The recent tragic Asian Tsunami is indicative of the types of problems that global warming and other global ecological changes can and will exacerbate. There is no doubt that higher sea levels would contribute to greater damage from such a wave. In addition there are other contributions made by poor enviromental management: destruction of corals, overpopulation (particularly along coastlines) and mangrove destruction all diminished natural resilience to such disasters. Unfortunately, this tidal wave's aftermath is indicative of ecological collapse on a planetary scale.

Tsunami threatens survival of low-lying Maldives islands

The tidal waves that swept across the Indian Ocean did more than take a heavy toll of lives and property in the Maldives _ it confronted the tiny island nation with a threat to its survival. The archipelago of 1,190 low-lying coral islands, dotted across hundreds of kilometers (miles) of ocean, has for years begged bigger, more powerful nations for action against global warming, fearing higher sea levels could literally make much of its territory disappear.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (1) | More on sea level rise

Climate skeptics are not only wrong, they are dangerous. As oil and coal industry patsies, they are willing to lie for money, at the expense of our children's and Earth's future. Global citizenry must get on with the task of living within the Earth's means, including ending the habit of treating the atmosphere as a waste dump. Creation, and our continued being, depends upon it.

Undeniable Global Warming (washingtonpost.com)

Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.

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Who would have thought that President Bush could be even more isolated on climate change policy? Now even Saudia Arabia and Australia have distanced themselves from his regressive and dangerous allegiance to profligate energy use and climate crisis inaction. America will come around to doing the right thing; making major investments in, and transitioning to, renewable energy while cutting emissions drastically. The only questions are when, will it be in time, and will Mr. Bush be a hero or villian in this regard? Indeed, enough is enough. This intransigent, obstinate man must be encouraged to make a dramatic break with his past and lead on climate change.

Bush left in the cold by climate allies

George Bush's two closest allies in his attempt to sabotage international action to combat global warning last week dramatically distanced themselves from him.
Saudi Arabia announced that it had approved the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty on climate change which President Bush has been trying to kill. And Australia, while still rejecting it, parted company from the United States by saying that it was prepared to negotiate its successor.

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Coal (and of course oil) will be the death of the Planet. There is no such things as clean coal - you can not use it without emitting carbon dioxide. If all the coal in the world gets burned the climate will collapse.

New coal plants bury 'Kyoto' | csmonitor.com

The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce...

By 2012, the plants in three key countries - China, India, and the United States - are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a Monitor analysis of power-plant construction data. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.

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The following editorial from the Boulder Daily Camera identifies a hallmark of Bush administration, a predilection to not only set "the world's agenda; (but) it also stifles dissenting views". Whenever a government takes it upon themselves to stifle dissent, it is scary and dangerous. But to do so on Climate Change - something that threatens all nations with annihilation, and is well documented scientifically - is callous, reckless and self-serving.

Global Storming: Having Nixed Kyoto, Bush Stifles Discussion

President Bush rejected an international treaty outlining limits on greenhouse gases, leaving other industrialized nations to address the looming problem without the help of the United States, the world's fattest gas hog. But somehow, that wasn't enough. Not only does the president refuse to help other nations address what they — and the emerging scientific consensus — see as a dire worldwide threat. Bush also wants to keep them from taking action as mild as getting together and issuing a report.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0) | More on Bush Kyoto

UNEP has announced a new climate change news tracking site called ClimateWire.org, which they describe as "the world's first daily updated, multi-sectoral and international news service specifically focussing on the issue of climate change." Wow - it is almost as if ClimateArk's six years of providing news tracking services - and its tens of millions of users - do not exist. Why would UNEP feel the need to duplicate services that other conservation interests have been providing on the web for many, many years? And at great personal expense and effort. Another example of big conservation interests spending lots of money putting small grassroots conservation operators, who are more capable and cost effective, at a disadvantage. This said - our site is way better than theirs, and will remain that way.

ClimateWire: An Overview

ClimateWire.org is the world's first daily updated, multi-sectoral and international news service specifically focussing on the issue of climate change.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (1) | More on climate news

How can you fund a few hundred fossil fuel projects (and try to open the Congo and PNG's rainforests to commercial logging), while claiming the mantle of the World's Green financier? You can not. The World Bank is not fulfilling the role of lender for environmental sustainability (i.e. the GEF) adequately and should not be trusted as the intermediary for financing conservation and development. They have been unable to reconcile the role of global banker for economic growth with global conservation financier.

Climate Change: Activists Question World Bank's Commitment to Sustainable Development

While the World Bank says it encourages "environmentally responsible" economic growth in developing countries, activists wonder why it has supported 332 fossil fuel projects in the past 12 years.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (2) | More on world bank sustainable development

I am incredulous regarding the news item linked below, which informs us that Kyoto will "damage" Asia. They speak of these country's economies as if they were completely independent from regional ecosystems including climatic patterns. There will be NO economy if ecosystems collapse. This is the fundamental flaw of the growth machine mentality that threatens global ecological sustainability and a collapse of both ecosystems and economies.

Kyoto Protocol could damage Asia: report

The fastest growing economies in the world would be damaged if they adopted Kyoto Protocol targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report by the Australian Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Study Centre. The report found East Asia was heavily dependent on power for development and strategies to relieve poverty. It said if those economies were required to cut emissions in the manner mandated for industrialised economies under the Kyoto Protocol their economic growth strategies would be jeopardised.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0) | More on kyoto economic costs

Perhaps, just perhaps, President Bush is the leader whose legacy will be to have begun to address climate change in an adequate and significant fashion. It will either be this, or a legacy of having solidified trends that will ultimately destroy the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth itself. Can the Texas oil man lead on climate? We shall see.

If Bush Really Wants a Legacy

As was the case when President Nixon went to China and President Reagan made overtures to the Soviet Union, when modern U.S. presidents have acted boldly — and often against expectations — they have changed the world. We can only hope that Bush has the same lofty ambition.

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China embracing meaningful and agressive energy conservation measures is good news indeed as clearly the World can not provide enough energy, nor absorb the wastes from, an expansion of Western energy use patterns. Now time for the U.S. to abandon their drill to the ends of the Earth energy policy and get serious about energy conservation as well.

Planet Ark : Power-Starved China Inks Energy Conservation Plan

China, grappling with its worst energy crunch in two decades, aims to save millions of tonnes of coal and oil a year by putting "conservation first" and making industry more efficient, the government has said.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0) | More on China energy conservation

I am deeply ashamed that my country, should international efforts to address climate change prove to be inadequate, will go down in history as the empire that killed the Earth and civilization. Shame on the United States.

U.S. Firmly Anti-Kyoto as U.N. Climate Talks Start

The United States showed no signs of budging in its opposition to the Kyoto protocol Monday as U.N. climate change talks began, a month after President Bush's reelection and Russia's ratification of the agreement. The U.S. government said it had "chosen a different path" from Kyoto, but vowed to work against global warming by slowing greenhouse gas emissions, investing in climate science and technology and cooperating internationally.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (1) | More on U.S. Kyoto climate

The life of a climate skeptic just keeps on getting harder and harder. There is tremendous scientific consensus that climate is warming at least partially due to human emissions. Hack scientists paid by the fossil fuel industry no longer have a scientific leg to stand on, and are being shown to be industry patsies.

Climate: The tropospheric data do conform

Global warming skeptics for some time have been using as a scientific linchpin data that suggest temperatures in the lower atmosphere are rising more slowly than those at the surface... For warming skeptics, however, the tropospheric data are the climate science World Series. They meet every challenge to the data with a furious counterassault, but the latest such challenge puts the skeptics down three games to one.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry | Permalink | Comments (0) | More on climate skeptics

What do you do when your industry and the government you control is found to be changing the climate, threatening the existence of humanity and the Earth? Well first you fight to discredit the overwhelming science that shows your culpability. And then as this obstruction starts yielding diminishing returns, you indicate it is too late to do anything anyway. So you treacherously change course, saying now we simply must learn to adapt to changing climate.

This is not to suggest that adaptation will not be neccessary and is unimportant, but with the full extent of climate change yet unclear, it is morally wrong if not evil to not work concurrently to reduce emissions, increase efficiency, and transition to renewable energy resources. And even worse to turn your back on international accords you once brokered.

The oil and coal industries and their U.S. government vassals are guilty of crimes against all of humanity. For their short term economic and politic profiteering, they are willing to risk destroying the global atmopshere. These are really bad people.

VOA News - US Plans to Emphasize Climate Change Adaptation at Upcoming Conference

U.S. climate experts are preparing for a United Nations conference on global climate change, set to begin Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina... Mr. Watson told reporters that the United States is eager to discuss adaptation. Adaptation measures would include helping countries develop plans for coastal management, water resources and agriculture, in order to adjust to the impact of climate change.

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Exciting new discoveries bolster the Gaia hypothesis'claims that living organisms continually modify the Earth to keep it fit for life. Life does not merely exist, but modifies the Planet to suit its needs. The Earth - Gaia - is alive, despite the best efforts of humanity to ignore this fact and kill her.

FT.com - Gaia theory's new signs of life

A few weeks ago, the journal Nature carried the results of a study that pointed to a hitherto unsuspected link between the global climate and plankton. The researchers found that the tiny ocean-going organisms release vast quantities of organic material that floats up into the air and seeds the formation of clouds. This, in turn, affects the amount of sunlight bounced back into space - and the surface temperature of the Earth. How the "plankton effect" might influence the debate on global warming is unclear; the effect has yet to be included in any of the supercomputer models used to predict the Earth's climate. However, it is becoming hard to dismiss the view that life does not merely exist on the planet but actively modifies it to suit itself.

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A new study finds that global warming doubles the chance of fatal heat waves. We are way past the point where there is any doubt regarding climate change being caused by humans, and that there will be very serious impacts of these changes. To state otherwise is criminally negligent.

MSNBC - Scientists tie heat waves to greenhouse gases

Human emissions of fossil fuels have raised the risk of more like the one last year that gave Europe what was probably its hottest summer since 1500, scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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Has there ever been a more self-absorbed, malevolent and dangerous society than the United States? Despite living better than any society in history (and perhaps because of this), their current leadership refuses to address climate change. This has stymied the action of the rest of the international community that bear the costs but not the benefits of profligate energy use. Shame on the U.S.

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Kyoto Re-Think Needed after U.S. Unmoved - Blair

The international community must find “a different way forward” to tackle climate change because the US will not change its mind over the Kyoto protocol, Tony Blair said today.

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