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POPSRudd backs deep 2020 emissions cuts During the election campaign, Kevin Rudd has repeatedly said that Australia would not set its own 2020 target until he received a report from economist Ross Garnaut next year. But when he arrives in Bali next week he will face international expectations from Europe, China and Indonesia to make Australia's position clear whether, having ratified the Kyoto Protocol, it is committed to its own deep cuts:
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POPSHow much scientific abuse can a polar bear?
A favourite deceit of AGW sceptics is to present Bjorn Lomberg as a "scientist." He isn't. His PhD is in Political Science — a humanity. There are different methodologies between those used in "hard" and social sciences. Social sciences don't really use the scientific method. This is clearly demonstrated through out a recent Salon.com interview with Bjorn, and was especially telling in the discussion of Bjorn's use of polar bears. Here is a response to the writer quoting one expert's opinion (a front-line researcher in polar bears). "OK. But I've talked to a different expert that's up in Greenland, who works for the Danish government, and he has looked over my chapter, and said that it's OK." If only all experts were equal. Bjorn's referencing of another expert is supposed to counter the point, but he never makes a commitment on which has the better data and the better hypothesis — a fundamental step in science. We will be tested over the next twenty years, so we w
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POPSPeak fitness hour National Ride to Work was an unmitigated success, given that the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, pledged $30 million over five years to construct 55 kilometres of separated cycle ways. I am yet to bite the bullet, giving in easily to my partner's argument that the 50km round trip is too far. I will let loyal blog readers know if and when I change my mind. Anyone a cyclist? Is 50km too much to fit into an intense working day?
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POPSWorld poll tolls death knell for global warming denialists I really like my BBC climate change news feed I embedded into my Firefox browser. Love it. For example, coming up for quick air during a hard stint working, I mouseover the feed icon, to catch up on GW headlines of news pieces I may have missed over the last three weeks or so. Seems I missed a sweet moment of poignancy when Howard was hosting his fascist-fence APEC green-bath with Bush, selling us not just a non-solution to global warming, but an irritant. How else do you describe "aspirational goals"? Anyway, it seems the UN was finding out the rest of the world has moved on from the recalcitrance of the fossil-fuel friendly Coalition of the Unwilling:
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POPSClimate Change in Australia The CSIRO and the BOM put their heads together to work out what the findings of the 2007 IPCC Report means to Australia. In a nutshell, we have to dramatically reduce emissions to keep Australia's average temperature from increasing more than the 1% that is already programmed into the system. If this is a Government agency report, then how can any self-respecting Government ignore the implications.
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POPSRoyal Society: Hurricanes doubled over century The dearly held tenants that the global warming denialists cling onto so tenaciously are disappearing faster than the Arctic ice-shelf. The latest one to crumble is the notion that global warming does not increase the number and frequency of hurricanes.
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POPSResearch to show UK flooding is from global warming I have just read about the fact that for the first time computer modelling has been able to detect a "human fingerprint" on the increased rainfall that Britain is seeing. They compare climate simulations run with, and without, anthropogenic GHG inputs and the difference that shows up is our "human fingerprint". It has been seen in temperature predictions before, but the research that will be published this week will be the first time the human fingerprint has been detected in rainfall predictions. It is essential to note that what is happening now — and increasing trend to heavier rainfall patterns over Britain — is what is claimed to have been predicted by the research. If this turns out to be substantial research maybe it will stop professional denialists like Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair carrying on like school kids with a fart cushion every time a cold snap ensues.
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POPSBritain's great flood a reminder of more to come An unusual meteorological event is responsible for this summer's weathe in the UK, not global warming. A shift to the south in the position of the jet stream brought a heatwave to eastern Europe and storms normally found in higher latitudes to England. But global warming is expected to cause more and more flooding in the UK into the near future.
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POPSGreening the Big Blue Cleantechblog offer some tantalising speculation about IBMs move into the solar cell business. Greenwash, or clean-up? We will have a better idea in the next eighteen months.
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POPSGreenbox turns car emissions into bio-oil Carbon dioxide engine emissions are diverted through a Greenbox, where algae fixes the carbon dioxide, i.e. grows. The algae is then collected and processed centrally into biofuel. Great idea, if it works.
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POPSBusiness is ready to tackle climate chang Australian business CEOs, GMs and MDs are an astute lot, or at least 85.82% of them are. A survey, by Business Climate International shows that, as a group, they are across the subject. I just think they need a little more education before they become a powerful environmental force. There's money to be saved by using energy more efficiently.
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POPSIndia to develop climate change mitigation policy Global warming is a quantifiable problem — at it's most reduced it is directly related to the amount of previously sequestered GHGs entering the atmosphere minus the amount of carbon that is being sunk — and to tackle it you need a quantifiable solution. That is, you need carbon emissions reductions targets. While it is theoretically a strong argument that it is India's turn to grow their economy so they should not have to tax their cheap fossil fuel energy, it is a short-term view. India is also one of the first-in-line, down-the-line, to pick up the real global warming tab which, in their case, is a not-so-mighty Ganges.
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POPSBan Ki-moon calls for UN action on climate change Moving the climate change debate, which has settled down into a consensus on AWG, out of the scientific body advising the UN — the IPCC — and into the General Assembly seems like a good idea. Even better, Ban seems to expect results coming out of his attempt to bang heads together: He said that the outcomes from this meeting would feed into the UN climate negotiation process. "I have been advised by many experts that if we act now - since we have the resources and heightened awareness - we can reverse it," he said. "Then we can give a much more prosperous planet Earth to our great, great, grandchildren.
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POPSWill Tony Jones demolish The Great Global Warming Swindle? It is my fervent wish that Tony Jones exposes The Great Global Warming Swindle as a hoax and fraud on ABC TV after the viewing at 8:30. He is a thorough and dogged interviewer. I hope he takes Martin Durkin to task. It looks like he might. The ANU's Dr Janette Lindesay and Professor Malcolm McCulloch, along with their Stanford University colleague, Professor Robert Dunbar, will address the scientific flaws in the claims of climate change sceptics at the public forum on Friday titled Debunking The Great Global Warming Swindle. The forum will focus on claims that global warming is not due to greenhouse gas emissions but other natural causes. Respected journal The New Scientist has also re-issued a guide to climate change myths and misconceptions it put together earlier this year, when The Great Global Warning Swindle was aired in the UK. "Despite the claims made in The Great Global Warming Swindle, there is now an overwhelming amount of evidence that the world is wa
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POPSLive Earth to reach two billion world over Al Gore has recruited Australian-based Cathy Zoi to run the Alliance for Climate Protection he set up six months ago. "It will be the first great note in a worldwide song demanding change that will be heard on every continent in every time zone," Zoi says of the concerts. "Post Live Earth, the Alliance for Climate Protection is undertaking a three- to five-year campaign to educate people from all walks of life that the climate crisis is both critically urgent and something we can solve." One such action is the Live Earth's outreach program, called Friends of Live Earth. Some 6000 people have applied for kits to run their own events simultaneously with the concerts. A key part of Live Earth will be to get people around the world to sign a seven-part pledge that commits them to lobby their governments. This is much more than a feel-good exercise: the event organisers plan to capture a massive database of people who can be mobilised in future campaigns - and be asked to do
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POPSGreenland's DNA has green past Erik the Red, who settled in Greenland 1000 years ago, named it to lure more settlers, although a small area not covered by ice would then have been very green. While an admirable marketing tactic, Erick was half a million years (give or take a thousand), behind the times.
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POPSRain in Spain falls mainly on the forest It's a good thing Spain is developing wind energy and concentrated solar power, because they are facing emissions levels of 37 percent above their 1990 levels. They are allowed only a 15 percent increase under the Kyoto Protocol agreement. So they plan to sink 20 percent of the excess carbon dioxide by re-foresting.
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POPSRich's carbon emissions is double the poor's The more we learn about the impact of global warming, the more it is apparent that the poor are going to bear the brunt of it. We see that in Bangladesh . And in Australia: At a relatively low carbon price of $25 a tonne of greenhouse pollution, poor families around Australia would be paying about $558 a year more on their bills, while the wealthiest households would pay around $1446 extra. But once those extra costs are adjusted to take into consideration income levels, as a proportion of their total spending, poor people could pay almost seven times more than the rich. The last word goes to the executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence , Tony Nicholson. "This is a great opportunity, because if we seriously address climate change we can also do a lot to address entrenched disadvantage," Mr Nicholson said. "Fo
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POPSHelp spread the word This guy is good: wonderingmind42 . Watch him present a risk analysis that conclusively makes the case for taking action on global warming. I haven't seen anyone logically refute him with, yet. But I'll take submissions. If you can't then do like the man says and help spread the word.
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POPSThe War on AGW Denial, Part 2 Holocaust denial is illegal in civilised countries of the world. So why shouldn't we render the orchestrated efforts of the well-funded global warming denial industry to nought, by making anthropogenic global warming denial illegal (unless it's genuine scientific research published in peer-review journals)? Advertisers are not allowed to make false and misleading claims about their products. Isn't it time we subjected fossil-fuel funded think-tanks and 'foundations' to the same scrutiny as advertisers?
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POPSIndians most worried about global warming While emerging economies like India and China are often accused of resisting the need to tackle climate change, a new survey by Australian environmentalist Jon Dee, published in the latest issue of New Scientist suggested that people of these two countries are more worried about climate change. The survey was conducted by Seattle-based research group Global Market Insite. It polled opinions from 14000 people in 14 countries to gather solid data on how people feel about climate change, Dee said.
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