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Last update: 25 June 2009

These recent articles concern climate and climate change issues of interest to California Applications Program (CAP) and/or California Climate Change Center (CCCC) participants.

• How the climate bill hits your wallet
  Lawmakers are set to debate a sweeping energy bill Friday (June 26, 2009). This is how it may affect you. Cutting greenhouse gases -- Reducing greenhouse gases is the main aim of the sweeping energy bill currently up for debate in the House. An 80% reduction is what most scientists say is needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Putting the nation on track to meet this goal by 2050 will cost the average American household $175 a year by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Under the bill, polluters would have to pay to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, something they currently do for free. Plus, the amount they can emit would decline each year. (CNN, June 2009)
• High human impact ocean areas along US West Coast revealed
  Climate change, fishing and commercial shipping top the list of threats to the ocean off the West Coast of the United States. "Every single spot of the ocean along the West Coast," said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "is affected by 10 to 15 different human activities annually." (e! Science News, May 2009)
• Yosemite's largest trees vanishing
  Climate change appears to be taking its toll on the oldest and largest firs and pines in California's Yosemite National Park, research said. The number of large-diameter trees fell by 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s in all types of forests in Yosemite, said James Lutz of the University of Washington in Seattle. (TerraDaily, May 2009)
• Climate change, water shortages conspire to create 21st century Dust Bowl
  Dust storms accelerated by a warming climate have covered the Rocky Mountains with dirt whose heat-trapping properties have caused snowpacks to melt weeks earlier than normal, worrying officials in Colorado about drastic water shortages by late summer. Snowpacks from the San Juan Mountains to the Front Range have either completely melted or will be gone within the next two weeks, said Tom Painter, director of the Snow Optics Laboratory at the University of Utah and a leading expert on snowmelt. The rapid melting is linked to a spate of intense dust storms that kick up dirt and sand that in turn are deposited on snow-topped mountains. The dust darkens the snow, allowing the surface to absorb more heat from the sun. This warms the snow -- and the air above it -- significantly, studies show. (The New York Times, May 2009)
• North Pole poised to be largely ice-free by 2020
  From the Climate Progress Blog: The north pole poised to be largely ice-free by 2020: "It's like the Arctic is covered with an egg shell and the egg shell is now just cracking completely". It's the ice thickness, stupid. The Arctic ice cover, which has endured for at least 100,000 years, will be all but gone within a decade according to a volume-based projection by a leading British scientist, the BBC reports. At the same time, "a gruelling 73-day" survey of sea-ice thickness found "the average thickness of the sea ice was 1.774 m" [5.8 feet]. One surveyor said the data "seems to suggest it was almost all first-year ice." (Climate Progress Blog, May 2009)
• Newsletter of the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) - April 2009
  Click above for the 56 page newsletter on Global Change in Mountain Regions from The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI). This newsletter (published twice a year) is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. It covers a wide range of subjects, activities and scientific communications. 8 science articles are available, covering topics including a report on a high altitude interdisciplinary field campaign, a forest dynamics network and incorporating climate change projections into watershed management. (MRI News, April 2009)
• Adventures of Junior Raindrop (1948) -- TeacherTube Video
  This 7.5 minute clip features animation of Junior Raindrop and his involvement in the water cycle. Film segments are included showing how human activities (timber, ranch, fire) can alter the landscape so rain can have a devastating effect. (TeacherTube, March 2009)
• David Rutledge: Hubbert's Peak, the Coal Question, and Climate Change
  A 52-minute video of David Rutledge, Caltech's Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering, presenting a Watson Lecture called "Hubbert's Peak, the Coal Question, and Climate Change." Rutledge discussed whether oil, natural gas, and coal resources will be sufficient in the future, and explained efforts to predict the changes in climate that will result from consuming these fossil fuels. (Caltech Today Streaming Theater, March 2009)
• Climate researchers seek citizen scientists
  Valerie Hilt's yard brims with hollyhocks, hellebores and hyacinths. But it's her lilac bush that landed the Port Angeles great-grandmother in the annals of science. For 35 springs, Hilt has logged the date when the first leaf unfurls on the 20-foot-tall shrub. She also takes note of the first fragrant blossom and other milestones, like peak bloom. "It doesn't take any great amount of time," she said. "I'm always outside looking around anyway." Hilt, 70, is one of the last remaining lilac watchers in a network that once included 2,500 volunteers across the Western U.S. Their handwritten postcards grew into a powerful database that researchers have used to document how rising temperatures are hastening the onset of spring. (The Seattle Times, March 2009)
• 4 Top Science Advisers Are Named by Obama
  In his selection of four top scientific advisers, President-elect Barack Obama has signaled what are likely to be significant changes in policies governing global warming, ocean protections and stem cell research. "It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," Mr. Obama said in a radio address on Saturday, when he announced the appointments. John P. Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, will serve as the president's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas ocean and atmospheric studies and performs much of the government's research on global warming. (The New York Times, December 2008)
• Has the Arctic melt passed the point of no return?
  Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen. Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover. The Arctic is considered one of the most sensitive regions in terms of climate change and its transition to another climatic state will have a direct impact on other parts of the northern hemisphere, as well more indirect effects around the world. (The Independent, December 2008)
• Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst
  As ministers and officials gather in Poznan one year ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming, the second part of a major series looks at the crucial issue of targets
  At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong. Many of those in the room who knew what he was about to say felt the same. His conclusions had already caused a stir in scientific and political circles. Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them terrified.
  Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, was about to send the gloomiest dispatch yet from the frontline of the war against climate change.
  Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media headlines and the corporate promises, he would say, carbon emissions were soaring way out of control - far above even the bleak scenarios considered by last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle against dangerous climate change had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very bad.
  "As an academic I wanted to be told that it was a very good piece of work and that the conclusions were sound," Anderson said. "But as a human being I desperately wanted someone to point out a mistake, and to tell me we had got it completely wrong."
  Nobody did. The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and "dangerously misguided" at worst.
  (The Guardian, December 2008)
• Gwynne Dyer: Four harsh truths about climate change (commentary)
  About two years ago, I realized that militaries in various countries were starting to do climate-change scenarios in-house-scenarios that started with the scientific predictions about rising temperatures, falling crop yields, and other physical effects, and then examined what that would do to politics and strategy. The scenarios predicted failed states proliferating because governments couldn't feed their people; waves of climate refugees washing up against the borders of more fortunate countries; and even wars between countries that share rivers. So I started interviewing everybody I could get access to, not only senior military people but scientists, diplomats, and politicians.
  (Straight.com, December 2008)
• California bulks up defenses against tide of global warming
  California is building a second line of defense against global warming, one that will prepare the state for a harsher environment while the other continues to cut climate-changing emissions. The two-front approach acknowledges that rising sea levels, bigger floods, greater loss of species and other harsh effects of warming are inevitable, if not already occurring - no matter the state's success in slashing greenhouse gases.
  (The Sacramento Bee, November 2008)
• Explore flu trends across the U.S.
  From the google web page: "We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems."
  (Google, November 2008)
• A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system
  R.A. Pielke, Sr., opinion from Physics Today, November 2008
  The 2007 report form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change Working Group I presents a narrow view of the state of climate science. Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on controlling carbon dioxide emissions alone cannot succeed since humans are significantly altering the global climate in a variety ofdiverse ways beyond the radiative effect of CO2.
  (Physics Today, November 2008)
• Chilean glacier will vanish in 50 years: study
  Chile's official water authority warned Saturday that the Echaurren glacier near Santiago, which supplies the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, could disappear in the next half century. In a new report on Chile's glaciers the main water company -- Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) -- said the ice fields of Echaurren are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.
  (AFP News, November 2008)
• Climate change at the poles IS man-made
  Changes to the climate due to human activity can now be detected on every continent, following a study showing that temperature rises in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic are the result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. It is the first time scientists have been able to prove the link between the temperature changes in both polar regions are down to human activity and it also undermines climate sceptics who believe the warming trend seen in the Arctic in recent decades is part of the climate's natural variability. The findings contradict the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that Antarctica was the only continent where the human impact on the climate had not been observed.
  (The Independent, October 2008)
• Yosemite glacier on thin ice
  There was so much rock, Devine dredged up a bit of humor. "What's the Lyell glacier's favorite movie?" he asked the tour group. Nobody had a clue. "Rocky," he said. Some laughed. Others groaned. Still, Devine wasn't finished. "What's the Lyell glacier's favorite ice cream?" he asked. Someone got that one: Rocky Road. "And what's its favorite band?" That one was easy: the Rolling Stones. The melting is so swift that even U.S. Geological Survey maps no longer reflect reality. "All this is gone," Devine said as he kneeled down to look at a 1985 topographical map that one member of the tour group - Chicago artist Bonnie Peterson - had pulled from her pack.
  (The Sacramento Bee, October 2008)
• Impacts Research Seen as Next Climate Frontier
  Scientists hope the next U.S. president will devote more of the billion-dollar climate change research program to impacts.
  Marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco was among the first scientists to study how ecosystems off the California coast are being affected by climate change.
  (Science, October 2008)
• 'Dramatic evidence' of Arctic melt, experts warn
  Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record highs, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday. "Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card for the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  (MSNBC, October 2008)
• The Sun
  The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years.
  (The Boston Globe, October 2008)
• Warming World In Range Of Dangerous Consequences
  The earth will warm about 2.4 degrees C (4.3 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful, according to a new analysis by a pair of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. That amount of warming falls within what the world's leading climate change authority recently set as the threshold range of temperature increase that would lead to widespread loss of biodiversity, deglaciation and other adverse consequences in nature.
  (Terra Daily, September 2008)
• Is Cotati part of Russian River grape region?
  The giant E&J Gallo Winery wants to stretch the acclaimed Russian River Valley grape-growing region all the way to Cotati to encompass its 350 acres of vineyards along Highway 101. The controversial proposal by Gallo, the country's largest winery, has brought protests from a band of grape growers and winemakers who worry the change would erode the integrity of the appellation and confuse consumers. "We're pretty proud of our AVA (American Viticulture Area), and I think what they are doing deteriorates it," said grape grower Nick Leras of Fulton.
  (The Press Democrat, September 2008)
• Nitrogen emerges as the latest climate-change threat
  Scientists are raising alarms about yet another threat to Earth's climate and human well-being. This time it's nitrogen, a common element essential to all life. For years, people have been bombarded with warnings about the harmful effects of carbon especially in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas widely blamed for global warming. Now, it's becoming clear that human activities, such as driving cars and raising crops, also are boosting nitrogen to dangerous levels polluting air and water and damaging human health.
  (McClatchy, September 2008)
• Global Warming to Cause More... Kidney Stones
  According to a study published in the July 15 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (and reported in the September issue of Scientific American), kidney stones will be more frequent during the 21st century. It's not exactly making headlines, but according to the researchers, there could be an extra 1.6 to 2.2 million cases of kidney stones by 2050, a 7 to 10% increase on the current numbers. This could cost about 1.3 billion of medical costs, and of course cause a lot of pain.
  (Tree Hugger, September 2008)
• Climate: New Spin On Ocean's Role
  New studies of the Southern Ocean are revealing previously unknown features of giant spinning eddies that have a profound influence on marine life and on the world's climate. These massive swirling structures - the largest are known as gyres - can be thousands of kilometres across and can extend down as deep as 500 metres or more, a research team led by a UNSW mathematician, Dr Gary Froyland, has shown in the latest study published in Physical Review Letters.
  (Science Daily, September 2008)
• Global Sea-rise Levels By 2100 May Be Lower Than Some Predict, Says New Study
  Despite projections by some scientists of global seas rising by 20 feet or more by the end of this century as a result of warming, a new University of Colorado at Boulder study concludes that global sea rise of much more than 6 feet is a near physical impossibility.
  (Science Daily, September 2008)
• Greenland Ice Core Reveals History Of Pollution In The Arctic
  Coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, contaminated the Arctic and potentially affected human health and ecosystems in and around Earth's polar regions, according to new research. The study was conducted by the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Reno, Nev. and partially funded by the National Science Foundation. Detailed measurements from a Greenland ice core showed pollutants from burning coal -- the toxic heavy metals cadmium, thallium and lead -- were much higher than expected. The catch, however, was the pollutants weren't higher at the times when researchers expected peaks.
  (Science Daily, August 2008)
• Drier, Warmer Springs In US Southwest Stem From Human-caused Changes In Winds
  Since the 1970s the winter storm track in the western U.S. has been shifting north, particularly in the late winter. As a result, fewer winter storms bring rain and snow to Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado and western New Mexico. "We used to have this season from October to April where we had a chance for a storm," said Stephanie A. McAfee. "Now it's from October to March."
  (Science Daily, August 2008)
• New Software Allows Wind Farms to Predict Output Up to Four Days in Advance
  A new piece of software developed in Germany is being used to predict electrical output from existing wind farms. By providing a level of predictability, the Previento system allows German grid operators to determine how much additional fossil fuel energy will be needed to compensate for lulls in wind energy output.
  (TreeHugger, August 2008)
• Purdue Researcher Identifies Climate Change Hotspots
  A study using one of the most complete climate modeling systems in the world points to southern California, northern Mexico and western Texas as climate change hotspots for the 21st century. The research team, led by Purdue University associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences Noah S. Diffenbaugh, developed a new technique to identify hotspots based on the magnitude of temperature and precipitation response to greenhouse gas emissions.
  (Terra Daily, August 2008)
• Climate Change Caused Widespread Tree Death In California Mountain Range
  Warmer temperatures and longer dry spells have killed thousands of trees and shrubs in a Southern California mountain range, pushing the plants' habitat an average of 213 feet up the mountain over the past 30 years, a UC Irvine study has determined. White fir and Jeffrey pine trees died at the lower altitudes of their growth range in the Santa Rosa Mountains, from 6,400 feet to as high as 7,200 feet in elevation, while California lilacs died between 4,000-4,800 feet. Almost all of the studied plants crept up the mountain a similar distance, countering the belief that slower-growing trees would move slower than faster-growing grasses and wildflowers.
  (Terra Daily, August 2008)
• Cattails may be solution in Delta
  On one side of the gravel road are hundreds of acres of corn. On the other is a much different crop that scientists hope will enable farmers to rebuild sinking islands in the Delta, combat global warming and make a profit at the same time. The alternate field is full of tules and cattails that the U.S. Geological Survey is growing on 15 acres on Twitchell Island, about 5.7 square miles of rich but fragile peat soil about 7 miles northeast of Antioch.
  (San Jose Mercury News, August 2008)
• The climate change clock is ticking
  The exact timescale of global warming is unknown, but the 100 months campaign provides a much-needed sense of urgency
  The UK is in denial about its real carbon emissions, suggests a report from the Stockholm Environment Institute. The academics conclude that if "outsourced" emissions produced in countries like China on goods which are imported into the UK are included in our total carbon footprint, this country's total greenhouse gas emissions are 49% higher than currently reported. So we should think twice when blaming the Chinese for emitting the CO2 that is required in the manufacture of our fridges and televisions.
  The report illustrates once again - as if we had forgotten - that global warming is an, er, global issue. A tonne of CO2 is a tonne of CO2, wherever it is emitted. How you do the counting is more a matter of politics than mathematics. A much greater concern is that all the politics is in danger of obscuring the increasingly drastic nature of the climate change threat. According to Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, the world has only got 100 months left if we are to have a reasonably high chance of staving off runaway global warming.
  (Guardian, August 2008)
• Sea Ice Outlook
  June Report: Outlook Based on June Data
  The outlook for the pan-arctic sea ice extent in September 2008, based on June data, indicates a continuation of dramatic sea ice loss. The June Sea Ice Outlook report is based on a synthesis of 17 individual projections, utilizing a range of methods. Projections based on June data are similar to those of the May report, with no indication that a return to historical sea ice extent will occur this year.
  (SEARCH: Study of Environmental ARctic Change, July 2008)
• Pinpointing sea-level rise
  Sea-level rise is one of the aspects of climate change that has captured the public imagination most strongly. To date, however, climate models haven't reproduced the large decadal variability in ocean heat content, which is linked to sea-level rise, that ocean temperature observations imply. Now an Australian-led team has come up with new estimates of ocean heat content that allow for sampling and instrumental biases. The revised estimates show 50% higher ocean warming and thermal expansion trends for 1961 to 2003 and are in better agreement with climate models.
  (Environmental Research Web, July 2008)
• California Traffic: Like a Wildfire Every 9 Days
  For every acre of California forest that burns in this week's 1,000 blazes, about 17 tons of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere. With an estimated 265,000 acres scorched already, these fires could have already sent up to 4.6 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's as much CO2 as a mere 9 days' worth of California traffic generates, according to our back-of-the-envelope estimate.
  (Wired, June 2008)
• Greenland Ice Core Analysis Shows Drastic Climate Change Near End Of Last Ice Age
  Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation. The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years, then plunged back into icy conditions before abruptly warming again about 11,700 years ago. Startlingly, the Greenland ice core evidence showed that a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere coincided with each temperature spurt, with each reorganization taking just one or two years, said the study authors.
  (TerraDaily, June 2008)
• State renews climate battle
  New rules to curb emissions call for a 30 percent cut by 2020
  The state Air Resources Board will outline this morning a plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020 and prepare the state for much deeper cuts in the years beyond. The bottom line for consumers, according to the agency's analysis: Electricity and fuel prices will rise. But improvements in efficiency should, on average, result in a net savings on household fuel and energy bills will drop.
  (Sacramento Bee, June 2008)
• Melting Asia
  China and India are increasingly keen to be seen to be tackling climate change; though it is dirtier, China is making a more convincing show of action.
  (The Economist, June 2008)
• Climate Change Is Bad News for U.S. Agriculture
  A landmark review of over 1000 papers documenting ecological change in the United States has found that a shifting climate is affecting agriculture, biodiversity, and land and water resources from the mountains of Alaska to the sands of Death Valley. Among the findings of the report, released yesterday: Forest fires are becoming more frequent and numerous, streams are warming, and the Mountain West is seeing much less snow. More changes may be coming, especially for U.S. farmers and ranchers.
  (Science Now, May 2008)
• Peak Everything: Eight Things We Are Running Out Of And Why
  Why is everything running out at the same time? We did a series on Planet Green where we looked at why those basic things that we take for granted, like water, food and fuel are getting expensive and scarce, all at once.
  (Treehugger, May 2008)
• Greenland hosts Arctic sovereignty talks
  Senior officials from five Arctic countries met in Greenland on Tuesday to discuss sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one-quarter of the world's undiscovered oil reserves. Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are squabbling over huge tracts of the Arctic seabed and Denmark has called them together for talks in its self-governing province to avert a free-for-all for the region's natural resources.
  (Reuters, May 2008)
• U.S. Pacific Coast Waters Turning More Acidic
  An international team of scientists surveying the waters of the continental shelf off the West Coast of North America has discovered for the first time high levels of acidified ocean water within 20 miles of the shoreline, raising concern for marine ecosystems from Canada to Mexico. Researchers aboard the Wecoma, an Oregon State University research vessel, also discovered that this corrosive, acidified water that is being "upwelled" seasonally from the deeper ocean is probably 50 years old, suggesting that future ocean acidification levels will increase since atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased rapidly over the past half century.
  (Science Daily, May 2008)
• Sinking without trace: Australia's climate change victims
  Like Kiribati and Tuvalu, the islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged. But unlike their Pacific neighbours, the plight of their inhabitants is being overlooked. Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island's only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck. Neighbours flagged them down, asking for help, and so it was not until some time later that they saw their own grandchildren standing in the road. "They were shouting 'Granddad, stop the car, the water is coming in the house'," says Ron. "I just slammed on the brakes."
  (The Independent, May 2008)
• Forecast for big sea level rise
  Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis. This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science. Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.
  (BBC News, April 2008)
• Eat: Sere Grapes
  Though ultraripe wines have been fashionable in the Napa Valley for more than a decade, climate change appears to be forcing the issue. While recent summers were cool, most Napa winemakers agree that 10-year averages are the hottest in memory. Too often, a result has been overripe grapes, and the cooked flavors and throat-searing alcohol that accompany them. If temperatures continue to rise even slightly, Napa could be in trouble.
  (New York Times, April 2008)
• California utility customers to fund think tank on climate
  California utility customers will foot the bill for a $600-million global-warming think tank under a Public Utilities Commission program that critics say is a costly and questionable departure from the agency's mission to make sure ratepayers get affordable and reliable power. The California Institute for Climate Solutions, approved Thursday, was pushed by commission President Michael Peevey, and the concept behind it -- accelerating research into ways to quickly cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions -- enjoyed broad support.
  (Los Angeles Times, April 2008)
• Researchers perform multi-century high-resolution climate simulations
  Using state-of-the-art supercomputers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientists have performed a 400-year high-resolution global ocean-atmosphere simulation with results that are more similar to actual observations of surface winds and sea surface temperatures.
  (Science Blog, April 2008)
• California's water fortune is told at Gin Flat
  In deep winter, water scientist Frank Gehrke straps on his cross-country skis and trudges uphill in the thin, cold air to one of the most closely monitored frozen meadows on the continent, 7,200 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevada. To understand why his arduous, breath-sucking hike is important, stand still and listen to the snow. In the pale morning sun, the forest of pine and cedar comes alive with sound. Clumps of fresh powder fall with a thud or drip-drop from tree tops, quickening with the staccato of popping corn. This place is like a Rosetta Stone for California's water supply. It's where the convergence of snow, sun and temperature enables scientists to predict floods or drought. It's where they have installed sophisticated equipment to help understand how climate change is altering snow melt in the Sierra, a source of water for millions of Californians.
  (Los Angeles Times, March 2008)
• Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell
  The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe's average temperature. It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment. So what is happening? According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Nina phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Nino pattern.
  (New York Times, March 2008)
• West Antarctic Glaciers Melting At 20 Times Former Rate, Rock Analysis Shows
  Boulders the size footballs could help scientists predict the West Antarctic Ice Sheet's (WAIS) contribution to sea-level rise according to new research. Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Durham University and Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) collected boulders deposited by three glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment -- a region currently the focus of intense international scientific attention because it is changing faster than anywhere else on the WAIS and it has the potential to raise sea-level by around 1.5 metres.
  (Science Daily, March 2008)
• Past Greenhouse Warming Provides Clues To What The Future May Hold
  If carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue on a "business-as-usual" trajectory, humans will have added about 5 trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere by the year 2400. A similarly massive release of carbon accompanied an extreme period of global warming 55 million years ago known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Scientists studying the PETM are piecing together an increasingly detailed picture of its causes and consequences. Their findings describe what may be the best analog in the geologic record for the global changes likely to result from continued carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, according to James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
  (Science Daily, February 2008)
• Eco-homes: There will be floods
  A floodplain on the edge of the North Sea may not be the ideal place to build your new home, especially with predictions of sea-level rises being ratcheted up with each new report. The latest global analysis, published earlier this month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicted a rise in sea levels by the end of the century of up to 58cm - higher than all previous predictions, which put the rises between 14cm and 43cm. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) warned last week that many new homes could be "unsaleable, uninsurable and uninhabitable" if they're built on floodplains. And the Environment Agency has also issued strong warnings that we must "avoid inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding and to direct development away from those areas at highest risk."
  (The Independent, February 2008)
• Climate Change Poses A Huge Threat To Human Health
  Climate change will have a huge impact on human health and bold environmental policy decisions are needed now to protect the world's population, according to the author of an article published in the British Medical Journal. The threat to human health is of a more fundamental kind than is the threat to the world's economic system, says Professor McMichael, a Professor of public health from the Australian National University. "Climate change is beginning to damage our natural life-support system," he says.
  (Science Daily, January 2008)
• Our Trial By Fire
  Beset by heat and drought, the West burns up
  This was a record fire year in the West, but most are these days. Wildfire began on schedule in the Southwest, but by July the heavy action was in the northern Rockies. Forest fires roared across more than 600,000 acres of Montana, where I live, close to 30 major fires, some lasting from mid-June until first snowfall in October. Idaho had it worse, with roughly the same number of fires as Montana but more than two million acres burned. The two states took the brunt of the action but were not far out of line with the rest of the West. All told, as much as eight million acres of western wildlands burned (the same as in each of the past three years); the climax came in Southern California with brushfires that claimed almost 2,000 homes and at least seven lives, engulfing close to half a million acres in less than a week.
  (OnEarth Magazine from NRDC, Winter 2008)
• The Ocean's Biological Deserts Are Expanding
  The Sahara, the Gobi, the Chihuahuan -- all are great deserts. But what about the South Pacific's subtropical gyre? This "biological desert" within a swirling expanse of nutrient-starved saltwater is the largest, and least productive, ecosystem of the South Pacific. Together with the subtropical gyres in other oceans, biological deserts cover 40% of Earth's surface. But their relative obscurity may be about to change. Researchers are reporting that the ocean's biological deserts have been expanding, and they are growing much faster than global warming models predict.
  (Science Now, January 2008)
• Why Natomas levees flunked
  U.S. agency used a new type of flood-risk analysis; critics fear faulty premises could distort the results.
  When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers two weeks ago revealed that Natomas levees are not tall enough to contain even a modest storm, it wasn't because the levees had shrunk overnight or because someone misread the yardstick. Instead, the corps applied a new yardstick. But the new method is so complex that many flood-control experts are struggling to understand it - even some within the corps itself, said Joe Countryman, former chief of civil works design in the corps' Sacramento District and now president of MBK Engineers, a flood-control consultancy.
  (Sacramento Bee, January 2008)
• Brazil Amazon deforestation soars
  The Brazilian government has announced a huge rise in the rate of Amazon deforestation, months after celebrating its success in achieving a reduction. In the last five months of 2007, 3,235 sq km (1,250 sq miles) were lost. Gilberto Camara, of INPE, an institute that provides satellite imaging of the area, said the rate of loss was unprecedented for the time of year.
  (BBC News, January 2008)
• Climate Change Entices Birds To Stay Home
  Amateur ornithologists in the UK are gearing up for this weekend's annual Big Garden Birdwatch. The results could be worrying: Due to warm weather, many feathered friends are foregoing their winter trips to the Mediterranean -- a process which climate change will exacerbate.
  (Spiegel Online, January 2008)
• Profiteering from the Arctic Thaw
  Global warming isn't necessarily the catastrophe it's made out to be -- at least not for multinational oil companies. Shrinking ice caps would reveal the Arctic's massive energy sources and shorten tanker routes by thousands of miles. Ice-cap melting may be bad news for the polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, but it is great news for Pat Broe of Denver. When the ice melts in the Arctic, the polar predators have to search for new hunting grounds or starve -- but but Broe doesn't mind. He figures global warming will make him around $100 million a year.
  (Spiegel Online, January 2008)
• Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data
  Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest and first previewed to the scientific community at the Science Foo camp at the Googleplex last August, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon.
  (Wired, January 2008)
• North American Birds Moving North As A Result Of Climate Change
  A new study led by an Auburn University researcher shows that the breeding ranges of North American birds have shifted northward coinciding with a period of increasing global temperatures. Alan Hitch, a doctoral student with AU's School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, along with his master's degree advisor, Paul Leberg, studied the breeding ranges of 56 bird species using data collected by the North American Breeding Bird Survey, a long-term, large-scale, international avian monitoring program initiated in 1966 to track the status and trends of North American bird populations.
  (Terradaily, January 2008)
• Warming forces Iditarod changes
  The modern challenges of global warming and population growth are catching up with the world's most famous sled dog race. Citing a warming climate and sprawling development, officials with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race said Wednesday they were implementing permanent logistical changes that in recent years have become the norm for the March event.
  (Yahoo News, January 2008)
• Scientists Find Good News About Methane Bubbling Up From the Ocean Floor Near Santa Barbara
  Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted in great quantities as bubbles from seeps on the ocean floor near Santa Barbara. About half of these bubbles dissolve into the ocean, but the fate of this dissolved methane remains uncertain. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that only one percent of this dissolved methane escapes into the air -- good news for the Earth's atmosphere.
  (UCSB News, December 2007)
• Climate sanctions sought against US
  The Social Democrats are calling for sanctions on energy-intensive US export products if the Bush administration continues to obstruct international agreements on climate protection, the party's leading environmental specialist said yesterday. The move, after the United Nations climate conference last week in Bali, Indonesia, has won strong support from the Greens and other leftist groupings in the European Parliament. Those factions will renew their bid to impose such levies when the Parliament reconvenes next month.
  (The Boston Globe, December 2007)
• Global warming is pushing edges of tropics towards poles: study
  The greenhouse effect is causing Earth's zone of tropical climate to creep towards the poles, according to a study whose release on Sunday coincided with the eve of a major UN conference on climate change. The poleward expansion of the tropics will have far-reaching impacts, notably in intensifying water scarcity in the Mediterranean and the US "Sun belt" as well as southern Africa and southern Australia, it warns.
  (TerraDaily, December 2007)
• European Union Forests Expanding, Absorbing Carbon At Surprisingly High Rate
  European Union countries likely require an old ally -- Mother Nature and her forests -- to meet an ambitious post-Kyoto goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020, according to new research. The University of Helsinki study says that despite rising population and affluence, the EU can meet its obligations post-Kyoto (2012-2020). However, it will likely require more than energy savings, new technologies and mitigating non-CO2 gasses such as methane; partial credit for expansion of the region's forests could be decisive, say researchers Pekka E. Kauppi, Laura Saikku and Aapo Rautiainen, whose report, The Sustainability Challenge of Meeting Carbon Dioxide Targets in Europe by 2020, is published today in the peer-reviewed UK journal Energy Policy.
  (Science Daily, November 2007)
• Fever Outbreak Linked to Climate Change
  An outbreak in Europe of an obscure disease from Africa is raising concerns that globalization and climate change are combining to pose a health threat to the West. Nearly 300 cases of chikungunya fever, a virus that previously has been common only in Africa and Asia, were reported in Italy -- where only isolated cases of the disease had been seen in the past. "We were quite surprised," said Stefania Salmaso, director of Italy's Center for Epidemiology at the National Health Institute. "Nobody was expecting that such an unusual event was going to happen."
  (The New York Times, November 2007)
• 2007 Rainfall Patterns in United States
  The rainfall pattern across the United States during the first eight months of 2007 is a study in contrasts. Drought dominated both coasts, while the Great Plains states saw far more rain than average. The pattern is illustrated in this rainfall anomaly image, made from data from the near-real-time, Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
  (NASA Earth Observatory Newsroom, November 2007)
• Tim Flannery broadcast on Climate Change (mp3 file)
  Leading Australian Scientist Tim Flannery on Global Warming and the Worsening Dangers of Climate Change Denial
  The above mp3 broadcast and interview transcript are with Tim Flannery, leading Australian scientist and climate change campaigner. He was named 2007 Australian of the Year. He is author of several books including "The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change."
  (Radio program 'Democracy Now!', November 2007)
• Chinese coal plants cause health problems around the world
  It takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. It shows up as mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon's Willamette River. It increases cloud cover and raises ozone levels. And along the way, it contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea and health problems everywhere from Taiyuan to the United States. This is the dark side of the world's growing use of coal.
  (CNN, November 2007)
• European Union moves to reduce aircraft emissions
  One of the boldest attempts by the European Union to impose its climate policy on other parts of the world received a boost Tuesday when legislators voted to strengthen a plan to cap carbon emissions from aircraft flying to and from Europe. The proposal mirrors an existing carbon credit trading system that the EU uses to combat global warming and meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Under the current system - which exempted airlines - governments set carbon dioxide limits for producers of power, cement, fuels, pulp and paper. Companies must then purchase credits if they exceed those targets.
  (International Herald Tribune, November 2007)
• The deceit behind global warming
  No one can deny that in recent years the need to "save the planet" from global warming has become one of the most pervasive issues of our time. As Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, it poses "a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism", warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.
  (Telegraph, November 2007)
• German City Turns All its Power Green
  While the government announces more targets for saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions, the central German city of Kassel is the first German city to go completely green when it comes to power. The juice coming out of electrical sockets in the central German city of Kassel in the state of Hesse couldn't get any greener. As of Tuesday, Oct. 30, only electricity generated from renewable sources is surging through the power lines.
  (DW, November 2007)
• As temperatures rise, a greening of Greenland
  A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerge's forest, a place so minute and unexpected that it brings to mind the teeny piece of land that Woody Allen's father carries around in the film "Love and Death." Its four oldest trees - in fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named Rosenvinge's trees after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment in 1893 - are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had glued on fresh needles.
  (International Herald Tribune, October 2007)
• Tower to gauge climate success
  Sensors will help show if Valley is reducing emissions quickly enough
  Scientists charged with determining if progress is being made under California's new anti-global warming law on Monday unveiled one way they will gather crucial independent information. Government and university scientists will rely on sensors along a 2,000-foot television tower rising from the tomato fields near Walnut Grove. The recently placed sensors will analyze the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the air. The data will help determine whether the state - or the Sacramento Valley at least - is reducing emissions fast enough. The new landmark state law requires that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 25 percent over the next dozen years.
  (Sacramento Bee, October 2007)
• Tiny Pacific islands say climate change threatens survival
  Some of the world's most vulnerable island nations appealed Monday for action to halt climate change that could cause them to disappear beneath the Pacific Ocean. Meeting in the Tongan capital, Nuku'alofa, the leaders of tiny nations including Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, Niue, the Cook Islands and the Marshall Islands said countries responsible for greenhouse gas emissions must act. "It is very, very serious because if we don't do something now, we are gone. That's for sure," said the Premier of Niue, Young Vivian. "There's no two ways about it and we are scared."
  (TerraDaily, October 2007)
• Award Underlines Danger of Climate Change
  The Nobel Peace Prize committee made a powerful statement today that the consequences of increasing carbon emissions could be as dangerous as the ravages of war. The award to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reflects a growing conviction on the part of scientists, politicians and economists that emissions and the global warming they produce will lead not only to more pollution but could also create economic mayhem, social upheaval and conflicts between nations or groups trying to survive in an increasingly hostile natural environment.
  (The New York Times, October 2007)
• All eyes on California climate-change fight
  Make big-rig trucks more aerodynamic. Allow docked ships to shut off engines and plug into electrical outlets. Require oil-change technicians to check tire pressure. Those measures and six more that California regulators will consider this month are among early actions in what will be a long, fiercely debated and politically perilous battle against global warming.
  (USA Today, October 2007)
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions Hit Danger Mark
  The global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and could potentially cause irreversible climate change, said one of Australia's leading scientists. Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level.
  (The New York Times, October 2007)
• Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts
  The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia. Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates. Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer's changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water - six Californias - beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.
  (The New York Times, October 2007)
• China offers surprise hope in climate change fight
  Teenager Zhu Xiaotong's home a few hours' drive outside Beijing is a world away from the acrid air and snarling traffic jams that have come to dominate China's energy-hungry capital. Cherry tomatoes, capsicum and spring onions rise up from a little garden patch that forms the centrepiece of her family's brick courtyard home, while a solar panel heater ensures the Zhu's have warm water even in winter.
  (TerraDaily, October 2007)
• Vanishing ice worries West
  Accelerating Arctic melting could change weather patterns in region, bring less rain
  The Arctic Ocean is more than 3,000 miles from Southern California, but the rapid disappearance of sea ice at the top of the world could be altering weather patterns down here. Three years ago, computer forecast models predicted that in 2050, the reduced ice mass would cause climate shifts that would result in a drought in the western United States. But the ice is melting far faster than climatologists thought it would.
  (The San Diego Union Tribune, September 2007)
• Fight for the Top of the World
  At the end of august, a wisp of flame suddenly appeared in the Arctic twilight over the Barents Sea, bathing the low clouds over the Norwegian port of Hammerfest in a spectral orange glow. With a tremendous roar, the flame bloomed over the windswept ocean and craggy gray rocks, competing for an instant with the Arctic summer's never-setting sun. The first flare-off of natural gas from the Snohvit (Snow White in Norwegian) gas field, some 90 miles (145 km) offshore, was a beacon of promise: after 25 years of false starts, planning and construction, the first Arctic industrial oil-and-gas operation outside of Alaska was up and running. Norway's state-owned petroleum firm Statoil could finally exploit once unreachable reserves, expected to deliver an estimated $1.4 billion worth of liquefied natural gas each year for the next 25 years.
  (Time, September 2007)
• Greenhouse Earth: Methane powered runaway global warming
  Methane released from wetlands turned the Earth into a hothouse 55 million years ago, according to research released Wednesday that could shed light on a worrying aspect of today's climate-change crisis. Scientists have long sought to understand the triggers for an extraordinary warming episode called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 10 million years after the twilight of the dinosaurs.
  (Terra Daily, September 2007)
• Greenland' Jakobshavn glacier sounds climate change alarm
  The chaotic cavalcade of blueish ice tumbling into the sea from the world's fastest-moving glacier is sounding a daily climate change alarm, say scientists ahead of International Polar Day on Friday. The Jakobshavn Glacier, on Greenland's west coast, is melting twice as fast as 10 years ago and advancing toward the sea at 12 kilometres (seven miles) per year, compared with six kilometres (three and a half miles) before.
  (Terra Daily, September 2007)
• Labor Day heat wave may test Calif. power grid
  Utilities warn customers to keep conserving energy as demand soars
  Utilities urged customers to ease up on electricity use and officials opened cool shelters as California continued to swelter under a heat wave at the start of Labor Day weekend. Meanwhile, cloudbursts laced with lightning unleashed downpours in the mountains and deserts, leading to flash flood watches and warnings. Firefighters also watched for lightning-sparked wildfires.
  (MSNBC, September 2007)
• Frequency of Atlantic Hurricanes Doubled Over Last Century; Climate Change Suspected
  About twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago, according to a new statistical analysis of hurricanes and tropical storms in the north Atlantic. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and altered wind patterns associated with global climate change are fueling much of the increase.
  (UCAR News Release, July 2007)
• A New Global Warming Video...From 1958
  Posted by Adam Howard
  This video contains scenes from the 1958 Frank Capra produced documentary "The Unchained Goddess", which had some startling predictions for the future.
  (AlterNet, July 2007)
• Hot and dry -- for decades
  By Glen M. MacDonald, professor of geography and ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA
  If you like it hot and dry and live in Southern California, you could be in luck. Our combination of an arid winter, scorching summer and host of wildfires may not be a short-term aberration. Consider the possibility of decades of dry, hot weather, stretching from Southern California to the headwaters of the Sacramento and Colorado river systems - the lifelines that allow us to flourish in our arid to semi-arid landscape. That is the nature of a "perfect drought," and new research regarding a past episode of climate warming tells us we could be on the brink of a new one.
  (Los Angeles Times, July 2007)
• Scenarios of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Atmospheric Concentrations; and Review of Integrated Scenario Development and Application
  The final reports for the scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations (part A) and global-change scenarios - their development and use (part B) have been released. These reports are part of 21 synthesis and assessment products called for in the Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. A scenario is a description of potential future conditions produced to inform decision-making under uncertainty. The scenarios in the reports explore the implications of alternative stabilization levels of anthropogenic greenhoues gases in the atmosphere, and they explicity consider the economic and technological foundations of such response options.
  (U.S. Climate Change Science Program, July 2007)
• Climate change brings early spring in the Arctic
  The Arctic spring is coming two weeks ahead of time compared to a decade ago, with birds, butterflies, flowers and small animals all appearing earlier in the year as a result of climate change.
  (The Independent, June 2007)
• Climate Change Adds Twist to Debate Over Dams
  The power company that owns four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River says the dams provide a crucial source of so-called clean energy at a time when carbon emissions have become one of the world's foremost environmental concerns.
  (The New York Times, April 2007)
• An Arid West No Longer Waits for Rain
  A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.
  (The New York Times, April 2007)
• Legislature flooded with bills about climate crisis
  Poll-driven politicians see need to tackle global warming
  Few issues are hotter in the Capitol this year than global warming. Lawmakers have introduced more than 60 bills on the topic, and no wonder. Polls show widespread support among California voters for tackling climate change. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez received rock star-like affection worldwide for their work on landmark greenhouse gas legislation last year. And there is a seemingly infinite number of policy directions the state could take to lower carbon emissions.
  (San Francisco Chronicle, April 2007)
• Justices: EPA Can Control Car Emissions The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.
  (San Francisco Chronicle, April 2007)
• NOAA Studies Causes of Catastrophic Urban Floods: Improve Forecasts and Better Understand 'Atmospheric Rivers' Researchers from the NOAA Earth System Research Lab are intensively monitoring air, water and soil in the American River basin between Reno, Nev., and Sacramento, Calif., through the end of March. Working closely with NOAA National Weather Service forecasters and hydrologists, scientists are improving predictions of California's heavy winter rains to help water resource managers prevent catastrophic flooding in the Sacramento region.
  (NOAA News Online, March 2007)
• Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar
  One might expect Burr Morse to have maple sugaring down to a science. Vermont's maple sugaring industry goes back centuries. Samples of different grades of maple syrup rest on shelves at Burr Morse's farm in Montpelier. Tree sap is boiled down to make the syrup. For more than 200 years, Mr. Morse's family has been culling sweet sap from maple trees, a passion that has manifested itself not only in jug upon jug of maple syrup, but also in maple-cured bacon, maple cream and maple soap, not to mention the display of a suggestively curved tree trunk Mr. Morse calls the Venus de Maple. But lately nature seems to be playing havoc with Mr. Morse and other maple mavens. Warmer-than-usual winters are throwing things out of kilter, causing confusion among maple syrup producers, called sugar makers, and stoking fears for the survival of New England's maple forests.
  (The New York Times, March 2007)
• Dueling studies fuel global warming controversy
  One study says irrigation cools the San Joaquin Valley and may hide the effects of global warming. Another says irrigation warms things up, at least at night, and that a lack of such heating in other areas suggests widespread climate change has not arrived here. What's a nonscientist to believe? Outside observers say it may only be getting harder to determine the truth about global warming, one of the world's most controversial topics.
  (Recordnet, March 2007)
• Antarctic ice melt reveals exotic creatures
  Spindly orange sea stars, fan-finned ice fish and herds of roving sea cucumbers are among the exotic creatures spied off the Antarctic coast in an area formerly covered by ice, scientists reported Sunday. This is the first time explorers have been able to catalog wildlife where two mammoth ice shelves used to extend for some 3,900 square miles over the Weddell Sea.
  (CNN, February 2007)
• Paul Krugman: Colorless Green Ideas
  The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it. There's nothing heroic about California's energy policy - but that's precisely the point. Over the years the state has adopted a series of conservation measures that are anything but splashy. They're the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive, if still well short of what we really need to do.
  (Welcome to Pottersville, February 2007)
• 46 Nations Back Body to Protect Planet
  Forty-five nations answered France's call for a new environmental body to slow inevitable global warming and protect the planet, perhaps with policing powers to punish violators. Absent were the world's heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the U.S. China and India. The charge led by French President Jacques Chirac came a day after the release of an authoritative and disturbingly grim scientific report in Paris that said global warming is "very likely" caused by mankind and that climate change will continue for centuries even if heat-trapping gases are reduced. It was the strongest language ever used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose last report was issued in 2001.
  (ABC News, February 2007)
• Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
  Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
  (Guardian Unlimited, February 2007)
• Ban traditional light bulbs? California eyes idea
  How many people does it take to change a light bulb? In California, the answer could be a majority of the Legislature as part of the state's groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act" would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs.
  (MSNBC, January 2007)
• Mountain Views
  The Newsletter of the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains (CIRMOUNT)
  The January 2007 edition of the CIRMOUNT newsletter has been released. This edition highlights several articles about climate research in the western mountains including:
  
  • Water Year 2006 -- Another 'Compressed' Spring in the Western United States?
  • Monitoring Alpine Plants for Climate Change: The North American GLORIA Project
  
  (January 2007)
• Bush administration in hot seat over warming
  The Democratic-controlled Congress on Tuesday stepped up its pressure on President Bush's global warming strategy, hearing allegations of new political pressure on government scientists to downplay the threat of global warming. Lawmakers received survey results of federal scientists that showed 46 percent felt pressure to eliminate the words "climate change", "global warming" or similar terms from communications about their work.
  (MSNBC, January 2007)
• Indonesia may lose 2,000 islands to warming
  Indonesia could lose about 2,000 islands by 2030 due to climate change, the country's environment minister said on Monday. "It is very, very serious," Rachmat Witoelar said at a media conference attended by Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat.
  (MSNBC, January 2007)
• Pelosi seeks global warming committee
  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) sought to create a special committee Thursday in an effort to jump-start long-delayed government efforts to deal with global warming and produce a bill by Independence Day. Pelosi, D-Calif., said the committee would hold hearings and recommend legislation on how to reduce greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels, that most scientists blame for a gradual warming of the earth's climate.
  (Yahoo News, January 2007)
• A Century Later, Los Angeles Atones for Water Sins
  It may fall short of a feel-good sequel to 'Chinatown', the movie based on the notorious, somewhat shady water grab by Los Angeles that allowed the city to bloom from a semi-arid desert. But in one of the largest river restoration efforts in the West, water is again flowing along a 62-mile stretch of the Owens River after a dry spell of nearly a century.
  (The New York Times, January 2007)
• Middle Stance Emerges in Debate Over Climate
  Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.
  (The New York Times, January 2007)
• Schwarzenegger Remakes Himself as Environmentalist
  Governor Challenges GOP on Global Warming
  Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the type of guy you would necessarily associate with tree hugging. When he bought a Hummer in the early 1990s, it kicked off a nationwide craze for the gas-guzzling behemoths. His lighter-fluid-dowsed action flicks and protein-packed chest bespoke more of American excess than environmentalism, more violence than vegan. But as governor of California, Schwarzenegger has engaged in a savvy makeover, befitting a Hollywood star. He retooled one of his four Hummers to run on alternative fuels and is quickly fashioning himself into one of the most aggressively pro-environment governors in a state known for leading the nation on that issue.
  (The Washington Post, December 2006)
• U.S. wants polar bears listed as threatened
  The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.
  (The Washington Post, December 2006)
• Climate change: So where has all the snow gone?
  With trees bursting into bud and ski runs looking like spring meadows, the Alpine winter appears to have been cancelled. Midwinter's day may not fall until later this week, but spring already seems to have come to the roof of Europe.
  (The Independent, December 2006)