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Medieval clues on climate changes
Weather reports by monks scoured
BY BRADLEY S. KLAPPER The Associated Press

   EINSIEDELN, Switzerland — A librarian at this 10th century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots.
   He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.
   “Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze,” says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and “weatherman” of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. “Since I’ve been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice.”
   “But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory,” he adds.
   Diaries of day-to-day weather details from the age before 19th-century standardized thermometers are proving of great value to scientists who study today’s climate. Historical accounts were once largely ignored, as they were thought to be fraught with inaccuracy or were simply inaccessible or illegible. But the booming interest in climate change has transformed the study of ancient weather records from what was once a “wallflower science,” says Christian Pfister, a climate historian at the University of Bern.
   The accounts dispel any lingering doubts that the Earth is heating up more dramatically than ever before, he says. Last winter — when spring blossoms popped up all over the Austrian Alps, Geneva’s official chestnut tree sprouted leaves and flowers, and Swedes were still picking mushrooms well into December — was Europe’s warmest in 500 years, Pfister says. It came after the hottest autumn in a millennium and was followed by one of the balmiest Aprils on record.
   “In the last year there was a series of extremely exceptional weather,” he says. “The probability of this is very low.”
   The records also provide a context for judging shifts in the weather. Brother Konrad Hinder, the current weatherman at Einsiedeln and an avid reader of Dietrich’s diaries, says his predecessor’s precise accounts of everything from yellow fog to avalanches provide historical context.
   “We know from Josef Dietrich that the extremes were very big during his time. There were very cold winters and very mild winters, very wet summers and very dry summers,” he says, adding that the range of weather extremes has been smaller in the 40 years he has recorded data for the Swiss national weather service.
   “That’s why I’m always cautious when people say the weather extremes now are at their greatest. Without historical context you lose control and you rush to proclaim every latest weather phenomenon as extreme or unprecedented,” Hinder says.
   Most historians and scientists delving deep into archives seek accounts of disasters and extreme weather events. But the records can also be used to obtain a more precise temperature range for most months and years that goes beyond such general indicators as tree rings, corals, ice cores or glaciers.
   Such weather sources include the thrice-daily temperature and pressure measurements by 17th-century Paris physician Louis Morin, a shortlived international meteorological network created by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1653, and 33 “weather diaries” surviving from the 16th century. In Japan, court officers kept records of the dates of cherry blossom festivals, which allow modern scientists to track the weather of the time.
   Early records often are only discovered by chance in documents that have survived in centuries-old European monasteries like Einsiedeln, or in the annals of rulers, military campaigns, famines, natural hazards and meteorological anomalies. In Klosterneuberg near Vienna an unidentified writer notes a lack of ice on the Danube in 1343-1344 and calls the winter “mild,” while the abbot of Switzerland’s Fischingen Monastery laments the late harvest of hay and corn in the summer of 1639 when “there was hardly ever a really warm day.”
   Scores of similar clues are pieced together year by year to determine temperature ranges, says Pfister, whose team of four uses old “weather reports” to work back as far as the 10th century.
   Pfister has found that from 1900 to 1990, there was an average of five months of extreme warmth per decade. In the 1990s, that number jumped to an unprecedented 22 months. The same decade also had no months of extreme cold, in contrast to the half-millennium before.
   Even in the last major global warming period from 900 to 1300, severe winters were only “somewhat less frequent and less extreme,” Pfi ster says. Over the past century, temperatures have gone up an average of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is often attributed to the accumulation of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

BRADLEY S. KLAPPER/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A page in one of 13 diaries by Brother Josef, inscribed from 1671 to 1704, is shown in the monastery in Einsiedeln, Switzerland

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Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON - A trio of climate change meetings in the United States this week will focus attention on how Washington can deliver on its pledge to play a lead role in combating global warming.


The central issue is how to curb the emission of climate-warming greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles, and whether to make the goals mandatory or "aspirational" as the White House has proposed.
As the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases -- with China close behind and gaining fast -- the United States has said it wants to lead, but critics from the US environmental movement and elsewhere question whether its voluntary approach will work.

A "high-level" UN meeting in New York on Monday is meant to send a "strong political message" from world leaders, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, although it is not a negotiation on climate change.

Harlan Watson, the chief US climate negotiator, said it was time to move beyond talk and try to develop a way forward.

"We're getting beyond the conceptual ... level and want to get down to the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves stage," Watson said on Friday at a briefing. "We really want to get away from the dialogue ... and see how we can really construct an architecture for what happens after the first commitment period of Kyoto ends in 2012."

The United States is at odds with the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, when the protocol expires.

President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto plan, saying it unfairly burdens rich countries while exempting developing countries like China and India, and that it will cost US jobs.


GETTING READY FOR BALI

Climate change negotiations will take place in December in Bali, when representatives will consider a way to cut emissions after the Kyoto pact expires. The deadline for figuring this out is 2009, so countries have enough time to ratify the agreement.

Eighty-one heads of state or government will attend Monday's event, along with two vice presidents, five deputy prime ministers, 33 foreign ministers and 12 environment ministers, in addition to 18 other representatives, according to the United Nations. Former US Vice President Al Gore and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are scheduled to attend.

Bush will not attend but is scheduled to dine with Ban afterward, in advance of his address on Tuesday to the UN General Assembly.

Bush will speak at a two-day Washington meeting at the State Department on Thursday and Friday, a gathering of "major economies" -- which are also the world's biggest global warming contributors -- on energy security and climate change.

"Unless the United States decides it wants to be a major and committed leadership player in this and make very specific leadership commitments, much of the rest of the world is going to effectively hide behind the skirts of the United States and not do anything," said Tim Wirth, head of the nonprofit UN Foundation.

"So what the United States does and how the United States decides to enter this negotiation is going to be a very, very telling commentary on the future of the climate negotiations and I believe on the fate of the Earth."

Only the United States and the chief UN climate change representative, Yvo de Boer, are scheduled to make public comments at the Washington meeting.

The White House would not release the names of participants, so it was unclear whether top government officials would attend. At least one country, Brazil, did not plan to send its president or even its environment minister.

In between the UN and Washington meetings, the nongovernmental Clinton Global Initiative will convene in New York from Wednesday through Friday. A nonpartisan project of former US President Bill Clinton's foundation, it will discuss climate change with participants from business, academia, entertainment and nongovernmental environmental organizations.

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Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption
to fight global warming

Article from:  
Karen Collier
October 10, 2007 02:35pm

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.
The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.
Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.
"It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said.
"Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."
The eat roo recommendation is contained in a report, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future, commissioned by Greenpeace and released today.
It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.
Australians eat about a third of the 30 million kilograms of roo meat produced annually. The delicacy is exported to dozens of countries and is most popular in Germany, France and Belgium.
The Greenpeace report has renewed calls for Victoria to lift a ban on harvesting roos for food.
Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia spokesman John Kelly said roos invading farmers' crops were already being illegally shot.
"They are being culled and left to rot," Mr Kelly said.
Kangaroo meat sold in Victoria is imported from interstate.
Australia's kangaroo population has halved to 25 million in the past five years as the drought has taken a toll on breeding and the animals' food sources, Mr Kelly said.
Under a quota system, 10 to 12 per cent can be killed for the meat and leather industry. Aerial surveys estimate their numbers.
Today's report by leading scientist Dr Mark Diesendorf, from the University of NSW, says greenhouse gas emissions need to be slashed by at least a third by 2020 to avoid a climate change catastrophe.
His recommendations include:
REDUCING beef consumption and increasing kangaroo meat production.
CUTTING gas and coal production.
HALTING land clearing and deforestation.
SHIFTING to renewable energy such as wind power and bioelectricity from crop residues.
"The world is currently on track to experience runaway global warming with average temperatures soon to exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, Dr Diesendorf said.
"We face a catastrophe unless there is urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020."
A major report by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology released this month warned average temperatures will rise 1C by 2030 and could increase as much as 5C in Australia by 2070 unless global greenhouse emissions are cut dramatically.

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They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane

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Peace prize goes to Gore
Scientists share in victory for global warming message
BY SETH BORENSTEIN AND LISA LEFF
The Associated Press

PALO ALTO, Calif. — For years, former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were belittled and, worst of all, ignored for their message about how dire global warming is.
On Friday, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their warnings about what Gore calls “a planetary emergency.”
Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists. This scientific panel has explained the dry details of global warming in thousands of pages of footnoted reports every six years or so since 1990.
   Gore, fresh from a near miss at winning the U.S. presidency in 2000, translated the numbers and jargonladen reports into something people could understand. He made a slide show and went Hollywood. His documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” won two Academy Awards and has been credited with changing the debate in America about global warming. For Gore, it was all about the message. “This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now,” he said Friday at the offices of the Alliance For Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded. “The alarm bells are going off in the scientific community.” Despite a live global stage, Gore did not take ques- tions from reporters, avoiding the issue of a potential 2008 presidential run. His aides repeatedly say he won’t enter the race. Gore donated his share of the $1.5 million prize to the nonprofit.
   “For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency,” Gore said in brief remarks. “It is a planetary emergency and we have to act quickly.”
   In announcing the award earlier in the day in Oslo, Norway, Nobel committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the prize was not a slap at the Bush administration’s current policies. Instead, he said it was about encouraging all countries “to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming.”
   Gore is the first former vice president to win the peace prize since 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt, who by that time had become president, was honored. Sitting Vice President Charles Gates Dawes won the prize in 1925. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
   Gore, who learned of his award from watching the live TV announcement — hearing his name amid the Norwegian — was not celebratory Friday. His tone was somber. He spoke beside his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report. Outside the building, schoolchildren held a sign saying, “Thank you Al.”
   For years, there was little thanks.
   From the late 1980s with his book “Earth in the Balance,” Gore championed the issue of global warming. He had monthly science seminars on it while vice president and helped negotiate the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that called for cuts in greenhouse gases.
   “When he first started really working on the climate change issue, I remember he was ridiculed in the press and certainly by political opponents as some kind of kook out there in la-la land,” said federal climate scientist Tom Peterson, an IPCC co-author. “It’s delightful that he’s sharing this and he deserves it well. And it’s nice to have his work being vindicated.”
   Since his loss to George W. Bush in 2000, Gore put aside political aspirations and become a global warming evangelical. He traveled to more than 50 countries. He presented his slide show on global warming more than 1,000 times.
   He turned that slide show into “An Inconvenient Truth.”
   The film won praise but also generated controversy. On Wednesday, a British judge ruled in a lawsuit that it was OK to show the movie to students in school. High Court Judge Michael Burton said it was “substantially founded upon scientific research and fact” but presented in a “context of alarmism and exaggeration.” He said teachers must be given a written document explaining that.
   More than 20 top climate scientists told The Associated Press last year that the film was generally accurate in its presentation of the science, although some were bothered by what they thought were a couple of exaggerations.
   Gore’s movie was deeply personal. It was about him after losing the 2000 election and about his travels, and he talked about the changing climate in a personal way.
   “He has honed that message in a way that many scientists are jealous of,” said University of Michigan Dean Rosina Birnbaum. She was a top White House science aide to Gore and President Clinton. “He is a master communicator.”
   Climate scientists said their work was cautious and rock-solid, confirmed with constant peer review, but it didn’t grab people’s attention.
   “We need an advocate such as Al Gore to help present the work of scientists across the world,” said Bob Watson, former chairman of the IPCC and a top federal climate science adviser to the Clinton-Gore Administration.
   Watson and Birnbaum, who regularly briefed Gore about global warming, described him as voracious, wanting to understand every detail about the science. Birnbaum recalled one Air Force Two journey with Gore and the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
   “Gore was such a consummate scientist that he would keep asking and asking and asking deeper and deeper questions until at one point Jim Baker of NOAA and I ran back to our seats to go back through textbooks to get the answers,” Birnbaum said. “It was both exhilarating and exhausting to be part of his science team.”

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UPDATED GORE FILM
   SCHENECTADY — An updated presentation of “An Inconvenient Truth” will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the First Unitarian Society, 1221 Wendell Ave.
   Dr. Steven Leibo, Sage College professor and WAMC commentator, will lead the free program.
   Former Vice President Al Gore has trained presenters to give a live, localized and updated slide show based on the Academy Award-winning fi lm about global warming. Leibo took the training in January in

Quoted from bumblethru

More propaganda!! Democratic fear tactics!