Thursday, July 21, 2005; Posted: 10:07 a.m. EDT (14:07 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming is caused primarily by humans and "nearly all climate scientists today" agree with that viewpoint, the new head of the National Academy of Sciences -- a climate scientist himself -- said Wednesday.
"Nearly all climate scientists today believe that much of Earth's current warming has been caused by increases in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fuels."
"We see economic growth, addressing the climate change problem and energy security as integrally related," said Daniel Reifsnyder, director of the State Department's Office of Global Change.
Cicerone also bolstered a 2004 Pentagon report that two private consultants prepared on potential global impacts of an abrupt and severe change in the world's climate. When the report was issued, it was met with some skepticism and disbelief -- even by the Pentagon official who commissioned the study.

A group of scientists led by Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently published their findings that Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun than it is emitting back to space.

Their climate model predicted that growing amounts of human-produced greenhouse gases would trap solar radiation and lead to a warming planet. If the model were correct, it should be possible to find all that excess heat somewhere -- and they did.

New measurements show that, over the past ten years, the heat content of the ocean has grown dramatically. It's grown by so much that it can finally account for the excess energy that the climate model calculated should exist. It is, in fact, a match.

On June 23, 2005, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX), in his capacity as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent letters to three climate scientists—Drs. Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes—as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Science Foundation questioning many aspects of a global warming study. The letter to the scientists requested a vast amount of data and information related to their research conducted over the past 15 years. While Rep. Barton’s request specifically targeted the results of the so-called “hockey stick” study (a 2,000-year record of Northern Hemisphere temperature), it also demanded a significant amount of data irrelevant to that set of peer-reviewed studies.

While a spokesman for Rep. Barton claims he is only “seeking scientific truth,” Rep. Barton seems to willfully misunderstand that the findings of the study in question are only one among thousands of pieces of evidence that support the scientific consensus that global warming is under way and that human activity is contributing significantly.

Australia and the United States, who have been criticised for remaining outside the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases, have now reportedly formed their own pact on climate change.
A report in The Australian newspaper claims they have joined with other heavy greenhouse polluters, China, India and South Korea, to focus on scientific advancements to ease the problem.
The Federal Government and the Bush administration have flatly refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol saying the treaty will damage industry and coal exports. The United States alone contributes about 15 per cent of all polluting gases and together the five countries account for more than 40 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. This pact, when you look at it, four of the world's biggest coal producers and the world's biggest coal exporter China is third, ganging up together to try and test the rest of the world, which has gone the Kyoto path towards renewal clean energy, which is the real solution to global warming," he said.

July 25, 2005
Scientists monitoring a Greenland glacier have found it is moving into the sea three times faster than a decade ago, The Independent reported Monday. Measurements taken in 1988 and in 1996 indicated the glacier was moving at a rate of between 3.1 and 3.7 miles annually. Measurements taken this summer show it's now moving at 8.7 miles a year.

July 27, 2005
NEWCASTLE, Australia - Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, closed down the world's largest coal export port in Newcastle Wednesday and called on Australia to quit coal and tackle climate change by moving to a clean energy economy. Greenpeace Australia climate and energy campaigner Ben Pearson said: "We are here today to expose Australia's dangerous addiction to coal export dollars and its significant contribution towards global climate change. Newcastle sends 80 million tons of coal to the world each year, and every ton causes worse droughts, bushfires, storms and floods. Every hour that we are here, we stop coal that could emit thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases from leaving."

July 27, 2005
The rivers of South America's Amazon basin are "breathing" far harder - and cycling the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide far faster - than anyone realized. Most of the carbon being exhaled as carbon dioxide from Amazonian rivers and wetlands has spent a mere five years sequestered in the trees, plants and soils of the surrounding landscape, researchers report in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature.
Because this time scale is so much shorter than researchers had thought, says James Morris, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s division of environmental biology, "this work adds important information to the global carbon cycle puzzle."
"Land use patterns, vegetation distribution and other parameters in the region are all changing as a result of human activities, and the system is responding fairly quickly," Mayorga says. "Both human and natural systems, in turn, will be impacted."

Thursday, 28 July, 2005, 04:12 GMT 05:12 UK
At least 37 people have died in a severe heat wave that has been spreading eastwards across the United States.
High temperatures boosted power demand to record levels as people sought refuge in air-conditioned buildings.
New York City power usage reached a new record of 12,551 megawatts, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the opening of special public air-conditioned "cooling centres".

A few days ago Roger Pielke Jr. pointed to a paper (PDF) by Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics called "On development, demography and climate change: The end of the world as we know it?" Pielke called it "refreshingly clear thinking on climate change." That's true, if by "refreshingly clear" he means "weep-silently-aplogize-to-your-children-and-throw-yourself-out-a-window depressing." Abandon hope, all ye who download PDF here.
Dyson's argument unfolds in several stages, but the brutal conclusion is simple: "In all likelihood, events are now set to run their course."

They present intriguing evidence that the sharp drop in carbon dioxide level, between 33 - 25 million years ago, prompted the origin of economically important land plants that are sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, such as corn and sugarcane.