An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.
Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action.
Details of Alec's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.
ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners by Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, Dec 4, 2013
The spring of 2013 has been Australia's warmest on record. Mean temperatures for the season were 1.57C above the 1961-1990 average, surpassing the previous record of 1.43C (set in 2006) by 0.14C. Daytime maximum temperatures were also the highest on record, coming in 2.07C above average and 0.24C above the previous record (also set in 2006), while overnight minimum temperatures were the fourth-warmest on record.
Australia's spring was the warmest on record, climate records show by Blair Trewin for the Conversation, part of the Guardian Environment Network, The Guardian, Dec 3, 2013
Abrupt climate change is not only imminent, it's already here. The rapid dwindling of summer Arctic sea ice has outpaced all scientific projections, which will have impacts on everything from atmospheric circulation to global shipping. And plants, animals and other species are already struggling to keep up with rapid climate shifts, increasing the risk of mass extinction that would rival the end of the dinosaurs. So warns a new report from the U.S. National Research Council.
That's exactly why longtime climate scientist James Hansen and a panoply of scientists and economists are urging in another new paper that current efforts to restrain global warming are woefully inadequate. In particular, global negotiations to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius risk "wrecking the planet," in the words of lead author Hansen, recently retired head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a researcher at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
Dangerous Global Warming Closer Than You Think, Climate Scientists Say by David Biello, Scientific American, Dec 4, 2013
Continued global warming poses a risk of rapid, drastic changes in some human and natural systems, a scientific panel warned Tuesday, citing the possible collapse of polar sea ice, the potential for a mass extinction of plant and animal life and the threat of immense dead zones in the ocean.
At the same time, some worst-case fears about climate change that have entered the popular imagination can be ruled out as unlikely, at least over the next century, the panel found. These include a sudden belch of methane from the ocean or the Arctic that would fry the planet, as well as a shutdown of the heat circulation in the Atlantic Ocean that would chill nearby land areas — the fear on which the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow” was loosely based.
In a report released Tuesday, the panel appointed by the National Research Council called for the creation of an early warning system to alert society well in advance to changes capable of producing chaos. Nasty climate surprises have occurred already, and more seem inevitable, perhaps within decades, panel members warned. But, they said, little has been done to prepare.
Panel Says Global Warming Carries Risk of Deep Changes by Justin Gillis, New York Times, Dec 3, 2013
Canada’s forest products industry is booming but faces a long-term threat from climate change, according to a new federal report tabled in the House of Commons.
The industry, while enjoying thriving and growing markets in Asia and a rebound in U.S. housing construction, could see its long-term supplies jeopardized, according to 2013 edition of Natural Resources Canada’s annual report, The State of Canada’s Forests.
“Canada’s forests are undergoing significant changes as a result of a changing climate, including more frequent fire, drought, and disease and insect attacks,” the report states.
Report warns global warming could trim tree supply for lumber industry by Peter O'Neil, The Vancouver Sun, Dec 5, 2013
Unless significant, steady reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels begin extremely soon, the Earth might be much closer to potentially catastrophic warming than is widely believed. So argues climatologist James Hansen of the Columbia University Earth Institute and an international team of colleagues in a new analysis published today in the journal PLOS One. Their paperfurther underscores other recent studies showing that even small delays in shrinking the industrial output of carbon dioxide (CO2) could steeply complicate not only attempts to temper climate change but also any attempts by future generations to adapt to it.
Safe Limit for Global Warming Is Lowered Dramatically by Experts by John Rennie, Scientific American, Dec 3, 2013
Independent videographer Peter Sinclair, a regular contributor to The Yale Forum, in this month’s post explores the views of several leading scientists on prospects for sea-level rise in coming years.
“We still are potentially underestimating the instability of the ice sheets,” Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam University in Germany cautions.
Scientists’ Concerns Challenge Conservative Sea-level Rise Projections, The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media, Dec 3, 2013
Watching the colossal destruction of Typhoon Haiyan over the past month, Columbia University Professor Graciela Chichilnisky knows one thing for sure: climate change will likely result in more of these massive storms, threatening the very existence of humanity.
As one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change and creator of the carbon market enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol emissions treaty, Chichilnisky also knows this is nothing new.
The Carbon Warrior by Anna Shen, Inter Press Service (IPS), Dec 1, 2013
As the international community fleshes out a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be unveiled next year, civil society activists and U.N. officials agree their success will hinge on policies that address the nexus of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is making a strong push for a politically realistic set of SDGs, points out the latest grim statistics: more than one billion people are still living in extreme poverty and over 840 million are perilously hanging on the edge of starvation and hunger.
Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of the U.S.-based NGO Food Tank, told IPS, “The urgency of finding ways to alleviate hunger, obesity, and poverty in the world is more important than ever before.”
U.N.’s Post-2015 Agenda Needs a Triple Play by Thalif Deen, International Press Service (IPS), Dec 5, 2013
The Arctic Ocean has has long been known as a carbon sink, but a new study suggests that while the frigid waters do store large quantities of carbon, parts of the ocean also emit atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Researchers from MIT constructed a model to simulate the effect of sea ice loss in the Arctic, finding that as the region loses its ice, it is becoming more of a carbon sink, taking on about one additional megaton of carbon each year between 1996 and 2007. But while the Arctic is taking on more carbon, the researchers found, paradoxically, the regions where the water is warmest are actually able to store less carbon and are instead emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
While the Arctic region as a whole remains a large carbon sink, the realization that parts of the Arctic are carbon emitters paints a more complex picture of how the region is responding to global warming.
Warm Arctic Waters Emit Carbon, Though Region is Carbon Sink Overall by James A. Foley, Nature Wrold News, Dec 04, 2013
U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered federal agencies to get at least 20 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2020, double the current rate, as the White House rolled out the latest phase of its climate change action plan.
Obama signed a memorandum setting the 20 percent target as an extension of an executive order he issued in 2009 that called on the federal government to be a leader in clean energy and energy efficiency.
The administration's Climate Action Plan is a multi-agency approach to regulate and reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions with measures that do not require congressional approval.
White House directs U.S. agencies to double renewable energy use by 2020, Reuters, Dec 5, 2013
Just before Thanksgiving, many conservatives seized on a new study examining the climate views of members of the American Meteorological Society. It's no secret that there's a schism between climate scientists and weather forecasters over climate change, and the study captured this, to skeptics' delight. The fact that a sizable percentage of AMS members disagree with mainstream climate science represented "the latest in a long line of evidence indicating the often asserted global warming consensus does not exist," according to Forbes blogger and Heartland Institute fellow James Taylor.
Yet a closer look at the study—conducted by researchers at George Mason University, Yale, and the AMS itself—shows that its main punch line is quite different. The research was chiefly focused on trying to understand why the meteorological community as a whole (the AMS includes climate scientists, academic meteorologists, forecast meteorologists, and general atmospheric scientists, among others) features such disparate views on global warming. And one of its principal findings is that AMS members who publish less peer-reviewed climate research, or less peer-reviewed research in general, are more likely to be climate skeptics.
Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming, Blue Marble, Mother Jones, Dec 4, 2013
Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 7 December, 2013
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