Summer feet need fresh air, not sandals that sweat toxins.
But PVC vinyl, an ubiquitous material in everything from
flip-flops to shower curtains to teething toys, tends to
release toxic phthalate plasticizers in the heat. Plus,
it's the least recyclable plastic, making it an
Earth-unfriendly as well as personally unhealthy buy.

The Second of Four Major Reports on Climate Change Says It's a Different World Already

By BILL BLAKEMORE

April 2, 2007 — - Within two or three decades, there could be one and a half billion people without enough water, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming.

Such droughts would produce "refugee crises like we've never seen," as one of the study's lead authors told ABC News.

Scientists working on the "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" report have been telling ABC News for months that its findings, once public, would be alarming. The report is being prepared by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of 2,500 experts in the field.

Scientists are hammering out that report's final wording in Brussels and are due to announce it on Friday.

But its basic findings, they say, won't change.

Drafts of the IPCC report depict a world already changed dramatically in the past 35 years by manmade global warming, with increasing drought, heavy precipitation and flooding.

It also says humankind is in for much worse in the next few decades.

The IPCC scientists are finalizing one chart that projects how, with each degree of future warming, Earth's natural life-support systems break down more and more.

It predicts mountain glaciers and snow-pack melting away around the world, faster than scientists thought possible only 20 years ago.

Ancient civilizations that have depended for millenia on fresh water from melted ice and snow are facing unprecedented crises, according to the two reports so far released.

For example, Himalayan glaciers and snow-pack which feed the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and which support hundreds of millions of people, are fast disappearing in the rising heat.

"What you can end up with is people homeless in places like Bangladesh having to move to places like India and China -- which will not be particularly welcoming to refugees," Peter Schwartz, a future systems analyst, told ABC News.

"You will have a refugee crisis like we've never seen," he said.

Emergencies, Not Slow and Steady

Schwartz, who heads the Global Business Network, directed the new study, "Impacts of Climate Change," commissioned for the U.S. defense and intelligence community.

He explained that some of the worst of upheavals feared from global warming are likely to arrive not in a slow and steady manner, but as sudden emergencies, because the temperatures themselves will not rise steadily.

Instead, the rise will be a series of spikes, and when temperatures spike in regions already stressed, the result will be disaster.

For example, said Schwartz, a record heat wave could hit an area already suffering from long-running drought.

"When you think of places like Bangladesh, Haiti, parts of Central America, where they already have over-stretched societies," he said, "and they get hit with severe droughts or severe storms, they're going to experience massive disruptions."

Ecosystems around the world are also affected by the rising temperature, according to the draft report.

It shows more and more species -- in a vast array of ecosystems worldwide -- to be facing extinction.

In regions already drying out, especially close to the equator, even more crops would fail within the coming decades, and more forests and jungles become desiccated, according to the study.

Temperate latitudes nearer the poles are already seeing more and more heavy downpours and floods, expected to get worse.

Some regions further from the equator, says the study, will probably see increased crop yields due to the warming -- but only for a while, until they get even hotter.

Too Late to Prevent 50 Years of Warming

Scientists generally agree that the world's average temperature will rise about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 50 years, no matter what humanity does.

But many calculate that if humankind somehow agrees drastically to curb greenhouse gas emission in the immediate future -- within the next 10 or 15 years -- there's a good chance that global temperatures could level off after that.

However, say many scientists, they probably couldn't begin to fall for a few centuries because carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere a very long time.

Action Wanted on Two Fronts, Many Scientists Say

Most climate scientists ABC News has talked to say humanity now faces a massive, unprecedented challenge on two fronts.

It must figure out how to prevent temperatures from continuing to rise after 2050, which requires immediate action now. And since there is probably no way to avoid a two-degree rise over the next 50 years, governments must also figure out how to adapt to the warmer world that is coming.

Failing to stop the rise after 2050, scientists say, will be catastrophic.

Both studies make clear that it is the poorest countries -- those with the least money to help them adapt to the rising temperature, and who produce by far the least greenhouse gases -- that will be hit hardest.

Less affected, due to their wealth, are the U.S., Europe and China -- which produce, by far, most of the man-made greenhouse gasses emissions.

Split court rules against Bush on greenhouse gases

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.

The court's four conservative justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.

Many scientists believe greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.

The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first global warming case.

Democrats took control of Congress last November. The world's leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is "very likely" caused by man and is so severe that it will "continue for centuries." Former Vice President Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth -- making the case for prompt action on climate change -- won an Oscar. Business leaders are saying they are increasingly open to congressional action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.

Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.

The court had three questions before it.

--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?

--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?

--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?

The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.

The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The lawsuit was filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups that had grown frustrated by the Bush administration's inaction on global warming.

In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.

The court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.

His position "involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem," he said.

The decision also is expected to boost California's prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.

Source: CNN

Could Crazy Technology Save the Planet?

March 16, 2007 — By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Crazy-sounding ideas for saving the planet are getting a serious look from top scientists, a sign of their fears about global warming and the desire for an insurance policy in case things get worse.

How crazy?

There's the man-made "volcano" that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space "sun shade" made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature. The forest of ugly artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air. And the "Geritol solution" in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean.

"Of course it's desperation," said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. "It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can't be trusted to do the right thing."

NASA is putting the finishing touches on a report summing up some of these ideas and has spent $75,000 to map out rough details of the sun shade concept. One of the premier climate modeling centers in the United States, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has spent the last six weeks running computer simulations of the man-made volcano scenario and will soon turn its attention to the space umbrella idea.

And last month, billionaire Richard Branson offered a $25 million prize to the first feasible technology to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air.

Simon "Pete" Worden, who heads NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., says some of these proposals, which represent a field called geoengineering, have been characterized as anywhere from "great" to "idiotic." As if to distance NASA from the issue a bit, Worden said the agency's report won't do much more than explain the range of possibilities.

Scientists in the recent past have been reluctant to consider such concepts. Many fear there will be unintended side effects; others worry such schemes might prevent the type of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are the only real way to fight global warming. These approaches are not an alternative to cutting pollution, said University of Calgary professor David Keith, a top geoengineering researcher.

Last month, Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the nation's largest science conference that more research must be done in this field, but no action should be taken yet.

Here is a look at some of the ideas:

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The Geritol solution

A private company is already carrying out this plan. Some scientists call it promising while others worry about the ecological fallout.

Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The idea of seeding the ocean with iron to beef up a natural plankton and algae system has been tried on a small scale several times since 1990. It has both succeeded and failed.

Planktos chief executive officer Russ George said his ship will try it on a larger scale, dumping a slurry of water and red iron dust from a hose into the sea.

"It makes a 25-foot swath of bright red for a very short period of time," George said.

The concept gained some credibility when it was mentioned in the 2001 report by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which cited it as a possible way to attack carbon emissions.

Small experiments "showed unequivocally that there was a biological response to the addition of the iron," the climate report said. Plankton used the iron to photosynthesize, extract greenhouse gases from the air, and grow rapidly. It forms a thick green soup of all sorts of carbon dioxide-sucking algae, which sea life feast on, and the carbon drops into the ocean.

However, the international climate report also cautioned about "the ecological consequences of large-scale fertilization of the ocean."

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said large-scale ocean seeding could change the crucial temperature difference between the sea surface and deeper waters and have a dramatic effect on marine life.

Cicerone, a climate scientist who is president of the National Academy of Sciences and advocate for more geoengineering research, called the Geritol solution promising. However, he noted that such actions by a company, or country, can have worldwide effects.

George, Planktos' CEO, said his company consulted with governments around the world and is only following previous scientific research. He said his firm will be dropping the iron in open international seas so he needs no permits. Most important, he said, is that it's such a small amount of iron compared to the ocean volume that it poses no threat.

He said it's unfair to lump his plan in with geoengineering, saying his company is just trying to restore the ocean to "a more ecologically normal and balanced state."

"We're a green solution," George said.

Planktos officials say that for every ton of iron used, 100,000 tons of carbon will be pulled into the ocean. Eventually, if this first large-scale test works, George hopes to remove 3 billion tons of carbon from the Earth's atmosphere, half of what's needed. Some scientists say that's overstated.

Planktos' efforts are financed by companies and individuals who buy carbon credits to offset their use of fossil fuels.

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Man-made volcano

When Mount Pinatubo erupted 16 years ago in the Philippines it cooled the Earth for about a year because the sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere reflected some sunlight.

Several leading scientists, from Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen to the late nuclear cold warrior Edward Teller, have proposed doing the same artificially to offset global warming.

Using jet engines, cannons or balloons to get sulfates in the air, humans could reduce the solar heat, and only increase current sulfur pollution by a small percentage, said Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

"It's an issue of the lesser of two evils," he said.

Scientists at the Center for Atmospheric Research put the idea into a computer climate model. The results aren't particularly cheap or promising, said NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann. It would take tens of thousands of tons of sulfate to be injected into the air each month, he said.

"From a practical point of view, it's completely ridiculous," Amman said. "Instead of investing so much into this, it would be much easier to cut down on the initial problem."

Both this technique and the solar umbrella while reducing heating, wouldn't reduce carbon dioxide. So they wouldn't counter a dramatic increase in the acidity of the world's oceans, which happens with global warming, scientists said. It harms sea life, especially coral reefs.

Despite that, Calgary's David Keith is working on tweaking the concept. He wants to find a more efficient chemical to inject into the atmosphere in case of emergency.

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Solar umbrella

For far-out concepts, it's hard to beat Roger Angel's. Last fall, the University of Arizona astronomer proposed what he called a "sun shade." It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like spaceships that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun.

"It really is just like turning down the knob by 2 percent of what's coming from the sun," he said.

The science for the ships, the rocketry to launch them, and the materials to make the shade are all doable, Angel said.

These nearly flat discs would each weigh less than an ounce and measure about a yard wide with three tab-like "ears" that are controllers sticking out just a few inches.

About 800,000 of these would be stacked into each rocket launch. It would take 16 trillion of them -- that's million million -- so there would be 20 million launches of rockets. All told, Angel figures 20 million tons of material to make the discs that together form the solar umbrella.

And then there's the cost: at least $4 trillion over 30 years, probably more.

"I compare it with sending men to Mars.I think they're both projects on the same scale," Angel said. "Given the danger to Earth, I think this project might warrant some fraction of the consideration of sending people to Mars."

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Artificial trees

Scientifically, it's known as "air capture." But the instruments being used have been dubbed "artificial trees" -- even though these devices are about as treelike as a radiator on a stick. They are designed to mimic the role of trees in using carbon dioxide, but early renderings show them looking more like the creation of a tinkering engineer with lots of steel.

Nearly a decade ago, Columbia University professor Klaus Lackner, hit on an idea for his then-middle school daughter's science fair project: Create air filters that grab carbon dioxide from the air using chemical absorbers and then compress the carbon dioxide into a liquid or compressed gas that can be shipped elsewhere. When his daughter was able to do it on a tiny scale, Lackner decided to look at doing it globally.

Newly inspired by the $25 million prize offered by Richard Branson, Lackner has fine-tuned the idea. He wants to develop a large filter that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Another chemical reaction would take the carbon from the absorbent material, and then a third process would change that greenhouse gas into a form that could be disposed of.

It would take wind and a lot of energy to power the air capture devices. They would stand tall like cell phone towers on steroids, reaching about 200 feet high with various-sized square filters at the top. Lackner envisions perhaps placing 100,000 of them near wind energy turbines.

Even if each filter was only the size of a television, it could remove about 25 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is about how much one American produces annually, Lackner said. The captured carbon dioxide would be changed into a liquid or gas that can be piped away from the air capture devices.

Disposal might be the biggest cost, Lackner said.

Disposal of carbon dioxide, including that from fossil fuel plant emissions, is a major issue of scientific and technological research called sequestration. The idea is to bury it underground, often in old oil wells or deep below the sea floor. The Bush Administration, which doesn't like many geoengineering ideas is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon sequestration, but mostly for power plant emissions.

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On the Net:

The Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University: http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/

The National Center for Atmospheric Research: http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/

Planktos Inc.: http://www.planktos.com/

Source: ENN

This Was World's Warmest Recorded Winter, U.S. Government Says

March 16, 2007 — By Reuters

WASHINGTON -- This has been the world's warmest winter since record-keeping began more than a century ago, the U.S. government agency that tracks weather reported Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the combined global land and ocean surface temperature from December through February was at its highest since records began in 1880.

A record-warm January was responsible for pushing up the combined winter temperature, according to the agency's Web site, http://www.noaa.gov.

"Contributing factors were the long-term trend toward warmer temperatures as well as a moderate El Nino in the Pacific," Jay Lawrimore of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said in a telephone interview from Asheville, North Carolina.

The next-warmest winter on record was in 2004, and the third warmest winter was in 1998, Lawrimore said.

The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.

"We don't say this winter is evidence of the influence of greenhouse gases," Lawrimore said.

However, he noted that his center's work is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change process, which released a report on global warming last month that found climate change is occurring and that human activities quite likely play a role in the change.

"So we know as a part of that, the conclusions have been reached and the warming trend is due in part to rises in greenhouse gas emissions," Lawrimore said. "By looking at long-term trends and long-term changes, we are able to better understand natural and anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change."

The combined temperature for the December-February period was 1.3 degrees F (0.72 degree C) above the 20th century mean, the agency said. Lawrimore did not give an absolute temperature for the three-month period, and said the deviation from the mean was what was important. He did not provide the 20th century mean temperature.

Temperatures were above average for these months in Europe, Asia, western Africa, southeastern Brazil and the northeast half of the United States, with cooler-than-average conditions in parts of Saudi Arabia and the central United States.

Global temperature on land surface during the northern hemisphere winter was also the warmest on record, while the ocean-surface temperature tied for second warmest after the winter of 1997-98.

Over the past century, global surface temperatures have increased by about 0.11 degree F per decade, but the rate of increase has been three times larger since 1976 -- around 0.32 degree F per decade, with some of the biggest temperature rises in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

Source: Reuters

Could genetically modified crops be killing bees?

John McDonald, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, March 10, 2007

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/10/HOG5FOH9VQ1.DTL

EU Drafts Plan to Battle Global Warming, Sets Binding Targets for Switch to Green Energy

March 09, 2007 — By Paul Ames, Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European Union leaders drafted an agreement Friday promising to take the lead in fighting global warming by setting binding targets to cut greenhouse gases and ensure a fifth of the bloc's energy comes from green power sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels.

Controversially, the draft, which was expected to be endorsed by the leaders by the end of Friday's summit, also noted the role nuclear power could play in tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

"This text really gives European Union policies a new quality and will establish us as a world pioneer," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters as she arrived to lead the talks.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the measures "the most ambitious package ever agreed by any institution on energy security and climate change."

Merkel was leading negotiations on details of the package, which includes a commitment to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. By the same date the EU wants to ensure 20 percent of its power comes from renewable energy and 10 percent of its cars and trucks run on biolfuels made from plants.

European leaders hope their commitment to tackling climate change will encourage other leading polluters, such as the United States and China, to agree on deep emissions cuts. Merkel plans to present those plans to a summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations that she will host in June.

"Europe only produces 15 percent of global CO2," Merkel said late Thursday. "The real climate problem will not be solved by Europe alone."

The final draft represents a compromise between nations that had demanded mandatory targets on clean energy, and eastern European nations led by Poland and Slovakia who had said they did not have the money to meet such high targets for developing costly alternatives. Those nations said they preferred to stay with cheaper, but more polluting options such as coal and oil.

While setting an overall 20 percent target for the bloc's use of renewable energy, the draft also says individual targets would be allowed for each of the 27 EU members.

"A differentiated approach to the contributions of the member states is needed, reflecting fairness (and) taking into account national circumstances," the draft says. It tasks the EU's executive Commission with establishing national targets for each country.

It also mentions solidarity between EU nations in times of energy supply crises from suppliers such as Russia, as demanded by the Poles.

Many of the former Communist nations that joined the EU in 2004 lag behind their Western neighbors in developing clean fuel. Although their economies are growing fast, most are still struggling to catch up with the West and say they need more time to meet the 20 percent target.

Cooler, landlocked countries such as Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic also argued that they were handicapped in developing wind, solar and water-based power sources, which recently gained wider use in countries such as Denmark and Spain.

The draft contains a reference to the role of nuclear power, a demand of the French, Czechs, Slovaks and others who argued it could play a crucial part in helping Europe move away from carbon fuels.

It says each EU nation should decide whether to use nuclear power, but takes note of a Commission report that says nuclear energy could contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and help alleviate worries about security of energy supply. It also stresses the need to improve nuclear safety.

Austria, Ireland and Denmark did not want the EU to sanction nuclear power, and the German government is split over whether to develop atomic energy. "Our Austrian attitude toward sustainable energy definitely does not include nuclear energy," Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik told reporters.

The leaders also agreed that EU nations should forge a common approach in dealing with its main foreign supplies of energy. The EU hopes to intensify imports from former Soviet nations such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and producers in Africa to reduce reliance on oil and gas supplies from Russia. They also want to diversity energy supply routes, a response to recent problems which have seen Russia turning off the taps on pipelines carrying oil and gas westward.

EU leaders asked regulators to develop a plan on opening the EU's internal energy market and overcoming problems such as overcharging and under-investment, which have been blamed for two major blackouts in the past year. They stopped short of endorsing a plan to split up national energy monopolies.

The EU's environmental agenda is to be pursued in parallel with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. treaty on climate change. The major EU economies have committed to cut greenhouse gases by 8 percent of 1990 levels by 2012, and want the United States to sign the treaty. The U.S. argues, however, that Kyoto would hurt its economy and says it should also apply to surging Asian economies like China and India.

'Don't Discuss Polar Bears,' Says U.S. Memo to Scientists

March 09, 2007 — By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters

WASHINGTON -- Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."

ARE POLAR BEARS 'THREATENED'?

Polar bears are a hot topic for the Bush administration, which decided in December to consider whether to list the white-furred behemoths as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, because of scientific reports that the bears' icy habitat is melting due to global warming.

Hall said a decision is expected in January 2008. A "threatened" listing would bar the government from taking any action that jeopardizes the animal's existence, and might spur debate about tougher measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

Hall defended the policy laid out in the memos, saying it was meant to keep scientists from straying from a set agenda at meetings in countries like Russia, Norway and Canada.

For example, he said, one meeting was about "human and polar bear interface." Receding Arctic sea ice where polar bears live and the global climate change that likely played a role in the melting were not proper discussion topics, he said.

"That's not a climate change discussion," Hall said at a telephone briefing. "That's a management, on-the-ground type discussion."

The prohibition on talking about these subjects only applies to public, formal situations, Hall said. Private scientific discussions outside the meeting and away from media are permitted and encouraged, he said.

"This administration has a long history of censoring speech and science on global warming," Eben Burnham-Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council said by telephone.

"Whenever we see an instance of the Bush administration restricting speech on global warming, it sends up a huge red flag that their commitment to the issue does not reflect their rhetoric," Burnham-Snyder said.

Source: ENN