Photo credit: suburbanbloke

As a top German scientist warns that climate change is accelerating, while 2008 ends up being the tenth warmest year ever recorded and a NOAA study shows climate change is “largely irreversible for 1000 years” we hear news about severe heatwaves and droughts in Argentina, Australia and USA.

Australians are currently facing a severe heatwave with temperatures of 40-plus Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for the southern parts of the country, making it the worst heatwave in 100 years. And the Australian government says it’s a sign of climate change.

“Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the heatwave, which started on Wednesday, was the sort of weather scientists had been warning about.

“Eleven of the hottest years in history have been in the last 12, and we also note, particularly in the southern part of Australia, we’re seeing less rainfall,” Wong told reporters.

“All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”"

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Photo credit: Ateo Fiel

After getting bailed out by the American public the “big three” in USA still show that they can’t be trusted. For years these failed auto companies have resisted and done everything in their powers to stop stronger compulsory MPG and CO2 emission standards, denied climate change and their promises that they could cut their greenhouse gases voluntarily have all failed.

If you thought the bailout would help put pressure on the big three to start shifting their production to more environmental friendly vehicles, that the consumers actually wants, you thought wrong. These failed auto makers have no intent in stopping their resistant for sane technology change after getting bailed out:

“In a telephone interview this morning, Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which is a party to two of the lawsuits now in federal court, said that the association had no intention of altering its strategy just because some of its members had recently received billions in public money.

“Keep in mind that the money that was given was one to two manufacturers [GM and Chrysler],” he said. “And all manufacturers have opposed the standards. Those lawsuits were brought by the entire industry, to protect the longstanding federal law that says that fuel efficiency standards should be set at the federal level and not by individual states.””

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Yesterday, during the Governors Global Climate Summit in California, Obama promised that USA would “engage vigorously” in the climate negotiations and “help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change”.

Unfortunately Obama yesterday turned down invitations to go to the UN climate conference in Poland this December. And he has not yet promised that as President he will sign the Kyoto protocol.

Below you can watch Obama’s speech during the climate summit, and read the transcript of the video:

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During a climate summit in California today Barack Obama said, in a taped video, that his “presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change”.

Obama spoke about his support for a cap-and-trade system and that he would reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and with 80% by 2050. Obama also said he wanted to give the private sector $15 billion each year to support their investments efforts in clean energy.

“I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”

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photo credit: Nrbelex

George Monbiot says that the motor industry has long sabotaged eco-innovations and that they are now demanding billions to cut its carbon emissions. The green subsidy for car makers, Monbiot says, is just a disguised corporate bail-out.

“Their sabotage of green technology has been both subtle and comprehensive. The film Who Killed The Electric Car? shows how the manufacturers, working with oil companies and corrupt officials, sank California’s attempt to change vehicle technologies. Having bumped off battery power, they persuaded the federal government to pour money instead into hydrogen vehicles, aware that the technological hurdles are so high that a cheap, mass-produced model might never be possible. Electric cars, by contrast, have been ready for the mass market for almost a century. The $1.2bn that the US government is spending on research and development for hydrogen cars – like the €2bn pledged to the same quest by the European Union – is a subsidy for avoiding technological change.”

Continue to read over at the Guardian.

The US Climate Change Science Program was created by the climate change denying Bush administration back in late 2002 “to review the validity of climate-change science before making policy decisions.” The science program was criticized by environmentalists for being used so that Bush could continue doing absolutely nothing to curb climate change.

But now the Climate Change Science Program has released their results and they clearly show that “human activity was responsible for the rapid warming of the 20th century.”

“The evidence is pretty convincing that the models give a good simulation of climate,” lead author David Bader of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California told reporters last week. He concedes that the report did not examine predictions of future climate change. Nor did it address policy issues, which will be left to the next administration.

Via New Scientist

Nidhi Jamwa from the Centre for Science and Environment India asks in the organisations journal Down to Earth “why green projects in India are hot favourite of international NGOs?”

Nidhi Jamwa focuses on a recently started green Sierra Club initiative in India that will try “to explore other ways of creating a robust dialogue on developing a green economy” and to “network, collaborate and share information”:

“There it goes again. It is always India and China that are the two emerging villains of climate change. The developed world has built their infrastructure and created wealth, based on technologies that are high on carbon emissions. Even now, it refuses to deliver on its promise to bring down carbon emissions. Yet goes about patronising the developing world on the need for green economy.

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Green WebHost is an UK company that started providing environmental guided hosting in 2003. They were, according to them, the first ISP in UK that took this issue seriously.

Their datacenter is located in California, east of Los Angeles, and uses 120 solar panels which generate all the electricity they need to power the servers and their offices, becoming the first and only solar-powered hosting company in the UK.

We “assist” in the offset all of our estimated 25 Tonnes per year of CO2 (by “sequestration” or “Carbon Fix”) by working with TreeSponsibility, a community based Climate Action Group, we also plant a tree for every new Broadband and Web Hosting customer.

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Here is a short summary of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s State of the State Address, which he made in January 8, 2008. You can read the whole speech over at knbc.com. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his speech, pushes for more dams to be built and repeating his promise to sue the Bush Administration for stopping California to get their “clean-car” standards to take effect.

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