President Barack Obama meeting with former Vice President Al Gore in the Oval Office on December 7, 2009 regarding Copenhagen. (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of the White House)
With no legally-binding agreement in
Copenhagen, there’s now talk of another global
warming conference next summer in Mexico
City. Lester Graham has more on that:
Transcript
With no legally-binding agreement in
Copenhagen, there’s now talk of another global
warming conference next summer in Mexico
City. Lester Graham has more on that:
When the U.S. House passed a climate bill this summer, the Senate was expected to pick it up and vote on it by the end of the year—maybe before the U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen.
That didn’t happen.
In Copenhagen last week, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore looked ahead to another conference next year.
“I believe that we are capable of resolving the remaining issues to the point we can meet in Mexico City this July in the aftermath of a successful action by the United States Senate in April and conclude a binding international treaty.”
Al Gore wants the Senate to pass the legislation by April 22 to be exact – Earth Day. With business concerned about coming greenhouse gas regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Senate might feel more pressure to by then.
Eileen Claussen is the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
(Photo courtesy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change)
Beginning December 7,
world leaders – including President
Obama – will gather in Copenhagen,
Denmark to talk about cutting the
greenhouse gas emissions causing
climate change. Eileen Claussen is
the President of the non-profit Pew
Center on Global Climate Change.
Lester Graham talked with her about
what will be accomplished at Copenhagen:
Transcript
Beginning December 7,
world leaders – including President
Obama – will gather in Copenhagen,
Denmark to talk about cutting the
greenhouse gas emissions causing
climate change. Eileen Claussen is
the President of the non-profit Pew
Center on Global Climate Change.
Lester Graham talked with her about
what will be accomplished at Copenhagen:
Lester Graham: We’ve been hearing about this United Nations summit in Copenhagen in the news for months now, but it’s not really clear what the world’s nations will accomplish there. It’s been downgraded from a conference to hammer out a treaty to a conference to come up with some kind of a framework for a treaty. So what can we really expect from Copenhagen?
Eileen Claussen: I think there are three things that are likely to be agreed in Copenhagen. All the developed countries in the world will make political commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by significant amounts, I think, across the board. I also think the major emitting developing countries will pledge to reduce their emissions from where they would otherwise go. And I think we will see some amount of money – maybe 5 to 10 billion dollars – collected from the developed countries to help developing countries adapt to climate change and build up their capacity to actually reduce their emissions.
Graham: And perhaps preserve some of the forests that store CO2.
Claussen: Absolutely. I think forestry is something where you actually might see some real progress.
Graham: President Obama is expected to tell the gathering that the US intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions to about 17% below the levels we emitted in 2005. And cut them by 83% by the year 2050. But, as it stands right now, there’s no legislation to accomplish that. It’s not clear that there’s enough support in Congress to pass climate change legislation that would accomplish that. Is the president making offers not within his power to give?
Claussen: Well, I think there’s no question that absent action in the Senate and a conference that merges the bill that passed in the House this summer, he can’t deliver on the 17%. There are many things he can do. And, in fact, he’s actually tried to do many of them. To increase the efficiency of automobiles which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions; to put stimulus money into clean energy projects; to get the EPA geared up to start regulating under the Clean Air Act. But I think none of those add up to the 17%. So we will need legislation that establishes a cap on emissions.
Graham: This Copenhagen agreement is supposed to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. The US did not ratify that treaty. But, of the nations that did, many of them failed to meet their obligations to reduce emissions. So will a treaty really mean anything?
Claussen: Well, I’m not sure that I agree that most countries or many countries have failed to reduce their emissions sufficiently. There are some countries that are not on track at the moment to get to their objectives, but others are. And I think it is still possible that most of those countries – not all – but most of them will actually get to where they said they would go.
Graham: Well, we’ll cal l that the optimistic view. I think in Canada they’re probably not going to make it.
Claussen: Well, Canada is the clear example of a country that won’t make it.
Graham: So we won’t have a sort of Copenhagen Protocol, Copenhagen appears to be now just another stop along the way to drafting a treaty.
Claussen: It’s not everything that many were hoping for, and there’s a fair amount of disappointment about that. But, quite honestly, there are a lot of very difficult issues for different countries to face here. And there actually had not been any real negotiation over the two years since the negotiation started.
Graham: Eileen Claussen is the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Thanks very much for talking with us.
The report summarizes what the scientists have been finding (Image courtesy of the US Global Change Research Program)
Scientists say the effects of human-caused climate change can no longer be ignored. Their findings are part of a national report just released. Sadie Babits reports it outlines the current and future impacts of climate change in the US:
Transcript
Scientists say the effects of human-caused climate change can no longer be ignored. Their findings are part of a national report just released. Sadie Babits reports it outlines the current and future impacts of climate change in the US:
The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report summarizes what scientists have been finding.
As temperatures warm, sea levels are rising, crop production is changing and hurricanes are getting worse.
Katherine Hayhoe is one of the report’s authors. She says we all need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and learn to adapt.
“So we need to figure out how to best prepare for the change that is coming.”
The report comes out while Congress is considering a major bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and reduce them over time.
But Hayhoe says the timing is just a coincidence.
Hayhoe says she does hope the report helps inform the debate in Washington.
This wildfire ignited along Idaho Highway 55 and was started by people. Scientists say as the climate warms, fires like this one will become common place in many parts of the world. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Moments after this fire started, flames raced through dried sage brush and grasses on an Idaho hillside. This fire burned close to homes and was quickly put out. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Wildfire burn so intense they often create their own weather system. Here, this towering column of "clouds" is actually smoke seen from an Idaho ski resort. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Multiple wildfires merged into one massive blaze in Idaho's central mountains. Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
This bank of clouds is really a bank of smoke created by a massive wildfire in Idaho. Climate change is expected to increase wildfires in the Western U.S. while decreasing the chance of fire in other regions. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
A helicopter uses a water bucket to scoop up river water to put out a wildfire burning through Idaho forest land. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Climate change has already brought
warmer temperatures, rising sea
levels and melting glaciers. Now,
researchers believe global warming
will cause major shifts in wildfire
patterns around the world. As Sadie
Babits reports, scientists hope to
predict where future wildfires will
light up:
Transcript
Climate change has already brought
warmer temperatures, rising sea
levels and melting glaciers. Now,
researchers believe global warming
will cause major shifts in wildfire
patterns around the world. As Sadie
Babits reports, scientists hope to
predict where future wildfires will
light up:
Trying to predict where wildfires are likely to start decades from now, is
kind of like getting a full body scan.
(sound of medical scanner)
Except instead of a medical scanner, scientists scanned the earth using
satellite data, climate models and the history of present day wildfires to
map out global wildfire patterns.
“The impacts of climate change on wildfires are expected to be widespread
around the world.”
Katherine Hayhoe is a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. She’s part
of a group of scientists that has for the first time, tried to project where fire
hotspots will crop up around the world. She says they found that climate
change will affect wildfire patterns.
Hotter temperatures and rain and snow coming at different times in the
year or perhaps not at all, will mean forests and grasslands will dry out
quicker – becoming tinder boxes for fire.
In the next 30 years, scientists believe that the Western U.S. will continue
to see catastrophic fires like the recent blaze in Santa Barbara, which
destroyed 80 homes.
In the next 60 years, they predict wildfires will increase in the Corn Belt and
spread into the East Coast.
Hayhoe says having an idea of how wildfire patterns will shift will help
communities better prepare.
“We can never eliminate the risk of climate change entirely but by making
wise choices and planning strategically we can minimize those risks.”
Some communities are already taking steps to prevent wildfire. The city of
Bend, Oregon was one of the first in the country to launch a public
education campaign to get homeowners to fire proof their homes. The
program, called FireFree, started more than a decade ago, after a massive
wildfire burned nineteen homes and scorched thousands of acres.
“It was something that scarred our community.”
Gary Marshall is the deputy chief of Bend’s Fire Department.
“We have this history of people wanting to live outside the urban area and
live out in rural areas, where they can see the deer and be out in the trees
and live that lifestyle that most Americans who move out to the West want
to be a part of that.”
Bend lies in what’s known as wildfire alley. Every year there are dozens of
fires that crop up either from lightning strikes or from people. The flames
are fed by dried out grasses and forests so dense you can’t see through
them. Add homes to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster not just
here but throughout the West.
But Marshall says the Fire Free program is working.
(sound of a truck driving on a dirt road)
County forester Joe Stutler and Gary Marshall drive me through
neighborhoods outside Bend. We stop first at an upscale suburb called
Coldera Springs. Everyone here has volunteered to fire proof their new
homes.
But just down the road, there’s a much older suburb and a lot of trees that
have been thinned out.
Sadie: “You can’t see through the trees it’s so dense.”
Joe: “You can’t walk through.”
Gary: “And a firefighter won’t go in there. You’d write that off. So if you
don’t take care of it, the fire will.”
That’s a picture that climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe hopes to avoid.
She says having a long term view of where wildfires might pop up could
help communities to start now and follow Bend’s lead.
It took Bend years to get most of the homeowners here to take
responsibility, and give their homes a fighting change to survive a
devastating blaze.
Whooping cranes have been abandoning their nests, and eggs, in search of food (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
About 70 whooping cranes now migrate between the Southeast US and the Midwest.
Wildlife experts have been hoping that more pairs of the birds would start hatching eggs
and raising chicks in the wild.
This spring, at their northern home in Wisconsin, several female cranes did lay eggs and
sat on the nests during cold weather. But when it warmed up, the adult birds abandoned
their nests to look for food.
George Archibald is co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.
“If there is a food stress, when it becomes warmer their drive to feed may increase much
more than when it’s cold.”
Some of the crane eggs were saved and hatched out by wildlife centers.
Aleutian Cackling Goose (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Some migratory birds are heading North earlier
because of climate change. That’s causing problems for
some bird species. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Some migratory birds are heading North earlier
because of climate change. That’s causing problems for
some bird species. Lester Graham reports:
On their way north, the migratory birds check things out at each stop along the way. If
the leaves are budding and the days are warm, they keep going north. But because of
climate change they’re getting to their breeding grounds a lot earlier.
Johannes Foufoloupolus is a researcher with the University of Michigan. He says, for
example, in the Rocky Mountain region, robins are arriving early. And when they go to
their highland breeding grounds, there’s still snow on the ground.
“A robin eats worms and it can’t really tunnel through six feet of snow to get to the
worms. So, that might be a problem.”
Other birds arrive early to find one of their main sources of food, insects, are not
emerging yet. What makes it worse, in some species the females like to hook-up with
males who get to the breeding grounds early. But with not as much food and cold
snaps, it means some baby birds are not surviving as well.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
The Colorado River in the Eastern end of the Grand Canyon National Park, below Desert View Overlook (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:
Now, this report was not peer reviewed, but The Natural Resources Defense Council and the
Rocky Mountain Climate Organization insist the data show it’s gotten hotter in the West
when you compare the last five years to the global average during the last century.
Theo Spencer is with the NRDC. He says water is always important in the West, and
this climate change is causing problems.
“The Colorado River Basin, which provides water for about 30 million people in the West, the temperature over the past 5 years increased 2.2 degrees. So that’s 120% more than the rest of the globe.”
The report says the Colorado is in a record drought – and that affects Denver,
Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Melting glaciers as seen from aboard the Fairweather Express II in Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Steller’s sea lions on a rock in Glacier Bay (Photo by John Ryan)
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
Transcript
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
(music)
Scene of the crime. Glacier Bay National Park. 9 o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning.
The crime: Global warming. You know: ice caps melting. Sea level rising. Deserts and
disease spreading. Scientists say it’s big, very big.
(music)
Intergovernmental investigators have ID’d the perpetrator: it’s us. Emissions from fossil
fuels like coal and oil have started heating the earth.
But here on the Fairweather Express II, you’d never know it. Park ranger Kevin Richards
is at the mic, entertaining passengers as we cruise past mile-wide glaciers
in the sun.
“That snow fell when Thomas Jefferson was signing the Declaration of
Independence.”
Richards tells the crowd how the glaciers have retreated 60 miles in the past 200 years.
But he hasn’t once mentioned global warming.
In the audience, Anchorage pathologist James Tiesinga smells a rat.
“The rangers seem very reluctant to say the words ‘global warming’, they skirt
the issue of why the glaciers are receding. I can’t help but wonder if the Park Service
has communicated the message to its employees, ‘don’t bring this up, it’s a hot topic’.”
And I notice the visitors’ newsletter put out by the park talks in depth about the changing
glaciers, but fails to mention that the climate is being changed by humans.
During a break in the naturalist’s stand-up routine, Tiesinga asks why there has been no
mention of global warming? Are we witnessing a coverup?
(music)
As huge chunks of ancient ice tumble into the bay, the Park Ranger, Kevin Richards, says, no,
there’s no censorship of climate science.
“Until very recently, yeah, if you’re working for the government, you
probably didn’t talk a lot about it. But now it’s okay, it’s an open forum right now.”
He says he’ll get to the connection
between melting glaciers and a warming earth near the end of his talk, but it’s a lot more
complicated than you might think.
“We just can’t talk about tidewater glaciers the same way we do about
terrestrial glaciers. It’s not the same process.”
Here’s why it’s not the same: tidewater glaciers have snouts that stick out into the ocean. Terrestrial glaciers are
land-locked. Richards goes on to say that land-locked glaciers in the mountains above
Glacier Bay are shrinking under a warming climate. But he says the dramatic loss of 60
miles of ice from Glacier Bay itself is not a sign of global warming.
(music)
To fact-check the on-board nature talk, I called up Roman Motycka.
He studies glaciers at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Geophysical
Institute. He confirmed that global warming is hitting most Alaskan
glaciers hard.
“90% of the glaciers in South-Eastern Alaska are wasting away, and that’s
complicated, but primarily due to global warming.”
So why aren’t tourists in Glacier Bay hearing that when they witness fall
ice chunks fall into the ocean?
“It’s really complex there. Here’s what happened when all
that ice got lost.”
Motycka explains that tidewater glaciers have their own cycles of
advance and retreat. In a nutshell, when the snout of a glacier ends up floating in deep water, it becomes inherently prone to calving – that is, dropping icebergs – independent of the climate. And that’s what’s happened in Glacier Bay. So, in other words…
“Your naturalist was right, the terrestrial glaciers are the
ones that are more important to look at in terms of straight climate
change.”
(music)
Back on the Fairweather Express II, Park Ranger Kevin Richards
finishes his day at the mic talking about global energy consumption and
making a plea for people to protect the environment back home,
wherever they come from.
So in the end, park rangers are still the nature lovers in funny green outfits you might
remember from your childhood. And as this episode of Thaw and Glacier comes to a
close, all is well in Glacier Bay. Except for a little thing called…
President Barack Obama meeting with former Vice President Al Gore in the Oval Office on December 7, 2009 regarding Copenhagen. (Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of the White House)
