Adieu, Perrier

Some restaurants are substituting tap water for bottled water in a bid to protect the environment, according to a story in the New York Times.

It’s a big move in the restaurant industry, which, if you extrapolate from the amount of water it buys, takes in at least $200 million to $350 million from bottled water a year, according to the restaurant consultant Clark Wolf.
The “eat local” movement first became popular in California, so it makes sense that “drink local” is catching on there as a way to reduce the environmental costs of manufacturing and transporting bottles of water, as well as the mountains of plastic that end up in landfills.
But soon the owners of Del Posto in New York, the most elegant and expensive of the restaurants in the empire of Joseph Bastianich and Mario Batali, will be joining the nascent movement — once they decide on the proper containers for their filtered still and carbonated tap water. Etched on the glass will be an explanation of why bottled water is no longer available.
“Filling cargo ships with water and sending it hundreds and thousands of miles to get it around the world seems ridiculous,” Mr. Bastianich said. “With all the other things we do for sustainability, it makes sense.”

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Bush Orders New Greenhouse Gas Limits

According to a story in the Environment News Service,

After resisting the regulation of greenhouse gases since he took office in 2001, President George W. Bush today signed an Executive Order directing four federal agencies to develop regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new mobile sources. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels, contribute to global climate change.
The President directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture to work together "to protect the environment with respect to greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, nonroad vehicles, and nonroad engines, in a manner consistent with sound science, analysis of benefits and costs, public safety, and economic growth," the Executive Order states.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

REGGI: Who Pays?

On Thursday, the state of Connecticut will release its plan to implement REGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Environmentalists and Power companies are at odds about who will pay for it. Listen to the story on local public radio station WNPR.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Climate Change: Case Studies

The New York Times continues reporting on how poor nations are paying the price for the greenhouse gases produced by wealthy nations (chiefly the US and Western Europe.

“We have an obligation to help countries prepare for the climate changes that we are largely responsible for,” said Peter H. Gleick, the founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Berkeley, Calif. His institute has been tracking trends like the burst of new desalination plants in wealthy places running short of water.
“If you drive your car into your neighbor’s living room, don’t you owe your neighbor something?” Dr. Gleick said. “On this planet, we’re driving the climate car into our neighbors’ living room, and they don’t have insurance and we do.”
Around the world, there are abundant examples of how wealth is already enabling some countries to gird against climatic and coastal risks, while poverty, geography and history place some of the world’s most crowded, vulnerable regions directly in harm’s way.

Follow this link to read about four fronts in the fight against the effects of climate change. (Free) registration is required.

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The Rich Pollute, The Poor Pay

Wealthy nations contribute about 2/3 of the greenhouse gases that are leading to climate change, while poorer nations will suffer the brunt of the consequences, according to a New York Times article.

The world’s richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.

But despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world’s most vulnerable regions — most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

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Time on Climate Change

Time Magazine has a long piece on how to combat climate change. Check out their ambitious "51 Ways to Save the Environment."
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Dude, Where's My Climate?

Computer models of climate trends show the potential disappearance of entire climate zones and significant, unprecedented changes in remaining climate zones, according to the German publication Innovations Report.

In general, the models show that existing climate zones will shift toward higher latitudes and higher elevations, squeezing out the climates at the extremes--tropical mountaintops and the poles--and leaving room for unfamiliar climes and new ecological niches around the equator.

The work, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wyoming, appears online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) during the week of March 26. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the research.The most severely affected parts of the world span both heavily populated regions, including the southeastern United States, southeastern Asia, and parts of Africa, and known hotspots of biodiversity, such as the Amazonian rainforest and African and South American mountain ranges.

The patterns of change foreshadow significant impacts on ecosystems and conservation. "There is a close correspondence between disappearing climates and areas of biodiversity," says University of Wisconsin at Madison geographer Jack Williams, primary author of the paper, which could increase risk of extinction in the affected areas.

For example, the Andes, Central America, South Africa and the Indonesian Archipelago are all hotspots of biological diversity. The projected disappearance of the climates unique to these regions places some species at risk of extinction."

As this research shows, studies integrating paleoclimate data, mathematical modeling and ecological principles provide insights into climate cause-and-effect that are of great practical consequence," says David Verardo, program director for paleoclimate at NSF,Williams and his colleagues foresee the appearance of novel climate zones on up to 39 percent of the world's land surface area by 2100, if current rates of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions continue, and the global disappearance of up to 48 percent of current land climates.

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Dems Need White House Support for Climate Bill

So says Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, according to the North County Times.

"If the administration wants to continue ... to oppose any and all mandatory limits of greenhouse gas emissions, it's going to be very difficult to get anything."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Going Fluorescent Down Under

According to Business Week,

The Australian government on Tuesday announced plans to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs across the country.
Legislation to gradually restrict the sale of the old-style bulbs could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons by 2012 and cut household power bills by up to 66 percent, said Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

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Happy Birthday Connecticut Climate Plan!

As of February 15, 2007, the Connecticut Climate Plan is two years old. How's our toddler doing? According to a report by Marc Breslow, PhD and Roger Smith, not so hot.

Of the top 14 policies in the plan which account for over 90% of the pollution reductions, only about half have been acted upon. Key policies which need to be implemented include: reducing "black carbon" diesel soot, prioritizing energy efficiency for heating and electricity, significantly increasing mass transit and curbing sprawl and restoring the raided energy efficiency fund and clean energy fund.

In addition the climate plan must be revised to take advantage of new and creative policies such as but not limited to "pay as you drive insurance" where driving less can save you money, tax exemptions for 40MPG+ cars (not just hybrids), and generators should be made to pay for their pollution under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative with revenue reinvested in efficiency for consumers.
IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

New Coal Plants Threaten Climate

Fourteen new coal plants are currently being built in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Nevada and are expected to release nearly 70 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to an article in AZ Central. These new plants threaten to undermine the political progress the Southwest region has made in benchmarks for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Our elected leaders have already shown strong leadership on global warming and clean energy issues by adopting greenhouse gas reduction and renewable energy benchmarks. These new plants, which are based on outdated technology, threaten to undo much of their hard work," Jana Milford, a senior scientist formerly with Environmental Defense, said in a statement.

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$25M for Greenhouse Gas-Removing Technology

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson has announced a $25 million prize for the scientist who comes up with a way to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, comparing it to the 17th-century quest to revolutionize navigation by determining longitude,according to Forbes.com.
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No Stopping Global Warming

The explosive UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is finally out and it is making headlines all over the world.
The Eiffel Tower is shown just before the 20,000 bulbs went out Thursday Feb. 1, 2007 at 7.55 p.m for five-minutes. The City of Light went dim when thousands of Parisians joined in a five-minutes "lights-out" campaign aimed at showing citizens concern over climate change. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (AP) -- The Eiffel Tower's 20,000 sparkling bulbs went dark for five minutes Thursday night and the lights went out at the Colosseum in Rome and the Greek parliament in Athens in a demonstration of concern about climate change across the European continent.

Read the LA Times story on the report. (As a sidebar to the story, the LA Times has a graphic illustration about curbing greenhouse gases for registered users. Registration is free.)
Here are the main findings, as published by the AP:

THE CAUSE: Global warming is "very likely'' caused by man, the strongest conclusion to date.

THE OUTLOOK: Now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries'' no matter how much humans control their pollution.

TEMPERATURE CHANGE: The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.
However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

SEA LEVELS: The report projected rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

HURRICANES: An increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone strength since 1970 "more likely than not'' can be attributed to man-made global warming. The scientists said global warming's connection varies with storms in different parts of the world, but that the storms that strike the Americas are global warming-influenced.

According to an article in the New York Times, (registration required)
''It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it,'' said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.
''The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do','' Steiner said. ''Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible.''

Read related stories in the New York Times Environment section. (registration required.)

Meanwhile, Al Gore has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness about global warming, according to the Chicago Tribune.
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US Businesses, States May Force Climate Policy

Al Gore says that the many US businesses and states that have embraced the aims of the Kyoto Protocol may force President Bush to reverse his unwillingness to require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore is currently in Japan promoting his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

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Exxon, Evironmental Groups Meet

Representatives from environmental groups met with Exxon last month, a sign that they might be moving toward acceptance of mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Exxon is also meeting with other companies to discuss their options. According to Reuters,

The Exxon meetings with other companies are expected to generate a report this fall, furnishing information on policy options to legislators on how to reduce emissions.

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Lieberman, McCain and Obama Offer Climate Bill

Two potential US presidential candidates and one former candidate have joined forces to put foward a bill to reduce greenhouse emissions in the US by 1/3 over the next 4 decades. The plan would return emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

A compromise bill is being proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico. Under his bill, the increase in greenhouse gases would slow through 2030, and then perhaps decrease. Read the rest of the story in The Washington Post.

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Greenouse gases led to severe and erratic weather in ancient past

Changing levels of greenhouse gases caused "severe and erratic" swings in ancient temperature, according to an article in the LA Times.

The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science. "It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."The provocative insight into planetary climate change counters the traditional view that global warming could be gradual and its regional effects easily anticipated.

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Methane ice could spell trouble for climate

Here's an excerpt from a BBC news report:

Scientists drilling ocean sediments off Canada have discovered methane ices at much shallower depths than expected.
"The rate of increase in the Earth's atmosphere for methane is much faster than that for carbon dioxide," said Timothy Collett, the co-chief scientist of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).
"Methane is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. The source of this methane is uncertain, but there are a number of scientists who have looked at gas hydrates as contributing to this recent change."

Read the rest of the story at the BBC News.
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Open Waters in the Arctic by 2040

New projections show that by 2040 there could be open water during summers in the arctic region, according to an article in a continuing series on climate change in the New York Times. This would be several decades earlier than previously expected.