Global Warming And The Bible | Redskynews.com

India’s environment minister said on Monday the country could not have high economic growth and a rapid rise in carbon emissions now that the nation was the number three emitter after China and the United States.

Jairam Ramesh’s comments come as negotiators from nearly 200 governments meet in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The U.N. talks aim to reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.
Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 6% [?]

Britain will not rely on the carbon dioxide emissions reductions made due to a weaker economy to meet its climate targets, Britain’s Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said on Thursday.

Britain is set to over-achieve on its so-called “carbon budgets” with an estimated 36 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

This was aided by the economic slowdown which reduced industrial output in 2008, causing emissions to fall by 2 percent. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 4% [?]

World leaders should focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible over the next 40 years to avoid perilous warming conditions, researchers said Monday.

In the first study of its kind, analysts used a detailed energy system model to analyze the relationship between emissions levels in 2050 and chances of achieving end-of-century targets of two or three degrees Celsius (3.5 or 5.5 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen ended last month with a non-binding agreement to limit warming to two degrees Celsius but did not set binding targets to reduce the emissions of gases that scientists say are heating up the world’s atmosphere to dangerous levels. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

Germany will stick to a more ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 even though the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen fell short of expectations, a government adviser said on Monday.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said it was unclear if the European Union as a whole would pursue a 30 percent target when it submits its plan to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat by January 31.

Germany had hoped that its offer to raise its 2020 target from 30 to 40 percent, combined with an EU offer to raise its goal from 20 to 30 percent if other nations pledged substantial cuts, would spur a deal on worldwide reductions in Copenhagen. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged industrialized and emerging countries to invest more in protecting wildlife and said the U.N. should create a body to refine scientific arguments for saving animal and plant species.

Researchers say preserving nature is crucial to the fight against climate change and warn that human activity is speeding up extinctions. They also argue that peoples’ livelihoods depend on natural assets worth trillions of dollars.

Extinction rates run at 1,000 times their natural pace due to human activity, research shows. Three species vanish per hour, according to U.N. figures. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Federal Government has released proposed new car emission standards which it wants to introduce from 2012.

The Government says the new standards would cut pollutants from all cars in Australia by as much as 90 per cent.

But the head of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, Andrew Mackellar, says to meet the proposed rules tougher fuel standards are needed.

“Any evaluation of vehicle emissions standards must also take into account whether or not there’s going to be a need to move to higher quality petrol in the Australian market,” he said. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 6% [?]

China has launched with Britain and Switzerland a project aimed at finding ways for the Asian giant to tackle climate change and mitigate its effects, officials said Thursday.

The Adapting to Climate Change in China project will run from this year through 2012, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Beijing’s top economic planning agency, in a statement on its website.

Britain’s departments for International Development and Energy and Climate Change along with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation will provide financial support and technical assistance for the project, the NDRC said. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 6% [?]

E.U. nations on Thursday agreed that manufacturers should make an array of building products, including windows and taps, more energy-efficient, broadening out a law on green design.

“Many energy-related products have a significant potential for being improved in order to reduce environmental impacts and to achieve energy savings through better design,” the revised law on environmentally-conscious design says, stressing that such rules can also save businesses and consumers money. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

A top European court annulled Wednesday an EU attempt to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that Estonia and Poland can let heavy industry emit.

The court ruled that the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, had overstepped its authority by slashing the National Allocation Plans (NAPS) of Poland and Estonia, by more than a quarter and almost half respectively.

“By imposing, in its review of NAPs, a ceiling on emission allowances to be allocated, the commission exceeds its powers,” the Luxembourg-based European Court of First Instance said in a statement. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new U.N. report said on Tuesday.

The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because of climate change.

Global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms and otherwise altering weather patterns, so disasters are now “an extremely significant driver of forced displacement globally,” it said. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 12% [?]

The leaders of China and Japan pledged Tuesday to take stronger action to fight climate change, but US President Barack Obama warned prospects for a global warming deal faced tough political realities.

Leaders of some 100 nations huddled at the largest-ever climate summit, as the clock ticks to a high-stakes December conference in Copenhagen meant to draft a successor to the landmark Kyoto Protocol.

“Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier warned the participants. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

World leaders tried to inject momentum into climate change talks on Tuesday but new proposals by China and a rallying cry from U.S. President Barack Obama did little to break a United Nations deadlock.

Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of the world’s top greenhouse gas polluters, had hoped to help foster efforts to forge a new global warming treaty two and a half months before a December deadline.
Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 4% [?]

Australians have overtaken Americans as the world’s biggest individual producers of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming, a risk consultancy says.

British firm Maplecroft placed Australia’s per capita output at 20.58 tons a year, some four percent higher than the United States and top of a list of 185 countries.

Canada, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia rounded out the top five. China remains the world’s biggest overall greenhouse gas polluter, followed by the United States. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 5% [?]

President Barack Obama’s top climate change negotiator on Thursday said international talks to cut carbon emissions were “difficult,” adding that the U.S. Senate must pass a domestic bill to fight global warming to give the talks a boost.

“Let me say bluntly that the tenor of negotiations in the formal UN track has been difficult,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s special envoy for climate change.

In prepared testimony to the House energy independence and global warming panel, Stern added, “Time is short and the negotiations have still too often foundered as a result of the … developed/developing country divide.” Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 3% [?]

The European Union outlined a scaled-back offer to help poor nations combat global warming on Thursday as some nations expressed gloom about prospects of a new U.N. climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Many experts said a summit of world leaders at U.N. headquarters on September 22 was a chance to end deadlock between rich and poor on aid and on sharing out the burden of curbs on greenhouse gases between rich and poor.

The United States said talks on the new U.N. climate treaty were “difficult” and Britain said a deal “hangs in the balance.” Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 3% [?]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming, calling it a “fiscal revolution” and overriding strong public opposition to the plan.

The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax.

“It is time to create green taxation,” Sarkozy said in an address delivered during a visit to a heat pump factory in Culoz, near the French border with Switzerland. Read More / Watch Video »

Popularity: 2% [?]