washington state, has lost nearly half of its volume and a quarter of its mass since 1958, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey said. The two others in the study, the Wolverine and Gulkana glaciers in Alaska, have both lost nearly 15% of their mass.
In all three cases, the melting has increased over the last two decades. The acceleration is the result of warmer, drier climates in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska caused by global warming, the researchers said.
"By having a 50-year record, you can look over what's going on, look over the meteorological, climatological record, and really get an idea of what's going on in the mountains," said Edward Josberger, a scientist with the USGS Washington Water Science Center in Tacoma, Wash., who has worked for a decade on the study.
"Climate change effects are starting to become more and more noticeable," he added, "and this is one of the effects that's being displayed."...

2009 July 16. NASA RELEASE : 09-167. NASA Airborne Expedition Chases Arctic Sea Ice Questions. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- A small NASA aircraft completed its first successful science flight Thursday as part of an expedition to study the receding Arctic sea ice and improve understanding of its life cycle and the long-term stability of the Arctic ice cover. The mission continues through July 24.
NASA's Characterization of Arctic Sea Ice Experiment, known as CASIE, began a series of unmanned aircraft system flights in coordination with satellites. Working with the University of Colorado and its research partners, NASA is using the remotely-piloted aircraft to image thick, old slabs of ice as they drift from the Arctic Ocean south through Fram Strait -- which lies between Greenland and Svalbard, Norway -- into the North Atlantic Ocean.
NASA's Science Instrumentation Evaluation Remote Research Aircraft, or SIERRA, will weave a pattern over open ocean and sea ice to map and measure ice conditions below cloud cover to as low as 300 feet.
"Our project is attempting to answer some of the most basic questions regarding the most fundamental changes in sea ice cover in recent years," said James Maslanik, a research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and principal investigator for the NASA mission. "Our analysis of satellite data shows that in 2009 the amount of older ice is just 12 percent of what it was in 1988 -- a decline of 74 percent. The oldest ice types now cover only 2 percent of the Arctic Ocean as compared to 20 percent during the 1980s."...

2009 July 9. World powers accept warming limit. BBC News. Excerpt: Developed and developing nations have agreed that global temperatures should not rise more than 2C above 1900 levels, a G8 summit declaration says. That is the level above which, the UN says, the Earth's climate system would become dangerously unstable.
US President Barack Obama said the countries had made important strides in dealing with climate change. But the G8 failed to persuade developing countries to accept targets of cutting emissions by 50% by 2050. On Wednesday, the G8 agreed its own members would work towards 80% cuts by the same date.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the G8 had not done enough and should also set 2020 targets. He said that while the G8's Wednesday agreement was welcome, its leaders also needed to establish a strong and ambitious mid-term target for emissions cuts.
...RK Pachauri, who chairs the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, praised the declaration's mention of the 2C limit but said more details were needed.
"It certainly doesn't give you a roadmap on how you should get there but at least they've defined the destination," he told the BBC World Service Newshour programme.
...BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin says the declaration is a significant step, with all big countries rich and poor agreeing there is a scientific limit on the amount we should warm the climate. But there is still a huge way to go, he says, as developing nations like India will not sign up to any 2050 targets unless rich nations show more determination and offer more cash....

2009 June 27. House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change. By JOHN M. BRODER, NY Times. Excerpt: The 219-212 vote marked the first time that either house of Congress has approved a bill aimed at curbing the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change, and it could lead to sweeping changes in the economy.

2009 June 12. Climate Change Treaty, to Go Beyond the Kyoto Protocol, Is Expected by the Year’s End. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, The NY Times. Excerpt: The world is on track to produce a new global climate treaty by December, the top United Nations climate official said Friday as delegates from more than 100 nations concluded 12 days of talks in Bonn, Germany.
The delegates issued a 200-page document that they said would serve as the starting point for treaty negotiations that open in Copenhagen in December.
...The goal is a climate treaty that would go beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a climate-change agreement that set emissions targets for industrialized nations. Many of those goals have not been met, and the United States never ratified the accord.
The document issued Friday outlines proposals for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases by rich countries and limiting the growth of gases in the developing world. It also discusses ways of preventing deforestation, which is linked to global warming, and of providing financing for poorer nations to help them adapt to warmer temperatures.
...environmentalists took heart from the strong involvement of many nations, especially the United States and China, which jointly produce 40 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. (In declining to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United States cited China and India’s lack of participation.)...

2009 April 27. Clinton Says U.S. Is Ready to Lead on Climate. By John M. Broder, The NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — After eight years largely on the sidelines of the international policy debate on climate change, the United States is prepared to lead negotiations toward a new global warming treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.
“The United States is fully engaged and determined to lead and make up for lost time both at home and abroad,” Mrs. Clinton told delegates from 16 countries at a State Department conference on energy and climate. “We are back in the game.”
The meeting in Washington was the first of three planned sessions among the participating countries, who together account for roughly 75 percent of emissions of the gases blamed for the heating of the planet....
...Mrs. Clinton said there was no longer any question that growing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other gases were causing a warming of the planet, with potentially catastrophic results. She said global climate change posed environmental, economic, health and security challenges that must be addressed by individual countries and by the community of nations.
Speaking directly to representatives of developing nations, who are skeptical of the motives of the United States and other industrialized countries on the issue, Mrs. Clinton that the United States would not seek to limit the use of energy in the developing world but would help make it cleaner.
“We want your economies to grow,” she said as representatives of Brazil, China, India and Indonesia listened. “We want your people to have a higher standard of living.”...

2009 April 6. NASA RELEASE: 09-079. Satellites Show Arctic Literally on Thin Ice. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.
...Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced today that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).
Until recently, the majority of Arctic sea ice survived at least one summer and often several. But things have changed dramatically, according to a team of University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists led by Charles Fowler. Thin seasonal ice -- ice that melts and re-freezes every year -- makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.
According to researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is 278,000 square miles less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000.
"Ice extent is an important measure of the health of the Arctic, but it only gives us a two-dimensional view of the ice cover," said Walter Meier, research scientist at the center and the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Thickness is important, especially in the winter, because it is the best overall indicator of the health of the ice cover. As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it grows more vulnerable to melting in the summer."...

2009 February 17. New York Must Prepare for Global Warming, Mayor’s Panel Says. By Mireya Navarro, The NY Times. Excerpt: New York City must prepare for higher temperatures, more rain and an increased risk of coastal flooding in the coming decades as a result of global climate change, an advisory panel said on Tuesday.
The panel, formed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to study the potential effects of global warming on the city, said that mean annual temperatures in New York could increase by up to 3 degrees and the average sea levels rise by 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s. By the 2080s, temperatures could increase by up to 7 ½ degrees, and sea levels could rise 12 to 23 inches by the end of the century, the panel said.
...City officials said that to prepare for the expected effects of climate change, the city should plan to keep cooling centers for people without air-conditioning open longer during heat waves, move critical equipment in city buildings above sea level and incorporate climate changes into the design of buildings, among other measures.
...“Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after the catastrophe,” the mayor said in response to the report. “We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change now.”...

2008 July 16. US EPA Says Greenhouse Emissions Endanger Health. By Deborah Zabarenko, Planet Ark. Excerpt: WASHINGTON - The US Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, a critical finding that has languished in bureaucratic limbo since last December.
In a 149-page document, the agency's scientists said that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that potential health risks include more heat waves, floods and droughts, insect outbreaks and and wildfires, along with crop failure and decline in livestock and fisheries productivity.
"This is a long-awaited EPA analysis that has been kept under wraps by the White House," said Vickie Patton of Environmental Defense. "It's of critical importance because it looks at the extensive body of science demonstrating that global warming threatens Americans' health and well-being."
The document posted on EPA's Web site was part of the environment agency's response to an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that for the first time found that greenhouse gases can be regulated as a pollutant under the US Clean Air Act...
This information had been sent to the White House last December by e-mail, but officials there refused to open it...
The Bush administration has opposed economy-wide moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Both major presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have said they would act to stem climate change.

2008 May 28. New Climate Report Foresees Big Changes.By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY Times. Exerpt: The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies, agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new federal report says.
The changes are unfolding in ways that are likely to produce an uneven national map of harms and benefits, according to the report, released Tuesday and posted online at climatescience.gov. The authors of the report and some independent experts said the main value of its projections was the level of detail and the high confidence in some conclusions. That confidence comes in part from the report's emphasis on the next 25 to 50 years, when shifts in emissions are unlikely to make much of a difference in climate trends. The report also reflects a recent, significant shift by the Bush administration on climate science. During Mr. Bush's first term, administration officials worked to play down a national assessment of climate effects conducted mainly during the Clinton administration, but released in 2000.
The new report, which includes some findings that are more sobering and definitive than those in the 2000 climate report, holds the signatures of three cabinet secretaries. According to the report, Western states will face substantial challenges because of growing demand for water and big projected drops in supplies....

2008 May 14. NASA STUDY LINKS EARTH IMPACTS TO HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE. NASA RELEASE: 08-127. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- A new NASA-led study shows human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth's natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa.
Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York and scientists at 10 other institutions have linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with rises in temperatures during that period. The study, to be published May 15 in the journal Nature, concludes human-caused warming is resulting in a broad range of impacts across the globe.
"This is the first study to link global temperature data sets, climate model results, and observed changes in a broad range of physical and biological systems to show the link between humans, climate, and impacts," said Rosenzweig, lead author of the study. ...Observed impacts included changes to physical systems, such as glaciers shrinking, permafrost melting, and lakes and rivers warming. Biological systems also were impacted in a variety of ways, such as leaves unfolding and flowers blooming earlier in the spring, birds arriving earlier during migration periods, and plant and animal species moving toward Earth's poles and higher in elevation. In aquatic environments such as oceans, lakes, and rivers, plankton and fish are shifting from cold-adapted to warm-adapted communities....

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