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Rainforest treaty 'fatally flawed'
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent
A vital safeguard to protect the world's rainforests from being cut down has been dropped from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit, countries which cut down rainforests and convert them to plantations of trees such as oil palms would still be able to classify the result as forest and could receive millions of dollars meant for preserving them. An earlier version of the text ruled out such a conversion but has been deleted, and the EU delegation – headed by Britain – has blocked its reinsertion.

Environmentalists say plantations are in no way a substitute for the lost natural forest in terms of wildlife, water production or, crucially, as a store of the carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere when forests are destroyed and intensifies climate change.

Now they are calling on Britain to take a lead in restoring the anti-plantations safeguard at the final negotiating session in a week's time, saying that otherwise the agreement – which seeks to halve global deforestation rates by 2020 – will be fatally flawed.

"It is a priority for the safeguard to be reinserted, or otherwise we will have a situation where countries are paid for converting their natural forests into palm plantations," said Emily Brickell, the climate and forests officer for the Worldwide Find for Nature (WWF-UK)...
(26 Oct 2009)

Fewer Americans View Global Warming as a Problem
environmental leader
About 35 percent of Americans see global warming as a very serious problem, down from about 44 percent in April of 2008, according to a new consumer survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

About 57 percent of the 1,500 adults surveyed from Sept. 30 through Oct. 4 think there is solid evidence that the Earth is getting warmer, compared to 71 percent who said that in April of 2008.

Only 36 percent attribute global warming to human activity, compared to 47 percent in April 2008.
(22 Oct 2009)

Government launches map to highlight global warming threat
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent
A nightmare in the not-very-distant future: the map below shows the enormous temperature rises which British scientists believe the planet may be experiencing in as a little as 50 years from now if global warming remains unchecked.

Released by the Government today, it illustrates a rise in global average temperature of four degrees Centigrade by 2060, and as such represents a dramatic acceleration of previous forecasts made as recently as 2007 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The point of the map, launched by the Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, his brother Ed, is to show that a four-degree average temperature rise over the whole globe (which takes into account the seas as well as the land surface) equates to very much greater rises over the land alone, especially at higher latitudes – as one goes north or south towards the poles. The darker the colour, the higher the heat increase...
(22 Oct 2009)

Arctic Sediments Show That 20th Century Warming Is Unlike Natural Variation
ScienceDaily
The research reveals that sediments retrieved by University at Buffalo geologists from a remote Arctic lake are unlike those seen during previous warming episodes.

The UB researchers and their international colleagues were able to pinpoint that dramatic changes began occurring in unprecedented ways after the midpoint of the twentieth century.

"The sediments from the mid-20th century were not all that different from previous warming intervals," said Jason P. Briner, PhD, assistant professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. "But after that things really changed. And the change is unprecedented."

The sediments are considered unique because they contain rare paleoclimate information about the past 200,000 years, providing a far longer record than most other sediments in the glaciated portion of the Arctic, which only reveals clues to the past 10,000 years...
(X Sept 2009)

Betting the Farm
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
You've heard the rumors that the Pentagon engineered 9/11. You know about the folks who think Barack Obama wasn't born in America. Last summer you learned every possible synonym for "death panel." But have you heard the one about the cow tax? Unless you're a farmer, probably not. This one goes back to the waning days of the Bush administration, when the EPA, after a long fight from environmentalists, grudgingly released a preliminary notice that outlined how the Clean Air Act could be used to control greenhouse gases. Buried deep in the document, on page 44,377 of that day's Federal Register to be exact, was a comment from the USDA warning that if the proposed rules were applied to the ag sector—which generates CO2 emissions in many ways, from cow burps to soil tillage—"even very small" farms might be affected. The American Farm Bureau Federation leaped into action: DC bureaucrats were proposing a cow tax! It could cost producers as much as $175 for each dairy cow! Farmers freaked out.

The Bush administration, of course, had no intention of regulating greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act, let alone applying any such regs to farms. Neither does the Obama administration, which never viewed the Clean Air Act as anything other than a vague fallback threat to help gain support for its own climate bill. But the lesson from the cow-tax uprising was clear anyway: Don't ever, ever get crosswise with the ag lobby. They will sink you.

So when the Waxman-Markey climate bill was written, power plants were covered. Chemical factories were covered. Refineries were covered. But agriculture? Not covered. At all. Farms can emit greenhouse gases until sea levels have risen enough to give Iowans an ocean view and never pay a dime.

With agriculture fully exempt from emission caps, the farm lobby was happy. Right? Of course not. "It really has taken on a life of its own," Farm Bureau lobbyist Rick Krause told the AP in June—modestly understating his own role in spreading the cow-tax meme in the first place. "This is something that people understand. All that we have to say is that [cows] are the next step with these proposed permit fees. And people are still talking about it."
(25 Oct 2009)

UN chief will pressure senators on climate bill
Jonathan Hiskes, Grist via Bester News
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a press conference in Seattle (Oct. 26, 2009).Jon Hiskes / GristAs the U.S. Senate begins work on a climate and energy bill this week, senators shouldn’t be surprised if they get a phone call from the guy who counts every person on Earth as a member of his constituency. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, said Monday that he plans to contact senators to urge them to pass a bill before December.

“I’m going to engage myself with not only government leaders but with senators of the United States,” Ban said at a press conference in Seattle.

He didn’t elaborate on who, or how, or what strategy he would employ to jumpstart the world’s most deliberative deliberative body. But his pledge illustrates how heavily the American legislative process weighs on the minds of those preparing for the UN climate conference in December.

China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico are all “ready to make some political compromises only if and only when the United States is ready to [pass a bill],” Ban said. “Leadership and initiative from the United States will be crucially important at this time. We have only six weeks to go. We don’t have much time.”

Ban maintained that reaching a treaty in December was still his goal, even as prospects for that diminish. He acknowledged that work toward a treaty would likely continue after the Copenhagen conference concludes, though he added, “I’m sure we will have an agreement there.”...
(26 Oct 2009)
Grist's website seems to be down at the time of posting. You can link to the original article on grist from the Bester News post.