Group items tagged

"The Pentagon released (1 February 2010), its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) for 2010 [PDF] , stating that crafting a strategic approach to climate and energy are a priority. The QDR states, "Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Although they produce distinct types of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.""

"Studying past climates can help scientists predict how the planet will change in the future. Using historical data, scientists at the University of Bristol, have developed a new model of climate change they believe is more accurate than previous estimates. Leaving certain data out of climate models, researchers discovered, has led to exceedingly modest estimates of the effect of carbon emissions on the planet."

Direct experience of extreme weather events increases concern about climate change and willingness to engage in energy-saving behaviour, according to a new research paper published in the first edition of the journal Nature Climate Change this week. In particular, members of the British public are more prepared to take personal action and reduce their energy use when they perceive their local area has a greater vulnerability to flooding, according to the research by Cardiff and Nottingham Universities.

">In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the problems associated with climate change are regarded with great apprehension. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in a report released during the conference, warned that the region could bear one of the heaviest costs of climate change. The organization said that up to 40 percent of the biodiversity of some Latin American nations could be wiped out by 2100 if steps are not taken immediately to control carbon emissions."

10:10UK makes a complete 180 on how they want to talk about climate change. They made that tasteless video showing children blowing up for 10-10. Now they say the key is to be positive when talking about climate change.

interesting visualization of the information provided by climate change skeptics versus science.

"Google.org demonstrated a new platform on Thursday that, if implemented in conjunction with a proposed United Nations program, could provide a significant tool to combat climate change. Its new "high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine" can process terabytes of information on thousands of Google servers while giving access to the results online. The platform, which was demonstrated on Thursday at the International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would allow anyone using the tool to monitor whether or not trees were being chopped down in a given forest. It analyzes satellite images to show forest changes over a given time period."

"For every argument tossed forward by climate change skeptics, there's a body of scientific research that clarifies the issue."

Global climate change poses a significant threat to migratory bird populations, which are already stressed by the loss of habitat and environmental pollution, according to a report released Thursday.

"WWF Philippines works in Sablayan to explain the difficult concept of climate change - what it means to have rising sea water levels; stronger and extreme weathers in the rainy season and drought in the summer season. The term now in use for conservation here is ADAPTATION - what to anticipate and how to proactively react in these trying times."

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganized researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal."

"One lesson is that anyone hoping to up-end decades of research pointing to a growing human influence on the climate by challenging a single batch of studies (in this case efforts to chart past temperatures using indirect clues like tree rings) is almost surely on a fool's errand. Another is that scientists, even when under relentless pressure, need to conduct their work scrupulously, carefully and openly and understand that transparency is inevitable in the digital era. A third is that scientists in highly specialized fields would do well to reach out for added statistical expertise when trying to test broader implications of their work."

The biggest climate talks in history opened on Monday with a stark U.N. warning of the risk of desertification and rising seas and an assurance by hosts Denmark that a deal to combat climate change was "within reach".

"Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change."

"Contrary to conventional belief, as the climate warms and growing seasons lengthen subalpine forests are likely to soak up less carbon dioxide, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. As a result, more of the greenhouse gas will be left to concentrate in the atmosphere."

Views on how the fight over climate certainty has distracted from the reality of a building risk.

"US Climate Envoy Todd Stern downplays hopes for a binding legal treaty in 2010. Instead, look for "strong progress be made" and "pragmatic steps" to be taken this year."

"US Climate Envoy Todd Stern downplays hopes for a binding legal treaty in 2010. Instead, look for "strong progress be made" and "pragmatic steps" to be taken this year."

"Researchers 'dedicated if slightly disorganised', but basic science was fair, finds inquiry commissioned by university"

"In 2006, Ron Suskind published "The One Percent Doctrine," a book about the U.S. war on terrorists after 9/11. The title was drawn from an assessment by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, in the face of concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda, reportedly declared: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney contended that the U.S. had to confront a very new type of threat: a 'low-probability, high-impact event.' Soon after Suskind's book came out, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who then was at the University of Chicago, pointed out that Mr. Cheney seemed to be endorsing the same "precautionary principle" that also animated environmentalists. Sunstein wrote in his blog: "According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events - such as climate change."