1) US SEES NO FINAL CLIMATE DEAL AT THE HAGUE (NY Times, BBC, Fox) 2) UK-PRESCOTT ISSUES CLIMATE WARNING (BBC) 3) UK-PORTILLO VOWS TO DROP CLIMATE LEVY (Financial Times) 4) NZ-CLEAN AND GREEN TO DIRTY AND BROWN (New Zealand Herald) 5) JAPAN-SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL WARMING HOLDS FIRST MEETING (BBC) 6) NEW TALKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE WORKS (IPS)

7) GAS TAXES UNDER GLOBAL ATTACK (Christian Science Monitor) 8) SWEDEN ENERGY TAX DRAWS FIRE FROM WITHIN GOVT PARTY (Reuters) 9) CARBON CONSERVATION BENEFITS TOUTED (New York Times, Fox News) 10) ASIA-PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT CHIEFS ADOPT PLAN (Japan Times) 11) GREENPEACE URGES CLIMATE TALKS TO REJECT NUCLEAR (Reuters) 12) ENERGY BILLS OFFER INSIGHT INTO GHG PRODUCTION (ENS)

13) CLIMATE DOES NOT STOP OIL SEARCH IN BARENTS SEA (Norway Post) 14) BP AMOCO PROPOSES CENTRALISED POWER FACILITY (Financial Times) 15) GOVERNMENT TO PROMOTE ECO-FRIENDLY CARS (Yomiuri Shimbun) 16) UNILEVER PLEDGES ECO-FRIENDLY FREEZERS (Financial Times) 17) DANISH ECONOMY FACING WIND OF CHANGE (Financial Times) 18) TRANSALTA HIGH ON WIND POWER (Calgary Herald)

19) STUDY PROPOSES NEW STRATEGY TO STEM WARMING (NY Times, MSNBC, Fox News, Science Daily, Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald) 20) ICE WARMING 'THREAT' TO ARCTIC PEOPLES (BBC News, Fox News) 21) INDIA & UK PARTNER TO EXPLORE GLOBAL WARMING IMPACT 22) SCIENTISTS WATCH CITIES MAKE THEIR OWN WEATHER (NY Times) 23) STUDY: HAY FEVER SUFFERERS CAN BLAME GLOBAL WARMING (CNN) 24) CARBON AT 20 MILLION YEAR HIGH (BBC News)

25) WARMING REPORT PREDICTS DOOM FOR MANY SPECIES (NY Times) 26) PAPUA NEW GUINEA-ATOLLS HIT BY RISING SEA LEVEL (BBC) 27) VENICE SINKING FAST, CLAIMS NEW STUDY (CNN) 28) THROUGH NORTHWEST PASSAGE IN A MONTH (Sydney Herald, NY Times) 29) 18TH CENTURY SHIP LOGS TRACK CLIMATE (National Geographic) 30) POPULATIONS UNDER INTENSE HEAT (North Africa Journal)

ON THE WEB

31) ENVIRONMENT GROUPS IN WEB CAMPAIGN ON GLOBAL WARMING 32) REASON PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE GUIDE TO CLIMATE SCIENCE 33) 21ST CENTURY SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY-ARTICLE ON OCEAN WARMING

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

34) THE WORLD'S CHANCE TO TACKLE GLOBAL WARMING (Times of London) 35) ANOTHER WAY TO KYOTO (Montreal Gazette) 36) GOING UP IN SMOKE (The Guardian)

37) ENERGY PACT BENEFITS U.S. MORE THAN INDIA (Hindustan Times) 38) GREENHOUSE GAS REPRIEVE (Financial Post Canada) 39) HOT NEWS ON WARMING (Washington Post) 40) THE HOLE AT 90 DEGREES NORTH (Time Magazine) _______________________________________ 1) U.S. SEES NO FINAL CLIMATE DEAL AT THE HAGUE New York Times September 6, 2000 Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/06/science/energy-climate-usa.html

LONDON Sept 5 - The United States on Tuesday reiterated its commitment to endorsing a global climate change treaty but said it did not expect a watertight agreement to be forged at a key conference in the Hague in November. At a briefing in London, Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Initiatives Roger Ballentine reasserted the current administration's pledge to fight global warming at home and abroad. Unveiling budget proposals to boost spending on climate change initiatives to the tune of $4 billion next year, Ballentine said he was confident there would be progress at the next global meeting on climate change, the Conference of the Parties 6 or COP 6 to be held in the Dutch capital.

Under the Kyoto Protocol industrial nations must find ways to cut heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels that are believed to cause global warming by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels in the period 2008 to 2012.``We are very optimistic about COP 6...We can and we must make significant progress,'' Ballantine said. ``But if your question is will we finalise, wrap up, every issue at COP 6 then the answer to that has to be no...There is too much work left to be done to wrap it up in November,'' he told reporters.

But Ballentine said he hoped that the meeting would generate more momentum towards final ratification. ``What we are hoping to do is to make significant progress towards finalising the rules, the mechanisms. And, getting the remaining aspects of this treaty if not wrapped up then certainly on a track to be concluded in the near future.'' Pressed on whether a comprehensive agreement was achievable in a couple of months time he replied: ``I don't know of anyone who thinks we will complete negotiations at COP 6 -- I haven't heard anyone say that. ``Our goal is to have a consensus that we have made significant progress and every country is going to move at its own pace.''

Ballentine said the bulk of the proposed 2001 budget, some $2.4 billion, would -- if approved by Congress -- be spent on a series of new initiatives to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals, which include funding to develop clean energy sources, a clean air partnership fund to boost state and local spending, increased research and development, as well as a five-year package of tax incentives to spur clean energy technologies, represent a 43 percent increase over 2000 levels. In addition the Clinton administration proposes more than $1.7 billion for global research, advisers say.

See also- BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_912000/912599.stm Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/science/090500/climatedeal.sml

2) PRESCOTT ISSUES CLIMATE WARNING

BBC News 24 August, 2000 Internet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_894000/894054.stm

Industrialised countries must take urgent action to combat greenhouse gases and climate change, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has insisted. Mr Prescott gave this message when he met representatives of 77 developing countries at Downing Street on Thursday. Developing countries, especially low-lying islands, want urgent action and a pledge from rich nations, particularly the US, that they will cut carbon dioxide emissions from transport fumes and industry.

Pollution is believed by many scientists to be responsible for the onset of climate change. Mr Prescott - who is also Environment Secretary - was aiming to lay the foundations for agreements at a meeting in November on global warming. Meeting in The Hague in the Netherlands, delegates will try to set up a system of carbon trading permits and other mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases.

Targets warning Mr Prescott said: "Time is running out. Developed countries need to start taking domestic action now if they are to meet their Kyoto targets. "If negotiations drag on much longer, Kyoto targets may well be out of reach. "Further delay will just play into the hands of those who would like to see Kyoto fail. We need to prove them wrong by succeeding in The Hague." At the Kyoto summit in 1997, the G8 nations agreed to cut gas emissions by 6%. Those attending Thursday's meeting in Downing Street included the presidents of Nigeria and Algeria, the prime ministers of Jamaica and Malaysia, and the South African high commissioner.

Flooding threat Such countries are increasingly being affected by freak weather, thought to be linked to global warming caused by greenhouse gases. If nothing is done, islands like the Maldives and Barbados could face a severe threat from flooding as ocean levels rise due to melting polar ice caps. The G77 representatives stressed they wanted to continue informal talks with the G8 countries on globalisation and other issues. The meeting also came two weeks ahead of a UN Millennium Summit in New York. The UK says it is already more than doing its bit to help slow down global warming: earlier this year, Mr Prescott announced Britain would cut its greenhouse emissions by almost twice as much as it was committed to do under the Kyoto agreement.

3) PORTILLO VOWS TO DROP CLIMATE LEVY

Financial Times August 30 2000 Internet: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT325DIAJCC&liv e=true&useoverridetemplate=IXLZHNNP94C

Michael Portillo will on Thursday commit a future UK Conservative government to abolishing the climate change levy, arguing that it is an "energy tax" that makes Britain less competitive. The pledge will be the centrepiece of a new Tory business package, entitled "Keeping Britain Competitive", that the shadow chancellor will publish as part of his efforts to woo business. Mr Portillo will argue that the tax could cost up to 150,000 jobs in manufacturing industry over the next 10 years, and that its goal of meeting the emissions targets set at the 1997 Kyoto summit can be more effectively achieved through increased use of gas-fired power stations and emission permit trading.

The package also includes a commitment to review the IR35 measure that prevents consultants who work for one company claiming the tax privileges given to the self-employed. The IT sector has criticised the measure and Mr Portillo has said it will damage the "new economy". Tory officials stressed that the package, aimed at reinforcing the growing perception among the business community that Labour is not as friendly as might have been hoped, was only the start of their business-friendly policies.

Mr Portillo will focus on two themes, the "stealth taxes", such as the climate change levy and IR35, and extra regulatory burdens. He will appeal to multinationals by reiterating his promise to reform Labour's changes to double taxation relief and to reverse changes made to the rules on controlled-foreign companies in the last Budget. The Tories will also oppose plans in this year's local government finance green paper that allow councils to add an extra 5 per cent to the national business rate. The British Chambers of Commerce has said this could cost businesses up to £2.75bn in the next five years and £1bn a year after that.

Mr Portillo will confirm that the plan to revert the working families tax credit to a benefit would spare business the estimated £100m administration cost. Other proposals include: A 10-point value added tax simplification plan to give businesses six weeks each quarter to submit returns and to make Customs & Excise pay interest on money it owes at the same rate it charges for late payments. Exempting SMEs from whole areas of regulation. Longer lead-in times and sunset clauses on new regulations so they are automatically reviewed or dropped after a set period. Independent regulatory impact assessments on new legislation and the creation of "red tape budgets" commiting each government department to a maximum level of regulation.

4) CLEAN AND GREEN CHANGING TO DIRTY AND BROWN New Zealand Herald

30.08.2000 Internet: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=149492&thesection=busines s&thesubsection=

New Zealand's clean, green image is darkening to dirty brown, says Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons. At this week's Energy Symposium in Auckland, she said New Zealand was trading internationally on an image that was quite undeserved. "Some day soon our cover could be blown and the damage to our markets would be considerable." Her comments come as the Government grapples with meeting its commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions under the Kyoto protocol on climate change. The Government is also required to produce a national strategy by October next year under the new Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act, which promotes renewable energy sources.

Proponents of renewable energy are looking for support from the Government's decisions on the David Caygill-chaired electricity inquiry, due to be announced next week. New Zealanders waste energy. An International Energy Agency study showed that, for its gross domestic product, New Zealand had a high energy use relative to other OECD countries. IEA economist Lee Schipper criticised New Zealand's information-gathering and record-keeping on energy as the worst he had seen in 14 countries. A worrying trend was the rise in energy demand, he said. As GDP grew, New Zealanders could be expected to heat their homes and drive their cars more, further fuelling emission levels. Cabinet papers giving the first broad- brush strokes on policy options for Kyoto targets are expected to be made public today. They are understood to narrow a range of measures the Government will introduce before the protocol is ratified in mid-2002.

This mix of price and non-price measures is part of a fuller package tailored to fit in with the electricity inquiry decisions and the legislative strategy due out in draft form in April. New Zealand is committed to stabilising its emissions at 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. Legislation will need to be introduced into Parliament by November 2001 to meet the deadline. Latest information suggests the country's gross carbon dioxide emissions have risen 19.2 per cent since 1990, the highest of any OECD country. Predictions from the Ministry of Economic Development estimate that, unless action is taken, our total greenhouse emissions will be 30 per cent to 40 per cent above 1990 levels.

The Kyoto measures outlined in the Cabinet papers include the fastest and cheapest option, energy efficiency. New Zealand has been criticised by the OECD for under-investing in energy efficiency. Unlike most other Western countries, it has no minimum energy performance standards or energy efficiency targets. The Government is throwing support behind public transport as New Zealanders' love affair with the car means domestic transport now accounts for 20 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions. Energy Minister Pete Hodgson has introduced stronger energy efficiency requirements for better insulation and lighting under the Building Code. Mandatory energy performance standards for energy-using products such as appliances, equipment and vehicles are likely to come under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act.

Negotiated agreements with industry to reduce emission levels are also being discussed. Voluntary agreements signed in 1995 by 23 industrial corporates and three industry sectors have largely met the less-than-onerous targets. The Greenhouse Policy Coalition, an employers' lobby group set up in 1995, favours replacing the voluntary agreements which expire later this year with negotiated agreements and legislated penalties for not achieving emission reduction targets. In exchange, it wants exemptions from any future carbon tax for those companies involved. Coalition chairwoman Maria Robertson said: "It would be irresponsible if industry was held to account for a second time. That's double dipping."

The coalition opposes two other measures on the agenda, a domestic and international emissions trading regime and a carbon tax to be introduced after the next election. Raising fuel taxes is opposed by employers and manufacturers. Their association chief executive, Alasdair Thompson, told the conference he doubted it would make an iota of difference to transport energy losses whereas addressing the lack of motorway capacity in Auckland would. He said the decision to ratify the Kyoto protocol threatened exports, because imposing carbon taxes ahead of our trading partners would give them a competitive advantage.

Centre for Energy Research director Ralph Sims said replacing fossil fuel use with renewable energy could make a significant contribution to the increasing energy demand while helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the face of it, New Zealand has a head start for green energy with more than 70 per cent of its generation from hydro and geothermal sources. But new large-scale hydro projects are limited by environmental and social factors. Thermal generation is playing an increasingly important role while new renewables account for only 6.8 per cent of consumer energy demand. Even the total amount of electricity generated from water flows into our hydro system has shrunk. It is speculated that 3000 GWh of hydro potential was spilled in the past year in favour of gas-fired generation. Critics suggest market games by electricity generators are taking precedence over efficient water use. The Australian Government requires electricity retailers to source an additional 2 per cent of the power they sell from new renewable sources by 2010, backed up by financial incentives.

Other countries have introduced a variety of measures from fossil fuel taxes to capital subsidies and mandated electricity purchases. The New Zealand Government has done nothing so far, despite having some of the best wind sites in the world. The Wind Energy Association's submissions to the electricity inquiry asked the Government to remove barriers for embedded generation. As a first step, it wanted ownership limitations on line companies removed. Jeanette Fitzsimons said the wholesale electricity market rules made it almost impossible for demand-side energy efficiency or new renewables, especially wind, to be accepted into the market. "If we were to ask nothing more of the Government than to create a genuinely level playing field that would achieve a lot."

Keith Turner, a member of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, said that while New Zealand had missed the boat on being a world leader in the wind industry, it could benefit from a forecast shift to a hydrogen-powered economy. Significant effort had been put into fuel cells by overseas companies which saw fuel cell and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles as the way of the future. Dr Turner, head of Meridian Energy, argued that New Zealand could use offpeak hydro power to generate hydrogen for fuel cell cars, significantly reducing transport sector carbon dioxide emissions. Mr Schipper said the bottom line was that New Zealand was getting browner but its future looked greener. "The issues are how fast, how far and how profitable?"

5) JAPAN: SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL WARMING HOLDS FIRST MEETING BBC Monitoring Service

Aug 23, 2000, 119 words Internet: http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.jsp?docId=000823002779&query =%22global+warming%22&resultsShown=20&resultsToRequest=100

Tokyo, 23rd August: A Central Environment Council subcommittee tasked with formulating a nationwide approach to realizing Japan's reduction target for greenhouse-gas emissions on Wednesday [23rd August] held its first meeting at the Environment Agency, officiaals of the subcommittee said. The subcommittee will work to strengthen existing policies to prevent further global warming and discuss new policies being promoted while referring to measures taken by other countries, the officials said.

Japan is required to cut its emission of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide by an average of 6 per cent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Central Environment Council is an advisory panel to the director general of the Environment Agency.

NEW TALKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE WORKS IPS

5 September Internet: http://www.oneworld.net/anydoc2.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eoneworld%2Eorg%2F ips2%2Fsept00%2F01%5F03%5F006%2Ehtml

GENEVA, Sep 5 (IPS) - An international conference on the mechanisms needed to reduce greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, is set to begin next week in the French city of Lyon, and the industrialised North will be the principal target of debate. The international community has identified gas emissions as a cause of climate change because they elevate the earth's temperatures, and has also agreed on the necessary steps to reduce these gases, but must still obtain practical commitments from industrialised nations.

The fundamental issue at the Lyon meeting, in preparation for the November conference at The Hague, consists of winning a commitment from the world's wealthier nations, explained Michael Zammit Cutajar, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Without this sort of guarantee from the countries of the North, especially from the United States, the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997 to establish the rules of the game for mitigating climate change, will not enter into effect, Zammit pointed out.

The Kyoto Protocol requires the ratification of at least 55 of the countries that signed the Convention, including the industrialised countries of the Organisation of Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) and transitional economies, which in 1990 accounted for at least 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. In the period 2008 to 2012, this bloc of countries must cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent from their 1990 levels. But industrialised nations face the issues of high economic costs and political resistance to change.

In the long term, the decision to cut emissions means changes in the models of production and consumption, as well as lifestyle modifications. Over the last 200 years, these models of economic behaviour created the climate change problem, Zammit told the media Tuesday in Geneva. Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, including petroleum, coal and gasoline, primarily by vehicles and factories. The rich nations of the world can overcome the problem of gas reduction through the purchase of emissions credits, a mechanism established by the Kyoto Protocol.

But poor nations, especially those characterised as least developed countries (LDCs), need the assistance of the international community in building their capacity to handle the climate change problem. The developing countries have accepted the obligations established by the Convention, which does not establish a limit for their greenhouse gas emissions. The multilateral instrument forces them to recognise the gravity of climate change and to implement national programmes and co-operate in the exchange of information on the issue.

But last weekend the Group of 77 plus China, made up of developing nations, stressed their firm opposition to new commitments. In the future, obviously, they will have to accept them, but developing countries do not agree to discuss commitments in the current negotiations, said Zammit. Another side of the issue is that oil producing countries are concerned that measures intended to reduce energy use in the industrialised world, their principal market, will hurt their petroleum exports.

These countries fear the petroleum market will suffer as a result of policies to fight climate change. They demand international recognition of the problem and some sort of response from the industrialised countries. This is one of the most critical aspects of the negotiations, said Zammit, and in the practical sphere, one of the most heated issues.

The Lyon conference, to be inaugurated Monday by French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, will include the participation of Dutch Environmental Minister, Jan Pronk, who will preside at the November meeting at The Hague. Zammit interpreted the Jospin invitation to hold the talks in Lyon as proof of the concern of France and other European governments about the consequences of the storms last December that devastated several regions and flattened vast areas of forests, phenomena related to climate change.

An increase in the frequency of extreme weather events will be one of the effects of climate destabilisation, predicted the official. Other results of climate destabilisation can be seen in the spread of insect-borne diseases due to rising average temperatures, and in rising sea levels, which affect millions of people living on islands, coasts and deltas, according to Zammit.

7) GAS TAXES UNDER GLOBAL ATTACK

Christian Science Monitor September 1, 2000 Internet: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/09/01/fp1s1-csm.shtml

PARIS-If the soaring price of gasoline angers you each time you fill your tank, here's a little consolation: You are not alone. Across the globe, pump prices are fueling frustration. In France, protesting fishermen this week dumped loads of sardines in front of government offices and blocked every port in the country. In Thailand, 1,000 truckers converged on the capital, Bangkok. In Bangladesh, a fuel strike Wednesday brought the country to a standstill.

And governments are listening to this citizen revolt, directed largely at high taxes on fuel. In bids to stay popular, political leaders are cutting gasoline taxes to help motorists and businesses. But in doing so, they are reversing the environmental policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and slowing global warming.

"If you are weak on fuel taxes, you are weak on climate change," warns Tony Bosworth of the British environmental group Friends of the Earth. "You send out all the wrong signals." Crude-oil prices topped $32 a barrel earlier this week - the highest since the Gulf War 10 years ago. The effects have been felt all over the world, and public discontent has reached boiling point in many countries.

In Britain, hundreds of thousands of motorists have joined a "Dump the Pump" rolling boycott of filling stations to express their anger at the steady rise in gas prices - already the highest in Europe at about $5 a gallon - and especially at the taxes that make up nearly 80 percent of the price. In Australia, the government is fighting off a rebellion in its own ranks from members of Parliament who want to freeze gas taxes. In Southeast Asian countries, fishermen, taxi drivers, and truckers have all staged demonstrations, following the example of US truckers who clogged the streets of Washington last winter to protest high diesel prices.

In their anxiety to assuage citizens' anger, many governments have made concessions, cutting the taxes that they slap on all fuel, from home heating oil to gasoline. "Tax cuts appear to be an idea whose time has come," says Malcolm Gladstone, an energy expert at the University of London. The protests "have frightened governments," he says. France's Finance Minister Laurent Fabius announced yesterday that as part of a sweeping tax reform the heating fuel tax will be cut by 30 percent and the Value Added Tax (VAT) on all oil products will be frozen.

The British government has already abandoned its ecology-conscious "fuel-tax escalator, " whereby gasoline prices automatically rose 6 percent more than inflation each year. The Thai government dispersed the truckers' protest by promising to subsidize diesel prices, and the Malaysian industry minister this week pledged to help companies whose energy costs have risen. Italy and Greece have cut gas taxes this year, and the Portuguese government has adopted a sliding scale by which taxes automatically fall with each jump in the price of oil.

These efforts to keep pump prices down, however, fly in the face of previous policies designed to discourage fuel consumption. At the climate-change conference in Kyoto, Japan, three years ago, industrialized countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012; since vehicle emissions are a major culprit, most of them had been deliberately increasing gas taxes to make motorists think twice before taking their cars out.

"People respond with their pocket books," says Jerome Sheridan, an economist who heads American University's Brussels center. "If prices fall, people will use more fuel." "There is pressure to reduce taxes, but that would be a very bad thing," argues Stefan van Kerk, an energy official at the European Commission. "It would send the wrong message to OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] that if they raise prices, we will lower taxes; and also in the long term, what is important is to answer the environmental concerns."

That, says Dr. Sheridan, means that "governments have very few options. The best one is to put pressure on OPEC countries to boost production." Opec has raised production twice this year, but crude-oil prices continue to climb - largely because the US economy is booming, Europe's economies have picked up, and Asian countries have bounced back from their crisis two years ago. Saudi Arabia appears willing to help consumer countries, promising on Wednesday to work with other OPEC countries for a "suitable rise" in oil output at a meeting on Sept. 10. But smaller producers already pumping at maximum capacity, would like to see prices stay above $30 a barrel for as long as possible.

Still, notes Peter Beck, an oil specialist at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, "OPEC remembers the world recession" that followed the 1973 "oil shock"... They know it is very easy for high prices to end up causing a drop in demand." Most economists say that high oil prices today will not have the catastrophic effect that they did in the 1970s. Industrialized countries rely more on services and less on energy-guzzling manufacturing for their wealth today.

Indeed, argues Alain Lipietz, a French Green party member of the European Parliament, today's oil prices should be seen not as a problem but as "an opportunity to foster energy saving policies."

8) SWEDEN ENERGY TAX DRAWS FIRE FROM WITHIN GOVT PARTY Reuters

August 25, 2000 Internet: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7940&newsDate=25-Aug-2000

STOCKHOLM - Sweden's Social Democratic government is facing opposition from within its own party to its proposal to increase taxes on energy to cut consumption and reduce pollution. The government, which now gets up to five percent of its tax income from energy taxes, wants to raise tax on energy, excluding petrol, to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful so-called greenhouse gases. But opponents of the higher tax say it could force many heavy industry companies, the biggest users of energy, to move abroad where energy prices and environmental standards were lower, and in this way threaten some 38,000 jobs in the industry.

"Those who want higher taxes should be straightforward and say that manufacturing industries such as forestry, steel and paper are no longer needed," said Benita Vikstrom, Social Democrat municipality commissioner. Vikstrom has set up a lobbying group, including politicians in some 30 municipalities with high- consuming industries to campaign against higher taxes on energy.

"If our companies were knocked out we would only move the problem abroad. Sweden has the cleanest industry in the world and we have to take a global responsibility," she said. But Anita Johansson, a Social Democrat deputy in the parliamentary tax committee, said Sweden would have to start somewhere in its aim to improve the environment and that higher taxes was one solution. "We cannot say that climate changes and growing ozone holes are horrible and not do anything about it," she said.

9) CARBON CONSERVATION BENEFITS TOUTED

New York Times 1 September

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Farmers should be encouraged to use no- till farming methods, leaving plant stubble in the ground instead of plowing it under, to help reduce the risk of global warming, panelists at a farming conference said. ``Agriculture needs to take on these things in a very proactive and positive way,'' said Paul Johnson, former director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. He was one of several panelists, including farmers, government officials and scientists, at a conference Thursday called ``Carbon: Exploring the Benefits to Farmers and Society.''

About 35 percent to 40 percent of the nation's farmers use no-till and other conservation methods that put organic matter back into the soil, a process known as carbon sequestration. Increasing the amount of carbon in the soil not only helps the soil retain moisture and nutrients, but it also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and other gases produced by farming.

Some scientists believe an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may cause a global rise in temperatures, melting of glaciers and a change in weather patterns -- the so-called greenhouse effect. Johnson and other panelists said farming may be responsible for as much as 15 percent of the greenhouses gases building up in the atmosphere.

They support incentives that would compensate farmers for conservation practices that boost carbon levels in the soil, perhaps through ``carbon credits.'' Carbon credits could be purchased by industries, utilities and other businesses that emit carbon dioxide, with payments going to farmers for their efforts to reduce carbon dioxide in the air.

``We have to get a trading system that will make this carbon valuable, so it's going to take a little while but there's certainly potential,'' Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Rominger said.

See also-- Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/science/090100/carbon.sml

ASIA-PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT CHIEFS ADOPT PLAN Japan Times (excerpt)

6 September Internet: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20000906b5.htm

KITAKYUSHU (Kyodo) Environment ministers from Asia-Pacific nations adopted a new action program Tuesday aimed at achieving environmentally sound and sustainable development in the region over the next five years. At the end of their two-day conference here, ministers from 42 members of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific also established a network among the regions' local governments to help exchange information on combating environmental problems. The ESCAP ministers reviewed achievements made under their 1996-2000 action program, which covered 24 areas of concern, and approved a new program that focuses on eight points for 2001-2005.

The eight issues are environmental quality and human health, biodiversity, coastal and marine environments, freshwater resources, desertification and land degradation, globalization and policy integration, climate change and sustainable energy policy.

Delegates also adopted the Kitakyushu Initiative for a Clean Environment, which incorporates lessons learned by the industrial city, which has overcome severe air and water pollution, and set up a network of local governments to jointly tackle environmental problems. The network, a project under the new regional action program, will foster exchanges of environmental information using advanced information technology, provide for the monitoring of air and water pollution and waste management in the region, encourage the transfer of technology and promote financial support for cooperation between cities.

The ministers also issued a regional message to be sent to the "Rio+10" U.N. conference slated for 2002 and a formal declaration on an environmental vision for the 21st century. As part of the message for the conference -- a followup to the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro -- the ministers emphasized the need to eradicate poverty and illiteracy and called for increased financial assistance for developing countries. They also urged that the 2002 gathering be held in Indonesia. In addition, the ministers pledged to establish border-straddling areas to protect endangered species and conduct cross-border pollution monitoring.

The ESCAP environmental ministers' meeting has been held every five years since 1985. The three previous meetings were held in Bangkok, where the U.N. body's headquarters is located.

11) GREENPEACE URGES CLIMATE TALKS TO REJECT NUCLEAR Reuters

September 6, 2000 Internet: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8059

PARIS - Environmental group Greenpeace yesterday urged experts at international talks on climate change to reject nuclear power as a solution to global warming. "France and Britain are leading the lobby for nuclear to be included in the list of 'acceptable technologies' that can be used for 'clean development' projects. We want it to ruled out," Greenpeace France director Bruno Rebelle told Reuters.

Representatives of 180 countries are meeting in the central French city of Lyon this week and next to thrash out how an international agreement to curb the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming will be made to work in practice. The negotiations, between experts from the countries which signed the Kyoto Protocol (treaty) in 1997, are a crucial preparation for ministerial-level world talks on climate change in the Dutch city of the Hague in November.

The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to around 5.2 percent below the 1990 level by 2008-2012. After three years of negotiations, the Kyoto signatories have still not agreed if there should be sanctions for countries which fail to meet their reductions targets. Nor have they agreed how systems for buying the right to pollute - either by purchasing emissions credits from states which more than meet their reductions targets or by funding projects for curbing emissions in other countries - will work.

Environmental groups want recourse to these so-called flexible mechanisms kept to a minimum, so that governments take genuine action at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas and coal consumption, transport and heavy industry. They also want the Kyoto rules explicitly to prevent countries earning emissions credits by building nuclear power stations abroad. "Otherwise they could use the Protocol as an excuse to revive the ailing nuclear industry," Greenpeace France energy specialist Helene Gassin said. French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin - whose country obtains 80 percent of its electricity from atomic energy - is due to attend the talks on September 11.

12) ENERGY BILLS OFFER INSIGHT INTO GREENHOUSE GAS PRODUCTION ENS (excerpt)

28 August Internet: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug2000/2000L-08-28-06.html

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, August 28, 2000 (ENS) - In a first step to understanding how to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases on the environment, engineers have created a method to convert the numbers on an energy bill to the production of greenhouse gases. Learning how energy use contributes to greenhouse gas pollution could help the United States combat climate change. Coal burning power plants, like the Cherokee Station plant in Colorado, are the largest single source of carbon dioxide pollution in the U.S. (All photos courtesy National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are on the rise, and higher levels are implicated in rising temperatures and changing weather worldwide. Two years ago, the Department of Energy's (DOE) Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) began developing a method to convert simple energy use numbers found on an electric bill and other contributing factors into a more accurate picture of greenhouse gas production.

Greenhouse gas refers to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases that can trap solar energy and cause changes to the global environment. The gases are created through common industrial processes and also by using fossil fuel based energy. Some energy production methods, such as hydroelectric and nuclear power, are cleaner than others and produce less or no greenhouse gases. In 1999, President Bill Clinton issued an Executive Order requiring all federal facilities to reduce their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 2010.

In support of that order, DOE's national laboratories are required to report their energy use each quarter. The gross energy usage is then converted into how much greenhouse gas was theoretically created to supply that energy. INEEL researchers think the current mathematic conversions do not paint the real picture.

"It's a fairly big effort to understand the calculations and how to bring emissions down to 1990 levels," said systems engineer David Shropshire. President Clinton's goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent of a 1990 baseline. In a related goal, the international Kyoto Accords also seek to reduce the production of greenhouse gases created by human activities. The Kyoto Protocol, an add on to the United Nations climate change treaty, mandates greenhouse gas emissions limits for 39 industrialized countries including the U.S.

Current methods for converting energy use to greenhouse gas emissions fail to account for how cleanly that energy was produced, as well as other details of the lab's energy use. Energy efficiency is affected by building design such as insulation, the energy efficiency of windows, peak energy usage hours, etc. Additionally, the local ecosystem may affect how long the gases stay in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide can be consumed by surrounding plants, in essence preventing the gases from contributing to global climate change, Shropshire said.

Shropshire and colleagues have been examining the life cycle of energy use and greenhouse gas creation at the INEEL, trying to understand where and how the energy was generated, how it was used at the institution, what other environmental gases were created either as byproducts or in other processes, and what environmental factors either mitigated or exacerbated its effect.

For example, INEEL buys a large portion of its electricity from utilities that are hydropower based, and produce less carbon dioxide than other energy sources. But buying clean energy is just one issue in determining total greenhouse gas emissions. An institution's transportation fleet also directly contributes greenhouse gases. Examining all potential contributors of greenhouse gas for an institution is part of "life cycle analysis." "We try to understand the full impacts of the energy we use. We also look forward and examine the twenty year cumulative impact," says INEEL mechanical engineer Karen Moore.

Shropshire is developing a greenhouse gas emissions baseline model for INEEL by analyzing the impacts from various energy and facility operations. "We want to be a leader among the DOE labs - to see how we can do better," he said. He notes that in dry years, there is less hydroelectric power available for INEEL to buy than in wet, so INEEL's greenhouse gas emissions go up during drought years.

"We're finding complexity on a small scale - one national lab - so when you try to generalize to all the labs, it gets very complicated," Shropshire says. "That's partly why it's been hard to come to an agreement on how to estimate emissions in a practical manner. There are so many issues to consider, including economic and scientific ones."

13) CLIMATE CHANGE DOES NOT STOP SEARCH FOR OIL IN THE BARENTS SEA Norway Post

22 August 2000 Internet: http://www.norwaypost.no/content.asp?folder_id=1&cluster_id=13597

Norwegian oil companies continue their large scale search for oil despite indications that we are facing global warming, much due to the burning of fossil fuels. Greenpeace says the process of global warming will continue unless the oil companies stop drilling for fossil fuels. At the same time as Polar researchers for the first time have observed open ocean at the North pole, the oil companies extend their search for oil. At the moment Norsk Hydro is drilling in the Barents Sea, while Statoil will start searching for oil in the Barents Sea in 2001.

According to Greenpeace the oil companies are taking advantage of the situation they have created. As a result of global warming the ice at the poles is melting, and in the areas where the ice melts it gets easier to search for oil. Research of the Northern areas by Greenpeace shows that the developments are caused by the Western world's consumption of fossil fuels. According to NASA, the climate changes of the past 20 years are created by humans.

Knut Barland, director of environment in Statoil, rejects that Statoil is taking advantage of the situation. The areas we are searching for oil in have always been free of ice, Barland says to Dagsavisen. He says Statoil takes climate change seriously by reducing discharges and supporting the Kyoto-agreement. Anne Ekern, information chief in Norsk Hydro, says that Hydro's work in the Barents Sea is carried out under strict environmental restrictions.

14) BP AMOCO PROPOSES CENTRALISED POWER FACILITY Financial Times

September 5 2000 Internet: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT32BGJBRCC&liv e=true&useoverridetemplate=IXLZHNNP94C

BP Amoco, the UK energy group, is considering a $2bn plan to centralise power supplies to North Sea platforms in a bid to cut costs and reduce airborne carbon emissions. Power supplies to platforms are currently generated offshore by small gas and diesel platforms which have low thermal efficiencies. The total annual power consumption of North Sea platforms is around two gigawatts a year - about the same as Scotland's summertime demand. BP is proposing to replace platform-based generators with a centralised power generation facility, probably located onshore. This is expected to free around 600 cubic feet of gas a day currently used to power the platforms for sale through export pipelines. It is also expected to benefit the environment by cutting carbon emissions, linked to global warming, by some seven million tonnes a year.

Under the proposals power would be transported through a high voltage direct current transmission system to a central North Sea power hub located on the decommissioned Forties Echo platform. Here the power would be converted to alternating current before being distributed around a grid of connected platforms.

BP is trying to persuade other North sea operators to participate in the scheme. It believes other power hubs could be established around the Ekofisk, Bruce and Miller platforms and also around Royal Dutch/Shell's Brent complex. Up to seven hubs and 68 platforms, with an average life of 15 years, could eventually be incorporated.

BP has already called for more detailed proposals to be drawn up by grid operators, power generators and technology developers. It is expected to make a decision on whether the project is technically feasible by the end of the month. If BP's North Sea engineers like the proposals they are likely to select the project development team by the end of March 2001. They will then seek commercial sanction for the scheme next September. First power from the scheme would be expected some time during 2003.

GOVERNMENT PLANNING WAYS TO PROMOTE ECO-FRIENDLY CARS Yomiuri Shimbun

6 September Internet: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/0906sc07.htm

The Central Environment Council, an advisory panel to the Environment Agency, has recommended that low-emission gasoline- powered cars be included in the clean-running vehicle category for government-authorized cars that receive favorable tax treatment and other benefits, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Tuesday. Vehicles currently listed in the low-pollution category include electric, methanol-, and natural gas-powered vehicles, and hybrid cars that run on both gasoline and electricity. Despite being subject to lower taxation and being afforded other benefits, such as lower parking fees, the cars have not proved popular as they tend to be more expensive than traditional gasoline-fueled vehicles, and also because of the lack of alternative-fuel stations around the nation.

The government is expected to add fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars to the category as part of a bill to revise the law concerning nitrogen oxide emissions that is scheduled to be submitted to the Diet next year. The Transport Ministry in April issued a guideline for approval of low gas-emission cars, which groups vehicles into "excellent" and "super" categories, based on the reduction of emissions of nitrogen oxide and other particles, compared to government regulation standards. Vehicles with 50 percent and 75 percent emission reductions are classified as "excellent" and "super," respectively.

Low-emission gasoline cars can be refueled at regular gasoline stations and are priced about the same as regular cars. Officials from the Environment Agency and the Transport Ministry expect to stimulate consumer purchases of low-pollution cars by expanding the category to include more vehicles. They also are considering requesting that vehicle manufacturers produce a certain minimum proportion of such cars.

16) UNILEVER PLEDGES INTRODUCTION OF ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY FREEZERS

Financial Times 4 September 2000 Internet: http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.jsp?docId=000904002247&query =%22global+warming%22&resultsShown=20&resultsToRequest=100

Unilever - the world's largest ice cream manufacturer - is pledging to step up its move to more environmentally friendly refrigerants for its freezer cabinets once a pilot scheme launched at the Olympics in Sydney Australia, to demonstrate the safety and efficiency of the equipment, is successfully completed. Currently with some two million freezers worldwide, Unilever has already started replacing them with equipment using hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants. It plans to accelerate the programme on completion of the trials in February next year as freezers are renewed in line with the company's replacement policy.

Unilever's pledge is part of its continuing worldwide environmental programme, full details of which are published today through Unilever's web-site (www.unilever.com). (See separate announcement.) The switch to HC will be progressive and dependent on national legislation, but by year 2005 Unilever's purchasing policy for ice cream freezers will discontinue the use of HFC* refrigerants, where commercially viable alternatives, such as HC, can be legally used. Bob Smith, Unilever's ice cream technical director: "Since the early 90s we have steadily shifted our freezers from ozone-depleting materials. HC refrigerants, widely used in domestic refrigerators in Europe, are currently the most promising alternative to HFC. The challenge has been to adopt HC for the very low temperatures needed for commercial ice cream freezers.

Unilever already requires its freezer manufacturers to use HC for insulation foam wherever this is permitted under local regulations. "For the past three years we have been working with others to develop and refine equipment capable of using HC as the coolant in commercial settings. But this is an evolutionary process. In time we may well find that alternative technologies can offer us even better solutions that allow us to minimise energy use and the emission of gases with climate change potential. "The Olympic trials will put 50 specially developed production-line freezers to the sternest of tests, operating at - 20degreesC in demanding conditions. They will be monitored by Unilever's Australian ice cream business, Streets, which will then transfer the freezers into the domestic market around Sydney. In February 2001, a decision on the roll-out of the technology initially across Australia will be taken. "These trials will also examine the energy usage which accounts for most of the global warming impact of

an ice cream freezer cabinet," said Mr Smith. "From the experience gained in the Australian market we will work with an increased number of refrigeration suppliers to meet the accelerated demand for replacement freezers using more environmentally sound technology from2005." * Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) are powerful greenhouse gases and are among those materials covered by the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

17) DANISH ECONOMY FACING WIND OF CHANGE Financial Times

August 24 2000 Internet: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT31MPSOACC&liv e=true&useoverridetemplate=IXLZHNNP94C

Bacon and beer have long been considered, in popular imagination, staple components of the Danish economy. But a third commodity is fast becoming as inextricably linked with the Nordic country: wind. Interim results ahead of market expectations earlier this week from Denmark's Vestas Wind Systems, the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines, underlined the industry's strength. The sector's growing appeal to investors was confirmed last week by Vestas' promotion to the Dow Jones Stoxx Nordic index of Scandinavia's 30 most prestigious shares. Last month, it joined the FTSE Eurotop 300 index of leading European shares. Since the 1970s, when the oil crisis and growing awareness of environmental issues turned attention to alternative energy sources, Denmark has taken the lead in harnessing the power of wind.

The nation has nearly 60 per cent of the global wind turbine market and is responsible for installing more than half the world's existing wind energy capacity. And with a forecast from Vestas and its Danish peers of securing orders worth E10bn during the next five years - equivalent to almost a quarter of total Danish exports in 1999 - in a market growing by 20 per cent per annum, it is set to get stronger still.

Such growth figures have banished the image of an industry more interested in saving the world than making a profit. Although wind power generation itself remains reliant on government subsidies, windfarm builders have been among Denmark's best performing stocks in the past two years.

Vestas has increased its market value fivefold since floating in 1998, catapulting the stock into Denmark's KFX blue-chip index which has had new life breathed into it by its dynamic new constituent. Shares in Vestas, priced at 48 times estimated 2001 earnings, rose more than 5 per cent on Wednesday after increasing its full-year earnings forecast. Pre-tax profits for 2000, which had been expected to come in between Dkr760m and Dkr810m, are now tipped to reach between Dkr800m and Dkr850m. Not all turbine makers have kept pace with Vestas. Only a Dkr1.2bn rescue package from shareholders and creditors saved NEG Micon, Vestas' closest competitor, from bankruptcy last year. The company had suffered technical hitches and management problems.

But a Dkr700m rights issue in December helped put the company back on an even keel and by June its shares had rallied so strongly that it joined its rival in the KFX index of Copenhagen's top 20 stocks. Brokers have begun to recommend NEG again, but still regard it a risky investment. Bears point out that demand for windfarms relies not on market forces, but on the political will of governments under pressure to reduce carbon emissions in accordance with targets sets at the Kyoto summit on global warming in 1997.

But Dr Craig Mackenzie, director of the ethics unit at Friends Ivory & Sime, specialists in socially responsible investment, sees this as positive. "One of the industry's key drivers is that European governments are rigging the market in their favour, " he said. And he does not believe the political wind is about to change. "Given the pressure on time to make Kyoto targets governments want to make progress as fast as possible and wind power is the fastest way to do it," he said.

Wind already provides 7 per cent of Denmark's energy requirements and is forecast to supply 10-15 per cent of Germany's within 15 years. "If that is replicated throughout Europe the wind turbine market is going to grow by 100 times," said Dr Mackenzie. He forecast that wind could generate one tenth of global energy needs within 20 years, creating a $100bn industry. Some analysts are sceptical about such bullish forecasts. "Wind power simply doesn't produce enough energy for the amount of space required. It will only ever be at the margin of energy production," said Paul Sankey, analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

But even if wind power achieves only a fraction of Dr Mackenzie's targets the fact that wind currently provides just 14GW of the world's total generating capacity of 3,500GW shows there is no lack of headroom. And as long as the demand for wind power increases, the turbine manufacturers will prosper. Competition will undoubtedly emerge to threaten Denmark's hegemony. But if Vestas staves off predators and remains ahead of the field, Dr Mackenzie said it has the potential to become "the next Microsoft".

18) TRANSALTA HIGH ON WIND POWER

Calgary Herald Wednesday 30 August 2000 Internet: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/stories/000830/4540239.html

Energy giant TransAlta Corp. sees the answer to the great Canadian climate change debate blowing in the wind. The Calgary power company made headlines in March with an unconventional project to reduce greenhouse gas output by curbing flatulence from Ugandan cows, providing TranAlta with credits for cutting methane emissions. On Tuesday, Canada's largest investor-owned utility announced a $5-million investment in Vision Quest Windelectric Inc., a fledgling Calgary company developing alternative power on the wind-swept Prairies.

Under the deal, TransAlta gets a minority stake and board representation in the private firm. In return, money from the agreement will be used to build 14 wind turbines in the Pincher Creek area. "They are windmills, but they don't look anything like the farm windmill. They are a long slender steel towers. . . with three rotor blades, essentially the same as airplane wings, that rotate with the wind," said Jason Edworthy, executive director of Vision Quest. "This deal is a real endorsement of the technology."

TransAlta has become one of the corporate leaders in the growing debate surrounding climate change. Many scientists and environmentalists believe greenhouse gas emissions -- created primarily by burning fossil fuels such as coal or oil -- are causing the planet to warm up; others dispute the science behind the theory.

TransAlta, the country's second largest producer of greenhouse gases after Ontario Power Generation, believes the issue must be tackled and has created a $100-million environmental fund to cut emissions to zero within 25 years. The money for Vision Quest will come from the special fund. "This investment will assist in the development of green power in Canada," said TransAlta's vice- president Bob Page. "This (wind power) industry is now on the verge of a very important breakthrough."

While Tuesday's deal signals more cash from TransAlta to fight climate change, it also signifies growing confidence in wind energy, which supplies less than one per cent of the province's electrical appetite -- compared to more than 90 per cent coming from coal-fired power plants.

Traditionally viewed as being too expensive and frequently unreliable, wind turbines are now online 98 per cent of the time, while the cost of wind power is lower than the Alberta wholesale spot price for electricity. Vision Quest owns and operates six wind-turbine power plants in southern Alberta and will start adding 14 more facilities in September at a cost of about $1 million each. By the end of the year, the company expects to build enough wind turbines to generate 13 megawatts of electricity, enough power to supply a town the size of Strathmore. The power will be sold to Enmax, Calgary's electrical retailer.

STUDY PROPOSES NEW STRATEGY TO STEM GLOBAL WARMING New York Times

19 August Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-environ-climate.ht ml

An influential expert on global warming who for nearly 20 years has pressed countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases now says the emphasis on carbon dioxide may be misplaced. Instead, he and a team of scientists have concluded that the quickest way to slow warming is to cut other heat-trapping greenhouse gases first. This strategy could help policy makers overcome a fundamental conflict in the debate over global warming: carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas in the air, is an unavoidable byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal and oil -- and combustion of fossil fuels is the foundation of industrial societies.

The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, and his colleagues conclude in a new analysis that the warming seen in recent decades has been caused mainly by other heat-trapping emissions -- methane, chlorofluorocarbons, black particles of diesel and coal soot and compounds that create the ozone in smog -- which are easier to control than carbon dioxide, with many of them already on the decline. The team, which reported its findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the burning of fossil fuels, although substantially raising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, also produces a pall of particle haze that reflects as much of the sun's energy back into space as the release of carbon dioxide has trapped in the air, Dr. Hansen said.

The haze from combustion is likely to be cleaned up in coming years, removing its cooling sun-blocking effect, said Dr. Hansen, who is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And over the course of the century, he added, carbon dioxide levels will still have to be reduced to prevent further warming. Meanwhile, emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities may be decreasing; he said they shrank slightly in 1998 and 1999, even as the global economy grew. As a result, he said, the world may find it easier and less costly to slow climate change than he and other scientists had thought, at least in the short term.

"The prospects for having a modest climate impact instead of a disastrous one are quite good, I think," Dr. Hansen said in an interview. Some climatologists greeted Dr. Hansen's new paper with dismay, saying they feared it would be misused by skeptics about global warming or by critics of a proposed treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which would commit industrialized nations to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Representatives of industries most vulnerable to restrictions on carbon dioxide welcomed the findings, saying they raised provocative questions about the need for vigorous action on the climate. The strong reaction is largely a function of the major role that Dr. Hansen has played in propelling the greenhouse debate onto the public stage. In 1981, he was a principal author of one of the first papers spelling out the links between rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and rising global temperatures.

In 1988, when a scorching American heat wave was at its peak and fires were consuming the Amazon, he testified before a Senate committee that human activities were changing the climate. In the analysis, Dr. Hansen and his colleagues culled data and scientific papers on topics from rice production, which releases methane, to urban pollution, a source of ozone and sooty particles, to obtain detailed estimates of the rate of change in different greenhouse emissions. He then used established formulas for calculating how different amounts of the gases in the future would affect the inflow of energy from the sun and escape of heat from the earth.

Carbon dioxide is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But the other gases Dr. Hansen and his team cite are more prodigious trappers of heat. Moreover, Dr. Hansen said, in contrast to the difficulties of controlling carbon dioxide, technologies already exist for capturing or eliminating many of the other kinds of emissions. "These are much more tractable," Dr. Hansen said, citing as an example existing systems for capturing methane produced by decomposing organic material in landfills. Also, because many of these gases cause serious, costly health problems or can harm agriculture, there are "strong economic reasons for wanting to eliminate them," he said.

Some scientists criticized aspects of the new study, but agreed that an initial focus on the other greenhouse gases could achieve significant slowing of climate warming, as long as carbon dioxide cuts were also made. Dr. John P. Holdren, a professor of environmental science and public policy at Harvard University, said any focus on cutting just one set of gases now would be a mistake. "This is not an either-or problem," Dr. Holdren said. "It's a both-and problem. We're going to need all the cuts we can get." The paper has prompted a significant amount of scrambling by scientists and lobbyists who are trying to shape the response to global warming. Several hundred scientists in dozens of countries are working on final revisions to the latest installment of a United Nations assessment of climate change.

It also comes as the presidential candidates are being pressed by private environmental groups to add more detail to their positions on global warming. Vice President Al Gore has frequently cited Dr. Hansen's work. In 1997, Mr. Gore played a major role in negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, on the proposed treaty. The White House said yesterday that the Kyoto plan was the best approach to slowing warming, adding that it placed equal emphasis on reducing all of the greenhouse gases largely because of insistence by American negotiators, including the vice president. Gov. George W. Bush of Texas has said the Kyoto proposals were "inadequate and unfair to the United States." A spokesman for the Bush campaign, Ray Sullivan, yesterday called the new Hansen paper intriguing, adding that there were still questions to be answered.

Dr. Robert T. Watson, the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he had received a flurry of phone calls from other scientists in the last few days expressing worries that Dr. Hansen's study could be misportrayed. "They said this could easily be interpreted as the guy who got Vice President Gore all excited about global warming now saying everything's fine," Dr. Watson said, adding: "If this paper is viewed that way, it'd be a horrible distortion. If anything, our projections for warming are higher than they used to be, and we're seeing discernible changes in ecosystems that we can link back to climate."

Representatives of industries that have sought to limit restrictions on fossil fuels said the paper poked provocative holes in the science behind the Kyoto plan and other proposals to stem warming. Dr. Hansen stressed that he is still convinced that global warming is under way, that people are a significant cause, and that work should be done to cut the rate of change -- perhaps not quite as much work as researchers thought.

See also- MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/447151.asp Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/science/083000/nasa.sml Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/08/000830073152.htm Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003288209242251&rtmo=QxxxQpxR&atmo=kkkkrjru &pg=/et/00/8/15/warm15.html Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/16/text/pageone5.html

ICE WARMING 'THREAT' TO ARCTIC PEOPLES BBC News

4 September Internet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_904000/904461.stm

The Inuit say Polar bears are already suffering. Climate change unseen since the Ice Age is threatening the livelihood of native people in the Arctic, the Inuit people of Canada have warned. The Inuit have noticed that ice near Hudson Bay, on Canada's northern coast, is thinner than usual and is forming later in the season. It has already affected polar bears, which cross the ice to hunt seals and travel to their winter retreat. The warning follows a report by the environment campaign group WWF that global warming could cause fundamental changes to about a third of the world's plant and animal habitats.

The report says the Earth's temperature is rising so rapidly that many animal and plant species will very likely be wiped out. Violet Ford, policy advisor for the Canadian Inuit, or Eskimos, warned that destruction of Arctic wildlife would also destroy the livelihoods of the nearly 120,000 Inuit in the northern areas of Alaska, Greenland, Russia and Canada. "If carbon dioxide concentrations double in the atmosphere in the next 100 years as predicted, the effects on the Arctic environment, animals and people are going to be catastrophic," she told a news conference in Toronto.

Land rights The Inuit say that the warming of the tundra, the vast permanently frozen treeless zone lying between the ice cap and the timber line, has altered migration routes of caribou, the North American reindeer on which the Inuit rely. They also say they have spotted grizzly bears, wolverines and other insects and birds that are more commonly found to the south. If the Inuit were forced to integrate into conventional society, it would come at a time when they have been winning land claims from the Canadian Government, Ms Ford said, allowing them to sustain their culture.

Since 1 April 1999 the Inuit have run their own vast territory, Nunavet, which was created by splitting up the Northwest Territories. Winning the two million square kilometres (770,000 square miles) of barren rock, snow and ice, was a victory for Inuit leaders who had campaigned for their own land for more than 20 years.

See also- National Geographic: http://www.ngnews.com/news/2000/07/07132000/inuitclimatechange_2837.asp Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/science/083100/climate.sml

INDIA & UK PARTNER TO EXPLORE GLOBAL WARMING IMPACT ENS 18 August Internet: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug2000/2000L-08-18-11.html

NEW DEHLI, India, August 18, 2000 (ENS) - India and the United Kingdom launched a joint three year study into the effects of global warming today. Home to more than a billion people, many of whom depend on the land or the ocean for their survival, India needs to know how it will be affected by climate change. In southern India, Kochi has one of the finest harbours on the Arabian coast. Global warming and its affects on sea levels will be studied under today's announcement.

Increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are expected to raise temperatures and change rainfall patterns. This could adversely affect water resources, agriculture, and forestry, and increase the spread of disease. For the seven million people threatened with displacement by rising sea levels, the study is particularly important. The UK Department of Environment will put up £650,000 (US$975,000) to help fund the project, which will look ahead 80 years. The money will allow Indian scientists from several organizations to build a comprehensive picture of the potential impacts of climate change in the sub-continent.

They will be helped by scientists at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. The Hadley Centre, a division of the UK Meteorological Office, runs one of the fastest super- computers in the world, making it possible to quickly process data collected during this three year research period. The Hadley Centre already predicts that annual river runoff may decline up to 70 percent in some areas of India. So the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology will lead new research to predict precipitation extremes and long term variability in the availability and quality of water resources, including groundwater.

A warmer climate threatens to increase the likelihood of malaria and other vector borne diseases, placing more pressure on India's health system. India's National Physical Laboratory will lead research on the impacts of climate on human health, with the major focus being on the impact of climate change on malaria. The UK's Hadley Centre predicts that annual river runoff may decline up to 70 percent in some areas of India.

The Indian Agricultural Research Institute will examine the vulnerability of agricultural production to climate change. It will study the potential yields of major Indian crops under different climate change scenarios. Indian agriculture occupies about 67 percent of the labor force. The yields of staple foods like wheat and rice are of particular concern. The Hadley Centre predicts, for instance, that cereal yields may decline up to 20 per cent by 2080. The National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) will conduct research on sea level variability. Extreme changes in sea level brought about by climate change, such as storm surges, may cause significant problems in coastal areas, some of which are among the most economically and ecologically important zones in India.

A sea level rise of one metre (39 inches) could displace seven million people in India, according to NIO statistics. India's east coast is particularly vulnerable to cyclones and storms from the Bay of Bengal and is the most densely populated coastal area in India. Forest ecosystems and their reaction to global warming will be studied. The Indian Institute of Science (IIS) will assess the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems, and, in collaboration with Jawaharlal Nehru University, will model vegetation responses to changes in climate. The IIS will examine the impact of climate change on forest dependent communities by assessing their vulnerability to changes in forest productivity. In addition to these projects, scientists will provide forecasts for temperature increase, sea level rise, precipitation, population and economic growth for the time periods 2020, 2050, and 2080.

See also-- DETR release: http://www.press.detr.gov.uk/0008/0554.htm

SCIENTISTS WATCH CITIES MAKE THEIR OWN WEATHER New York Times 15 August Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081500sci-environ-climate.ht ml

Atlanta is so big and hot that it makes its own weather, and scientists have the pictures to prove it. While analyzing weather data that was collected during the 1996 Summer Olympics, Dr. Robert Bornstein, a professor of meteorology at San Jose State University in California, saw a pattern in the winds. The heat- absorbing roofs and pavement were warming the air, and the hot air was rising, sucking air from all directions into the city. Dr. Bornstein surmised what was happening next: as the warm air rose, it cooled, condensing into clouds and rain.

Satellite images backed him up, revealing several instances in which thunderstorms erupted over Atlanta, seemingly out of nowhere, and dumped rain on the city, usually at its southeast and northeast edges. "We documented all the steps in the sequence," Dr. Bornstein said. In the satellite images, he said, "you will not see any other clouds upwind or downwind." The idea that cities generate their own heat, and alter their climates as a result, is not new. Dr. Bornstein observed similar thunderstorms appearing over New York City more than two decades ago based on radar images, and other cities probably create their own storms, too.

But in recent years, scientists using high-tech sensors have produced a more detailed picture of how human activities change the weather. Over the past four years, researchers from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have flown jets equipped with infrared cameras over Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Baton Rouge, La., and Atlanta, producing block-by-block temperature maps. Parks were cool -- plants are full of cooling water, and trees also provide shade -- while asphalt parking lots were hot.

Surprisingly, though, the hottest buildings were often the newest. In Salt Lake City, the Scott M. Matheson Courthouse, a dark-roofed building that opened a couple of years ago, is a white-hot splotch in the infrared photograph, suggesting a roof temperature of about 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Across the street to the east, the century-old, castle-like City and County Building is a relatively cool red.

In the era of universal air-conditioning, builders may have focused more on durability and cost of roofs than on their ability to absorb or reflect heat. "We don't necessarily think about making things cool because everything is air-conditioned," said Dr. Dale A. Quattrochi, a senior scientist at Marshall and co- leader of the NASA heat island research. Moreover, the heat-island effect is growing as suburbia expands. For instance, Atlanta's urban heat island now covers at least 17 square miles. "It's a semicultural mindset change." Dr. Quattrochi said. "We start paving over things and we start cutting down trees."

The NASA team expects to turn its infrared cameras on Houston as soon as next week, as part of a larger effort by Texas and federal agencies to track smog there. More heat speeds the chemical reactions that create ozone, the primary component of smog. "One of things that's interesting about Houston is it is an extremely large city in terms of the built-up area," Dr. Quattrochi said. At 572 square miles, he said, "It's going to be the largest urban area we've studied to date." Unlike other cities, Houston does not have zoning laws, and its industrial, commercial and residential buildings are all mixed together.

By comparing data from the different cities, the NASA researchers want to better understand how the heating effect differs among different urban landscapes. The heat-island effect was first recorded almost 200 years ago, by Luke Howard, an amateur meteorologist in England. Beginning in 1807, he started comparing temperatures from several sites within London with those measured a few miles beyond the city's edge. "Thus, " Howard wrote in his book, "The Climate of London" in 1818, "under the varying circumstances of different sites, different instruments, and different positions of the latter, we find London always warmer than the country, the average excess of its temperature being 1.579 degrees." Today, average temperatures in the largest cities can range 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than surrounding areas.

Besides discomfort, the added heat also increases the need for air-conditioning, which in turn contributes to other air quality problems. The laboring air-conditioners consume more electricity, which causes nonnuclear power plants to spew out more of the chemical ingredients for the making of ozone. But once made, these effects can be unmade. In a 1998 study, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., concluded that residents and businesses in the New York City area could cut their summertime air-conditioning costs by $22 million by swapping dark roofs with more reflective ones. Outdoor summer temperatures could also drop a couple of degrees.

On the other hand, the reflective roofs would raise heating bills by $6 million in winter. "In the wintertime, you want the roof to be hot," said Steven Konopacki, staff research associate at Lawrence Berkeley and a member of the heat island research group. Still, the net savings would be $16 million a year. And the benefits cascade. According to the computer simulations, a drop in temperature of a couple of degrees can reduce levels of ozone "on the order of 5 percent to 10 percent, sometimes up to 20 percent," said Dr. Haider Taha, a Lawrence Berkeley scientist. "You slow down the cooking rate of smog." Lawrence Berkeley researchers are also working on making lighter-colored asphalts and roof shingles that come in different colors but that efficiently reflect infrared light.

One reason black roofs dominate the urban landscape is that they cost less. "Some bad habits have developed, at least in the States," Mr. Konopacki said. But reduced electric bills could more than offset the initial difference in price. Mr. Konopacki cited a medical office building in Davis, Calif., that had a "typical commercial building roof," reflecting about 24 percent of the sunlight that hit it. When the roof needed to be replaced in 1997, the Berkeley researchers persuaded the building owner to use a white roof that reflected 60 percent of the sunlight. Air- conditioning costs dropped 18 percent. The NASA and Berkeley researchers hope the data will catch the attention of architects and builders. "Historically, that hasn't been part of their curriculum," said Dr. Jeff Luvall, who runs the NASA heat island research program with Dr. Quattrochi. "They're looking at aesthetics and budgets."

Georgia has revised its building code for commercial buildings to encourage the use of reflective roofs, and counties around Atlanta have passed or are considering ordinances to preserve remaining trees. Fifty-three roofing products now carry the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star label, which indicates that the roofs will reflect at least 65 percent of the sunlight when new and at least 50 percent three years later. Some sellers of reflective roofing, like Craig Lease of the Stockton Roofing Company in California, include NASA images in their sales materials. "When you can back up your words with NASA data," Mr. Lease said, "people listen."

STUDY: HAY FEVER SUFFERERS CAN BLAME GLOBAL WARMING CNN August 15, 2000 Internet: http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/08/15/warming.hayfever.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Does your sneezing and hay fever seem to be getting worse each year? Blame global warming. Researchers with the U.S. Agriculture Department said Tuesday that higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels linked to gradually increasing temperatures on earth may also be responsible for doubling the amount of ragweed pollen during the past four decades. Another doubling could occur by the end of this century, they said.

"This research may help us better understand the troubling impact of high carbon dioxide levels on our environment and our health," Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said in a statement. The USDA study showed pollen production rose almost 400 percent with a 200 percent increase in the amount of C02. The high CO2 levels also appeared to encourage ragweed to produce pollen earlier than usual.

Lewis Ziska, a USDA plant physiologist, measured pollen counts on ragweed grown in the laboratory at various levels of atmospheric CO2, from the 1900 level of 280 parts per million (ppm) to today's levels of 370 ppm, and at the future predicted level of 600 ppm. Pollen production soared from 5.5 grams to 10 grams to 20 grams as CO2 moved through the three levels.

An estimated 40 million Americans suffer from allergies, mostly from airborne pollens such as ragweed, grass, spruce, cedar, juniper and other trees. The U.S. Senate has yet to ratify the Kyoto Treaty, negotiated in late 1997 to curb global warming by limiting the fossil fuel emissions of industrialized nations. The emissions have been linked to the steady rise in carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere.

CARBON AT 20 MILLION YEAR HIGH BBC News 17 August Internet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_883000/883398.stm

Two British scientists say the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere is higher than for 20 million years. But their study of levels over the last 60 million years suggests that the gas was once even more abundant than it is today. Carbon dioxide is the main gas caused by human activity that has been linked to global warming. Concentrations now are about 360 ppm (parts per million), but will continue to rise as emissions increase. Based on current trends, by 2030 the total climatic impact of rising levels of all greenhouse gases will be equal to that caused by the doubling of pre-industrial CO2 concentrations. By 2100, the effect would be trebled. The research, by Dr Paul Pearson of the University of Bristol and Professor Martin Palmer, of Imperial College, London, is reported in the journal Nature.

Shelling out They used a new technique to establish CO2 levels in the ancient atmosphere, analysing the shells of planktonic organisms that once lived near the surface of the ocean. This enabled them to establish past seawater acidity, which in turn was dictated by the amount of atmospheric CO2. The researchers estimate that between about 60 and 52 million years ago, CO2 concentrations reached more than 2,000 ppm. But from about 55 to 40 million years ago, there was "an erratic decline", which may have been caused by a reduction in CO2 emissions from ocean ridges and volcanoes, and by increased carbon burial. Since about 24 million years ago, concentrations appear to have remained below 500 ppm and were more stable than before, although transient intervals of CO2 reduction may have occurred during periods of rapid cooling approximately 15 and 3 million years ago. "Our observations put the modern greenhouse effect into a long-term perspective," said Dr Pearson.

Back to the future Commenting on the prospect suggested by climate models, that the 2100 CO2 level could be as high as that last seen in the Eocene period, 50 million years ago, he said: "This does not necessarily mean we will recreate Eocene-type conditions. "There are still too many unknowns involved in climate prediction. But the sweltering ice-free world of the Eocene does warn us of what might happen if a runaway greenhouse effects sets in." Some researchers still doubt that human activities are inducing rapid climate change. They highlight the inconsistencies between the temperature records taken at the Earth's surface, which show rapid warming over the last century, and the data produced by satellite and balloon studies.

These show little if any warming, in the last two decades, of the low to mid-troposphere - the atmospheric layer extending up to about 8 km from the Earth's surface. Climate models generally predict that temperatures should increase in the upper air as well as at the surface if increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are causing the warming recorded at ground level.

GLOBAL WARMING REPORT PREDICTS DOOM FOR MANY SPECIES New York Times 31 August Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/090100global-climate.html

LONDON, Aug. 31 -- Global warming could wipe out many species of plants and animals by the end of the 21st century, the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a report issued here today. The fund, known in the United States as the World Wildlife Fund, paints a devastating picture of the ability of species from Arctic polar bears and walruses to New England sugar maple trees to survive unless they can migrate quickly or adapt to their new environments. The predictions are based on the standard assumption -- which some experts say should be revised -- that by 2100, carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere will be double what they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

They also rely on climate models that lose precision when assessing regional impacts of a warming global climate. Particularly at risk in addition to rare species, the report indicates, are those living in mountainous or isolated places. Among those singled out as vulnerable are the Gelada baboon in Ethiopia; the monarch butterfly, which spends winters in Mexico; the Australian mountain pygmy possum; the northern spruce in New York State; and the spoonbilled sandpiper, which breeds in the far northeastern reaches of Russia.

According to the report, as much as 70 percent of the natural habitat could be lost, and 20 percent of the species rendered extinct, in the Arctic and northernmost areas of places like Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, where warming is predicted to be most rapid. Places farther south, including parts of Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Iceland and Kyrgyzstan, could lose more than half of their natural habitat. In the United States, the report predicts, more than a third of the existing habitat in Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas could be irrevocably altered by global warming.

"Rapid rates of global warming are likely to increase rates of habitat loss and species extinction, most markedly in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere," the report reads. Jennifer L. Morgan, director of the World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Campaign in Washington, says that to survive into the following century, some species would have to migrate 10 times faster than after the last ice age. "Climate change is coming at us much faster than many habitats are going to be able handle," Ms. Morgan said.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ATOLLS HIT BY RISING SEA LEVEL BBC Monitoring Service Sep 4, 2000 Internet: http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.jsp?docId=000904003385&query =%22global+warming%22&resultsShown=20&resultsToRequest=100

Communities on Bougainville's atoll islands most threatened by rising sea levels are calling on the provincial government to assist in resettling them. Amongst the outer atolls of Mortlock, Nuguria, Tasman, Nissan and Carterets groups, the latter are the worse affected. Since the 1960s the Carterets group has slowly but surely been undergoing the effects of the global warming commonly known as the greenhouse effect. In this light the shorelines of the atoll islands have been washed away at an alarming rate by rising seas and by the way things are going, the islanders fear that in the next five to 10 years some of the atolls will be no more.

The main islands of the Carterets group include Han, the largest, Piul, Huene, Iolasa, Iosela and Iangain. `The Independent' could not obtain - among other much needed information - a figure on the population of the Carterets group, but a rough guess would be over 2,000 people. The islands are an eight-hours boat ride from Buka. Prior to the crisis, the Bougainville provincial government had a resettlement programme where Carteret Islanders from the most affected atolls were resettled at Kuveria near Mabiri in central Bougainville. However, they returned home to the islands when the troubles on the mainland worsened in 1990, only to find that they are in a far worse scenario than before. A huge tidal wave struck the islands in 1995, washing away greater parts of the shoreline. Garden food crops were affected and destroyed after the tide left pools of salty water inland.

The National Disaster and Emergency Service [NDES] and the Bougainville administration assisted the people with relief supplies and it continues to do so when the situation worsens. But for how long, the people are asking. They say the problem will not go away but is worsening and they fear very much for their lives...

[One islander told the paper:] "I come from Han Island and the situation there now is that erosion is occurring from both sides and the island is getting narrow. It is not happening only in Han but in Piul, where the problem is worsening and many families are leaving. On Huene, the island is divided into half now and there is a wide passage in the middle. Four families only are left while most have left for the other atolls such as Iolasa. The situation on Iolasa, Iosela and Iangain islands is such that when high seas occur, they stand below sea level and this is very frightening...

"My people are very worried and we are asking authorities to find us a place on the mainland to resettle permanently and also for the people to accept us... "Food shortage is a reality on the affected atolls and most times, they survive on fish, seaweeds and coconuts. When the situation gets bad, NDES sends relief food supplies but because the problem is an ongoing one, the cycle starts all over again..."

VENICE SINKING FAST, CLAIMS NEW STUDY CNN September 2, 2000 Internet: http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/09/02/italy.venice.reut/index.html

VENICE, Italy (Reuters) -- A new archaeological report suggests the ancient city of Venice may be sinking faster than previously thought. American archaeologist Albert Ammerman claims that not only has the sinking process speeded up, but a controversial and expensive plan to protect the city from flood waters with moveable dams will not work. In an article published in the latest edition of the journal Science, Ammerman says the dams would not prevent Venice from sinking, but it was hoped that they would allay the effects of high and flood waters, which are likely to be exacerbated by global warming.

Venice, which rests on millions of wooden piles pounded into marshy ground, has sunk by about seven centimetres a century for the past 1,000 years. But the U.S. study says that it has subsided 24 centimetres in the past 100 years. However, Venice's mayor Paolo Costa says the report is inaccurate, although a study carried out by the city authorities concedes it will sink between 20 and 50 centimetres by 2050.

Mayor disputes evidence "From a scientific point of view, the conclusions are incorrect," Costa said in an interview. "The study is based on a very good piece of archaeological research -- it was able to compare the sinking rate of Venice over the last 2,000 years and the last century to show it is sinking more quickly, which is absolutely true." But he said the study did not take into consideration a slowing down of the city's inundation in the past decade because the city had stopped pumping water from the bedrock underneath the city. The earth's natural underground water supplies acted as a cushion that helped slow the city's sinking, he said.

More important, Costa disputed the study's reliance on what he said were unspecified and unsourced future projections for global warming to bolster the assertion that the dam project would be insufficient. Costa added: "I can assume he (Ammerman) knows everything about the past, but not about global warming. "They rely on someone else's forecasts for global warming. That's not science. We have our own forecast."

Dam project to save city The city hopes work will start soon on a $4 billion dam project, named Moses, which would involve a series of moveable dams. The origins of the project date back to 1966, when the city risked being destroyed by a flood, and it has provoked plenty of controversy in the intervening 36 years. Environmentalists are against it because they argue it will harm the ecological balance of the lagoon that Venice sits on. But without the dams -- and the sinking aside -- Venice remains vulnerable to another flood and high tides that each year erode buildings and flood squares. Ammerman believes that, if ever built, the dams would have to be closed for as much as 150 days a year, effectively turning the city into a pond for half the year.

THROUGH NORTHWEST PASSAGE IN A MONTH, ICE-FREE New York Times 5 September Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/090500sci-environ-climate.ht ml

NUUK, Greenland, Sept. 4 -- During World War II, when Henry Larsen took a Royal Canadian Mounted Police ship, the St. Roch, into the fabled Northwest Passage, his boat was frozen in Arctic ice through two winters, only emerging at the eastern end after 27 months. On Sunday the St. Roch II completed a voyage over the same route in one month, including leisurely overnight stops at communities visited by the namesake boat half a century ago. After leaving Tuktoyaktuk, near Canada's border with Alaska, the boat traversed all of Canada's Arctic without encountering pack ice. "Concern should be registered with the fact we didn't see any ice," the skipper, Sgt. Ken Burton of the Mounties, said on Sunday over a maritime telephone as he took the police boat into open waters across Baffin Bay from Greenland.

Safely out of the passage, he said, "There were some bergs, but nothing we saw to cause any anxiety. We saw some ribbons of multiyear ice floes, all small and fragmented, and were able to steer around them.' The Canadians' ice-free passage through their nation's northern waters is the latest evidence that Arctic ice is melting in the summer more extensively than usual. In a trend that scientists attribute to changing winds and rising temperatures, submarine sonar probes indicate that the thickness of polar ice is only 58 percent of what it was in the 1950's. Satellite photographs show that the polar ice cap at the time of maximum summer melt -- about now -- has been reduced by about 6 percent since 1980. The original St. Roche was blocked even in the summer.

"We don't know enough about the Arctic to know if this is global warming, climate change or maybe we were just plain lucky," Sergeant Burton said as he took his boat south, planning to arrive in Halifax on Oct. 9 or 10 and New York a week later. Along the way the crew of the St. Roch and a support ship, the Simon Fraser, found a chilling reminder of how harrowing the Arctic can be: a skull and the graves of six men believed to have perished in the late 1840's as part of the ill-fated Franklin expedition. In 1845 Sir John Franklin set out from Britain with 128 men and two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, trying to find the Northwest Passage. The ships were last spotted frozen in the ice in 1847, but their fate has remained a mystery. In the decade that followed, 32 rescue parties searched for the ships and their crews.

Until two weeks ago, only about 30 bodies had been recovered. Autopsies of those earlier bodies indicated that some men had died of lead poisoning from canned food and that the starving survivors had resorted to cannibalism before they, too, perished in the cold. The Mounties were led to the six newly found graves by Louie Kamookak, an Inuk hunter who once heard his grandfather tell of how he had fashioned an ice pick from a knife he had found at old campsite where plates and knives were scattered about. "In addition to the six grave sites, there was a cooking and fire pit that looked like it had been used for an extended period of time," Sergeant Burton said. The bodies were found on a desolate beach in the Todd Island group, about 30 miles south of Gjoa Haven. Mr. Kamookak, a self-described Franklin buff, has said that by using tales from village elders, he has been able to locate many markers and artifacts left by early Arctic explorers, including as many as seven more Franklin sites. He told the Canadian Press: "There's other stuff. But one day I'm hoping to write my own book, and I'm saving it for that." Scientists and environmentalists are trying to figure out if commercial ships will be able to cross the Canadian Arctic on a regular basis in the late summer.

"It is still a risky venture," Sergeant Burton said, "but the day of the famed Northwest Passage, the shortcut to Orient may be just around the corner." The possibility of such a maritime route has intrigued sovereigns and ship captains since the time when Queen Elizabeth I wished Martin Frobisher godspeed as he sailed from London, bound for the Arctic, in 1575. He was not successful. The passage was first navigated in 1903 by Raold Amundsen, a voyage that took three years. A shipping channel over the top of North America would cut 5,000 miles off the Panama Canal route now used by freighters going from Rotterdam to Yokohama. Not by chance, one passenger who traveled on the St. Roch II for a few days this summer was a reporter for a Rotterdam newspaper.

After taking the ship through the 10,000-mile maze of channels and islands that constitutes the Northwest Passage, Sergeant Burton cautioned that the Arctic "is a very fickle environment." He was speaking shortly after leaving Pond Inlet, an eastern Arctic town where the three crew members of a Norwegian boat attempting the passage were recuperating after their boat flipped over. Sergeant Burton said he knew of two other boats that had successfully navigated the passage this summer: a New Zealand sailboat, the Evco, which is now heading to Greenland, and the United States Coast Guard cutter Healy. In late July the American ship, a new icebreaker, had to cut through heavy ice in areas where, one month later, the St. Roch II found open water. Timing is essential, Stephen Rybak, spokesman for the St. Roch II, said from Vancouver, where he is raising money to restore the original St. Roch, which is deteriorating from dry rot.

Before shipping executives try a northern short cut, he warned, their captains should know that they will have to slip through two "gates" -- one off Barrow, Alaska, the other in the McClintock Channel, a north-south waterway in the middle of the Canadian Arctic. There, winds can clog channels with ice. "Global warming may increase periods of ice-free navigation in the Arctic," Mr. Rybak said. "But it won't do a darn thing about the gates opening and closing. That has to do with the winds."

See aslo- Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0009/06/text/world9.html

18TH CENTURY SHIP LOGS TRACK CLIMATE CHANGE National Geographic August 29, 2000 Internet: http://www.ngnews.com/news/2000/08/08292000/shipslogs_2975.asp

Thousands of logbooks from vessels that plied the world oceans from 1750 to 1850 are being pulled from the archives in search of information to help scientists forecast future climate change. Research teams from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Holland, and Argentina will comb the logs for data under a project funded by the European Union. The logs reflect the reach of the empires of the time and document travel to all the major ports and cities across the world, from Europe to South America, South Africa, India, and Japan. Because ships were powered by wind, navigated by stars, and at the mercy of changing weather conditions, ships' logs were updated daily, and sometimes hourly. The 200-year-old weather records will paint a picture of weather in pre-industrial times. The resulting data base will be posted on the Internet, available to scientists and students around the world.

VOYAGES OF THE PAST The logs of famous voyagers such as the legendary Captain James Cook and Robert Fitzroy, captain of the HMS Beagle which took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, will be part of the data base. But logs of ordinary merchant and naval vessels will be of more importance, says Dennis Wheeler, professor of geography at the University of Sunderland. Wheeler is heading the three-year project. "While the log books from the voyages of discovery have an intrinsic interest and often cover oceanic regions not hitherto described, they are of less value to us than the logs of the more mundane journeys of naval and official vessels that plied between the European colonial states and their respective overseas possessions," he said.

"Several thousand of these log books survive and while not offering the scope for excitement and heroism found in the records of discovery they do contain the consistently recorded, detailed, and reliable weather observations that we need to build up a useful data base." Wheeler began to work with ships' logs as a result of his interest in the great naval battles in the age of sailing ships. Reconstructing the battles of Trafalgar, Quiberon Bay, Bantry Bay and Camperdown, he came to recognize the "matchless source of climatic data" he found in the logs. The data covered the oceans - "the three-quarters of the planet's surface about whose climate we know least" - at a time, the pre-industrial age, before human influence was as pronounced as it is today.

USING THE PAST TO PREDICT THE FUTURE The data will be used to assess the scope and nature of climate change since pre-industrial times using computer models. "Today we can compare our numerical results against winds measured by satellites, radiosondes, and various ground-based instruments, but we just don't have such data before 1900," says Steve Baum, a research scientist in oceanography at Texas A & M University. "The logs will hopefully allow maps to be created against which model simulations of the 1700s and 1800s can be compared. If we can confidently replicate today's climate and the climates of, say, 100 and 200 years ago (that is, model them so they resemble the available or reconstructed data), we will have that much more confidence in the predictions the models make for the next 100 to 1,000 years."

POPULATIONS UNDER INTENSE HEAT North Africa Journal September 6, 2000 Internet: http://allafrica.com/stories/200009060180.html

ALGIERS -Temperature is rising and the heat wave continues to linger. Northern Algeria is also living its share of high temperatures. Hospitals and emergency rooms have been kept busy as well. This persistent heat wave is also having an impact on the soda and soft drink market with shortages recorded in most retail stores. Soda companies are now unable to fulfill skyrocketing demand. Meteorologists say the current heat wave is comparable to that of summer 1988 when the thermometer reached 47 degrees on the Celsius scale . With burning air and temperatures exceeding 45 degrees, hospitals have been kept busy with increasing numbers of patients in north- central Algeria complaining of headaches, asthma attacks, nose bleeding and other problems. Meteorologists say this heat wave is the result of a combined low pressure zone concentrated in Spain that attracts south-western winds to Algeria's coastal regions and a high pressure zone in Libya and Italy that brings hot air from the southeast to the northern coast. These two phenomenon combined are the cause of the tough time facing northern Algerians these days.

ON THE WEB

ENVIRONMENT GROUPS IN WEB CAMPAIGN ON GLOBAL WARMING A coalition of environmental organizations have launched an Internet initiative to bombard the world's political leaders with messages opposing global warming. The site, http://www.climatevoice.org , was launched by 16 groups including World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace International and Friends of the Earth. A WWF statement said that the site aimed to send 10 million public messages before the meeting and target heads of states and prime ministers of the 15-member European Union.

REASON PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE GUIDE TO CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE The Reason Public Policy Institute recently published a "Plain English Guide" that reviews the evidence surrounding global warming. Entitled "Exploring the Science of Climate Change," it was authored by Kenneth Green, RPPI's director of environmental programs. The publication is divided into major sections on climate-change theory, warming and cooling forces, observed climate changes, and the impact of climate changes. Green writes that the guide is offered to provide a basic foundation in the policy-relevant elements of climate science in order to enhance the quality of public-policy debate. For more information see: http://www.rppi.org/peg3central.html

21ST CENTURY SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE-ARTICLE ON OCEAN WARMING 21st Century Science & Technology magazine has posted an article from its current issue: "Yes, the Ocean Has Warmed; No It's Not Global Warming," by oceanographer Robert E. Stevenson, former Secretary General of the International Association for the Physical Science of the Oceans, 1987-1995. Stevenson demonstrates that the general warming (and cooling) of the oceans follows long-term cycles, independent of radiative or man-made influences. For more information see: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

THIS IS THE WORLD'S CHANCE TO TACKLE GLOBAL WARMING Times of London September 3 2000 Internet: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/09/03/stirevnws02015.html

By Michael Meacher Minister for the environment

Climate change is the biggest environmental problem facing humankind today. Seven of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the past decade. By acting now we can avoid its worst effects. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries signed up to legally binding targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions - overall by at least 5% below 1990 levels over the period 2008-12. But since then negotiations have continued and it has still not come into force.

Two conferences - in Lyons, France (from tomorrow until September 15) and the Hague, Holland (November 13-24) - present us with an opportunity to bring these talks to a conclusion. Britain and Germany are committed to reaching an agreement in the Hague that will safeguard the integrity and the credibility of the Kyoto protocol by delivering real reductions in emissions. We must ensure that we do not create loopholes that might allow some countries to avoid real domestic action.

The protocol allows developed countries to "buy" emission reductions abroad. The logic is simple: it does not matter where emission reductions occur - the environmental benefit is the same. But at the same time the protocol will not be credible if developed countries are able to meet their targets without reducing their own domestic emissions. European Union ministers have therefore proposed an upper limit on this option to ensure that each developed country meets at least half of its required reductions through domestic action. A number of other developed countries - including America, Canada and Japan - have refused even to negotiate with us on this issue. We urge them to reconsider their positions.

Secondly, we need reasonable rules on "sinks". A sink is any process that removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - for example, trees absorb carbon. There are problems associated with this - sinks store carbon only temporarily, simply delaying climate change. And there are many uncertainties and risks - forests can die, burn down, or be destroyed by storms. The recent forest fires in America illustrate this very clearly.

The clean development mechanism (CDM) proposed at Kyoto (projects to reduce emissions in developing countries) needs to be based on safe, environmentally sound projects. The mechanism has two aims: to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development, and to assist developed countries in meeting their Kyoto commitments. We need to agree rules for the mechanism in the Hague that will ensure projects can get off to a prompt start.

Industrialised countries must show leadership by taking domestic action to reduce emissions. We plan to publish our national climate change programmes next month. We are already implementing domestic measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Germany's CO2 emissions in 1999 were 15.3% lower than in 1990, and the domestic target of achieving a 25% reduction by 2005 is well within reach, even with the government's phase out of nuclear energy. Emissions of the six Kyoto gases were 18.5% below 1990 levels, compared to Germany's Kyoto target of a 21% reduction by 2008-12.

Meanwhile, Britain's greenhouse gas emissions were 8.5% below 1990 levels in 1998. The government has already introduced new measures to ensure that we meet our Kyoto target and move towards the domestic goal of a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions. The UK's draft climate change programme estimated that these measures could reduce emissions to 21.5% below 1990 levels in 2010 - way beyond its Kyoto target of 12.5%.

However, according to 1999 UN figures, CO2 emissions have continued to rise in many other industrialised countries, including America (+10.7%), Japan (+9.5%), Australia (+12%) , and the EU as a whole has only stabilised its emission reductions levels. It is vital that real domestic action is taken to reverse these trends. We cannot expect the developing world to do more unless industrialised countries demonstrate that we take our own commitments seriously. The meetings in Lyons and the Hague could be a turning point in the climate change negotiations. We hope that the Hague will be the start of a long-term transition to a low-carbon global economy and we take the call of our citizens seriously: Don't be vague in the Hague.

ANOTHER WAY TO KYOTO Montreal Gazette Friday 1 September 2000 Internet: http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/000901/4073432.html

One of the less attractive characteristics of convinced environmental crusaders such as Canada's David Suzuki and Monte Hummel is their apparent attitude that in a good cause, anything goes. How else to explain their casual dismissal of a ground- breaking study by a highly respected U.S. climate scientist that suggests there is an easier way to combat global warming than the current emphasis on controlling carbon dioxide? How else to explain the apocalyptic vision of a Canadian north turned into a wasteland by global warming, presented by Mr. Suzuki and Mr. Hummel with unqualified enthusiasm at a World Wildlife Fund press conference this week?

Mr. Suzuki conceded to reporters that he hadn't read the new study by James Hansen, published just a week ago. Mr. Hummel said he did not think its conclusions would have any implication for the continuing drive to get countries to ratify the Kyoto protocol on global warming. This is an agreement, signed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, that committed industrialized countries including Canada to big cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide.

Their lack of interest is strange, given that Mr. Hansen is a leading light among the world's climate scientists and was the first to call attention to the risks of global warming two decades ago. Equally strange is that they did not welcome conclusions in the Hansen study that could make their goals easier to achieve.

Mr. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, led a team that reported its findings last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their most striking conclusion: carbon dioxide, fingered as the principal culprit among heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is not guilty as charged. Most of the global warming for which humans are responsible and which has been observed so far comes from other gases such as methane, chlorofluorocarbons, black particles of diesel and coal soot, and compounds that create smog, such as ozone.

Better still, these other emissions are easier and less costly to control than carbon dioxide, which is produced as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Some of them are already declining, in fact. Limiting the burning of fossil fuels is the main stumbling block to ratification of the Kyoto protocol. On the one hand, critics say reaching the targets set by the agreement would devastate industrialized economies. Other critics say the targets are not tough enough to do the job. The Hansen study proposes "an alternative, more optimistic scenario," a switch in focus from reducing emissions of carbon dioxide to reducing emissions of these other heat-trapping gases and compounds over the next 50 years. "We suggest it is more practical to slow global warming than is sometimes assumed," the study says.

Interestingly, a little-known provision of the Kyoto agreement allows for the substitution of reductions in other greenhouse gases for reductions in carbon dioxide. Certainly, there is a danger that equally convinced skeptics about global warming will try to use the Hansen study to justify a halt to any action. In fact, the study offers them no comfort. Mr. Hansen and his team continue to believe the world is warming up as a result of human actions, and that something must be done to stop it. They continue to advocate control of carbon- dioxide emissions, too.

But this doesn't justify blind dismissal of its recommendations, even in a good cause. Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Hummel, meet Mr. Hansen.

GOING UP IN SMOKE The Guardian Friday September 1, 2000 Internet: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4057868,00.html

By Polly Toynbee

Yesterday Michael Portillo inadvertently raised the key question of the century. Can western democracies ever deliver the politics necessary to save the world? To stop global warming as it is now - just to halt it - world emissions of carbon dioxide have to be cut by between 60% and 80% according to the intergovernmental panel on climate change: targets set at Kyoto which some countries won't reach were a pathetically modest first step. But outside wartime, no democracy has ever asked its voters for such savage belt- tightening or such radical lifestyle change as would be required to get anywhere near that goal. Will it have to wait until citizens can see for themselves that climate change threatens them now, not in the future? Dying polar bears, water at the north pole, fires blazing across great tracts of land or even tropical diseases like West Nile fever breaking out in Boston make interesting newspaper stories, but they don't scare the people into a wartime frame of mind: presumably that will take water

flooding over the spire of the Empire State Building.

Michael Portillo yesterday said the Conservatives would abolish Labour's climate-change levy, a pollution tax that after three years of negotiation finally comes into force in April. It will create energy savings worth about a third of the Kyoto cuts Britain has to make in carbon emissions. It is not draconian, adding only 0.45p per unit to business energy bills. It will raise £1.1bn, all of it to be recycled back to business. (It is not a Treasury money-maker). All employers will get the money back as a reduction in National Insurance contributions they pay for employees. The idea is an incentive to cut energy use, coupled with an incentive to employ more people.Ten per cent of it will be used for energy saving capital grants for business.

This policy was led by Lord Marshall, then head of the CBI. It has undergone years of delicate negotiation to ensure it is fair. Industry persuaded Gordon Brown to halve the size of his original levy, making special agreements for 80% rebates for sectors that use vast quantities of energy but employ few people - steel, chemicals, engineering. Yesterday John Cridland, deputy director- general of the CBI, said it was not opposing the climate-change levy.

The one and only supporter of Portillo's surprise announcement was the Institute of Directors. (Small business stands to gain from the NI cuts). Portillo's rousing rhetoric at the breakfast for business included these thoughts: "There is no justification for an energy tax which is going to be particularly harmful to manufacturing industry. Business can no longer be the fall guy." He called the idea of taxing manufacturing industry "ill- conceived", "counter-productive" and "crazy". (Both he and the institute talked of manufacturing industry's dire plight due to the high pound, apparently shameless about their own part in Britain's failure to join the euro and rescue British manufacturing).

But most important of all, Michael Portillo took no account of global warming. He simply criticised the levy as a tax on business. It is politics as usual, no change. At least, unlike the Republicans in America, the Conservatives don't deny the existence of global warming, nor the need to do something about it. But as oppositions do and always will, they deny the need for a particular belt-tightening measure the government of the day proposes. It's "crazy", needless, could be done better or in any other way but the one proposed. There will be a great array of methods governments choose to apply carrots and sticks to drive down energy use to hit their targets. But if oppositions always offer the people an excuse for not doing it, a reason for voting against any particular tax, quota or limit, nothing will be done.

Portillo's "alternative" suggestion is typical weaselling. Instead of a tax, he said, his party would introduce "emissions trading" whereby companies are given carbon quotas they can buy and sell. It gives them a financial incentive for switching to more expensive clean energy sources such as wind or solar power that fall outside the quota. Good idea. Except that the government is already planning to do this and has a taskforce in place drawing up just such a scheme. So is the EU. But it will be needed side by side, not instead of, a climate-change levy because it wouldn't work without that incentive. It will take several years to introduce, during which time Portillo proposes nothing should be done. The danger is that in democracies people are easily seduced by apparently pain-free alternatives offered by oppositions, ensuring governments never quite dare take measures as tough as they know they should be to hit their targets. And that's the way the world ends.

Consider the sort of lifestyle change we in the west will have to make to meet the 60-80% cut: a one-way flight from London to Miami uses up half the carbon emission a person would be allocated for a whole year's heating, cooking and transport. Will it require authoritarian national governments to introduce those kinds of severe changes, or can oppositions behave more responsibly and sit down with governments to agree global-warming measures? The Conservatives' desperate thrashing around at the moment for any vote-catcher, however disgraceful, doesn't bode well.

Must it all be hard sacrifice? There's always a glint in the eye of the Greens that suggests they really relish anti-materialist, back-to-nature lifestyle cuts as a puritanical good thing in its own right. However, it is possible that a mixture of good government and new technology will mean nothing too drastic has to hit general standards of living. But as Michael Portillo must know, the longer action is delayed, the harsher the cuts that will need to be made later.

The climate-change levy is an excellent tool to start large energy users thinking again about ways to convert their supplies to clean sources and to use less. For example, it will tip the balance in making it financially worthwhile for a new office building to invest in solar panels as a cladding that would give the building 30 years free electricity at no greater construction cost than most ornamental but useless cladding. (It looks like blue marble). The levy would tip the balance in encouraging any large energy user to invest in solar panels. The government is to use 10% of the levy for grants to help companies install this and other clean electricity supplies.

The difference in cost between clean and dirty electricity is shrinking all the time, so that relatively small extra taxes can change energy use dramatically. How high do oil prices rise before electric cars look attractive? Maybe we shall fly less often, but then trains will improve to take up the international long- distance trade. But carrots and sticks will have to start the whole process. And oppositions that try to capitalise shamelessly on what all responsible governments must do deserve to be kept out of office indefinitely. polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

ENERGY PACT BENEFITS US MORE THAN INDIA: SCIENTIST Hindustan Times August 11 Internet: http://www1.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/120800/detNAT05.htm

By Apratim Mukarji

THE INDIA-US agreement on renewable energy, signed during President Bill Clinton's India visit, serves US interests more than India's, eminent energy scientist Dr R K Pachauri said here today. The agreement was signed between External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last March. "Thanks to the shoddy job done, we have laid down certain targets for ourselves which are in the interests of the US. The agreement looks one-sided to me," he said. Dr Pachauri is shortly taking up the McCluskey Chair on Sustainable Development in Yale University.

Director of Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) and Vice- Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Pachauri told The Hindustan Times that the background to the India-US agreement was provided by a non-binding US Senate resolution adopted three years ago. It said that the US would not implement the Kyoto Protocol unless "key" developing countries fulfilled their commitments. India qualified eminently for the label of a "key developing country".

"Having satisfied its interests, the US will now make every effort to ensure that India implements its commitments even though the targets we have set for ourselves are unrealistic." Examples: The target of setting up 10 per cent of new energy plants from renewable energy sources by the year 2012. "Do we have the wherewithal to achieve this target?" Then, the target of achieving a 15 per cent improvement in energy efficiency is the year 2007. "This is totally unrealistic." Irrespective of the demerits inherent in the agreement, however, Dr Pachauri believed, now that it was a fait accompli India should implement it "to the best of our advantage".

This could be achieved by persuading the US Government to help finance the use of "clean and efficient" energy technology, which India was now committed to, under the agreement. That the signing of the agreement was an unwise act was beyond controversy, giving rise to the impression that India had rushed into "cobbling" the pact up essentially to satisfy interests of the United States. As Dr Pachauri spelt it out, India should have been circumspect before agreeing to be party to an agreement, which would be obviously more to the advantage of the US.

GREENHOUSE GAS REPRIEVE Financial Post Canada Aug 31, 2000 Internet: http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.jsp?docId=000831003282&query =%22global+warming%22&resultsShown=20&resultsToRequest=100

by Gregg Easterbrook

BETHESDA, Md. - That North Pole ice has turned liquid may be the least of our problems. New studies have found that all Northern Hemisphere sea ice is melting at a rate of about 15% per decade, and that the oceans as a whole are warming. Moreover, researchers have just identified a rare manufacturing byproduct, SF5 CF3, that represents the most potent greenhouse gas ever detected. The signs of global warming keep accumulating.

It's all so depressing; we must be doomed. Except that in the flood of distressing developments comes a breakthrough. A study led by James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, suggests that our basic understanding of greenhouse gases should be overturned -- and that reforms could be more practical and affordable than widely assumed. Until recently, scientists studying global warming focused nearly all their attention on the deleterious effects of carbon dioxide, which is known to trap atmospheric heat. Every year, cars, trucks and power plants release billions of tons of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. Some combination of advanced nuclear energy and clean renewable fuels may eventually change this; but for the next few decades, at least, continued buildup is inevitable. Even the ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which would commit industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, could not stop carbon dioxide buildup. If the treaty's rules went into effect (no major country has ratified it), rising carbon emissions from the developing world would outweigh any reductions in the West.

Enter Mr. Hansen's team to suggest that focusing on carbon dioxide is a fundamental error. Carbon dioxide is a concern, the study says, but other factors may be equally significant. Black soot from industrial smoke, for example, may turn out to be a leading warming force. (Basically, it makes the atmosphere soak up more of the sun's heat, since black absorbs sunlight.) Compounds like SF5 CF3, may be doing more damage than expected. And most of all, methane, which has far more heat-trapping power than carbon dioxide, may be a much greater greenhouse malefactor than today's scientific models assume.

Here is the beauty of Mr. Hansen's insight. While fossil fuels are an essential, much of the world's methane emissions have no economic utility; they are the unintended byproduct of natural gas exploration, poor landfill management and gas pipeline leaks. These sources could be eliminated with little sacrifice to our lifestyle or economic growth. Likewise, rare chemicals like SF5 CF3, could be controlled without harm to industry.

Black soot emissions have already nearly disappeared from Western industry without any economic harm. Today such soot comes mainly from the developing world, where choking smoke rises from unregulated industry and from unelectrified homes that use fires for cooking and heating.

While regulating smokestack emissions and expanding access to electricity in developing nations would be an expensive undertaking, it would also be a huge boon. Public health as well as the environment would benefit. The World Health Organization says that more children in the developing world die each year from respiratory diseases caused by smoke and soot inhalation than all those who die each year in the United States and the European Union from all causes at all ages.

This breakthrough study of greenhouse gases comes from a guru of the environmental movement. In 1981, Mr. Hansen authored one of the first papers linking rising levels of carbon dioxide to rising global temperatures. Yet much of the environmental movement has greeted the new study with skepticism; many environmentalists worry that any lessening of fea