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Studies Attribute Ocean Warming to Human Actions April 14, 2001 by Will Dunham Washington (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas emissions have caused the world's oceans to heat up over the past half century, according to studies that researchers said this week pointed with near certainty to human activity, not natural climate fluctuations, as the culprit behind global warming. Research teams led by Sydney Levitus of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Tim Barnett of the University of California at San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography used different climate models to simulate how ocean temperatures would respond to current greenhouse gas levels and other modern-day atmospheric conditions. Both models predicted an amount of warming in the upper 1.9 miles of the world's oceans remarkably similar to levels actually measured, according to the studies appearing in the journal Science. Experts previously reported that the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans collectively had warmed an average of 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit since 1955. "Our results indicate that the warming of the Earth's climate system during the 1955 to 1996 period is most likely due to the increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere observed over the past 100 years. We believe this is some of the strongest evidence to date that this warming is, in fact, of human-induced origin," Levitus said in an interview on Thursday. Barnett added that the results provide a "95 percent confidence level" that human-produced greenhouse gases are behind the warming. Many scientists believe emissions of certain pollutants from industry, power plants, vehicles and other sources threaten to disrupt global climate and ecosystems by causing the Earth's atmosphere to trap more of the sun's energy, triggering global warming. But solid evidence directly linking human activities to climate changes has been elusive. SKEPTICS UNSWAYED Scientists who doubt human activities have triggered global climate changes said computer models such as those used in the new studies are of dubious value, and that the researchers ignored the more plausible explanation that natural oscillations of the planet's climate system are to blame. "This is simply another case of scientists who have so committed themselves to the global warming myth that they are unable to visualize and accept a fairly obvious explanation," said S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist who heads the Science & Environmental Policy Project in Arlington, Virginia. Most efforts to detect signs of global warming have dwelt on air temperatures. But the new studies instead focused on the oceans. "If you claim you're heating something up, you'd like to be looking where most of the heat is going," Barnett said. "It's not the atmosphere. It's not the ice. It's the oceans. So that's what we did." Covering 72 percent of the Earth's surface, the oceans have been called the "memory" of the Earth's climate system. They can absorb large amounts of heat and store it before circulating it back to the atmosphere. Earlier climate models failed to include an ocean component, thus frequently predicting air temperatures would increase more than they actually have risen, Levitus said. ANSWERS SOUGHT Levitus last year determined an average for how much the oceans had warmed by compiling millions of deep ocean temperature measurements from 1948-1995. The problem was that no one could say whether this trapped heat came from greenhouse warming or merely a natural swing in the climate cycle. Levitus and Barnett sought to answer the question by using different, complex climate models to simulate the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Both models produced findings that closely mirrored actual conditions. To ensure the results were not a fluke, Barnett's team ran five simulations and averaged the results. They also ran the model without the extra greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols produced by human activity. Without these man-made factors, the simulated oceans did not warm significantly, they said. Using a different model, Levitus and his colleagues also factored in the effects of the sun's changing intensity and aerosol particles produced by volcanic eruptions over the last century. But this simulation also produced a very close match to the actual ocean temperature measurements, reaffirming human activity as the likely cause.
Acid Rain Damage Continues March 25, 2001 by Shannon McCaffrey Washington (AP) - Cuts in power plant emissions have not done enough to reduce acid rain damage in the Northeast, an environmental research group says. Lakes, streams, soil and trees continue to suffer despite the emissions cuts mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act, according to a study by the New Hampshire-based Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. Only deeper reductions in nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions - the pollutants which cause acid rain - are likely to help the Northeast recover, scientists said in the report being released Monday. Many of findings on acid rain damage to soil and waterways parallel those of earlier studies. The new report provides particularly strong evidence about the harm being done to red spruce and sugar maple trees. Researcher said acid rain has contributed to a decline in red spruce trees across the eastern United States and to sugar maples in central and western Pennsylvania. Earlier reports had blamed acid rain for damage only to red spruce trees at high elevations, saying its effect on other trees was inconclusive. Since the 1960s, more than half the canopy of red spruce trees in New York's Adirondack Mountains and Vermont's Green Mountains and one-quarter of those in New Hampshire's White Mountains have died. The report suggested white ash and basswood trees may also be susceptible. Supporters of federal legislation to curb nitrogen and sulfur emissions said the report was helpful to their effort. "This is one more brick in what has become a huge wall of evidence that acid rain must be stopped as soon as possible," said Timothy Burke, executive director of The Adirondack Council, a New York-based environmental group. The report found that 41 percent of the lakes in the Adirondacks and 15 percent of the lakes in New England have become acidic. While there have been modest improvements in the New England waterways, the Adirondacks have seen no such progress. About 24 percent of the 1,469 lakes in the Adirondacks have become too acidic to sustain fish life. Coal-burning plants in the Ohio River Valley are blamed as the major source of nitrogen and sulfur pollution that falls in the Northeast. The pollution travels eastward on prevailing winds, mixes with moisture then falls as rain, snow or fog. For years, Northeast lawmakers have introduced legislation in Congress to cut nitrogen and sulfur emissions. But the bills have gained little support outside the Northeast and drawn strong opposition from the Midwest. While President Bush has reversed his campaign pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions, he has signaled he still supports reductions in nitrogen and sulfur emissions. Scientists from Syracuse University, University of Maine, University of Virginia U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA participated in the report. It will be published in the journal Bioscience. An EPA spokesman said the agency would review the report. - - - On the Net: Hubbard Brook Research Foundation: www.hbrook.sr.unh.edu/ Environmental Protection Agency information on acid rain: www.epa.gov/airmarkets/acidrain/
Brazilians Hold Funeral for Amazon Rain Forest Sao Paulo (Reuters) - May 21, 2000 - Brazilian environmentalists staged a mock funeral on Sunday for the Amazon rain forest to warn that unbridled agricultural expansion is suffocating the so-called "lungs of the world." Hundreds of mourners followed a casket through Sao Paulo's crowded Ibirapuera Park, clutching seedlings of the native Ipe tree instead of candles, to protest against devastation of the world's largest tropical forest.
Environmentalists scored a victory last week when Congress shelved a draft bill that would cut the legally protected Amazon reserve area to 50 percent from 80 percent of the total. But they warned on Sunday that a new bill would be drawn up and the powerful congressional agricultural lobby was determined to push for more planting land in the Amazon jungle, on the frontier of Brazil's new, highly productive soy fields. "We have to stop these lawmakers and the farm lobbyists who want to destroy our forests," said Mario Mantovani of forest protection group SOS Mata Atlantica. The Amazon, twice the size of France, is home to 50 percent of the world's plant and animal species. Last year, it lost a chunk bigger than the U.S. state of Hawaii to logging and farming. |
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April 12, 2000 - The world's frogs, toads and other amphibians are vanishing, and the decline began decades before scientists first sounded the alarm in the 1980s, according to the biggest statistical study of the topic.
Please call
your Member of Congress and urge him/her to vote for the Kucinich/Ros-Lehtinen
Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill.
States
and localities must either eliminate the laws or pay corporations for the right
to protect the environment. In the MTBE case, the Methanex corporation of Canada
is suing the state for $1 billion in damages.
Reps Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) want to protect state and local laws from corporations and undemocratic trade bodies. Their amendment would prevent the Federal government from using taxpayer dollars to force states and localities to comply with international trade agreements. It would also stop the federal government from using taxpayer dollars to stop local and state legislators from passing laws which could be challengeable under international trade rules (such as when the State Dept. went to Maryland to stop the consideration of a human rights law in support of the people of Nigeria). WHAT
YOU CAN DO
Sixteen leading national environmental organized joined together in opposition to the Clinton Administration's support of a forest products initiative at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky released July 19, 1999, groups as diverse as the Wilderness Society, National Audubon Society, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and American Lands, joined together in opposition to this misguided agreement.
. . . In the letter, the groups state that
the forest
Members of Congress will be voting this week on the "NAFTA for Africa" bill, H.R. 434, to expand African trade. This bill represents a failed model of international trade which provides multinational corporations with greater control over African natural resources and economics while requiring nothing of these corporations with respect to workers and protection of the environment.
The NAFTA for Africa bill, H.R. 434, would encourage the continuation of logging practices that have led to the near deforestation of Africa's frontier forests. In West Africa, nearly 90 percent of the original moist forest is gone, and what remains is heavily fragmented and degraded. In Central Africa, over 90 percent of all logging occurs in primary forest, one of the highest ratios of any region in the world.
In Zaire, which contains more than half Central Africa's remaining forests, many tropical forests remain intact, in part because of the nation's poor transportation system. The NAFTA for Africa bill would mean open season on these endangered forests.
There is a better alternative. Representatives can vote against the NAFTA for Africa bill and cosponsor Rep. Jesse Jackson's (D-IL) HOPE for Africa bill, HR 722, which would ensure that U.S. corporations doing business in Africa conduct themselves in an environmentally responsible manner and with accountability to local citizens.
Unique
among trade legislation, the HOPE for Africa act includes strong environmental
safeguards to ensure that corporations operating in Africa and accessing the bill's
benefits act responsibly with respect to the local environment. Specifically,
the bill (1) denies U.S. market access to products that are produced in a manner
inconsistent with the environmental standards that apply to similar operations
in developed countries; (2) empowers U.S. citizens to enforce provisions of the
Act in U.S. courts; and (3) provides foreign assistance to Africa while requiring
that the assistance be spent in consultation with the African people and be directed
toward environmental protection and other goals.
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