ExxonMobil paid to "erase" Global Warming

[Swiss Miss]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

Group: ExxonMobil Paid to Mislead Public

WASHINGTON (AP) -- ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."

Many scientists say carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice and alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

ExxonMobil called the scientists' report Wednesday "yet another attempt to smear our name and confuse the discussion of the serious issue of CO2 emissions and global climate change."

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for "public information and policy research" distributed to more than 140 think tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed any link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or emphasizing only selected facts.
Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

The company said its financial support doesn't mean control over any group's views.

"We find some of them persuasive and enlightening, and some not," ExxonMobil spokesman Dave Gardner said. "But there is value in the debate they prompt if it can lead to better informed and more optimal public policy decisions."

He said the company believes that despite many scientific uncertainties, the risk that greenhouse gas emissions may have serious environmental effects justifies taking action to limit them.

Just wait til Al Gore gets a hold of them!

[DansDarkSide]

I didn't reall beleive in all of the global warming hype untill just about a week ago. I live in Buffalo and usually at this time in the year we have already gone through a blizzard and so far I doubt we even had 3" of snow. It just started to get into the 20s last week.

Exxon needs to listen to the scientific community and quit jackin' around...

'Now or never' for climate action
Sunday, 18 February 2007, EU nations must back plans to cut emissions by 30% by 2020 or risk jeopardising future global climate efforts, ministers warn.

The call for unity among the 27-nation bloc was made by the UK Environment Secretary, David Miliband, and his Spanish and Slovenian counterparts. Failure to act would threaten efforts to get nations such as the US and China to agree to cap emissions, they said. EU environment ministers will discuss the proposals at a meeting on Tuesday.

In an article on the BBC News website, the ministers wrote: "We all know that the current Kyoto deal does not go far enough. "If we are going to avoid the dangerous impacts of climate change... then the EU must stand up and lead the debate on committing to further action."

Divided opinions

They called for all members to endorse the proposals outlined by the European Commission in its strategic energy review. "The window of opportunity is closing rapidly and a strong EU voice is necessary" - David Miliband, Cristina Narbona and Janez Podobnik

More http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/6369171.stm

[Big Red 11]

Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.

Amazing how large companies are willing to sacrifice the environment for some extra cash, as if the environment is some abstract concept in a land far, far away, that in no way affects them.

[RadioactiveMan]

Originally Posted by Big Red 11

Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.

With China now starting to get concerned about it, maybe climate change will finally be taken seriously...

China will continue to get warmer in the 21st century
February 20, 2007 - Chinese meteorologists warned that in the 21st century China will become increasingly warmer, with increased precipitation in some parts of the country.

A recent report from the China Meteorological Administration said that in the past 50 years, China's surface temperature rose 0.22 degrees Celsius for every 10 years on average, higher than the increases in global and Northern Hemisphere temperatures. Compared with the average temperature during the 30 years between 1961 and 1990, China's annual average temperature will possibly rise 1.3-2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020, 1.5-2.8 degrees by 2030, 2.3-3.3 degrees by 2050, and 3.9-6.0 degrees by 2100.

The report also said that the country's precipitation will also be on a rising trend. By 2020, the national average annual precipitation will increase two to three percent, by 2050, five to seven percent, and by 2100, 11-17 percent. The sea level will continue to rise, by 2050 it will rise 12-50 centimeters. In the coming 100 years, extreme weather events will possibly increase; drought areas will expand and desertification will be more serious; glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Tianshan Mountains will recede at accelerating speed and some small glaciers will disappear.

By 2050, the area of glaciers in China's northwest will shrink by 27 percent, the report warned. In the coming four to five years, chances of extremely strong rainfall in east China will be four to six times that of the 1980s and 1990s, and there will be more frequent and stronger typhoons in coastal areas, the report said.

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[DansDarkSide]

Originally Posted by Big Red 11

Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.

[IMG]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r135/TroyBurton/women_evil.jpg
LOL[/IMG]

Check out the amazing pic of Lake Mead which has lost 50% of its reservoir...

Scientists warn global warming will intensify Southwest droughts
2/21/2007: The fast-growing states of the arid Southwest must plan for more severe droughts and make difficult water management choices — choices made even tougher by global warming, says a new scientific assessment of the Colorado River Basin.

The report Wednesday by a National Research Council committee says agriculture, which comprises 80% of the West's water use, is the likeliest target for shifting use to urban needs in the fastest-growing region in the USA. But it cautions that "the availability of agricultural water is finite." It adds that rising population and water demands "will inevitably result in increasingly costly, controversial and unavoidable trade-off choices" in managing a shrinking resource.

Some of the Colorado's waters irrigate crops in California, the nation's biggest farm producer. The 159-page report says climate reconstructions — based on prehistoric tree-ring data and modern computer models — suggest extended droughts were common in the past and will be even longer, more severe and more numerous in the future because of rising temperatures. "The preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that warmer future temperatures will reduce future Colorado River streamflow and water supplies," it says.

The river supplies parts of seven states, including the most populous, California, and the fastest-growing, Nevada. Nevada's population rose 66% in the 1990s, and water consumption in greater Las Vegas doubled from 1985 to 2000. Arizona's population grew 40% and Colorado's 30% in the '90s. Utah and New Mexico were close behind. Only Wyoming had less than double-digit growth that decade.

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[waltky]

Vermont judge gives states more authority to regulate emissions...

A win on auto emissions
Sep 13, 2007 - Oregon and 14 other states seeking to enforce stricter standards for reducing motor vehicle emissions to combat global warming won a major victory Wednesday in a federal district court in Vermont.

Judge William K. Sessions III ruled that the states can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and rejected the auto industry's claims that federal law pre-empts state regulations and, more preposterously, that the new standards are technologically impossible to meet. The ruling comes in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority - and responsibility - to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases in auto emissions.

The rulings should clear the way for the EPA to immediately grant California's request for a waiver to let it set its own tailpipe rules. Once that waiver is granted, 14 other states, including Oregon, would be free to follow California's lead in setting stricter standards. That's what the EPAshoulddo - but Americans shouldn't hold their breath waiting for the agency to act. The Bush administration has so far shown no signs of cooperating with individual states - or Congress, for that matter - in restricting greenhouse emissions. Earlier this year, President Bush ordered federal agencies to develop proposals for regulating vehicle emissions by the time he leaves office in January 2009 - a disturbingly clear indication that The Denier intends to run out the clock and leave the problem of global warming to his successor.

In the Vermont case, automakers whiffed on every one of their arguments, starting with their insistence that federal law pre-empts states from setting their own emissions standards. The judge said the industry failed to prove that the California standards were "sufficiently draconian they essentially usurp (the National Highway Traffic Administration's) prerogative to set fuel-economy standards." Automakers, who love to boast of their endless capacity for innovation, also argued that they are incapable of developing the technologies necessary to meet the tougher emissions standards. "History suggests that the ingenuity of the industry, once put in gear, responds admirably to most technological challenges," the judge wrote.

The industry also failed to convince the court that allowing different sets of emissions standards would make product planning impossible. That, of course, presumes that automakers, confronted with the challenge of providing 44 percent of the nation's population with cars that meet the new standards, would foolishly refuse to retool their thinking and factories to reflect 21st Century realities. In the wake of Wednesday's ruling, the EPA should immediately grant California's waiver request. If the Bush administration refuses to lead the way on global warming, then it must stop erecting roadblocks and let the states proceed on their own.

Source

[waltky]

Increased CO2 output is the culprit...

Study: Warming is stronger, happening sooner
Oct 22, 2007 - Higher C02 emissions from fossil fuels, and weaker Earth, cited as reasons

Just a days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that warming signals are stronger, and happening sooner than expected, due to increased human emissions of carbon dioxide and an Earth less able to absorb them. Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers reported in Tuesday’s edition of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the ability of land and oceans to absorb CO2 were listed as causes of the increase. The changes “characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing,” the researchers wrote. “The new twist here is the demonstration that weakening land and ocean sinks are contributing to the accelerating growth of atmospheric CO2,” said co-author Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University.

The researchers said that human-induced warming had caused changes in wind patterns over the Southern Ocean that brought carbon-rich water toward the surface, reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb excess CO2 from the atmosphere. On land, where plant growth is the major mechanism for soaking up CO2, droughts have curbed that ability, they stated.

Ocean sink 'really shocking'

See also:

At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate
Monday, October 22, 2007; For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it's not fiction.

The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away. The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low; this summer the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska. Where explorer Robert Peary just 102 years ago saw "a great white disk stretching away apparently infinitely" from Ellesmere Island, there is often nothing now but open water. Glaciers race into the sea from the island of Greenland, beginning an inevitable rise in the oceans. Animals are on the move. Polar bears, kings of the Arctic, now search for ice on which to hunt and bear young. Seals, walrus and fish adapted to the cold are retreating north. New species -- salmon, crabs, even crows -- are coming from the south. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are seeing their houses sink into once-frozen mud, and their hunting trails on the ice are pocked with sinkholes.

"It affects everyone," said Carin Ashjian, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientist who spent early September with native Inupiats in Barrow, the northernmost town of Alaska. "The only ice I saw this year was in my cup at the cafeteria." At the South Pole, ancient ice shelves have abruptly crumbled. The air over the western Antarctic peninsula has warmed by nearly 6 degrees since 1950. The sea there is heating as well, further melting edges of the ice cap. Green grass and beech trees are taking root on the ice fringes. Antarctica's signature Adelie penguins are moving inland, seeking the cold of their ancestors, replaced by chinstrap and Gentoo penguins, which prefer open water. Krill, the massive smorgasbord for a food chain reaching to the whales, are disappearing from traditional spawning grounds.

"We've seen quite big changes in the living environment," John King, a lead researcher for the British Antarctic Survey, said from Cambridge, England. The scenario is not new. What is most alarming to the scientists is the speed at which it is unfolding. A decade ago, melting at the poles was predicted to play out over 100 years. Instead, it is happening on a scale scientists describe as overnight. When the Larsen B, an Antarctic ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, collapsed in 2002, "it was a big glaring clue that something not natural was happening," said Hugh Ducklow, director of ecosystems for MBL Laboratories in Woods Hole, Mass. "The geological evidence suggested that was stable for at least 10,000 years, back to the last ice age. And it literally disintegrated in three weeks."

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