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Hollywood stars join politicians at Bolivia’s ‘cool’ global warming summit

Evo Morales says talks will give a voice to world’s poorest and encourage governments to be ambitious after Copenhagen

Hollywood stars join politicians at Bolivia’s ‘cool’ global warming summit

Evo Morales says talks will give a voice to world’s poorest and encourage governments to be ambitious after Copenhagen

John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 April 2010 17.03 BST

In what is becoming the hippest environment meeting of the year, presidents, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and Hollywood stars will join more than 15,000 indigenous people and thousands of grass roots groups from more than 100 countries to debate climate change in one of the world’s poorest nations.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which opens next week in the small Bolivian town of Cochabamba, will have no direct bearing on the UN climate talks being conducted by 192 governments. But Bolivian President Evo Morales says it will give a voice to the poorest people of the world and encourage governments to be far more ambitious following the failure of the Copenhagen summit.

Morales will use the meeting to announce the world’s largest referendum, with up to 2 billion people being asked to vote on ways out of the climate crisis. Bolivia also wants to create a UN charter of rights and to draft an action plan to set up an international climate justice tribunal.

“The only way to get climate negotiations back on track not just for Bolivia or other countries, but for all of life, biodiversity, our Mother Earth is to put civil society back into the process. The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy,” said Bolivia’s United Nations Ambassador Pablo Solon in Bonn, at the end of the latest UN talks.

“There will be no secret discussions behind closed doors. The debate and the proposals will be led by communities on the frontlines of climate change and by organisations and individuals from civil society dedicated to tackling the climate crisis,” he said.

More than 90 governments are sending delegations to Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city. Also expected to attend are scientists such as James Hansen, James Cameron, the director of Avatar, the linguist Noam Chomsky, author Naomi Klein of Canada, anti-globalisation activist José Bové of France, and actors Danny Glover, Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon are expected.

The meeting will coincide with celebrations of the Cochabamba “water war” of 2000 when a revolt against the privatisation of water in the city acted as an inspiration for social movements across Latin America and indirectly to the election of Morales as Bolivia’s president.

“We hope that this unique format will help shift power back to the people, which is where it needs to be on this critical issue for all humanity. We don’t expect agreement on everything, but at least we can start to discuss openly and sincerely in a way that didn’t happen in Copenhagen,” said Solón.

>>> Please read the full article at the guardian, here

Climate change could exacerbate hay fever

The number of people suffering from hay fever is expected to soar over the next two decades as a result of pollution and climate change.

According to the Hay Fever Health Report, commissioned by Kleenex, half the UK population could have the condition by 2030.

Hay fever is a type of allergic reaction caused by pollen or spores and affects the nose, sinuses, throat and eyes, causing cold-like symptoms.

According to the NHS, around ten million people in England are currently affected by it, but the report suggests this could rise to 32 million 20 years from now.

Professor Jean Emberlin, author of the report, said growth in the UK’s urban population will accentuate the natural rise in hay fever.

“Climate change will also impact upon the timing and severity of pollen seasons making them longer and more severe,” she added.

Hay fever is more likely to occur in those with a family history of allergies, particularly asthma or eczema.

>>> Please read the full article here

Climate change space mission begins

A satellite that will measure the thickness of the ice at the earth’s poles is being sent into orbit today (April 8th).

The Cryosat-2 spacecraft will be launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 14:57 BST.

If it makes it into space, it will send information back to a team of UK-led researchers, allowing them to monitor the melting of sea ice.

They will use the data to determine how global warming is affecting ocean currents, sea levels and the world’s climate.

The first Cryosat craft was launched in 2005 but crashed minutes after take-off, landing in the Arctic Ocean.

Project manager Richard Francis, from the European Space Agency, told the BBC that the launch of the new satellite will be nerve-wracking.

However, he added: “It will be so exhilarating when the spacecraft finally makes it into orbit and we get the first contact with it.”

According to figures from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, ice cover in the Arctic increased this winter during an unusually cold spell, reaching levels not seen since 2001.

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Arctic winter ice recovers slightly despite record year low, scientists say

By Juliette Jowit – The Guardian

The melting Arctic ice cap recovered slightly over the last winter, but scientists warned that it was still one of the worst years on record.

The twice yearly figures published by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre of the winter high and summer low for the Arctic sea ice is seen as a powerful indicator of global warming.

Last night the US organisation released the data for the winter of 2009-10 showing the maximum extent reached on 31 March was 5.89m square miles (15.25m sq km). This was 250,000 square miles (650,000 sq km) below the 1979 to 2000 average for March when measurements are taken for winter sea ice. The rate of decline for March over the 1978 to 2010 period is 2.6% per decade, according to NSIDC data. Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate.

NSIDC said there had been some recovery in the amount of ice that was two years old or more, from last year’s previous record low.

However, the spread of the ice, though higher than in some recent very bad years, was still low compared to past decades. “I think it’s the sixth or seventh lowest maximum out of the previous 32 years,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at NSIDC.

Looking ahead to the other key annual figure – the lowest extent of sea ice at the end of the summer melting season – Meier said this year was also expected to be historically low, depending on temperatures and winds which blow the ice around, and sometimes out of the Arctic Sea into the warmer Atlantic and Pacific currents.

“I would say [it's going to be] low, perhaps one of the lowest, but not approaching 2007,” said Meier, referring to the record lows that year when the Arctic lost an area of ice the size of Alaska in one year. “Given the amount of thin ice we know we’re going to be low, it’s just a matter of how low.”

Last month, Japanese scientists reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that winds rather than climate change had been responsible for around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979. The study did not question global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate “tipping point” that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

Last week the Catlin Arctic Survey leader Ann Daniels wrote for the Guardian about the ice seen by the team of three explorers trekking across the Arctic in “incredibly strong north winds” to measure ocean acidification linked to greenhouse gases. “We’ve also been seeing vast areas of open water and very thin ice — it’s the first time any of us have experienced anything quite like this on such a large scale,” wrote Daniels. “The way the ice is behaving is simply the strangest we have ever seen.”

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Battle over climate science spreads to US schoolrooms

11 March 2010 by Debora MacKenzie

SCHOOLS in three US states – Louisiana, Texas and South Dakota – have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming. The moves appear to be allied to efforts to teach creationism in public schools. Such efforts have in the past been thwarted when courts ruled them unconstitutional, but those advocating the teaching of sound science may find it harder to fight misrepresentations concerning climate change.

Last week, South Dakota’s state legislature adopted a bill which “urges” schools to take a “balanced approach” to teaching about climate change, because the science is “unresolved” and has been “complicated and prejudiced” by “political and philosophical viewpoints”.

When New Scientist asked what these were, the bill’s sponsor, Don Kopp, mentioned claims commonly cited in opposition to the idea of human-induced global warming: for example, that any global warming is due to changes in solar activity. “I am against bankrupting the country to fight warming,” he said, “without being sure it’s true.”

The measure makes no mention of evolution, but its wording resembles bills in other states primarily aimed at teaching alternatives to evolution. Since a court in Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that “intelligent design” had religious origins, so could not be taught in state schools, states have used vaguer language in bills when calling for schools to teach alternatives to established science.

In Michigan in 2005, one such bill also called for students to “critically evaluate… theories of global warming”. It failed, as have all similar bills – except in Louisiana, which in 2008 passed a law requiring “open and objective discussion” of warming, evolution and human cloning. Kentucky is now debating a similar bill.

In March 2009, Texas adopted school standards that both allow creationist claims and say students must “evaluate different views on the existence of global warming”. Texas buys more textbooks than any other state, so publishers often conform to Texan demands, including adding scepticism about warming.

Bundling warming with evolution in calls for “academic freedom” may make it harder to challenge these laws. Steve Newton of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, observes that the US constitution restricts the teaching of religious ideas in state schools, but not the teaching of bad science. A study last year found that evangelical Christians, who account for most creationists, are up to three times as likely as other Americans to deny that warming has human origins.

Moves against climate science and in favour of creationism are linked in other ways too: some see warming, like evolution, as the product of a hostile scientific establishment. When the US Chamber of Commerce, which opposes stringent cuts in greenhouse emissions, called for a public hearing on climate science last August, it called it “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century”, after the 1925 Tennessee trial about teaching evolution.

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Whaling worsens carbon release, scientists warn

By Victoria Gill

A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes – or a large forest’s worth – of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say. Whales store carbon within their huge bodies and when they are killed, much of this carbon can be released. US scientists revealed their estimate of carbon released by whaling at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, US. Dr Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine described whales as the “forests of the ocean”.

Dr Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute calculated the annual carbon-storing capacity of whales as they grew. “Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon,” he said. “And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that’s removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere.” He pointed out that, particularly in the early days of whaling, the animals were a source of lamp oil, which was burned, releasing the carbon directly into the air.

“And this marine system is unique because when whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean. “If they die where it’s deep enough, it will be [stored] out of the atmosphere perhaps for hundreds of years.”

In their initial calculations, the team worked out that 100 years of whaling had released an amount of carbon equivalent to burning 130,000 sq km of temperate forests, or to driving 128,000 Humvees continuously for 100 years. Dr Pershing stressed that this was still a relatively tiny amount when compared to the billions of tonnes produced by human activity every year.

When whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean.
Dr Andrew Pershing, University of Maine. But he said that whales played an important role in storing and transporting carbon in the marine ecosystem. Simply leaving large groups of whales to grow, he said, could “sequester” the greenhouse gas, in amounts that were comparable to some of the reforestation schemes that earn and sell carbon credits.

He suggested that a similar system of carbon credits could be applied to whales in order to protect and rebuild their stocks. Other scientists said that he had raised an exciting and interesting problem.

Dr Pershing said: “These are huge and they are top predators, so unless they’re fished they would be likely to take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean [when they die].”

Read the full article at BBC News