Arctic Melting Shows Global Warming Serious - Expert.

CANADA: September 4, 2008

OTTAWA - The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada’s Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the “very substantial changes” that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on Wednesday.

Researchers announced late on Tuesday that the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in the Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, had shrunk by 23 percent this summer alone.
The largest shelf is disintegrating and one of the smaller shelves, covering 19 square miles (55 square km), broke away entirely last month.

“Climate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

“This will be the starting point for more substantial changes throughout the rest of the planet…. Our indicators are showing us exactly what the climate models predict,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Global warming is forecast to generate more damaging weather extremes such as hurricanes, cyclones and floods.

The peak temperature the team recorded was 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit (19.7 degrees Celsius), far above the average of 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

***

Vincent said he had no doubt that global warming was caused in part by human activity.

“I think we’re at a point where it is not stoppable but it can be slowed down. And if you think about the magnitude of effects on our society, then we really need to buy ourselves more time to get ready for some very substantial changes that are ahead,” he said.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

“More and more, we’re realizing that it is microscopic life that really dominates the biodiversity of planet Earth … we really need to understand what that biodiversity is,” said Vincent. 

From:  newsdesk at brownrudnick.com
Subject: Brown Rudnick: The Case for Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standards & Tradable White Certificates ATTORNEY ADVERTISING
Date: September 3, 2008

Energy efficiency has long been a great idea; however, not until the recent convergence of higher sustained energy prices and demand for carbon footprint reduction has the case for widespread adoption of energy efficiency measures become so compelling.

In the attached article, by Peter Fusaro and Howard Siegel, Howard L. Siegel, Co-Leader of our Energy and Utilities Practice Group, discusses how today’s technology is better, more reliable and ready to be massively deployed in a new trading market based on energy efficiency portfolio standards and white certificates. Peter Fusaro got into this two decades ago.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact your Brown Rudnick attorney or Howard L. Siegel at  hsiegel at brownrudnick.com / 860.509.6519.

Learn more about Brown Rudnick at www.brownrudnick.com.

• Download the PDF here:
• brown-rudnick-energy-efficiency-and-white-certificates-utilipoint-8-08.pdf

Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, September 3, 2008 (written September 2, 2008)

.
AND THEN THERE WAS ONE.
As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election.

There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates.

That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

***

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

***

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

“One of McCain’s last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” added Pope, “yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, ‘The jury is still out on global warming.’ She’s the one hanging the jury — and John McCain is going to let her.”

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

***

Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.

I am not against a limited expansion of off-shore drilling now. But it is a complete sideshow. By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to “drill, drill, drill,” McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.

Why? Because renewable energy technologies — what I call “E.T.” — are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass “I.T.” — information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.

***

Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”

So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.

====================

 http://www.koreasociety.org/contemporary…

South Korean Business and the DMZ in an Era of Climate Change

South Korean businesses might use the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea as a resource in the country’s effort to fight global warming.
A Meeting at the Korea Society on New York City is called for September 10, 2008 in order to discuss the areas potential for Sustainable Development.
They will be having experts from The DMZ Forum and Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index program for a get together to discuss how the
DMZ could function as a conservation resource.

with

Hall Healy, President, DMZ Forum
William B. Shore, Secretary, DMZ Forum
John Mickelson, Landscape Ecologist
Christine Kim, Program and Research Director, Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy

Wednesday, September 10, 2008
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM ♦ Registration and Reception
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM ♦ Luncheon and Presentation

The Korea Society
950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of 57th Street and Third Avenue)

$20 for members, $25 for nonmembers
Buy tickets
For more information or to register for the program, contact Patrick Clair at (212) 759-7525, ext. 328, or email.

South Korea mastered the game of development economics, rising to become the world’s eleventh largest economy by producing cars, ships and electronics. Now, with climate change a major global issue, the game has changed. From desertification in Mongolia to increased flooding in North Korea, to car emissions, development and air pollution within its borders, South Korea is already wrestling with the effects of global warming on its economy. Can it successfully integrate with the new environmental paradigm?

Hall Healy, president of The DMZ Forum, Inc., believes South Korea can thrive in this new era of green economics, and that the DMZ, untouched by 50 years of development, may be one of its biggest assets. If developed responsibly, the pristine environment of the DMZ could provide clean drinking water to millions of Koreans, trillions of won in income and an untold number of jobs in eco-tourism, sustainable agriculture and ecosystem services. Healy will also discuss other strategies that could help South Korean industries re-tool for the future with landscape ecologist John Mickelson and William B. Shore, secretary of The DMZ Forum. Christine Kim, Yale’s program director for the Environmental Performance Index will discuss North and South Korea’s rankings.

This forum is jointly presented by The Korea Society and the DMZ Forum  www.dmzforum.org)

From the IPCC Meeting in Geneva:

Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, has been reelected by acclamation this morning for a second term.

Mr. Pachauri will meet the press on Thursday following the closure of the Plenary at 13.00, at the CICG in Geneva.

He will then introduce the new Bureau members and provide information on other major items concerning the future IPCC work program.

The Chairman will only be available for interviews on that occasion.

Please see Press release attached.

With best wishes,

Brenda Abrar-Milani
IPCC information and communication Office
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
7 bis, avenue de la Paix
CH-1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland
Tel. +4122 730 8066
Email:  babrar at wmo.int
Web: www.ipcc.ch

————————————————-

PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday September 2, 2008.
The IPCC is happy to announce that its Chairman, Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, has been reelected by acclamation this morning for a second term.

Mr. Pachauri has been the head of the organization since 2002. Under his leadership, the IPCC released “Climate Change 2007”, its Fourth Assessment Report, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is holding its 29th Plenary session in Geneva until Thursday 4 September.

All other agenda items under discussion, including the election of the other Bureau members, are still in progress. The new team elected by all member countries will lead the IPCC through the preparation of the Fifth Assessment Report, which is expected to be released in 2014.

Mr. Pachauri will meet the press on Thursday following the closure of the Plenary at 13.00, at the CICG in Geneva. He will then introduce the new Bureau members and provide information on other major items concerning the future IPCC work program.

The Chairman will only be available for interviews on that occasion.
Contact :
Brenda Abrar-Milani :  babrar at wmo.int Tel: +33 614 81 73 98/ IPCC website : www.ipcc.ch

 Statement by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Programme

In Response to Hurricane Gustav and the Devastating Indian Floods

2  September,  2008- The  evacuation  of  New  Orleans  in  advance of hurricane Gustav and the
displacement  of  two  million Indians to the worst flood in 50 years underline the increasing
vulnerability  of  humanity  to  natural disasters-vulnerability that is set to rise under the
scientific scenarios if climate change if left unchecked.

According  to  Munich  Re,  one of the world’s leading insurance companies and a member of the  UNEP Finance Initiative, 2008 is already shaping up to be a significant, disaster-prone year.

By  June,  an  estimated 400 natural disasters had occurred costing $82 billion. And while the  earthquake  in  Sichuan  Province, China cannot be laid at the climate change door many of the  others  are  in line with the scientific predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate  Change (IPCC).


“The  year  is  following  the  long-term  trend  towards  more weather catastrophes, which is
influenced by climate change,” said the German-based re-insurer last month.

 There  is  now  less than 500 days before governments meet in Copenhagen in 2009 to agree on a
new climate deal to kick in post 2012.

Nothing  less  than firm, legally binding commitments to significantly reduce pollution linked
with  the  burning  of  fossil fuels will suffice alongside increased funding to climate-proof
vulnerable economies and communities.

Indeed  the  way  we  manage-or  fail  to  manage-our  cities and coastal infrastructure up to
transport networks; agricultural lands; forests; mangroves and wetlands will be as critical as
managing a big decline in carbon dioxide, methane and other key pollutants.

The  IPCC,  whose  20th  anniversary  we  mark  in Geneva this week, has provided the sobering
assessments and the clear direction that detours and delay and are not options.

 It is not just weather-related catastrophes that are of concern.

The current calamities facing the planet, from the serious threat of famine in Ethiopia to the
misery  and  loss of life in India and the disruptions to the people of New Orleans, underline
the kind of economic and human suffering the globe is facing within the coming years.

But  the  IPCC  assessments have shone an even brighter light on the costs of action-indeed it
clear  that  it  will  not  cost  the Earth to save it, perhaps as little as a few tenths of a
percent of global GDP a year over the next 30 years.

In  doing  so  the  globe  can  also  address other running sores from the loss of forests and
biodiversity to delivering clean energy to the rural poor and conserving water supplies.

So  the  IPCC  remind  us that we have challenges but we also have choices. It is time to make
those.                                                                                        

In Bali last year at the climate convention meeting, governments agreed to negotiate a package
of actions to be finalized by, or at, the Copenhagen climate convention meeting.

While some progress was made in August at a meeting in Accra, Ghana, the level of consensus is
failing  to  match  the  magnitude of the challenges nor the opportunities to Green the global
economy.

 The  start  of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season should serve as a reminder and catalyze that
urgent response.

The  IPCC said in its fourth assessment last year that there has been an increase in hurricane
intensity  in  the North Atlantic since the 1970s, and that increase correlates with increases
in sea surface temperature.

The  IPCC  also said it is likely that we will see increases in hurricane intensity during the
21st  century-it  is  not  too  late to act, first at the climate convention meeting in Poznan
later this year and decisively in Copenhagen a year later: we have some 500 days left.

From:  sniffenj at un.org
Subject: UNEP Executive Director remarks at IPCC 20th anniversary.
Date: September 2, 2008
The following is the content as received - our comment is in our title to this piece.

***

31 August, 2008 Geneva - Speech by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to the 20th Anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

It was 1988 and a leap year: the Summer Olympics games were held in Seoul; the first Fair Trade label was launched in the Netherlands and UN peacekeepers won the Nobel Peace Prize.

But perhaps one of the greatest leaps occurred not in time but in environmental science with the establishment by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization of the IPCC.

Over 20 years, thousands of scientists have selflessly come together to
periodically sift, to weigh and to validate the scientific evidence on the
links between rising greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on the
global climate.
The likely impacts too of climate change on humans and vital
ecosystems from glaciers and forests to river systems and coastal
settlements.
And increasingly, the price tag of lethargy and indifference if these
emissions are left unchecked.
Contrasting too with the likely economic benefits of swift and
decisive action-and adaptation- to this most over arching of
human-made threats.

In doing so the IPCC has put the sharpest and most potent lens possible on
the unsustainable development paths of the past few centuries.
It has also however shone a bright light on the choices and down the path
to the opportunities we have for a greener, fairer and ultimately more
sustainable world.

The Fourth Assessment Report, launched last year, was a milestone and was
crowned with the IPCC being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was a prize not just for the Fourth Assessment and the current and past
Panel scientists but also for the previous and current Chair, Dr Pachauri,
and his staff. { THIS IS A VERY UNCLEAR STATEMENT AND HIDES THE ONE MAN THAT WAS PROBABLY MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR FIGHTING THE CAUSE OF DISMANTLING THE INCREDIBLE LIES AND CORPORATE PUSH THAT STILL CAUSE MEDIA TO DOUBT THE PROBLEM, AND TO DOUBT THAT THERE IS AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION — THIS MAN WAS BOB WATSON — PRESENTLY STILL CHIEF SCIENTIST AT THE WORLD BANK THAT HE JOINED IN 1996. We were among the people that spoke up in 2002 when Washington decided to push him out of the IPCC leadership position.}

For undoubtedly the findings rolled out in 2007 underlined that climate
change is an environmental change phenomenon but one that goes to the core
of the UN’s mandate. { YES, YES, YES}

A point recognized not just by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee but in the
statements by retired and serving senior-ranking military in Australia, the
United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Undoubtedly the IPCC science also underpinned and fostered the UN Security
Council debate in April 2007 when it held its first ever discussion on
climate change, peace and security.

In recognizing all this we must also recognize two very special
people-Mostafa Tolba and Godwin Olu Patrick Obasi who, as heads of their
respective UN agencies in 1988 had the vision and the determination to
establish the IPCC.

Indeed one wonders whether the Kyoto Protocol, its inventive market
mechanisms and the current UN Framework Convention negotiations towards a
post-2012 regime, would even be a reality if it had not been for foresight
of these two parents of the Panel.

It is a mark of the Panel’s veracity, transparency and courage that such an
active and wide-ranging political process is underway and that the debate
is on how to deal with climate change not whether it is a reality or a
chimera—that has been empirically and scientifically laid to rest.

It would be an even greater tribute to the Panel’s scientists, both past
and present, if Governments can find their own courage, tenacity and
collective will to rise above their differences and seize the moment.

There are just some 500 days for Governments to deliver what the world is
waiting for in Copenhagen in 2009—the facts and figures from IPCC delivered
in 2007, and which powered the Bali Climate Convention meeting into high
gear, remain as valid and as sobering today as they did just over six
months ago.

Indeed the science emerging recently from a wide variety of respected
institutes is in many ways even more sobering and certainly not less.

So there is no need to idle, slide into reverse or take detours on the Bali
Road Map—there is a need to find the highest gear possible to speed all
countries on their way to a landmark deal.

***

What of the future?

It is clear that there is an urgent need to translate the IPCC’s global and
regional assessments onto the sub-national, national and even local level
in order to focus developing country and donor country efforts on
climate-proofing vulnerable economies.

So I am delighted to note that UNEP is now cooperating with the IPCC and
other partners on a European Commission-funded project with these very
aims.

It is part of a wider effort of outreach aimed at bridging the knowledge
gap on the implications and actions needed as a result of the Fourth
Assessment Report.

Under this umbrella UNEP is taking a lead in the next phase of the
Assessments of Impacts and Adaptation of Climate Change -with the guidance
and assistance of you: the current IPCC scientists.

This is aimed at encouraging the research of the future IPCC scientists
from developing countries while bringing focus to impacts and thus
adaptation measures at the level of the ecosystem and river catchment
basin.

We are here to celebrate 20 years of the IPCC—its place in the history
books is clear in terms of climate science.

The final entry as a result of the Panel’s work may, however, prove to be
far larger.

For if that science can be fully and frankly translated into political
action we will have gone a long way to not only overcoming climate change.

The international community will have also embarked on a path that will
also address other persistent and emerging concerns- from overcoming
poverty and biodiversity loss to one where tensions and conflicts over
scarce resources can at best be managed and at the very best, overcome.

Science is knowledge and thus it is power but also empowerment of
politicians, business men and woman, civic leaders, the UN and the public.

The dictionary defines an imperative as a ”plea”; a ”duty”; something
that is ”impossible to evade or ignore” and an ”obligation”.

This is what the IPCC has handed to this generation of presidents, prime
ministers and politicians, indeed to this generation overall—facts and
figures that cannot be ignored and a duty and an obligation to act, and to
act fast.

***

Now to the point of the 500 days to the December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen that did not mention the December 2008 meeting in Poznan, Poland:

It is clear that with the US Presidential elections of November 2008, the Poznan meeting has become totally unnecessary, as there will be no functioning US representation at that meeting. For Mr. Ahim Steiner to regain his personal credibility on the issues, it would be in place to state clearly that for reasons of saving CO2 emissions caused by unnecessary travel to an unnecessary meeting - that meeting should be canceled, or rescheduled for May 2009. Just to step in the UN political line will not help the subject that I know he cares for personally. (the www.SustainabiliTank.info opinion)

***********************************

Received from:

Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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