ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS

Overwhelming stench from monstrous stain on the sea - Times Online

Only from the air can the enormity and hopelessness of the situation be comprehended. Even before Lieutenant Rene Baez of the US Coast Guard lowers the ramp of the surveillance aircraft in which we are flying, opening up the cabin to a rush of air from the Gulf of Mexico 1,500ft below, there is no mistaking the smell of crude oil.

via www.timesonline.co.uk

While the mainstream media won't discuss much of this point, the columnist and TV commentator Charles Krauthammer has pointed out that one reason for risky offshore drilling is the refusal of the government to permit more on-shore drilling. In the case of a disaster on land, the technoloigies for capping the oil spill are wll-developed and relatively easy to implement. However, because places like Anwar are off limtis, oil exploration has been driven to places like the Gulf-where, as we see, the ability to respond to a deep underwater spill is at the frontier of technology.

Instead of just casting blame on others, the federal government needs to engage in an honest doscussion of the failrue of its limtiation on the expansion of terrestrial drilling.

UN says case for saving species 'more powerful than climate change' | Environment | The Guardian

Goods and services from the natural world should be factored into the global economic system, says UN biodiversity report • Economic report into biodiversity crisis reveals price of consuming the planet

via www.guardian.co.uk

"The TEEB report shows that on average one third of Earth's habitats have been damaged by humans – but the problem ranges from zero percent of ice, rock and polar lands to 85% of seas and oceans and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland. It also warns that in spite of growing awareness of the dangers, destruction of nature will "still continue on a large scale". The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has previously estimated that species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be without humans."

This the best Reader comment in The Guardian on this article:

"I suppose if this is shouted loud enough, then it will form sufficient distraction so that AGW can be allowed to quietly die and the eco movement can seque seamlessly onto species loss as the next oh-my-gaia-we're-all-doomed-it's-all-man's-fault catastrophism.... "

Are You Ready For Global Cooling? - IBD - Investors.com

Climate Science: Noted scientists at a Chicago climate conference declare that global warming is not only dead, but that the planet faces a big chill for decades to come. What about those frozen wind turbines?

It's not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own in the most liberal sense.

"Global warming is over — at least for a few decades," Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. "However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for greater concern."

Easterbrook and 74 other presenters at the conference said what everyone already knows, having shoveled record amounts of global warming off our sidewalks and driveways last winter.

via www.investors.com

Harvard astrophysicist dismisses AGW theory, challenges peers to 'take back climate science'

In the following interview, Dr. Willie Soon, a solar and climate scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, questions the prevailing dogma of man-made global warming and challenges his peers to “take back climate science.” His remarks are his personal opinion based upon 19 years of scientific research.

Examiner.com: What drives climate change on Earth?

Dr. Soon: Most of the weather and climate variations we observed are essentially related to the sun and the changing seasons – not by CO2 radiative forcing and feedback. The climate system is constantly readjusting naturally in a large way – more than we would ever see from CO2. The CO2 kick [impact of CO2 emissions] is extremely small compared to what is happening in a natural way. Within the framework of a proper study of the sun-climate connection, you don’t need CO2 to explain anything.

via www.examiner.com

EPA moves to regulate smokestack greenhouse gases - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency moved Thursday to more tightly control air pollution from large power plants, factories and oil refineries, a step to limit emissions widely blamed for global warming.

The EPA said it is completing a rule requiring large polluters to reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that they release into the air. Those emissions can exacerbate asthma and other breathing problems.

The rule would require companies to install better technology and improve energy efficiency whenever they build, or significantly modify, a plant.

via news.yahoo.com

Bill Gates pays for ‘artificial’ clouds to beat greenhouse gases - Times Online

The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

via technology.timesonline.co.uk

Whoops! CO2 has almost nothing to do with global warming, discovers top US meteorologist – Telegraph Blogs

Dr Spencer, formerly senior scientist for climate studies at NASA, now leads the US science team for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSRE) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He co-developed the original satellite method for precise monitoring of global temperatures from Earth-orbiting satellites. He’s just the kind of egghead the IPCC claims to represent when it tells us the world is getting dangerously warmer, it’s man’s fault – the result of CO2 emissions – and it must be urgently addressed.

Except Dr Spencer doesn’t agree with any of that. He thinks it’s all nonsense, based on a very elementary error he describes in his new book The Great Global Warming Blunder. I summarise his arguments in this article.

Climate change, he shows, is an almost entirely natural process on which human influence is negligible.

via blogs.telegraph.co.uk

FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy - White House defends oil spill response

The Obama administration defended its response to the oil spill on Sunday and insisted it had not been overly reliant on BP in assessing the disaster.

However, even as the administration sought to reassure the public that it was doing everything in its power to address the environmental threat, Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, acknowledged that the US was inevitably facing a “massive restoration of the gulf coast”.

via www.ft.com

BP says it will pay for Gulf spill's cleanup - Yahoo! News

VENICE, La. – BP PLC said Monday that it will pay for all the cleanup costs from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that could continue spewing crude for at least another week.

The company posted a fact sheet on its Web site saying it took responsibility for the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill and would pay compensation for legitimate claims for property damage, personal injury and commercial losses.

via news.yahoo.com