For information on the Burn Barrel bike tour headind to Earth Day Lobby Day, see burnbarrel.org/TourDeBB/TourBB.html

Join hundreds of students, citizen activists and local, state and national environmental groups for Earth Day Lobby Day 2004 on Monday, April 19th in Albany. Hear from leading environmental and government leaders, and lobby for important environmental issues in New York State, including clean energy, the Bigger Better Bottle Bill, closure of Indian Point, wetlands protection and a ban on backyard burning.

When: Monday, April 19th, 9:30AM-3:30PM
Where: Hearing Room B, Legislative Office Building, Albany
Cost: $5 (free for students and those on a limited income)

For more information or to register, visit: www.eany.org/takeaction/earthday.html, or contact Laura DiBetta at 518-462-5526 ext. 221, or edld (at) eany.org.

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From Australia IMC on Global Warming

A new study by a senior British climatologist, Jonathan Gregory, published in Nature and reported on in New Scientist (Greenland ice cap 'doomed to meltdown'), predicts that the Greenland ice sheet is all but doomed to melt away to nothing causing global sea levels to rise by seven metres, flooding most of the world's coastal regions.

Gregory warns that, if his calculations are correct, "the Greenland ice sheet is likely to be eliminated unless much more substantial reductions in [carbon dioxide] emissions are made than those envisaged" so far by scientists or politicians.

Snowfall onto the ice cap at present is balanced by meltwater and icebergs draining away into the Atlantic Ocean. The icecap is 3,000 metres high and contains 2.85 million cubic kilometres of ice. Gregory, from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in England, and co-author Philippe Huybrechts, a glaciologist at the Free University in Brussels, Belgium, calculate that if the island warms by an annual average of 3 degrees Celsius, melting will exceed snowfall and the ice sheet will begin to disappear.

The melting will be almost impossible to stop, argues Gregory. As the ice melts, the cap's surface will sink to lower altitudes, warming the surface further, reducing snowfall and accelerating melting. Runaway melting on Greenland could start within 50 years, and it will "probably be irreversible this side of a new ice age". Although total meltdown is likely to take at least 1000 years.

This latest study and analysis by Gregory and Huybrechts significantly strengthens their predictions, which they first put forward in 1999. In the latest study 35 different predictions of climate change from seven global climate models were examined. All but one forecast that the threshold for runaway melting on Greenland will be exceeded, in some cases as early as 2035.

If warming stabilises at 3 degrees Celsius, the ice sheet could survive for several thousand years. But if temperatures rise by 8 degrees Celsius, which several scenarios predict, then it would disappear in 1000 years.

Coastal areas inundated
The disintegration of the world's second largest ice cap would have a catastrophic effect on global sea levels, with the flooding of many coastal cities and coastal farmland. The rise in sea levels would, however, be gradual. This does not help the many Pacific Islanders, such as Tuvalu, or the many people in Bangladesh who will need relocating.

Another concern is the effect all the fresh meltwater in the North Atlantic could have on the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt. The operation of this global ocean current system is still poorly understood, but predictions of the current system being disrupted in the North Atlantic may lead to the onset of a new Ice Age with Siberian conditions for Britain and Europe.

Increased Arctic Sea Ice melt points to drier North American West Coast
Current research reported on in New Scientist (Arctic melt may dry out US west coast) on Arctic sea ice melts indicates that annual rainfall may drop by as much as 30 percent on the US/Canada west Coast. This will lead inevitably to a water crisis with water rationing a necessity and reduced water for irrigation. Natural ecosystems would be forced to adapt to a drier climate.

Jacob Sewall and Lisa Cirbus Sloan from the University of California at Santa Cruz first used a climate model to work out how sea ice cover was likely to change through the rest of the year. These values for sea ice cover and the resulting sea surface temperatures were then plugged into a global climate model to see which areas of the world would be most affected. While Europe was affected relatively lightly, they found that the sea ice changes are likely to mean significantly fewer storms will pass over the west coast of the US.

Sewall is careful to point out that they have only modelled the impact of reduced Arctic sea ice cover. Other climate factors, such as increasing greenhouse gases, might interact with melting Arctic sea ice, reducing, or even exacerbating, any changes in rainfall.

Other climatologists such as Marika Holland, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says the research "needs more work to become a prediction," but points out the study "highlights the importance of regional changes associated with a distant location".

Kyoto Protocol Hamstrung
Greenhouse gas emissions are now the recognised cause of climate change, and are largely a result of industrialisation and the combustion of fossil fuels for energy. The Kyoto Protocol was signed as a framework agreement in 1997 under which rich industrialised countries would curb emissions of "greenhouse" gases - carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that scientists say is dangerously affecting Earth's fragile climate system.

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Climate Change Warnings -- Again

By Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle
April 2, 2004

The Pentagon has warned that global warming is a serious threat to our country's national security.


Dryly entitled "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security" (October 2003), the Pentagon report first appeared in the British press, Fortune magazine, a small number of American newspapers and then began circulating on the Internet.


Andrew Marshall, a highly respected 82-year-old defense adviser in the Department of Defense, commissioned the Pentagon study. He also led the sweeping review of the military ordered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and runs a little-known Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, which has evaluated risks to national security for four presidents.

The authors of the study – Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant, and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network in California, are tough-minded analysts, not your stereotypical tree-hugging environmentalists.

Their report, however, reads like the script for a horror flick. "The purpose of this report," they begin, "is to imagine the unthinkable." To accomplish this goal, they "interviewed leading climate-change scientists."

Extrapolating from the present, they predict that dramatic climate changes may lead to rising seas, mega-droughts and famine within 20 years. Some European coastal cities, such as The Hague, could sink under the ocean, Britain could be plunged into a semi-Siberian climate, Bangladesh could become uninhabitable and drought could destroy the American breadbasket.

California would be especially hard hit. "Failures of the delta-island levees in the Sacramento River region in the Central Valley of California" could create an inland sea that would "disrupt the aqueduct system that transports water from Northern to Southern California because saltwater can no longer be kept out of the area during the dry season . . ."

In response to such catastrophic changes, the authors argue, some regions or countries will defend dwindling supplies of water, food and energy with all kinds of military strategies, including nuclear weapons. Widespread rioting and regional conflict could even push some areas of the planet to the edge of anarchy.

Global warming, they conclude, must "therefore be viewed as a serious threat to global stability and should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."

So far, the reframing of global warming as a national security threat has fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

But what would you expect? The Bush administration, after all, has said that "the jury is still out on global warming," suppressed scientific data on global warming in a 2002 annual report on the state of air pollution and published a 2003 "comprehensive" report on the environment without including any information at all about climate change.

Jeremy Symons, a whistle-blower at the Environmental Protection Agency, told the British newspaper the Observer, that "This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies."

Symons's desire for scientific impartiality is shared by many respected scientists who have protested the Bush administration's manipulation or suppression of scientific evidence.

Robert Watson, now chief scientist for the World Bank, has also warned that the Bush administration must not ignore the Pentagon's dire warnings.

For decades, human-rights proponents have been advocating an expanded definition of national security – one that includes the health and welfare of citizens. With both the World Bank and the Pentagon worried about global warming, President Bush now has an opportunity to broaden his militaristic view of national security and include climate change as well.

The Pentagon's report is already breathing new life into the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act that was narrowly defeated last year. A staff member of Sen. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, says that he plans to hold hearings on global warming and the national security.

The Bush administration says it was shocked when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred. Now, the Pentagon is predicting an eventual environmental Armageddon.

Don't say we weren't warned.

It took four years to negotiate the protocol's highly detailed rulebook but by that time the United States had quit the process under a controversial decision by President George W Bush. The US withdrawal has deprived Kyoto of support from its biggest carbon polluter and left it perilously short of failing to muster enough support to take effect. Under the protocol's rules, ratification by Russia is now essential for the deal to become an international treaty.

As reported by AAP on the ABC network in March, United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, warned that the first signs of disastrous climate change may already be visible in a message to mark the 10th anniversary of the coming into force of Kyoto's parent treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Some of the effects of climate change are by now inevitable and, indeed, we may already be seeing - in the increased incidence of drought, floods and extreme weather events that many regions are experiencing - some of the devastation that lies ahead," he said. Kyoto's "lack of entry into force remains a major hurdle to effective action. I call again on those countries that have not yet ratified the protocol to do so, and show that they are truly committed to shouldering their global responsibilities."

While the USA tops the list for total Green House Gas emissions at 19.074 Tonnes per capita per year of CO2, Australia with its reliance on abundant coal reserves and coal fired power stations is close behind with 16.902 Tonnes per capita per year of CO2. According to UN statistics Australia had a 24.9 per cent increase in CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2001 (see Note 1).

In Australia, a 2 per cent Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) was introduced in 1998 which has kick started a solar, wind and bioenergy industry. However, a 10% MRET by 2010 is the international standard which environmental groups are calling for the Australian Government to implement. (Campaigners ask Howard for more Renewable Energy) Australia, like the USA, refuses to sign the Kyoto treaty to control green house gas emissions.