Rachel's #934: Oil, PLASTIC, AQUATIC LIFE, OCEANS, & CO2

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Rachel's

Democracy & Health News #934

 

" Environment,

health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide? "

 

Thursday, November 22,

2007.............Printer-friendly

version

 

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Featured stories in this issue...

 

Oil

Officials See Limit Looming on Production

The oil industry this week acknowledged that there are limits to

the growth of world oil supplies. Industry executives did not

exactly

endorse the

" peak

oil " theory, but they acknowledged that oil

production is unlikely ever to exceed 100 million barrels per day

(the

world is presently using 85 million per day). Soon this problem

could

shove global warming off the front page.

U.N. Panel

Issues Warnings on Climate Change

In a grim report released this week, the Intergovernmental Panel

on

Climate Change (IPCC) portrays the Earth hurtling toward a

warmer

climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human

suffering.

It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must

stabilize

by 2015 and go down after that.

Here It

Is: The Future of the World, in 23 Pages

" This is the key document on climate change, and from now on

you

can forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about.

This

is the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled,

peer-reviewed

research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without

qualification, by all the world's major governments. "

Key

Findings of the Latest Scientific Report on Global Warming

A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt

to

climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a

price

on carbon emissions. The longer action is delayed, the more it

will

cost, according to the latest scientific report.

Alarming

UN Report on Climate Change Too Rosy, Many Say

" The blunt and alarming final report of the United Nations

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by UN

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of

climate change, many experts and even the report's authors

admit. "

A

Toxic Trojan Horse: Tiny Plastic Particles Pack a Major Punch

The world's oceans are full of plastic trash that has broken

down

into microscopic particles. These " microplastics " are

impossible to

clean up. And now research suggests they act like tiny Trojan

horses

as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently

swallow.

Early Puberty's

Toxic Causes and Effects

Many girls now start to develop breasts as early as eight years

old

-- two years earlier than they did a few decades ago. The

consequences

of growing up too soon are serious -- depression and anxiety,

eating

disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug and alcohol

abuse

are just a few. And the implications are not just psychological.

Menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer risk by 50 percent

 

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Wall

Street Journal (pg. A1), Nov. 19, 2007

[Printer-friendly

version]

 

OIL OFFICIALS SEE LIMIT LOOMING ON

PRODUCTION

 

By Russell Gold and Ann Davis

 

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long

deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the

number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

 

Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil,

producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit --

which two senior industry officials recently pegged at about 100

million barrels a day -- is well short of global demand projections

over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million

barrels a day.

 

The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty of

energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of

alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is

mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those

innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a

period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled

competition for fuel.

 

The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-

derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil

theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists,

have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an

irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the

world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their

theory has become debased.

 

The new adherents -- who range from senior Western oil-company

executives to current and former officials of the major world

exporting countries -- don't believe the global oil tank is at the

half-empty point. But they share the belief that a global production

ceiling is coming for other reasons: restricted access to oil fields,

spiraling costs and increasingly complex oil-field geology. This will

create a global production plateau, not a peak, they contend, with oil

output remaining relatively constant rather than rising or falling.

 

The emergence of a production ceiling would mark a monumental shift in

the energy world. Oil production has averaged a 2.3% annual growth

rate since 1965, according to statistics compiled by British oil giant

BP PLC. This expanding pool of oil, most of it priced cheaply by

today's standards, fueled the post-World War II global economic

expansion.

 

On Oct. 31, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of French oil

company Total SA, jolted attendees at a London conference by openly

labeling production forecasts of the International Energy Agency, the

sober-minded energy watchdog for industrialized nations, as

unrealistic. The IEA projects production will grow to between 102.3

million and 120 million barrels a day by 2030. Mr. de Margerie said

production by 2030 of even 100 million barrels a day will be

" difficult. "

 

Speaking Clearly

 

This is " the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly,

and

[are] not just trying to please people, " he bluntly declared. The

French executive said many existing oil fields are being depleted at

rates that will damage their geologic structures, which will limit

future output more than most people allow. What's more, some nations

endowed with large untapped pools of oil are generating so much

revenue from their current production that they feel they don't need

to further develop their fields, thus putting another cap on output.

 

Earlier this month, James Mulva, the chief executive of

ConocoPhillips, echoed those conclusions in a speech at a Wall Street

conference: " I don't think we are going to see the supply going

over

100 million barrels a day.... Where is all that going to come

from? "

He questioned whether the industry has enough support services and

people to execute projects to add that much oil production.

 

Even some officials from member states of the Organization of

Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has long insisted on its ability

to supply the world with fuel for decades hence, are breaking ranks

and forecasting limits. The chairman of Libya National Oil Corp. said

at the same London conference the world will have difficulty producing

more than 100 million barrels a day.

 

A former head of exploration and production at Saudi Arabia's national

oil company, Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, has also gone public with

doubts. He said in London last month that he didn't believe there were

enough engineers or equipment to ramp up production fast enough to

keep up with the thirsty global economy. What's more, he said, new

discoveries are tending to be smaller and more complex to develop.

 

Many leaders of the industry still dismiss the idea that there is

reason to worry. " I am no r to the theory that oil

supplies

have already peaked, " said BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward,

earlier

this month in a speech in Houston.

 

Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson has said that if

companies had better access to the world's oil reserves, production

would increase and prices would go down. " Sufficient hydrocarbon

resources exist to play their role in meeting this growing global

demand, if industry is allowed to access them, " he said in a

speech

this month. If access were granted, Exxon Mobil believes the industry

would be able to raise fuel production to meet demand in 2030 of 116

million barrels a day.

 

The oil industry has long been beset by doom-and-gloom scenarios,

which so far haven't panned out. " The entire oil industry in the

late

1970s was convinced the price [of oil] would be $100 by 1990 and we

would need huge oil shale mines " to exploit oil locked away tightly

in

rock, says Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy &

Economic

Research Inc. Of course, that didn't happen, as discoveries ushered in

new eras of low-priced oil in the mid-1980s through the late 1990s.

 

U.S. government experts are optimistic -- to a point. The Energy

Information Administration, the data arm of the Energy Department,

forecasts world oil production will hit 118 million barrels a day by

2030. But the agency warns that its prediction might not pan out if

resource-rich nations such as Venezuela and Iraq don't invest enough

in their operations.

 

" We know that the world is not running out of energy resources,

but

nonetheless, above-ground risks like resource nationalism, limited

access and infrastructure constraints may make it feel like peak oil

just the same, by limiting production to something far less than what

is required, " said Clay Sell, deputy secretary of energy, in a

speech

in October. Resource nationalism refers to tightening state control of

oil fields to achieve political aims, often by restricting outsiders'

ability to develop the oil for world markets.

 

'Undulating Plateau'

 

Two or three years ago, it was far more common for oil analysts and

officials to trumpet the potential of new technology to harvest more

oil. In a report last year, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a

prominent adviser to energy companies, made the comforting prediction

that oil production could reach 110 million barrels a day by 2015, and

" more than meet any reasonable high growth rate demand scenario we

can

envisage " up to that date. Because of progress being made in

extracting oil through new methods, CERA said it found " no

evidence "

there would be a peak in oil flows " any time soon. " In a later

report,

CERA said world oil production won't peak before 2030 and that even

when it does, production will resemble an " undulating plateau "

for one

or more decades before declining gradually.

 

Oil companies have seen several years of bull-market prices, and thus

of trying to produce more. This has given their executives a better

sense of what is and isn't possible.

 

One limit: Many people think most of the world's giant fields already

have been discovered. By 1970, oil-industry explorers had discovered

10 giants that could each produce more than 600,000 barrels a day,

according to Matt Simmons, chairman of energy investment banking firm

Simmons & Co. International. Exploration in the next 20 years, to

1990, yielded only two. Since 1990, despite billions in new spending,

the industry has found only one field with the potential to top

500,000 barrels a day, Kazakhstan's Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea.

And Mr. Simmons notes it is proving expensive and difficult to

extract.

 

Big strikes are still possible. This month, Petroleo Brasileiro SA

announced a deep-water find off Brazil's Atlantic coast that appears

to be the largest discovery since Kashagan.

 

But some of the most promising geological formations are in locations

that are inhospitable, for reasons of geography or, especially,

politics and strife. Output from Iraq's rich fields is unlikely to

grow much until security improves and outside investment returns. The

future of Iranian and Nigerian production is likewise clouded by

geopolitical and local instability.

 

Labor and construction bottlenecks also are making it difficult to

develop proven fields. One of the largest obstacles is the booming

commodity markets themselves: The prices of raw materials used in oil-

field platforms and equipment has escalated. And during the years of

low or moderate oil prices in the 1980s and 1990s, companies didn't

develop enough geologists and other skilled workers to supply today's

needs. " Years of underinvestment in new talent have led to a

limited

and aging pool of skilled workers, " noted Andrew Gould, the CEO of

oil-service giant Schlumberger Ltd., last month.

 

High oil prices have also led to steep cost inflation for drilling

rigs and other equipment. Costs have soared so much that the industry

is falling behind in the investment needed to sate expected future

demand. To meet demand forecasts of 90 million barrels of oil a day in

2010, the industry needed to have spent $350 billion on drilling and

producing in 2005, argues Larry G. Chorn, chief economist of Platts,

the energy and commodities-information division of McGraw-Hill Cos.

But the International Energy Agency estimates that spending on oil-

field production in 2005 came to only about $225 billion, he says.

 

A failure to spend enough in the past few years " may have already

put

the industry behind the spending curve, " Mr. Chorn says. As a

result,

he predicts " temporary shortages over several years, causing

debilitating price spikes. "

 

Compounding the problem: Most of the world's biggest fields are aging,

and production at them is declining rapidly. So, just to keep global

production at current levels, the industry needs to add new production

of at least four million daily barrels, every year. That need is

roughly five times the daily production of Alaska, with its big

Prudhoe Bay field -- and it doesn't assume any demand growth at all.

 

Rate of Decline

 

Mr. Simmons scoffs at estimates that production from proven fields

will decline only 4.5% a year. He thinks a more realistic rate of

decline is 8% to 10% a year, especially because modern technology

actually succeeds in depleting fields faster.

 

If he's right, the industry needs to add new daily production of at

least eight million barrels -- 10 times current Alaskan production --

just to stay even.

 

Mr. Simmons thinks the world needs to shift its energy focus from

climate change to more immediate concerns. " Peak oil is likely

already

a crisis that we don't know about. At the furthest out, it will be a

crisis in 2008 to 2012. Global warming, if real, will not be a problem

for 50 to 100 years, " he says.

 

Oil executives who believe a production ceiling is coming are making

plans to stay relevant in a world where oil production is constrained.

 

Mr. de Margerie said at Total's annual meeting this spring that the

company was " looking into " nuclear-industry investments and had

hired

nuclear experts to help make strategic decisions. ConocoPhillips

recently said it was considering building a commercial-scale plant to

turn plentiful U.S. coal into natural gas.

 

Soaring energy prices have breathed new life into projects targeting

" nonconventional " oil, such as that trapped in sand or shale.

But

these sources can't be tapped nearly as quickly or inexpensively as

the big oil finds of the past.

 

Vivid Example

 

Canada's massive oil-sands deposits, which hold the largest oil

reserves after Saudi Arabia's, offer a vivid example. They contain an

estimated 180 billion barrels of oil. But after years of intensive

development and tens of billions of dollars of investments, the sands

are producing only a little more than 1.1 million barrels of crude a

day. That's projected to reach three million a day by 2015. The oil

deposits are so heavy that companies must either mine them or slowly

steam them underground to get the oil to flow out of the sand.

 

Randy Udall, co-founder of the U.S. chapter of the Association for the

Study of Peak Oil and Gas, has written that these unconventional oil

supplies are like having $100 million in the bank, but " being

forbidden to withdraw more than $100,000 per year. You are rich, sort

of. "

 

As these uncertainties mount, there is growing hope that Saudi Arabia,

which has about 20% of the world's oil reserves, would ride to the

rescue if needed. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, has embarked

on an ambitious plan to increase its daily production by 30%, or three

million barrels, early next decade, and thus reclaim the title of top

producer from Russia. But Mr. Al Husseini, the former Saudi oil

executive, now an independent consultant, said others aren't doing as

much, leaving the world entirely dependent on Saudi Arabia to provide

extra capacity.

 

" Everyone thinks that Saudi Arabia will pull us out of this mess.

Saudi Arabia is doing all it can, " he says in an interview.

" But what

it is doing, in the long run, won't be enough. "

 

Write to Russell Gold at

russell.gold and Ann

Davis at

ann.davis

 

Compare the

Energy

Watch Group's view at

http://tinyurl.com/2q4zvk

(from their report of October 2007, available at

http://tinyurl.c

om/2ww8zl.

 

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Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2007

[Printer-friendly

version]

 

U.N. PANEL ISSUES WARNINGS ON

CLIMATE CHANGE

 

By Associated Press

 

Valencia, Spain -- Global warming is " unequivocal " and carbon

dioxide

already in the atmosphere commits the world to an average rise in sea

levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned

Saturday in their most authoritative

report

to date.

 

" Only urgent, global action will do, " said U.N.

Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon, calling on the U.S. and China -- the world's two biggest

polluters -- to do more to slow global climate change.

 

" I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more

constructive role, " Mr. Ban told reporters. " Both countries can

lead

in their own way. "

 

Mr. Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.

 

Climate change imperils " the most precious treasures of our

planet, "

he said, and the effects are " so severe and so sweeping that only

urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must

work together. "

 

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a

synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has

built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-

thirds of the world's species.

 

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will

suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at

great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.

 

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will

experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for

water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.

 

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a

quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says

emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015

and go down after that.

 

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon

already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were

shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level

will reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period,

or about 1850.

 

" We have already committed the world to sea level rise, " the

panel's

chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet

melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet

the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.

 

Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and

glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If

unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further

stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent

droughts, and could drive up to 70% of plant and animal species to

extinction, according to the panel's report.

 

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations

among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding

the worst catastrophes -- and various possible outcomes, depending on

how quickly and decisively action is taken.

 

" The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one

voice, " Mr.

Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali,

Indonesia, next month. " I expect the world's policy makers to do

the

same. "

 

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for

the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global

climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

 

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to

reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is

needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

 

Copyright 2007 Associated Press

 

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The Independent (London, UK), Nov. 19, 2007

[Printer-friendly

version]

 

HERE IT IS: THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD,

IN 23 PAGES

 

By Mike McCarthy, Environment

Editor

 

It is about the size and weight of a theatre programme and when it was

published in Valencia, Spain, at the weekend, the first eagerly

grabbed copies were held together by a hastily punched staple. Yet

these 23 pages are crucial for the future of the world.

 

This is

the

key document on climate change, and from now on you can

forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about. This is

the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled, peer-reviewed

research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without

qualification, by all the world's major governments. Its official name

is a mouthful: the Policymakers' Summary of the Synthesis Report of

the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Fourth Assessment. So let's just call it The Synthesis.

 

It is so important because it provides one concise, easily-readable

but comprehensive text of facts, figures and diagrams -- in short all

the information you need to understand and act on the threat of global

warming, be you a politician, a businessman, an activist or a citizen

(or for that matter, a doubter).

 

The Synthesis has been distilled from more than 3,000 pages of

research published in the three separate parts of the IPCC's Fourth

Assessment Report, or AR4, during the course of 2007 -- on the science

of climate change, on its potential impacts, and the possible

remedies.

 

These individual sections -- published in Paris in February, in

Brussels in April and in Bangkok in May -- spelled out comprehensively

that the Earth could warm by an average of up to 6C during the course

of the coming century, and that this would be catastrophic in its

impact for human society, most of all the poor in developing

countries; but they also offered hope that the problem was solvable,

if the governments took rapid and decisive action to reduce the

greenhouse gas emissions causing the warming.

 

The IPCC, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year (along with Al Gore)

for its efforts to raise awareness of climate change, was set up by

the UN in 1988 and published its first assessment, sounding the

initial warning about rising temperatures, in 1990; it issued

subsequent reports in 1995 and 2001. But this year's fourth assessment

has an importance all its own.

 

For it is the one where scientists now feel confident enough to

declare that the warming world is a phenomenon beyond all doubt, and

that the likelihood of this being caused by the human actions of

putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- and not say, by

increased solar activity, as some have argued -- is greater than 90

per cent.

 

For all but the most perverse of sceptics, it ends the basic argument.

And it also urgently warns that the risks are greater, and possibly

closer in time, than was appreciated even six years ago, when the

third assessment was published.

 

It is chapter and verse, it is Holy Writ: you may not agree with it,

but this (backed up by the full reports) is what the world scientific

community thinks. Its opening words are magisterial -- almost Biblical

- in tone. " Warming of the climate system, " it pronounces,

" is

unequivocal " . It goes on to spell out that the atmosphere is

rapidly

warming, snow and ice are melting across the world, and the global sea

level is rising at an increasing rate; yet the problem is solvable if

governments act decisively.

 

It is of immediate importance: for the 10,000 ministers, diplomats,

officials and civil servants from every country in the world who are

assembling in Bali, Indonesia, in two weeks' time to try to sketch out

a new international climate treaty to follow the bruised and battered

Kyoto protocol.

 

The Bali conference was put back by a month so that the participants

could be in possession of The Synthesis for the talks, and the

document will provide the essential background information against

which all delegates will work. " We expect to see their personal

copies

return from Bali, battered and worn from frequent use, with paragraphs

underlined and notes in the margin, " said Stephanie Tunmore of

Greenpeace.

 

Because all governments adopted The Synthesis by consensus (after a

week's negotiations in Valencia), it means they cannot disavow the

underlying science and its conclusions (although it does not commit

them to specific courses of action).

 

In Bali, delegates will attempt to set a path forward to a replacement

treaty for Kyoto, which runs out in its present form in 2012. The

original protocol called on industrialised countries such as the US

and Britain to cut their carbon dioxide emissions, without imposing a

similar task on developing nations such as China and India -- which

was one of the reasons President George Bush withdrew.

 

But no new treaty will work unless it brings together both the US and

China -- now jointly the world's greatest CO2 producers -- along with

the rest of the international community in a unified attempt to bring

emissions under control.

 

The Synthesis shows in its 23 short pages -- just 5,000 words --

exactly why that is necessary. It shows it to governments and it shows

it to all of us. It will be one of history's most important documents,

and because of the phenomenon of the internet you can read it in a

matter of moments and judge for yourself.

 

Download it

here.

 

Latest statistics and shocks still in store

 

* 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years

in instrumental records of global surface temperatures (since 1850)

 

* Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an average rate of

1.8mm per year -- but since 1993 at an average rate of 3.1mm

 

* Temperature changes will depend on how much CO2 is emitted, but

different scenarios see the increase by 2100 ranging from 0.3C to 6.4C

 

* Up to 30 per cent of the world's species are at increased risk of

extinction after a 2C temperature rise

 

* Between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa could suffer

water shortages by 2020; in Asia, heavily-populated

" mega-deltas " are

at greatly increased risk of flooding; tropical forest in eastern

Amazonia will turn to savannah by mid-century

 

Copyright 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

 

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Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2007

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version]

 

KEY FINDINGS OF UN SCIENTIFIC

REPORT

 

By The Associated Press

 

The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

 

** Global warming is " unequivocal. " Temperatures have risen

1.3

degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12 years

are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an

average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.

 

** About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face

the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees

Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit,

between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.

 

** Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions

of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The

concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than

the natural range over the last 650,000 years.

 

** Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt

everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will

suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at

great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect

extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and

hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.

 

** Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms

will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will

affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of

diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the

quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and

salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.

 

** Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep

warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring " abrupt

and

irreversible " changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the

poles,

and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.

 

** A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to

climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price

on carbon emissions.

 

** By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global

economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is

delayed, the more it will cost.

 

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

 

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International Herald Tribune, Nov. 18, 2007

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ALARMING UN REPORT ON CLIMATE

CHANGE TOO ROSY, MANY SAY

 

By Elisabeth Rosenthal and James

Kanter

 

Valencia, Spain: The blunt and alarming

final

report of the United

Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by UN

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of

climate change, many experts and even the report's authors admit.

 

The report describes the evidence for human-induced climate change as

" unequivocal. " The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

thus far

will result in an average rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, or 1.4

meters, it concluded.

 

" Slowing -- and reversing -- these threats is the defining

challenge

of our age, " Ban said upon the report's release Saturday.

 

Ban said he had just completed a whirlwind tour of some climate change

hot spots, which he called as " frightening as a science-fiction

movie. "

 

He described ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, the destruction of

the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, and children in Chile having to wear

protective clothing because an ozone hole was letting in so much

ultraviolet radiation.

 

The panel's fourth and final report summarized and integrated the most

significant findings of three sections of the panel's exhaustive

climate-science review that were released from January through April,

to create an official " pocket guide " to climate change for

policy

makers who must now decide how the world will respond.

 

The first covered climate trends; the second, the world's ability to

adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon

emissions. With their mission now concluded, the hundreds of IPCC

scientists spoke more freely than they had previously.

 

" The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new

and

striking, " said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was co-

chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report.

 

This report's summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of

the Greenland ice sheet could result in a substantive sea level rise

over centuries rather than millennia.

 

" Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a

catastrophe "

so rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael

Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University who

contributed to the IPCC.

 

Delegations from hundreds of nations will be meeting in Bali,

Indonesia in two weeks to start hammering out a global climate

agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the current climate change

treaty. The first phase of the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012.

 

" It's extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of

inaction

will be huge compared to the cost of action, " said Jeffrey Sachs,

head

of Columbia University's Earth Institute. " We can't afford to wait

for

some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We

can't afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start

acting now. "

 

He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where

they do agree, for example, by public financing for demonstration

projects on new technologies like " carbon capture, " a

" promising but

not proved " system that pumps emissions underground instead of

releasing them into the sky. He said the energy ministers should start

a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which causes

emissions to increase because growing plants absorb carbon in the

atmosphere.

 

Although the scientific data is not new, this was the first time it

had been looked at together in its entirety, leading the scientists to

new emphasis and more sweeping conclusions.

 

But even as the IPCC was working toward its conclusions over the past

several years, a steady stream of even more alarming data has come in.

 

" The IPCC is a five-year process and the IPCC is struggling to keep

up

with the data -- we are all being inundated with new evidence and new

science, " said Hans Verolme, director of the Global Climate Change

Program at the conservation organization WWF.

 

" And the new science is saying: 'You thought it was bad? No it's

worse.' "

 

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from

India, acknowledged the new trajectory. " If there's no action

before

2012, that's too late, " Pachauri said. " What we do in the next

two to

three years will determine our future. This is the defining

moment. "

 

He said that since the IPCC began work on its current report five

years ago, scientists have recorded " much stronger trends in

climate

change, " like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been

predicted. " That means you better start with intervention much

earlier. "

 

" If you look at the scientific knowledge things do seem to be

getting

progressively worse, " Pachauri said later in an interview. " So

you'd

better start with the interventions even earlier. Now. "

 

The effects will be greatest in the developing world. Even without the

more alarming data, the report says inaction could leave island states

submerged, African crop yields down by 50 percent, and cause a 5

percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

 

Developments that affect the IPCC predictions and have made such

scenarios even more likely, scientists said, include faster than

expected industrial development in China and India. Economic growth

has a huge effect because these countries' industries are largely

powered by electricity from burning coal, a cheap but highly polluting

source of energy.

 

" The IPCC report never imagined the world would move back to a

coal-

based energy economy -- and that's essentially what we've done, "

said

Gernot Klepper an economist who studies climate change at the Kiel

Institute in Germany. " If you extrapolate from that we're running

into

a disaster. "

 

Part of the reason the scientists inserted their alarming statements

about polar ice melts in the synthesis report is because " recent

observations " were not " fully included in ice sheet

models " used by

IPCC, the report said.

 

Some in the scientific community have gone so far as to question the

effectiveness of the IPCC as the world's early warning system on

climate change.

 

" Sadly, even the most pessimistic of the climate prophets of the

IPCC

panel do not appear to have noticed how rapidly the climate is

changing, " said James Lovelock, a British scientist,

" Scientists have

let this potentially disastrous future steal up on us unaware. "

 

But most scientists have been awed by the IPCC's deliberate work, for

which it was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

 

Pachauri said that even if reality was worse than the final IPCC

report suggested, that only made it more urgent to act quickly and

forcefully.

 

" What we brought out is that if you delay action or don't do

enough

the impact is quite devastating. This only strengthens that

message. "

 

James Kanter reported from Paris. Andrew C. Revkin contributed

reporting from New York.

 

Copyright 2007 The International Herald Tribune

www.iht.com

 

Return to Table of Contents

 

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Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 17, 2007

[Printer-friendly

version]

 

A TOXIC TROJAN HORSE: TINY PLASTIC

PARTICLES PACK A MAJOR PUNCH

 

By Zoe Cormier

 

The planet's

oceans

are full of plastic trash that has broken down

into microscopic particles. These " microplastics " are

impossible to

clean up. And

now

research suggests they act like tiny Trojan horses

as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently swallow.

 

Scientists at the University of Plymouth [in England] found that

microplastics soaked up far more phenanthrene (a common marine

pollutant) than samples of normal sand -- and when the toxic

microplastics were added to tanks of marine worms, the concentration

of phenanthrene in their tissues shot up 80 per cent.

 

Professor Richard Thompson, who worked on the study with a team of

scientists at Plymouth, had long suspected that animals might ingest

toxins along with mouthfuls of microplastics. Now, he has proof. But

the full environmental impact has yet to be researched, along with

whether these microplastics and their toxic passengers could work

their way up the food chain, right up to humans, as worms and other

small creatures are eaten by predators.

 

The answer is not to ban plastics outright, Prof. Thompson says.

Lightweight, durable and sterile, they are essential for modern

medicine and technology. " But what do we do with most of the

plastic

we produce? Forty per cent of it is used to make plastic packaging,

which is used once and then discarded. The long-term solution is to be

smarter about our use of plastics. "

 

Zoe Cormier is a science writer based in London.

 

Copyright Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

 

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San

Francisco Bay Guardian, Nov. 21, 2007

[Printer-friendly

version]

 

EARLY PUBERTY'S TOXIC CAUSES AND

EFFECTS

 

New report links chemicals to

problematic early development

 

By Jessika Fruchter

 

As if growing up weren't hard enough, a new

report

published by San

Francisco's

Breast

Cancer Fund says girls, particularly African

American girls, are hitting puberty earlier -- and it's lasting

longer.

 

Environmental toxins, obesity, and psychological stressors are all

cited as possible reasons for the trend in the report written by

Ithaca College professor

Sandra

Steingraber. It was commissioned

about a year ago to put together what she calls " pieces of a big

jigsaw puzzle. "

 

Steingraber found that many girls now start to develop breasts as

early as eight years old -- two years earlier than they did a few

decades ago. On average, however, girls begin menstruating only a few

months earlier than they once did -- making puberty a lengthier

process.

 

The consequences of growing up too soon are serious -- depression and

anxiety, eating disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug and

alcohol abuse are just a few.

 

" As a mother of a nine-year-old girl, " Steingraber says,

" I was really

impressed by the consequences, not just the causes. The world is not a

good place for early-maturing girls. "

 

The implications are not just psychological. According to

Steingraber's report, menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer risk

by 50 percent.

 

" The data is pretty ample linking the two, " she says. " The

earlier a

girl gets her breasts, the wider the estrogen window. " Longer

lifetime

exposure to estrogen increases the risk of developing many forms of

breast cancer.

 

Steingraber points to obesity and endocrine-disrupting chemicals

(toxins that interfere with the hormonal system) as major factors in

the new puberty equation. Phthalates, bisphenol A, and dioxin are a

few of the culprits often cited by environmental health advocates as

contributors to earlier puberty onset. These chemicals are often found

in cosmetics and personal care products like shampoo, hand lotion, and

sunscreen. They are also used in pesticides.

 

Dr. Tracey Woodruff, associate professor of reproductive health and

environment at UC San Francisco, says the link has been researched and

discussed anecdotally in scientific circles for the past 10 years,

with the last major report issued in 1997.

 

A big obstacle to keeping kids safe, Woodruff says, is that most

consumer products are not required to undergo US Food and Drug

Administration approval before they are sold to the public, nor are

companies required to disclose all ingredients.

 

" How chemicals are governed is somewhat archaic, " Woodruff

says.

 

Environmental health activists agree. In 2002 a national coalition of

nonprofit organizations launched the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an

initiative to educate the public and influence policy. Marisa Walker

of the Breast Cancer Fund -- a founding member organization -- says

manufacturers jump through big loopholes in federal law to hide

ingredients by claiming that chemicals are trade secrets.

 

An Environmental Protection Agency-administered program to test new

chemicals was created more than a decade ago, but progress has been

slow at best. In June the EPA announced it was still seeking comment

on a draft list of 73 pesticides to be evaluated under the new

screening program. Chemicals in consumer products are not slated for

review.

 

The program has received widespread criticism, and in September the US

House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a letter to the EPA

expressing its concern: " EPA's actions have been a continued

failure

to protect the American public from these chemicals. " The

seven-page

letter also requests that the EPA take immediate action.

 

Meanwhile, Woodruff, Steingraber, and many environmental health

advocates point to Europe and neighboring Canada as better models of

protecting consumer health. Their policies have a heavier emphasis on

precaution. Woodruff says prevention can mean the difference between

responding to a change in hormone levels and coping with a birth

defect.

 

" At what point is there enough information to take action? "

Steingraber asks. " Chemicals are turning up in the urine of some

of

these girls, and while more research needs to be done, we can't even

do more research until the industry gives us more data. The time of

saying, 'Hmmm, that's interesting,' is over. It's time to take

action. "

 

Return to Table of Contents

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

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Featured stories in this issue...

Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production

The oil industry this week acknowledged that there are limits

to

the growth of world oil supplies. Industry executives did not

exactly

endorse the " peak oil " theory, but they acknowledged

that oil

production is unlikely ever to exceed 100 million barrels per day

(the

world is presently using 85 million per day). Soon this problem

could

shove global warming off the front page.

U.N. Panel Issues Warnings on Climate Change

In a grim report released this week, the Intergovernmental Panel

on

Climate Change (IPCC) portrays the Earth hurtling toward a

warmer

climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human

suffering.

It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must

stabilize

by 2015 and go down after that.

Here It Is: The Future of the World, in 23 Pages

" This is the key document on climate change, and from now on

you

can forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about.

This

is the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled,

peer-reviewed

research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed,

without

qualification, by all the world's major governments. "

Key Findings of the Latest Scientific Report on Global Warming

A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt

to

climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a

price

on carbon emissions. The longer action is delayed, the more it

will

cost, according to the latest scientific report.

Alarming UN Report on Climate Change Too Rosy, Many Say

" The blunt and alarming final report of the United

Nations

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by

UN

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem

of

climate change, many experts and even the report's authors

admit. "

A Toxic Trojan Horse: Tiny Plastic Particles Pack a Major Punch

The world's oceans are full of plastic trash that has broken

down

into microscopic particles. These " microplastics " are

impossible to

clean up. And now research suggests they act like tiny Trojan

horses

as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently

swallow.

Early Puberty's Toxic Causes and Effects

Many girls now start to develop breasts as early as eight years

old

-- two years earlier than they did a few decades ago. The

consequences

of growing up too soon are serious -- depression and anxiety,

eating

disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug and alcohol

abuse

are just a few. And the implications are not just

psychological.

Menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer risk by 50

percent

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Wall Street Journal (pg. A1), Nov. 19, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

OIL OFFICIALS SEE LIMIT LOOMING ON PRODUCTION

By Russell Gold and Ann Davis

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea

long

deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the

number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil,

producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit

--

which two senior industry officials recently pegged at about 100

million barrels a day -- is well short of global demand projections

over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million

barrels a day.

The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty

of

energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of

alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is

mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those

innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a

period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled

competition for fuel.

The current debate represents a significant twist on an older,

often-

derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil

theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired

geologists,

have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an

irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the

world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their

theory has become debased.

The new adherents -- who range from senior Western oil-company

executives to current and former officials of the major world

exporting countries -- don't believe the global oil tank is at the

half-empty point. But they share the belief that a global production

ceiling is coming for other reasons: restricted access to oil

fields,

spiraling costs and increasingly complex oil-field geology. This

will

create a global production plateau, not a peak, they contend, with

oil

output remaining relatively constant rather than rising or

falling.

The emergence of a production ceiling would mark a monumental shift

in

the energy world. Oil production has averaged a 2.3% annual growth

rate since 1965, according to statistics compiled by British oil

giant

BP PLC. This expanding pool of oil, most of it priced cheaply by

today's standards, fueled the post-World War II global economic

expansion.

On Oct. 31, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of French

oil

company Total SA, jolted attendees at a London conference by openly

labeling production forecasts of the International Energy Agency,

the

sober-minded energy watchdog for industrialized nations, as

unrealistic. The IEA projects production will grow to between 102.3

million and 120 million barrels a day by 2030. Mr. de Margerie said

production by 2030 of even 100 million barrels a day will be

" difficult. "

Speaking Clearly

This is " the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly,

and

[are] not just trying to please people, " he bluntly declared.

The

French executive said many existing oil fields are being depleted at

rates that will damage their geologic structures, which will limit

future output more than most people allow. What's more, some nations

endowed with large untapped pools of oil are generating so much

revenue from their current production that they feel they don't need

to further develop their fields, thus putting another cap on

output.

Earlier this month, James Mulva, the chief executive of

ConocoPhillips, echoed those conclusions in a speech at a Wall

Street

conference: " I don't think we are going to see the supply going

over

100 million barrels a day.... Where is all that going to come

from? "

He questioned whether the industry has enough support services and

people to execute projects to add that much oil production.

Even some officials from member states of the Organization of

Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has long insisted on its

ability

to supply the world with fuel for decades hence, are breaking ranks

and forecasting limits. The chairman of Libya National Oil Corp.

said

at the same London conference the world will have difficulty

producing

more than 100 million barrels a day.

A former head of exploration and production at Saudi Arabia's

national

oil company, Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, has also gone public with

doubts. He said in London last month that he didn't believe there

were

enough engineers or equipment to ramp up production fast enough to

keep up with the thirsty global economy. What's more, he said, new

discoveries are tending to be smaller and more complex to

develop.

Many leaders of the industry still dismiss the idea that there is

reason to worry. " I am no r to the theory that oil

supplies

have already peaked, " said BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward,

earlier

this month in a speech in Houston.

Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson has said that if

companies had better access to the world's oil reserves, production

would increase and prices would go down. " Sufficient

hydrocarbon

resources exist to play their role in meeting this growing global

demand, if industry is allowed to access them, " he said in a

speech

this month. If access were granted, Exxon Mobil believes the

industry

would be able to raise fuel production to meet demand in 2030 of 116

million barrels a day.

The oil industry has long been beset by doom-and-gloom scenarios,

which so far haven't panned out. " The entire oil industry in the

late

1970s was convinced the price [of oil] would be $100 by 1990 and we

would need huge oil shale mines " to exploit oil locked away tightly

in

rock, says Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy &

Economic

Research Inc. Of course, that didn't happen, as discoveries ushered

in

new eras of low-priced oil in the mid-1980s through the late

1990s.

U.S. government experts are optimistic -- to a point. The Energy

Information Administration, the data arm of the Energy Department,

forecasts world oil production will hit 118 million barrels a day by

2030. But the agency warns that its prediction might not pan out if

resource-rich nations such as Venezuela and Iraq don't invest enough

in their operations.

" We know that the world is not running out of energy resources,

but

nonetheless, above-ground risks like resource nationalism, limited

access and infrastructure constraints may make it feel like peak oil

just the same, by limiting production to something far less than

what

is required, " said Clay Sell, deputy secretary of energy, in a

speech

in October. Resource nationalism refers to tightening state control

of

oil fields to achieve political aims, often by restricting

outsiders'

ability to develop the oil for world markets.

'Undulating Plateau'

Two or three years ago, it was far more common for oil analysts and

officials to trumpet the potential of new technology to harvest more

oil. In a report last year, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a

prominent adviser to energy companies, made the comforting

prediction

that oil production could reach 110 million barrels a day by 2015,

and

" more than meet any reasonable high growth rate demand scenario we

can

envisage " up to that date. Because of progress being made in

extracting oil through new methods, CERA said it found " no

evidence "

there would be a peak in oil flows " any time soon. " In a later

report,

CERA said world oil production won't peak before 2030 and that even

when it does, production will resemble an " undulating plateau "

for one

or more decades before declining gradually.

Oil companies have seen several years of bull-market prices, and

thus

of trying to produce more. This has given their executives a better

sense of what is and isn't possible.

One limit: Many people think most of the world's giant fields

already

have been discovered. By 1970, oil-industry explorers had discovered

10 giants that could each produce more than 600,000 barrels a day,

according to Matt Simmons, chairman of energy investment banking

firm

Simmons & Co. International. Exploration in the next 20 years,

to

1990, yielded only two. Since 1990, despite billions in new

spending,

the industry has found only one field with the potential to top

500,000 barrels a day, Kazakhstan's Kashagan field in the Caspian

Sea.

And Mr. Simmons notes it is proving expensive and difficult to

extract.

Big strikes are still possible. This month, Petroleo Brasileiro SA

announced a deep-water find off Brazil's Atlantic coast that appears

to be the largest discovery since Kashagan.

But some of the most promising geological formations are in

locations

that are inhospitable, for reasons of geography or, especially,

politics and strife. Output from Iraq's rich fields is unlikely to

grow much until security improves and outside investment returns.

The

future of Iranian and Nigerian production is likewise clouded by

geopolitical and local instability.

Labor and construction bottlenecks also are making it difficult to

develop proven fields. One of the largest obstacles is the booming

commodity markets themselves: The prices of raw materials used in

oil-

field platforms and equipment has escalated. And during the years of

low or moderate oil prices in the 1980s and 1990s, companies didn't

develop enough geologists and other skilled workers to supply

today's

needs. " Years of underinvestment in new talent have led to a

limited

and aging pool of skilled workers, " noted Andrew Gould, the CEO

of

oil-service giant Schlumberger Ltd., last month.

High oil prices have also led to steep cost inflation for drilling

rigs and other equipment. Costs have soared so much that the

industry

is falling behind in the investment needed to sate expected future

demand. To meet demand forecasts of 90 million barrels of oil a day

in

2010, the industry needed to have spent $350 billion on drilling and

producing in 2005, argues Larry G. Chorn, chief economist of Platts,

the energy and commodities-information division of McGraw-Hill Cos.

But the International Energy Agency estimates that spending on oil-

field production in 2005 came to only about $225 billion, he

says.

A failure to spend enough in the past few years " may have already

put

the industry behind the spending curve, " Mr. Chorn says. As a

result,

he predicts " temporary shortages over several years, causing

debilitating price spikes. "

Compounding the problem: Most of the world's biggest fields are

aging,

and production at them is declining rapidly. So, just to keep global

production at current levels, the industry needs to add new

production

of at least four million daily barrels, every year. That need is

roughly five times the daily production of Alaska, with its big

Prudhoe Bay field -- and it doesn't assume any demand growth at

all.

Rate of Decline

Mr. Simmons scoffs at estimates that production from proven fields

will decline only 4.5% a year. He thinks a more realistic rate of

decline is 8% to 10% a year, especially because modern technology

actually succeeds in depleting fields faster.

If he's right, the industry needs to add new daily production of at

least eight million barrels -- 10 times current Alaskan production

--

just to stay even.

Mr. Simmons thinks the world needs to shift its energy focus from

climate change to more immediate concerns. " Peak oil is likely

already

a crisis that we don't know about. At the furthest out, it will be a

crisis in 2008 to 2012. Global warming, if real, will not be a

problem

for 50 to 100 years, " he says.

Oil executives who believe a production ceiling is coming are making

plans to stay relevant in a world where oil production is

constrained.

Mr. de Margerie said at Total's annual meeting this spring that the

company was " looking into " nuclear-industry investments and had

hired

nuclear experts to help make strategic decisions. ConocoPhillips

recently said it was considering building a commercial-scale plant

to

turn plentiful U.S. coal into natural gas.

Soaring energy prices have breathed new life into projects targeting

" nonconventional " oil, such as that trapped in sand or shale.

But

these sources can't be tapped nearly as quickly or inexpensively as

the big oil finds of the past.

Vivid Example

Canada's massive oil-sands deposits, which hold the largest oil

reserves after Saudi Arabia's, offer a vivid example. They contain

an

estimated 180 billion barrels of oil. But after years of intensive

development and tens of billions of dollars of investments, the

sands

are producing only a little more than 1.1 million barrels of crude a

day. That's projected to reach three million a day by 2015. The oil

deposits are so heavy that companies must either mine them or slowly

steam them underground to get the oil to flow out of the sand.

Randy Udall, co-founder of the U.S. chapter of the Association for

the

Study of Peak Oil and Gas, has written that these unconventional oil

supplies are like having $100 million in the bank, but " being

forbidden to withdraw more than $100,000 per year. You are rich,

sort

of. "

As these uncertainties mount, there is growing hope that Saudi

Arabia,

which has about 20% of the world's oil reserves, would ride to the

rescue if needed. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, has

embarked

on an ambitious plan to increase its daily production by 30%, or

three

million barrels, early next decade, and thus reclaim the title of

top

producer from Russia. But Mr. Al Husseini, the former Saudi oil

executive, now an independent consultant, said others aren't doing

as

much, leaving the world entirely dependent on Saudi Arabia to

provide

extra capacity.

" Everyone thinks that Saudi Arabia will pull us out of this

mess.

Saudi Arabia is doing all it can, " he says in an interview.

" But what

it is doing, in the long run, won't be enough. "

Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold and Ann Davis at

ann.davis

Compare the Energy Watch Group's view at

http://tinyurl.com/2q4zvk

(from their report of October 2007, available at http://tinyurl.c

om/2ww8zl.

Return to Table of Contents

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Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

U.N. PANEL ISSUES WARNINGS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

By Associated Press

Valencia, Spain -- Global warming is " unequivocal " and carbon

dioxide

already in the atmosphere commits the world to an average rise in

sea

levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned

Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.

" Only urgent, global action will do, " said U.N.

Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon, calling on the U.S. and China -- the world's two biggest

polluters -- to do more to slow global climate change.

" I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more

constructive role, " Mr. Ban told reporters. " Both countries can

lead

in their own way. "

Mr. Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.

Climate change imperils " the most precious treasures of our

planet, "

he said, and the effects are " so severe and so sweeping that

only

urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must

work together. "

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a

synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has

built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-

thirds of the world's species.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will

suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at

great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the

report.

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans

will

experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for

water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this

year.

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a

quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says

emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by

2015

and go down after that.

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon

already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were

shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level

will reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial

period,

or about 1850.

" We have already committed the world to sea level rise, " the

panel's

chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet

melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet

the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.

Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and

glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If

unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put

further

stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent

droughts, and could drive up to 70% of plant and animal species to

extinction, according to the panel's report.

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense

negotiations

among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding

the worst catastrophes -- and various possible outcomes, depending

on

how quickly and decisively action is taken.

" The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one

voice, " Mr.

Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali,

Indonesia, next month. " I expect the world's policy makers to do

the

same. "

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide

for

the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a

global

climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to

reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is

needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press

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The Independent (London, UK), Nov. 19, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

HERE IT IS: THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD, IN 23 PAGES

By Mike McCarthy, Environment Editor

It is about the size and weight of a theatre programme and when it

was

published in Valencia, Spain, at the weekend, the first eagerly

grabbed copies were held together by a hastily punched staple. Yet

these 23 pages are crucial for the future of the world.

This is the key document on climate change, and from now on you can

forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about. This is

the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled, peer-reviewed

research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without

qualification, by all the world's major governments. Its official

name

is a mouthful: the Policymakers' Summary of the Synthesis Report of

the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Fourth Assessment. So let's just call it The Synthesis.

It is so important because it provides one concise, easily-readable

but comprehensive text of facts, figures and diagrams -- in short

all

the information you need to understand and act on the threat of

global

warming, be you a politician, a businessman, an activist or a

citizen

(or for that matter, a doubter).

The Synthesis has been distilled from more than 3,000 pages of

research published in the three separate parts of the IPCC's Fourth

Assessment Report, or AR4, during the course of 2007 -- on the

science

of climate change, on its potential impacts, and the possible

remedies.

These individual sections -- published in Paris in February, in

Brussels in April and in Bangkok in May -- spelled out

comprehensively

that the Earth could warm by an average of up to 6C during the

course

of the coming century, and that this would be catastrophic in its

impact for human society, most of all the poor in developing

countries; but they also offered hope that the problem was solvable,

if the governments took rapid and decisive action to reduce the

greenhouse gas emissions causing the warming.

The IPCC, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year (along with Al

Gore)

for its efforts to raise awareness of climate change, was set up by

the UN in 1988 and published its first assessment, sounding the

initial warning about rising temperatures, in 1990; it issued

subsequent reports in 1995 and 2001. But this year's fourth

assessment

has an importance all its own.

For it is the one where scientists now feel confident enough to

declare that the warming world is a phenomenon beyond all doubt, and

that the likelihood of this being caused by the human actions of

putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- and not say, by

increased solar activity, as some have argued -- is greater than 90

per cent.

For all but the most perverse of sceptics, it ends the basic

argument.

And it also urgently warns that the risks are greater, and possibly

closer in time, than was appreciated even six years ago, when the

third assessment was published.

It is chapter and verse, it is Holy Writ: you may not agree with it,

but this (backed up by the full reports) is what the world

scientific

community thinks. Its opening words are magisterial -- almost

Biblical

- in tone. " Warming of the climate system, " it pronounces,

" is

unequivocal " . It goes on to spell out that the atmosphere is

rapidly

warming, snow and ice are melting across the world, and the global

sea

level is rising at an increasing rate; yet the problem is solvable

if

governments act decisively.

It is of immediate importance: for the 10,000 ministers, diplomats,

officials and civil servants from every country in the world who are

assembling in Bali, Indonesia, in two weeks' time to try to sketch

out

a new international climate treaty to follow the bruised and

battered

Kyoto protocol.

The Bali conference was put back by a month so that the participants

could be in possession of The Synthesis for the talks, and the

document will provide the essential background information against

which all delegates will work. " We expect to see their personal

copies

return from Bali, battered and worn from frequent use, with

paragraphs

underlined and notes in the margin, " said Stephanie Tunmore of

Greenpeace.

Because all governments adopted The Synthesis by consensus (after a

week's negotiations in Valencia), it means they cannot disavow the

underlying science and its conclusions (although it does not commit

them to specific courses of action).

In Bali, delegates will attempt to set a path forward to a

replacement

treaty for Kyoto, which runs out in its present form in 2012. The

original protocol called on industrialised countries such as the US

and Britain to cut their carbon dioxide emissions, without imposing

a

similar task on developing nations such as China and India -- which

was one of the reasons President George Bush withdrew.

But no new treaty will work unless it brings together both the US

and

China -- now jointly the world's greatest CO2 producers -- along

with

the rest of the international community in a unified attempt to

bring

emissions under control.

The Synthesis shows in its 23 short pages -- just 5,000 words --

exactly why that is necessary. It shows it to governments and it

shows

it to all of us. It will be one of history's most important

documents,

and because of the phenomenon of the internet you can read it in a

matter of moments and judge for yourself.

Download it here.

Latest statistics and shocks still in store

* 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest

years

in instrumental records of global surface temperatures (since

1850)

* Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an average rate

of

1.8mm per year -- but since 1993 at an average rate of 3.1mm

* Temperature changes will depend on how much CO2 is emitted, but

different scenarios see the increase by 2100 ranging from 0.3C to

6.4C

* Up to 30 per cent of the world's species are at increased risk of

extinction after a 2C temperature rise

* Between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa could suffer

water shortages by 2020; in Asia, heavily-populated

" mega-deltas " are

at greatly increased risk of flooding; tropical forest in eastern

Amazonia will turn to savannah by mid-century

Copyright 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

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Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

KEY FINDINGS OF UN SCIENTIFIC REPORT

By The Associated Press

The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by

the

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

** Global warming is " unequivocal. " Temperatures have risen

1.3

degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12

years

are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an

average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.

** About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species

face

the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees

Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit,

between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.

** Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global

emissions

of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The

concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than

the natural range over the last 650,000 years.

** Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt

everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will

suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at

great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect

extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer

and

hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.

** Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms

will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will

affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of

diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the

quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding

and

salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.

** Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep

warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring " abrupt

and

irreversible " changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the

poles,

and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.

** A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt

to

climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a

price

on carbon emissions.

** By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual

global

economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is

delayed, the more it will cost.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

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International Herald Tribune, Nov. 18, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

ALARMING UN REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE TOO ROSY, MANY SAY

By Elisabeth Rosenthal and James Kanter

Valencia, Spain: The blunt and alarming final report of the United

Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by

UN

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of

climate change, many experts and even the report's authors

admit.

The report describes the evidence for human-induced climate change

as

" unequivocal. " The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

thus far

will result in an average rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, or

1.4

meters, it concluded.

" Slowing -- and reversing -- these threats is the defining

challenge

of our age, " Ban said upon the report's release Saturday.

Ban said he had just completed a whirlwind tour of some climate

change

hot spots, which he called as " frightening as a science-fiction

movie. "

He described ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, the destruction

of

the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, and children in Chile having to

wear

protective clothing because an ozone hole was letting in so much

ultraviolet radiation.

The panel's fourth and final report summarized and integrated the

most

significant findings of three sections of the panel's exhaustive

climate-science review that were released from January through

April,

to create an official " pocket guide " to climate change for

policy

makers who must now decide how the world will respond.

The first covered climate trends; the second, the world's ability to

adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon

emissions. With their mission now concluded, the hundreds of IPCC

scientists spoke more freely than they had previously.

" The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new

and

striking, " said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was

co-

chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report.

This report's summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting

of

the Greenland ice sheet could result in a substantive sea level rise

over centuries rather than millennia.

" Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a

catastrophe "

so rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael

Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University who

contributed to the IPCC.

Delegations from hundreds of nations will be meeting in Bali,

Indonesia in two weeks to start hammering out a global climate

agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the current climate change

treaty. The first phase of the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012.

" It's extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of

inaction

will be huge compared to the cost of action, " said Jeffrey Sachs,

head

of Columbia University's Earth Institute. " We can't afford to wait

for

some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We

can't afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start

acting now. "

He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where

they do agree, for example, by public financing for demonstration

projects on new technologies like " carbon capture, " a

" promising but

not proved " system that pumps emissions underground instead of

releasing them into the sky. He said the energy ministers should

start

a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which

causes

emissions to increase because growing plants absorb carbon in the

atmosphere.

Although the scientific data is not new, this was the first time it

had been looked at together in its entirety, leading the scientists

to

new emphasis and more sweeping conclusions.

But even as the IPCC was working toward its conclusions over the

past

several years, a steady stream of even more alarming data has come

in.

" The IPCC is a five-year process and the IPCC is struggling to keep

up

with the data -- we are all being inundated with new evidence and

new

science, " said Hans Verolme, director of the Global Climate

Change

Program at the conservation organization WWF.

" And the new science is saying: 'You thought it was bad? No

it's

worse.' "

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from

India, acknowledged the new trajectory. " If there's no action

before

2012, that's too late, " Pachauri said. " What we do in the next

two to

three years will determine our future. This is the defining

moment. "

He said that since the IPCC began work on its current report five

years ago, scientists have recorded " much stronger trends in

climate

change, " like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been

predicted. " That means you better start with intervention much

earlier. "

" If you look at the scientific knowledge things do seem to be

getting

progressively worse, " Pachauri said later in an interview. " So

you'd

better start with the interventions even earlier. Now. "

The effects will be greatest in the developing world. Even without

the

more alarming data, the report says inaction could leave island

states

submerged, African crop yields down by 50 percent, and cause a 5

percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

Developments that affect the IPCC predictions and have made such

scenarios even more likely, scientists said, include faster than

expected industrial development in China and India. Economic growth

has a huge effect because these countries' industries are largely

powered by electricity from burning coal, a cheap but highly

polluting

source of energy.

" The IPCC report never imagined the world would move back to a

coal-

based energy economy -- and that's essentially what we've done, "

said

Gernot Klepper an economist who studies climate change at the Kiel

Institute in Germany. " If you extrapolate from that we're running

into

a disaster. "

Part of the reason the scientists inserted their alarming statements

about polar ice melts in the synthesis report is because

" recent

observations " were not " fully included in ice sheet

models " used by

IPCC, the report said.

Some in the scientific community have gone so far as to question the

effectiveness of the IPCC as the world's early warning system on

climate change.

" Sadly, even the most pessimistic of the climate prophets of the

IPCC

panel do not appear to have noticed how rapidly the climate is

changing, " said James Lovelock, a British scientist,

" Scientists have

let this potentially disastrous future steal up on us

unaware. "

But most scientists have been awed by the IPCC's deliberate work,

for

which it was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Pachauri said that even if reality was worse than the final IPCC

report suggested, that only made it more urgent to act quickly and

forcefully.

" What we brought out is that if you delay action or don't do

enough

the impact is quite devastating. This only strengthens that

message. "

James Kanter reported from Paris. Andrew C. Revkin contributed

reporting from New York.

Copyright 2007 The International Herald Tribune

www.iht.com

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Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 17, 2007

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A TOXIC TROJAN HORSE: TINY PLASTIC PARTICLES PACK A MAJOR PUNCH

By Zoe Cormier

The planet's oceans are full of plastic trash that has broken down

into microscopic particles. These " microplastics " are

impossible to

clean up. And now research suggests they act like tiny Trojan horses

as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently

swallow.

Scientists at the University of Plymouth [in England] found that

microplastics soaked up far more phenanthrene (a common marine

pollutant) than samples of normal sand -- and when the toxic

microplastics were added to tanks of marine worms, the concentration

of phenanthrene in their tissues shot up 80 per cent.

Professor Richard Thompson, who worked on the study with a team of

scientists at Plymouth, had long suspected that animals might ingest

toxins along with mouthfuls of microplastics. Now, he has proof. But

the full environmental impact has yet to be researched, along with

whether these microplastics and their toxic passengers could work

their way up the food chain, right up to humans, as worms and other

small creatures are eaten by predators.

The answer is not to ban plastics outright, Prof. Thompson says.

Lightweight, durable and sterile, they are essential for modern

medicine and technology. " But what do we do with most of the

plastic

we produce? Forty per cent of it is used to make plastic packaging,

which is used once and then discarded. The long-term solution is to

be

smarter about our use of plastics. "

Zoe Cormier is a science writer based in London.

Copyright Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

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San Francisco Bay Guardian, Nov. 21, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

EARLY PUBERTY'S TOXIC CAUSES AND EFFECTS

New report links chemicals to problematic early development

By Jessika Fruchter

As if growing up weren't hard enough, a new report published by San

Francisco's Breast Cancer Fund says girls, particularly African

American girls, are hitting puberty earlier -- and it's lasting

longer.

Environmental toxins, obesity, and psychological stressors are all

cited as possible reasons for the trend in the report written by

Ithaca College professor Sandra Steingraber. It was commissioned

about a year ago to put together what she calls " pieces of a

big

jigsaw puzzle. "

Steingraber found that many girls now start to develop breasts as

early as eight years old -- two years earlier than they did a few

decades ago. On average, however, girls begin menstruating only a

few

months earlier than they once did -- making puberty a lengthier

process.

The consequences of growing up too soon are serious -- depression

and

anxiety, eating disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug

and

alcohol abuse are just a few.

" As a mother of a nine-year-old girl, " Steingraber says,

" I was really

impressed by the consequences, not just the causes. The world is not

a

good place for early-maturing girls. "

The implications are not just psychological. According to

Steingraber's report, menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer

risk

by 50 percent.

" The data is pretty ample linking the two, " she says. " The

earlier a

girl gets her breasts, the wider the estrogen window. " Longer

lifetime

exposure to estrogen increases the risk of developing many forms of

breast cancer.

Steingraber points to obesity and endocrine-disrupting chemicals

(toxins that interfere with the hormonal system) as major factors in

the new puberty equation. Phthalates, bisphenol A, and dioxin are a

few of the culprits often cited by environmental health advocates as

contributors to earlier puberty onset. These chemicals are often

found

in cosmetics and personal care products like shampoo, hand lotion,

and

sunscreen. They are also used in pesticides.

Dr. Tracey Woodruff, associate professor of reproductive health and

environment at UC San Francisco, says the link has been researched

and

discussed anecdotally in scientific circles for the past 10 years,

with the last major report issued in 1997.

A big obstacle to keeping kids safe, Woodruff says, is that most

consumer products are not required to undergo US Food and Drug

Administration approval before they are sold to the public, nor are

companies required to disclose all ingredients.

" How chemicals are governed is somewhat archaic, " Woodruff

says.

Environmental health activists agree. In 2002 a national coalition

of

nonprofit organizations launched the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an

initiative to educate the public and influence policy. Marisa Walker

of the Breast Cancer Fund -- a founding member organization -- says

manufacturers jump through big loopholes in federal law to hide

ingredients by claiming that chemicals are trade secrets.

An Environmental Protection Agency-administered program to test new

chemicals was created more than a decade ago, but progress has been

slow at best. In June the EPA announced it was still seeking comment

on a draft list of 73 pesticides to be evaluated under the new

screening program. Chemicals in consumer products are not slated for

review.

The program has received widespread criticism, and in September the

US

House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a letter to the EPA

expressing its concern: " EPA's actions have been a continued

failure

to protect the American public from these chemicals. " The

seven-page

letter also requests that the EPA take immediate action.

Meanwhile, Woodruff, Steingraber, and many environmental health

advocates point to Europe and neighboring Canada as better models of

protecting consumer health. Their policies have a heavier emphasis

on

precaution. Woodruff says prevention can mean the difference between

responding to a change in hormone levels and coping with a birth

defect.

" At what point is there enough information to take

action? "

Steingraber asks. " Chemicals are turning up in the urine of some

of

these girls, and while more research needs to be done, we can't even

do more research until the industry gives us more data. The time of

saying, 'Hmmm, that's interesting,' is over. It's time to take

action. "

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's

Environment &

Health News) highlights the connections between issues that

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often considered separately or not at all.

The natural world is deteriorating and human health is

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because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones

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bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between

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health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community,

the

rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress

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and

therefore ruled by the few.

In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than,

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As you come across stories that might help people connect the

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Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as

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