Scientific research indicates the risks from global warming „warrant action now,” Kenneth Cohen, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s vice president of public affairs, said in materials prepared for a conference call today with reporters. New policies are needed to „reduce the risk of serious impacts at a reasonable cost.” Cohen's comments are the Irving, Texas-based company's most strident to date on the topic of climate changes linked to the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline, coal and diesel.
Exxon Mobil, pilloried by Greenpeace throughout the 1990s as an enemy of environmentalism, has been softening its stance on global warming since early 2000, when former CEO Lee Raymond gave a speech in London that acknowledged the dangers inherent in climate change. Temperatures have risen worldwide since the industrial revolution of the 19th century ushered in more use of fossil fuels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a creation of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.
If the warming trend continues, it could threaten food production and fresh-water supplies, and spur malaria and cholera epidemics, according to the panel. Exxon Mobil scientists participated in some of the studies that led to the panel's report.

The average temperature of Korea has gone at twice the speed of that of the world over the past 80 years, the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) said yesterday.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on world climate change on Feb. 2 to discuss a plan to deal with the warming effect and possible disasters.

From 1912 to 1920, the annual average temperature on the Korean Peninsula was 12 degrees Celsius, but between 1991 and 2000, it jumped to 13.5 degrees, showing an increase of 1.5 degrees in 80 years. This is twice the IPCC report's figure of the world's 0.74 degrees.

Lee Man-ki, director of KMA, said that winter has become shorter by a month over the 80 year period, which is a definite sign of a warming effect.

The organization has calculated what the climate would be like after 100 years using a super computer, and found that if the carbon dioxide levels keep increasing at the current rate, the temperature will rise by 6 degrees and rainfall will jump by 30 percent.

``This year, the average temperature will be 0.5 degrees higher than before at 12.4 degrees,'' Lee said.

The KMA forecast that this summer will be the hottest, even hotter than 1998, which is recorded as the hottest year in Korean forecast history. ``There will be more than 9.8 days of tropical nights,'' said Shin Soon-ho, the administration's forecast policy division.

It hopes to copy the success of a venture with Google Inc. that made an atlas of before-and-after satellite images of environmental change available to more than 100 million viewers through the interactive mapping program Google Earth.

Now UNEP is seeking similar partnerships with firms including Microsoft, Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems and ESRI, a California-based computer mapping company, UNEP program officer Michael Wilson told Reuters.

"A lot of effort is going into developing these sorts of partnerships and finding alignment of interests," he said on the sidelines of a U.N. environment conference in Kenya.

UNEP's "Atlas of Our Changing World" was first published in hardback in June 2005 and features high-resolution images of changes ranging from dramatic deforestation in South America to retreating glaciers in the North Pole, oil exploration in Canada and the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain.

In environmental terms, the book became something of a bestseller, moving more than 10,000 copies at $150 each.

"For an organization like UNEP, that was an unprecedented success," said Wilson. "So we all started looking at ways we could make this information available to more and more people."

Story Link 

Note: Once in a while you run into a story that is just to..interesting...not to share. Here is one on the many uses for the lowly penis. Guys, did you know that your penis could be used to produce face cream? Yep and Ophra endorses it...Story below:

 MJ

One foreskin can be used for decades to produce miles of skin and generate as much as $100,000 -- that's not the fee from a one-time sale, but the fees from the fibroblasts that are created from those original skin cells.

One of the most publicized examples of the foreskin-for-sale trend involves a skin cream that has been promoted by none other than Oprah Winfrey. SkinMedica, a face cream, which costs over $100 for a 63-oz. bottle, is used by many high-profile celebrities (such as Winfrey and Barbara Walters) as an alternative to cosmetic surgery. Winfrey has promoted the SkinMedica product several times on her show, and her website, which raves about "a new product that boosts collagen production and can rejuvenate skin called TNS Recovery Complex. TNS is comprised from six natural human growth factors found in normal healthy skin ... the factors are engineered from human foreskin!"

Click here for the rest of the story . 

02/07/07

WORLD SCIENTISTS CONFIRM HUMANS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
The Eiffel Tower switched off its 20,000 flashing light bulbs in a five-minute blackout to call attention to the release of the . This historic report presented unequivocal conclusions by more than 2,000 scientists in 150 countries who spent 6 years culling the latest research.

GLOBALWARMING101.COM: NO MORE ARCTIC?
There's no better place to witness the disruption of ecosystems and cultures by global warming than the Arctic. This February 14th, and his team of Inuit hunters, explorers and educators, will embark on a 1200-mile, four-month-long expedition across the Canadian Arctic's Baffin Island to get a first-hand look at how global warming is impacting the landscape, wildlife, and human communities.

You can follow Will Steger's Global Warming 101 Expedition at to learn what is happening to the region.

BRITISH TO SHOW 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH' IN SCHOOLS
As part of a year-long environmental education campaign to combat global warming, Al Gore's documentary will be sent to every secondary school in England, over 3,385 schools.

As Education Secretary Alan Johnson explained, "Children are the key to changing society's long-term attitudes to the environment. Not only are they passionate about saving the planet, but children also have a big influence over their own families' lifestyles and behavior."

VIRTUAL MARCH PARTNER OUTREACH
Special thanks to our latest featured marcher and their "Ships and Dip" four-day rock cruise aboard the Carnival Legend for their efforts in signing up new marchers. The cruise last month, also featuring SGW partner , not only provided fans with some great music, but also a valuable opportunity to learn about stopping global warming and maintaining an eco-friendly lifestyle. They quadrupled their goal of making the cruise carbon neutral, and over 4000 tons of CO2 was offset through participation of the band, , and the fans, equivalent to over 8 million miles not driven in a car. Great job!

NEW PARTNERS AND MARCHERS
This week the Virtual March grew to over 620,000 marchers! Recent partners include , , , , , , , professional snowboarder , sports agent , and Pro Football Hall of Fame QB .

SUPPORT THE VIRTUAL MARCH
Please help spread the word by hosting a on your website, blog or online community page. We also have a new selection of computer desktop images available for download.

We have also partnered with a number of organizations to make it easy for donations to be made to our cause. Check out our new page for more details.

Keep Marching!

Laurie David
Founder

February 5, 2007

By Mike Johnston

I am sitting in a truck in Whately Massachusetts going over the daily Climate Change/alternative energy news feeds and posting stories to the blog. Sometimes when I am doing this I can't help but be struck by the irony of seemingly unrelated stories which, when taken together, mean something totally different than either story meant on it's own.

In the background is REM playing "Its The End of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine)" and again the irony is delicious.  The two stories today that sparked this line of reasoning are especially fun because they just add one more layer to an already familiar socio-economic pattern. The first story is entitled "Global warming to hit poor worst, says U.N.'s Ban". Now there is a no brainer. Seems like everything hits the poor worse (including capitalism). How bad will it be to be poor if the world gets more and more out of whack?  Pretty bad according to most experts. Now there is another good one, if you are an "expert" on poverty does that make you just an observer or should the responsibility to end poverty be inherent to claiming that title?

At any rate, while the poor will get poorer and more uncomfortable sitting in their sweltering hovels/tenements/welfare housing projects drinking water that has been recycled from their own excrement what will the rich be doing? Why getting richer of course, what else?

The second Story today that completes the ironic moment is titled "Financial Firms Detail Climate Change Risks,Opportunities". Isn't that just sweet? That's right my poor friends, there are opportunities for financial reward in any situation. After all someone has to build the sewer system that collects your sewage and channels it to the recycling plant where it is strained and then bottled to sell back to you don't they?

While i wrote this I remembered the famous quote often attributed to French Queen Marie Antoinette. She supposedly said it on the eve of the French revolution when she was asked what the peasants could do who could not even find bread to eat. As the story goes her reply was; "Let them eat cake". While the validity of this quote is in dispute now among scholars the gut sentiment behind it remains unchanged. So today when the sweltering masses of the poor look to the rich and ask, "what can we drink?" apparently the reply is going to be; "Let them drink piss". We have come so, so far, haven't we?

More info here
 

Note: Imagine that, in England (any many other parts of the world) kids are being taught real science. They are learning to observe the world around them and to make deductions based on those observations. Here in the U.S. meanwhile we are teaching our kids (and most adults too) that Climate Change is just some sort of "vague" possibility being forced into the gullible by evil Liberals. Of course we now know that Exxon paid large sums of money to deliberately skew evidence on Climate Change in order to keep it as "vague" as possible and, more recently, that the White House used it's influence to do the same thing...

 MJ

Note: The linked article below seems to be a reasonably good resource for anyone who is interested in learning about climate change.

MJ

Climate change factors

Variations within the Earth's climate

    F riday 02 February 2007

    W ashington - Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

    E nergy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

    & quot;There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the U.S. economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially even worse emissions."

    P resident Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.

    & quot;Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world. And so it's really got to be a global solution," Bodman said.

This was not a wake-up call. This was "We told you so."

Seventeen years and a zillion computer hours after the world's climate scientists first ran the big calculation, they came up with the same estimate of the warming the planet will see by the end of the century if we go on pouring out greenhouse gases: 3C.

If a single numeral can be accusatory, this one was.

If there are any of our political leaders still snoozing at the back of this science lesson, they stand duly rebuked for not paying attention.

In the past 17 years that mankind has squabbled and allowed its greenhouse gas emissions to go on rising, the blanket of gases that keeps the Earth warmer than space has increased by seven per cent. But when you calculate the radiative forcing potential of that seven per cent — its capacity to force the climate to warm — the increase since the IPCC's first report in 1990 is 30 per cent.

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, said that gives an idea of the urgency of doing something now, before climate change gets beyond our control — and a sense that many opportunities have already been squandered.

The predicament we face if emissions go on rising along the "high" scenario envisaged by IPCC was put colourfully by one of its authors, Kevin Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"If you come back in 100 years, it will be like Star Trek. You could be on a different planet," he said. "You can move from Miami to New York, but polar bears and trees don't have anywhere to go to."

In an interview with USA TODAY, Scott said the effort has been embraced by employees and has helped Wal-Mart with retention and recruitment.

"Our young managers view our focus on sustainability as a higher calling," he said.

As for suppliers, Wal-Mart has come up with a scorecard to grade their environmental progress and will "pick the ones moving in the right direction." Still, customers will ultimately decide which suppliers' products are available with their purchase choices, he said.

Scott said the company will introduce "Global Innovation Projects," including a challenge for Wal-Mart associates and suppliers to come up with ways to remove non-renewable energy from products the company sells. Wal-Mart will push suppliers to "make products that rely less and less on carbon-based energy," he said.

Scott said he's gotten strong support for this and other aspects of Wal-Mart's sustainability plan from major suppliers, including Unilever, PepsiCo (PEP) and Universal Music.

"In some cases, they've been ahead of us and in other cases waiting for us to ask," Scott said in the interview. "But no one has pushed back to me."

(Blog writer's note: Wal-Mart is such a symbol of corporate greed to many people that it will be interesting to see how their new found environmental awareness will translate into the real world. Will part of their conscience extend to health care and a living wage for the workers in Asia and other places who make the products they sell? If this turns out to be sincere and not just some PR maneuver I will be happy to support their efforts.)

The Worldmapper project's depiction of global public spending on health

A new set of maps basing the relative size of countries on socio-economic data rather than land area clearly shows gross inequalities in global public health.

The innovative maps, published in PLoS Medicine this week (30 January), were developed by the Worldmapper project.

The project aims to show each country sized according to public health variables derived from UN data such as population density, disease distribution and healthcare spending.

By using these variables instead of landmass, the maps give a clearer picture of how health problems affect different parts of the world.

A standard map of global malaria distribution, for example, will show a relatively small area of the world affected by the disease.

But according to Danny Dorling of the UK-based Sheffield University, who led the study, malaria is "a disease of people, not of land".

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Former Vice President Al Gore has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen, of the Socialist Left Party, to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday. (Watch what Democrats think about Gore running for president )

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila [Watt-Cloutier] works from the ground up," Brende said.

During eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including for the Kyoto Treaty, and after leaving office in 2001 has campaigned worldwide, especially with his Oscar-nominated documentary on climate change called "An Inconvenient Truth."

Canadian Press

PARIS (AP) - The City of Light dimmed Thursday as Parisians joined a five-minute "lights-out" campaign to express concern over climate change.

Even the Eiffel Tower, whose 20,000 sparkling bulbs light up the Paris skyline nightly, went dark between 7:55 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time.

The countrywide lights-out, the brainchild of France's Alliance for the Planet conservation group, was timed before the release Friday of a major climate change report warning that Earth will keep getting warmer.

Lights also went out at Paris' Hilton Hotel, where many of the scientists and officials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are staying as they work on the report. The hotel even switched off its electric revolving front door.

A campaign rally organized by Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal went ahead in the dark after organizers pulled the plug on lights in the meeting hall, in the southeastern city of Grenoble. The hall's microphones and speakers continued to work during the blackout.

In the strongest language it has ever used, a United Nations panel says global warming is "very likely" caused by human activities and has become a runaway train that cannot be stopped.

The warming of Earth and increases in sea levels "would continue for centuries … even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized," according to a 20-page summary of the report that was leaked to wire services.

The summary of the fourth report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, was scheduled for release this morning in Paris. But scientists involved in the final editing process have been leaking bits and pieces from it all week, culminating in the leaking of the full report eight hours before its release.

The phrase "very likely" indicates a 90% certainty. The last IPCC report, issued five years ago, said it was "likely" that human activity was at fault, indicating a certainty of 66%.

Many scientists had argued during the editing process that the report should say it is "virtually certain" that human activities are causing global warming. That would indicate a 99% certainty.

By Professor Mike Hulme

Director

A prototype of a Zero Energy Home using solar energy. Many such homes use more than one renewable energy technology. All employ passive solar design.

Let us revisit sustainable shelter with David Zaks and Jeff Christian. David interviewed¹ Jeff for World Changing (January 30, 2007).

Jeff Christian directs the Buildings Technology Center at the Oak Ridge National Labs. Over the last four years he has conducted research on five prototype houses that cost between 60 cents and one dollar a day in energy costs to operate.

Jeff Christian works with Building America, a program that focuses on the building site, envelope, mechanical systems, and energy-use factors. Such homes optimize the following, energy efficiency and renewable energy features:

• Climate-specific design
• Passive solar heating and cooling
• Natural day-lighting
• Energy-efficient construction
• Energy-efficient appliances and lighting
• Solar thermal and solar electric systems.