Every Geologic Day is absolutely inconsequential relative to Earth’s lifetime. After all, Earth has 27,394 of them.
Posts Tagged ‘climate’
Jeff Goldstein: Understanding Why Climate Change is Human-Induced: A Day in the Life of the Earth
July 14th, 2009 |
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We will protect air travel – Miliband
July 14th, 2009 |
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Mass air travel will be preserved even in a low-carbon Britain because the government will find deeper emissions cuts in other areas, the climate change secretary Ed Miliband said today.
Dismissing demands for punitive sanctions to curb flying, Miliband said the government was determined to ensure that airline travel remains affordable for ordinary people.
In a Guardian interview, ahead of the publication of a white paper on climate change, Miliband said air travel would become more expensive as Britain tries to meet a G8 target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050. But he said it would be wrong to impose the target on airlines, which will be covered by the European Emissions Trading Scheme from 2012 if they fly to and from the EU.
“Where I disagree with other people on aviation is if you did 80% cuts across the board, as some people have called for on aviation, you would go back to 1974 levels of flying,” he said. “I don’t want to have a situation where only rich people can afford to fly.”
Miliband spoke of the importance of flying for his constituents in Doncaster which has benefited after an RAF airbase was turned into an international airport in 2005. “People in my constituency have benefited from being able to have foreign travel which, 40 years ago, the middle classes took for granted,” he said. “There are sacrifices and changes in lifestyle necessary. But the job of government is to facilitate them and understand people’s lives and what they value.”
The pledge by Miliband echoes remarks by Tony Blair in 2007 who said it would be wrong to impose “unrealistic targets” on airline travellers. Britain has pledged to bring its aviation emissions down to 2005 levels by 2050.
Miliband’s remarks are designed to illustrate the government’s overall approach to meeting the 2050 target which will not involve imposing a blanket 80% cut on all areas of the economy. The white paper is expected to build on government plans to tolerate relatively high emissions in one area if action is taken in other areas by, for example, lagging lofts and driving less. Carbon levels have already been brought down from 1990 levels, the benchmark for global climate talks. So far they have been reduced by 22% and are due to come down by 34% by 2020, with a target of at least 80% due in 2050.
The government has already announced that will be achieved by dividing the economy into a series of sectors. The biggest is power, with others including transport, homes, work places and agriculture.
Miliband will outline on Wednesday how much carbon Britain is emitting in each area and will suggest steps to bring them down. He refused to outline the details of his white paper out of respect to John Bercow, the new Commons speaker, who has demanded ministers make announcements first to parliament. But he said his philosophy is to outline a vision of “green hope” – with jobs in green technology and a safer country – not “green despair”.
“If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare’ people would not have followed him,” Miliband said, quoting someone he met at the Guardian’s recent Manchester climate change summit. “You have to persuade people that, yes, there are costs of not acting but also there is a vision of society at the end of this: more secure, more prosperous, fairer better quality of life. All those things are crucial to persuade people to take the leap.
“All our research indicates that people in Britain are not climate change deniers. But now they are persuaded it is a problem, you have to start offering them a vision about how you tackle the problem.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
BBC walks with dinosaurs on climate
July 13th, 2009 |
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The BBC’s output treats the findings of thousands of scientists on climate change as no more than ‘views’ or ‘opinion’
Years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I worked for the BBC’s natural history unit as a radio producer. It was a great job, and my colleagues were stimulating and fun. I was allowed to make investigative environmental programmes, and we exposed some shocking scandals. We recorded the head of customs in Abidjan offering to sell us smuggled chimpanzees, for example, and we found that a bulk carrier which crashed off the coast of Cork, polluting rare habitats, appeared to have been deliberately scuppered.
After Mrs Thatcher launched her coup against the BBC, its executives quickly lost their appetite for investigative programmes, and my boss explained that we no longer had the support we needed to continue. Since then the natural history unit has continued to broadcast beautiful, thrilling programmes about the world’s wildlife. Occasionally it makes an environmental programme. But by and large it presents the biosphere as if it inhabits a planet yet to be discovered by human beings (except of course the cameramen you see struggling with the elements in the “how we made it” segments).
The most extreme example was the three-part series on the Congo made for the BBC by Scorer Associates. At the height of a devastating civil war which had caused the deaths of some 4 million people, the series reported that “the Congo may once have been known as the ‘heart of darkness’ – today it seems more like a bright, beautiful wilderness.” In two and a half hours of programmes the killings were not mentioned.
Lovely as the unit’s output remains, I believe that it creates a misleading impression of the world, which can have grave political consequences. It encourages people to believe that all is well with the world’s ecosystems; often it produces the only footage viewers see from far-flung parts of the world. I am not arguing that the political or environmental context should dominate the unit’s output, only that it should be acknowledged and explained, however briefly. Is this too much to ask?
Yes, apparently. For the past few years an environmental campaigner called Peter Hack has been writing to the BBC asking about one of these gaps. As far as he can discover, over the past 17 years (since the 1992 Rio earth summit in other words) of BBC films about the ecosystems of east Africa, there has not been a single mention of climate change. Yet these places have been hit harder than almost anywhere else by changes in weather patterns. Kenya, for example, has suffered a series of extreme droughts, whose frequency appears to be unprecedented. These have direct and immediate impacts on the region’s wildlife. But watching Big Cat Diary or any of the other films the unit has made in the Serengeti, Maasai Mara and other great parks and reserves, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea that anything had changed.
Peter Hack has just shown me the latest letter he’s received from Gerald McCusker at BBC Information. McCusker explains the gap thus:
“It’s not always possible or practical to reflect all the different opinions on a subject within individual programmes and we feel that over a reasonable period our coverage will reflect a diverse range of views and opinions with regard to this issue.”
So it turns out that the entire science of climate change, the work of thousands of researchers, the tens of thousands of papers published in scientific journals, the indisputable facts about changes in temperature, precipitation and wildlife populations in east Africa is no more than a “view” or “opinion”. Nice to know where you stand, isn’t it?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Twenty ideas to save the world
July 13th, 2009 |
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The Manchester Report: Join our search for the best plan to tackle global climate change
Gordon Brown’s Climate Change Adviser Has Swine Flu
July 13th, 2009 |
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A key adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown has contracted swine flu and was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy, reports said late Sunday.
More on Swine Flu
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 13th, 2009 |
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The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 13th, 2009 |
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The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Swine flu strikes Downing Street adviser
July 12th, 2009 |
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The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown’s senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L’Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8′s leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown’s entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
Jacobs is seen as the one of the best informed climate change specialists in Britain and his absence from the talks was regarded as a significant loss. He made no mention of contracting the disease or the ban imposed on him when he sent out a circular to those interested in climate change setting out the outcome of the negotiations, and the problems that lie ahead in securing a deal at Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Jacobs, former general secretary of the Fabian Society, clearly did not regard his absence as fatal to the outcome of the summit since he pointed out in his email to green groups that five big achievements had been secured at the L’Aquila talks,
For the first time the G8 and developing nations agreed that the science demanded global average temperatures rise by only 2C on preindustrial levels.
“Until a few weeks ago, in fact in the case of the developing countries until a few days ago we did not believe we were going to get this agreement,” he said.
Secondly, the G8 agreed to cut its own emissions by 80% by 2050.
He also said it was now possible to see an agreement to cut global emissions by half at Copenhagen, the aim of the talks. The G8 meetings had seen developing countries for the first time accept the concept that their emissions were peaking, Jacobs said.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Sanjay Khanna: From Climate Science to Climate Justice: Climate Change a Symptom of Man’s Inhumanity to Man
July 11th, 2009 |
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The salient and problematic underlying political reality is that it climate change the culmination of longstanding processes of colonization and realpolitik.
Environmentalists Turn On Obama As Compromiser
July 11th, 2009 |
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For environmental activists like Jessica Miller, 31, the passage of a major climate bill by the House last month should have been cause for euphoria. Instead she felt cheated.
Mark Kirk Won’t Run For Senate: Report
July 10th, 2009 |
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U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk will not run for the Senate in 2010, the Washington Post’s Chris Cilliza reports.
The North Shore Republican appeared set to enter the race just days ago, after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would no…
Poor nations urge G8 emissions cuts
July 10th, 2009 |
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Diplomat says developing nations ‘will commit once they have certainty that developed countries are commiting themselves’
Developing nations are prepared to make concessions on climate change targets if the G8 fulfils its side of the bargain in the run-up to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, a key negotiator told the Guardian today.
The developing countries want the G8 nations to sign up to a 40% cut by 2020, but that figure is off the radar of the EU and, given the unwieldy legislation laboriously passing through the senate, not a possibility for the US.
In important forward steps this week, the G8 agreed to cut its emissions by 80% by 2050 and said worldwide emissions should fall 50% by the same date.
However, the value of this pledge has been reduced by the lack of an agreed start date from which the emission cuts should be measured, making it a distant promise.
Luis Alfonso de Alba, the lead co-ordinator on climate change for the developing countries at the G8, told the Guardian that their call for a 25-40%cut in developed nations’ emissions by 2020 was based on what UN climate change scientists had recommended.
The Mexican diplomat gave some ground, saying: “It does not have to be a specific target of 40%.
“That is what we hope to achieve, but this is a process of negotiation.”
He said a G8 commitment to a 2020 target was “fundamental”, adding: “It is logical that developing countries will commit once they have certainty that developed countries are commiting themselves.
“We need to see the mid-term targets go much higher, and we want to see all the developed countries, including the US, move at the same pace.
“We still need to see numbers. We respect the internal debate in the US, but it is important for the US to understand that this is a global issue and a multilateral negotiation.”
He said developing nations could not “just sit and wait to see what the internal debate in the US resolves”. He insisted the meeting chaired by Barack Obama under the aegis of the Major Economies Forum this week had made progress in accepting common responsibility for the crisis and for the need for carbon emissions to peak.
“Climate change is no longer seen as a north-south issue,” he said. “It is no longer a donor recipient relationship.
“The most important message is that assuming individual responsibilities to fight climate change can start immediately, and by doing it immediately it will be easier to reach an ambitious agreement at Copenhagen.”
De Alba said Mexico had already come up with its own carbon reduction programme, and he expected other developing nations to do the same over the coming months.
It was acknowledged at the summit that science dictates world temperatures must not rise more than 2C degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The negotiators hope this acknowledgement will drive the coming negotiations in the run-up to Copenhagen.
The talks include three UN sponsored meetings in Bonn, Bangkok and Barcelona as well as another meeting of the G20 in September.
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Climate change talks: Wanted: fresh air
July 9th, 2009 |
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Poor countries wrangle with rich ones about who can burn what and when
WHEN argument fails, try metaphor. Shyam Saran, who heads India’s international negotiating team on climate change, says that greenhouse gases are taking up “carbon space” in the atmosphere. Past emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from rich countries have taken up much of that space. Now the poor countries are standing up for their right to a little bit of that space too.
Put in those terms, it seems a matter of plain justice. Mr Saran is merely defending India’s right to industrialise. But as a negotiating position, it is one of the reasons why the talks on climate change at the G8 meeting in Italy this week have proved so fractious. Mr Saran says that the only limit India will accept on greenhouse-gas emissions is the same per-person amount enjoyed by citizens of developed countries. From the planet’s point of view that would mean a huge, and possibly catastrophic, increase in overall emissions. …
Key Is Getting Climate Message Through: Don
November 12th, 2007 |
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Alicia Wong
alicia@mediacorp.com.sg
He may have made winning a Nobel Peace Prize seem easy: One docu-movie and
former United States vice-president Al Gore shared the honours this year
with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But when it comes to environmental work, the importance of successfully
conveying the issues to the public – which is what Mr Gore did with An
Inconvenient Truth – cannot be understated, according to the coordinating
lead author of the panel’s Fourth Assessment Report, Professor Richard C J
Somerville (picture).
Prof Somerville, a climate scientist and distinguished professor emeritus
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told reporters yesterday that
people needed to “tell their governments that these issues are important
to them”.
“Polling data show this is not an overpowering No-1 priority Â… but I think
governments are responsive,” he said, citing western Europe’s several
centre-right governments that made the environment a “high priority”
despite a pro-business philosophy.
The refusal, on the other hand, by the US to move on environmental
policies until developing countries do so is frustrating for the American
on a personal level. Prof Somerville, who is in Singapore as a Lee Kuan
Yew Distinguished Fellow and was speaking in his capacity as a scientist,
called doubters of the effects of global warming “professional
contrarians”.
It is like smoking. It took 50 years to prove that smoking causes health
problems, and he expects environmental education to take time, too.
“Sceptical people are simply not well-informed about science,” he said.
But “people listen to their physicians and that’s all we are”. As
“planetary physicians”, he said, scientists tell governments and people
“there are different ways to behave and there are consequences”.
While climate science, like medical science, is imperfect, “it’s good
enough to be a valuable ingredient to policymaking”, added Prof
Somerville, who will be giving two public lectures today and on Friday at
the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.