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		News Archive     27/07/2008 07:00 AM United States: Change in the land of frozen ground, fish and hardy trees Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Alaska is changing, and not just in the booming suburbs or shrinking villages, but in the trees on the hillsides, the fish in the oceans, and the climate itself – the very things that make Alaska what it is. The spruce and birch of the boreal forest are struggling with warm summers, and shrubs are moving into the tundra. Grizzly bear, moose, and king salmon are showing up in places they haven't been seen before, and subtropical fish are taking fishermen's bait in the Gulf of ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Few homes using renewable energy Associated Press: Even as more Americans look to shrink their carbon footprints, relatively few have switched to providers of electricity generated by wind, water and sun. Green power programs allow consumers to purchase renewable energy, usually at a premium, without having to go through the far greater expense of erecting a windmill or installing a solar panel. The programs are widely available, yet there are estimates that fewer than 1 percent of residential consumers nationwide receive their ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Ice Free New York Times: Greenland's ice sheet represents one of global warming's most disturbing threats. The vast expanses of glaciers – massed, on average, 1.6 miles deep – contain enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 23 feet. Should they melt or otherwise slip into the ocean, they would flood coastal capitals, submerge tropical islands and generally redraw the world's atlases. The infusion of fresh water could slow or shut down the ocean's currents, plunging Europe into bitter winter. Yet for the ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling Washington Post: Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Market meltdown? Carbon trading is just warming up Independent: Is the carbon market a success or not? If you were to look at the share prices of companies involved in generating carbon credits, you would conclude that this was a business to steer clear of. Analysts New Energy Finance reported in May that shares in the carbon credit groups EcoSecurities, Camco International and Trading Emissions had plummeted 75 per cent, 50 per cent and 20 per cent respectively from their highs last year, while Agcert, once a leader in Clean Development Mechanism ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Scientists fear climate change tipping points Garden Island: A year ago James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, published a study in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics concluding that just 10 more years of business as usual emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas will make disastrous global results all but impossible to avoid. The study described various climatic possibilities called tipping points. These tipping points, also called nonlinear events, both accelerate climate change and are ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM UK scientists hit out at new coal station plans Observer: British scientists have called on the government to deploy speedily a new technology which will almost completely eliminate carbon emissions from power stations. In a letter published in The Observer today, they say failure to capture emissions from dirty coal plants planned for Britain will have catastrophic environmental consequences. In addition, the group - which includes scientists from Imperial College London and Cambridge, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Bristol and Nottingham ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Unsettled tax credits stymie renewable laws Denver Post: The renewable-energy industry is the darling of Congress, with plenty of suitors and pledges of devotion. But there's trouble getting a long-term commitment. Tax credits that renewable companies say they rely upon expire at year's end, and Congress has failed to pass an extension despite repeated votes. Another effort is expected this week. But it's unclear whether lawmakers can get past partisan differences and agree on legislation. "No growing industry is ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM India: 'Treat climate change tech as public' Times of India: Shyam Saran, PM's special envoy on climate change as well as his key nuclear deal negotiator, back from convincing Ireland to support India's bid at the Nuclear Supply Group, on Saturday said India wants climate change technologies to be treated as public and common goods. Speaking in the capital, Saran said that India was keen to see technologies that could make substantial impact in reducing climate change should be dealt with in the same manner as HIV drugs. Under the ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Actions speak louder than a lot of government hot air Observer: There was a cleverly staged moment during last week's BBC eco-drama Burn Up, when oil company workers started poking holes in the icy Canadian tundra. To their consternation, flames of burning methane promptly whooshed out of the melting permafrost. It was a striking moment of television that demonstrated, vividly, how our warming world might soon change in uncontrollable ways. Melt our ice-caps and you release forces you cannot control: in this case, permafrost methane that would ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Baseball Team Clashes With Environmentalists Over Oil Company Advertising New York Times: When the Washington Nationals' season opened in March, the team unveiled a stadium any environmentalist could love – the country's first certified green major professional sports stadium, with energy-conserving lights and water-conserving plumbing. Now, the team is the focus of protests from environmentalists who say their issue is not with the stadium, but with the Nationals' advertising relationship with the oil giant ExxonMobil. The company's logo appears prominently on the ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Combating global warming could cost upto $3 trillion: Expert Press Trust of India: The combating of global warming could cost upto a whopping USD three trillion. However, given that the GDP of the world today is over USD 65 trillion , the amount is affordable, a top expert on global warming has said. Shailesh Haribhakti, Chairman of industry body Indian Merchant Chambers' committee on 'Combating global warming' in a note said there are various estimates made on what might be the cost of achieving the 2050 target of 450 parts per million of CO2. These estimates ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM GlobalWarmingSolution.Org: Aiming for the big 3-5-0 Missoulian: 350. Three. Five. Oh. That's an important number for a Missoula nonprofit called GlobalWarmingSolution.Org. In fact, it's a figure the group's members hope will be shouted at Washington, D.C., and here's why. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is somewhere around 385 parts per million - and climbing like the thermostat. According to the membership network, it needs to be pushed down to 350 ppm at the most. That's low compared with the 450 ppm ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM United States: Governor vetoes climate change curriculum San Jose Mercury News: California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools' curriculum. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject. In January, the state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, by a 26-13 vote. Only two Republicans supported the ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Invest in water for farming, or the world will go hungry Daily Monitor: A long list of factors have been blamed for the global food crisis which along with the energy crisis has hit developing countries, and the poor in particular, hardest. Prices of staple foods have risen by up to 100 per cent. A growing population, changes in trade patterns, urbanisation, dietary changes, biofuel production, climate change and regional droughts are all responsible, and commentators point to a classic pattern of price increases caused by high demand and low ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Legendary oilman Pickens sees wind as way out of energy bind Palm Beach Post: Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is pushing an energy plan he calls vital to America's security - and its centerpiece is not drilling for more oil. "We've got $700 billion going out of the country every year" to pay foreign oil suppliers, Pickens said in an interview. "We can't afford to do that. ... The security of the country is in grave danger." The Pickens plan 1. Private industry funds the installation of thousands of wind turbines in the U.S. ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Liquid Assets: Why water is become a commodity Newsday: Battles over water rights for survival and economic growth were dramatically depicted in the films "Chinatown" about Los Angeles and "The Milagro Beanfield War" about the American Southwest. The present-day story unfolding over water's future may offer opportunities for investors able to envision it as a valuable commodity that benefits companies involved in its sale, distribution, purification and infrastructure. Corporate raider and oilman T. Boone Pickens ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Living 'off the grid' is an achievable goal Online Athens: This week, I visited a family so concerned about the environment that it lives a radically different life than most Americans. This family's lifestyle doesn't look much different. The family has a wife, a husband and a 10-year-old boy who loves to ride his bike and play in his treehouse. They live in a beautiful home amid a lovely garden. Like most people in this country, this family has a washing machine and a mixer, a chest freezer and a DVD player. The big difference between ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM More federal coal eyed by energy companies Associated Press: Energy companies are eyeing federal coal in North Dakota, possibly for gasification or coal-to-liquid plants over the next two decades. The Bureau of Land Management is holding meetings this week in Bismarck, Beulah and Dickinson to gather comments about the future management of the federal coal in the state. "We're asking coal companies to give us a 20-year look at their crystal ball," said John Hartley, a BLM project manager in Dickinson. "We're hopeful to get ... read more 27/07/2008 07:00 AM Oil May Become GOP's 2008 Issue Washington Post: Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done something that few Republicans thought possible just a few months ago: given them hope. United behind a renewed push for offshore oil drilling, Republican members of Congress and the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, think they have found their best political issue of the 2008 campaign. McCain strategists and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill say the issue, which polls suggest Americans favor by healthy margins, lets ... read more News Archive     Back to Homepage
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