Planetary Ruin

Research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming is part of a huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the world’s largest carbon polluters, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday.

“There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community,” Gore said at a forum in Singapore. “In actuality, there is very little disagreement.”

Gore likened the campaign to the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of scientific debate on smoking’s harmful effects.

“This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science,” Gore said. “We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion.”

After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world’s top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned that the cause of global warming is “very likely” man-made, “the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere,” Gore said.

“They’re trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools,” he said.

He said Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, is one of the major fuel companies involved in attempting to mislead the public about global warming.

Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. The company said the scientists’ reports were just attempts to smear Exxon Mobil’s name and confuse the debate.

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Montgomery County officials are looking into whether a bond can be issued to pay for greenhouse gas reduction projects as part of a larger strategy to fight global warming.

Although local governments regularly float bonds to pay for large long-term projects, it’s not clear if cutting global climate change fits into a pre-existing category.

“The county can only do what the Legislature said it can do in writing. … We just can’t willy-nilly do whatever we want,” Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairman Tom Ellis said at Thursday’s meeting.

Without a national strategy to cut greenhouses gases, state, county and local governments are going ahead with their own plans to curb climate change. Many have urged their citizens to do likewise.

Philadelphia has already adopted a greenhouse gas reduction plan, and Bucks and Delaware counties are both looking into doing so, said Steve Nelson, the county’s deputy chief operating officer.

Global warming falls within the county’s general purview of health, safety and general welfare because the potential effects include increased rainfall and flooding, as well as extremely hot days, Nelson said.

Armed with a graduate student’s thesis about changes Montgomery County can make, a task force appointed in January is expected to report back on its recommendations by the end of the year. It will set emissions targets for 2012, 2017 and 2025.

Montgomery County’s emissions history is not encouraging. From 1990 to 2004, carbon dioxide emissions in the county grew 34 percent while population only rose 14 percent, Nelson said.

“As you can see, the trendline is not going in the direction we would want it to,” he said.

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Iraq’s electricity grid could collapse any day because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provincial officials who are unplugging local power stations from the national system, electricity officials said on Saturday.
U.S. President George W. Bush, meanwhile, was busy on the phone, calling Vice president Adel Abdel-Mahdi and President Jalal Talabani, urging political unity in the country, where the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is under a stiff challenge.
Abdel-Mahdi, a Shiite, and Talabani, a Kurd, provided few details of the conversations in statements released by their offices. But both men have been involved in trying to solve a government crisis after Iraq’s largest bloc of Sunni political parties ordered its ministers to quit the government.

For many Iraqi citizens, however, trying to stay cool or find sufficient drinking water was a more urgent problem. The Baghdad water supply already has been severely affected by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.
And now water mains have gone dry in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where the whole province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days. Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that.
«We no longer need to television documentaries about the stone age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having,» said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.
Aziz al-Shimari, the Electricity Ministry spokesman in Baghdad, said power generation nationally was only half of demand and that there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days.

«Many southern provinces, such as Basra, Diwaniyah, Nassiriyah, Babil have disconnected their power plants from the national grid. Northern provinces, including Kurdistan, are doing the same,» al-Shimari said.
He complained that the central government was unable to do anything about that or the fact that some provinces were failing to take themselves off the supply grid once they had consumed their daily ration of electricity.
Najaf province spokesman Ahmed Deibel confirmed to The Associated Press Sunday that the gas turbine generator there was removed from the national grid. He said the plant produced 50 megawatts while the province needed at least 200.
«What we produce is not enough even for us. We disconnected it from the national grid three days ago because the people in Baghdad were getting too much, leaving little electricity for Najaf,» he said.  Which confirmed al-Shimari’s charge that «we have absolutely no control over some areas in the south.

The conflict over electricity is a perennial problem in Iraq, which ironically sits atop one of the world’s largest crude oil reserves. The system became decrepit under Saddam Hussein whose regime was under a U.N. sanctions regime after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or the equipment to upgrade the system.
Al-Shimari said the electricity shortages now were the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam.
«And what makes Baghdad the worst place in the country is that most of the lines leading into the capital have been destroyed. That is compounded by the fact that Baghdad has limited generating capacity.

He said that there are 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad but only two were operational. The rest had been sabotaged.

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U.S. President George W. Bush unveiled plans on Friday for global warming talks next month that will bring together the world’s biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases.
 
Under pressure for tougher action against climate change, Bush invited the European Union, the United Nations and 11 industrial and developing countries to the September 27-28 meeting in Washington to work toward setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions.

Bush was following through on his pledge in late May to convene a series of conferences with economic powers responsible for producing most of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The United States is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only G8 country outside Kyoto, the U.N.-sponsored plan for cutting greenhouse gases.

Some environmentalists voiced skepticism about the conference, seeing it as a bid to deflect attention from U.N. efforts and evade international calls for strict U.S. limits on emissions.

“In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it,” Bush said in his invitation letter.

He insisted the United States “is committed to collaborating with other major economies” on a new global framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

But a senior U.S. official said the administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps. Many climate experts say that without binding U.S. targets, the chance for significant progress is limited.

Bush agreed with leaders at a Group of Eight summit in June to make “substantial” but unspecified reductions in greenhouse emissions and to negotiate a new global climate pact that would broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond its 2012 expiration.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer is heading north this weekend – way north – to Greenland with a bipartisan delegation of senators to see firsthand the effects of global warming.

Boxer, D-Calif., chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee and hopes to bring a bill to combat climate change to the Senate floor possibly after the August recess. About half a dozen different global warming bills – ranging from those with firm economy-wide emission reduction targets to more narrow measures – have been introduced this year.

The lawmakers actually picked a pretty good time of the year to go: the forecast up there calls for highs in the low 50s.

Boxer and her group will tour the Kangia Ice Fjord, have dinner with the Danish environmental minister, Connie Hedegaard, and take a boat tour of Disko Bay where they will see the world’s largest glaciers.

Accompanying Boxer on the trip will be Democratic senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin of Maryland, Bill Nelson of Florida, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Republican senators are Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also will attend. Richard Alley of Penn State University, the lead author on the United States Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be the scientific advisor on the trip.

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