The environment in the news monday, 10 July 2006

Other Environment News

7.7.2006

The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union, will be joining President Putin for Russia's debut G8 summit. More than 100 nongovernmental organizations from around the world, some representing hundreds of other groups, held a two day forum in Moscow Monday and Tuesday by means of a process called the Civil Eight 2006 that is new this year to the G8 cycle of meetings. The initiators of the Civil G8 2006 project were over 40 Russian nongovernmental organizations, and NGO communities from every continent were involved in its work.

Over 500 people, representing rights and advocacy organizations and civil society, including the International Socio-ecological Union, the United Nations, the Ford Foundation, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Climate Action Network, Charities Aid Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Wildlife Fund, the International Council of Women and many others, participated in the NGO forum.

Global energy security, prevention of global pandemics, efforts to curb HIV/AIDS, human rights, African trade and development, education, and intellectual property took center stage at the meeting.

The Civil G8 statement on global energy security began with the declaration that human combustion of fossil fuels is directly responsible for global warming and all its environmental consequences.

"Non-controlled growth of production, transportation and burning of fossil fuels has negative, oppressive impact to the environment, and results in negative anthropogenic climate change, growth of the related negative phenomena – hurricanes, droughts, floods, avalanching, ablation of permafrost, etc., and thereby raises danger to stability of the global economics, life and health of humans," according to the statement.

The forum emphasized that nuclear power, while it does not emit the greenhouse gases, is not a climate change solution they can support. "In spite of different points of view, worded by participants of the round table," the Civil G8 said, "most of them consider that nuclear energy is not a stable way of the energy development, and insist on abandoning of nuclear energy use."

The forum expressed concern about radiation hazards, and possible releases of radiation during the transport, storage and processing of nuclear waste, and reactor dismantling.

They also fear the "possible interrelation of nuclear energy and distribution of nuclear weapons" especially in Third World countries. They recommend banning all trans-border transport of nuclear wastes, including spent nuclear fuels.

Meeting with the NGO forum participants July 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin was confronted with a group holding a banner reading, "No to nuclear power! No to nuclear power!”

Putin tolerated the demonstration, saying, "Let the people do their thing. We won't get in their way. They came here to make themselves heard, and we must give them that opportunity."

"I should also say immediately, and honestly, that some of your recommendations, and the documents that I have been able to review, will cause disputes within the G8. Of course," Putin said. "I am not sure that a hundred percent of everyone here would agree, say, that it is necessary to halt development of atomic energy, but I see that your documents do contain such a recommendation."

"It seems to me," said Putin, "that first we need to develop an alternative for the world, we need first to propose solutions, and then will be the time to cease development of atomic energy. Although it is certainly true that not everyone shares this opinion."

The Civil G8 say in their statement that there is a "crying need to change the prevailing energy paradigm, transfer to stable energy development in order to ensure global energy safety on the basis of energy saving and efficient use of new and renewable sources of fuel and power."

They would like to see power generation by biomass, coal gasification, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal power plants, dam-free hydroelectric power stations, and hydrogen energy.

Evgeny Shvarts, who chairs the Biodiversity Conservation Center of the Socio-Ecological Union, told the Civil G8 forum, "Energy security must necessarily include climate security. Based on this principle, we believe that the G8 countries must take the necessary measures to keep growth in average global temperature to a maximum of two degrees in comparison to pre-industrial levels."

"To do so, by 2050 we will need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in comparison with 1990 levels. And we absolutely believe that the G8 must accelerate implementation of the action plan approved at Gleneagles in order to ensure heightened energy efficiency, rapid development of renewable energy, and lowering of greenhouse gas emissions."

Putin responded, "Energy security must include environmental security, there are no disputes of problems in this regard."

Shvarts expressed the belief of forum participants that "in the year of the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster we have an obligation to demand that other G8 countries wind up their programs for construction of new active nuclear units, as atomic energy represents a non-sustainable path for development of energy."

Putin said that the G8 leaders have agreed to discuss nuclear energy at the Summit.

"The subject under discussion in Saint Petersburg in relation to atomic energy will not be development of atomic energy worldwide, but rather issues of ensuring the security of atomic energy," said Putin.

Because the Civil G8 forum recommends an end to nuclear power development, Putin said he would bring it up in St. Petersburg. "But I should tell you now," he said at the forum, "several of my colleagues have even been reluctant to discuss this topic on principle. Not because they are against security in nuclear energy, but owing to the rather harsh positions of non-governmental organizations in their countries with regard to this issue, they have not wanted even to touch on this matter. But I believe that this is wrong."

"While in France today 80 percent of generated electric power comes from nuclear energy, security of nuclear energy affects us all, even those countries that do not intend to develop nuclear energy - like Germany, which has adopted a resolution not to build any new nuclear plants," Putin said. "But security is something that affects everyone.

"We know this better than anyone else following the Chernobyl tragedy," he said. "Therefore, in the end everyone agreed that we should discuss problems of atomic energy security in Saint Petersburg."

The Civil G8 forum proposes the creation of a global monitoring system covering nuclear power plants, transportation and production of hydrocarbons, and space based equipment in order to prevent damage to the environment.

They recommend that an international system of mandatory insurance for environmental risks be developed and submitted to the United Nations for discussion by 2010.

They envision an insurance system that would provide financial compensation for damage to the health of the population as a result of "production, transportation and processing of hydrocarbon and nuclear materials, burial and processing of the wastes."

Putin promised that their recommendations would be considered by the G8 leaders. "Where in previous years these meetings with the leaders of nongovernmental organizations were limited in terms of participation," he said, "today, as you see, we have invited you for discussion as part of a far wider representative forum."

"I want to assure you that everything that you expound will, in essence, reach the G8 countries' heads, and that not only will we study them attentively, but we will also analyze them most critically, and will take them into account in making ultimate decisions," Putin pledged.

____________________________________________________________The_Economist:_Plumbing_the_depths_--_Carbon_sequestration'>__________________________________________________________________________Associated_Press'>_________________________________________________________________________
Associated Press: Overfishing Among Threats to Ecosystems

By Garry Mitchell

7.7.2006

MOBILE, Ala. — For years, millions of people have traveled to summer retreats along the Gulf of Mexico, with many ultimately putting down permanent sandy roots on the coast.

One of the problems the population boom has created is overfishing in Gulf waters, which has endangered marine ecosystems and fisheries that are the source of multimillion-dollar recreation and fishing industries.

Officials say efforts to rebuild the populations are under way, but many environmentalists accuse the government of lax enforcement of regulations meant to protect against overfishing.

Chris Dorsett of Austin, Texas, director of Gulf of Mexico Fish Conservation for The Ocean Conservancy, said fishery managers in the Gulf and elsewhere have ignored the law and allowed unsustainable fishing for many important fish.

"It's time to follow the science and put Gulf fisheries on the road to ecological and economic recovery," he said. "Had they managed our red snapper fishery responsibly our catch levels could be almost three times higher than current levels. We can and must be better stewards of our coastal ecosystem."

Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, federal officials have a mandate to protect fisheries from overfishing, which is defined as the harvesting of fish quicker than they reproduce.

Four species in the Gulf of Mexico are still described as being overfished -- greater amberjack, red grouper, red snapper and vermilion snapper. The goal is to end overfishing for red grouper this year, red snapper by 2009 or 2010 and vermilion snapper by 2007.

Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, said it takes time to rebuild fish stocks now that an estimated 153 million residents live on the nation's coastlines.

"It's not going to happen overnight," she said. "They did become depleted in several decades of overfishing. It wasn't until about the year 2000 that the rebuilding plan based on the 1996 law became effective."

A study in a recent issue of the journal Science says damage to marine ecosystems has accelerated over the past 150-300 years with population growth, luxury resorts and homes and expanded industry.

In areas where conservation efforts started in the last century, signs of recovery are apparent, according to the study, which was partly supported by the Lenfest Oceans Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

National Geographic's July issue takes an in-depth look at threats to the coasts, illustrating its report with a ghostly two-page photo of Hurricane Katrina's destructive blow to the west end of Dauphin Island off the Alabama coast. Katrina also damaged shrimping grounds and oyster beds in its path.

According to the report, the Southeast's coast is the healthiest in the nation despite agricultural runoff and a population growth of 160 percent from 1980 to 2000. The Northeast coast, with its dense population, is in the poorest health, according to the magazine, which relies on data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

In a June report to Congress on the 2005 fisheries, the NOAA said it has made progress in rebuilding overfished stocks and ending overfishing with help from its regional councils.

The work continues: The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council -- one of eight regional councils -- is considering additional red snapper regulatory actions, such as commercial and individual fishing quotas and reductions in total allowable catch and bycatch.

Nationwide, the NOAA says 54 stocks of specific species and complexes are overfished and 45 stocks and complexes are subject to overfishing. A complex is a grouping of different species that are similar.

Scientists at the Lenfest Oceans Program say most fish resources are in poor shape 10 years after passage of amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which also requires ailing fish stocks be rebuilt as quickly as possible.

But the mandate that overfishing be immediately halted as part of a rebuilding plan has not been met, said Andrew A. Rosenberg at the University of New Hampshire's Ocean Process and Analysis Laboratory.

"Congress could strengthen accountability in the law," he said.

A potential problem for the idea of burying greenhouse gases

Oil companies have long pumped carbon dioxide into depleted fields—not for environmental reasons, but because it forces out the remaining oil. America has 80 such fields, some of which are 30 years old. Aquifers full of brine, however, could be better because there are so many of them, and they often lie close to offshore oil- and gas-fields. Statoil, Norway's national oil company, started pumping carbon dioxide into aquifers under the North Sea a decade ago and BP has a similar onshore project in Algeria.

But few studies have looked at what happens once the gas is in the ground. In October 2004 a group of researchers led by Yousif Kharaka of the United States' Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, pumped 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Frio formation, a disused brine and oil reservoir east of Houston, Texas. The results of their experiment have just been published in Geology.

The team compressed the gas into its liquid form and pumped it into a layer of sandstone 24 metres thick, lying 1.5km (about a mile) under the surface. They have been monitoring the site ever since, and so far they have found no leaks.

What they have, however, found is that the carbon dioxide has increased the acidity of the water in the aquifer. This, in turn, has dissolved the minerals that hold the sandstone together. As their report puts it, “this rapid dissolution of carbonate and other minerals could ultimately create pathways in the rock seals or well cements for carbon dioxide and brine leakage.”

Although changes in the rock made in a year can certainly be described as rapid, the concept of “ultimately” in geological time could be thousands—or even millions—of years. So there may be no need to worry unduly. But Dr Kharaka nevertheless suggests that the sequestration of carbon dioxide should be confined to deep aquifers, where overlying layers of shale would be likely to prevent leaks.

By John Biemer

- - -

- 32.5 percent of 5,743 described species are threatened.

- At least nine, and perhaps 122, have gone extinct since 1980.

- A fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, is predicted to kill off about half the amphibian species and 80 percent of the individual amphibians within six months of arriving at a place where the fungus has not previously been present.

- Of the 113 species of harlequin toads (a small, colorful Central and South American toad), 30 are possibly extinct and only 10 have stable populations.

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By Naila Moreira

7.7.2006

Global warming may be largely to blame for the increasingly destructive wildfires in the Western United States in the last two decades, new research suggests.

Longer and fiercer wildfire seasons since 1986 are closely associated with warmer summer temperatures, earlier arrival of spring, and earlier snowmelts in the West, scientists reported yesterday in the online edition of the journal Science.

The new findings suggest that the most up-to-date forest management methods may be insufficient to slow the uptick in large forest fires. Most climate researchers believe that global teperatures will continue to warm as human activity increases the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

``Local policies to manage forests are not going to be a magic bullet, they're not going to be successful in reversing this trend," said Anthony L. Westerling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography , the study's lead author.

The study adds fuel to a debate on whether global warming causes extreme weather-related events across the United States, including last year's powerful hurricane season. Two papers published last year in the journals Nature and Science linked climate change to increases in hurricane intensity since 1970. Also, climate models suggest that both severe droughts and very heavy rain events in the United States will become more frequent as temperatures warm.

``Many of the changes in frequency and severity of extreme weather events that we're seeing now are exactly what we expect with increased greenhouse gas emissions," said climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh of Purdue University .

Westerling and his colleagues analyzed a comprehensive government database of forest fires larger than about 1,000 acres in the West since 1970. They found a dramatic increase in wildfires after 1986, with large fires four times more frequent than during the preceding years, and burning through 6 1/2 times more area. Also, the average wildfire season increased by 2 1/2 months.

Scientists had previously believed that increased wildfire activity resulted from changes in land use practices. In particular, tactics to suppress fires had allowed dead and dry vegetation to build up in Western forests, providing more fuel for fires.

But the new study shows that most of the increase in wildfires has occurred in the Northern Rocky Mountains, where few land-use changes have occurred. Also, the scientists found that 66 percent of the yearly variation in forest fires could be explained by temperature changes alone, with hotter years producing more fires.

The wildfires were also much more common in years with an early snowmelt, the researchers reported. When snow melts earlier, it allows more time for soil and vegetation to dry out, permitting fires to begin earlier in the season. On average, snowmelt in the West came about a week earlier after 1986, with spring and summer temperatures higher by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thomas W. Swetnam of the University of Arizona , a coauthor of the paper, said he was surprised that the study showed temperature had a greater influence than land-use changes on wildfire activity. Steven W. Running , a forestry professor at the University of Montana who was not involved in the study, said the research shows that climate change is already making its impact felt. As he talked, a forest fire burned less than a mile from his office, he said.

``Increasing wildfires is a big issue that's expensive to combat, it's dangerous, and everything we know about climate change in the future means it's going to get worse," he said. The cost of fighting wildfires can exceed $1 billion a year, he said. 

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Par Christophe Olry

6.7.2006

L’ouest du Canada est en proie aux flammes. En effet, la Colombie-Britannique, la Saskatchewan, le Manitoba et l’Alberta font actuellement face à de nombreux incendies de forêt, qui ont forcé plus de 6.000 habitants à fuir. Des sapeurs-pompiers de l’Ontario, du Nouveau-Brunswick et des Territoires du Nord-Ouest sont venus prêter main forte aux hommes du feu déjà présents sur les lieux…

Pourquoi tant de départs de feux ? Principalement en raison des conditions météorologiques chaudes et sèches qui baignent ces régions. En Manitoba, ce sont 316 incendies qui ont été enregistrés cette année, contre une moyenne annuelle de 281.

« D’un point de vue national, la situation est critique », a estimé Steve Roberts, directeur du service de lutte contre les incendies du ministère de l’Environnement de la Saskatchewan.

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En Sevilla y Córdoba se alcanzarán los 43 grados

09.07.2006 

En Andalucía las temperaturas máximas podrían llegar a los 43 grados en Sevilla y Córdoba. Las autoridades reiteran su recomendación de evitar el sol en las horas centrales del día y de hidratarse.

A la sombra y bebiendo líquido. Esa será la situación más recomendable para pasar la jornada de mañana ante el pico de calor que ya se sintió hoy en buena parte del país.

Protección Civil extendió hoy la alerta ante el repunte de las temperaturas a diez comunidades, aunque Andalucía será la más afectada.

Concretamente se ha avisado, además de a los andaluces, a Aragón, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Galicia, Madrid, País Vasco y la ciudad autónoma de Melilla. Sin embargo, los andaluces son los que tendrán que afrontar temperaturas más extremas.

Hoy mismo en Sevilla o en Málaga se llegó a los 43 grados en algunos momentos del día, una situación que se volverá a repetir mañana en Sevilla y en Córdoba. El resto de las provincias andaluzas "se quedarán" entre los 40 y los 41 grados.

Sin embargo, su sudor no será el único. Está previsto que Extremadura también supere los 40 grados. En Castilla-La Mancha y en Madrid se llegará a los 39 grados. Una temperatura más soportable habrá en Castilla y León, donde se espera llegar a los 37 grados en Ávila, León, Salamanca, Valladolid y Zamora.

Y aunque el País Vasco también está en alerta, lo cierto es que las máximas son aún mucho más llevaderas. Las tres provincias vascas podrían registrar hasta 34 grados de temperatura y Cantabria y Asturias estarán entre los 30 y los 33 grados.

Asimismo, Protección Civil subraya la conveniencia de tomar comidas ligeras y regulares, y bebidas y alimentos ricos en agua y sales minerales, tales como las frutas y las hortalizas, que ayuden a reponer las sales perdidas por el sudor.

Además, aconseja vestirse con ropa adecuada, de colores claros y que cubra la mayor parte del cuerpo, mantener la cabeza cubierta y a no dejar a niños ni personas de avanzada edad en el interior de un vehículo cerrado.

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By LEAH KRAUSS

EIN BOKEK, Israel, July 6 (UPI) -- Hotels and spas at the Dead Sea, a tourist area with some of the strongest sunlight in Israel, are looking to solar thermal power to save energy costs while still heating the Jacuzzis and pools, and cooling rooms.

The Lot Spa Hotel -- named after the biblical hero of the Dead Sea-set Sodom and Gomorra story -- unveiled its new solar thermal system in a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Israeli Minister of National Infrastructures Benjamin Ben-Eliezer on Tuesday.

"May we see many more systems like this one (soon)," Ben-Eliezer said has he helped officially inaugurate the system's sunlight collectors.

The hotel, opened for business in 1982, is one of the largest on the Dead Sea's shores. It is the first to implement solar power for its water-heating needs.

Lot Spa Hotel had relied on natural gas to heat its swimming pool, mineral pools and showers, but beginning in mid-April, when the system went online, "we have hardly used any gas at all," the hotel's general manager, Nechemia Ben-Porat, told United Press International.

"The last time I had gas trucks at my hotel was two months ago," Ben-Porat said.

Several factors led Ben-Porat to seek a solar energy system for the hotel.

"First, (energy) prices rose and rose and rose, and keep rising," he said. "(At the same time), we were undertaking serious renovations to improve the hotel."

He said Lot Spa Hotel had received water from hot springs around the Dead Sea, but it was of poor quality. Later, when the hotel started receiving treated water from Israel's national water company, Mekorot, the hotel found itself having to heat the "tap temperature," rather than cooling the water from the hot springs.

Heating just the 137,369 gallons of water required for the swimming pool required a lot of energy -- "I thought, it's stupid to use so much gas when we have so much sun (available)," Ben-Porat said, adding that the region gets only between 0.78 inches and 1.18 inches of rain a year.

The hotel manager then turned to Eddie Bet-Hazavdi, the Ministry of National Infrastructures' coordinator of legislation standards and supervision, for help with planning the project.

"It's important to emphasize that this is the cheapest technology," Bet-Hazavdi told UPI on Wednesday. "You don't buy a Ferrari that can go 400 kilometers an hour (248 mph) for driving around the city," he said. "Likewise, you don't need the highest solar technology for an area with so much sunlight."

This understanding is what led the Lot Spa Hotel and the ministry to come up with the low-cost project that will pay for itself within a year, Bet-Hazavdi said.

In all, the solar system will save the hotel 110 tons of natural gas and $75,000 annually, Ben-Porat said. The heat savings is millions of kilocalories every year, he added.

Solar thermal energy systems collect sunlight with panels or troughs to heat a liquid, usually oil. In solar thermal power plants, the heat boils water to power a steam turbine, which, in turn, creates electricity. In Lot Spa Hotel's system, the heated liquid is used to heat water for bathing and spa and pool use.

Around the world, the technology is regaining popularity after a hiatus. In the United States, companies like Israel-based Solel and Germany-based SCHOTT are signing more supply contracts for power plants, representatives from the companies have told UPI.

Bet-Hazavdi said four other hotels in the Dead Sea area have approached him, inquiring about similar systems for their establishments.

"We want to try to get these projects rolling," he said, adding that several Israeli hospitals have also expressed interest.

Ben-Eliezer has repeatedly expressed his support for alternative energy projects. He told UPI in an interview before Tuesday's ceremony that he'd like to see all hotels in the region, plus factories, to start relying on alternative energy -- not just the Israel Electric Corp.'s power stations, which are the current focus of his efforts.

"I'm very happy about what this hotel manager did," Ben-Eliezer said in his speech at the ceremony. "It's a sign of excellent service."

The solar project "has saved money and lots of gas, so it's just left for me to congratulate (Lot Spa Hotel). We'll continue to encourage these kinds of projects," he said.

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Hartford Courant (Connecticut): Climate Change; The Insurance Industry Is Feeling The Heat Of Global Warming

JOEL LANG

9.7.2006

Worrying about global warming can be like knowing with near certainty that an asteroid is going to hit the planet. The only questions are when and how much damage it will do.

Except that global warming, or climate change, as it is often called, is not a singular catastrophe that either will, or will not, happen. It's most assuredly real. As those constant and urgent warnings coming from scientists have made clear, climate change is both a present and future event. Think of it as an asteroid of unknown size striking the earth in super slow motion.

Scientists point to melting glaciers and rising sea levels and call it climate change. They see its telltale marks in drier droughts and fiercer hurricanes and predict that malaria and Lyme disease will spread as greater heat breeds pestilence from pole to pole. Even poison ivy will get worse, Harvard and Duke university scientists recently proved, as urushiol, the plant's rash-causing chemical, becomes more potent.

Still, the plainest evidence of climate change can be too widespread to see at all. Climate monitors were needed to inform us that 2005 edged out 1998 as the hottest year on record, and to connect those records to the unfelt fact that the atmosphere contains 30 percent more carbon dioxide than it did before the Industrial Revolution.

On the other hand, extreme local events -- such as Hurricane Katrina or the monsoon-like rains that brought unseasonable floods to parts of New England in May and to the East Coast from Washington to New York in June -- may be too isolated to be taken as proof of climate change. And no one is likely to blame climate change for an extraordinary stretch of nice weather -- like the April just passed that set records for warmth.

This spring, however, a new kind of warning emerged, one that comes from a startling source, very close to Connecticut's heart. After years of silence, the U.S. insurance industry is waking up to climate change. Given the industry's historic caution and skill at predicting risk, the alarm it is sounding may be more persuasive, or scary, than any dozen scientific studies.

The alarm takes the form of reports and pronouncements by some of the industry's biggest names. In April, Marsh Inc., the world's largest insurance broker and risk consulting firm, published what amounts to a 30-page primer on climate change, warning of its hazards while pointing out opportunities for profit in new ``green'' markets.

AIG, the American International Group, followed in mid-May by becoming the first U.S. insurer to adopt a policy explicitly addressing climate change. Recognizing the worldwide drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions, AIG said it was creating an Office of Environment and Climate Change. Based in New York, AIG, with $850 billion in assets, is often described as the world's largest insurance company.

A week later, Risk Management Services (RMS), a leading supplier of actuarial models to the industry, set a precedent when it released its updated model for calculating future hurricane damage. The model factored in climate change for the first time.

Then, at a mid-June conference, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners heard from a newly formed climate-change task force that met for the first time and passed a resolution saying the industry needs government help to cope with the mounting costs of natural disasters.

Even before Katrina, however, insurers were abandoning hurricane-prone areas, especially in states like Florida and Louisiana, being replaced by state-run companies that charge higher premiums. Despite the devastation it caused and the 1,600 lives it claimed, Katrina was not the most powerful nor deadliest hurricane ever. It was just the most expensive, with insured losses estimated at $40 billion.

Rita and Wilma followed on the heels of Katrina, making 2005 the country's most expensive hurricane season. Total insured losses came close to $60 billion, eclipsing the record damage done in 2004 by hurricanes Charley, Ivan and Frances. The commissioners' resolution called on Congress to create a Natural Catastrophe Preparedness Commission.

Little public notice was given to these developments. Informed observers outside the industry, however, say they're highly significant. In effect, the industry is not only bowing to the reality of climate change, it is beginning to tally its costs.

``The burden [of climate change] is falling to the insurance industry, and it's being passed along to everyone else,'' said Andy Logan, the insurance program manager for Ceres, an investor coalition that promotes corporate responsibility on environmental issues.

``They have no choice,'' Logan said of companies certain to adopt the new RMS hurricane model, ``They have to deal with climate change.''

Evan Mills, a government scientist who is an internationally recognized expert on insurance-loss prevention, said insurers thrive by gauging risk. But in a rapidly changing climate, risk becomes much harder to predict.

``Old risk models worked on the idea that the future would be like the past,'' Mills said. The new models ``are a recognition the future may not be like the past. That is the touchstone and that is confounding to the modelers and actuaries where price is based on past history.''

Mills works at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Last summer in the journal Science, he published a paper titled ``Insurance and Climate Change'' that noted that the industry is the world's largest, with $3.2 trillion in annual revenues, and therefore a ``lightning rod'' for disruptions to all sectors of the global economy.

``Business and science meet in the wake of disasters,'' Mills wrote. After analyzing the worldwide rising cost of weather-related disasters, he made this prediction: ``As the globe warms, climate change puts a chill on the insurance market. Insurance ceases to be the world's largest industry.''

Among the forces that converged to spur the U.S. industry to finally react to climate change, the most meaningful is reflected in a single sentence in AIG's policy statement:

``AIG recognizes the scientific consensus that climate change is a reality and is likely in large part the result of human activities that have led to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere.''

``That's actually a big step,'' said Alice LeBlanc, who drafted the company statement and is in charge of its new program.

She said the scientific consensus AIG accepts comes from two groups, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change and the joint national academies of science in 11 countries, including the United States. The U.N. panel's report, reflecting the opinion of 2,500 scientists, dates from 2001. But the lesser known national academies' statement was issued last June. It called on world leaders to ``acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing.''

``It's almost an urgent statement,'' LeBlanc said.

The other forces referred to in the Marsh report and the AIG statement have more to do with finance and public policy than science.

Many nations, especially in Europe, have begun capping their carbon-dioxide emissions. This is in keeping with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that took effect early last year after Russia ratified it. Since then, a so-called ``carbon market'' has emerged for buying and selling carbon credits based on whether companies are above or below their emission targets. The World Bank estimates the market grew to $10 billion in 2005, making carbon credits a commodity more valuable than the $7 billion U.S. wheat crop.

Why U.S. insurers should care about power plant emissions in Europe may not be obvious. But as Logan of Ceres notes, ``the insurance industry is a strange creature. They're half mutual funds and they're half insurers.''

For companies with global reach, the new financial landscape means the fortunes of their foreign customers, and investments, may rise or fall depending on how they manage the economics of climate change.

The same logic has led U.S. institutional investors to use their clout as stockholders to pressure insurers and other American companies to reckon with climate change. One of the smaller, but more active, of these investors -- with $23 billion in assets -- is the office of Connecticut State Treasurer Denise Nappier.

Last month, Nappier was named one of the ``100 most influential people in finance'' by Treasury and Risk Management Magazine. She's made Connecticut part of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, an arm of Ceres whose members control more than $3 trillion in assets.

Nappier is routinely quoted in the network's press releases, such as one last month announcing that 28 network members were renewing a demand that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission require all publicly traded companies ``to disclose the financial risks of global warming'' in their filings.

``The SEC needs to treat the disclosure issue with the seriousness it warrants,'' Nappier said, ``because unresponsive regulations can lead to economic disaster.''

Nappier was instrumental in founding the network. It grew out of a 2003 business summit on climate risk at the U.N. that she promoted and then presided over as co-chair with former U.S. senator Timothy Wirth. At a follow-up summit in May 2005, Nappier shared the spotlight again with Wirth and former vice president Al Gore.

Neither gathering got anywhere near the media coverage given ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' the documentary film about Gore's obsession with climate change. Nor did another landmark conference that took place last October in Hartford. Billed as ``the first-ever summit on climate risks and opportunities,'' it was convened by Nappier and the state commissioners of insurance and environmental protection.

Their October meeting qualified for ``first-ever'' honors thanks to a hurricane named Katrina. The storm inundated New Orleans just before the National Association of Insurance Commissioners was to fly into the city for its own first climate-change meeting.

A massive catastrophe such as Katrina is like a ``one-two punch'' for insurers, Nappier said. First it erodes their underwriting profits from premiums. But then it can knock down the value of their investments by disrupting business in unexpected ways. The huge spike in gasoline prices after Katrina is an example of the storm's secondary fallout.

The weather threatens the state of Connecticut's investments, too. And the state's portfolio also includes companies at risk from emissions regulations, such as Ford Motor Co. and American Electric Power, the Ohio-based utility that is the nation's largest producer of carbon dioxide.

Nappier's office has taken the lead in filing shareholder resolutions with both companies, last year winning their promise to prepare climate-change reports.

Nappier's own awakening to the idea that climate change carried financial risk was slow. As a former Hartford city treasurer in charge of its pension funds, she recognized the health dangers from traditional kinds of environmental pollution.

``I mean, it seems ironical to me that you would use pension fund assets in a manner that limited the life span of the beneficiaries of that fund,'' she said.

In 2000, midway through her first term in the state post and in the wake of a kickback scandal involving her predecessor, Nappier had her office adopt corporate proxy voting guidelines focused on executive pay, financial disclosure and the environment. She hesitated to act on global warming, though, until she saw that ``clean'' companies returned good profits.

``I wasn't thoroughly convinced that climate risk would have an impact on my portfolios, and I couldn't quantify the risk in financial terms. So I offered the [2003] summit as a way to continue our dialogue with the environmental community,'' Nappier said.

``We didn't want a heavy discussion on the environment. We wanted to talk about climate change as it relates to money.''

At the summit, she said, ``the people who make buy-and-sell decisions'' were briefed on the latest science by John Holdren, a Harvard University professor. One set of Holdren's slides was a kind of epiphany for Nappier.

``Visuals always help. And one of the visuals I remember was the fires in California. And he showed how there was a correlation of the increasing frequency of wildfires in California and the warming of our planet,'' she said.

A lot of business people came to the summit believing climate change posed some risk, Nappier said. ``But I don't think folks realized how significant that risk is, or that it's the kind of risk you can get a hold of tomorrow when it happens.''

European insurers have long led their U.S. rivals in expressing alarm about global warming today and tomorrow. In June, Lloyd's of London issued one of the most dire warnings yet. In releasing a report titled ``Climate Change: Adapt or Bust,'' a Lloyd's director said, ``If we don't take action now to understand the changing nature of our planet and its impact, our industry will face extinction.''

Europe already has experienced its own stunning weather event, one far deadlier than Katrina. In the summer of 2003, a continental heat wave, many degrees beyond normal, was blamed for the deaths of 22,000 to 35,000 people and nearly $14 billion in crop damage.

The content of Lloyd's report, however, doesn't differ much from the more muted ``Risk Alert'' on climate change that the broker Marsh Inc. issued in April. Both reports call for the industry to change the way it does business and named the usual dangerous suspects: melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, more damaging hurricanes.

The longer Marsh report even cites some of the most recent and disturbing scientific findings. One is that the Greenland ice sheet is melting twice as fast as it was a decade ago. Up to 2 miles thick, the ice sheet contains a tenth of the world's fresh water. If it were to melt entirely, sea levels would rise 20 feet.

As for hurricanes, the Marsh report highlights the new research of MIT professor Kerry Emanuel who concluded that only ocean heating from global warming can explain the extraordinary sequence of storms in the past two years. Emanuel's opinion carries extra weight because he had been considered neutral on the dangers of global warming. The Marsh report says a single strong storm in the future might alone cause more than $100 billion in damage.

Marsh also warns companies of the risks here from climate-change lawsuits and probable emissions caps. Connecticut plays a role in both prospects. It is a lead plaintiff in probably the most significant climate-change lawsuit. It seeks to force the federal Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide (the ``oxygen'' that plants breathe) as an air pollutant. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Connecticut also is one of seven Northeastern states in the six-month-old Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that mirrors the Kyoto agreement. It requires area power plants to cut their overall carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels and sets up a carbon credit-trading system.

Gary Guzy, senior vice president for Marsh's Emerging Environmental Risk Practices, said such state actions as well as pressure from institutional investors (like Nappier's office) were among the ``spectrum of risk issues'' that led the company to issue its report. Others were the impact of Kyoto and Katrina.

``To some extent Hurricane Katrina crystallized the concern about the potential impact of severe weather events,'' Guzy said.

The Marsh report also cites the widely influential work of Evan Mills, who lectured at Connecticut's summit and co-authored a report for Ceres titled, ``Availability and Affordability of Insurance under Climate Change: a Growing Challenge for the U.S.''

``I've been on the trail a long time. I really think there have been profound developments in the last six to 12 months, even more than in the previous 12 to 24 months -- and for the better as far as I'm concerned,'' Mills said last month just before leaving for a climate change conference in Iceland.

He ticked off the insurers' actions and reports from science that, he said, ``should be trickling out into people's minds and the corporate world.''

One ``huge advance,'' he said, is research showing that 84 percent of the warming already caused by greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the oceans, rather than the atmosphere. A startling minor discovery is of new ``glacial earthquakes,'' he said. ``They're caused by glaciers suddenly shifting and rocking the Earth, enough to register on the seismic scale. It's indicative of more rapid melting than expected.''

The faster melting glaciers, like suddenly stronger hurricanes, are part of ``a trend of trends'' of climate change so speeding up, Mills said, ``that you will systematically underestimate the impacts.''

Katrina was a signal event because, Mills said, ``We experienced that the inconceivable can happen.'' Yet no scientist would claim that climate change caused Katrina.

Climate change is about emerging patterns. In his insurance research, the pattern Mills finds is that the industry's losses are mounting in predictable lock step with the temperature and the damage from weather-related disasters. Besides mega-storms, he counts wildfires and lightning strikes. Two fires in California in 2003 (probably the ones that impressed Nappier) caused $2 billion in losses. He estimates lightning strikes start half of all wildfires and cause power outages costing $1 billion a year.

These are direct costs and do not include the income lost from withdrawing from markets or conceding markets in developing countries. Nor does the movement of people to disaster-prone coastal areas explain the sharp rise in insurance losses, Mills notes, in answer to ``climate contrarians.''

Mills is not all doomsday. Like Nappier, AIG and Marsh, he says the industry can lessen the damage of climate change by acting in the same spirit that it promotes fire and auto safety and underwriting standards. Energy-efficient lighting is another of Mills' areas of expertise.

No matter what happens, however, there is no escaping the bill for climate change. Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, not decreasing. And the amount already in the atmosphere guarantees further warming.

``It's an illusion to think we have the freedom to choose about paying. You pay for the impact [of climate change] or you pay for the cost of lower emissions,'' Mills said, referring to the cost of complying with the Kyoto Protocol.

``Doing nothing doesn't cost nothing. The illusion is [that] there is cost of responding versus no cost of `wait and see.' Because if you wait and see, you have more costs because you have more impacts,'' he said.

``Look at Katrina. What if we built better levees?''

The Ceres report, "Availability and Affordability of Insurance under Climate Change," can be accessed at http://www.ceres.org/pub/ The Marsh Inc. report, "Climate Change: Business Risks and Solutions," can be accessed at http://solutions.marsh.com/climates/

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Le Monde: La vidange de deux lacs géants dans l'océan a provoqué le dernier cataclysme climatique

07.07.06

Les climatologues l'appellent poliment "l'événement froid à 8 200 ans". Un "événement" dont Hollywood s'est (très) librement inspiré dans Le Jour d'après et qui ferait aujourd'hui, il est vrai, figure de cataclysme. Qu'on en juge : dans une période de réchauffement et en l'espace de quelques décennies à peine, le climat européen se refroidit au point de perdre, selon les régions, de 3 °C à 6 °C de température moyenne.

L'étude de sédiments marins, publiée fin juin dans la revue Science, confirme ce scénario. En le révisant légèrement. Selon les travaux d'Ian Hall, chercheur à l'université de Cardiff (Royaume-Uni) "l'événement froid à 8 200 ans" serait en réalité la somme de deux événements successifs. Les carottages effectués font remonter ces deux coups de froid à 8 490 et 8 290 ans, sans doute provoqués par le brusque écoulement de deux lacs géants dans l'actuelle baie de l'Hudson.

Malgré le réchauffement, risque-t-on, dans les prochaines décennies, un nouvel "événement froid" sur l'Europe ? Certains climatologues ne l'excluent pas et précisent que le recul des glaciers contribue à alimenter l'Atlantique en eau douce et, donc, à freiner le Gulf Stream... Ce ralentissement est déjà observable (Le Monde du 2 décembre 2005), mais nul n'est aujourd'hui capable de dire s'il pourra supplanter ou seulement limiter, localement, les effets du réchauffement.
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BBC: Living with Arctic climate change
People in the Arctic are living at the front line of climate change. Our reporter Doreen Walton spent two months living and hunting with an Inupiat family in Barrow, Alaska, to see how the changes affect their daily lives. Here's her three-part diary.

LIFE IN BARROW

Barrow is the northernmost settlement in the US. In winter, the Arctic Ocean freezes right up to the coast.

When I got off the plane I was shocked by the extreme cold. I arrived in April. A blanket of snow covered everything in sight and the water in a plastic bottle I was holding started to freeze within minutes.

I wanted to hear how climate change is affecting people's daily lives in the Arctic.

The majority of the people who live in Barrow are Inupiat, native coastal Alaskans. They hunt whales, seals, walrus, caribou and other game for food so they watch the weather and the changes in seasons closely.

I moved in with the Kaleak family who helped me get used to the cold. They lent me a fur parka and introduced me to native foods, including maktak, which is whale blubber and skin.

They also told me about the ice cellars melting. Many families have ice cellars, natural freezers down below the ground. As the climate in the North Slope warms, it is becoming more difficult to store food.

ON WHALE HUNT

In spring, people in Barrow start to get excited. It's whaling season.

The subsistence hunters get ready to travel out on the sea ice. Living with the Kaleaks, I learned that a huge amount of work goes into whaling preparations.

Snow machines must be serviced and fuelled up, sleds have to be packed and the umiak has to be ready. The umiak is the small boat, traditionally covered in sealskin, which the hunters use when harpooning the whale.

We broke trail, cutting a path with pickaxes through ice boulders across the frozen sea. Then we had to wait.

As summer approaches and the ocean ice starts to melt, cracks appear. When the wind and current are right, the ice starts to move and the cracks open forming a channel along which the whales migrate.

I was warned the ice could move at any time so we had to be ready to pack up camp quickly and head back to land. We also had to watch out for polar bears.

The weather is boss and, as I discovered, sometimes you have to wait for weeks before conditions are right to go out.

Some people in Barrow are worried the changing climate will mean their children and grandchildren will not be able to continue their traditions and lifestyle.

COMMUNITY FUTURE

The frozen Arctic Ocean is spectacularly beautiful but it's dangerous.

You have to watch for cracks and keep an eye on the wind and current at all times.

The Inupiat are experts on weather and ice conditions. The crews work together and communicate by radio during the whale hunt to stay safe. I waited with the Kaleak crew for days at the edge of the channel of water, called a lead, for whales to come.

We collected ice for water by breaking it off the ice-hills with a pickaxe. When there is old ice in the ice pack the salt has drained out of it and it's possible to melt it for drinking and cooking.

The crew told me about the spiritual and ethical side of the hunt. Whales are hunted for food for the community, not for pleasure. You can't kill anything that will not be eaten; there is no waste in this harsh environment.

The Inupiat believe that the whales give themselves to deserving crews and the spirit of the whale will be reborn.

The Mayor of the North Slope borough, Edward Sagaan Itta, himself a whaling captain, says climate change is very real for the Inupiat.

"We see shorter winters, less harsh winters, earlier snow melts jeopardising our whaling, our way of life, [and] thinner ice in the ice pack.

"We live it, we experience it as whalers which is the core of our culture here in Barrow and has been for thousands of years."

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