Fshhead's WunderBlog

This is all about Big Brother do-gooders trying to control how you live your life, and stripping away the freedoms and liberties of people to live their lives as they see fit, engage in commerce and raise their families.
LOL you got to be kidding me. I pulled this statement off of that Conservative site "the real weather channel"talking about the liberals.

well Marshall I will not comment to much on this cause I am not real sure about the cnn connection, ratings going down etc....
Personally I thought the weather channel rather mediocre to start with so, not sure what all the fuss is about. Hey you guys got FOX channel LOL

LMAO Marshall I was just reading through a bunch of stories fromyour worldnetdaily site.
WOW & your worried about the lady on the weather channel devoting some time to the global warming issue???? I had to read some of those stories twice cause I could not believe the way the had so many things twisted. I don't know maybe I guess its just me being one of those "tree hugging, PEACE loving, crazy liberals.

In other words this is wrong. This is seriously wrong. You do not put on trial and “excommunicate” scientists who are skeptical about a theory just because he/she is in the minority. You don’t threaten meteorologists with their AMS certifications because they are skeptics. Why? Because it causes a “chilling effect” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect) on scientists to report any evidence that may contradict the current “belief”. That is when we lose any integrity in science, don’t you agree?
Astro here is something that we can totally agree on. I also feel that noone should be coerced or forced into a certain view. At the same time lets remember the other side does the same thing. I think Jim Hansons name should ring a bell. I have said it here before I want to hear both views & make my OWN decision.
As far as comment #1 ahhhh K tell me how solar, wind, hydro etc... are so harmful & I can throw 10 times as many reasons the current ways are more harmful.
Like I keep saying lets see what this new report has to say. I think it probably is going to start changing alot of skeptics views.
Oh & the one I really want to address is the stuff on the storms. Well I have done some research on this & commented on it earlier in this blog. Storms that are more severe have been on the rise & becoming more frequent. This is fact!!! Not one season should de looked at, you have to look at many seasons thats when you see the trends. Even though the Atlantic season was unusually quite this year this is due to many reasons most notably El-Nino of course. At the same time look at the Pacific season which was really really rough & active. This is also effect of El-Nino BUT, at the same time even with El-Nino this was an unreal year for them.I remember Loke. That was a freak of nature. A cat-5 storm that damn near tracked across the whole Pacific ocean if memory serves me right. This is where the trends I spoke about come into effect. The past 10-15 years we have seen weird weather anamolies that show a trend & when you put this along with all the other evidence, it sure seems to me that the global warming scientists are indeed correct. Everything that is happening mirrors what their computer models are telling them.
Snowboy, like I told a while ago, if possible you should start buying land cause I think in 10-15 years you are going to see alot of people moving north of the border cause your region is probably going to be the new place to be for comfortable living.
BTW.... Astro I look forward to the debate with you I have a feeling it will be a good one.LOL

Well one thing is for sure, they have said that the pollution did mask the global warming.
They said that now that some of the stuff is being kept from entering atmosphere the real data is coming out. LOL go ahead I have heard that one too(then keep pumping it to mask the effects of the wrming,BAD IDEA LOL)

gotta go, I will check back in a few hours, I have a feeling their will be some good comments here.
AS ALWAYS THANX FOR READIN' & POSTIN'!!!!!

Oil chief emerges with climate warningBlair Speedy
January 23, 2007

FORMER fossil fuel mogul John Schubert says the nation has reached a "tipping point" on climate change, with overwhelming public acceptance of the problem making it impossible for business and government to ignore it any longer.
The Commonwealth Bank chairman credits the drought, extreme weather disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in the US and Cyclone Larry in northern Queensland, record global temperatures in 2005 and former US President Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth with dispelling any remaining doubts on the threat of climate change.

"I have to say that the Australian community reached a tipping point about September-October, over about a six-week period, when it was just extremely clear that the Australian community bought in that climate change was a real problem," he told The Australian.

The respected company director, who sits on the board of mining and petroleum giant BHP Billiton, has now joined calls for Australia to implement a carbon-trading scheme. His push comes just one day after BHP's great rival, Rio Tinto, said the federal Government should move ahead with emissions trading even if major polluters such as China and the US refused to be involved.

"Now that there is a tipping point, politicians of all persuasions will very much want to ensure that they're doing what both they and the community now think is the right thing," Dr Schubert said.

Dr Schubert's conversion from oil industry chief to global warming campaigner was less than dramatic.

The former chairman and managing director of Esso Australia had left the oil industry behind and was running building products group Pioneer in 1999 when three business colleagues raised their concerns about environmental damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr Schubert, who says he has always had a keen interest in the environment and spends most of his leisure time around the water, was impressed enough to join his friends in forming the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation to raise funds for research into the reef and how to save it from threats such as coral bleaching caused by rising water temperatures.

But it was another five years before he was convinced that the reef was being killed by the burning of fossil fuels - the industry in which he had built a career with none other than the company behind the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, one of the worst marine ecological disasters.

Having been made chairman of both the Commonwealth Bank and the reef foundation in 2004, the trained chemical engineer asked the foundation's scientific advisory committee to take him through the evidence for global warming, because he was "not convinced that the science was completely there yet".

"I was convinced about the threats to the reef, but it was after I became chairman about three years ago that I really thought we needed to get agreement amongst the scientists and those involved as to what were the major threats to the reef," he said.

His scepticism was quickly dispelled. "If there is one piece of fact that I was shown it was probably the ice-core data that shows 650,000 years of both temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and there's just a hugely close correlation between them and it's pretty hard not to come to the conclusion that the carbon dioxide levels are due to fossil fuel burning, largely," he said.

Dr Schubert said awareness of global warming has now reached a critical mass in Australia, as more and more people come to share his conviction. The first sign was when business leaders at the Australian Davos Connection's annual conference on Hayman Island were much more receptive to his presentation on climate change last August than they had been a year earlier.

A few months later the rest of the population also caught on, following the October release of the British Government-commissioned Stern Report, which concluded that climate change could cause global economic devastation greater than either of last century's two world wars or the Great Depression.

Dr Schubert said the Australian Government should now use its pull with Washington to propel the world's largest economy into action.

He also called on the government to plan for a phased introduction of carbon trading to allow business to plan accordingly and avoid disruption.
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MIT study: Get more energy from Earth's heat
Geothermal could meet 10 percent of U.S. needs by 2050, it finds
By Charles Q. Choi

Updated: 2:53 p.m. ET Jan 22, 2007
The extraordinary amount of heat seething below Earth's hard rocky crust could help supply the United States with a significant fraction of the electricity it will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact, scientists now claim.

An 18-member panel led by MIT has prepared the first study in some 30 years to take a new look at the largely ignored area of geothermal energy.

Geothermal plants essentially mine heat by using wells at times a mile or more deep. These wells tap into hot rock and connect them with flowing water, producing large amounts of steam and super-hot water that can drive turbines and run electricity generators at the surface.
Unlike conventional power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel is required. And unlike solar power, a geothermal plant draws energy night and day.

Geothermal research was very active in the 1970s and early 1980s. As oil prices declined in the mid-1980s, enthusiasm for alternative energy sources waned and funding for research on geothermal and other renewable energy was greatly reduced, making it difficult for the technology to advance.

"Now that energy concerns have resurfaced, an opportunity exists for the U.S. to pursue the enhanced geothermal system option aggressively to meet long-term national needs," said panel head Jefferson Tester, a chemical engineer at MIT.

Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are increasingly expensive and dump carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Furthermore, oil and gas imports from foreign sources are not necessarily secure in the world's shifting political climate.

The United States is the world's biggest producer of geothermal energy. Nafi Toksöz, a geophysicist at MIT, noted that the electricity produced annually by geothermal plants now in use in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined.

However, existing U.S. plants are concentrated mostly at isolated regions in the West. There, hot rocks are closer to the surface, requiring less drilling and thus lowering costs. Even then, drilling must reach depths of 5,000 feet or more in the West, and much deeper in the eastern United States.

Still, the panel now estimates geothermal power could meet roughly 10 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2050. Their new study also finds the environmental impacts of geothermal development are markedly lower than conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.

Tester and his colleagues emphasize that federally funded engineering research and development is still needed to lower risks and encourage investment by early adopters. The report also noted that meeting water requirements for geothermal plants may be an issue, particularly in arid regions. In addition, the potential for any seismic risks needs to be carefully monitored and managed.

© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved
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Hmmmmm 1st time I have heard about this...
Could be possible BUT, that 10% by 2050 needs to be higher than that no matter which combination of alternatives that we end up using!

Storm Hits Weather Community Over Climate Expert's Global Warming Claims
WASHINGTON — The Weather Channel is standing by a climatologist who is taking some heat after blogging that TV weather forecasters skeptical about man-made global warming theories should lose their professional certification.

Climate expert Heidi Cullen defended herself last week in The Weather Channel's One Degree Climate Change blog after questioning the fitness of meteorologists who disagree with her conclusions.

Cullen raised Cain last month when she suggested that the American Meteorological Society decertify meteorologists who don't warn about climate change.

"If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming," Cullen wrote in the blog. "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a seal of approval."

The AMS certifies broadcast and consulting meteorologists with three programs. The Seal of Approval, introduced in 1957, aims to "recognize meteorologists for their sound delivery of weather information to the general public," according to the AMS Web site.

According to a statement by the AMS, the society agrees with Cullen on the science of global warming, if not the certification of its approved meteorologists.

"There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change," the statement reads.

On Friday, Matthew de Ganon, executive director of the blog, backed Cullen wholeheartedly.

"We believe that by presenting her perspective in her blog, the site was able to put into action its mission statement, which states, 'One Degree's mission will be to present an open, balanced dialogue around the scientific facts concerning global climate change. We will provide a place where sound science can be heard and a forum where all people can question and debate,'" De Ganon wrote.

But James Spann, chief meteorologist for ABC 33/40 in Alabama, who has been in operational meteorology since 1978, said Cullen is wading into dangerous waters when it comes to judging her colleagues.

"I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them," Spann said on his blog. "I have nothing against 'The Weather Channel,' but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go."

Kent Laborde, a spokesman at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, suggested the whole argument may be off the mark since Cullen and her critics are two different categories of weather experts — climatologists who look at long-term trends and meteorologists who look at short-term conditions.

Meteorologists are "really not going to have as much of a climate perspective," Laborde said.

NOAA doesn't have a position on climate change but contributes to assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"We have a strong feeling that what they'll do is upgrade their certainty of whether humans are inducing climate change from likely to very likely," Laborde said.

The issue of man-made global climate change has long stirred debate in the scientific and political communities.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers have pledged to devote time to the controversial subject in the coming months. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to create a new House special committee to study global warming and suggest ways to cut back on greenhouse gases. If approved, the panel will draft legislation that aims to cut greenhouse gases.

President Bush also plans to lay out a response to challenges of global warming in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Cullen said she and The Weather Channel don't have a political position on global warming.

"Our goal at The Weather Channel has always been to keep people out of harm's way. Whether it's a land-falling hurricane or global warming," Cullen wrote. "We aim to help our viewers better understand why scientists are so concerned about climate change — and then to decide for themselves what they want to do about it. The bottom line is ... this issue isn't going away."
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Pioneering U.S. renewable energy lab is neglected

GOLDEN, Colorado: Thirty years after it was founded by President Jimmy Carter, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the edge of the Rockies here still does not have a cafeteria.

Evaporation chambers for new solar energy systems look like they belong in an H.G. Wells movie. Technicians had to knock out a giant door from a testing facility to fit modern wind turbine blades, which now stick out like a bare toe from an old sock.

The hopes for this neglected lab brightened a bit just over a year ago when President George W. Bush made the first presidential call on the lab since Carter. He spelled out a vision for the not-too-distant future in which solar and wind power would help run every American home and cars would operate on biofuels made from plant residues.

But one year after the presidential visit, the money flowing into the primary national laboratory for developing renewable fuels is actually less than it was when the Bush Administration took office. The lab's fitful history reflects a basic truth: Americans may have a growing love affair with renewables, with cutting oil imports and conserving energy, but it's a fickle one.

Riding that wave, the new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, recently promised committee hearings on how lawmakers could limit climate change and enhance energy independence, and Congressional Democrats pledged to find research dollars for clean energy
The problem is that, despite a lot of promises, no one so far has wanted to pay the extra costs to make wind and solar more than a trivial energy source. Research is uncertain and expensive, and the benefits seem far away.

So while all kinds of domestic energy technologies are being advanced in the name of energy independence, most of the money and attention is still focused on the dirty, but cheaper energy standbys: offshore oil, oil sands and coal.

"You have fossil fuels competing with renewable fuels," said Benjamin Kroposki, a senior scientist at the lab here. "Renewables lose every time."

One example is the shotgun approach to tax incentives, loan guarantees and other spending in the 2005 energy act, the first major energy legislation enacted by Congress in a decade: $13.1 billion for oil, gas and coal, $12 billion for nuclear energy and $7.7 billion divided among a wide assortment of renewables including ethanol, and hydroelectric, wind and solar power.

Now that they are in control of Congress, the Democrats have promised to increase the amount going to renewable energy sources, taking the money from tax breaks for oil companies.

But even additional money for renewable energy will be going up against government tax policies that encourage more energy consumption.

Companies can still deduct purchases of sport utility vehicles and utility bills, for example, while consumers get a break to build bigger homes with deductions for interest payments on mortgages even on second homes that far outweigh their energy saving credits.

Meanwhile, fuel efficiency standards for automobiles have changed only slightly over the decades and the federal government still does not have a building code to encourage energy efficiency.
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Well I am sure by now everyone should know what was said in the State of the Union address. Hopefully as far as alternatives it won't be more broken promises!!!! This time the democrats need to hold him accountable & start implementing rapid change to lead us into the future.

Energy rhetoric, and reality

For six years, off and on, President George W. Bush has been talking about the need for alternative fuels and conservation to make the United States less beholden to unreliable sources of foreign oil. Yet all he has to show for it is a growing dependence on foreign oil, a growing climate problem and an increasingly cynical public.

Bush talked the same game during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, offering several impressively specific goals. But whether these new pledges turn out to be as empty as the old ones depends on his capacity for follow-through, and history is not encouraging.

Bush was true to form on one subject. The White House had promised nothing on global warming, and he delivered nothing. He mentioned "global climate change" but showed no sense of urgency on the issue. Nor was there any sign that he had even heard the ever-louder entreaties from Congress — and from many of his friends in the business community — that he support a national program of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

At one point, he did suggest that his proposals for alternative fuels and more efficient automobiles could also help reduce greenhouse gases. But these gains would be marginal — passenger vehicles account for only one-fifth of these gases.

Bush's enthusiasms mainly involved energy independence. He called for replacing 35 billion gallons of gasoline with renewable or alternative fuels by 2017, and for modest but steady improvements in the efficiency of cars and light trucks, a category that includes Sports Utility Vehicles, or SUV's. But he offered no specifics on where these 35 billion gallons in alternative fuels are going to come from.

Corn ethanol cannot be expected to provide more than 15 billion gallons without driving up food prices. Cellulosic ethanol, made from grasses and woody material, shows great promise. But there is no commercial refinery in operation today, and there is not expected to be one for several years. Hydrogen, a longtime Bush favorite, is even further down the road.

That leaves gasoline derived from coal. But refining and then burning a gallon of gasoline derived from coal would send nearly twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a conventional gallon of gasoline and would thus be a disaster for global warming.
Which raises the next question about the Bush plan: Where's the money coming from? It seems unrealistic to depend on the private sector alone. Washington must help. But federal research and development spending on energy has been in free fall for more than 20 years.

Once again, we have heard Bush make big promises about energy independence. Once again, we fear that very little will change. It would be nice, for once, to be surprised.


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Hmmmmmm..... With all the advanced technology of the electric nowadays I cannot believe that it is not being seriously considered. After seeing all the advances made in the last year, I now believe that this is the path to take. I also still believe that it is the company Tesla that is going to lead the way!!

THANX Tropics for the daily wishes!!!!!!!!
I am curious, how is global warming viewed in Puerto Rico???

Hmmmm thought so. I was thinking your island would be impacted for sure from rising sea levels.
I really really cannot understand how intelligent people including Crichton could not think that global warming is happening & we are a part of the problem.
To me it's just common sense!!!!
Also I have to say again...
Watch the movie "Who killed the electric car?"

Well, the new climate report comes out next week. I think that 2007 is the year everyone's going to start waking up. I am reading articles that are echoing the same thoughts.
May 2007 go down in the history books as the Green year!!!!!!!!!!!!

Granholm going after jobs
Electric sports car company is bringing work to Rochester Hills, but governor wants more
January 14, 2007

BY TOM WALSH

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Tesla Motors Inc., a California-based maker of electric sports cars, is on the verge of establishing a new engineering center in Rochester Hills that will hire 50 to 60 engineers this year.

In addition, Gov. Jennifer Granholm laid a hard-sell pitch on Tesla founder and CEO Martin Eberhard last week to also put a $100-million, 300-employee Tesla manufacturing plant in Michigan -- a factory earlier reported to be headed for Arizona, North Carolina or California.
She leaned on me pretty hard," Eberhard said Saturday from California in a telephone interview. He met with Granholm on Wednesday in Detroit during preview days for the North American International Auto Show. "We hope to make the decision on the factory soon. We're going to take another look at the choices in light of what she had to say."

In an interview Friday, Granholm told the Free Press she was aware that other states were considered front-runners for the production plant. "But we want to go after that, too," she said.

Tesla's move to locate a technical center in metro Detroit, the hub of the traditional U.S. automotive industry, is a significant step toward enhancing the region's status as a brainpower center for developing electric cars and other alternative-energy vehicles of the future.

Alternative energy initiatives, ranging from electric-car research to more ethanol fueling stations to hydrogen fuel-cell development, are a cornerstone of Granholm's second-term push to revive Michigan's sluggish economy.

The Michigan Economic Growth Authority is expected to approve state tax incentives Tuesday for the Tesla engineering center. Eberhard said Tesla expects to close a deal on a building for the center in the next couple of weeks and already has hired about a dozen automotive engineers here.

Experience needed

Tesla Motors was formed in 2003 by Eberhard, 46, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sold the digital book company NuvoMedia for $187 million, and by his partner Marc Tarpenning. Last year, they began selling their first product, the $100,000 Tesla Roadster, which is powered by lithium-ion batteries and boasts a range of 250 miles per charge.

Eberhard said Tesla will ship its first cars later this year from Britain, where they are made by the racing-car company Group Lotus PLC. Plans call for selling about 1,000 roadsters by the end of 2008.

Tesla's U.S. manufacturing plant and the Rochester Hills engineering center would be focused chiefly on the company's next-generation electric vehicle, a sedan that Eberhard hopes will cost around $50,000 and sell about 10 times the volume of the roadster.

Tesla has raised about $60 million, including $27 million from PayPal Inc. founder Elon Musk and small investments from Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Initial employees at its San Carlos, Calif., headquarters were primarily engineers with backgrounds in electronics, but as the company moved toward mass production, Eberhard said experienced automotive engineers were needed. "And the fact is, those people are in Michigan," he said.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, called Tesla's decision to put a tech center in Rochester Hills "an affirmation of the fact that if you want to be major player on the automotive scene, you've got to have a presence here."

General Motors Corp. made a big splash last week by unveiling the Chevrolet Volt electric concept car at the auto show. Like the Tesla Roadster, it would be powered chiefly by lithium-ion batteries, but with an assist from an on-board gasoline generator that could recharge the electric motor while driving. That would extend the Volt's range to 600 miles or more.

Granholm noted that GM, BMW and DaimlerChrysler have 500 engineers working on a joint project in Troy to develop hybrid engine technology that combines a battery-powered electric motor with a conventional gasoline internal combustion engine.

Alternative energy push

Granholm, clearly frustrated by Michigan's lethargic economy during her first term as slumping local automakers, companies and suppliers slashed tens of thousands of jobs, has named alternative energy as a key focus of her strategy to revive economic growth in the state. She said the state already has 215 research and development centers, most run by auto manufacturers and their key suppliers.

Granholm concedes that despite the auto industry's technology base, Michigan still has trouble shedding its image as an old-economy, rust-belt state. "We've got to get over our own inferiority complex," she said.

Her push to make Michigan a leader in alternative energy includes a plan to have 1,000 fuel pumps available by 2008 to supply drivers with E85 ethanol or other biofuel alternatives to traditional gasoline. She said the state already has 10 biofuel production plants either operating or planning to open soon.

Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com.


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Now this is going to be interesting, moving onto the big dog's porch LOL
Watch how fast GM trys to buy them out
Go Tesla, Go Tesla!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last warning: 10 years to save world
Jonathan Leake
January 28, 2007

THE world has just 10 years to reverse surging greenhouse gas emissions or risk runaway climate change that could make many parts of the planet uninhabitable.

The stark warning comes from scientists who are working on the final draft of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report, due to be published this week, will draw together the work of thousands of scientists from around the world who have been studying changes in the world’s climate and predicting how they might accelerate.

They conclude that unless mankind rapidly stabilises greenhouse gas emissions and starts reducing them, it will have little chance of keeping global warming within manageable limits.

The results could include the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, the forced migration of hundreds of millions of people from equatorial regions, and the loss of vast tracts of land under rising seas as the ice caps melt.

In Europe the summers could become unbearably hot, especially in southern countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, while Britain and northern Europe would face summer droughts and wet, stormy winters.

“The next 10 years are crucial,” said Richard Betts, leader of a research team at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate prediction. “In that decade we have to achieve serious reductions in carbon emissions. After that time the task becomes very much harder.”

Among the scientists’ biggest fears is that rising temperatures and levels of greenhouse gases could soon overwhelm the natural systems that normally keep their levels in check.

About half the 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide generated by human activities each year are absorbed by forests and oceans — a process without which the world might already be several degrees warmer.

But as CO2 levels rise and soils dry, microbes can start breaking down accumulated organic matter, so forests become net producers of greenhouse gases. The sea’s power to absorb CO2 also falls sharply as it warms.

The latest research suggests the threshold for such disastrous changes will come when CO2 levels reach 550 parts per million (ppm), roughly double their natural levels. This is predicted to happen around 2040-50.

“At the moment the real impact of our emissions is buffered because CO2 is absorbed by natural systems. However, if we reach this threshold they could be magnified instead,” said Betts. “It means we must start the action needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years.”

His warnings were backed up by Dr Malte Meinshausen, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He has used computer modelling to work out what might happen if greenhouse gas emissions were cut immediately, in 10 years’ time or later.

His results showed that immediate action might allow mankind to hold CO2 levels at 450ppm — well below the 550ppm danger level. However, Meinshausen and his colleagues recognise that this is unrealistic because the world’s governments are in such disarray over global warming. The best hope, they say, is that a global plan will emerge in the next few years, most likely from the renegotiations of the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions.

“We have to make sure carbon emissions peak no later than 2015 and then fall at around 3% a year. If we let them keep rising after that date it becomes much harder to bring them under control,” said Meinshausen.

His views were echoed by Dr Carol Turley of Plymouth Marine Laboratories who has been studying how rising CO2 levels are acidifying the ocean. When the gas dissolves in water it creates carbonic acid. “Rising acidity makes it much harder for marine organisms to build shells,” she said.

Turley, like the other scientists, has contributed to the IPCC report but all commented this weekend on the basis of already-published research. “If we do not take action in the next decade, by 2100 swathes of the ocean could have been stripped of creatures from plankton to coral reefs,” she said. “Such changes would devastate ecosystems and fisheries.”


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So they are thinking 10 years...
This HAS to be the year to really get going on this. Right above is the Tesla car showing that it CAN be done. Think about it this guy started from nothing & had modest investments to say the least. Now think about if his company had huge amounts of money being thrown at it. You guys should really look into this company. They have very good views on what & why things need to change!!

Snowboy that is really really good news!!!!!!
I have a feeling our next big presidential election is not fully going to be won or lost on the global warming issue BUT, I do feel it's going to be a factor. Also I think like I said before that when this new climate report comes out I think it should really wake us up too. The U.S. HAS to be at the forefront of this huge challenge.

Scientist's 'Russian roulette' climate warning
Liz Minchin, Environment Reporter
January 29, 2007

The world is "playing Russian roulette" with its future by responding too slowly to climate change, a leading American scientist has warned ahead of the release of a major international report this week.

But Professor Stephen Schneider told The Age that although Australian and US politics had been dominated for too long by "climate monkeys" who refused to take global warming seriously, he was more optimistic about the future because of the groundswell of community concern in both countries.

Scientists and government representatives from around the world will meet in Paris this week to finalise the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report before its release on Friday.

A draft of the report, obtained by The Age, confirms that there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are heating the planet unnaturally fast, mainly by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
There has been speculation that the IPCC report would downgrade earlier forecasts of how much the world will warm if we continue producing as much greenhouse gas as we do today.

But the draft report shows projections for the average global temperature rise from 1990 to 2100 are set to expand slightly, with a new range of 1.0 to 6.3 degrees Celsius. The 2001 report's range was 1.4 to 5.8.

Professor Schneider, a key figure in the IPCC process for more than a decade, said he could not comment on the exact range until the report was released. But he said he was concerned that the increase was more likely to be three degrees or above, with a 10 per cent chance of an extreme six-degree rise by the end of the century. "Hell, we buy fire insurance based on a 1 per cent chance," he said.

"If we're going to be risk averse … we cannot dismiss the possibility of potentially catastrophic outlyers and that includes Greenland and West Antarctica (ice sheets breaking up), massive species extinctions, intensified hurricanes and all those things. There's at least a 10 per cent chance of that. And that to me for a society is too high a risk … My value judgement when you're talking about planetary life-support systems is that 10 per cent, my God, that's Russian roulette with a Luger."

Professor Schneider said the weight of scientific evidence meant there could be no more excuses for delaying deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

He spent much of last year in Australia working with state governments and industry. While impressed with the work of the Australian Greenhouse Office and the CSIRO, he said he was disappointed that "the political establishment (in Canberra) was uninterested and they weren't even going to have a conversation" about climate change last year.

He said he had been heartened by the rise in awareness among ordinary people and big business in the US and Australia. "I'm more optimistic that the feds are finally going to get in the act than I was six months ago … the pressure from the bottom up is quite palpable and federal governments can't continue to ignore it," he said.

Last week Victoria produced 1.925 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from energy use, up slightly from the previous week.

http://climatechange.net
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Like I keep saying Snowboy this report is going to wake this country up!! I don't know maybe it's just me but, they sound pretty convinced......