NewsTrust - Climate Change - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Keystone Pipeline Facts

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Redford - Feb. 10 (News Analysis) - 'Joe Nocera's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday deserves a response and a reiteration of the facts surrounding the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. ...Let's put the rhetoric aside, and simply focus on the facts. Nocera wants us to believe that approving this pipeline is a matter of national security. ... The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would not make the United States of America safer. Why? It would not make us safer, because the majority of the processed oil was already scheduled for export to foreign countries. That's right, this Keystone XL pipeline's Canadian tar sands oil would have

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Reef Fish at Risk as Carbon Dioxide Levels Build

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - Jan. 21 (Special Report) - Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions threaten the survival of some fish species by sending their central nervous systems haywire.' Australian Associated Press

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Durban: Saving the Planet or Saving Face?

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Tom Zeller Jr. - Dec. 12 (News Report) - Some environmental groups saw the agreement as being far less ambitious than what is needed to curb rising temperatures and prevent the potentially devastating impacts of a substantially warmer planet. "While governments avoided disaster in Durban, they by no means responded adequately to the mounting threat of climate change,"

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U.S. Publicly Shifts Climate Stance in Face of Widespread Criticism -- Then Quietly Backtracks

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 09 (News Report) - Talks at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban have entered their last official day, with focus now on a European Union-sponsored road map calling for a new climate treaty to be negotiated by 2015. The treaty would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases, but would not likely go into effect until 2020. After being publicly heckled by a U.S. college student on Thursday and facing widespread accusations of obstructing the Durban talks, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said the Obama administration supports the E.U. road map. The U.S. State Department later backtracked on Stern's comments by taking the unusual step of issuing a clarification to its position, saying it does not yet support a legally binding deal to cut emissions. When Amy Goodman then tried to question Stern and fellow lead U.S. negotiator Jonathan Pershing about the apparent retraction, they refused to answer. [includes rush transcript]

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"Get It Done": Urging Climate Justice, Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai Mic Checks U.N. Summit

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 09 (News Report) - A number of protests are being held today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban to protest the failure of world leaders to agree to immediately agree to a deal of binding emissions cuts. Anjali Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, addressed the conference on behalf of youth delegates. Just after her speech, she led a mic check from the stage -- a move inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests. "It always seems impossible until it's done," Appadurai said. "So, distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world: Deep [emissions] cuts now. Get it done." [includes rush transcript]

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Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceDaily - By NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center - Dec. 08 (Research) - New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

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Gingrich On Climate Change

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Dec. 07 (Fact Check) - Newt Gingrich went too far when he claimed that “I’ve never favored cap-and-trade.” It’s true he’s never favored the approach taken by Democrats, but he said in 2007 that he would “strongly support” cap-and-trade if combined with “a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions”.

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Hopes Fade for Binding Climate Deal as Durban Summit Enters Final Stages

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 07 (News Report) - We are broadcasting from Durban, South Africa, in our week-long exclusive at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Talks have entered their 10th day, but doubt is growing that a legally binding deal to combat climate change will be reached by Friday. On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that such a deal is "beyond our reach" for now due in part to the global financial crisis. But Ban urged world leaders to preserve the Kyoto Protocol, which binds some of the largest historical polluters to binding emissions cuts. [includes rush transcript]

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Canadian Activists Barred From Durban Summit for Protesting Environment Minister

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 07 (News Report) - Soon after Kent began speaking, six members of the Canadian Youth Delegation stood up and turned their backs on the minister. They were taken out of the room and later stripped of their credentials to the climate change conference. "Today, six of us stood up and turned our backs on the government of Canada, in the same way the government of Canada has turned its back on us," says activist Karen Rooney. "We are calling on the government of Canada to start putting the interests of people over the interests of polluters."

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At Durban Summit, Leading African Activist Calls U.S. Emissions Stance "A Death Sentence for Africa"

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 06 (News Report) - We continue our week-long coverage from the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP 17 in Durban, where negotiators from more than 190 nations are in their final week of key talks on fighting climate change. The future of the Kyoto Protocol is in doubt as is the formation of a new Green Climate Fund. With the talks taking place in South Africa, special interest is being paid to how the continent of Africa is already being heavily impacted by the climate crisis. We speak to Nigerian environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria and Chair of Friends of the Earth International. He is author of the new book, "To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and Climate Crisis in Africa." “We are still in a situation where the negotiations are being carried out on a big platform of hypocrisy, a lack of seriousness, a lack of recognition of the fact that Africa is so heavily impacted,” Bassey says. “For every one degree Celsius change in temperature, Africa is impacted at a heightened level. This is very much to be condemned.”

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Indigenous Activists From Canada Protest Tar Sands Oil at Durban Climate Change Summit

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 06 (News Report) - This morning in Durban, South Africa, a group of youth and indigenous activists from Canada gave delegates to the U.N. climate talks mock gift bags containing samples of fake tar sands along with tourism brochures for Canada and Canadian flags. Kandi Mossett, one of the activists participating in the action, says Canada’s reliance on tar sands oil “is the largest catastrophic project that I am aware of on earth right now.” Mossett, who is the Native Energy and Climate Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, notes that the tar sands extraction process is energy and water-intensive, emits immense amounts of pollution into the air, and destroys the landscape. “To even get to the tar sands they have to remove boreal forests — old growth forests — and they call it ‘overburden.’ They just scrape it off and get rid of that. And then they dig down and move so many tons of earth,” Mossett says. “Then they squeeze out the last little 10 percent of oil that’s actually in the sand. And then they have to use chemicals to make it liquid enough to be able to put it through the pipelines — it’s much more toxic than any other kind of, you know, sweet crude oil.”

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BC First Nations Unite To Ban Export Of Tar Sands Oil | Care2 Causes

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

care2.com - Dec. 06 (News) -

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Thousands March at U.N. Climate Summit in Durban to Demand Climate Justice

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 05 (News Report) - Key issues at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP17, remain unresolved, including the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty with enforceable provisions designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Delegates are also debating how to form a Green Climate Fund to support developing nations most affected by climate change.

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The Road to Durban: Tracking Global Warming's Devastating Impact Across the African Continent

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 05 (Special Report) - For more on the impact of climate change on the African continent and an update on the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 17 talks, we're joined in Durban by John Vidal, environment editor for The Guardian. Vidal has just returned from a journey between Africa's two most industrialized countries — Egypt and South Africa. His route included one of Africa's poorest nations, Malawi — its newest, Southern Sudan — and its hungriest, Ethiopia. He visited some of the continent's most remote tribes in Uganda and Kenya, and coastal areas here in South Africa. For all of these countries, the stakes of what comes out of COP 17 are high. "It was a terrifying journey of reality," says Vidal. "Very little science has been done, but there is absolutely no doubt about the consequences — which are going to be very much hotter temperatures, making it almost impossible to live in many areas, huge effects on the poor people." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Flipping Through DNC Playbook on Romney

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, Robert Farley, Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore, Scott Blackburn, Lalita Clozel - Dec. 01 (Fact Check) - The Democratic National Committee casts Mitt Romney as an untrustworthy flip-flopper in a lengthy Web video, but pads a long list of examples with some falsehoods and distortions. It's true that Romney has changed or modified his position on some major issues -- including abortion, a federal assault weapons ban and Reaganomics, as the DNC says. But the video strains the truth ... More >>

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Mitt Romney's views on climate change have changed, says DNC

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Nov. 30 (Fact Check) - Global warming has become a hot potato, at least for Republican presidential candidates. We’ve seen candidates for the Republican nomination question whether there’s scientific consensus on climate change, but those statements are at odds with the facts.

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To Conservatives, Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Naomi Klein - Nov. 29 (News Analysis) - Claiming that climate change is a plot to steal American freedom is rather tame by Heartland standards. Over the course of this two-day conference, I will learn that Obama’s campaign promise to support locally owned biofuels refineries was really about “green communitarianism,” akin to the “Maoist” scheme to put “a pig iron furnace in everybody’s backyard” (the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels). That climate change is “a stalking horse for National Socialism” (former Republican senator and retired astronaut Harrison Schmitt). And that environmentalists are like Aztec priests, sacrificing countless people to appease the gods and change the weather (Marc Morano, editor of the denialists’ go-to website, ClimateDepot.com).

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Erratic, extreme day-to-day weather puts climate change in new light

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceDaily - By Princeton University, Morgan Kelly - Nov. 15 (Research) - Researchers report the first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions, which found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases; industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production; and could affect what scientists can expect to see as the Earth's climate changes.

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10,000 Surround White House to Protest Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Nov. 07 (News Report) - More than 10,000 protesters surrounded the White House on Sunday calling on President Obama to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. The protest came exactly a year before the 2012 election and the pipeline is shaping up to be a major political issue.

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Climate Skeptics Take Another Hit

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Oct. 25 (News Report) - Physicists are notorious for believing that other scientists are mathematically incompetent. And University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller is notorious for believing that conventional wisdom is often wrong. For example, the conventional wisdom about climate change.

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The Fracking Industry's War on the Truth

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Oct. 21 (News Analysis) - Superb investigative journalism by the New York Times has brought the paper under attack by the natural gas industry. That campaign of intimidation and obfuscation has been orchestrated by top-shelf players like Exxon and Chesapeake, aligned with the industry's worst bottom feeders. This coalition has launched an impressive propaganda effort carried by slick PR firms, industry-funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right-wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio. In pitting itself against public disclosure and reasonable regulation, the natural gas industry is once again proving that it is its own worst enemy.

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Why climate models underestimated Arctic sea ice retreat: No Arctic sea ice in summer by end of century?

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ScienceDaily - By CNRS, ScienceDaily staff - Oct. 12 (Research) - "results from the new model suggested that there will be no artic sea ice in summer by the end of the century"

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Wedges reaffirmed

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

thebulletin.org - By Robert Socolow - Sep. 27 (Special Report) - Robert Socolow reaffirms his Stabilization Wedges Theory regarding climate change, contrary to reports a few months ago that he now feels the wedges theory is a mistake. This lays the science out quite well, and also how to proceed forward in a way everyone can agree on. Here's a quote: "Confronted with unwelcome news, human beings often shoot the messenger. Consider two earlier occasions. Galileo argued that the Earth wasn't at the center of the universe. For this, he was excommunicated. Darwin argued that human beings were part of the animal kingdom, and he was cruelly mocked. The idea that humans can't change our planet is as out-of-date and wrong as the Earth-centered universe and the separate creation of Man, but all three ideas have such appeal that they will fade away only very slowly."

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100,000 Evacuate As Philippines Braces For Typhoon

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Oliver Teves - Sep. 26 (News Report) - MANILA, Philippines -- Massive flooding hit the Philippine capital on Tuesday as typhoon winds and rains isolated the historic old city where residents waded in waist-deep waters, dodging tree branches and debris. At least seven people were killed.

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Global Warming & War: New Study Finds Link Between Climate Change and Conflict

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 29 (News Report) - A new study has found that that often war is associated with global climate change. According to the report, there are links between the climate phenomenon, El Niño, and outbreaks of violence in countries from southern Sudan to Indonesia and Peru. The scientists find that El Niño, which brings hot and dry conditions to tropical nations, doubles the risk of civil war in up to 90 countries, and may help account for a fifth of conflicts worldwide during the past 50 years. We speak with the report’s lead author, Solomon Hsiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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